Linux Forcibly Installed On Congressman's Computer In Act of Terrorism 343
fermion writes with news of Windows computers being forcefully liberated: "The campaign headquarters of Michael Grimm, a U.S. House of Representatives member from New York, were vandalized. What has not been reported everywhere is that Linux was installed on one of his computers, erasing data in the process. Is this a new attack on democracy by the open source radicals, or it is just a random occurrence?"
From the article: "'In fact, one officer said to me today they see this as a crime against the government, because I am a sitting United States congressman and they take it very seriously. You know, especially in light of what happened with Gabby Giffords, we're not in the world today where we can shrug things off,' Grimm said. ... [GNU/]Linux, an open-source operating system, was installed on Grimm's computers, erasing the hard drive contents, which included polling and voter identification data. But staff had backed up the hard drive contents hours beforehand. Grimm and his staffers said the vandalism — cement blocks were thrown through the office's windows — is a cover-up for the attacks on the computers."
Re:Noob Hackers. (Score:4, Informative)
And then selected the wrong keyboard and language settings, and then chose the wrong partitions to format and then selected the wrong packages to install...
Re:There's more to this story. (Score:5, Informative)
To follow up, here's the link: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/09/rep_michael_gri_1.php
Re:There's more to this story. (Score:5, Informative)
Elsewhere it was revealed that it was a young kid who threw the rocks, and a staffer "accidentally" wiped the computers with a Linux disk.
I say accidentally because he was being investigated for illegal use of campaign funds, and some of the data that may have been of interest to the investigation was lost. And it's not exactly trivial to accidentally wipe your disks with a Linux disk. I can see someone doing it, but you do have to go through enough steps that you have to have been trying to do *something* with that disk even if it wasn't wiping the system.
Yep, New York Daily New has the story here [nydailynews.com]. Apparently like the data wasn't deleted and whoever they had to do their IT didn't know enough about Linux and partitions to realise.
Re:There's more to this story. (Score:5, Informative)
I'd also like to note that the only place the word "terrorism" appears is in the headline of the slashdot summary. The word is not used at all in either the summary nor in the linked article.
captcha: distorts
This is a non-story. (Score:5, Informative)
1. Congressman misappropriates campaign funds
2. Congressman comes under investigation
3. Congressman slips IT guy $50 to ransack the office at night and make some key financial data "disappear"
4. Congressman acts shocked and appalled, decries this act of "terrorism" and labels himself as a helpless victim.
5. Media gobbles it up because it contains the word "terrorism"
6.
7. Profit! (from misappropriating campaign funds)
Link doesn't mention anything about illegal funds (Score:5, Informative)
Your link doesn't mention anything about illegal funds, I was going to call you out for trying to mislead but then I Google'd it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/michael-grimm_n_1853232.html
Wow, pretty murkey Eric Cantor (Republican head of the House!) in there too receiving the monies, so you can bet this one will be buried quick.
Re:There's more to this story. (Score:4, Informative)
It's far easier to just boot dban and type AUTONUKE.