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Mr Biden possibly subject to Russian blackmail

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Brictoria
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17 Aug 2021, 9:23 pm

Pepe wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
^^^
The computer repair guy couldn't have just given Hunter a reminder call that his laptop was ready? That's a reason why I find this story simply unbelievable.

It was reported in multiple locations at the time that he tried calling Hunter on several occasions...


Do you believe this?
Could it be a "he said, she said" situation? :scratch:


It's hard to say - If calls to the number went unanswered, how would you provide evidence of having called to try and make contact?

On one hand, there is the case that he treated this like any other device brought in, tried to make contact several times when no-one returned to collect it, and eventually it reverted to "Abandoned" and so he took ownership of it.

On the other hand, there is the possibility that he repaired the device and sat it aside with no intention of contacting the owner, merely to gain ownership of it and so access data on the device he already had possesion of.

The problems with the second option are that he already had access to the data, and the first people he contacted once he took ownership of the device were the FBI (contacting anyone for political reasons occurred many months after this) - Had he accessed the data prior to then, he could have contacted the FBI at that time (much as Best Buy do, or as occurred - albeit in the UK - with Gary Glitter), and had he "withheld" the device for political reasons, why wait so long before contacting anyone and providing a copy?

It's not impossible that he didn't try to make contact, it merely seems less plausible.



SabbraCadabra
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17 Aug 2021, 11:07 pm

Brictoria wrote:
On the other hand, there is the possibility that he repaired the device and sat it aside with no intention of contacting the owner, merely to gain ownership of it and so access data on the device he already had possesion of.

But in Real Life, he wouldn't be able to access any of Hunter's data, because he wouldn't know Hunter's password(s).


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Brictoria
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18 Aug 2021, 12:06 am

SabbraCadabra wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
On the other hand, there is the possibility that he repaired the device and sat it aside with no intention of contacting the owner, merely to gain ownership of it and so access data on the device he already had possesion of.

But in Real Life, he wouldn't be able to access any of Hunter's data, because he wouldn't know Hunter's password(s).

It would depend (in general terms) - some shops ask for these credentials to allow them to have the access required (admin rights to install software, for example), and even if he got a generic admin account for the device, being a Mac, a simple "sudo" command would give access to files for any other user of the machine. There's also the possibility (depending on the model) that the storage device is removable, and so the contents could be viewed by connecting it to another machine - unless the owner had taken specific steps to manually encrypt the data (making recovery difficult)...It's not encrypted by default, relying instead on access permissions in the OS.

In this specific instance, given the laptop was supposedly water damaged and there for "data recovery to store server" (see repair quote linked previously), the data recovered would be freely available to the owner at any time once "recovered" to this location, given the access permissions can be set on the device which the data resides upon (in simple terms).



cyberdad
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18 Aug 2021, 12:11 am

SabbraCadabra wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
On the other hand, there is the possibility that he repaired the device and sat it aside with no intention of contacting the owner, merely to gain ownership of it and so access data on the device he already had possesion of.

But in Real Life, he wouldn't be able to access any of Hunter's data, because he wouldn't know Hunter's password(s).


Which is why he ran away and closed his business. Because no rationale person would continue using him as a client if he cracked a client's password and accessed private information



Last edited by Cornflake on 18 Aug 2021, 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.: Removed a personal attack

SabbraCadabra
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18 Aug 2021, 1:15 am

Brictoria wrote:
There's also the possibility (depending on the model) that the storage device is removable, and so the contents could be viewed by connecting it to another machine - unless the owner had taken specific steps to manually encrypt the data (making recovery difficult)...It's not encrypted by default, relying instead on access permissions in the OS.

I don't know Hunter, maybe he's a complete idiot, but one would think that someone in his position would keep their data encrypted.

One would think that a work laptop that originated from the Beau Biden Foundation would be encrypted.

I don't know, it seems like red flags to me. Not to mention all of the red flags that popped up when they tried to interview the guy from the shop.

Brictoria wrote:
I'm curious: How do you imagine a person could perform "data recovery" (including confirming the content of files recovered are not damaged) without accessing them?

1:1 clone.
But the article never claims or even implies that either of the drives needed to be recovered, only that he had made a copy of "the hard drive" (which one?) to give to Rudy.

Brictoria wrote:
[1] I also consider various poster's credibility on a similar scale, based on whether information\facts they introduce are verifiable (more points if sources are supplied, rather than expecting the reader to "trust" them\search online themselves), and how regularly they include sources to support their claims.

I learned from a psychologist that citing sources is unhealthy when dealing with people like conspiracy theorists. There's no way to change their mind, and they actually get off on knowing that you wasted time finding sources that they had no intention of clicking on. You just have to make your statement and show confidence in it.

People don't click sources, they read headlines. I gave up on that kind of thing.

Besides, it's the Internet, you can find sources to back up virtually any claim at all these days, whether it's true or not.


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Cornflake
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18 Aug 2021, 11:48 am

 ! Cornflake wrote:
Several accusations, personal attacks, instances of unnecessary snarkiness and other malarkey have been removed to tidy the thread and bring it more on topic.

Please do not make further accusations or judgements on other members' understanding or supposed motives; they would be off-topic and likely to be removed.

Thread unlocked.


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Mr Reynholm
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18 Aug 2021, 1:20 pm

cyberdad wrote:
Mr Reynholm wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
I hadn't been planning on re-hashing this, but it seems there are people who fail to grasp basic information explained to them.


The fact is you already had zero proof the FBI or the Russians have intelligence on Biden Jr that could be used ot blackmail Joe Biden sr.
Secondly you the earlier thread is relevant because if the FBI already had damaging information on Biden Jr from his laptop then both they and the now disgraced Rudi Giuliani would have acted upon the information.


Not sure about Russia or the FBI, but the video of Hunter on BitChute is pretty damaging and opens Joe Biden up to some bad PR.


All depends what's on the laptop. I asked this question before. The answer is nobody knows. Here's a piece of common sense, Biden Sr. is never going to share confidential information/state secrets with his drug addict son, Does anyone seriously think Hunter can enter the Whitehouse and access all areas? :lol:

Hypothetically all Russian mobsters are going to find is Hunter Biden's picture collection which I suspect is a personal embarrassment to his family but beyond that nothing else. It may have blackmail value on that level but how much further can Hunter Biden sink in the public eye?

Much ado about nothing except the sad life of a president's son being used as a pawn by right wing gutter trollls in the media.

Can you imagine the same situation during Trump's time in office? The shrieks of outrage from the media and DNC would have been deafening.



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18 Aug 2021, 4:44 pm

Mr Reynholm wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Mr Reynholm wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
I hadn't been planning on re-hashing this, but it seems there are people who fail to grasp basic information explained to them.


The fact is you already had zero proof the FBI or the Russians have intelligence on Biden Jr that could be used ot blackmail Joe Biden sr.
Secondly you the earlier thread is relevant because if the FBI already had damaging information on Biden Jr from his laptop then both they and the now disgraced Rudi Giuliani would have acted upon the information.


Not sure about Russia or the FBI, but the video of Hunter on BitChute is pretty damaging and opens Joe Biden up to some bad PR.


All depends what's on the laptop. I asked this question before. The answer is nobody knows. Here's a piece of common sense, Biden Sr. is never going to share confidential information/state secrets with his drug addict son, Does anyone seriously think Hunter can enter the Whitehouse and access all areas? :lol:

Hypothetically all Russian mobsters are going to find is Hunter Biden's picture collection which I suspect is a personal embarrassment to his family but beyond that nothing else. It may have blackmail value on that level but how much further can Hunter Biden sink in the public eye?

Much ado about nothing except the sad life of a president's son being used as a pawn by right wing gutter trollls in the media.

Can you imagine the same situation during Trump's time in office? The shrieks of outrage from the media and DNC would have been deafening.


All of Trump's scandals had fire behind the smoke.


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cyberdad
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18 Aug 2021, 6:58 pm

Mr Reynholm wrote:
Can you imagine the same situation during Trump's time in office? The shrieks of outrage from the media and DNC would have been deafening.


Given the vast volume of transgressions during the Trump administration it would have been merely one of many claims/accusations awaiting legal investigation.



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18 Aug 2021, 7:39 pm

Mr Reynholm wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Mr Reynholm wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
I hadn't been planning on re-hashing this, but it seems there are people who fail to grasp basic information explained to them.


The fact is you already had zero proof the FBI or the Russians have intelligence on Biden Jr that could be used ot blackmail Joe Biden sr.
Secondly you the earlier thread is relevant because if the FBI already had damaging information on Biden Jr from his laptop then both they and the now disgraced Rudi Giuliani would have acted upon the information.


Not sure about Russia or the FBI, but the video of Hunter on BitChute is pretty damaging and opens Joe Biden up to some bad PR.


All depends what's on the laptop. I asked this question before. The answer is nobody knows. Here's a piece of common sense, Biden Sr. is never going to share confidential information/state secrets with his drug addict son, Does anyone seriously think Hunter can enter the Whitehouse and access all areas? :lol:

Hypothetically all Russian mobsters are going to find is Hunter Biden's picture collection which I suspect is a personal embarrassment to his family but beyond that nothing else. It may have blackmail value on that level but how much further can Hunter Biden sink in the public eye?

Much ado about nothing except the sad life of a president's son being used as a pawn by right wing gutter trollls in the media.

Can you imagine the same situation during Trump's time in office? The shrieks of outrage from the media and DNC would have been deafening.


I don’t think you realize how many rumors people tried to start that most of us just didn’t buy into. I’m not afraid to tell other liberals when they are either digging into something irrelevant or that isn’t proven. Within my circles we kill that stuff fast because we don’t want to lose credibility.

The fact remains, however, that Trump tended to be proud of his transgressions (not always realizing how scandalous they were). So if he’s boasting, well, it’s a little bigger than a rumor. He kept everyone so busy with easily proven questionable actions that there was little need to hold onto rumors for long.

Ah it has been so peaceful to not have a new questionable tweet or pronouncement every day … (a peace the Afghanistan situation has broken, but that is a different topic).


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Last edited by DW_a_mom on 18 Aug 2021, 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

DW_a_mom
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18 Aug 2021, 7:46 pm

Brictoria wrote:
SabbraCadabra wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
On the other hand, there is the possibility that he repaired the device and sat it aside with no intention of contacting the owner, merely to gain ownership of it and so access data on the device he already had possesion of.

But in Real Life, he wouldn't be able to access any of Hunter's data, because he wouldn't know Hunter's password(s).

It would depend (in general terms) - some shops ask for these credentials to allow them to have the access required (admin rights to install software, for example), and even if he got a generic admin account for the device, being a Mac, a simple "sudo" command would give access to files for any other user of the machine. There's also the possibility (depending on the model) that the storage device is removable, and so the contents could be viewed by connecting it to another machine - unless the owner had taken specific steps to manually encrypt the data (making recovery difficult)...It's not encrypted by default, relying instead on access permissions in the OS.

In this specific instance, given the laptop was supposedly water damaged and there for "data recovery to store server" (see repair quote linked previously), the data recovered would be freely available to the owner at any time once "recovered" to this location, given the access permissions can be set on the device which the data resides upon (in simple terms).


With the thread unlocked, I have to ask - given that even though I do have some legal training, I never presume to know how the law plays out in another state, much less another country - what makes you so confident in your analysis?

My experience with and understanding of the law is that no one else can ever take ownership of my data. Period. Ever. I’ve submitted a computer for data retrieval, and I would not have done that if I hadn’t been convinced of the security of what they retrieved, regardless of if I ever remembered to pick it up or not. If I hadn’t picked it up, it would have been destroyed.

We take privacy laws very seriously around here.


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cyberdad
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18 Aug 2021, 8:15 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:
My experience with and understanding of the law is that no one else can ever take ownership of my data. Period. Ever. I’ve submitted a computer for data retrieval, and I would not have done that if I hadn’t been convinced of the security of what they retrieved, regardless of if I ever remembered to pick it up or not. If I hadn’t picked it up, it would have been destroyed.

We take privacy laws very seriously around here.


Not surprisingly we take data privacy very seriously here as well in Australia. A computer technician pulling this type of "theft" of data would not be tolerated here either (despite the flimsy claims made).

Your interpretation is common sense. The person making these flimsy claims is pretending they wouldn't be worried if their own laptop data was "retrieved" because the technician thought it was ok to share their details with the authorities.



Brictoria
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19 Aug 2021, 12:10 am

DW_a_mom wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
SabbraCadabra wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
On the other hand, there is the possibility that he repaired the device and sat it aside with no intention of contacting the owner, merely to gain ownership of it and so access data on the device he already had possesion of.

But in Real Life, he wouldn't be able to access any of Hunter's data, because he wouldn't know Hunter's password(s).

It would depend (in general terms) - some shops ask for these credentials to allow them to have the access required (admin rights to install software, for example), and even if he got a generic admin account for the device, being a Mac, a simple "sudo" command would give access to files for any other user of the machine. There's also the possibility (depending on the model) that the storage device is removable, and so the contents could be viewed by connecting it to another machine - unless the owner had taken specific steps to manually encrypt the data (making recovery difficult)...It's not encrypted by default, relying instead on access permissions in the OS.

In this specific instance, given the laptop was supposedly water damaged and there for "data recovery to store server" (see repair quote linked previously), the data recovered would be freely available to the owner at any time once "recovered" to this location, given the access permissions can be set on the device which the data resides upon (in simple terms).


With the thread unlocked, I have to ask - given that even though I do have some legal training, I never presume to know how the law plays out in another state, much less another country - what makes you so confident in your analysis?

My experience with and understanding of the law is that no one else can ever take ownership of my data. Period. Ever. I’ve submitted a computer for data retrieval, and I would not have done that if I hadn’t been convinced of the security of what they retrieved, regardless of if I ever remembered to pick it up or not. If I hadn’t picked it up, it would have been destroyed.

We take privacy laws very seriously around here.


Probably the easiest example of what I have been saying would be as part of a ruling from Ohio[1].

In the case, the appeal was over the fourth amendment and how it intersected with data on an abandoned computer. In that case, government accessing an abandoned computer, in this, the new "owner" of an abandoned computer.

The appeals court there declared:
Quote:
The Supreme Court of Ohio today held that a warrantless search of abandoned property does not violate the property owner’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches because the owner forfeits any expectation of privacy in the property after it has been abandoned. The Court held further that, to establish a reasonable expectation of privacy in property protected by the Fourth Amendment, a person must exhibit a subjective expectation of privacy that, viewed objectively, is reasonable under the circumstances.


The important\relevent component of this is:
Quote:
because the owner forfeits any expectation of privacy in the property after it has been abandoned.


Whilst various jurisdictions may differ, the above appears to be a common understanding across most jurisdictions (hence also no right to privacy over documents, etc. you place in the rubbish\trash, and why police\detectives are permitted to hunt through these). Had the laptop not reverted to "abandoned", things would be different: the ownership of the device is the important factor.

[1] Original at - http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/PIO/summaries/2012/0117/101315.asp
Cached version (Original site wasn't loading and, possibly due to a change to the site since google scraped it) - https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SDzkxvVpwvkJ:https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/PIO/summaries/2012/0117/101315.asp+&cd=30&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au



Brictoria
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19 Aug 2021, 12:55 am

Further to the above:

Quote:
Abandoned property refers to the property to which the owner has relinquished all rights. When property is abandoned, the owner gives up the reasonable expectation of privacy concerning it. The person finding the abandoned property is entitled to keep it. A police officer shall take possession of abandoned property as evidence without violating the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.


Source: https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/abandoned-property/



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19 Aug 2021, 1:41 am

Brictoria wrote:
Further to the above:
Quote:
Abandoned property refers to the property to which the owner has relinquished all rights. When property is abandoned, the owner gives up the reasonable expectation of privacy concerning it. The person finding the abandoned property is entitled to keep it. A police officer shall take possession of abandoned property as evidence without violating the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.


Source: https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/abandoned-property/


The computer repair guy didn't "find" the laptop, it had been left in his care.
Besides, I still have my doubts how legit the existence of this laptop owned by Hunter Biden is.


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Brictoria
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19 Aug 2021, 1:54 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
Further to the above:
Quote:
Abandoned property refers to the property to which the owner has relinquished all rights. When property is abandoned, the owner gives up the reasonable expectation of privacy concerning it. The person finding the abandoned property is entitled to keep it. A police officer shall take possession of abandoned property as evidence without violating the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.


Source: https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/abandoned-property/


The computer repair guy didn't "find" the laptop, it had been left in his care.
Besides, I still have my doubts how legit the existence of this laptop owned by Hunter Biden is.

There was a section of the contract (shown at bottom of quote) which stated that the person leaving the device agreed if it was not collected within 90 days it would be considered abandoned...
Image
(best copy I could find without annotations added - see final papragraph re: abandoned status.)

As to whether it was his: He has not denied it was his, but were he to acknowledge it as being his, then he would also acknowledge the legitimacy of what was on it (to a degree - He could claim the files were added while at the store, potentially), so we'll likely never know one way or another (There was a story that a lawyer for the Bidens had sent a letter\email to the store owner asking for the return of the laptop just after the story broke, but I haven't seen a copy, so there's no way to confirm this).