RobertB-DC's Journal: Ghost Article: Cracker Reads E-mails of Investigating Agent

Ghosts of Slashdot: 01/13/2005
[I almost missed this one -- I'm pretty excited about the Mars Rock. But this one is a dupe of an article from sometime late last week. Spelling note: it's "sensitive". Watch those tricky schwas.]

Cracker Reads E-mails of Investigating Agent
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the they're-everywhere-they're-everywhere dept.

l2718 writes "A Secret Service agent kept sensetive information on his PDA which was accessed by a cracker. Now this wouldn't be funny except that he was investigating a T-Mobile break-in, and that he was a T-Mobile customer. In addition to secret government documents the cracker had also obtained customer records and Social Security numbers of 400 other customers."

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! These stories were accepted, posted for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

Other Subscribers have joined the Ghost Hunt!
Here's a partial list:

morcheeba

more to come...

Funny.

[hkmwbz]

This is pretty funny, actually... Subscribers are paying to do the Slashdot editors' jobs for them by detecting dups, correcting typos, etc ;) (Maybe they need more subscribers, though, as dups and typos still make it through to the front page :-D)

Re:Funny.

[RobertB-DC]

This is pretty funny, actually... Subscribers are paying to do the Slashdot editors' jobs for them by detecting dups, correcting typos, etc ;)

But isn't that the essense of an online community? I don't mind "paying for the privlege" of helping edit Slashdot. The alternative is for the editors to throw up their hands and sell Slashdot to Microsoft or some other evil empire, that can pay their salary and prevent typos... and ensure "control" of the content. I can accept the typos and dups as the price I p