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Comment by fencepost | Hacker News Reader

For people thinking that he should have known better on a technical basis, maybe but remember that during the time in question he was a 64-68 year old man (= graduated college around the time Unix was being rewritten in C) who's never worked in a technical field. By the time most of these capabilities existed Manafort had been management/executive for years or decades.

That's not to say that he couldn't have learned were he interested, but his daily life had very little intersection with this kind of thing until he spiraled into a hole of debt, at which point "do I trust this person" ranked a lot higher than "how are this person's technical skills?"

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Not sending a written paper trail should be covered in Criminal Surivial Strategies 101. Whether it's telegraph, snail mail, email or WhatsApp, this is just sloppy criminal work. For example Steven Cohen avoided an insider trading conviction by making sure nothing bad ever had his name on it. If you needed to discuss something secret, you talked to him in person.

Background: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/efda2ca2-ec6...

Even though Manafort was associated with foreign government figures it took being associated with the U.S President to be investigated. It didn't matter before... having a paper trail was ok, no one cared.

It's likely people such as that don't even realize they are creating a paper trail.

"Paper trail? There was no paper! How could there be a trail!?"

E-mail especially is very easy to discover.

The "e" in "e-mail" stands for "evidence." :)

Link is dead for non FT subscribers.

(Or at least for those who the FT thinks would pay for a subscription)

He was working with first tier Russian oligarchs who hold a lot of his debt. They could have readily afforded to provide him with a moonlighting troll bot coder to keep his tradecraft sharp.

Do you really need a technical background or some sort of college training to find the File > Save As > PDF option?

Using File -> Save As -> PDF requires several skills

Window management in Windows GUI:

1. Usage of File Menu and/or Ribbon Menu

2. Knowledge of Word's PDF integration

File System knowledge:

1. What a "file" is

2. What "file formats" are

3. What a PDF is

4. That a word document can be saved or printed as a PDF

Etc etc etc

I work with non-technical folks all the time and printing/saving as PDF comes up often.

Usually in most cases I can install a PDF printer and let them "print to PDF" and they can understand it, but before they know the process, they look at me like I'm speaking Latin when I try to describe what files are, what PDFs are, what conversion is, what the file menu is used for, etc.

You beat me to it.

HN readers who don't work with non-technical users may not realize just how lost and unable to explore many people are, particularly when they didn't grow up with computers. There's also a huge problem with "dialog blindness."

If you have an understanding of how "computers" (hardware, OS, apps, websites, doesn't matter it's all the same mystery box) work then you can explore with less fear. I deal with people in their 20s and 30s who don't grasp that a "scanner XYZ not found" error may mean that they should look for a way to select a scanner. Many of my older end users are clearly using a lot of software entirely by rote, though it's definitely not limited to them.

"Didn't grow up with computers" (have contact with computers during compulsory education) in the West is likely people over 50.

Can probably go to 55-58 for people who have degrees; ie people who used computers during Uni education.

If you're older you've probably had 20 years with computers in the workplace save for some niches, seems long enough to learn to use a simple point-click menu.

You're underestimating how much things have changed in the last 30-50 years. Manafort knows how to use common Office programs like Microsoft Word and Excel. There's a pretty good chance that he's even somewhat skilled (by his standards) with Excel or at least that he's experienced. He may have understood from reading about it in the past that document files can save a history of changes, and he knew to some extent the difference between a document and a PDF.

None of that means that he actually understands what is happening behind the scenes. Odds are good that his college exposure to computers was limited to Hollerith cards used for registration.

Put differently, Manafort is from the generation that indents in word processors by hitting space 4-5 times.

There's a great deal of assumptions in that comment.

How much of that is applicable in this case?

He knew enough to attach the file to an e-mail and send it to someone else asking for a PDF version. So the only piece of missing knowledge here appears to be finding the option in word's menus.

Does word have save as PDF option if you haven't bought acrobat?

Haha.. I don't buy into it either. Something is fishy about the story, or maybe this is a secret plea deal with a behind the scenes type negotiation process to trick other conspirators into providing more evidence.

So, you’re saying this team of six government prosecutors signing the indictment, each of whom would be disbarred and prosecuted for knowingly lying to the court, are willing to take those risks for... what exactly? Getting a single conviction that won’t even get them a raise?

You don't buy that many people are quite bad with computers?

When it is your job to hide your financial activities, then no not really.

> When it is your job to hide your financial activities

"On February 11, 2011, another trader, Trader E, wrote to Trader C: 'shall we spoof.' Trader C responded: 'sure.'

...

Even the most minimalist 2018-era bank compliance program would at least teach traders not to use the word 'spoof' in a recorded electronic chat, but a decade ago our primitive forebears did not quite understand the problem."

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-31/sergeant-...

Why can't people be bad at their jobs?

I'm having trouble buying any other explanation than, "This absurdly overcomplicated workflow introduced by conventional office software not designed to cover its tracks didn't cover its own tracks" as plausible.

You've never worked tech support, have you?

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