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Comment by martindale | Hacker News Reader

Interesting; it appears someone failed to redact some data from the slides. In the Facebook chat example, the message is "to" 1536051595.

Using the Facebook Graph API, we can gather information based on this ID: http://graph.facebook.com/1536051595

Which leads us to the Facebook profile (https://www.facebook.com/arash.gorjipour.5) of an individual, real or contrived, named "Arash Gorjipour". His email address and phone number are all exposed in one of his uploaded photos: http://i.imgur.com/0UUk5cB.jpg

I wonder what the reason for this man being in these slides is.

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He's Canadian. And he has dark skin and a funny-sounding name.

He's (almost certainly) a real person, by the way. I called his office. He wasn't in, but they offered to page him for me.

Just FYI (almost certainly of no importance because this individual was chosen at random for the slides): his name (both first and surname) are Persian. I'd guess he was an Iranian (graduate) student who has decided to stay in Canada after his studies; possibly to be "free" from an oppressive government's espionage and meddling in his private life. The irony...

Probably because he has dark skin, and his native tongue is probably something other than English.

I'm a little worried now because I visited his page, and this will surely be logged, hence my past online activities may now be investigated.

Don't worry, you were already on their list.

HN fields roughly 200,000 unique visitors each day, most of which have a markedly anti-gov't-spying slant[1], that's enough evidence to be in their cross-hairs.

[1]: Such that in some capacity you might participate in the creation/promotion of methods or software to get around their snooping technologies.

Yup. I think that we all classify as "Enemy sympathizers". I wonder when we will be classified as "Enemy combatants?". As soon as somebody mentions violence, I suppose.

Oh bum..

Thoughtcrime.

Quite.

Now lets all forward to newspeak in schools instead of English in the coming years

Did the Guardian change the slide? I couldn't see that slide, and it has now appeared with a value of 1234567890.

The relevant slide is inline in the article, under the first appearance of the string "facebook". It was apparently redacted by the gaurdian; see nwh's link to the archived page below.

In keeping with that line of thought would it not be better to redact the information you are presenting? I don't see why you need to write it out in full.

You could say 153xxxxxxx and "Arxxx Goxxxxxxx" just to be sure and if you need to post links you could use a URL shortener.

Probably picked at random. The screenshot 'test case' could have been you. We are all in the database after all.

Of course, it would have been more amusing had the 'selector' been chosen as 'Barack Hussein Obama II'.

Forget amusing, that would have been a perfect action trigger: people are OK with privacy infringement on others, but when it happens to them, they are more likely to be upset.

I suspect, or maybe just hope, that politicians are protected in some way from this. While it is unfair, at least it would mean less opportunities to extort or threaten lawmakers. Though, obviously, it would be best if we ALL were safe from that kind of crud.

I think it's a test account. The text string which reads something like 'does it still recognize me?' is very much like the kind of thing I'd type in my QA days when I was testing a new system.

If I were putting together a deck on that system I'd also probably favor test data over live data, if for no other reason than it's easy to come by.

There's a small version of the original slide here, which has since been removed — http://archive.is/xcwg6

do you see that in this document? i can't find it anywhere and wonder if the guardian subsequently redacted it:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa...

They may have used an existing public profile since he's already displayed it openly. He's a realestate broker after all so, presumably, he's got "nothing to hide".

Anna Chapman was a realestate broker too...

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