I has a computer.
A computer. I has it.
It's scowling at me and threatening to bite my fingers. Just a moment.
Okay, better.
Anyway, I got my computer back (Thanks smashingrequiem ) and my warm lurky cloak and wand (Thanks
l33t_magician ), and returned the loaner to the headmaster. So logistical stuff is being taken care of.
I'm in full-speed wrap-up mode or the squirrel-fication research. I had my class help search for transformed students, which was moderately productive. I think the headmaster's been working full-time on the manner (quietly, of course) himself. I'm kind of annoyed that he's taking the fall for the students' actions, rather than taking the fall for LETTING THE ARMY CHANGE HIS STUDENTS INTO SQUIRRELS WITHOUT PROTEST!
Sorry for the talking all in caps. That level of gross irresponsibility in positions of authority annoys me.
Anyway, the wrap-up is more or less over, and I promise I'll have a real lecture on Thursday. My course notes say that it's going to be on reversing necromantic and other corpse-mangling effects to assist medical examiners. Gonna ask one of the polymorphed students if he or she doesn't mind staying polymorphed for another four days, to demonstrate proper procedure for diagnosing and undoing permenant magical disfiguration.
Though on the other hand... the whole transformation faculty is unavailable due to being squirrel-fied (by me! Suckers!). I wonder if the headmaster would be willing to assist.
There is one more matter of wrapup, and a troubling one. I've been doing some security research-- you may remember that after I filed my report, tactical teams arrested myself and two other students whom I'm not going to mention here, and then a third raid was made on a third student within another 24 hours. That third raid may have been to seize this computer-- I'm not entirely sure yet. Most damning of all, I've watched the security footage the Dark Computer took as I was seized using its builtin camera. Good computer. *pat pat* STOP TRYING TO EAT MY FINGERS YOU DAMNED MACHINE! Okay! I take it back! You're not good! Evil computer. *pat pat* Better.
So, some of you may know that I'm under a probation spell. One of the terms of that spell is that a command word spoken by anyone in hearing range of me knocks me out. And I'm not allowed to block my ears to prevent myself from hearing it. I've tried that. The hilarious part was, the security video had the word in it, and it also knocked me out. And because of the wording of the probation spell, I couldn't mute it. Or even avoid replaying it to avoid being knocked out again. So if anyone didn't see me Saturday, or heard repeated thumping from my room, yeah. The Dark Computer eventually got bored of watching me pass out (though the humor only dimmed on it after five or six hours) and muted the volume for me, though I pretty much knew what had happened by then. Given that only the Ministry of Magic Law Enforcement Subsection has permission to give out that command word, this is pretty troubling.
Anyway, the point is there was a huge security leak. Now there's a few possibilities here, which I'd like to go over:
1. Livejournal password security breach or other breach in livejournal.
I'm going to dismiss this one out of hand. If livejournal had been breached and these account names were known, the feds would have taken us down before we learned as much as we learned. I've been quite open about my aims, authority, and the progress of my plans. This raid came out directly after my report, but equally damning evidence was already posted a week previously. If they wanted to silence me, they would've done it sooner.
2. Encryption broken.
The fastest possible public key crypto break for the keysize and method I used on record is 2 months, seven days, give or take a few hours, using a cloud computing facility and brute force. But the report was leaked within 12 hours. Probably less, since they had to get permission and assemble a tactical team. Time magic is possible, but the results of temporally accelerated computing, at least the officially published ones (I can't rule out the army having something better that's classified) cause all kinds of weird causality effects where the program becomes invalid before it's written and other weirdness. So while this is possible, it's very unlikely.
3. Parole officer pwnt from higher level bureaucracy.
This is quite possible. Being lawful, the ministry of magic obeys chain of command, even if it's a stupid idea. In this case, I had alleged that the military was doing bad things with magic. A report like that would've set off all kinds of alarms, and gotten forwarded up the chain of command quickly. Likely somewhat at Justice called and yelled at someone in the military "YOU BROKE THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS" or somesuch and shown them the report. Then it could've gone sideways-like somewhere lower down in the chain "bring her in for breaking into classified data", which then would've circulated down to my parole officer, who'd have likely organized the arrest group himself. Given that my lock was opened by polymorphing rather than by traditional means, that suggests that the (now-squirrel-fied) transformation professors participated in the raid. In this case, filing another report isn't going to do much good-- things went through channels, and the authorities themselves were corrupt. The information you students put on the internet can do more damage to those people than anything I try. I should still file my normal report though so that my parole officer hears about my illegal activities from me before he hears it from, say, any of the people I turned into squirrels. Gotta keep up appearances, don'cha know.
4. Parole officer is dirty rotten traitor who needs to die.
It's also possible that my parole officer realized by reading the report that I now had powerful official enemies, and took it directly to them instead of up the chain of command. This would mean that I could get him sacked or possibly even thrown in jail, if I can prove it to his superiors. Of course, this requires me getting access to said superiors, who don't normally give me the time of day. Given that my parole officer has repeatedly told me that I deserve to die and that I'm scum of the earth, this option is as likely in my mind as 3 is.
5. Dark computer told them.
If so, I don't think the dark computer would have shown me what happened. It would've also alerted them and used them as a means of escape, for my revenge is dark and terrible to behold, and the computer has seen it in action several times and would know better than to double-cross me in a way that might fail.
Why would I betray you, Ash? Your vain efforts at villainy in the face of overwhelming odds amuse me greatly.
I love you too, machine. *headdesk*
So the questions: How do I figure out if it's 4 or 3, how to I execute appropriate revenge in the case of 4 despite my parole spell, and if it's 3, is there anything useful I can do to make sure the people truly responsible get fired, and, if possible hanged for treason? Any advice? I'm used to rooting out corrupt authorities, but generally I'm amongst the authority I'm investigating. In this case the corruption is far away, which limits my investigative options.
Some of you may be wondering, isn't this overkill? May I remind the student body that these people changed lots of innocent students (and one not-entirely-innocent guest lecturer) into squirrels on a campus full of cats (not to mention at least two students seem to think squirrels are food as well). People could have died horribly (though cutely) and no one would have known. We still haven't found everyone missing yet.
It's scowling at me and threatening to bite my fingers. Just a moment.
Okay, better.
Anyway, I got my computer back (Thanks smashingrequiem ) and my warm lurky cloak and wand (Thanks
l33t_magician ), and returned the loaner to the headmaster. So logistical stuff is being taken care of.
I'm in full-speed wrap-up mode or the squirrel-fication research. I had my class help search for transformed students, which was moderately productive. I think the headmaster's been working full-time on the manner (quietly, of course) himself. I'm kind of annoyed that he's taking the fall for the students' actions, rather than taking the fall for LETTING THE ARMY CHANGE HIS STUDENTS INTO SQUIRRELS WITHOUT PROTEST!
Sorry for the talking all in caps. That level of gross irresponsibility in positions of authority annoys me.
Anyway, the wrap-up is more or less over, and I promise I'll have a real lecture on Thursday. My course notes say that it's going to be on reversing necromantic and other corpse-mangling effects to assist medical examiners. Gonna ask one of the polymorphed students if he or she doesn't mind staying polymorphed for another four days, to demonstrate proper procedure for diagnosing and undoing permenant magical disfiguration.
Though on the other hand... the whole transformation faculty is unavailable due to being squirrel-fied (by me! Suckers!). I wonder if the headmaster would be willing to assist.
There is one more matter of wrapup, and a troubling one. I've been doing some security research-- you may remember that after I filed my report, tactical teams arrested myself and two other students whom I'm not going to mention here, and then a third raid was made on a third student within another 24 hours. That third raid may have been to seize this computer-- I'm not entirely sure yet. Most damning of all, I've watched the security footage the Dark Computer took as I was seized using its builtin camera. Good computer. *pat pat* STOP TRYING TO EAT MY FINGERS YOU DAMNED MACHINE! Okay! I take it back! You're not good! Evil computer. *pat pat* Better.
So, some of you may know that I'm under a probation spell. One of the terms of that spell is that a command word spoken by anyone in hearing range of me knocks me out. And I'm not allowed to block my ears to prevent myself from hearing it. I've tried that. The hilarious part was, the security video had the word in it, and it also knocked me out. And because of the wording of the probation spell, I couldn't mute it. Or even avoid replaying it to avoid being knocked out again. So if anyone didn't see me Saturday, or heard repeated thumping from my room, yeah. The Dark Computer eventually got bored of watching me pass out (though the humor only dimmed on it after five or six hours) and muted the volume for me, though I pretty much knew what had happened by then. Given that only the Ministry of Magic Law Enforcement Subsection has permission to give out that command word, this is pretty troubling.
Anyway, the point is there was a huge security leak. Now there's a few possibilities here, which I'd like to go over:
1. Livejournal password security breach or other breach in livejournal.
I'm going to dismiss this one out of hand. If livejournal had been breached and these account names were known, the feds would have taken us down before we learned as much as we learned. I've been quite open about my aims, authority, and the progress of my plans. This raid came out directly after my report, but equally damning evidence was already posted a week previously. If they wanted to silence me, they would've done it sooner.
2. Encryption broken.
The fastest possible public key crypto break for the keysize and method I used on record is 2 months, seven days, give or take a few hours, using a cloud computing facility and brute force. But the report was leaked within 12 hours. Probably less, since they had to get permission and assemble a tactical team. Time magic is possible, but the results of temporally accelerated computing, at least the officially published ones (I can't rule out the army having something better that's classified) cause all kinds of weird causality effects where the program becomes invalid before it's written and other weirdness. So while this is possible, it's very unlikely.
3. Parole officer pwnt from higher level bureaucracy.
This is quite possible. Being lawful, the ministry of magic obeys chain of command, even if it's a stupid idea. In this case, I had alleged that the military was doing bad things with magic. A report like that would've set off all kinds of alarms, and gotten forwarded up the chain of command quickly. Likely somewhat at Justice called and yelled at someone in the military "YOU BROKE THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS" or somesuch and shown them the report. Then it could've gone sideways-like somewhere lower down in the chain "bring her in for breaking into classified data", which then would've circulated down to my parole officer, who'd have likely organized the arrest group himself. Given that my lock was opened by polymorphing rather than by traditional means, that suggests that the (now-squirrel-fied) transformation professors participated in the raid. In this case, filing another report isn't going to do much good-- things went through channels, and the authorities themselves were corrupt. The information you students put on the internet can do more damage to those people than anything I try. I should still file my normal report though so that my parole officer hears about my illegal activities from me before he hears it from, say, any of the people I turned into squirrels. Gotta keep up appearances, don'cha know.
4. Parole officer is dirty rotten traitor who needs to die.
It's also possible that my parole officer realized by reading the report that I now had powerful official enemies, and took it directly to them instead of up the chain of command. This would mean that I could get him sacked or possibly even thrown in jail, if I can prove it to his superiors. Of course, this requires me getting access to said superiors, who don't normally give me the time of day. Given that my parole officer has repeatedly told me that I deserve to die and that I'm scum of the earth, this option is as likely in my mind as 3 is.
5. Dark computer told them.
If so, I don't think the dark computer would have shown me what happened. It would've also alerted them and used them as a means of escape, for my revenge is dark and terrible to behold, and the computer has seen it in action several times and would know better than to double-cross me in a way that might fail.
Why would I betray you, Ash? Your vain efforts at villainy in the face of overwhelming odds amuse me greatly.
I love you too, machine. *headdesk*
So the questions: How do I figure out if it's 4 or 3, how to I execute appropriate revenge in the case of 4 despite my parole spell, and if it's 3, is there anything useful I can do to make sure the people truly responsible get fired, and, if possible hanged for treason? Any advice? I'm used to rooting out corrupt authorities, but generally I'm amongst the authority I'm investigating. In this case the corruption is far away, which limits my investigative options.
Some of you may be wondering, isn't this overkill? May I remind the student body that these people changed lots of innocent students (and one not-entirely-innocent guest lecturer) into squirrels on a campus full of cats (not to mention at least two students seem to think squirrels are food as well). People could have died horribly (though cutely) and no one would have known. We still haven't found everyone missing yet.