
Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash - ctoth
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/06/23/michael_hastings_sent_panicked_email_hours_before_car_crash.html
======
DigitalSea
How does a 2013 model Mercedes Benz with a five star ANCAP safety rating (the
highest rating you can get) scoring 35.51 points scored out of 37 (an
Australian car safety rating for reference) with more airbags than wheels (8
airbags for those of you playing at home including a curtain airbag that drops
in-front of the passenger and driver protecting the head and upper-body from
impacting anything) crash into a tree without there even being another vehicle
involved?

The car has stability control, traction control, ABS, EBD, brake assist and
three-point pre-tensioning seatbelts. If you've ever driven a modern BMW,
Mercedes or any other premium European vehicle than you'd know it's impossible
to crash these things unless you honestly wanted to crash them. I am pretty
sure it has been standard on most cars in this price bracket for a while now
to respond to impacts by shutting off fuel, disconnecting battery terminals
and unlocking doors. It varies from model to model, but most premium cars
react to emergencies by cutting off as many points of danger as possible.
Something doesn't add up here.

Was he drunk? Was he poisoned with a cocktail of drugs that perhaps made him
lose concentration and crash into a tree? A new 2013 Mercedes don't just
malfunction and crash killing its occupants so easily. They build these cars
to withstand a lot of impact, this isn't the movies, new cars don't just crash
and explode on impact. You hear of gruesome accidents everyday in vehicles,
but you rarely hear of them exploding, mangling in a ball of metal and plastic
yes, but rarely exploding. Is there CCTV footage of the minutes before he
crashed showing perhaps what happened?

Perhaps a recreation of the accident might help shed some light on what really
happened. A computer simulation I am sure would be more than enough, coupled
with CCTV footage and you should have a pretty close to accurate simulation of
how it all went down and how the car would fare.

If the FBI were interviewing close friends and family, someone needs to come
out at least dispelling the suggestion he went crazy or was suffering from
paranoia. Because at present, there's nothing to suggest foul play other than
speculation. And as usual, we all point fingers and call someone crazy when
they claim the FBI is watching them and after all of this PRISM controversy,
claims like that don't sound as crazy as they once did...

~~~
snowwrestler
This is how conspiracy theories are promulgated: propose an preposterous
alternate reality and then find real facts wanting in comparison.

In this case the alternate reality is that it is "impossible" to crash recent
model year Mercedes unless you intend to. This is obviously preposterous since
it's not hard to find reports of such crashes with 5 minutes on Google.

~~~
DigitalSea
It's not impossible to crash any car, the alternate reality here is that a
brand new car with more safety features than a padded cell crashed by itself
at 4:30am in the morning into a tree and exploded on impact. The point is
these cars are built to try and avoid these kind of accidents at all cost, the
plethora of safety features cars like these have makes it a lot more difficult
than say an early 00's vehicle crashing into a tree to hurt anyone inside. Not
impossible, but certainly reduces the odds a bit. This article here details
the kinds of testing Mercedes put the car through:
[http://blogs.automotive.com/2013-mercedes-benz-c-class-
and-m...](http://blogs.automotive.com/2013-mercedes-benz-c-class-and-m-class-
earn-5-star-federal-safety-ratings-131883.html) \- 200 high-speed in-house
crashes sounds like a lot of testing for a car and apparently it faired well
in all of them. You can see a video of the car being testing here as well:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvw_VLcUUwU&feature=youtu.be](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvw_VLcUUwU&feature=youtu.be)
\- while Hasting's didn't crash in a controlled environment, you see a picture
painted of a car capable of withstanding a lot of impact.

I know it's common for cars to slice down the middle and kill their occupants,
but exploding and incinerating Hastings inside to the point they have to
identify him by his dental records at least warrants a closer look. I'm not
saying foul play is to blame here, but some questions need to be answered. As
is common in unexplained plane crashes, the debris should be tested for
explosive residue just as a precaution.

Another interesting question is why was the engine found over 100 feet away
from the car? When a car crashes isn't an engine pushed back into the cabin,
not thrown forwards?

~~~
cloverich
So I know almost nothing of the circumstances of the crash, but I think there
is more to consider. For instance, how _fast_ was he going? My 2006 accord is
much safer than some car from the 1950's. But also, I get 260-hp out of a 3
liter engine, and its faster than a Mustang GT from the 90's. If you hit a
tree going 90mph, there's little a bunch of airbags will do for you. People
dying, things exploding, parts flying - how strange that is really depends on
the circumstances of the crash I'd argue.

~~~
bicknergseng
> its faster than a Mustang GT from the 90's

What?

~~~
milesokeefe
I have that car and I can attest to it not being incredibly fast.
Unfortunately horsepower != speed.

~~~
cloverich
lol. Source: [http://www.zeroto60times.com/](http://www.zeroto60times.com/)

1996 Ford Mustang GT 0-60 mph 6.7 Quarter mile 15.1 1999 Ford Mustang GT 0-60
mph 5.4 Quarter mile 13.9 2006 Honda Accord EX (V6) 0-60 mph 5.8 Quarter mile
14.3

Only when they re-designed the GT in the late 90's did it get faster - which
isn't really relevant, I was making the general point that modern cars have
gotten a _ridiculous_ amount of power, often in a lighter vehicle (e.g. the
2006 honda accord I drive).

> Unfortunately horsepower != speed

Horsepower doesn't give a direct comparison across vehicles, but _generally_
speaking, yes horsepower = speed.

> I have that car and I can attest to it not being incredibly fast.

Perhaps you dont have the v6 manual? Any car that gets to 60mph in under 6
seconds is _fast_. And again - my comparison with the mustang GT was to paint
a picture - we all recognize that as a fast car, and are perhaps surprised
that modern sedan's are as fast - and often faster, while typically having a
smaller (i.e. _lighter_ ) engine. Hell, look at the list of Mercede's on the
same site ([http://www.zeroto60times.com/Mercedes-Benz-0-60-mph-
Times.ht...](http://www.zeroto60times.com/Mercedes-Benz-0-60-mph-Times.html)).
There's cars on there coming in the 4 second range.

So - just wanted to point out that without more details, the story isn't
complete, and perhaps not as surprising as first-pass suggests.

------
mrschwabe
This Hastings incident has interesting parallels to Andrew Breitbart's death.

[http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-
breitbart-456/](http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/)

Namely the fact that both of these men were prominent journalists, living in
the US, each with 'big stories' they were working on that have not seen the
light of day due to their untimely death shortly after proclaiming they were
working on said stories.

To compound the dire possibilities, in February the US Justice Department
confirmed the existence of legal justification for the assassination of
American citizens:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/politics/obama-
orders-r...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/politics/obama-orders-
release-of-drone-memos-to-lawmakers.html?_r=0)

Not drawing conclusions here, but I think it's important in this day and age
to be diligent in connecting dots and evaluating ALL possibilities.

~~~
groby_b
Uh, no. Breitbart was a lot of things, but certainly not a journalist of
nearly the same caliber. And given that he claimed to work on "big stories"
pretty much all the time, we can take that out of the equation, too.

And your disingenuous argument trying to tie drone attacks into that is an
utter disservice to truth. To quote from the fine article: _" could target a
citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda involved in plots
against the country and if his capture was not feasible."_

Whatever your position on this is, you need to stretch mightily to make this
into "the government is indiscriminately killing people it doesn't like".

So please remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
And try to bring at least the tiniest bit of evidence to a post that's rather
light on them.

~~~
lazyjones
> "could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda
> involved in plots against the country and if his capture was not feasible."

They have already assassinated a 16 year old US citizen who was not a senior
Al Qaeda leader and who wasn't "collateral damage" either:
[http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/awlakis.html](http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/awlakis.html)

~~~
groby_b
If you'd get your news from other sources but boingboing, you'd be aware that
we actually _don 't know_ if he was targeted or collateral damage.

Once again, I'm not debating the morality of the drone program, or the
ludicrousness of writing off killings as "collateral damage". I debate the
deliberate use of misinformation to score a point. We all need to stop
distorting the truth to suit our purpose, so we can see what's _actually_
happening - which is bad enough and doesn't require conspiracy theories.

------
stfu
Anybody read through [http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-
usenixsec2011.pdf](http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-usenixsec2011.pdf)
already? My car-tech knowledge is way to rudimentary to get a better idea on
that stuff.

~~~
incision
_> "Anybody read through [http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-
usenixsec2011.pdf](http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-usenixsec2011.pdf)
already?"_

To what end?

At a glance:

* These attacks were demonstrated on a "moderately priced late model sedan" which is surely a bit of a different situation than a brand new luxury car.

That could mean more sophisticated systems and likely less time to reverse
engineer - assuming you don't believe the manufacturer is complicit.

* On page 5 and 6 they describe the work necessary to pull the exploits off. They dumped over two dozen ECUs, desoldering them where necessary and, if I'm not mistaken - reverse engineered them and injected the code which was necessary to support the follow-on attacks.

Assuming the same type and method of attack, the attacker would have had to
succesfully generate attack knowledge for a 2013 model-year car then gain
intimate physical access to the vehicle to seed the exploits before eventually
remotely exploiting them.

That reads like a tall order to me, but it could be the opposite. I could
certainly imagine newer, increasingly connected vehicles being more
exploitable.

~~~
ynniv
_That could mean more sophisticated systems and likely less time to reverse
engineer_

Car electronics change very little year to year. If you have an unreported
exploit, it wouldn't surprise me if it were valid for more than 5 production
years. The bigger issue is that the networks in these cars are only secured by
physical access, and there are more devices on the bus every year.

A remote exploit must fetch a pretty penny, so I would expect professionals to
get to work on pre-production units as soon as they are available in the hope
that they don't change substantially.

 _then gain intimate physical access to the vehicle to seed the exploits
before eventually remotely exploiting them_

I think you read this wrong - the car was disassembled to explore the systems,
but after vulnerability development, physical access to a target was not
required. This is suggested by _" Sniff MAC address, brute force PIN, buffer
overﬂow"_ and _" Call car, authentication exploit, buffer overﬂow"_. If
modification was required, executing an exploit would involve a predetermined
handshake (which is described later in the paper), not something as crude as
buffer overflows.

~~~
incision
_" >Car electronics change very little year to year. If you have an unreported
exploit, it wouldn't surprise me if it were valid for more than 5 production
years."_

Anecdotally, most ECUs I've seen change up 1-3 years. I have no idea if later
units might be code compatible with prior, but I'd doubt it.

> _I think you read this wrong - the car was disassembled to explore the
> systems, but after vulnerability development, physical access to a target
> was not required._

Obviously, I'm not certain, but looking at the previous work they reference [0
.p12-13] seems to say that the bridging exploits [1 .p5] are dependent on re-
flashing. Perhaps the 2011 Bluetooth overflow is injecting 2010 re-flash
equivalent code?

0: [http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-
oakland2010.pdf](http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-oakland2010.pdf)

 _" We were able to successfully reprogram our car’s telematics unit from a
device connected to the car’s low-speed bus (in our experiments, a laptop
running CARSHARK). Once reprogrammed, our telematics unit acts as a bridge,
relaying packets from the lowspeed bus onto the high-speed bus."_

1: [http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-
usenixsec2011.pdf](http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-usenixsec2011.pdf)

 _" Note, such interbus bridging is critical to many of the attacks we explore
since it exposes the attack surface of one set of components to components on
a separate bus; we explain brieﬂy here."_

------
darkchasma
I used to say that people were paranoid who thought the government was spying
on them. So I'm not quite ready to dismiss this as a crazy conspiracy just
yet.

~~~
maaku
I thought stealthy black helicopters was the ultimate ridiculous conspiracy
theory.. until they crashed one in Pakistan.

I knew the NSA could listen in wherever they wanted, but I thought mass
surveillance and storage of all communications was outlandish 1984-like
paranoia.. until Edward Snowden.

Now I don't know what to think.

~~~
derleth
The helicopter in Pakistan was hardly stealthy. Someone tweeted about it as it
was flying overhead.

~~~
flyinRyan
Twitter should run this ad: "Osama Bin Laden died because he wasn't on
Twitter! Sign up today!"

------
quackerhacker
A more thorough article with pictures:
[http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/21/email-sent-by-
mic...](http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/21/email-sent-by-michael-
hastings-hours-before-his-death-mentions-a-big-story-and-a-need-to-go-off-the-
radar/)

Wanted to share this since there was alot of great opinions about what
happened:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5943251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5943251)

------
meepmorp
So.... what? Is the implication here that he was assassinated?

The email doesn't really seem all that panicked to me - I didn't know the guy,
so maybe is he being panicked, but it just sounds like a guy who's writing to
let people he works with know about possible legal problems.

------
glasz
while this story is about a week old and got lost in all this nsa nonsense,
listen to what mr. hastings said before his death. even on tv.

i am german and i can tell you that a mercedes benz DOES NOT just blow up and
spit its engine 100yd down the street. the car wasn't even really against the
tree...

sometimes you just need to apply a little grain of common sense, ppl.

~~~
eridius
I never even heard of Michael Hasting's death before today, so I don't have an
opinion yet, but I find it hilarious that someone who is implying that a
conspiracy is at work here is telling everyone to "apply a little grain of
common sense". Conspiracy theories are not common sense.

~~~
jamieb
Watergate "Scandal". From wikipedia: "On September 15, a grand jury indicted
them, as well as Hunt and Liddy,[9] for _conspiracy_ , burglary, and violation
of federal wiretapping laws."

I find it interesting that when the Watergate "Conspiracy Theory" was proven,
two things happened:

1\. The perpetrators were charged with conspiracy (proving it was a
conspiracy), and yet:

2\. The Watergate Conspiracy was henceforth known as the Watergate Scandal.

In the Iran-Contra "Affair", "Fawn Hall, Oliver North's secretary was given
immunity from prosecution on charges of _conspiracy_ and destroying documents
in exchange for her testimony."

Again:

1\. Perpetrators charged with _conspiracy_.

2\. The _conspiracy_ is henceforth known as The Iran-Contra _Affair_.

Rinse, repeat.

~~~
derleth
You're being dishonest. That isn't what 'conspiracy theory' means and you know
it. Noun phrases aren't defined by taking their words one by one; they have to
be understood as a unit.

~~~
jamieb
Wikipedia again:

"Originally a neutral term, since the mid-1960s it has acquired a somewhat
derogatory meaning, implying a paranoid tendency to see the influence of some
malign covert agency in events.[5] The term is sometimes used to automatically
dismiss claims that are deemed ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded,
outlandish or irrational.[6][page needed] A proven conspiracy theory, such as
the notion that United States President Richard Nixon and his aides conspired
to cover up Watergate, is usually referred to as something else, such as
investigative journalism or historical analysis."

Ironic, isn't it, that since the time when genuine conspiracies at the highest
level have come to light, the term has been successfully modified in the
general vernacular to mean a ridiculous or paranoid idea.

I'm not falling for the redefinition. You're welcome to.

~~~
derleth
Nobody's falling for anything except the people who think English is
controlled by a secret cabal.

------
ForrestN
At the time it was widely reported that the story he was working on was
related to a socialite from Florida named Jill Kelley, but it looks like that
isn't true:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/michael-hastings-
ji...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/michael-hastings-jill-kelley-
reporting_n_3502003.html)

I won't pretend I read all of his work, but whenever I saw his name attached
to something I was impressed. For example:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3eKaXVe-7A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3eKaXVe-7A)

------
dano416
As a mechanic, I have never seen any vechicle burn like that vechicle. I know
it has a high pressure EFI system, but it has one way valves and other safety
features. It looked like someone poured lighter fluid throughout the car. I
imagine the Government has access to odorless flamable fluid?

As the my own paranoia, I am not thrilled about even talking about this
incident. I'm definetly more concerned about privacy since the NSA reporting.
I am also using DuckDuckGo, but it's horrid right now.

~~~
JshWright
As a firefighter, I've seen many cars burn like that. That's what vehicle
fires look like. Car interiors are _full_ of flammable stuff. Seat cushions,
plastics, rubber... etc... The energy output of a burning car is really
incredible.

~~~
derleth
As an experienced Internet denizen who has seen dozens of conspiracy theories
play out, the person I'm responding to is playing a fool's game and will be
shouted down and ignored by everyone who wants a neat little conspiratorial
story to go with their morning breakfast. Clear, simple explanations are
_death_ to conspiracy theories, so they are ignored and the people who make
them are vilified at every turn.

~~~
pessimizer
The 'utterly dismissive of the possibility' people are also all over
discussions like these, dismissing speculation with arguments that tend to
amount to "oh, please!" and "oh, come on!"

In fact, these discussions usually amount to amateur physicists insisting that
somewhat unusual phenomena are physically impossible (usually citing retired
fire chiefs, their uncle who is a mechanic, and 'common sense'), and a bunch
of authoritarians replying with "Oh, please - tinfoil hat!"

I'm surprised that people don't know how eager cars are to burn esp in light
of this recent fire: [http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-06/news/chi-
calif...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-06/news/chi-california-
limo-fire-20130506_1_town-car-partition-five-women)

There wasn't even a crash and five women burned to death during the time it
took to notice the fire, communicate that to the driver, pull over, and open
the back door.

------
NatW
(pure speculation) I wonder if he might have signed the email, "...hope to see
you all soon" to indicate to others that he was not suicidal.

------
kposehn
This email has already been in circulation for quite some time - nothing new
here by the look of it.

------
fixxer
Any idea what the big story was?

~~~
ChrisAntaki
Maybe it was related to TrapWire, a cloud service that has facial, emotional,
and behavioral recognition. It would tie in well with the upstream fibertap,
and PRISM programs.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Doubtful, trapwire is entirely public if you do research on it. Also, emotion
and behavioral recognition is pretty far fetched.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
Behavioral recognition is pretty much TrapWire's value proposition.

------
kailuowang
I thought the best way to murder a person is to make him disappear and that
should be pretty easy for an assassinate from the most powerful government.
"Off the radar" would be convenient.

------
ChrisAntaki
He really should have sent the story, in the email.

------
kenjackson
Have they confirmed the body in the car is his?

~~~
mikeyouse
According to the AP, yes they have.

[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/la-coroner-ids-body-
journalis...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/la-coroner-ids-body-journalist-
michael-hastings)

------
Angostura
I hate to say it, but really if you read the e-mail it does not really appear
to be panicked in any way, to me.

------
corresation
Another possibility is that he had a nervous breakdown or substance abuse
episode, leading to both the paranoid emails and the irrational vehicle
operations.

Obviously I'm not saying that's the case, but the extremely irrational driving
goes fits a theory of paranoid delusions (brought on by any number of
mechanisms), just as the hacked car system goes with about to uncover
something big.

~~~
sage_joch
Yeah, we really don't know. But I'm _extremely_ uncomfortable by the fact that
foul play is a real possibility. We already know that the federal government
is operating largely in secret and without regard to the law (their insistence
that are indeed following their own secret set of laws doesn't provide me much
solace). We already know that various press organizations have been
wiretapped. I feel like I've woken up into a country I no longer recognize.
How long will it be before people no longer feel safe expressing opinions
online?

~~~
skwirl
It is a huge leap from the revelations of late and a world where the
government goes around killing journalists. When your parents confided to you
that Santa Claus wasn't real, you didn't suddenly become adopted too. Chill
out and reacquaint with reality.

~~~
jychang
You completely misread the point. We don't know the truth, if it was foul play
or not. Probably not. BUT, it doesn't matter about the size of the jump, yet
the fact that it's even a POSSIBILITY THAT WE HAVE TO CONSIDER ... is scary.

Plus, it's not as large of a leap as you think, it goes hand in hand. Everyone
is familiar with journalists disappearing in countries like Turkey.

~~~
glhaynes
No, you don't get to do that. You can't say "I'm speculating that this person
might have been murdered. Wow, look at what the world is coming to, that
people are even considering the possibility that this person was murdered.
(Besides, sometimes people _do_ get murdered...)" This is begging the question
in its most basic form.

~~~
dllthomas
Well, not quite begging the question, in that it's not something you're
_assuming_ to be true but rather something you're _causing_ to be trivially
true, but it's still an odd and presumably invalid construction to be sure.

------
andyl
"Hey [redacted] the Feds are interviewing my close friends and associates."

So - who was interviewed? What questions were asked?

~~~
fixxer
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. I wonder if his editor was in the loop.

I read it _wasn 't_ about Jill Kelly... doesn't really narrow it down.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/michael-hastings-
ji...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/michael-hastings-jill-kelley-
reporting_n_3502003.html?utm_hp_ref=media)

------
lesslaw
Or, his murderers sent it as a smoke screen.

It doesn't say "an electronically signed email" using Hastings' PGP key, it
doesn't say it was DKIM signed.

    
    
        telnet hotmail.com 25
        MAIL FROM: micheal.hastings@domain.com
        RCPT TO: wikileakseditor@hotmail.com
        Subject: I'm going out for a walk
    
        I might be some time. Don't come looking for me.
    
        .
        ^D

