Tom Weinstein wrote:

Just to be clear, we didn't give the blackmailer any money. As Mike Homer put it: "We don't bargain with terrorists."

That's rather inflammatory name-calling. Sounds a bit Kallstromish, no? Surely Homer hasn't been hanging with the CT-hypers. However, it confirms Tim's surmise that we're facing an inflation of terrorist-spin to whatever feeds nightsweats of monsters coming to Ballmer our babies -- of flesh, markets or surveilling features. Still, is it any surprise to the burgeoning snoopers (prurient, commercial or law) that most personal computer disks are as empty of content as those of data banks, government, military, corporations and other XXX sites? They're stuffed with make-work idleness, slightly Dilberted with lonely-guy infowar & -love games of fantasies of what will never be. Recall Mitnick's find on The Well, Shimomura, the telcos and the feds -- lots of empty data and wannabe-prattle. In that case, the Feds and the victims conspired to script a film to make the nothingness seem valuable, when what they really feared that it would be shown to be worthless junk. Not that NSCP would sink to that kind of RSA Schwartau TLA insecurity.