Rob Ford apparently hired a hacker to nuke the crack-smoking video

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I just hope the gods of irony end this with Bill Blair arresting Ford personally.

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He got his crack from the Goonies?

Bring Wil Wheaton and Corey Feldman in for questioning immediately!

Your sentence kinda says that the local gang owned its own cloud storage provider, which I will decide to believe, because it’s awesome.

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Ever since the unions collapsed, organized crime has had to branch out elsewhere, and cloud storage was a logical step.

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It would have been even more awesome if the hacker had succeeded - not because Ford, but because lulz.

They buried the lede on this one…

The are TWO videos, and the second could possibly be a sex tape

Ain’t nobody wants to watch that though. Nobody.

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The point in the story where the “hacker” claims he got into he website using a a brute force password attack makes this story pure BS.

Vice has a detailed email chain between Ford's communications director and a hacker for hire who was allegedly hired to delete **the video of Hizzoner smoking crack and making racist and homophobic remarks from a cloud storage provider** that may have belonged to a local gang, who were allegedly blackmailing him.

It’s awesome that a gang owns a cloud storage provider. Further, it’s awesome that apparently Hizzoner was IN the cloud storage provider when he made the remarks.

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As an American I’m a latecomer to this saga. Ford finally became newsworthy down here when he started admitting things. Can you explain how a mayor who says he did naughty things during “a drunken stupor” hasn’t already been hounded out of office? Sure, we have equally slimy pols down here, but at the first hint of scandal the opposition joins in with a high-power smear campaign which usually results in the incumbent quickly becoming unencumbered. I hear that Ford’s numbers have actually risen since all this started. Do Canadians tend to embrace a drunken, drug-addicted underdog?

Yes, it exists. The problem is when anyone tries to watch it, the Raiders of the Lost Ark’s scene of the opening of the Ark of the Covenant keeps getting reenacted. Don’t worry though, it’s being stored somewhere very safe. Do feel sorry for the “top men” whose faces will soon be liquified.

I’m not terribly familiar with Canadian politics, but I got a whiff that he’s the sort of character popular amongst sectors of the electorate who don’t like (or even read) newspapers and mass media in general.

Remember: you elected a President who was a self-confessed cocaine and alcohol addict… and you did it twice. The Italian political agenda is still set by a tax fraudster who had sex with underage prostitutes and had mafia links. One Washington mayor was re-elected after being filmed smoking crack.

The electorate, any electorate, can be a funny bunch.

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Isn’t crack cocaine illegal in Toronto? If so, why isn’t the guy arrested after admitting to a crime?

If not, it would explain why Toronto FC hasn’t made the MLS playoffs in its history.

it’s illegal to sell or possess it in large quantities. Smoking it isn’t strictly speaking illegal.

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We don’t have recalls in Ontario so if he doesn’t quit there isn’t much the electorate can do about him until next October. During our last municipal election Rob Ford was pretty much the only right winger on the ballot while the left wing was divided 4 ways. The leading left wing candidate also happened to by gay which probably swayed some conservative religious voters into Rob Ford’s camp too. The next election is likely to go the other way with the left coming together around one candidate and the right split between two or three.

One poll did show an upswing in his numbers. It was taken after he admitted to being publicly drunk on St. Patrick’s Day and before he admitted to smoking crack. I suspect a lot more voters can relate to having a few too many beers on St. Patrick’s Day then can relate to having accidentally smoked crack when in a drunken stupor but I might be wrong.

The Ford has pretty much burned every ally he had on city council. The mayor doesn’t have that much power beyond a normal councilor. Currently he can appoint the committee chairs but there is some talk that the City Council will move this week to remove that power. There is also talk that they might strip his office of his budget so he couldn’t effectively do his job but I think that is less likely. The impression I get is that the other members of City Council have gotten quite use to working around Rob Ford over the last three years and expect they can manage it for another year until the elections.

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There was a quote from one of the counselors that confirmed this a couple of days ago and the city has been run by staff and council for about a year and a half now.

Apparently Ford had a really busy schedule for a year or so after the last election, but then after that, it all turned into private meetings and constituent engagement. That’s around when his agenda started to go off the rails too. It’ll be interesting to know if his disengagement was because he stopped being able to do anything on council, or if it was the other way around.

On the illegality of crack, the video isn’t good evidence one way or the other since you couldn’t prove to the satisfaction of a court what the contents were. He’s confessed now of course, but no matter who you are, just confessing to smoking up once is not something the cops aren’t going to take much notice.

Of course, the cops have him on surveilance transferring suspicious packages with someone on a number of occasions, which in my mind should have had him searched and arrested, and if he were a minority, probably would have. But that’s not the smoking.

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Somehow people are always totally blind about their own politicians. Get outside of any of the jurisdictions you just mentioned and nearly everyone thought those election results were crazy. Somehow it is obvious that you shouldn’t elect a criminal to office when someone else is doing it, but less obvious when that criminal has his name on the ballot you are checking.

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Yeah, that bugged me, coupled with this:

he downloaded two video files that were heavily encrypted into a GreenForce Player format

If you’re going to the trouble of encrypting the videos, surely you would:

a) use a seriously secure password
b) have more than one copy anyway

Ever since the unions collapsed, organized crime has had to branch out elsewhere, and cloud storage was a logical step.

Jesus, did one of the Koch brothers write this?