[doctorless]

To me, the most interesting thing in this entire post is the following:

> Funny enough, in the middle of that question, my internet died and interrupted the call for the first time in the six months I lived in that house. Odd. It came back ten minutes later, and I dialed back into the conference line, but the mood of the call pretty much 180’d.

I find that when strange things happen like this, they’re hardly coincidence. Did you run a traceroute after the disconnect anywhere? Did you see an IP address change? If so, was it a significant change in the CIDR block it was within?

[jacquesm]

That's speculative without any proof and I personally think it is a weak point in the article. I do conference calls several times per week and the number of times I've been accidentally booted out of the room are numerous.

Also, once they realized they had left the room of course they would continue to discuss the case and it is obvious they had to consider all possibilities, including the recipient releasing the information to others, hence the 180.

[anigbrowl]

Also, once they realized they had left the room of course they would continue to discuss the case and it is obvious they had to consider all possibilities, including the recipient releasing the information to others, hence the 180.

You're saying the natural default behavior is to assume the worst about someone and draw a conclusion in their absence, as opposed to suspending discussion briefly while trying to get the person back on the phone? That seems like a very bad-faith approach to negotiation or discussion, given that the legal liabilities are something that were so easy to identify in advance.

[bpchaps]

Er, why the doubt? My internet completely died. My room mates were also affected.. Not sure how I can give proof.

[jacquesm]

Because it is just the timing that makes you say this, and I highly doubt the city of Seattle can - on a moments notice, no less - pull the plug on any residential internet connection.

If true, that would be a far bigger news item than the rest of your story.

[bpchaps]

Who knows. It was strange for me, too.

[jacquesm]

Think about it: you see your internet connection dying as proof when they could have just as easily booted you from the conference call raising much less suspicion. I see it as proof of the opposite, they had a far easier and more direct means at their disposal to achieve the effect you say they desired. So I really do not believe that it was anything other than bad timing, all that it would take for this to happen is for your provider to reset a router somewhere.

My residential connection here is pretty good, even so it goes up and down at least once every week or so whenever some firmware update is pushed to the router.

[bpchaps]

My phone was dead at the time, so I was using my desktop with google hangouts for the call. I was not booted from the call. My internet died. End of story.

I work from home, so my internet going down is a big deal for my livelihood and all that. I'm not saying that something suspicious happened, but I figured it was an interesting thing to happen. You're frankly thinking into it too much.