The Mythical And Almost Certainly Made Up 'Legend' Of Walter O'Brien Continues To Grow

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141004/07211128727/mythical-almost-certainly-made-up-legend-walter-obrien-continues-to-grow.shtml

By Mike Masnick
Techdirt.com
Oct 6th 2014

A few weeks ago, we wrote about "Walter O'Brien," the guy who is supposed 
to be the basis of the CBS TV show Scorpion. The problem we had was that 
O'Brien made a ton of absolutely fantastical claims and, after doing a 
little fact checking, none of them seemed to check out. At all. Since a 
few people brought this up, let me make it clear: I have no issue with 
exaggerating on a TV show for the sake of good entertainment. I don't even 
mind bogus claims like "based on a true story" because, hey, Fargo was 
pretty awesome. If that's all that was going on, it wouldn't be a big deal 
and everyone could get on with their lives.

What concerns me about the bogus Walter O'Brien story is twofold: (1) 
Gullible reporters simply repeat his claims without even the slightest bit 
of skepticism, which is just shameful reporting and (2) O'Brien and his 
friends aren't just making a TV show: they're trying to spin the TV show 
(which, as far as we can tell has close to no basis in reality) into a way 
to promote O'Brien's "business" with claims that are wholly unbelievable 
-- in that, literally, I don't think most of the claims are true. It 
worries me that some people will take the TV show's inflated claims at 
face value and think that throwing gobs of money O'Brien's way will get 
them the clearly exaggerated solutions the show is pitching.

Last week, O'Brien appeared with Scorpion producer (and Justin Bieber 
manager) Scooter Braun at the "Techmanity"* conference in San Jose, and I 
went to the show hoping to talk to O'Brien and/or the producers of the 
show to see if they could help clear up the inconsistencies in his story 
(many of which we detailed in the original post). Instead, despite 
multiple requests, I was denied an opportunity to interview them before or 
afterward. They did appear to show up right before going on stage, and 
then I was told they had to leave immediately after (though, at least one 
other conference attendee posted a selfie with O'Brien well over an hour 
after O'Brien got off stage). Despite the agenda specifically promising a 
Q&A with O'Brien and multiple producers, there was no Q&A (and those other 
producers weren't even there). A microphone stand that had been present 
for Q&A during earlier sessions was removed prior to the panel, so it was 
clear that there was no intention of a Q&A at all.

Instead, there were just more questionable claims from O'Brien, on a panel 
moderated by Fast Company's Chuck Salter, an "award winning" reporter who 
didn't seem interested in challenging a single claim from O'Brien, taking 
them all at face value. Fast Company, which co-produced the conference, 
and thus, perhaps, had business reasons for suppressing all skepticism, 
also wrote a big article again repeating the O'Brien myth, though that 
article appears to have been dropped behind a paywall.

[...]



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