A friend and I recently got into a heated debate about something he claimed to have read in the Wall Street Journal. He stated that a case for espionage had occurred wherein someone's laptop was accessed without it being even turned on. This is to say that someone remotely accessed the hard drive in the laptop while it was turned off.
I say this is utter BS and that he merely misunderstood what he had read. Even if the laptop's hard drive was solid state which was never made clear either way, without the physical removal of the hard drive, the information on the powerless drive cannot be accessed (that is to say operated in the sense that information can be both installed to the drive and copied from the drive) within the laptop from a remote location. Even 10 feet away for that matter. I simply do not believe this is possible. What do you think?
Now, I really want to stay away from "well, if you are familiar with radio telescope technology, you know that..."
That's all fine and theoretical but what I want to know is if this is clearly possible or not in the good old "here & now".