4 ms·

I really doubt that it was done by a US government entity. Trump is the president and all, but to hack and release (by a third party) the personal information i

by gyaniv 8y ago

I really doubt that it was done by a US government entity. Trump is the president and all, but to hack and release (by a third party) the personal information if a citizen (not suspected or related to any crime) seems to me to be something that even Trump or his supporters can't do, the intelligence agencies just wouldn't do it in my opinion. The Saudis seem like a much more likely party to do it in my opinion, mostly because we know they are willing to do a lot worse against people they oppose (or who oppose them). That being said, I also think that playing the "A government hacked my phone" is a much better play on behalf of Bezos then claiming it was done by someone accessing his or Sanchezs phone (for example her brother who is supposedly a Trump supporter, like the link in the end suggests).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
greendesk 8y ago
>>Trump is the president and all, but to hack and release (by a third party) the personal information if a citizen (not suspected or related to any crime) seems to me to be something that even Trump or his supporters can't doTrump is the president and all, but to hack and release (by a third party) the personal information if a citizen (not suspected or related to any crime) seems to me to be something that even Trump or his supporters can't do, the intelligence agencies just wouldn't do it in my opinion. For me it checks out - leaking informations sounds like something that Trump or his supporters would do. Why would not they, if they have the option to? Per the intelligence agencies - are you sure that they are a single entity, where people are of uniform opinion? And every single person follows law to the letter of it? There is the example that those services employed Snowden - if the services were so organised as to avoid such hacks, we would not have heard of Snowden. Sure, Sanchez' phone might have had leaks in it... but it is just as plausible as a government officials (US or non-US) accessing his phone.
- gyaniv 8y ago
  There's a chance I'm mostly just being hopeful, and you're right in both that Trump would totally support doing something like that, and that the intelligence agencies aren't a single entity. >>For me it checks out - leaking informations sounds like something that Trump or his supporters would do. Why would not they, if they have the option to? Per the intelligence agencies - are you sure that they are a single entity, where people are of uniform opinion? And every single person follows law to the letter of it? There is the example that those services employed Snowden - if the services were so organised as to avoid such hacks, we would not have heard of Snowden. But from my experience in other government entities, I believe that doing something like hacking into someone's phone, would require approval and support from high enough officials in those organizations, and so far it seems that these organization do still seem to remain professional and not involved in political actions by the president. I agree that there might be (and I'm assuming there are) private Trump supporters in those agencies, that for example, would do 'a Snowden' and release classified and private information that they shouldn't. But that information first needs to gathered, and I don't think Jeff Bezos has done something to warrant previous gathering of information about him. (If information about Trump for example is released this way, it would seem more likely to me, because we know they collected that information while thinking he might be a spy). But once again, I hope I'm not just being hopefully optimistic in my trust of 'the system'.
- JoeSmithson 8y ago
  It's somewhat plausible that an NSA employee might leak Bezos's nudes, it is not plausible that a US agency would hack his phone.
oligopoly 8y ago
What usually happens in these kind of things is mistress or partner shares images with friends and someone looks to profit or take vengeance behalf of cheated friend. I'm baffled nobody brings this up.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  Yeah, like "the fappening", for christ's sake, it doesn't have to be a "state actor"!
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    We mustn't forget, the War Media is always agitating for more military action. "State actor" gets them a lot closer to their goal than "fat dude in his mom's basement".
cstross 8y ago
Nuh-huh. What happens is something approximately like this: Saudi military intelligence puts through a request via appropriate channels to the Five Eyes for a tap on some low-profile woman's phone, claiming it's necessary in pursuit of a counter-terrorism objective. This ends up with GCHQ rather than NSA (NSA spies on Brits, Brits spy on Americans, they work at adjacent desks and share info: this is the traditional work-around for laws banning domestic spying) who happily hand over the contents of a foreign POIs phone to an allied intel agency. Nobody at any senior level has a clue what's going on under cover of surveillance: stuff like this happens thousands of times a day. Meanwhile, the Saudi officer in charge of the kompromat on Bezos now has the dodgy photos off his girlfriend's phone ... If GCHQ doesn't work, route through some other allied SIGINT agency with cooperation via NSA, preferably in a country where the Khashoggi thing is just another "foreigners doing horrible things to each other" back page story and nobody has a clue about Jeff Bezos' divorce. TLDR: the global war on terror has given us a global hairball of inter-tangled intelligence sharing arrangements, and these can be manipulated for pleasure and profit by any sufficiently corrupt party who is plugged in to it.
- sgt101 8y ago
  No no no. The UK has laws that facilitate surveillance of its citizens. The UK spying on US citizens in the USA is something that I would put into a risk category two (more??) orders of magnitude above brexit or suez. I'm sorry, but it would be lunatic recklessness, and to what advantage?
  - cstross 8y ago
    UKUSA treaty: goes back to 1945, GCHQ is used by the NSA as a convenient work-around for restrictions on domestic surveillance. This was all documented by James Bamford in his histories of the NSA, "Inside the Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets". (You're looking at the present-day for context, but these agencies run on protocols that have built up over many decades, dating back to the Cold War.)
    - ncmncm 8y ago

by gyaniv 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

greendesk 8y ago

>>Trump is the president and all, but to hack and release (by a third party) the personal information if a citizen (not suspected or related to any crime) seems to me to be something that even Trump or his supporters can't doTrump is the president and all, but to hack and release (by a third party) the personal information if a citizen (not suspected or related to any crime) seems to me to be something that even Trump or his supporters can't do, the intelligence agencies just wouldn't do it in my opinion. For me it checks out - leaking informations sounds like something that Trump or his supporters would do. Why would not they, if they have the option to? Per the intelligence agencies - are you sure that they are a single entity, where people are of uniform opinion? And every single person follows law to the letter of it? There is the example that those services employed Snowden - if the services were so organised as to avoid such hacks, we would not have heard of Snowden. Sure, Sanchez' phone might have had leaks in it... but it is just as plausible as a government officials (US or non-US) accessing his phone.

gyaniv 8y ago
There's a chance I'm mostly just being hopeful, and you're right in both that Trump would totally support doing something like that, and that the intelligence agencies aren't a single entity. >>For me it checks out - leaking informations sounds like something that Trump or his supporters would do. Why would not they, if they have the option to? Per the intelligence agencies - are you sure that they are a single entity, where people are of uniform opinion? And every single person follows law to the letter of it? There is the example that those services employed Snowden - if the services were so organised as to avoid such hacks, we would not have heard of Snowden. But from my experience in other government entities, I believe that doing something like hacking into someone's phone, would require approval and support from high enough officials in those organizations, and so far it seems that these organization do still seem to remain professional and not involved in political actions by the president. I agree that there might be (and I'm assuming there are) private Trump supporters in those agencies, that for example, would do 'a Snowden' and release classified and private information that they shouldn't. But that information first needs to gathered, and I don't think Jeff Bezos has done something to warrant previous gathering of information about him. (If information about Trump for example is released this way, it would seem more likely to me, because we know they collected that information while thinking he might be a spy). But once again, I hope I'm not just being hopefully optimistic in my trust of 'the system'.
JoeSmithson 8y ago
It's somewhat plausible that an NSA employee might leak Bezos's nudes, it is not plausible that a US agency would hack his phone.

oligopoly 8y ago

What usually happens in these kind of things is mistress or partner shares images with friends and someone looks to profit or take vengeance behalf of cheated friend. I'm baffled nobody brings this up.

crispyambulance 8y ago
Yeah, like "the fappening", for christ's sake, it doesn't have to be a "state actor"!
- jessaustin 8y ago
  We mustn't forget, the War Media is always agitating for more military action. "State actor" gets them a lot closer to their goal than "fat dude in his mom's basement".

cstross 8y ago

Nuh-huh. What happens is something approximately like this: Saudi military intelligence puts through a request via appropriate channels to the Five Eyes for a tap on some low-profile woman's phone, claiming it's necessary in pursuit of a counter-terrorism objective. This ends up with GCHQ rather than NSA (NSA spies on Brits, Brits spy on Americans, they work at adjacent desks and share info: this is the traditional work-around for laws banning domestic spying) who happily hand over the contents of a foreign POIs phone to an allied intel agency. Nobody at any senior level has a clue what's going on under cover of surveillance: stuff like this happens thousands of times a day. Meanwhile, the Saudi officer in charge of the kompromat on Bezos now has the dodgy photos off his girlfriend's phone ... If GCHQ doesn't work, route through some other allied SIGINT agency with cooperation via NSA, preferably in a country where the Khashoggi thing is just another "foreigners doing horrible things to each other" back page story and nobody has a clue about Jeff Bezos' divorce. TLDR: the global war on terror has given us a global hairball of inter-tangled intelligence sharing arrangements, and these can be manipulated for pleasure and profit by any sufficiently corrupt party who is plugged in to it.

sgt101 8y ago
No no no. The UK has laws that facilitate surveillance of its citizens. The UK spying on US citizens in the USA is something that I would put into a risk category two (more??) orders of magnitude above brexit or suez. I'm sorry, but it would be lunatic recklessness, and to what advantage?
- cstross 8y ago
  UKUSA treaty: goes back to 1945, GCHQ is used by the NSA as a convenient work-around for restrictions on domestic surveillance. This was all documented by James Bamford in his histories of the NSA, "Inside the Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets". (You're looking at the present-day for context, but these agencies run on protocols that have built up over many decades, dating back to the Cold War.)
  - ncmncm 8y ago