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Beyond the information security risk around the loss of this specific device, what really worries me is the physical security implications here. I'm certainly n

Beyond the information security risk around the loss of this specific device, what really worries me is the physical security implications here. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but it seems to me like, in a building like the US Capitol, it should not be anywhere near this easy for unauthorized people to waltz into an office or conference room in the first place. Let alone walk away with items from within that room.

ProAm 6y ago
Ha! These people are in their 70's and 80's, getting any legitimate security is near impossible. Try telling your grandparents not to play flash games on their computer. The best security should have been by the entrances of the building. Edit: Pelosi is 80 years old.
- ben_w 6y ago
  Age isn’t the problem, lack of digital security literacy might well be. My dad was born in ‘39, he did a degree in electrical engineering, and it took until something like his second job after graduation for his employer to send him on a two-day training course for the new-fangled [0] invention of something called “software”. He then worked in software from that course until retirement. However, he never understood RSA despite working on UK military IFF systems. [0] “new-fangled” was his description; the closest he came to acknowledging Ada Lovelace before I learned of her was to complain about the language Ada.
Fauntleroy 6y ago
To prevent unauthorized entry, Capitol Police would have had to put up a fight. Seems they were unwilling to do so. If America continues down this path Russia (and others) are just gonna have a field day.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  You're being naive if you believe that Russia and others didn't already have a field day at the Capitol yesterday. I wouldn't worry as much about what these guys took from offices and server rooms as I would worry about what little digital gifts these guys may have left behind in the offices and server rooms.
  - derg 6y ago
    Yep. The entire building needs to be completely scrubbed down and all tech needs to be taken and destroyed. A complete fresh start. Move operations to a new building while this is happening.
    - vladTheInhaler 6y ago
      It honestly boggles the mind that capitol police announced the all-clear as soon as they did. I mean they found pipe bombs in the RNC and DNC headquarters. No way did the conduct the kind of thorough search that would ensure that nobody left a pipe bomb in an air vent or in a random filing cabinet. And that goes double for mysterious flash drives randomly stuck in people's computers, or bugs hidden in planters etc. Just an absolute travesty.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Given the solarwind hack aren't they already in?
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  I guess? I would have expected the doors to put up a fight, too. But it doesn't sound like there was much forced entry going on beyond getting into the building itself. At my own workplace, all the areas that are not intended for public use - office blocks and most meeting rooms, for example - are locked at all times and have keycard access. Defense in depth, y'know? And we're not even a juicy target like the US Capitol, we're just some company.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    Congress isn't really one office, though. It's hundreds of individually run ones, each intended to serve the public fairly frequently. You can (generally) pop in and see your congressperson and/or their staff if you want.
    - mumblemumble 6y ago
      You can pop in and see me, too. You just need to check in at the front desk, and can't wander around sensitive areas un-escorted.
      - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
        My office is likely set up the same as yours, or at least close enough to yours. You could absolutely pop in to visit me. But you could also grab enough of your friends to obtain a decisive numerical advantage – let's say, you and twenty of your closest friends, that probably gets close to what we saw yesterday. Be sure one or two of them are visibly armed. Once you have your buddies, you can go break through the glass door leading to the receptionist's desk. We saw that yesterday too. Once you're in, game over: I don't expect Nancy to tackle you at the door, or my friend Brian to kick you when you try to come into the conference room. I expect when you're inside you'll get a guest badge – or an employees – and proceed to go about doing whatever you were interested in doing. My office's threat model – and yours – is not based on defending against a mob of people storming the building.
        6y ago
- djsumdog 6y ago
  The Capitol Police were either incompetent or complicit. There are literally no other options. They knew there would be a big protests, numbers put it around 200k~300k (a tiny percentage of which actually went into the capitol building mind you). If they weren't prepared for this: incompetence. But there are videos of people getting selfies with guards, and staying within the velvet ropes when coming in. Something isn't right here and no one is talking about it.
  - amyjess 6y ago
    They took selfies with the insurrectionists. They were complicit.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      > insurrectionists Peaceful protestors. Were the BLM people who stormed city hall in Seattle insurrectionists? Where the Black Panthers who took the California State Capitol in the 1970s insurrectionists? Stop with the bullshit name games. These were not rioters. They didn't set anything on fire. They should not have stolen or broken anything. That's wrong and bad and should be condemned. Those people should get federal time But man...you have to admit...there is something beautiful about the peasants entering the royal court, and the town idiot putting his feet up on the table that belongs to the Hand of the King. The villagers entered the royal court and the senators clutched their pearls. America has had a long history of occupying federal buildings. This is certainly not unprecedented. These people were not a coup or insurrection. They had no plan. There was no person with a new founding document they were going to read. They didn't bring in an armed force and take and occupy the capital. The overreaction to what happened is fucking insane, especially compared to what actual Rioters where allowed to get away with for the past year. In May, DC was literally on fire from the BLM riots, and we didn't see this type of DoubleSpeak.
      - amyjess 6y ago
        Storming the capitol to stop the certification of an election whose result t hey didn't like is the very definition of an attempted coup d'etat. They had zip ties meant for the purpose of taking hostages: https://twitter.com/Adiscen/status/1347189171362918400 https://twitter.com/Adiscen/status/1347189171362918400 IEDs were found at the DNC and RNC: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc... https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/abc-news-exclusive-photo-suspected-explosive-device-found/story?id=75105481 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/abc-news-exclusive-photo-sus...
- staplers 6y ago
  You're being downvoted, but it's been proven police helped the rioters and even took selfies with them.
  - mimikatz 6y ago
    It has not been proven. This is false. Please stop spreading it. Multiple people were killed in clashes with the police. They did not help the rioters. This is the type of misinformation that caused all these problems.
    - danaris 6y ago
      Without any specific knowledge on this case one way or the other, both of these things can be simultaneously true: Some Capitol police stuck to their duty and tried to keep the insurrectionists out, while others agreed with them, let them in, and took selfies with them. "The Capitol Police" is not a single, monolithic entity; it's made up of individual people, with their own political views.
    - akersten 6y ago
      Police taking selfie with terrorist: https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520 https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520 Police letting terrorists in: https://twitter.com/joshuapotash/status/1346931235176783873 https://twitter.com/joshuapotash/status/1346931235176783873
      - itronitron 6y ago
        Regarding the second video, there were already protesters behind the barrier so those police may have been ordered to move back to another area. The bigger concern for me is the understaffing and declining of offers of assistance made by other police departments.
      - waterside81 6y ago
        Here's another video of cops letting people in. https://twitter.com/christina_bobb/status/1347596278583197698 https://twitter.com/christina_bobb/status/134759627858319769...
- rhino369 6y ago
  Firing on a mob is risky as hell and not morally clear. I can't blame Capitol Police--at least for the actions after it already got out of hand. If federal security at Court House shoots BLM protestors who are entering a federal court house, those security people would probably get charged with murder. It's unreasonable to expect Capitol Police to make that sort of moral choice in the moment. And if you give cops the greenlight to shoot people to protect property, there will be a lot of unnecessarily death going forward. That said, they may (probably?) screwed up containing the crowd contained in the first place. Though to play devils advocate, the President had just told a mob to go "wild." Not sure if Capitol Police could successfully manage that.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >That said, they may (probably?) screwed up containing the crowd contained in the first place. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight, there should have been a much stronger show of force/barricades/etc. Should that have been obvious even without hindsight? Don't know. That said, once the Capitol Police were outnumbered and things were getting out of hand, I'm pretty sure the best outcome if they had used deadly force to stop a rush would have been headlines like "Dozens of Trump supporters dead after police open fire on crowd." Worse scenarios include the police getting overwhelmed anyway and many of them killed also leading to a firefight within the capitol.
    - kweinber 6y ago
      Hindsight? You have the same kind of folks who showed up at Charlottesville and other altercations and you can’t predict they will cause trouble? The very idea that no-one could see this coming is ridiculous.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        There have been several pro-Trump rallies since the election. The city got locked down hard, but nothing happened. They were much more peaceful than the rallies this summer. (I drove by all of these because my wife’s office is a couple of blocks from the White House).
35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
I've traveled to countries before whose offices of government are behind very large fences, protected by unfriendly looking men standing behind heavy machine guns in armored vehicles – and the guide books are very clear that you are not to take photos of them. I much prefer the approach taken in the USA, where our offices of government are accessible to the people that the government serves. It's very good that I can protest out front without worrying about that unfriendly man with his finger by the trigger to the Browning M2.
- davidw 6y ago
  Seems like it ought to be possible to have both, to some degree. I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this. I mean... the US spends massive amounts of money on the police and military. I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.
  - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
    American history[1] shows this probably isn't a requirement - beyond a foreign military attacking, which is clearly out of scope of policing, the other attacks were acts carried out by isolated people. "Storming the gates" hasn't happened before now. I suspect the main reason that this hasn't happened before is that very large protests/gatherings are often met with a large show of police force to ensure the protestors know this isn't an option. Why that didn't happen today will be interesting to investigate. We all probably have a theory, but what comes out of the inevitable hearings on this will be interesting to see. [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/us-capitol-violence-history-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/us-capitol-violence-histor...
    - rayiner 6y ago
      They’re often not met with a show of police force. Here’s a picture of the Million Man March in the 1990s: https://images.app.goo.gl/WSvMYDK4asyav5HX7 https://images.app.goo.gl/WSvMYDK4asyav5HX7 There are hundreds of thousands of people behind the camera, going all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. You can see some security milling around, but no large show of police force.
jacquesm 6y ago
The US Embassy in Amsterdam is better protected than the Capitol.
- _trampeltier 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure, almost every US Embassy, not just in Amsterdam, is better protected.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Isn't that the right way around? Embassies in foreign countries need more protection than buildings in your own home country?
- tpmx 6y ago
  I think you should read up on how western countries typically prefer to have very light visible security in front of buildings like these. It sends a message of non-approachability if you have heavily-armed forces out front, which politicans don't like. I'm assuming a similar security plan is in place in e.g. European countries' parliaments; extracting the high value targets is P1. The building is just a building; if it's damaged it can be repaired. And killing a bunch of people defending a building is a political no-go. None of this applies to an embassy.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Apparently there was a joke going around latin america twitter that the coup failed because there is no US embassy in DC to support it.
hsnewman 6y ago
Looks to me like they stood down, being complicit with the insurrection. This often is how 3rd world nations are overthrown by dictators with the militarys help.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ashtonkem 6y ago
All that money, all those guns, all that harassing of random citizens, and this happened. One has to ask “what are we actually paying for?”
- vincentmarle 6y ago
  Right, the annual Capitol Police budget alone is $550 million.
  - kelchqvjpnfasjl 6y ago
    A police force of 2200, just for one building. Compare that to the Atlanta Police Department which has 1800 officers for a city of 500,000+ people and a size of 136 sq miles.
    - hindsightbias 6y ago
      Not one bldg. There are multiple House and Senate offices and the Library of Congress. It's a huge complex which does not seem well designed from a security standpoint. I don't know if they've fixed that, but after 9/11 it was a mess of access.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  Fwiw multiple police/security leaders have been fired or forced to resign due to this.
rayiner 6y ago
That’s just how the Capitol (and most US state houses) is. My wife has on multiple occasions waltzed down to the (non-public) underground subway that connects the Capitol to the Senate and House office buildings to chat with members of Congress. The Capitol Police usually say “well you’re not supposed to be here, but I guess it’s okay.”
- tandr 6y ago
  This is not the information for a public forum, sorry.
  - tandr 6y ago
    I may be paranoid, and thus don't get why the downvotes? 1. The person specified he has a wife that chats with members of Congress out of usual channels of communications. 2. The person specified place where it happens in the open. How hard for some non-friendly party to get there directly given the instructions above, or start tracking his wife through other means and get there through her?
wtfiswiththis 6y ago
The president massed rioters down the road and had them attack the building shortly after 1pm when the tally started in the Capitol building. He watched the riots unfold live, and refused federal backup for local forces. Giuliani is Trump's lawyer, he called for "trial by combat" during the rally and after the riot started he was calling Republicans to press them into going along with the coup attempt. This was a coup attempt, with a violent and legislative side to it. They were both organized and timed by the same parties. Both failed fortunately.
switch007 6y ago
The correct fix seems to be electing presidents that don’t invite terrorists to do what they did.
- gibrown 6y ago
  And who actually protect the capitol building when it is under attack.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
In the Netherlands there are a few entry ways and they look a bit like this: https://www.dormakaba.com/resource/blob/128222/7d74af646dce430c0f4af41383524131/798058-jpg-data.jpg https://www.dormakaba.com/resource/blob/128222/7d74af646dce4... They're configured one-way only, can be fully opened for high through-put or emergencies, but are otherwise single-person only. They can detect multiple people in various ways. The default for sensitive areas would be biometric (e.g. weight, some parlement members coming back from vacation a little overweight have had to get a manual override in the past). Of course bulletproof, and can be controlled at a distance by an operator. It makes sense that not everything requires something like this, but the office of the speaker of the house of course should be in any situation. If she wishes to meet people in less-secure rooms it's entirely possible to create meeting rooms with fewer or even no significant entry or security controls if you wish, but your personal office, places where you store sensitive data etc... can't just have em behind a few wooden doors. Of course some countries opted for the benefit of a modern building. The capitol is more than two centuries old, you can only retrofit it so much.
- brudgers 6y ago
  The US Capitol belongs to the people. There are risks from that which fall on the people who serve there. In counties with monarchs there are different traditions expressed by the architecture of public institutions and the seats of power.
  - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
    Without referencing any source I'll just assume you made that up. As far as I know there's no difference between say the French or German republic or the Dutch (symbolic) monarchy in this regard. Dutch representatives are accessible by the people. They have a walk-in hour, you can call them, email them, write them, you can join hearings and meetings where they're present, they go out into the country to talk to citizens. But what you can't do is waltz into their office. This has obvious reasons in a post 9/11 world, and it has nothing to do with the fact the Netherlands has a king who has a purely symbolic function and does not participate in politics, no different from say France which is a republic, or Germany which saw a mob storm the Reichstag a few months ago and was easily held off by the police, which is also a republic.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ProAm 6y ago

Ha! These people are in their 70's and 80's, getting any legitimate security is near impossible. Try telling your grandparents not to play flash games on their computer. The best security should have been by the entrances of the building. Edit: Pelosi is 80 years old.

ben_w 6y ago
Age isn’t the problem, lack of digital security literacy might well be. My dad was born in ‘39, he did a degree in electrical engineering, and it took until something like his second job after graduation for his employer to send him on a two-day training course for the new-fangled [0] invention of something called “software”. He then worked in software from that course until retirement. However, he never understood RSA despite working on UK military IFF systems. [0] “new-fangled” was his description; the closest he came to acknowledging Ada Lovelace before I learned of her was to complain about the language Ada.

Fauntleroy 6y ago

To prevent unauthorized entry, Capitol Police would have had to put up a fight. Seems they were unwilling to do so. If America continues down this path Russia (and others) are just gonna have a field day.

bilbo0s 6y ago
You're being naive if you believe that Russia and others didn't already have a field day at the Capitol yesterday. I wouldn't worry as much about what these guys took from offices and server rooms as I would worry about what little digital gifts these guys may have left behind in the offices and server rooms.
- derg 6y ago
  Yep. The entire building needs to be completely scrubbed down and all tech needs to be taken and destroyed. A complete fresh start. Move operations to a new building while this is happening.
  - vladTheInhaler 6y ago
    It honestly boggles the mind that capitol police announced the all-clear as soon as they did. I mean they found pipe bombs in the RNC and DNC headquarters. No way did the conduct the kind of thorough search that would ensure that nobody left a pipe bomb in an air vent or in a random filing cabinet. And that goes double for mysterious flash drives randomly stuck in people's computers, or bugs hidden in planters etc. Just an absolute travesty.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Given the solarwind hack aren't they already in?
mumblemumble 6y ago
I guess? I would have expected the doors to put up a fight, too. But it doesn't sound like there was much forced entry going on beyond getting into the building itself. At my own workplace, all the areas that are not intended for public use - office blocks and most meeting rooms, for example - are locked at all times and have keycard access. Defense in depth, y'know? And we're not even a juicy target like the US Capitol, we're just some company.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Congress isn't really one office, though. It's hundreds of individually run ones, each intended to serve the public fairly frequently. You can (generally) pop in and see your congressperson and/or their staff if you want.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    You can pop in and see me, too. You just need to check in at the front desk, and can't wander around sensitive areas un-escorted.
    - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
      My office is likely set up the same as yours, or at least close enough to yours. You could absolutely pop in to visit me. But you could also grab enough of your friends to obtain a decisive numerical advantage – let's say, you and twenty of your closest friends, that probably gets close to what we saw yesterday. Be sure one or two of them are visibly armed. Once you have your buddies, you can go break through the glass door leading to the receptionist's desk. We saw that yesterday too. Once you're in, game over: I don't expect Nancy to tackle you at the door, or my friend Brian to kick you when you try to come into the conference room. I expect when you're inside you'll get a guest badge – or an employees – and proceed to go about doing whatever you were interested in doing. My office's threat model – and yours – is not based on defending against a mob of people storming the building.
      - 6y ago
djsumdog 6y ago
The Capitol Police were either incompetent or complicit. There are literally no other options. They knew there would be a big protests, numbers put it around 200k~300k (a tiny percentage of which actually went into the capitol building mind you). If they weren't prepared for this: incompetence. But there are videos of people getting selfies with guards, and staying within the velvet ropes when coming in. Something isn't right here and no one is talking about it.
- amyjess 6y ago
  They took selfies with the insurrectionists. They were complicit.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    > insurrectionists Peaceful protestors. Were the BLM people who stormed city hall in Seattle insurrectionists? Where the Black Panthers who took the California State Capitol in the 1970s insurrectionists? Stop with the bullshit name games. These were not rioters. They didn't set anything on fire. They should not have stolen or broken anything. That's wrong and bad and should be condemned. Those people should get federal time But man...you have to admit...there is something beautiful about the peasants entering the royal court, and the town idiot putting his feet up on the table that belongs to the Hand of the King. The villagers entered the royal court and the senators clutched their pearls. America has had a long history of occupying federal buildings. This is certainly not unprecedented. These people were not a coup or insurrection. They had no plan. There was no person with a new founding document they were going to read. They didn't bring in an armed force and take and occupy the capital. The overreaction to what happened is fucking insane, especially compared to what actual Rioters where allowed to get away with for the past year. In May, DC was literally on fire from the BLM riots, and we didn't see this type of DoubleSpeak.
    - amyjess 6y ago
      Storming the capitol to stop the certification of an election whose result t hey didn't like is the very definition of an attempted coup d'etat. They had zip ties meant for the purpose of taking hostages: https://twitter.com/Adiscen/status/1347189171362918400 https://twitter.com/Adiscen/status/1347189171362918400 IEDs were found at the DNC and RNC: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc... https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/abc-news-exclusive-photo-suspected-explosive-device-found/story?id=75105481 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/abc-news-exclusive-photo-sus...
staplers 6y ago
You're being downvoted, but it's been proven police helped the rioters and even took selfies with them.
- mimikatz 6y ago
  It has not been proven. This is false. Please stop spreading it. Multiple people were killed in clashes with the police. They did not help the rioters. This is the type of misinformation that caused all these problems.
  - danaris 6y ago
    Without any specific knowledge on this case one way or the other, both of these things can be simultaneously true: Some Capitol police stuck to their duty and tried to keep the insurrectionists out, while others agreed with them, let them in, and took selfies with them. "The Capitol Police" is not a single, monolithic entity; it's made up of individual people, with their own political views.
  - akersten 6y ago
    Police taking selfie with terrorist: https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520 https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520 Police letting terrorists in: https://twitter.com/joshuapotash/status/1346931235176783873 https://twitter.com/joshuapotash/status/1346931235176783873
    - itronitron 6y ago
      Regarding the second video, there were already protesters behind the barrier so those police may have been ordered to move back to another area. The bigger concern for me is the understaffing and declining of offers of assistance made by other police departments.
    - waterside81 6y ago
      Here's another video of cops letting people in. https://twitter.com/christina_bobb/status/1347596278583197698 https://twitter.com/christina_bobb/status/134759627858319769...
rhino369 6y ago
Firing on a mob is risky as hell and not morally clear. I can't blame Capitol Police--at least for the actions after it already got out of hand. If federal security at Court House shoots BLM protestors who are entering a federal court house, those security people would probably get charged with murder. It's unreasonable to expect Capitol Police to make that sort of moral choice in the moment. And if you give cops the greenlight to shoot people to protect property, there will be a lot of unnecessarily death going forward. That said, they may (probably?) screwed up containing the crowd contained in the first place. Though to play devils advocate, the President had just told a mob to go "wild." Not sure if Capitol Police could successfully manage that.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >That said, they may (probably?) screwed up containing the crowd contained in the first place. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight, there should have been a much stronger show of force/barricades/etc. Should that have been obvious even without hindsight? Don't know. That said, once the Capitol Police were outnumbered and things were getting out of hand, I'm pretty sure the best outcome if they had used deadly force to stop a rush would have been headlines like "Dozens of Trump supporters dead after police open fire on crowd." Worse scenarios include the police getting overwhelmed anyway and many of them killed also leading to a firefight within the capitol.
  - kweinber 6y ago
    Hindsight? You have the same kind of folks who showed up at Charlottesville and other altercations and you can’t predict they will cause trouble? The very idea that no-one could see this coming is ridiculous.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      There have been several pro-Trump rallies since the election. The city got locked down hard, but nothing happened. They were much more peaceful than the rallies this summer. (I drove by all of these because my wife’s office is a couple of blocks from the White House).

35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago

I've traveled to countries before whose offices of government are behind very large fences, protected by unfriendly looking men standing behind heavy machine guns in armored vehicles – and the guide books are very clear that you are not to take photos of them. I much prefer the approach taken in the USA, where our offices of government are accessible to the people that the government serves. It's very good that I can protest out front without worrying about that unfriendly man with his finger by the trigger to the Browning M2.

davidw 6y ago
Seems like it ought to be possible to have both, to some degree. I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this. I mean... the US spends massive amounts of money on the police and military. I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
  American history[1] shows this probably isn't a requirement - beyond a foreign military attacking, which is clearly out of scope of policing, the other attacks were acts carried out by isolated people. "Storming the gates" hasn't happened before now. I suspect the main reason that this hasn't happened before is that very large protests/gatherings are often met with a large show of police force to ensure the protestors know this isn't an option. Why that didn't happen today will be interesting to investigate. We all probably have a theory, but what comes out of the inevitable hearings on this will be interesting to see. [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/us-capitol-violence-history-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/us-capitol-violence-histor...
  - rayiner 6y ago
    They’re often not met with a show of police force. Here’s a picture of the Million Man March in the 1990s: https://images.app.goo.gl/WSvMYDK4asyav5HX7 https://images.app.goo.gl/WSvMYDK4asyav5HX7 There are hundreds of thousands of people behind the camera, going all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. You can see some security milling around, but no large show of police force.

jacquesm 6y ago

The US Embassy in Amsterdam is better protected than the Capitol.

_trampeltier 6y ago
I'm pretty sure, almost every US Embassy, not just in Amsterdam, is better protected.
chrisseaton 6y ago
Isn't that the right way around? Embassies in foreign countries need more protection than buildings in your own home country?
tpmx 6y ago
I think you should read up on how western countries typically prefer to have very light visible security in front of buildings like these. It sends a message of non-approachability if you have heavily-armed forces out front, which politicans don't like. I'm assuming a similar security plan is in place in e.g. European countries' parliaments; extracting the high value targets is P1. The building is just a building; if it's damaged it can be repaired. And killing a bunch of people defending a building is a political no-go. None of this applies to an embassy.
pjc50 6y ago
Apparently there was a joke going around latin america twitter that the coup failed because there is no US embassy in DC to support it.

hsnewman 6y ago

Looks to me like they stood down, being complicit with the insurrection. This often is how 3rd world nations are overthrown by dictators with the militarys help.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ashtonkem 6y ago

All that money, all those guns, all that harassing of random citizens, and this happened. One has to ask “what are we actually paying for?”

vincentmarle 6y ago
Right, the annual Capitol Police budget alone is $550 million.
- kelchqvjpnfasjl 6y ago
  A police force of 2200, just for one building. Compare that to the Atlanta Police Department which has 1800 officers for a city of 500,000+ people and a size of 136 sq miles.
  - hindsightbias 6y ago
    Not one bldg. There are multiple House and Senate offices and the Library of Congress. It's a huge complex which does not seem well designed from a security standpoint. I don't know if they've fixed that, but after 9/11 it was a mess of access.
therealdrag0 6y ago
Fwiw multiple police/security leaders have been fired or forced to resign due to this.

rayiner 6y ago

That’s just how the Capitol (and most US state houses) is. My wife has on multiple occasions waltzed down to the (non-public) underground subway that connects the Capitol to the Senate and House office buildings to chat with members of Congress. The Capitol Police usually say “well you’re not supposed to be here, but I guess it’s okay.”

tandr 6y ago
This is not the information for a public forum, sorry.
- tandr 6y ago
  I may be paranoid, and thus don't get why the downvotes? 1. The person specified he has a wife that chats with members of Congress out of usual channels of communications. 2. The person specified place where it happens in the open. How hard for some non-friendly party to get there directly given the instructions above, or start tracking his wife through other means and get there through her?

wtfiswiththis 6y ago

The president massed rioters down the road and had them attack the building shortly after 1pm when the tally started in the Capitol building. He watched the riots unfold live, and refused federal backup for local forces. Giuliani is Trump's lawyer, he called for "trial by combat" during the rally and after the riot started he was calling Republicans to press them into going along with the coup attempt. This was a coup attempt, with a violent and legislative side to it. They were both organized and timed by the same parties. Both failed fortunately.

switch007 6y ago

The correct fix seems to be electing presidents that don’t invite terrorists to do what they did.

gibrown 6y ago
And who actually protect the capitol building when it is under attack.

IkmoIkmo 6y ago

In the Netherlands there are a few entry ways and they look a bit like this: https://www.dormakaba.com/resource/blob/128222/7d74af646dce430c0f4af41383524131/798058-jpg-data.jpg https://www.dormakaba.com/resource/blob/128222/7d74af646dce4... They're configured one-way only, can be fully opened for high through-put or emergencies, but are otherwise single-person only. They can detect multiple people in various ways. The default for sensitive areas would be biometric (e.g. weight, some parlement members coming back from vacation a little overweight have had to get a manual override in the past). Of course bulletproof, and can be controlled at a distance by an operator. It makes sense that not everything requires something like this, but the office of the speaker of the house of course should be in any situation. If she wishes to meet people in less-secure rooms it's entirely possible to create meeting rooms with fewer or even no significant entry or security controls if you wish, but your personal office, places where you store sensitive data etc... can't just have em behind a few wooden doors. Of course some countries opted for the benefit of a modern building. The capitol is more than two centuries old, you can only retrofit it so much.

brudgers 6y ago
The US Capitol belongs to the people. There are risks from that which fall on the people who serve there. In counties with monarchs there are different traditions expressed by the architecture of public institutions and the seats of power.
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  Without referencing any source I'll just assume you made that up. As far as I know there's no difference between say the French or German republic or the Dutch (symbolic) monarchy in this regard. Dutch representatives are accessible by the people. They have a walk-in hour, you can call them, email them, write them, you can join hearings and meetings where they're present, they go out into the country to talk to citizens. But what you can't do is waltz into their office. This has obvious reasons in a post 9/11 world, and it has nothing to do with the fact the Netherlands has a king who has a purely symbolic function and does not participate in politics, no different from say France which is a republic, or Germany which saw a mob storm the Reichstag a few months ago and was easily held off by the police, which is also a republic.

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