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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 (

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.
      - mumblemumble 6y ago
        > My office's threat model – and yours – is not based on defending against a mob of people storming the building. That's sort of exactly the point I'm making. My office's threat model isn't even in the same league, and yet it still seems to have more thought put into physical security than the Capitol building. It would appear that, unlike in the hypothetical you're constructing, in the real event, people didn't even need keycards in order to freely move about the building after getting past the exterior doors.
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).

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.
    - mumblemumble 6y ago
      > My office's threat model – and yours – is not based on defending against a mob of people storming the building. That's sort of exactly the point I'm making. My office's threat model isn't even in the same league, and yet it still seems to have more thought put into physical security than the Capitol building. It would appear that, unlike in the hypothetical you're constructing, in the real event, people didn't even need keycards in order to freely move about the building after getting past the exterior doors.

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).