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It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting anything worth hacking on gmail.
by leereeves 7mo ago
It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting anything worth hacking on gmail.
- pdpi 7mo agoSecurity in depth. Even if you think you don't have anything particularly valuable in there, you still protect it as if you did.
- leereeves 7mo agoI'd rather he worry about securing government secrets, not spend one second worrying about "personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible, and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum".
- ndsipa_pomu 7mo agoObviously government secrets need to be properly secured, but the personal info/photos of a top official can often be used for blackmail or for determining close friends that could be used to compromise Patel.
- leereeves 7mo agoThere's so much speculation about how this hack could conceivably be damaging, but so little evidence that it actually contained anything damaging.
- ndsipa_pomu 7mo agoSecurity through luck? The reality is that officials are targetted by various states looking to get some leverage, so not properly securing an email account is a serious failing unless it's part of a wider honeypot scheme. Personally, I'm not convinced that the current U.S. administration is competent enough to plan ahead and implement honeypots.
- leereeves 7mo agoNo point in going round and round with personal opinions and general speculation. The debate is easily settled: just point to some actual harm done by this hack.
- ndsipa_pomu 7mo agoI don't think you really understand how blackmail works. If the information is public, then that's a failed blackmail attempt. Also, the U.S. administration is unlikely to provide public information on how top officials have been compromised. It's not really much of a debate as it's widely acknowledged that letting enemy states get access to the email accounts of officials is a really bad idea.
- thephyber 7mo ago“The enemy broke into our nuke silo, killed our Air Force manned crew, stole the nuke codes, launched the missile. Not a big deal because we shot it down before it hit its target.” Most of the time, actual harm is the most important issue. In this case because that office holds so much centralized power and authority over many aspects of American life (domestic law enforcement, some foreign law enforcement, domestic counterterrorism / counterintelligence / counterespionage, and security clearance background checks for all VIPs), the means are equally as important as the ends. And I would throw in a wrinkle: what evidence is there that the dumps were not stripped of the most useful blackmail material? If I were in charge of a hack operation, I would dump the low impact stuff to show the world how much of a joke this guy’s security is, but only after I already used the best stuff to blackmail him months ago.
- leereeves 7mo agoThe scenario you're proposing is more like "They broke into our silo and launched a nuke, then they shot it down themselves." A successful blackmailer doesn't want the security breach exposed or investigated, they want to continue to use the victim.
- thephyber 7mo agoBad take. Patel specifically bypassed security clearance protocols for Bongino and other staff he hired. His top priority isn’t protecting government secrets — it’s to take down what he thinks is the part of the US government that resists bending to Trump’s will. And you are wrong that the FBI shouldn’t care about securing the Director’s private life information. Anything and everything can and will be used to blackmail him by foreign governments, criminals, political actors. I highly doubt the first public dump of messages would include the most compromising content — that’s like handing away a maximum severity zero day for the most common OS in the federal government. There’s no logical reason to do that for free, so I suspect the really incriminating/ salacious stuff was withheld for private use. And if the FBI didn’t enable the high security setting on the FBI Director’s private email account, they might not have known what, if any, compromising materials were in there.
- kevin_thibedeau 7mo agoTrump bypassed clearance protocols for unclearable Jared. Nobody cares with an unaccountable executive.
- thephyber 6mo agoMy take isn’t that “nobody cares”. It’s that we realized we are helpless against a President who violates the rules. Until he is impeached, he is for most purposes a king.
- stickfigure 7mo agoIt is also possible he is an idiot. There are few valuable sentences that begin with "it is possible..."
- leptons 7mo agoTo be fair, he probably never once in his wildest dreams ever thought he would be head of the FBI. So he probably didn't think he needed the extra security, because what idiot would put him in charge of the world's largest spy network.
- eps 7mo agoThe FBI is not a spy network.
- ArnoVW 7mo agoWhile I understand why you would say that, I think the way "spy network" was meant, was in the way that their job is to spy within the US. And given the resources at their disposition, and the size of the US, "worlds biggest spy network" is not wrong. Also, they do head up the main counterintelligence effort of the US. How the mighty have fallen.
- thephyber 7mo agoYou are being pedantic. I have 2 family members who are/were special agents for the FBI. Much of their job is harvesting evidence to build cases by spying, which frequently comes more in the form of “spying” in the way we saw in The Sopranos. The FBI is also the premier counter-espionage organization within the US, so it is tasked with spying on suspected foreign / turned spies. It is much more than a spy network, but it is exactly that as well.
- kevin_thibedeau 7mo agoAll cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their life. You don't have to be a suspect to fall within their panopticon.