Interesting, and not all that implausible. The real test: his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
If they wanted to maintain access, they certainly wouldn't celebrate it publicly, which is why I assume they want to release information. But, there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting professionally. We'll see how the facts bear out. I also suppose it's possible they're just going for any win they can and there's nothing interesting here whatsoever, or it's a really boring secondary address or something.
I think this is actually the opposite of the correct conclusion—just look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal). I seriously doubt that Kash Patel doesn't have a bunch of skeletons to dust off and show the world; the man is a weirdo (much like the rest of the administration).
EDIT: I actually misread the comment; I think we're likely in agreement. My bad.
If I was Iran I'd leak the innocuous stuff first to let them know I had access to potentially more damning things, to try and force the US to the table.
That would only work if there was something damning to Trump or someone in charge of Iran negotiations. Trump has no problem cutting people loose otherwise
From the news I’ve read the most “embarrassing” things in his personal email are photos of him smoking cigars, holding a bottle of rum, and posing in front of a supercar. What a scandal…
I'd like to chime in and say that that Kash Patel, while completely unprofessional and incompetent, is way less of a weirdo than the rest of the administration.
His scandals are all about shirking job responsibilities to party and sightsee. That's not great from the FBI director but its way more normal than the rest of them.
I dunno, a sitting FBI director testifying under oath about details that are clearly false, goes above and way beyond "to party and sightsee". At least in my world it puts him up there together with the rest of the weirdos.
That's not remotely true of his history.. he's a full on Jan-6er, deep into Q-Anon, he was involved in numerous serious scandals during the first Trump admin (Nunes Memo / Russiagate 'parallel' investigation: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-men...), he has a number of sketchy moneymaking side-businesses, he was formerly living with a GOP megadonor 'Timeshare Tycoon' as roommates in Vegas (https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/trump-fbi-pick-kash...), he collected enemies' lists for Trump which resulted in firing of most of the Iran counterintel team right before we started launching attacks because they had the termerity to investigate why Trump was showing donors top-secret maps of Iran after he left office..
In the current environment, those are more expecteds than scandalous.
Insider trades around government activities, same-sex behavior, overt racism for example might nudge the needle.
Dig in? Was already aware of his book, and he's made many more weird books. Trump's cabinet are all weird little goblins, some more Nazi than others, like Miller.
Why do you assume I did any digging at all? I just said we might find out some fun stuff in his emails about his weird book, which I already was aware of. Presumably the SAT includes properly written words and sentences, not whatever you spew out.
I was just reading a X thread that published some of the more notable things and overall it's pretty innocuous. The most "controversial" thing thus far is he took a trip to Cuba
The press was stupid. They were doing stupid gotchas like swiftboats, fake reports on GWB (Dan Rather), but couldn’t care less about things like the CIA and the crack cocaine connection[1], or lots of other things the government gets away with (including Clappers total information awareness unconstitutional surveillance efforts) The press is always carrying water for someone but that someone is rarely the public unless is just pure coincidence.
[1] there was one reporter who dared but the toll from the story resulted in his suicide, some years later. His colleagues poo-pooed his reporting on the connection.
* The Swiftboat thing was completely an ad campaign if I remember correctly.
I remember most media covering it as BS.
* The contents of Dan Rather report on GWB was true. There was one document
which was sketchy, but the whole report didn't hinge on the one document
from an officer's office. (E.g. Ex-senator Ben Barnes's interview is reasonably
indicting: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-barnes-on-bush/)
The media did fall down though. Only one outlet went to the the Officer's
secretary (who was still alive) to ask if she had typed the document.
She looked at it and said (summarizing here) that it wasn't the document
she typed, but it was the same contents.
What's interesting is how easily the media is distracted. What's even more
concerning though, is that when the more centrist major media has tried to
be less gullible, they've been vilified. (E.g. trying not to be suckered
by miraculous appearance Hunter Biden's laptop.)
It's a mess, and the only way out of it is probably limits own media ownership.
Maybe the hackers will release information connecting Patel to the Noem and Lewandowski grift operations with govt contracts. Out of the four companies allowed to bid for the $220 million advertising contract, 3 were linked to Noem and Lewandowski and one to Patel.
There is so much corruption and impropriety in this administration that skeletons don't matter anymore. Looking at what sunk officials in previous administrations provides a sense for just how far gone we are, but it's not an indicator of what future consequences will be.
Like what? We have two presidents, including the current one, that took multiple trips to a pedophile island. What skeletons could be greater than accusations of punching a child in the face after they bit the dude’s penis during forced sodomy?
There is no credible evidence that either of the Presidents you alluded to visited "the island". It's amazing to see conspiracy theories promulgated on HN.
There is lots of evidence that these two presidents were on the pedophile island many times, and one of their wives. That is well established.
There is no evidence released to the public directly linking those two men to specific sex acts by name. There is unnamed evidence released by the US DOJ specifically describing the assault I described in the prior comment. Again, none of this is theoretical, conspiracy, or conjecture. It’s in the documents released by the government that the government has confirmed as authentic.
No doubt you are aware that the claims about Clinton originated with the founder of the Epstein Mythos, Virginia Giuffre, who we know for a fact was a serial confabulator. While she was inarguably one of Epstein's victims, she also made several claims that were demonstrably untrue, she could not keep her own stories straight, the FBI concluded internally that she was totally unreliable and that she was even lying about what the FBI told her, other victims contradicted her, and she was herself forced to recant on several subjects, including admitting that her "autobiography" book was a work of fiction. If you doubt me, feel free to read the FBI memo about her.
In the case of both Clinton and Trump, there is no evidence that either of them visited Little St. James, and plenty of evidence otherwise - for example, Epstein even says so about Clinton in an email.
> It’s in the documents released by the government that the government has confirmed as authentic.
The documents are "authentic" in that yes, a real schizo did really tell the government he heard it secondhand 30 years ago that this happened and also that he discovered Hilary Clinton was behind the WTC bombing. (For some reason, people like you always leave that part of the bombshell revelations out.) I am for total transparency generally, but this whole saga has been a major disappointment for me in that the level of public discourse is so lazy and low that its clear that in a purely utilitarian way, it would have been better to not release it. Hopefully long-term the sacrifice of many people whose reputations are being destroyed over little or nothing is worth it. Every crank call about celebrities is being treated as gospel.
Remarkable that Epstein confined his pedophile activities to a single location.
No, wait:
In 2008, Epstein reached a plea deal with prosecutors after the parents of a 14-year-old girl told Florida police that Epstein had molested their daughter at his Palm Beach home.
Hmm ... would that be the same Palm Beach home that Trump visited a good many times back when he was best of chums with Jeffrey and sending him the nude outline sketches?
> Remarkable that Epstein confined his pedophile activities to a single location
Correct, the vast majority of his criminal activity appeared to be in his Palm Beach home and in New York, where he recruited high dozens to hundreds of high school girls for his personal sexualized massages. It actually appears only a very small amount of his illicit activity ever took place on the island, which makes it all the more ironic that's what the conspiracy theorists focus on.
I was willing to be more than openmminded about the conspiracists' mass trafficking ring (ie, beyond the two people charged) angle, but the ironic thing is about the Epstein files is they revealed it was almost all smoke. Of course, in the conspirational mindset, all contradicting evidence is actually, secretly, when you apply the correct hermeutics, even more damning, or else evidence of a coverup.
> the ironic thing is about the Epstein files is they revealed it was almost all smoke.
and a few massive conspiracy shaped holes - eg: the references to missing content regarding Trump and a few other. Oh, and the shortfall between what has been released Vs what has been indexed, the black paging, and the hints from those that have seen but are sworn to not tell about that which they have seen but cannot recount.
Still, at least we seem to agree that PedoIsland is a misdirect when it comes to determining who did what to whom and where.
I can't see Pam Bondi coming clean here anytime soon.
> the hints from those that have seen but are sworn to not tell about that which they have seen but cannot recoun
The people who were victimized by anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell could come forward at any time, just as dozens of Epstein's victims have. They have some of the highest-powered civil lawyers in America, hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement funds available, and vast swaths of the country behind them.
It tells me that they are afraid of their safety and the safety of their families. They would risking backlash from a billionaire who loves intimidation tactics, who currently has the highest amount of power of any individual in the US, and who has nutty followers who would act on his behalf and let him pretend he was not at all happy about what they are doing.
The people who have come forward about Epstein's abuses have little to worry about because that man is dead and he's a perfect scapegoat for all the the other ultra-rich who took part in the abuses.
If you’re talking about Trump, you may remember that E Jean Carroll won a lawsuit against him. She’s walking the earth and continuing to live a public life.
And again, millions of dollars are available from settlement funds if Epstein was involved, there’s already some of the best lawyers in the country begging to represent you, and there’s people volunteering to pay for your security needs.
You’re also ignoring the many victims that came out before Epstein died.
This is just an excuse to perpetuate the conspiracy theories. It doesn’t hold water. And of course if anything was released from super secret “the files” they’re definitely still covering up, they’d become publicly known.
Surely you see how this line of reasoning is identical to that of any other conspiracy or moral panic.
You misunderstand my point. I’m saying that if there are any credible accusations in “the files” beyond those well-documented ones against Epstein and Maxwell, then the accusers would be known publicly anyway when they’re disclosed.
The whole thing falls apart the moment you examine the actual evidence and think about it. It’s really disappointing that smart people on even this forum get wrapped up into this junk.
Surely we are currently clean on OPSEC. There couldn't be any precedent for government officials using private email servers for confidential information!
obligatory - that first famous private server was done because someone wanted a blackberry like Obama had, and was told no by NSA. Man that BB keyboard was good.
I’ve been using a Clicks case since the early days and have personally loved every second of it but it’s definitely an acquired taste. Let us know how you find it.
Are we talking about the same FBI director here? Professional and competent are not how I would describe Kash Patel. Given his overt buffoonishness and the whole administration's disdain for procedure and expertise I would be shocked if he didn't have extremely inappropriate content in his inbox.
Yeah, the fact they announced it proves it’s nothing. I saw a picture of him smoking a cigar. We’ve already seen him drinking beer and acting foolish; probably enough to get you executed in Isfahan, but a giant nothining in the USA.
> his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?
Color me surprised if these people haven't heard of opsec before, and mix their work/personal life all over the place.
Yes, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was classified information in there. I struggled with wording, but what I meant was "you're not supposed to be able to find classified or sensitive information in personal email, but I who knows what will be the case here."
Also wildly illegal to use to conduct government business, especially confidential government business. (and yes the messages were auto-deleting and largely lost before anyone chimes in with technically they could be archived!)
> Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out there
That might be true amongst the communication platforms available for the average Joe. It is definietly not the most secure communication platform available for someone high ranking in the USA government.
> it is obviously not immune to human error or social engineering
Nothing is immune. But there are systems more and systems less prone to these issues.
Signal started being used during the Biden administration, the issue was how they were managing contacts which could be added to groups. They weren't carefully vetting access and a journalist with the same name as another military guy was added to the group by accident.
The public record of a contract to the Israeli company which handled archiving Signal chats for the DoD was done during Biden admin. And it's been well reported if you just Google it:
> Alexa Henning, spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, tweeted last week that “widespread use” of Signal began under the Biden administration, adding that “at ODNI, when I got my phone, it was pre-installed.”
You're missing some key distinctions. The issues are: 1) putting classified information into a non-classified system; 2) putting information that needs to be preserved under laws like the presidential records act into systems where it's set to be auto-deleted. Both are illegal. Simply saying that the Biden administration pre-installed Signal is irrelevant. There are legitimate uses.
Your own article makes this exact point:
> Matthew Shoemaker, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who left the agency in 2021, said that while Signal was used during his time in government, “it was almost exclusively restricted to scheduling purposes,” such as letting their boss know that they’ll be late to work because of personal circumstances.
“That’s why Signalgate is all the more staggering — because these senior leaders were doing the exact opposite of what even my most junior intelligence officers knew not to do,” he said.
You're doing bullshit partisan whataboutism. "well the democrats did it first".
This has nothing to do with adding the wrong contacts. It has to do with putting highly-sensitive material into Signal to circumvent the law around records preservation and as a result creating a situation where it's possible to accidentally add the wrong contact and therefore exposing that information to a journalist.
> This has nothing to do with adding the wrong contacts. It has to do with putting highly-sensitive material into Signal to circumvent the law around records preservation
My comment above already mentions public records of the DoD contracting out archiving of the Signal chat, so it doesn't in fact circumvent laws around preservation.
> You're doing bullshit partisan whataboutism. "well the democrats did it first".
I don't think it's a huge sin for government workers to be using Signal, remote work and messaging is the new norm and they will use something whether we like it or not, and Signal is the least bad option. I don't blame the Biden DoD for experimenting down that road at all, as I'm skeptical they'd build something better internally - and to your hyperpolitical points I don't see large distinctions between these type of tech choices between administrations (the DoD staff largely remains the same even when presidents change).
The issue with encryption and security will always be human security practices come first-and-foremost, technology second. They failed an OPSEC checklist when using group chats and need to implement better identification management. That's the sort of lesson that large organizations frequently need to re-learn the hard way when adopting new (and often better) things.
1. Classified information. Was it legal to put that into the DoD approved Signal build? The media coverage at the time gave me the impression that it was not.
2. Records keeping. Were the Trump admin chats in question properly archived then? I had been led to believe that they weren't. Do you believe that to be incorrect?
> I don't blame the Biden DoD for experimenting down that road at all
The person you're replying to never criticized them for such.
> The real test: his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news.
I have no idea why this would be the default assumption for somebody as sloppy and erratic as Patel. Look at how many people were emailing damning stuff to/from Epstein's personal email accounts from their own personal email accounts!
I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
But it feels million years away.
It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level.
Putting those people in charge was quick ; sure, a future administration could put them out quickly enough ; but how long will there be decently skilled people willing to take those positions ? How long until the only ones who want to put their toes in the swamp are those who really enjoy the mud ?
Put differently: can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge ?
Those that got fired where the good ones. Sometimes the best career move is to get fired. Reminds me of the old faces running the BRD after the war. Democratic floatsome in a thin crust residing over an ocean of collaborators.
Maybe it's borderline because it's coming from the other direction. Corruption presumes some kind of "covertness", when you break all the rules without even trying to be discreet can you still talk of corruption?
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
> the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Except, of course, that this is historically wrong. Transitions from democracy to dictatorship are common, but I cannot think of one that happened because of "loose fiscal policy".
Athens spending like drunken sailors during the Peloponnesian War and the subsequent Oligarchical Coup d’Etat comes to mind. Or must the dictator be just one person and not a bunch of Orwell's pigs?
Pithy. But a made up quote by Tytler, he never said or wrote that.
Tyler expressed some skepticism of Democracies but nothing like this. The too on-the-nose nature of this often passed along bit of propaganda should also be the giveaway that it might be one of those rare things on the internet that someone may have been less than honest about the origins, and go look and see.
Tytler's quote is trying to say too much. It might be acceptable as historical commentary, but it carries little weight to me; it seems overly confident about what the future might hold.*
Tytler died in 1813. We have learned much since then: much about human nature, institutions, experimentation, statistics, evidence, constructing good theories, and governance.** Sure, the quote is worth some reflection; it has grains of truth, but it should not be given undue weight.
* I am not saying "we can predict nothing"! Far from it. I am ok with predictions (even bold ones) to the extent they are deeply rooted in the best understandings and models we have available.
** I'm talking about what motivated people figure out through careful reasoning and evidence, not simply how the median person funnels information from their ears to their mouth. And I'm certainly not commending the effort and thought that the median person puts into stewarding their democracy (if they have one). While we (in the USA, for the time being?) have something like one.
That doesn’t disprove him at all: if the average one lasts 200 years and not all last exactly 200, then some will necessarily last more than 200. This is a mathematical consequence of what an average means.
what better way to celebrate the democracy by combining it with a celebration of the birthday of the Great Leader, with a soviet style military parade and an admonition that any protest will be met with the harshest of consequences.
I know that math makes it harder to come up with political zingers but if there are two civilizations; one lasted 150 years and the other lasted 250 years the average is 200.
You know, it's very funny. This is the most reproduced quote from Tytler, and yet you also have these chestnuts:
While man is being instigated by the love of power—a passion visible in an infant, and common to us even with the inferior animals—he will seek personal superiority in preference to every matter of a general concern.
The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch.
Relevant quote today but seems to misunderstand the U.S. framers’ idea of what the U.S. govt was set up to be, namely by consent of the governed.
It is not enough that a law is just, nor that the judge should be convinced of its justice; those from whom obedience is expected should have that conviction too. -Tertullian, 1st century.
The power used by government…is justified merely because it is a better way of protecting natural right than the self-help to which each man is naturally entitled -Sabine explaining John Locke
Therefore if the governors ever fail the criteria of said justification, the consent is removed by default, irrespective of their elected term length or anything else.
One particular democratic election or another is not the contract. The Constitution itself is the contract, countersigned by the 50 U.S. states.
The quotee would be surprised to see how little voting is being done by the people receiving the largesse in the last 20 years.
Not to mention how little voters had to do with the decisions which caused the deficit to rise the most. The Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the wealthy.
>It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level.
you get out when the thing dies because these kinds of organizations always end the same way; competence is usurped by sycophancy and flattery until there's no one left to keep it functioning and it collapses under the weight of it's own bullshit.
hopefully, there will be something to salvage but the longer these folks are in charge the bigger the splash will be when they finally bottom out
>I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.
The first one is, in the words of a federal District of Columbia judge: "one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency". [1]
The second one is the malicious leaking of some private emails. These emails are frankly none of our business (unless you are part of Kash Patel's family or friends).
There is a difference for sure between hosting your own email server and using it for official government communications and having your own personal email address used for personal communications.
The issue that seemed to completely disappear related to the use of Signal messenger for official white house communications seems more aligned to the email server issue. It was reported heavily at the time what the reporting requirements were and that they would have to submit the full chat histories within 30 days or something like that to stay within the law. I never heard whether that actually happened or not, the story just died.
HN is overrun by partisans whose majority does not care about factual interpretations of current events and flags level-headed comments in favor of cheap shots, double standards, hyperbolic misconstructions, and ad hominem. I don't think it's difficult to be critical of the government without resorting to such low-brow commentary, but it is what it is. I once offended some people by comparing HN to Reddit, but the lines are getting more blurred by the day.
The moderators need to take a more active stance on getting these hot button political topic wars off HN. We're seeing some sort of brigading and/or manipulation going on here with behaviors (like flagging) that are not consistent with what I think we want to have on the platform. Certainly no following of the guidelines. Just look at the top comment here.
"Normal" people are stuck in two modes, either they ignore it or they need to descend to the same level. I put normal in double quotes since I honestly don't know what's normal any more. I would like to believe the majority of the kind of community we used to have here on HN does not operate at this level of discussion.
To some extent this is a reflection of broader polarization, tribal behavior, and social media manipulation. Even Reuters IMO have chosen a sensationalist headline and seem to have an agenda here. There's an easy tell - can you tell the political orientation of the author by reading the article/comments etc.
This topic could be an interesting one and we could actually have some good discussions about security. Instead it degenerates into what's essentially a political bashing flame war.
It's beind downvoted because "but, her emails..." is not saying it's the same thing, but rather, that so much fuss was made about her emails, and then when something similar happens, the right conveniently ignores it. For example, as you mentioned, signalgate, or the times members of the Trump administration used their "own email server and using it for official government communications and having your own personal email address used for personal communications."
It's being down voted because it's attacking a strawman. No one is saying they are the same exact thing. It's that you will see people activatley defending this as a big nothingburger when in truth, it's still a security breach that has the potential to lower our defenses.
We know for a fact that the current DoD are using private Signal messages for coordinating military action. We know they are constantly using private emails. We are sending the president's son-in-law to negotiate with foreign countries despite not being a government employee and also have massive conflicts of interest.
> HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.
That's not what the "but, her emails..." reference implies. It's not saying they are the same thing. It's saying that the amount of attention and excitement made about her emails was a show. And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it. Same thing with the signalgate from last year, or all the previous times the Trump administration used private emails or private communication for government business as well.
So, no. The fact that it is not the same is immaterial. Which makes the rest of your comment immaterial.
> And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it
How is this case equally bad? It's just his private email being hacked, he did nothing wrong.
There are probably about a thousand things you could point to in the Trump administration that are worse than Clinton's private email server, but this isn't one of them.
Referencing Hillary’s email would be kinda silly. She self hosted the email account she used for official government business. It was loaded with classified information.
This guy, while incompetent, had his personal email hacked.
On the other hand, Patel's emails "appear to show a mix of personal and work correspondence". We already know that people in government - this isn't a partisan point: folks of all factions do it - use private communication channels to discuss "official business" specifically to avoid mandated disclosure and archival requirements. If (and I emphasize "if", because we don't yet know if this was the case), if Patel was doing that, and especially if he was sharing / discussing classified material, then the facts of the case would bump right up against what Clinton and Powell did.
Sorry, as much as I despise Trump (though I'm thankful it caused Europe to wake up to the idea that the US is an unreliable ally); "Her emails" were:
A) Used for Official business as secretary of state
B) Full of national security strategically important decisions.
C) Improperly secured.
FBI directors personal email feels less cutting in that context.
Breaching my personal email (or my own mail server, I host one) will tell you literally nothing about my employer except perhaps the conversation from when I joined and my own employment contract.
honestly, look internally. after the plane from qatar. after the son-in-law's real estate dealings. after the visible-to-everyone kalshi and oil futures bets frontrunning the administrations announcements. for you to still feel the need to frame things as "border-line (to be polite)" is, in and of itself, the perfect example of the overall problem.
take your inability to draw a clear-as-day conclusion and state it plainly and multiply it by another ~50M "centrists" who continue to believe that staying "not political" and "avoiding the news" is a viable strategy to just wait the problem out.
until the checked out cowards realize that strategy isn't going to work, things will continue to get worse.
"no politics" might as as well be the second maga slogan.
"no politics" is the immune response to the social-media-fueled, conspiracy-theory-driven "we are the good guys, you basically deserve to die" craze.
Both sides are culpable here. In the US, both parties were literally claiming that the elections were stolen (Republicans in 2020, Democrats with the since-debunked 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal). Other countries had different issues, but the shape of the problem was basically the same everywhere.
If you keep being called bad words for years for no reason, seeing your side do the exact same thing, no surprise you tune out.
> Simultaneously, the Republican-led Senate and House Intelligence Committees conducted their own investigations into the Russians' activities. The Senate committee's report, released in five volumes between July 2019 and August 2020, found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump
> In the US, both parties were literally claiming that the elections were stolen
This is not even remotely true.
One party broadly mobilized a country wide effort to overthrow an election and usurp the incoming duly elected government, culminating in a violent attack on congress itself.
The other party had concerns about foreign interference in our elections.
A couple of DOGE teenagers were able to casually walk in and steal the entire country's social security and healthcare data (and probably more), and we were cheering them on. There is still no accountability, and it has probably already been sold to the highest bidder. So this would be the least surprising thing in the world.
We? I don't think I've seen anyone but the people absolutely not understanding the gravity of the situation were cheering on. And I'm not even American.
Well over here, 30% still approve of it and they will openly praise how much money DOGE "saved us." It's quite eye opening talking to them. They live in a totally different reality
Any time they act like they disapprove of something the administration is doing, like the aimless war, they will change their tune in a few weeks when Fox gets it's talking points down.
"We" is such an imprecise word for a pool of people. I believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the listener too, and "women" excluding the listener. Obviously "we" did not elect Trump, only "a majority of the US voters who voted", and even the others may sadly use "we" though they didn't, because they are members of the political body that did. Just like the "they" of Israel that harass Palestinians and throw up West Bank settlements do not reflect all of Israel, and the average Soviet citizen did not reflect the behavior of the Soviet government.
We isn't an imprecise word at all, it's very precise in it's definition.
I can honestly not come up with a single example of the distinction between 'zanmen and women' being useful besides this specific case where you really want to be able to say in 1 sentence that you identify as the same group as someone else, but that that group is subdivided into 2 groups, and you're talking about the sub-group that you're specifically not a part of.
Allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment and propose that maybe DOGE did loudly what the Solarwinds paired with OPM breach did quietly years prior.
Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles of high power in the government. He is a real embarrassment and I feel sorry for his mother.
Gone only because current leadership kicked them all to the curb and told them to get out of Washington. Only loyal talking heads are wanted there now.
I've been wondering if we'd see a cyber campaign emerge in this conflict. To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced cyber capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back. Gloves-off cyber war doesn't sound good to me. The US CISA already been cut back, has lost "virtually all of its top officials"^, doesn't have a permanent director, and is operating at a further reduced capacity because of the DHS shutdown.
that's the thing that people overlook the most in regards to this war.iran isn’t doing this on its own. Russia, China and north korea have been backing it from the start. they’re the ones helping with intel on US base locations across the Middle East, supplying drones, and working out strategies to drag things into a stalemate, plus whatever else iran needs along the way
Russia and North Korea are obviously doing so, but I haven't seen any direct evidence that China is providing intelligence support to Iran, do you have any links? It is certainly plausible, China would love to see Russia tied up in Ukraine and the US tied up in Iran.
Can you blame them? Iran is fighting for its own survival and has to find help where it can.
If the US had an educated administration not composed by lap dogs they would've known that attacking Iran was going to be a terrible idea.
Saddam did the same mistake in 1980.
He thought that the Iranian Kurds, the political opponents, the Iranian Arabs, civilians were going to raise against the regime.
None of this happened. None. In fact, hundreds of thousands of people, even kids, rallied around the banner. There are documented stories of 13 year olds, jumping on barbed wire to use their bodies as bridges for infantry. Disgusting, yet telling of the fact that the Persians will do everything to defend their land even if they don't like its leadership.
It's very difficult to convince people you're bombing left that you're helping them get rid of a regime (which, you never know for sure how popular or unpopular it is).
Iranians, yet again, are rallying around the flag for what is effectively a foreign aggression.
Iran has been preparing for this war for 40 years. So has Israel. They will engage in a battle of supremacy over the Middle East. Both want the USA knocked out so that the Americans can't use their influence there anymore (both consider the USA a nuisance).
As soon as ground troops land in Iran, it's over for the USA. As it is, oil and goods shipping via the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea will be controlled by Iran for a very long time to come. All Iran has to do is withstand the pummeling, which it very likely will do. And they'll get plenty of support from China, since this plays into the South China Seas plan quite nicely as the USA moves carrier after carrier out of Asia.
It's relative. We're in a pretty bad spot relative to where we were before the attack, and so is the world economy.
The Iranian regime is doing much better so far, relative to where they should be after a joint military attack from the US/Israel and maybe even relative to where they were just a few months ago.
The previous Ayatollah was 86 and had multiple bouts of pancreatic cancer. He was on deaths door, Iran was destabilizing with bouts of protest and repression, the regime itself suffered major military blows, and a potentially rocky and fractured transition was imminent.
Thanks to the war, the regime survived a transition, and seems consolidated around the son of the former Ayatollah, who's entire family was killed by our strikes, and the US seems largely impotent as Iran chokes off a large portion of the worlds oil supply and strikes at energy assets in the ME.
The thing getting overlooked is all of the recent moves by Trump all lead back to China. Venezuela, Cuba, now Iran. These are all tentacles of China. The aggression against these 3 countries is not a coincidence. It’s a concerted and indirect attack on China in an attempt to weaken their subsidiaries. In the eyes of this administration, this is unpleasant, but necessary housekeeping that should have been done decades ago but no one was willing to spend the political capital to do it.
In Iran, Trump was clearly hoping (and verbally requested) the same thing you say about Sadam. I think we actually do know how unpopular the regime is, the mass protests demonstrated that. But the religious hardliners are the ones with the guns. And they clearly aren’t afraid to use them. So while there was some momentum, after everyone got gunned down in the streets by the IRGC it quickly deflated. So asking unarmed protesters to step up again is kind of big ask, without any material support.
Iranian protesters were not calling for US interference. Let's be very clear about that. They were doing it for their own regime change, not some US imposition. What they think of the US or whether they are for this war or supposed regime change by the US is a totally different consideration.
> The thing getting overlooked is all of the recent moves by Trump all lead back to China.
Are you trying to frame the twice accidental president as some sort of visionary? He doesn’t even remember what he said 5 mins ago. If he had planned or even had any clue about wars, we’d not be in this mess. He insulted Zelenskyy last year but ended up asking for his help.
Do you recall orange phenomenon was asking for China’s help just last week, let’s wait for it, to act against their friends, which you called their subsidiaries :-). You can’t script this horror show, even if you wanted to.
And rightfully so. China isn't killing and kidnapping world leaders, supporting genocides in Gaza, launching military operations, threatening its allies of annexation or overtly interfering in their democratic process.
you mean best selling children's book author Kash Patel who is desperately trying to scrub the internet of his music video[0] revising the Jan 6 insurrection
If they got into the account they got everything. The publicly released pictures are more of a taunt meant to publicly signal that he’s fucked. I would bet (figuratively) that anyrhing of actual value is either being sold or leveraged. After all this is a man that has shown an almost infinite capacity for humiliation.
And it is more than likely. US and Iran probably can’t defeat each other militarily (us obviously can, but it requires full scale ground invasion which is not even contemplated at the moment). And both can’t back out of the conflict. So the likely outcome is that the conflict escalates until one of the regimes snaps and it becomes to somehow politically possible to back out.
Collapse of the regime in Iran seems unlikely at the moment because it’s hard and zealous dictatorship with unlimited power and will for violence within the country. In the US OTOH the elections are coming. An administration that started a stupid and absolutely preventable war and then effectively lost faces quite a challenge there despite everything else. This seems like a perfect moment for Iran to create a deterrent for US: attacking us ends your presidency.
If the newest batch of 10,000 is approved, we're up to 17,000 combat troops deployed for this. (Marines there as of Mar 27, another 3,500 in about two weeks, and then at least 1 battalion of the 82nd Airborne, plus another 10,000 requested)
I have heard other units getting pre-mobilization / warnings.
(This would not nearly be enough troops for large scale ground conflict, but it might be enough to go into the island tunnels looking for drones and ballistic missiles while the US tries to hold open the straight by force for... However long that takes)
While it's appreciated, that isn't the original link and Ddos "secrets" gate keeps info to people they personally allow. The person who runs it also has been to court for a name change, citing something along the lines of wanting to work in intelligence.
Not a source I would trust unless there is no other option to get the dumps or leaks.
I too am very curious about this. Even if his password was exposed and he didn’t have 2-factor auth, doesn’t Google by default ask for confirmation — e.g. texting a number or backup email associated with the account — when seeing an unrecognized device? Maybe he didn’t have any alt contact methods associated with his account?
(which might not be that unusual, he’s old enough to have opened a gmail account upon launch, before extra info hoops were put in place, and maybe he never touched his account config in the past 2 decades?
You are probably right... I tend to change my password semi often. It's always a super complex impossible to remember string - and always keep an eye on the account activity.
Not to mention ; you would assume he should have more than one device linked to the account and then that adds another layer, since Google will ask you " is this you trying to logon ". <-- that is the only way to get Google to do the unrecognized flow you mention.
If you are suggesting it was exposed and he didn't immediately randomise all his passwords.. WORDS FAIL ME
It's all security 101 the irony is immense...
if the US government / FBI need someone to give some talks on how to do security ...
Honeypot sure I didn't think of that.. But I was under the impression the FBI confirmed it ? So we can rule it out.
Making the password impossible to guess - how could that not be?
Since then you know you have a breach, as its randomised gibberish, if you then get the 2nd device asking " is this you trying to login " you can definitely know you are compromised....
I can't see your logic here, that isn't " theatre " ????
If you think that is theatre what is better then? Words and numbers.. easily brute forced.. Sorry can't agree.
Why would they willingly destroy their successful honeypot if the other party announced they've access to it?
I haven't seen what's in it either though, but I would not rule it out yet, especially when the FBI is involved - which love those tactics
When you're compromised, changing the password is obviously not theatre - but changing a password which is randomly generated with enough entropy is what's pointless theatre. A secure password is secure, esp. If you're already using a password manager then the act of changing isn't meaningfully increasing your security (unless you're aware that your password was compromised) because the way to compromise it is what...? Having a keylogger on a device you logged in on? Then the changed password will be just as compromised
That's why keepass is really useful since you aren't ever typing in the password.. its generated and then copied to the clipboard.. That clipboard is then wiped after X seconds.
So then you know that you have been rooted => If that fails to resolve it.
Reduce the number of vectors to know what you have to change asap. in this scenario you don't want to be guessing about how they did it.
The randomised gibberish just means you can rule out certain things. I can agree on part of what your saying but a string high entropy password, makes it harder to brute..
Many services don't really do that whole retries thing properly. So make it take as long as possible.
If you don't use a random gibberish your password can be cracked on any consumer device in a surprisingly short amount of time...
This way you can then focus on that a session token is probably how they got in.. It's the most common vector these days...
Just saying that there's a working link if you search. It's a useful information on its own.
There's no reason to post it directly. Their server is slow today even without adding lazy (ok, HN readers not interested in applying some effort to the matter) HN readers to the mix.
Loads of natural resources, no local military threats, and historically a government that stayed out of the way and allowed individuals to reap the rewards of their efforts.
The first is almost impossible to screw up, though we're really trying on the last front.
We're ranked number one based on the summation of all the angsty teen America bad comments on social media. At least that is the stat the press goes off of I believe
America had the advantage of getting through WW2 relatively unscathed with lots of resources and intact infrastructure that it used to leverage against the reconstruction of Europe, Japan and the USSR and entrench its cultural and economic hegemony. Also the US essentially colonized the West with nuclear weapons under the guise of "Pax Americana" and making the dollar the reserve currency.
That's really it. Not moral superiority, not technical ingenuity, not the indomitable American spirit. Just imperialist opportunism.
Are you suggesting that he was targeted before he became the director of the FBI? That seems unlikely. Once he became an obvious target surely the FBI should have secured his past, present and future communications. But I have no idea what protocols there are for such things, I'm just going off common sense, a notoriously sketchy starting point in the crazy world of the current US administration.
They absolutely advertised it when it was released and every journalist knows about it.
Kashmir Patel went out of his way to bypass security protocols for onboarding his political hires (for the US’s premiere domestic intelligence service!). If he wanted to be secure, all he had to do was not get in the way of the FBI’s natural processes.
Also, this wouldn’t have happened if POTUS had hired someone with relevant FBI experience instead of a political hack.
What are you talking about? There's literally a Cyber Crimes[0] division of the FBI, and they run the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF). They probably know a thing or two about cyber security for high-ranked governmental officials.
dude at least you should have brought an internal recommendation memo targeted all fbi people, not "but fbi has this and this division..."
lets say your college have astrophysics and other big departments. Are you really expert on those areas? Can you expect all highly-regarded professors to know most things from other departments? Do all 'competent' art professors know about astrophysics?
I would, yes. Maybe a director in the Small Business Administration is lower on the target list of gov officials that would need to be concerned, but certainly anyone in the Departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, State, Transportation, Treasury, and probably Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for sure.
> BECAUSE NSA IS part of the government ?
I don't know why multiple times in this comment section you allude to the NSA as being the only Federal agency tasked with any sort of cyber security responsibility, that is just plain wrong.
>you should have brought an internal recommendation memo targeted all fbi people
Yes, because I have access to any and all internal memos provided by the FBI to their employees. Internal memos are by their very nature are internal, so are generally not available for public consumption.
Also, your higher ed example is terrible, because as someone with a work history at a flagship state university's IT department, I can assure you that we provide all sorts of "memos", trainings, and tools to combat cybercrime, including special onboarding sessions to ensure new hires are protecting themselves and the university. We don't depend on the Art and Physics departments to make sure they keep their faculty 'in-line' following best practices in cyber security.
do you even know what your soap your janitor uses?
do you even understand why I ask whether "internal recommendation memo for that product" exists? what differences it makes?
"as someone with a work history at a flagship state university's IT department, I can assure you..."
...ok so wtf was that advertisement? I did NOT ask what you do, but whether your 'customers' actually care and know the stuff.
...do you have an intelligence of a parrot? or are you some llm?
If only the Director of the FBI had access to some sort of investigative team, maybe more than one, maybe even enough that they use a collective term for it, something like, I don't know: bureau?
no but I've been interested in cryptography/anonimity stuff, so I see a lot of suggestions/advertisements related to those: signal, telegram, proton-mail, etc
He held very important positions in the US government before 2022, including in the SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020-2021.
This is just a sad story of a partisan hack who failed upwards into one of the most sensitive and powerful offices in the nation, simply for being a loyal sycophant, not merit.
From the article, he wasn't the director of the FBI for the time period the emails are from: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"
To 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.
The same idiot who pushed him into SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020.
He shouldn’t be FBI Director and he shouldn’t have been in the DNI or Secretary of Staff for SecDef either. All of those are high positions of responsibility and require tremendous OpsSec. This guy’s first act as FBI Director was to waive most of the investigations into his staff to bypass security clearance checks.
Sorry if I’m not disagreeing with you. Sarcasm is a bit hard to identify these days.
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.
All 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.
While 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.
I'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".
Obviously 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.
“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.
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.
No 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.
I 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.
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.
The confusing thing is that googling "google advanced protection program" takes you to the en_in locale, even if you are in the US. An American has no clue what a crore is, so it is just an SEO failure on Google's part, which is funny. I didn't know there was an en_us equivalent to the page when I googled the topic.
It doesn’t really tell you where the copywriters were from but you notice that the locale of the page is Indian because the numbers are given in crore.
if this was a few years ago I would even say here on "hacker" news we could probably notice the indian locale in the damn URL and save an entire subthread of racial offtopic
A great many experts in the military, medicine, disaster relief, and cybersecurity { the list goes on } were fired.
It's almost as if the nation were being weakened on purpose.
Don't get mad, get Vlad. Or just prepare for the long-desired Rapture.[0] and which politicians seem to be working very hard to being about (the Apocalypse part, anyway)
"Competent" people are not valuable and over rated because they will flake out in such jobs when the group holds them responsible for all sorts of things they have no control over. They are the first people who recognize lumits. Their own, their teams and the systems. But people dont want to hear about Limits. They want saviors and messaihs. They want fantasy and magic. So the system runs not optimized for efficiency but illusion of control, for damping of anxieties and fears.
No, I’m convinced the one thing that Trump wants to do is to launch a nuke before he dies. That’s what he wants his legacy to be. and his name everywhere.
• They are already "trained" (in random violence against civilians. Checks one box)
• Bonespur "victims" have already been weeded out.
• They are already government employees and must go where assigned. (saves TONS of paperwork)
• They already have weapons, and unspent budget money.
• They already have swell masks to protect from radioactive dust that bombing reactors creates, and (this is big)
• Their kill to loss ratio is infinite.
These are a group that used outside signal chats to discuss war plans. What odds do you have that he didn't use a personal email to avoid future accountability?
> In some cases, Patel appears to have sent emails from his former Justice Department email address in 2014 to his Gmail account. TechCrunch found that the emails sent from Patel’s DOJ account also appeared to be authentic.
Are you kidding? He had extremely sensitive roles as Devin Nunes' House committee aide from 2017–2019 in the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, National Security Council aide and deputy director of national intelligence (2019–2020), and then Chief of staff to the secretary of defense (2020–2021).
What a weird looking book. The cover shows Trump as the king, lol
Anyways, if i were a parent, i'd certainly try to do everything to prevent my kids (under 10) from getting into politics. Let them live as normal kids should.
The US media has a clear understanding that their reporting on the war needs to be filtered and biased. This is not some coming-to-their-senses against sensationalism, but a nothingburger they know they can't sensationalize without great risk.
As is the case in any administration; let alone with an admin as vindictive as Trump's.
This "balanced take" warrants kudos?
We're not even pretending to lift the bar off the ground when it comes to mainstream media, are we?
That’s arguably even more objectionable of a term. Jester’s role was often a critical one in the court system, serving as deliverer of uncomfortable messages in light hearted ways and often also confidant to the monarch.
These rather evil and cruel bumbling fools are an insult to clowns and jesters alike. Maybe “fool” is the applicable term.
Almost all phishing attempts at my domain are from google. Many Norton subscription bills for around $350. I report every single one to google. I can’t believe they aren’t using there AI to figure this out.
Meanwhile have a complaint volume of more than 0.1% and they'll consider you extremely suspicious and start actively interfering with your deliveries.
Then you get into the forgotten early 2000s era google "postmaster tools" to try to poke through the chicken entrails to divine the nature of your issue.
It always will be. The FBI is scandal prone and a stranger to success. I'm not entirely sure a large federal apparatus is needed anymore. It maybe made sense when local police were poorly trained and psychics were seen as credible investigative tools, but, I think we're well past that. I think it should be chopped into 50 pieces and handed over to the states to operate. A small coordinating office is all that should be left.
Seriously though I'm not so sanguine about local forces. Assuming the local PD is well trained seems like a big if, to say nothing of the risk of localized pressure or corruption. Eg would the local sheriff of a county with a very large employer be able to effectively investigate and bring charges against it? Being able to bring in federal LE brings a certain impartiality to those sorts of cases.
With FOIA and Body Worn Cameras I think we're in far better position to demand accountability from local police and sheriffs. Two tools the FBI are not compelled to comply with or deploy and which many state police agencies also resist using.
In any case I think you'd want to remove their enforcement mandate and instead refocus them on information gathering and rapid secure distribution, tailored forensic investigations, and on creating, monitoring and refining police best practices and training programs.
Not just that, clowns and jesters played critical and culturally significant roles.
“Fools” is not only not an insult to clowns and jesters, but it’s far more accurate.
I would even say without any necessary religious perspective, these people are like the origins of the term and concept of “demons”, entities representing the most heinous and nefarious instincts and impulses of humanity so vile and repulsive that they had to be emanations of hell. How would you even makes sense of such evil behavior back then. They didn’t know what the dark triad of personality flaws was, narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism (yes, I understand it’s an erroneous label, but it’s the one used).
From the administration that brought us "We are currently clean on OPSEC", I can't claim surprise. Disappointment, but not surprise.
Nor, however, can I take the statements of malicious actors at face value. They hacked a personal email address, but that does not mean "the FBI’s security was nothing more than a joke".
Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email
Perhaps a little embarrassing related to communications security but come on, of all the people's email to grab they had to grab one of the most boring individuals? Ice hokey, cigars, classic cars...? Is that taboo in Iran? It is not taboo in the USA.
Be careful Iran. The country you are targeting know how to use AI and can make ultra realistic videos and images of your leaders doing unspeakable things and upload them to decentralized platforms. Such things can not be erased from the internet.
>“This isn’t an FBI compromise — it’s someone’s personal junk drawer,” he said.
Eh, with how many people in the current administration seem to use out of band channels to communicate very important things who knows what else they located.
As if this is the first time this has ever happened.
How many former officials used personal accounts about government business?
How many corporate executives communicate business via personal accounts to avoid legal discovery?
How many individuals communicate outside their main email accounts to avoid scrutiny or attribution?
Point is, nobody should feel superior or shocked that such things like this happen. I understand some enjoy the privacy of their perceived enemies being exposed, but IMHO, nobody should be happy about invasion of anyone's privacy.
GPG keys are typically guarded much better than emails, that's the whole point. Accessing e-mails can be done by guessing a password, to get to the key you basically need command execution on the target's client system.
If you read the news with enough cynicism, you'll realize that rules like formality, password strength or cybersecurity hygiene are for the average Joes, not the morons/perverts who run the world.
No worries. As long as rigorous due diligence was followed when vetting him as a candidate, there will surely be nothing embarrassing or harmful found in his personal emails.
> "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said in a July 27, 2016 news conference.
But far more seriously, imagine the danger he has put this country into by firing so many critical people, some specifically and uniquely for Iran and Middle-East defense
Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it coming, maybe even on purpose
> Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it coming, maybe even on purpose
Why would anyone bother to attack us now? This entire administration has done more to make The US weak and vulnerable than any outside attacker could have hoped to accomplish. They can just sit back and watch rome burn
We've given a lot of people a lot of reasons to hate us sure, but no matter how much you hate someone, if you see them kicking their own ass it just makes sense to let them finish before you jump in.
This is the end of his high profile bureaucrat career. Inevitably, something will show up in the emails that will get airplay as embarrassing to Trump, and Trump will just say that he should have protected his password better and ask for his resignation.
He doesn't have a face for Fox News, so he'll have to try to parlay his past closeness with the administration for lobbyist money, but if he gets shunned by the people left in the administration, he's got to go back to his public defender job.
I mean, yes? You can give whatever weight you want to the whole thing, but the core issue with Hillary Clinton and the emails was that she was storing material on a private server rather than in official infrastructure.
If Patel didn't do such thing here, the breach should only expose personal stuff, if he did, then it's much more of a problem, but either way this is a really clear example of why concern was raised back at the time.
Noem - habeas corpus definition she gave at the Congress hearing
Kennedy Jr - vaccines and the rest of his view on medicine
Now Patel's unhackable FBI.
I think the world has changed, and i really need to update my expectations of what is new normal. It is like in tech when paradigm shift happens, and you're either go with the new paradigm or get irrelevant.
We’re way beyond Idiocracy now, we left that timeline six years ago.
For all his flaws, Camacho was a good leader - he recognised there was a problem, knew he couldn’t fix it and actively rallied the world around the one person who could.
This bunch of dipshits expressly denigrated the experts, refused to take the slightest precaution to protect themselves and others from a deadly virus and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And that’s not even thinking about the industrial levels of fuckery and bullshit they’ve perpetrated over the last year.
Yes, people forget that in the early days of the pandemic, they were playing political games with PPE, sending it to red states with no population or cases, while NYC was running out of space in hospitals. It got so bad, RFK's grandson became a whistleblower because he was dismayed that he and other 20-somethings with no relevent experience were in charge of the government response.
It "was like a family office meets organized crime, melded with Lord of the Flies," Kennedy said. "It was a government of chaos." Kennedy says was shocked that he and a dozen other twenty-somethings with no experience in the medical sector were tasked with procuring much-needed PPE for the country, using their personal laptops and email addresses.
"We were the team. We were the entire frontline team for the federal government." Kennedy added, "It was the number of people who show up to an after-school event, not to run the greatest crisis in a hundred years. It was such a mismatch of personnel. It was one of the largest mobilization problems ever. It was so unbelievably colossal and gargantuan. The fact that they didn’t want to get any more people was so upsetting." [1]
That kind of executive negligence and dereliction of duty absolutely cost lives.
What Kennedy described during COVID is now the entire government from top to bottom. DOJ, FBI, DOD, FEMA, DHS, ICE, NASA, USPS, SSA etc etc, rotting from the head.
What's the use of mockery after they bombed a girls' school and killed at least 175 innocent people? I'd like to see the IRGC erased off the face of the Earth, but not like this. This is exponentially worse than Bush jr. reading a children's book on 9/11.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” ~Hannah Arendt
i'm from USSR, so pretty familiar with it. The issue here is whether it is a fluke, or the world is really going into new phase where totalitarianism and authoritarianism are going to become dominating state of affairs.
For example many attribute rise of totalitarianism back then in 20th century to the power of broadcasting radio and "formation of mass society". We have a similarly transformative factor now - social media. And with the new tech power - propaganda (sounds dated, today it is more like mind control) through social media and total surveillance plus AI "minority report" - we can get a hyper-totalitarianism orders of magnitude more totalitarian than those of the 20th century. And may be we're witnessing the birth of such a new world order.
Totalitarianism and authoritarianism has been the norm for the majority of human history. The last century of technological progress created a bubble where the power of sycophancy wasn't strong enough to counteract the power of actual technology. Now that the technology is widely distributed and easily available to sycophants, and that they've had time to learn how to leverage the technology, sycophancy again brings an advantage.
The people of the US were converted into functional Putin-subservient Russians for the last election, and the media environment is not getting better, and in fact seems to be getting much worse.
However there is revolt amongst a good chunk of the fractured coalition that barely brought Trump into office.
Trump's Epstein coverup and sheltering of Ghislaine Maxwell took off the shine with a large number of people. The ghastly behavior around the deaths of major figures takes off more. Exempting producers of the pesticide glyphosate has taken off most of the MAHA coalition. And then, of course the wars, when he promised not to launch any and accused his opponent of doing exactly what he's currently doing...
It remains to be seen just how permanent this is, and whether the post-Trump US can be reattached to reality instead of reality TV, but I use hope.
Unfortunately that leaves us with the Democrats who have shown time and again that they are unwilling or unable to confront this movement for what it is.
I'm frankly far more concerned that the Republicans lose next election, and we get Democrats in power who then prioritize "getting back to normal" and once again utterly failing to hold accountable the utter BUFFET of mediocre wannabe dictators who brought us to the brink already.
I also hope. But I'd be lying if I said I thought it was rational.
The real fear is that they don't solve any of the problems that caused this in the first place... it's not about some vindictive punishment, it's about solving the problem.
I beg to differ, as I see it, it's both. Solving the problem necessarily entails punishing the malicious actors attempting to subvert and demolish our governance, justice system, society and way of life. Allowing Jan 6th to go unpunished at the highest levels was a key factor in what brought us here.
> demolish our governance, justice system, society and way of life
"Our" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There were many "ours" whose ways of life, governance, and society were destroyed on the road to making the Jan 6th thing possible..
>The people of the US were converted into functional Putin-subservient Russians
It's crazy that you continue to push this narrative despite the entire "Russia-Gate" thing turning out to total bullshit oppo followed by Trump being currently at war with one of Putin's allies and having jailed another.
The evidence supporting this claim is what, he wasn't nice to Zelenskyy that one time (despite still financially supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia)?
Authoritarianism is a spectrum and all states are on it. We all have brain slugs now, it was voluntary. We'll be going back to that old time religion, but with a new twist. With AI every man will, in a much more literal way, be able to have an ongoing private conversation with god. And you won't need money or the government anymore. God has a special plan for you and you follow it.
Totalitarianism is not becoming more popular. Russia is not totalitarian, Venezuela is not totalitarian, and even China is not really totalitarian anymore.
These are authoritarian countries. Meaning that they don't have an official ideology, the real one that has people willing to die for it. If anything, they are focused on suppressing people and keeping them passive.
Iran is a notable exception here. They _are_ a totalitarian theocratic state, and this makes them more resilient. They are not governed by a single person but by ideology, even if it's unpopular among the people.
Authoritarian states are fragile in comparison. They struggle to survive the removal of their leader, especially the ones that had governed for a long time. The long-time ruler inevitably becomes the arbiter between the elites, a focal point of their undercover agreements.
And once the ruler is gone, the elites are now faced with a new round of struggles. So the smarter ones decide that perhaps it's a good idea to have some kind of collegial power, where people can discuss their disagreements rather than shoot each other. This usually results in the country becoming milder and not so carnivorous towards its citizens.
The USSR was a good example. Stalin died, and his successors decided that a new Stalin was not a good idea. Instead, they gave power to the Politburo, where the General Secretary was "the first among equals". The USSR did not become a human rights paradise afterwards. But it never had any more mass purges, deportations, or mega-projects built with slave labor of GULAG inmates.
>Totalitarianism is not becoming more popular. Russia is not totalitarian,
Russia is totalitarian today. It transitioned from authoritarian to totalitarian slowly starting about second half of 201x and very quickly down hill during 2022 with the introduction of all those "discreditation" laws and the likes and especially with extreme hardening of application of such laws.
>Meaning that they don't have an official ideology, the real one that has people willing to die for it.
That is the point. In a contrast to being just a kleptocracy for the first ~15 years of Putin, Russia does have such an ideology at the state level today - "Russian world" (known outside as "Russian fascism" - "rushism") with Ukranian war (where at least several hundred thousands of Russians have already died) being one of the real-world implementations of that ideology.
It's really not. There is no ideology. There are no mass rallies in support of the government. No official sets of books, there's no "My Struggle" by Putin that everyone in the country needs to have.
> That is the point. In a contrast to being just a kleptocracy for the first ~15 years of Putin, Russia does have such an ideology at the state level today - "Russian world"
Not really. It's trying to do that, but it looks comical even for people inside Russia. Even true believers in "Russian World" are now either dead or silenced. Russian government systematically punishes _any_ true belief.
Another example to watch is Venezuela. I predict that it'll slowly transform into being a more open country, with at least some electoral freedom. It won't become a liberal democracy overnight, but it won't be completely authoritarian for long.
new unified history textbook. The "Talks about Important" school ideology lessons. Putin's propaganda article on Ukraine history (of course no relation to real history).
>It's really not. There is no ideology.
the foundational ideology of a fascist state is "interests of state trump any and all rights/freedoms/interests of an individual". One can see that in Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Mussolini's Italy, and in Putin's Russia these days. Of course that was also the case in Germany in 1933-1945, yet the Germany went further - it was a fascism where state had a political nationalism as an official ideology. Similarly Russian state in recent years took "Russian world" as its official ideology, and thus now you see Lebensraum, Volksgemeinschaft, Blut and Boden and Dolchstoßlegende in the words and actions of Russian state.
>Not really. It's trying to do that, but it looks comical even for people inside Russia.
There is nothing comical here. One of the cornerstone of "Russian world" ideology is Russians being the master-nation (and by the way the words to pretty much that effect were even put into the Russian Constitution in 2020) while Ukranians are declared "inferior". The state TV openly talks about "Ukrainess" being a brain decease needing eradication (reminds a lot how "Jewishness" was talked about back then in Germany). It definitely lost any chance of being even remotely comical when they actually declared and started that eradication in 2022.
>Even true believers in "Russian World" are now either dead or silenced. Russian government systematically punishes _any_ true belief.
State ideology never requires true believers. Even more - true believer may happen to follow his/her beliefs even when state orders the other way - that of course would conflict with the basic tenets of totalitarian state.
That was electoral event with mandatory presence. This is nothing like Stalin's rallies where people themselves organized and attended, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6bzBTmmhU
> new unified history textbook. The "Talks about Important" school ideology lessons. Putin's propaganda article on Ukraine history (of course no relation to real history).
Yup. They are _trying_ but without at least semi-coherent ideology, it just looks comical. I suggest reading that textbook, it's just trash. It's badly written and is just a collection of unconnected facts. All it can teach is the late USSR norm: "Say what they want to hear, think what you want, and do what you actually need to do".
There can be no ideology in an authoritarian state, ideology binds the leadership. Khomeini in Iran can't just go to a gay party or eat during Ramadan. Putin (and his ilk like Maduro) does not want to get limited in any way.
> the foundational ideology of a fascist state is "interests of state trump any and all rights/freedoms/interests of an individual"
If you want to talk about fine details of political science, then fascism is not necessarily totalitarian. It can be practiced in a far-right authoritarian state. Nazism is indeed different, and it _is_ a totalitarian ideology.
Nazism had its foundational work ("Mein Kampf") and a doctrine fortified by a set of "scientific" proofs of German superiority. And they had plenty of true believers, including the actual core of the Nazi party. It also imposed binding restrictions on everyone. For example, nobody in the Nazi party could (openly) marry a Jewish person and expect to stay in power.
Putin doesn't want any of this. He loves that one day the US is the enemy number one for him, and the next day Trump is his best friend.
> The state TV openly talks about "Ukrainess" being a brain decease needing eradication (reminds a lot how "Jewishness" was talked about back then in Germany).
Yes, and these TV channels now have less popularity than gardening channels. This is another point of difference. In a totalitarian state, the ideology must be, well, _total_ and omnipresent.
The Russian government is trying to make sure the war stays as invisible as possible. Try to find any mentions of it here: https://yandex.com/maps/-/CPVwbS-t
> It definitely lost any chance of being even remotely comical when they actually declared and started that eradication in 2022.
Unfortunately, you don't need ideology to wage wars.
> State ideology never requires true believers.
It does. And that is the true difference. A significant part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran really sincerely believes that they're fighting for Islam. It's not _just_ a way for them to get into power to run protection rackets.
>Yes, and these TV channels now have less popularity than gardening channels.
Nobody knowing anything about Russia would make such a gross mistake like you've just made. It is like you'd be discussing physics problems while not knowing Newton's laws.
"Television is the most popular medium in Russia, with 74% of the population watching national television channels routinely "
As it happens you just don't know what you're talking about. Most of the other things you said about Russia is similarly just incorrect. It looked strange to me how and what you've been arguing about, and in good faith i thought that we're discussing while each being well informed, and may be you just have different opinion/view and may be a bit less understanding and information than me. Well, it happens you just don't know basically anything about Russia. In such a case instead of arguing, you should just look for and consume the information, and not waste other people's time with uninformed arguments.
I don't think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was a celebrity buffoon/reality show personality for decades before "politics". Stupid people eat that up. Other Trumpy candidates have not been able to reproduce his success. Let's not assume this is the new normal.
I heard some of the best advice I ever heard at a Subgenius devival in Dallas in the 80s: "Act like a dumb-shit and they'll treat you like an equal." Every year that quip seems more and more relevant.
I don’t think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was the only candidate explicitly saying they were working to Make America Great Again, as opposed to foreign interests or illegals.
I recently read one of the best descriptions of why middle of the road, non wealthy voters went for Trump in the book "The King in Orange," a book about the "magickal" aspects of the 2016 campaign by John Michael Greer, the former (?) head of the Ancient Order of Druids in America.
I expect cogent commentary about ritual magick by a Druid, but was a little surprised to find well laid out political commentary. I guess that was a failure of my imagination. Worth a read, even if you consider the topic bollocks. Greer sticks mostly to psychology and musings about using metaphor to engineer the mass imagination. Much less woo-woo than you might expect.
I mention it in support of the previous poster's commentary about the Dems messaging being irrelevant to most Americans. Seemed to me middle America doesn't love Trump as much as they weren't able to hear Harris address any issues they were concerned about.
I can recommend The King in Orange, What's the Matter with Kansas and Metaphors We Live By for more musings about such things.
Wat we are witnessing is not just traditional totalitarianism, but the emergence of a suicidal state driven by a fascist death drive.
Under MAGA, the state no longer pretends to be guided internally by reason and progress, but is instead founded on non progress and terror, a scorched earth approach to slashing government agencies, and the accelerated destruction of state institutions: rather than seeking to resolve societal crises, MAGA produces constant crises to feed off of, preferring to annihilate its own systems rather than stop the destruction.
Yes, the world has changed. We have entered a reality where insanity has become the goal of the authoritarians, ie the self-destruction itself is the actual end goal.
I'm no fan of this administration, at all, but this seems like a big fat nothingburger. They hacked a personal gmail account, not a government account, not government infra. Why is this not a failing of Google instead of the government? And surely the hackers would have eagerly released anything damning, but nothing damning seems to exist. What am i missing here?
Remember when this admin used a Signal group chat to coordinate an operation against Houthi forces in Yemen and left in some journalists. Do you think he cares care whether he sent an email with his gov email on a gov device or if he sent it with his personal email?
you don't think that it's relevant and concerning that the director of the FBI didn't take operational security seriously enough that his account got compromised? even if they didn't get anything incriminating (which maybe they did and are going to blackmail him later) that show a shocking lack of competency for someone in that kind of position.
i think the facts of the matter are that a gmail vulnerability is on the very low likelihood kind of event. they wouldn't burn their insanely valuable vulnerability on showing how much of a fratboy kash is. the most likely possibility is that he either clicked on something dumb and gave access through phishing(really bad) or had a really weak password without 2fa(also really bad).
True, but don't you think the FBI director should be held to higher standards of security hygiene than average people? Because I'm interpreting your tone as "it could happen to anyone". At some point the doubt is gone and there's no more benefit to give...
it's definitely newsworthy, no doubt there. but i see so many people in this thread pointing to this as somehow a failing of the fbi, which it's not. i'm all for calling out this administration for its many many failings, but this is not one of them, and calling this a failure of the administration just hurts the credibility of everyone pointing out real issues with this administration.
True yeah. but uh anyway what about HILLARYS EMAILS we need to hear about those for the next 4 decades (no convictions despite "Lock Her Up" slogans for 5 years)
Major public figure who is currently in a position of power in the USA. That’s bad news because it reveals sensitive details which may lead to their further compromise. Imagine you’re compromised by a corrupt administration with pics of CSAM or something already, now imagine a foreign actor also having compromised you. It’s a sticky situation.
Yes, that's all true, all potential issues in theory. I'm still not seeing why this points to or supports the (valid) claim of incompetence in the FBI. That seems to be the angle most posters in this thread are taking, and it seems...misguided to me. Tilting at windmills. Let's call out the admin for their real failings, not nonsense like this. Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional.
> "Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional."
Doesn't it though? Especially when your profession involves the security of a nation and you can't even secure your own personal email account successfully?
Leaking one’s credentials to sensitive personal repositories of information is a “real failing” lol, how could one think any differently? I would be mortified and immediately rectify the situation.
> Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional.
Why not? Most professionals at larger organizations have to do security training. These kinds of attacks are far less likely to succeed on anyone who follows the basic precautions taught in such training. E.g., if he had MFA enabled on his account - as he certainly should have had - they would not have been able to compromise it externally, i.e. it would have had to be much more than his email that was hacked.
I don’t get the propensity some people seem to have for defending this shameful collection of incompetent criminals, bullies, and clowns.
> Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional
If you work in security: it *absolutely does*, because 99+% of the time you are the primary contributing factor, whether from password reuse or downloading malware or clicking bad links or opening random emails or being susceptible to social engineering, etc.
If you are the head of a security organization: obviously you should not expect to retain that job, as your poor reputation is now an albatross around the company's neck.
If you are the head of the FBI: lol. lmao. what the actual fuck. my money is on someone spearfished him with an email subject about a book deal and he'll just click fucking anything.
Aren't most exploits that get used, shared through black markets anyway? So Saying Xcountry-linked hackers, is just saying who ponied up the bitcoin to pay for the attack?
This is quite misleading and partisan to present this as "FBI director's personal email" when the emails far predate his current role.
If I had downloaded those emails, which I haven't because I know of no website that archives the internet, and if I had read them, which I haven't because that would be a breach of someone's privacy, then certainly I would have figured out that it contains no spicy state secrets. But why spend one hour assessing an information when you can get clicks by suggesting something bigger?
Those supposedly Iranian hackers surely know how to hack the western media to get attention.
I found it actually more informative to read on the sad history of the Dena, the ship whose victims this leak was dedicated to, so it's not been a complete waste of time.
Interesting, and not all that implausible. The real test: his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
If they wanted to maintain access, they certainly wouldn't celebrate it publicly, which is why I assume they want to release information. But, there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting professionally. We'll see how the facts bear out. I also suppose it's possible they're just going for any win they can and there's nothing interesting here whatsoever, or it's a really boring secondary address or something.
I think this is actually the opposite of the correct conclusion—just look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal). I seriously doubt that Kash Patel doesn't have a bunch of skeletons to dust off and show the world; the man is a weirdo (much like the rest of the administration).
EDIT: I actually misread the comment; I think we're likely in agreement. My bad.
I don't know, these days skeletons seem to be treated as funny decoration and we're in a permanent state of Halloween.
Sullying Halloween's good name
Trump doesn't have a few skeletons in his closest, he boasts a series of catacombs.
I think theirs was the right conclusion, but for the wrong reason. If there was anything really damning, Iran would rather use that as leverage.
The fact that they released it publicly means that the most embarrassing part of it is just the hack in itself.
If I was Iran I'd leak the innocuous stuff first to let them know I had access to potentially more damning things, to try and force the US to the table.
That would only work if there was something damning to Trump or someone in charge of Iran negotiations. Trump has no problem cutting people loose otherwise
From the news I’ve read the most “embarrassing” things in his personal email are photos of him smoking cigars, holding a bottle of rum, and posing in front of a supercar. What a scandal…
I'd like to chime in and say that that Kash Patel, while completely unprofessional and incompetent, is way less of a weirdo than the rest of the administration.
His scandals are all about shirking job responsibilities to party and sightsee. That's not great from the FBI director but its way more normal than the rest of them.
I dunno, a sitting FBI director testifying under oath about details that are clearly false, goes above and way beyond "to party and sightsee". At least in my world it puts him up there together with the rest of the weirdos.
A sitting FBI director testifying under oath about details that are clearly false is tradition at this point.
That's not remotely true of his history.. he's a full on Jan-6er, deep into Q-Anon, he was involved in numerous serious scandals during the first Trump admin (Nunes Memo / Russiagate 'parallel' investigation: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-men...), he has a number of sketchy moneymaking side-businesses, he was formerly living with a GOP megadonor 'Timeshare Tycoon' as roommates in Vegas (https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/trump-fbi-pick-kash...), he collected enemies' lists for Trump which resulted in firing of most of the Iran counterintel team right before we started launching attacks because they had the termerity to investigate why Trump was showing donors top-secret maps of Iran after he left office..
In the current environment, those are more expecteds than scandalous. Insider trades around government activities, same-sex behavior, overt racism for example might nudge the needle.
yeah that world-event gambling stuff gotta stop...
I mean, if I can send troops, I would bet on sending troops, wont I?
those gamblers who aren't Trump or any 'event initiators themselves' must be idiots of extraordinary quality
I'm not defending or advocating for the guy, just saying, if you're gonna be a piece of shit, he seems more relatable than the rest of them.
How can you way that with a straight face when this book exists.
https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/19555...
idk if you have to dig in and link to some amazon link...
this iran hack is a dismal propaganda failure...
nothing much to see I guess
Dig in? Was already aware of his book, and he's made many more weird books. Trump's cabinet are all weird little goblins, some more Nazi than others, like Miller.
isn't that "hackers" supposed to get some unknown secret scandalous stuff?
if you're digging amazon FOR them, what's the point of their activity?
and by "digging", yes it's digging because is that link THE FIRST RECOMMENDED THING from amazon?
gosh I didn't even say "trump cabinet is the best and perfect"...
...damn did you get like 300 on SAT reading?
Why do you assume I did any digging at all? I just said we might find out some fun stuff in his emails about his weird book, which I already was aware of. Presumably the SAT includes properly written words and sentences, not whatever you spew out.
I did not know about that book, yeah that is cringe.
90% of US media is not aligned with the Democrats and as such they do not possess the same power to manufacture outrage as the Republicans do.
So you mean to point out that the sitting FBI director is a bro's bro.
I was just reading a X thread that published some of the more notable things and overall it's pretty innocuous. The most "controversial" thing thus far is he took a trip to Cuba
My favorite explanation of the Petraeus scandal: https://vimeo.com/100348256
> look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was
Those times have passed. I'll restate what I said in a comment some days ago:
>> 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today presidents are "impeaching" the press
The current strategy is "keep the outrage hose on full blast and eventually people get desensitized". It works.
The press was stupid. They were doing stupid gotchas like swiftboats, fake reports on GWB (Dan Rather), but couldn’t care less about things like the CIA and the crack cocaine connection[1], or lots of other things the government gets away with (including Clappers total information awareness unconstitutional surveillance efforts) The press is always carrying water for someone but that someone is rarely the public unless is just pure coincidence.
[1] there was one reporter who dared but the toll from the story resulted in his suicide, some years later. His colleagues poo-pooed his reporting on the connection.
* The Swiftboat thing was completely an ad campaign if I remember correctly. I remember most media covering it as BS.
* The contents of Dan Rather report on GWB was true. There was one document which was sketchy, but the whole report didn't hinge on the one document from an officer's office. (E.g. Ex-senator Ben Barnes's interview is reasonably indicting: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-barnes-on-bush/)
What's interesting is how easily the media is distracted. What's even more concerning though, is that when the more centrist major media has tried to be less gullible, they've been vilified. (E.g. trying not to be suckered by miraculous appearance Hunter Biden's laptop.)It's a mess, and the only way out of it is probably limits own media ownership.
Maybe the hackers will release information connecting Patel to the Noem and Lewandowski grift operations with govt contracts. Out of the four companies allowed to bid for the $220 million advertising contract, 3 were linked to Noem and Lewandowski and one to Patel.
Im sure they are all doing it...
well if you're listing your hopes, not talking from what those hackers brought...
that just means the operation is a dismal failure -- nothing to see
this really undermines iran hackers' claims regarding 'big things' on trump administration
Well, if the president sets the example. What can you expect from the rest ?
There is so much corruption and impropriety in this administration that skeletons don't matter anymore. Looking at what sunk officials in previous administrations provides a sense for just how far gone we are, but it's not an indicator of what future consequences will be.
Dan Quayle lost a serious bid because he couldn't spell potato.
Now look at where we're at. It really is wild. Right, wrong, or indifferent. How far we've shifted is absolutely wild.
Dan Quayle also had the charisma of a potato. Let's not overfit this curve.
Like what? We have two presidents, including the current one, that took multiple trips to a pedophile island. What skeletons could be greater than accusations of punching a child in the face after they bit the dude’s penis during forced sodomy?
There is no credible evidence that either of the Presidents you alluded to visited "the island". It's amazing to see conspiracy theories promulgated on HN.
There is lots of evidence that these two presidents were on the pedophile island many times, and one of their wives. That is well established.
There is no evidence released to the public directly linking those two men to specific sex acts by name. There is unnamed evidence released by the US DOJ specifically describing the assault I described in the prior comment. Again, none of this is theoretical, conspiracy, or conjecture. It’s in the documents released by the government that the government has confirmed as authentic.
No doubt you are aware that the claims about Clinton originated with the founder of the Epstein Mythos, Virginia Giuffre, who we know for a fact was a serial confabulator. While she was inarguably one of Epstein's victims, she also made several claims that were demonstrably untrue, she could not keep her own stories straight, the FBI concluded internally that she was totally unreliable and that she was even lying about what the FBI told her, other victims contradicted her, and she was herself forced to recant on several subjects, including admitting that her "autobiography" book was a work of fiction. If you doubt me, feel free to read the FBI memo about her.
In the case of both Clinton and Trump, there is no evidence that either of them visited Little St. James, and plenty of evidence otherwise - for example, Epstein even says so about Clinton in an email.
> It’s in the documents released by the government that the government has confirmed as authentic.
The documents are "authentic" in that yes, a real schizo did really tell the government he heard it secondhand 30 years ago that this happened and also that he discovered Hilary Clinton was behind the WTC bombing. (For some reason, people like you always leave that part of the bombshell revelations out.) I am for total transparency generally, but this whole saga has been a major disappointment for me in that the level of public discourse is so lazy and low that its clear that in a purely utilitarian way, it would have been better to not release it. Hopefully long-term the sacrifice of many people whose reputations are being destroyed over little or nothing is worth it. Every crank call about celebrities is being treated as gospel.
Remarkable that Epstein confined his pedophile activities to a single location.
No, wait:
Hmm ... would that be the same Palm Beach home that Trump visited a good many times back when he was best of chums with Jeffrey and sending him the nude outline sketches?> Remarkable that Epstein confined his pedophile activities to a single location
Correct, the vast majority of his criminal activity appeared to be in his Palm Beach home and in New York, where he recruited high dozens to hundreds of high school girls for his personal sexualized massages. It actually appears only a very small amount of his illicit activity ever took place on the island, which makes it all the more ironic that's what the conspiracy theorists focus on.
I was willing to be more than openmminded about the conspiracists' mass trafficking ring (ie, beyond the two people charged) angle, but the ironic thing is about the Epstein files is they revealed it was almost all smoke. Of course, in the conspirational mindset, all contradicting evidence is actually, secretly, when you apply the correct hermeutics, even more damning, or else evidence of a coverup.
> the ironic thing is about the Epstein files is they revealed it was almost all smoke.
and a few massive conspiracy shaped holes - eg: the references to missing content regarding Trump and a few other. Oh, and the shortfall between what has been released Vs what has been indexed, the black paging, and the hints from those that have seen but are sworn to not tell about that which they have seen but cannot recount.
Still, at least we seem to agree that PedoIsland is a misdirect when it comes to determining who did what to whom and where.
I can't see Pam Bondi coming clean here anytime soon.
> the hints from those that have seen but are sworn to not tell about that which they have seen but cannot recoun
The people who were victimized by anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell could come forward at any time, just as dozens of Epstein's victims have. They have some of the highest-powered civil lawyers in America, hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement funds available, and vast swaths of the country behind them.
That they haven't should tell you something.
It tells me that they are afraid of their safety and the safety of their families. They would risking backlash from a billionaire who loves intimidation tactics, who currently has the highest amount of power of any individual in the US, and who has nutty followers who would act on his behalf and let him pretend he was not at all happy about what they are doing.
The people who have come forward about Epstein's abuses have little to worry about because that man is dead and he's a perfect scapegoat for all the the other ultra-rich who took part in the abuses.
If you’re talking about Trump, you may remember that E Jean Carroll won a lawsuit against him. She’s walking the earth and continuing to live a public life.
And again, millions of dollars are available from settlement funds if Epstein was involved, there’s already some of the best lawyers in the country begging to represent you, and there’s people volunteering to pay for your security needs.
You’re also ignoring the many victims that came out before Epstein died.
This is just an excuse to perpetuate the conspiracy theories. It doesn’t hold water. And of course if anything was released from super secret “the files” they’re definitely still covering up, they’d become publicly known.
Surely you see how this line of reasoning is identical to that of any other conspiracy or moral panic.
> And of course if anything was released from super secret “the files” they’re definitely still covering up, they’d become publicly known.
They've been caught trying to do Trump related reactions at least three times now.
You misunderstand my point. I’m saying that if there are any credible accusations in “the files” beyond those well-documented ones against Epstein and Maxwell, then the accusers would be known publicly anyway when they’re disclosed.
The whole thing falls apart the moment you examine the actual evidence and think about it. It’s really disappointing that smart people on even this forum get wrapped up into this junk.
Surely we are currently clean on OPSEC. There couldn't be any precedent for government officials using private email servers for confidential information!
obligatory - that first famous private server was done because someone wanted a blackberry like Obama had, and was told no by NSA. Man that BB keyboard was good.
That can't be the first one. Colin Powell used a personal email account during the GWB administration.
https://www.npr.org/2016/09/08/493133413/colin-powells-ways-...
Of course that pales in comparison with the practices of the GWB White House:
https://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/george-w-bush-white-hous...
Check this out (can't wait til mine arrives): https://www.clicks.tech/
I’ve been using a Clicks case since the early days and have personally loved every second of it but it’s definitely an acquired taste. Let us know how you find it.
Are we talking about the same FBI director here? Professional and competent are not how I would describe Kash Patel. Given his overt buffoonishness and the whole administration's disdain for procedure and expertise I would be shocked if he didn't have extremely inappropriate content in his inbox.
I believe “if” is doing a tremendous amount of work in parent’s comment.
>his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA
medical diagnoses can be incredibly useful in understanding past and future actions
>there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting professionally
that "if" is doing some heavy lifting given who we are discussing
Yeah, the fact they announced it proves it’s nothing. I saw a picture of him smoking a cigar. We’ve already seen him drinking beer and acting foolish; probably enough to get you executed in Isfahan, but a giant nothining in the USA.
> his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?
Color me surprised if these people haven't heard of opsec before, and mix their work/personal life all over the place.
Yes, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was classified information in there. I struggled with wording, but what I meant was "you're not supposed to be able to find classified or sensitive information in personal email, but I who knows what will be the case here."
> Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?
Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out there, but it is obviously not immune to human error or social engineering.
Also wildly illegal to use to conduct government business, especially confidential government business. (and yes the messages were auto-deleting and largely lost before anyone chimes in with technically they could be archived!)
It was a custom (presumably DoD-approved) build. And the story gets much better than that:
https://youtu.be/KFYyfrTIPQY&t=724
> Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out there
That might be true amongst the communication platforms available for the average Joe. It is definietly not the most secure communication platform available for someone high ranking in the USA government.
> it is obviously not immune to human error or social engineering
Nothing is immune. But there are systems more and systems less prone to these issues.
https://www.404media.co/the-signal-clone-the-trump-admin-use...
Ok? Signal is not the topic of my comment really, nor has anyone claimed it's less secure than other chat apps.
Signal started being used during the Biden administration, the issue was how they were managing contacts which could be added to groups. They weren't carefully vetting access and a journalist with the same name as another military guy was added to the group by accident.
Source?
The public record of a contract to the Israeli company which handled archiving Signal chats for the DoD was done during Biden admin. And it's been well reported if you just Google it:
> Alexa Henning, spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, tweeted last week that “widespread use” of Signal began under the Biden administration, adding that “at ODNI, when I got my phone, it was pre-installed.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/inside-the-hazy-fra...
You're missing some key distinctions. The issues are: 1) putting classified information into a non-classified system; 2) putting information that needs to be preserved under laws like the presidential records act into systems where it's set to be auto-deleted. Both are illegal. Simply saying that the Biden administration pre-installed Signal is irrelevant. There are legitimate uses.
Your own article makes this exact point: > Matthew Shoemaker, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who left the agency in 2021, said that while Signal was used during his time in government, “it was almost exclusively restricted to scheduling purposes,” such as letting their boss know that they’ll be late to work because of personal circumstances. “That’s why Signalgate is all the more staggering — because these senior leaders were doing the exact opposite of what even my most junior intelligence officers knew not to do,” he said.
You're doing bullshit partisan whataboutism. "well the democrats did it first".
This has nothing to do with adding the wrong contacts. It has to do with putting highly-sensitive material into Signal to circumvent the law around records preservation and as a result creating a situation where it's possible to accidentally add the wrong contact and therefore exposing that information to a journalist.
> This has nothing to do with adding the wrong contacts. It has to do with putting highly-sensitive material into Signal to circumvent the law around records preservation
My comment above already mentions public records of the DoD contracting out archiving of the Signal chat, so it doesn't in fact circumvent laws around preservation.
> You're doing bullshit partisan whataboutism. "well the democrats did it first".
I don't think it's a huge sin for government workers to be using Signal, remote work and messaging is the new norm and they will use something whether we like it or not, and Signal is the least bad option. I don't blame the Biden DoD for experimenting down that road at all, as I'm skeptical they'd build something better internally - and to your hyperpolitical points I don't see large distinctions between these type of tech choices between administrations (the DoD staff largely remains the same even when presidents change).
The issue with encryption and security will always be human security practices come first-and-foremost, technology second. They failed an OPSEC checklist when using group chats and need to implement better identification management. That's the sort of lesson that large organizations frequently need to re-learn the hard way when adopting new (and often better) things.
This was just a good lesson in security hygiene
I'm not clear on the verdict here.
1. Classified information. Was it legal to put that into the DoD approved Signal build? The media coverage at the time gave me the impression that it was not.
2. Records keeping. Were the Trump admin chats in question properly archived then? I had been led to believe that they weren't. Do you believe that to be incorrect?
> I don't blame the Biden DoD for experimenting down that road at all
The person you're replying to never criticized them for such.
But his girlfriend, though...
https://www.tabletmag.com/the-scroll/articles/march-25-kash-...
We’re not getting any juicy leaks from it because it’s just full of 20-year-old memes and meeting invites to look busy.
Those "should"s are doing a lot of heavy lifting.
> The real test: his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news.
I have no idea why this would be the default assumption for somebody as sloppy and erratic as Patel. Look at how many people were emailing damning stuff to/from Epstein's personal email accounts from their own personal email accounts!
I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
But it feels million years away.
It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level.
Putting those people in charge was quick ; sure, a future administration could put them out quickly enough ; but how long will there be decently skilled people willing to take those positions ? How long until the only ones who want to put their toes in the swamp are those who really enjoy the mud ?
Put differently: can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge ?
Those that got fired where the good ones. Sometimes the best career move is to get fired. Reminds me of the old faces running the BRD after the war. Democratic floatsome in a thin crust residing over an ocean of collaborators.
> border-line (to be polite) corrumption
Hard to imagine what would constitute "full blown corruption" based on this standard?
Maybe it's borderline because it's coming from the other direction. Corruption presumes some kind of "covertness", when you break all the rules without even trying to be discreet can you still talk of corruption?
Yes. Only people who are used to living in non-corrupt countries presume corruption is covert.
The coup has already happened.
We'd have to look at the longest-running democracies and observe how they handled periodic refactorings
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler
> the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Except, of course, that this is historically wrong. Transitions from democracy to dictatorship are common, but I cannot think of one that happened because of "loose fiscal policy".
If the Central Intelligence Agency’s definition of ‘loose fiscal policy’ is good enough, Pinochet’s rise is a good example.
Athens spending like drunken sailors during the Peloponnesian War and the subsequent Oligarchical Coup d’Etat comes to mind. Or must the dictator be just one person and not a bunch of Orwell's pigs?
Pithy. But a made up quote by Tytler, he never said or wrote that.
Tyler expressed some skepticism of Democracies but nothing like this. The too on-the-nose nature of this often passed along bit of propaganda should also be the giveaway that it might be one of those rare things on the internet that someone may have been less than honest about the origins, and go look and see.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ― Voltaire 1767
Tytler's quote is trying to say too much. It might be acceptable as historical commentary, but it carries little weight to me; it seems overly confident about what the future might hold.*
Tytler died in 1813. We have learned much since then: much about human nature, institutions, experimentation, statistics, evidence, constructing good theories, and governance.** Sure, the quote is worth some reflection; it has grains of truth, but it should not be given undue weight.
* I am not saying "we can predict nothing"! Far from it. I am ok with predictions (even bold ones) to the extent they are deeply rooted in the best understandings and models we have available.
** I'm talking about what motivated people figure out through careful reasoning and evidence, not simply how the median person funnels information from their ears to their mouth. And I'm certainly not commending the effort and thought that the median person puts into stewarding their democracy (if they have one). While we (in the USA, for the time being?) have something like one.
It's not a Tytler quote anyway, and as mentioned by others it's demonstrably false.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110723192744/http://www.lorenc... https://freakonomics.com/2009/01/our-daily-bleg-what-quotes-...
The whole reason the US founding fathers are amazing is that they proved him concretely incorrect. US will celebrate 250 years of democracy this year.
That doesn’t disprove him at all: if the average one lasts 200 years and not all last exactly 200, then some will necessarily last more than 200. This is a mathematical consequence of what an average means.
It'd be hilarious if it was a fiction, some bitter comedic cautionary satire
what better way to celebrate the democracy by combining it with a celebration of the birthday of the Great Leader, with a soviet style military parade and an admonition that any protest will be met with the harshest of consequences.
I know that math makes it harder to come up with political zingers but if there are two civilizations; one lasted 150 years and the other lasted 250 years the average is 200.
If that's what you call a democracy, sure... I don't think most people will agree with you though.
You know, it's very funny. This is the most reproduced quote from Tytler, and yet you also have these chestnuts:
Relevant quote today but seems to misunderstand the U.S. framers’ idea of what the U.S. govt was set up to be, namely by consent of the governed.
Therefore if the governors ever fail the criteria of said justification, the consent is removed by default, irrespective of their elected term length or anything else.One particular democratic election or another is not the contract. The Constitution itself is the contract, countersigned by the 50 U.S. states.
The quotee would be surprised to see how little voting is being done by the people receiving the largesse in the last 20 years.
Not to mention how little voters had to do with the decisions which caused the deficit to rise the most. The Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the wealthy.
> The Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the wealthy.
And now the Iran War, wait for it.
40% of Americans pay nothing in federal income tax
do you think these are the ones voting?
Definitely. They are the reason republicans spend time trying to make voting difficult
Well….they tended to collapse after a couple centuries.
> Put differently: can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge?
This is how all of them started.
But once you have a liberal democracy, people will refuse another purge. For very good reasons.
>It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level.
you get out when the thing dies because these kinds of organizations always end the same way; competence is usurped by sycophancy and flattery until there's no one left to keep it functioning and it collapses under the weight of it's own bullshit.
hopefully, there will be something to salvage but the longer these folks are in charge the bigger the splash will be when they finally bottom out
>I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.
The first one is, in the words of a federal District of Columbia judge: "one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency". [1]
The second one is the malicious leaking of some private emails. These emails are frankly none of our business (unless you are part of Kash Patel's family or friends).
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/clinton-emails-l...
Not sure why this is being down voted.
There is a difference for sure between hosting your own email server and using it for official government communications and having your own personal email address used for personal communications.
The issue that seemed to completely disappear related to the use of Signal messenger for official white house communications seems more aligned to the email server issue. It was reported heavily at the time what the reporting requirements were and that they would have to submit the full chat histories within 30 days or something like that to stay within the law. I never heard whether that actually happened or not, the story just died.
I think we all know the answer to that…
HN is overrun by partisans whose majority does not care about factual interpretations of current events and flags level-headed comments in favor of cheap shots, double standards, hyperbolic misconstructions, and ad hominem. I don't think it's difficult to be critical of the government without resorting to such low-brow commentary, but it is what it is. I once offended some people by comparing HN to Reddit, but the lines are getting more blurred by the day.
The moderators need to take a more active stance on getting these hot button political topic wars off HN. We're seeing some sort of brigading and/or manipulation going on here with behaviors (like flagging) that are not consistent with what I think we want to have on the platform. Certainly no following of the guidelines. Just look at the top comment here.
"Normal" people are stuck in two modes, either they ignore it or they need to descend to the same level. I put normal in double quotes since I honestly don't know what's normal any more. I would like to believe the majority of the kind of community we used to have here on HN does not operate at this level of discussion.
To some extent this is a reflection of broader polarization, tribal behavior, and social media manipulation. Even Reuters IMO have chosen a sensationalist headline and seem to have an agenda here. There's an easy tell - can you tell the political orientation of the author by reading the article/comments etc.
This topic could be an interesting one and we could actually have some good discussions about security. Instead it degenerates into what's essentially a political bashing flame war.
It's beind downvoted because "but, her emails..." is not saying it's the same thing, but rather, that so much fuss was made about her emails, and then when something similar happens, the right conveniently ignores it. For example, as you mentioned, signalgate, or the times members of the Trump administration used their "own email server and using it for official government communications and having your own personal email address used for personal communications."
It's being down voted because it's attacking a strawman. No one is saying they are the same exact thing. It's that you will see people activatley defending this as a big nothingburger when in truth, it's still a security breach that has the potential to lower our defenses.
> I never heard whether that actually happened or not, the story just died.
It wouldn't be the first thing related to her that died https://web.archive.org/web/20220331092216/https://www.arkan...
We know for a fact that the current DoD are using private Signal messages for coordinating military action. We know they are constantly using private emails. We are sending the president's son-in-law to negotiate with foreign countries despite not being a government employee and also have massive conflicts of interest.
> HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.
That's not what the "but, her emails..." reference implies. It's not saying they are the same thing. It's saying that the amount of attention and excitement made about her emails was a show. And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it. Same thing with the signalgate from last year, or all the previous times the Trump administration used private emails or private communication for government business as well.
So, no. The fact that it is not the same is immaterial. Which makes the rest of your comment immaterial.
> And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it
How is this case equally bad? It's just his private email being hacked, he did nothing wrong.
There are probably about a thousand things you could point to in the Trump administration that are worse than Clinton's private email server, but this isn't one of them.
Was it equally grave when Colin Powell did the same thing?
Yes. That man lied us into the Iraq war. He is a traitor.
my standard for criminal acts is also whether i don't like the guy.
Why not look for historical examples? There should be hundreds not to mention the obvious ones?
Referencing Hillary’s email would be kinda silly. She self hosted the email account she used for official government business. It was loaded with classified information.
This guy, while incompetent, had his personal email hacked.
Important distinction.
You are correct.
On the other hand, Patel's emails "appear to show a mix of personal and work correspondence". We already know that people in government - this isn't a partisan point: folks of all factions do it - use private communication channels to discuss "official business" specifically to avoid mandated disclosure and archival requirements. If (and I emphasize "if", because we don't yet know if this was the case), if Patel was doing that, and especially if he was sharing / discussing classified material, then the facts of the case would bump right up against what Clinton and Powell did.
Please. Same shit, different day.
Trying to distinguish between the two acts is like splitting hairs on the same arse.
Just makes you look silly.
Sorry, as much as I despise Trump (though I'm thankful it caused Europe to wake up to the idea that the US is an unreliable ally); "Her emails" were:
A) Used for Official business as secretary of state
B) Full of national security strategically important decisions.
C) Improperly secured.
FBI directors personal email feels less cutting in that context.
Breaching my personal email (or my own mail server, I host one) will tell you literally nothing about my employer except perhaps the conversation from when I joined and my own employment contract.
honestly, look internally. after the plane from qatar. after the son-in-law's real estate dealings. after the visible-to-everyone kalshi and oil futures bets frontrunning the administrations announcements. for you to still feel the need to frame things as "border-line (to be polite)" is, in and of itself, the perfect example of the overall problem.
take your inability to draw a clear-as-day conclusion and state it plainly and multiply it by another ~50M "centrists" who continue to believe that staying "not political" and "avoiding the news" is a viable strategy to just wait the problem out.
until the checked out cowards realize that strategy isn't going to work, things will continue to get worse.
"no politics" might as as well be the second maga slogan.
"no politics" is the immune response to the social-media-fueled, conspiracy-theory-driven "we are the good guys, you basically deserve to die" craze.
Both sides are culpable here. In the US, both parties were literally claiming that the elections were stolen (Republicans in 2020, Democrats with the since-debunked 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal). Other countries had different issues, but the shape of the problem was basically the same everywhere.
If you keep being called bad words for years for no reason, seeing your side do the exact same thing, no surprise you tune out.
"Both sides" is the biggest cop out of the last decade.
I'd say the bigger issue in 2016 was the Russian interference, which has been proven and has lead to convictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
> Simultaneously, the Republican-led Senate and House Intelligence Committees conducted their own investigations into the Russians' activities. The Senate committee's report, released in five volumes between July 2019 and August 2020, found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump
I'm also curious how you think Cambridge Analytica was debunked. I don't see any mention of debunking on their wikipedia page, but I do see facebook being fined billions for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
The Russian collusion narrative has been completely debunked.
Really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_investigation_origins_c...
How was Cambridge analytica debunked?
> In the US, both parties were literally claiming that the elections were stolen
This is not even remotely true.
One party broadly mobilized a country wide effort to overthrow an election and usurp the incoming duly elected government, culminating in a violent attack on congress itself.
The other party had concerns about foreign interference in our elections.
> can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge ?
Absolutely, it happened before on January 30, 1933
A couple of DOGE teenagers were able to casually walk in and steal the entire country's social security and healthcare data (and probably more), and we were cheering them on. There is still no accountability, and it has probably already been sold to the highest bidder. So this would be the least surprising thing in the world.
We? I don't think I've seen anyone but the people absolutely not understanding the gravity of the situation were cheering on. And I'm not even American.
> And I'm not even American.
Well over here, 30% still approve of it and they will openly praise how much money DOGE "saved us." It's quite eye opening talking to them. They live in a totally different reality
Any time they act like they disapprove of something the administration is doing, like the aimless war, they will change their tune in a few weeks when Fox gets it's talking points down.
"We" is such an imprecise word for a pool of people. I believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the listener too, and "women" excluding the listener. Obviously "we" did not elect Trump, only "a majority of the US voters who voted", and even the others may sadly use "we" though they didn't, because they are members of the political body that did. Just like the "they" of Israel that harass Palestinians and throw up West Bank settlements do not reflect all of Israel, and the average Soviet citizen did not reflect the behavior of the Soviet government.
We isn't an imprecise word at all, it's very precise in it's definition.
I can honestly not come up with a single example of the distinction between 'zanmen and women' being useful besides this specific case where you really want to be able to say in 1 sentence that you identify as the same group as someone else, but that that group is subdivided into 2 groups, and you're talking about the sub-group that you're specifically not a part of.
In English, you can say "we" or "they"
But "they" excludes the speaker.
Allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment and propose that maybe DOGE did loudly what the Solarwinds paired with OPM breach did quietly years prior.
OPM was much more serious. Equifax had already leaked the social security data and more.
I feel like sending phishing emails for penis enlargement pills would take down half the current administration.
I know someone who will be interested in bigger hands--big beautiful hands.
I must say, i'd prefer if my hands remained the same size they are now. I dont want to lose my dexterity. Slightly offtopic
worth a try
Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles of high power in the government. He is a real embarrassment and I feel sorry for his mother.
> Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles of high power in the government
What, like J.Edgar?
Fair critique. Mueller was a pretty upstanding example of how to run the FBI, however.
> I feel sorry for his mother.
In all likelihood his upbringing is what made him this way.
You think so? Peers, in my experience, have an even greater impact, especially between the ages of 10 and 25.
And it’s your upbringing that has the biggest impact on who your peers will become.
Gone only because current leadership kicked them all to the curb and told them to get out of Washington. Only loyal talking heads are wanted there now.
Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?
I've been wondering if we'd see a cyber campaign emerge in this conflict. To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced cyber capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back. Gloves-off cyber war doesn't sound good to me. The US CISA already been cut back, has lost "virtually all of its top officials"^, doesn't have a permanent director, and is operating at a further reduced capacity because of the DHS shutdown.
^ https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/cisa-senior-official-...
> To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced cyber capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back.
Iran isn’t alone!! They are a quad along with China, Russia, and North Korea.
that's the thing that people overlook the most in regards to this war.iran isn’t doing this on its own. Russia, China and north korea have been backing it from the start. they’re the ones helping with intel on US base locations across the Middle East, supplying drones, and working out strategies to drag things into a stalemate, plus whatever else iran needs along the way
Russia and North Korea are obviously doing so, but I haven't seen any direct evidence that China is providing intelligence support to Iran, do you have any links? It is certainly plausible, China would love to see Russia tied up in Ukraine and the US tied up in Iran.
There has been speculation that China is letting Iran use their satellites for targeting but it’s not confirmed.
China is for sure providing material for drone and rocket manufacturing as well as air defense systems.
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/01/28/how-china-aims-to-bloc...
Can you blame them? Iran is fighting for its own survival and has to find help where it can.
If the US had an educated administration not composed by lap dogs they would've known that attacking Iran was going to be a terrible idea.
Saddam did the same mistake in 1980.
He thought that the Iranian Kurds, the political opponents, the Iranian Arabs, civilians were going to raise against the regime.
None of this happened. None. In fact, hundreds of thousands of people, even kids, rallied around the banner. There are documented stories of 13 year olds, jumping on barbed wire to use their bodies as bridges for infantry. Disgusting, yet telling of the fact that the Persians will do everything to defend their land even if they don't like its leadership.
It's very difficult to convince people you're bombing left that you're helping them get rid of a regime (which, you never know for sure how popular or unpopular it is).
Iranians, yet again, are rallying around the flag for what is effectively a foreign aggression.
Iran has been preparing for this war for 40 years. So has Israel. They will engage in a battle of supremacy over the Middle East. Both want the USA knocked out so that the Americans can't use their influence there anymore (both consider the USA a nuisance).
As soon as ground troops land in Iran, it's over for the USA. As it is, oil and goods shipping via the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea will be controlled by Iran for a very long time to come. All Iran has to do is withstand the pummeling, which it very likely will do. And they'll get plenty of support from China, since this plays into the South China Seas plan quite nicely as the USA moves carrier after carrier out of Asia.
The corpses of Irans’s leadership have us right where they want us
It's relative. We're in a pretty bad spot relative to where we were before the attack, and so is the world economy.
The Iranian regime is doing much better so far, relative to where they should be after a joint military attack from the US/Israel and maybe even relative to where they were just a few months ago.
The previous Ayatollah was 86 and had multiple bouts of pancreatic cancer. He was on deaths door, Iran was destabilizing with bouts of protest and repression, the regime itself suffered major military blows, and a potentially rocky and fractured transition was imminent.
Thanks to the war, the regime survived a transition, and seems consolidated around the son of the former Ayatollah, who's entire family was killed by our strikes, and the US seems largely impotent as Iran chokes off a large portion of the worlds oil supply and strikes at energy assets in the ME.
The thing getting overlooked is all of the recent moves by Trump all lead back to China. Venezuela, Cuba, now Iran. These are all tentacles of China. The aggression against these 3 countries is not a coincidence. It’s a concerted and indirect attack on China in an attempt to weaken their subsidiaries. In the eyes of this administration, this is unpleasant, but necessary housekeeping that should have been done decades ago but no one was willing to spend the political capital to do it.
In Iran, Trump was clearly hoping (and verbally requested) the same thing you say about Sadam. I think we actually do know how unpopular the regime is, the mass protests demonstrated that. But the religious hardliners are the ones with the guns. And they clearly aren’t afraid to use them. So while there was some momentum, after everyone got gunned down in the streets by the IRGC it quickly deflated. So asking unarmed protesters to step up again is kind of big ask, without any material support.
Iranian protesters were not calling for US interference. Let's be very clear about that. They were doing it for their own regime change, not some US imposition. What they think of the US or whether they are for this war or supposed regime change by the US is a totally different consideration.
> The thing getting overlooked is all of the recent moves by Trump all lead back to China.
Are you trying to frame the twice accidental president as some sort of visionary? He doesn’t even remember what he said 5 mins ago. If he had planned or even had any clue about wars, we’d not be in this mess. He insulted Zelenskyy last year but ended up asking for his help.
Do you recall orange phenomenon was asking for China’s help just last week, let’s wait for it, to act against their friends, which you called their subsidiaries :-). You can’t script this horror show, even if you wanted to.
Also, he's pushing the world towards China.
And rightfully so. China isn't killing and kidnapping world leaders, supporting genocides in Gaza, launching military operations, threatening its allies of annexation or overtly interfering in their democratic process.
I forget all the details but a hacker group associated with Iran already hacked the infrastructure of a major US health care tech company
Stryker. FWIW a friend in ER medicine said it had very very limited effect.
That’s right thanks. The same Hacker group as this story. Yeah I didn’t hear much after the initial breach so I assumed it was minor.
Edit: apparently 80000 employee workstations got remotely wiped. So not so I guess I wouldn’t call that minor.
Also that’s what I get for commenting before reading the story, they mention the Styker incident in the story lol
I still can’t get over the fact that *Kash “Stay in my lane” Patel* is heading the FBI
you mean best selling children's book author Kash Patel who is desperately trying to scrub the internet of his music video[0] revising the Jan 6 insurrection
[0] https://youtu.be/TPF_e2E5F74
What the actual hell did I just listen to. I really hope those kids were paid decently at this.
It’s all fine since he didn’t use it for official business right, right…
The FBI just made a bounty to find who hacked family photos.
I am sure the FBI will do that for my family too right?
Or we’re more than family photos hacked?
Maybe the family un-friendly kind?
Based on the links in the articles, it's personal photographs and a resume from an old Gmail account. The resume dates from 2017.
If they got into the account they got everything. The publicly released pictures are more of a taunt meant to publicly signal that he’s fucked. I would bet (figuratively) that anyrhing of actual value is either being sold or leveraged. After all this is a man that has shown an almost infinite capacity for humiliation.
Or more likely unofficial business
apparently it was a gooner account for one of the popular adult websites.
Link if you want to look: https://bsky.app/profile/ddosecrets.org/post/3mi2iokglyn2w
Interesting comment: "if Iran ends up responsible for regime change in the US, i will be overjoyed as i die from irony"
And it is more than likely. US and Iran probably can’t defeat each other militarily (us obviously can, but it requires full scale ground invasion which is not even contemplated at the moment). And both can’t back out of the conflict. So the likely outcome is that the conflict escalates until one of the regimes snaps and it becomes to somehow politically possible to back out.
Collapse of the regime in Iran seems unlikely at the moment because it’s hard and zealous dictatorship with unlimited power and will for violence within the country. In the US OTOH the elections are coming. An administration that started a stupid and absolutely preventable war and then effectively lost faces quite a challenge there despite everything else. This seems like a perfect moment for Iran to create a deterrent for US: attacking us ends your presidency.
USA cannot do a full scale invasion without major internal unrest.
If the newest batch of 10,000 is approved, we're up to 17,000 combat troops deployed for this. (Marines there as of Mar 27, another 3,500 in about two weeks, and then at least 1 battalion of the 82nd Airborne, plus another 10,000 requested)
I have heard other units getting pre-mobilization / warnings.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2026-03-27/82nd...
(This would not nearly be enough troops for large scale ground conflict, but it might be enough to go into the island tunnels looking for drones and ballistic missiles while the US tries to hold open the straight by force for... However long that takes)
Fwiw, peak deployments to Afghanistan was ~100k troops. Iran is ~2x the land mass and population.
While it's appreciated, that isn't the original link and Ddos "secrets" gate keeps info to people they personally allow. The person who runs it also has been to court for a name change, citing something along the lines of wanting to work in intelligence.
Not a source I would trust unless there is no other option to get the dumps or leaks.
Real link from Handala (dead): https://handala-team.to/kash-patel-current-director-of-the-f...
Archive: https://archive.ph/ILFFH
Download: https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxoxwyp7qosgdwldereecudqpbva/...
Password: handala
Anybody dug through it yet?
Is it legal to download something like this?
Legal or illegal doesn't really matter. If the regime wants to come for you they will.
Of course it's allowed. The gov will happily steal and buy all of your info. No problem to have it done to them.
Legality matters now least of all to either side.
I dont know. I think downloading it with Tor would make it almost impossible to find out you downloaded this stuff anyway.
You can't prove you didn't (and the fuzz will produce evidence you did).
I really want to know how they did it.. was it some terrible password?
He doesn't strike me as the kinda person even using a local password manager; like keepass.
Somebody needs to find this out.
I doubt it was gmail support... surely it could not be via his phone sim, and if he didn't have two factor on; That would be so funny.
I'm tempted to check out the dark web or the telegram, but i'd rather not do either of those things.
I too am very curious about this. Even if his password was exposed and he didn’t have 2-factor auth, doesn’t Google by default ask for confirmation — e.g. texting a number or backup email associated with the account — when seeing an unrecognized device? Maybe he didn’t have any alt contact methods associated with his account?
(which might not be that unusual, he’s old enough to have opened a gmail account upon launch, before extra info hoops were put in place, and maybe he never touched his account config in the past 2 decades?
You are probably right... I tend to change my password semi often. It's always a super complex impossible to remember string - and always keep an eye on the account activity.
Not to mention ; you would assume he should have more than one device linked to the account and then that adds another layer, since Google will ask you " is this you trying to logon ". <-- that is the only way to get Google to do the unrecognized flow you mention.
If you are suggesting it was exposed and he didn't immediately randomise all his passwords.. WORDS FAIL ME
It's all security 101 the irony is immense...
if the US government / FBI need someone to give some talks on how to do security ...
Changing a password that's randomly generated is security theatre. It doesn't meaningfully improve security
Also it's entirely possible they only compromised a honeypot.
Considering their track record, that's actually more likely tbh
Honeypot sure I didn't think of that.. But I was under the impression the FBI confirmed it ? So we can rule it out.
Making the password impossible to guess - how could that not be?
Since then you know you have a breach, as its randomised gibberish, if you then get the 2nd device asking " is this you trying to login " you can definitely know you are compromised....
I can't see your logic here, that isn't " theatre " ????
If you think that is theatre what is better then? Words and numbers.. easily brute forced.. Sorry can't agree.
Why would they willingly destroy their successful honeypot if the other party announced they've access to it?
I haven't seen what's in it either though, but I would not rule it out yet, especially when the FBI is involved - which love those tactics
When you're compromised, changing the password is obviously not theatre - but changing a password which is randomly generated with enough entropy is what's pointless theatre. A secure password is secure, esp. If you're already using a password manager then the act of changing isn't meaningfully increasing your security (unless you're aware that your password was compromised) because the way to compromise it is what...? Having a keylogger on a device you logged in on? Then the changed password will be just as compromised
That's why keepass is really useful since you aren't ever typing in the password.. its generated and then copied to the clipboard.. That clipboard is then wiped after X seconds.
So then you know that you have been rooted => If that fails to resolve it.
Reduce the number of vectors to know what you have to change asap. in this scenario you don't want to be guessing about how they did it.
The randomised gibberish just means you can rule out certain things. I can agree on part of what your saying but a string high entropy password, makes it harder to brute..
Many services don't really do that whole retries thing properly. So make it take as long as possible.
If you don't use a random gibberish your password can be cracked on any consumer device in a surprisingly short amount of time...
This way you can then focus on that a session token is probably how they got in.. It's the most common vector these days...
> On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said . . . .
Anybody have a link? You know, for science ...
Edit: Apparently, just last week the DoJ snatched their domains: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-i...
not all of them, search harder
So, to echo the previous comment, got a link?
"Search harder" is a pretty unfriendly response to a request for a link...
Just saying that there's a working link if you search. It's a useful information on its own.
There's no reason to post it directly. Their server is slow today even without adding lazy (ok, HN readers not interested in applying some effort to the matter) HN readers to the mix.
Forget the Iran attribution for a second. The FBI director's personal email was already in leaked credential databases from prior breaches.
Every now and then something happens that makes me wonder how the fuck America is number one, this being one of them.
One of the largest populations, and by extension, GDPs.
Bretton Woods, Petro dollar and Lindy effect?
Also the only major economy which didn't fight World War 2 on its own territory.
Boy are there some angry Pearl Harbour comments incoming...
Loads of natural resources, no local military threats, and historically a government that stayed out of the way and allowed individuals to reap the rewards of their efforts.
The first is almost impossible to screw up, though we're really trying on the last front.
We're ranked number one based on the summation of all the angsty teen America bad comments on social media. At least that is the stat the press goes off of I believe
Don't worry, it's on its way out.
America had the advantage of getting through WW2 relatively unscathed with lots of resources and intact infrastructure that it used to leverage against the reconstruction of Europe, Japan and the USSR and entrench its cultural and economic hegemony. Also the US essentially colonized the West with nuclear weapons under the guise of "Pax Americana" and making the dollar the reserve currency.
That's really it. Not moral superiority, not technical ingenuity, not the indomitable American spirit. Just imperialist opportunism.
Plus huge amounts of braindrain from all over the world after WW2 (originally from Europe, but nowadays mainly from India and China).
Number one based on what metric other than they constantly say they're number one?
Because America is a lot more than a podcaster put into a position that he has no qualifications for.
GMail, like Apple, has specific enhanced security programs available for Politically Exposed Persons:
https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/
The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of this just reiterates how incompetent he is, in addition to being corrupt as heck.
Read the article he wasn't the director of the FBI: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"
Are you suggesting that he was targeted before he became the director of the FBI? That seems unlikely. Once he became an obvious target surely the FBI should have secured his past, present and future communications. But I have no idea what protocols there are for such things, I'm just going off common sense, a notoriously sketchy starting point in the crazy world of the current US administration.
He was well known in the first Trump admin.
He's had over a year to enable it.
woah but even I haven't heard about that gmail feature...?
maybe google doesn't advertise about this much?
They absolutely advertised it when it was released and every journalist knows about it.
Kashmir Patel went out of his way to bypass security protocols for onboarding his political hires (for the US’s premiere domestic intelligence service!). If he wanted to be secure, all he had to do was not get in the way of the FBI’s natural processes.
Also, this wouldn’t have happened if POTUS had hired someone with relevant FBI experience instead of a political hack.
> POTUS had hired someone with relevant FBI experience instead of a political hack.
well what percentage of highly-rated FBI people have actually enabled that feature?
did FBI had some internal recommendation to enable that feature?
FBI isn't NSA people...
What are you talking about? There's literally a Cyber Crimes[0] division of the FBI, and they run the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF). They probably know a thing or two about cyber security for high-ranked governmental officials.
[0] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber
well by that logic, you can argue every top gov officials who didn't sign up for https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/ is incompetent, BECAUSE NSA IS part of the government ?
dude at least you should have brought an internal recommendation memo targeted all fbi people, not "but fbi has this and this division..."
lets say your college have astrophysics and other big departments. Are you really expert on those areas? Can you expect all highly-regarded professors to know most things from other departments? Do all 'competent' art professors know about astrophysics?
>well by that logic, you can argue every top gov officials who didn't sign up for https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/ is incompetent
I would, yes. Maybe a director in the Small Business Administration is lower on the target list of gov officials that would need to be concerned, but certainly anyone in the Departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, State, Transportation, Treasury, and probably Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for sure.
> BECAUSE NSA IS part of the government ?
I don't know why multiple times in this comment section you allude to the NSA as being the only Federal agency tasked with any sort of cyber security responsibility, that is just plain wrong.
>you should have brought an internal recommendation memo targeted all fbi people
Yes, because I have access to any and all internal memos provided by the FBI to their employees. Internal memos are by their very nature are internal, so are generally not available for public consumption.
Also, your higher ed example is terrible, because as someone with a work history at a flagship state university's IT department, I can assure you that we provide all sorts of "memos", trainings, and tools to combat cybercrime, including special onboarding sessions to ensure new hires are protecting themselves and the university. We don't depend on the Art and Physics departments to make sure they keep their faculty 'in-line' following best practices in cyber security.
wow... how dense are you?
do you even know what your soap your janitor uses?
do you even understand why I ask whether "internal recommendation memo for that product" exists? what differences it makes?
"as someone with a work history at a flagship state university's IT department, I can assure you..." ...ok so wtf was that advertisement? I did NOT ask what you do, but whether your 'customers' actually care and know the stuff.
...do you have an intelligence of a parrot? or are you some llm?
If only the Director of the FBI had access to some sort of investigative team, maybe more than one, maybe even enough that they use a collective term for it, something like, I don't know: bureau?
"Even you"?
Are you someone who would be inclined to look into something like that?
no but I've been interested in cryptography/anonimity stuff, so I see a lot of suggestions/advertisements related to those: signal, telegram, proton-mail, etc
Why would he, when he wasn't director of the FBI then?
You’re right. He was merely [checks notes]:
Not a big deal. No need for OpSec in those positions.Agree only a smart person would the sense in it.
Sick burn. Bet the dopamine hit was sweet.
It's possible it was breached in 2022 and they've held on to it until now.
He held very important positions in the US government before 2022, including in the SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020-2021.
This is just a sad story of a partisan hack who failed upwards into one of the most sensitive and powerful offices in the nation, simply for being a loyal sycophant, not merit.
From the article, he wasn't the director of the FBI for the time period the emails are from: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"
It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting anything worth hacking on gmail.
It is also possible he is an idiot. There are few valuable sentences that begin with "it is possible..."
To 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.
The same idiot who pushed him into SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020.
He shouldn’t be FBI Director and he shouldn’t have been in the DNI or Secretary of Staff for SecDef either. All of those are high positions of responsibility and require tremendous OpsSec. This guy’s first act as FBI Director was to waive most of the investigations into his staff to bypass security clearance checks.
Sorry if I’m not disagreeing with you. Sarcasm is a bit hard to identify these days.
World’s largest spy network? The FBI wouldn’t even be the largest spy network within the US.
The FBI is not a spy network.
You 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.
All 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.
> All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their life.
That claim deserves a source.
It's buried in EO12333
While 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.
Security in depth. Even if you think you don't have anything particularly valuable in there, you still protect it as if you did.
I'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".
Obviously 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.
There's so much speculation about how this hack could conceivably be damaging, but so little evidence that it actually contained anything damaging.
“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.
The 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.
Security 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.
No 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.
I 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.
Bad 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.
Trump bypassed clearance protocols for unclearable Jared. Nobody cares with an unaccountable executive.
> The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of this
well even I haven't seen/heard about this...
maybe google should advertise more?
(or... maybe I don't look important to google :( ?)
Was that landing page written by Google India team !
Uh yeah, the locale in the link is specifically an Indian locale. If you find it it disorienting you can change en_in to en_us:
https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/
The confusing thing is that googling "google advanced protection program" takes you to the en_in locale, even if you are in the US. An American has no clue what a crore is, so it is just an SEO failure on Google's part, which is funny. I didn't know there was an en_us equivalent to the page when I googled the topic.
> An American has no clue what a crore is
Really?
It's ten million of something, or (currently) about $11,000 US dollars in money.
You might also see "lakh" which is one hundred thousand of something, or about $1100 when it's used to describe money.
Now you know.
> or (currently) about $11,000 US dollars $110,000 US dollars
Oops, you're right. Don't do currency conversions in your head, folks.
Not sure what difference the nationality of the copywriters makes…
It doesn’t really tell you where the copywriters were from but you notice that the locale of the page is Indian because the numbers are given in crore.
if this was a few years ago I would even say here on "hacker" news we could probably notice the indian locale in the damn URL and save an entire subthread of racial offtopic
"Gmail blocks over 10 crore phishing attempts every day."
Petty racism, probably linked to the FBI director's ethnicity.
Crores are pretty distinctive.
Well, it was written to target Indian English. You can find the American version of the page at https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/ .
It would be poetic justice to get the unredacted Epstein files via Iran...
Real link from Handala (dead): https://handala-team.to/kash-patel-current-director-of-the-f...
Archive: https://archive.ph/ILFFH
Download: https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxoxwyp7qosgdwldereecudqpbva/...
Password: handala
Was he running openclaw on his unpenetrable system by any chance?
A great many experts in the military, medicine, disaster relief, and cybersecurity { the list goes on } were fired.
It's almost as if the nation were being weakened on purpose.
Don't get mad, get Vlad. Or just prepare for the long-desired Rapture.[0] and which politicians seem to be working very hard to being about (the Apocalypse part, anyway)
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/29/us/iran-israel-evangelicals-p...
> Prophecy, not politics, may also shape America’s clash with Iran
So, is prophecy OK in a pitch deck? Asking for a friend.
Its both dumber and more dangerous than that. Competent people are not valuable to governments that value loyalty more than competence.
"Competent" people are not valuable and over rated because they will flake out in such jobs when the group holds them responsible for all sorts of things they have no control over. They are the first people who recognize lumits. Their own, their teams and the systems. But people dont want to hear about Limits. They want saviors and messaihs. They want fantasy and magic. So the system runs not optimized for efficiency but illusion of control, for damping of anxieties and fears.
Over 90% of my managers got into their positions by either stabbing someone in the back, or walking across their dead body.
That's how hierarchies work. It's an circumstantial constraint. Some people just keep trying to make hierarchies permanent for whatever reason.
and that will be there eventual downfall luckily.
The Manchurian Candidate.
When do the Raptor puppets go on sale?
Yes, the “experts” like the head of the HHS that was a lawyer and former DA in California.
Were any of the people fired responsible for security on personal gmail accounts?
no paywall for the CNN article: https://archive.ph/Pz81T
For real, I wouldn't be shocked if Trump drafted everyone between 18 and 42, sent them all to Iran and then let Israel nuke Iran
No, I’m convinced the one thing that Trump wants to do is to launch a nuke before he dies. That’s what he wants his legacy to be. and his name everywhere.
No. DRAFT ICE!
Oh, and ...I'm sure it will be embarrassing for him personally, but not a breach of U.S. government systems.
Kudos to CNN for publishing a balanced take on it.
These are a group that used outside signal chats to discuss war plans. What odds do you have that he didn't use a personal email to avoid future accountability?
That’s depressingly common with politicians the world over because Signal supports disappearing messages.
So I wouldn’t expect someone who uses Signal to automatically be the kind of person to use personal email for work.
You're assuming that he didn't use personal email for his FBI "work".
The leak is from 2011-2022. He wasn't in the government then!!!!
per Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
> In some cases, Patel appears to have sent emails from his former Justice Department email address in 2014 to his Gmail account. TechCrunch found that the emails sent from Patel’s DOJ account also appeared to be authentic.
Are you kidding? He had extremely sensitive roles as Devin Nunes' House committee aide from 2017–2019 in the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, National Security Council aide and deputy director of national intelligence (2019–2020), and then Chief of staff to the secretary of defense (2020–2021).
I wonder how much of 2021. Two FBI agents reported that he was the bag man for payments to alter Jan 6 cases.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/us/politics/house-weaponi...
Maybe something fun about his book. https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/19555...
What a weird looking book. The cover shows Trump as the king, lol Anyways, if i were a parent, i'd certainly try to do everything to prevent my kids (under 10) from getting into politics. Let them live as normal kids should.
Patel is a weird little goblin for sure.
The US media has a clear understanding that their reporting on the war needs to be filtered and biased. This is not some coming-to-their-senses against sensationalism, but a nothingburger they know they can't sensationalize without great risk.
As is the case in any administration; let alone with an admin as vindictive as Trump's.
This "balanced take" warrants kudos?
We're not even pretending to lift the bar off the ground when it comes to mainstream media, are we?
If you check their telegram channel they have some humorous photos and his resume.
This is great.
It couldn't happen to a more corrupt person and organization!
The Handala group has promised even more.
Get it while it's hot!
Clowns, all the way down.
Unfair to clowns, a noble profession.
counterexample is serial killer John Wayne Gacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy#/media/File:Jo...
Prefer the title “jesters”
That’s arguably even more objectionable of a term. Jester’s role was often a critical one in the court system, serving as deliverer of uncomfortable messages in light hearted ways and often also confidant to the monarch.
These rather evil and cruel bumbling fools are an insult to clowns and jesters alike. Maybe “fool” is the applicable term.
the sensible middle of the road between clowns on the left and the jokers on the right.
Its hard to keep this smile off my face
…here I am stuck in the middle with you… ♪
flicks open a straight razor
When the clown moves into the palace it doesn’t make him the king, the palace becomes a circus
I wonder how many others are hacked but remain undiscovered
Considering 95% of spam that hits my inbox originates from compromised Gmail accounts, I'd say it's a few.
Because Google is too big to fail, all Gmail traffic is essentially whitelisted and they can't be bothered to do anything about it.
Almost all phishing attempts at my domain are from google. Many Norton subscription bills for around $350. I report every single one to google. I can’t believe they aren’t using there AI to figure this out.
> I can’t believe they aren’t using there AI to figure this out.
Why would they burn compute on it when they have zero incentive to fix the problem?
Meanwhile have a complaint volume of more than 0.1% and they'll consider you extremely suspicious and start actively interfering with your deliveries.
Then you get into the forgotten early 2000s era google "postmaster tools" to try to poke through the chicken entrails to divine the nature of your issue.
Google was banned from Usenet once, so there's hope. Every single provider was so fed up with spam they just blocked the whole network.
It always will be. The FBI is scandal prone and a stranger to success. I'm not entirely sure a large federal apparatus is needed anymore. It maybe made sense when local police were poorly trained and psychics were seen as credible investigative tools, but, I think we're well past that. I think it should be chopped into 50 pieces and handed over to the states to operate. A small coordinating office is all that should be left.
Username checks out, I guess!
Seriously though I'm not so sanguine about local forces. Assuming the local PD is well trained seems like a big if, to say nothing of the risk of localized pressure or corruption. Eg would the local sheriff of a county with a very large employer be able to effectively investigate and bring charges against it? Being able to bring in federal LE brings a certain impartiality to those sorts of cases.
With FOIA and Body Worn Cameras I think we're in far better position to demand accountability from local police and sheriffs. Two tools the FBI are not compelled to comply with or deploy and which many state police agencies also resist using.
In any case I think you'd want to remove their enforcement mandate and instead refocus them on information gathering and rapid secure distribution, tailored forensic investigations, and on creating, monitoring and refining police best practices and training programs.
More than clowns, they’re all fools.
Not just that, clowns and jesters played critical and culturally significant roles.
“Fools” is not only not an insult to clowns and jesters, but it’s far more accurate.
I would even say without any necessary religious perspective, these people are like the origins of the term and concept of “demons”, entities representing the most heinous and nefarious instincts and impulses of humanity so vile and repulsive that they had to be emanations of hell. How would you even makes sense of such evil behavior back then. They didn’t know what the dark triad of personality flaws was, narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism (yes, I understand it’s an erroneous label, but it’s the one used).
Did you write the software that allowed him to get hacked in the first place?
Looking good there, murica, looking good
But his emails!
From the administration that brought us "We are currently clean on OPSEC", I can't claim surprise. Disappointment, but not surprise.
Nor, however, can I take the statements of malicious actors at face value. They hacked a personal email address, but that does not mean "the FBI’s security was nothing more than a joke".
These government officials are idiots. Jeffery Epstein, idiot. Why do even rich and powerful use easily hackable stuff?
Lest us not forget bObama@yahoo.com or the IT guy who worked for the Clinton foundation who posted about bleachbit on recdit
Obama's old personal email was at defunct ISP ameritech.net, not Yahoo. I only remember because that's the ISP I grew up with.
Trump using yourefired as his Twitter password well into his 2016 campaign was amazing, too.
I'm surprised he put the 'e' on 'you're'.
Ameritech.net was backed by yahoo’s mail and IIRC, joefish@ameritech.net and joefish@yahoo.com would be the same mailbox.
Idiots
Because they are experts in acquiring riches and power, not experts in computer security.
I can't help but interpret these stories as psyops
This is one of the risks of dating a Mossad agent.
Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email
Perhaps a little embarrassing related to communications security but come on, of all the people's email to grab they had to grab one of the most boring individuals? Ice hokey, cigars, classic cars...? Is that taboo in Iran? It is not taboo in the USA.
Be careful Iran. The country you are targeting know how to use AI and can make ultra realistic videos and images of your leaders doing unspeakable things and upload them to decentralized platforms. Such things can not be erased from the internet.
Where did the article go?
I wonder if the Nazi cabinet was as bizarre as the current America cabinet...
>“This isn’t an FBI compromise — it’s someone’s personal junk drawer,” he said.
Eh, with how many people in the current administration seem to use out of band channels to communicate very important things who knows what else they located.
This isn’t a written by a human — it's a AI-accelerated piece.
As if this is the first time this has ever happened.
How many former officials used personal accounts about government business?
How many corporate executives communicate business via personal accounts to avoid legal discovery?
How many individuals communicate outside their main email accounts to avoid scrutiny or attribution?
Point is, nobody should feel superior or shocked that such things like this happen. I understand some enjoy the privacy of their perceived enemies being exposed, but IMHO, nobody should be happy about invasion of anyone's privacy.
Most incompetent administration in the modern era.
Think about it this way, this administration is the most competent administraion we've ever had at being incompetent.
I dont know why your comment got grayed out but it made me smile.
Not surprising as email providers like Yahoo's security are a joke. A former CIA director got his personal emailed pwned as well.
Oh a while ago everything bad that happened to or in the US was the fault of Russians, now I guess it's gonna be Iranians.
It’s an administration filled with incompetent fools whose only expertise is in grifting.
This hack of his emails is hilarious, though. And it made my day.
"Iran, if you're listening..."
How the heck is the buried down to page 4 after one hour?? The head of the FBI having his email hacked is a pretty big tech story.
Lots of personal opinions and low-effort jabs in this thread.
Negative voting.
Imagine a world where gpg encryption was the norm instead of something that only works reliably in Emacs.
This wouldn't have happened if Kash Patel used Emacs, that's right.
You know, thats really my main takeaway from all this. Once you really boil it down
I think it's a pretty cynical take that an Emacs user will never be made FBI director.
are you saying someone can’t key information into an NCIC profile with EMacs? Ha! furious typing
aw damn, you're keying my information into an NCIC profile right now aren't you!!?
How would GPG help? GPG is as safe as your private key is. If someone gets "hacks you" and gets access to your private key, it's over
GPG keys are typically guarded much better than emails, that's the whole point. Accessing e-mails can be done by guessing a password, to get to the key you basically need command execution on the target's client system.
https://dangerousthings.com/product/apex-flex/
But just a personal account with materials reportedly from 2011-2022, not an FBI breach
JFC. This does not belong on HN. Look at the discussion. Nothing but politics.
If you read the news with enough cynicism, you'll realize that rules like formality, password strength or cybersecurity hygiene are for the average Joes, not the morons/perverts who run the world.
No worries. As long as rigorous due diligence was followed when vetting him as a candidate, there will surely be nothing embarrassing or harmful found in his personal emails.
Iran... if you're listening...
We'd love to see all of those Epstein files.
Is this a reference to
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...
> "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said in a July 27, 2016 news conference.
Haha - yes exactly.
They'd be a couple years late on that.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/foreign-hacker-2023-comprom... (reported last year)
I'm sorry but nothing can ever be more embarrassing for that man who wrote this book to get that job
https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/19555...
What an absolute clown
But far more seriously, imagine the danger he has put this country into by firing so many critical people, some specifically and uniquely for Iran and Middle-East defense
Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it coming, maybe even on purpose
> Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it coming, maybe even on purpose
Why would anyone bother to attack us now? This entire administration has done more to make The US weak and vulnerable than any outside attacker could have hoped to accomplish. They can just sit back and watch rome burn
> Why would anyone bother to attack us now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
We've given a lot of people a lot of reasons to hate us sure, but no matter how much you hate someone, if you see them kicking their own ass it just makes sense to let them finish before you jump in.
How am I only finding out about this now... my sides
This is the end of his high profile bureaucrat career. Inevitably, something will show up in the emails that will get airplay as embarrassing to Trump, and Trump will just say that he should have protected his password better and ask for his resignation.
He doesn't have a face for Fox News, so he'll have to try to parlay his past closeness with the administration for lobbyist money, but if he gets shunned by the people left in the administration, he's got to go back to his public defender job.
But ... but her emails!
I mean, yes? You can give whatever weight you want to the whole thing, but the core issue with Hillary Clinton and the emails was that she was storing material on a private server rather than in official infrastructure.
If Patel didn't do such thing here, the breach should only expose personal stuff, if he did, then it's much more of a problem, but either way this is a really clear example of why concern was raised back at the time.
I’m surprised no group has hacked the Epstein files, given the extreme interest.
hacking groups are generally funded by the people that are in the files. -> government leaders.
Hegseth - Signal app
Noem - habeas corpus definition she gave at the Congress hearing
Kennedy Jr - vaccines and the rest of his view on medicine
Now Patel's unhackable FBI.
I think the world has changed, and i really need to update my expectations of what is new normal. It is like in tech when paradigm shift happens, and you're either go with the new paradigm or get irrelevant.
If Idiocracy was made today, I wonder how far in the future they’d place it. In 2006, they thought 500 years which seems optimistic now.
We’re way beyond Idiocracy now, we left that timeline six years ago.
For all his flaws, Camacho was a good leader - he recognised there was a problem, knew he couldn’t fix it and actively rallied the world around the one person who could.
This bunch of dipshits expressly denigrated the experts, refused to take the slightest precaution to protect themselves and others from a deadly virus and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And that’s not even thinking about the industrial levels of fuckery and bullshit they’ve perpetrated over the last year.
Camacho is aspirational at this point. I would have a lot of sympathy for someone trying to do the right thing but unaware what that is.
Go away, 'batin'!
> caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Excess mortality in the US during the pandemic was around 1.2 million.
Yes, people forget that in the early days of the pandemic, they were playing political games with PPE, sending it to red states with no population or cases, while NYC was running out of space in hospitals. It got so bad, RFK's grandson became a whistleblower because he was dismayed that he and other 20-somethings with no relevent experience were in charge of the government response.
That kind of executive negligence and dereliction of duty absolutely cost lives.What Kennedy described during COVID is now the entire government from top to bottom. DOJ, FBI, DOD, FEMA, DHS, ICE, NASA, USPS, SSA etc etc, rotting from the head.
[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/robert-f-kennedys-grandson-w...
It would literally just be a compilation of TikToks
Future? I'm thinking a Borat style mockumentary in the present.
I think it's the future of entertainment. Ruthlessly mocking idiots in power (and others). To be honest it's the present of some entertainment.
What's the use of mockery after they bombed a girls' school and killed at least 175 innocent people? I'd like to see the IRGC erased off the face of the Earth, but not like this. This is exponentially worse than Bush jr. reading a children's book on 9/11.
Don't forget "the files are on my desk" and many other classics.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” ~Hannah Arendt
i'm from USSR, so pretty familiar with it. The issue here is whether it is a fluke, or the world is really going into new phase where totalitarianism and authoritarianism are going to become dominating state of affairs.
For example many attribute rise of totalitarianism back then in 20th century to the power of broadcasting radio and "formation of mass society". We have a similarly transformative factor now - social media. And with the new tech power - propaganda (sounds dated, today it is more like mind control) through social media and total surveillance plus AI "minority report" - we can get a hyper-totalitarianism orders of magnitude more totalitarian than those of the 20th century. And may be we're witnessing the birth of such a new world order.
Totalitarianism and authoritarianism has been the norm for the majority of human history. The last century of technological progress created a bubble where the power of sycophancy wasn't strong enough to counteract the power of actual technology. Now that the technology is widely distributed and easily available to sycophants, and that they've had time to learn how to leverage the technology, sycophancy again brings an advantage.
The people of the US were converted into functional Putin-subservient Russians for the last election, and the media environment is not getting better, and in fact seems to be getting much worse.
However there is revolt amongst a good chunk of the fractured coalition that barely brought Trump into office.
Trump's Epstein coverup and sheltering of Ghislaine Maxwell took off the shine with a large number of people. The ghastly behavior around the deaths of major figures takes off more. Exempting producers of the pesticide glyphosate has taken off most of the MAHA coalition. And then, of course the wars, when he promised not to launch any and accused his opponent of doing exactly what he's currently doing...
It remains to be seen just how permanent this is, and whether the post-Trump US can be reattached to reality instead of reality TV, but I use hope.
Unfortunately that leaves us with the Democrats who have shown time and again that they are unwilling or unable to confront this movement for what it is.
I'm frankly far more concerned that the Republicans lose next election, and we get Democrats in power who then prioritize "getting back to normal" and once again utterly failing to hold accountable the utter BUFFET of mediocre wannabe dictators who brought us to the brink already.
I also hope. But I'd be lying if I said I thought it was rational.
The real fear is that they don't solve any of the problems that caused this in the first place... it's not about some vindictive punishment, it's about solving the problem.
I beg to differ, as I see it, it's both. Solving the problem necessarily entails punishing the malicious actors attempting to subvert and demolish our governance, justice system, society and way of life. Allowing Jan 6th to go unpunished at the highest levels was a key factor in what brought us here.
> demolish our governance, justice system, society and way of life
"Our" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There were many "ours" whose ways of life, governance, and society were destroyed on the road to making the Jan 6th thing possible..
>The people of the US were converted into functional Putin-subservient Russians
It's crazy that you continue to push this narrative despite the entire "Russia-Gate" thing turning out to total bullshit oppo followed by Trump being currently at war with one of Putin's allies and having jailed another.
The evidence supporting this claim is what, he wasn't nice to Zelenskyy that one time (despite still financially supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia)?
The Russians certainly did interfere in the 2016 election. It was not bullshit.
Define "interfere". Be specific.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Authoritarianism is a spectrum and all states are on it. We all have brain slugs now, it was voluntary. We'll be going back to that old time religion, but with a new twist. With AI every man will, in a much more literal way, be able to have an ongoing private conversation with god. And you won't need money or the government anymore. God has a special plan for you and you follow it.
Totalitarianism is not becoming more popular. Russia is not totalitarian, Venezuela is not totalitarian, and even China is not really totalitarian anymore.
These are authoritarian countries. Meaning that they don't have an official ideology, the real one that has people willing to die for it. If anything, they are focused on suppressing people and keeping them passive.
Iran is a notable exception here. They _are_ a totalitarian theocratic state, and this makes them more resilient. They are not governed by a single person but by ideology, even if it's unpopular among the people.
Authoritarian states are fragile in comparison. They struggle to survive the removal of their leader, especially the ones that had governed for a long time. The long-time ruler inevitably becomes the arbiter between the elites, a focal point of their undercover agreements.
And once the ruler is gone, the elites are now faced with a new round of struggles. So the smarter ones decide that perhaps it's a good idea to have some kind of collegial power, where people can discuss their disagreements rather than shoot each other. This usually results in the country becoming milder and not so carnivorous towards its citizens.
The USSR was a good example. Stalin died, and his successors decided that a new Stalin was not a good idea. Instead, they gave power to the Politburo, where the General Secretary was "the first among equals". The USSR did not become a human rights paradise afterwards. But it never had any more mass purges, deportations, or mega-projects built with slave labor of GULAG inmates.
>Totalitarianism is not becoming more popular. Russia is not totalitarian,
Russia is totalitarian today. It transitioned from authoritarian to totalitarian slowly starting about second half of 201x and very quickly down hill during 2022 with the introduction of all those "discreditation" laws and the likes and especially with extreme hardening of application of such laws.
>Meaning that they don't have an official ideology, the real one that has people willing to die for it.
That is the point. In a contrast to being just a kleptocracy for the first ~15 years of Putin, Russia does have such an ideology at the state level today - "Russian world" (known outside as "Russian fascism" - "rushism") with Ukranian war (where at least several hundred thousands of Russians have already died) being one of the real-world implementations of that ideology.
> Russia is totalitarian today.
It's really not. There is no ideology. There are no mass rallies in support of the government. No official sets of books, there's no "My Struggle" by Putin that everyone in the country needs to have.
> That is the point. In a contrast to being just a kleptocracy for the first ~15 years of Putin, Russia does have such an ideology at the state level today - "Russian world"
Not really. It's trying to do that, but it looks comical even for people inside Russia. Even true believers in "Russian World" are now either dead or silenced. Russian government systematically punishes _any_ true belief.
Another example to watch is Venezuela. I predict that it'll slowly transform into being a more open country, with at least some electoral freedom. It won't become a liberal democracy overnight, but it won't be completely authoritarian for long.
>There are no mass rallies in support of the government.
for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzaoHPWfkbE
>No official sets of books,
new unified history textbook. The "Talks about Important" school ideology lessons. Putin's propaganda article on Ukraine history (of course no relation to real history).
>It's really not. There is no ideology.
the foundational ideology of a fascist state is "interests of state trump any and all rights/freedoms/interests of an individual". One can see that in Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Mussolini's Italy, and in Putin's Russia these days. Of course that was also the case in Germany in 1933-1945, yet the Germany went further - it was a fascism where state had a political nationalism as an official ideology. Similarly Russian state in recent years took "Russian world" as its official ideology, and thus now you see Lebensraum, Volksgemeinschaft, Blut and Boden and Dolchstoßlegende in the words and actions of Russian state.
>Not really. It's trying to do that, but it looks comical even for people inside Russia.
There is nothing comical here. One of the cornerstone of "Russian world" ideology is Russians being the master-nation (and by the way the words to pretty much that effect were even put into the Russian Constitution in 2020) while Ukranians are declared "inferior". The state TV openly talks about "Ukrainess" being a brain decease needing eradication (reminds a lot how "Jewishness" was talked about back then in Germany). It definitely lost any chance of being even remotely comical when they actually declared and started that eradication in 2022.
>Even true believers in "Russian World" are now either dead or silenced. Russian government systematically punishes _any_ true belief.
State ideology never requires true believers. Even more - true believer may happen to follow his/her beliefs even when state orders the other way - that of course would conflict with the basic tenets of totalitarian state.
> for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzaoHPWfkbE
That was electoral event with mandatory presence. This is nothing like Stalin's rallies where people themselves organized and attended, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6bzBTmmhU
> new unified history textbook. The "Talks about Important" school ideology lessons. Putin's propaganda article on Ukraine history (of course no relation to real history).
Yup. They are _trying_ but without at least semi-coherent ideology, it just looks comical. I suggest reading that textbook, it's just trash. It's badly written and is just a collection of unconnected facts. All it can teach is the late USSR norm: "Say what they want to hear, think what you want, and do what you actually need to do".
There can be no ideology in an authoritarian state, ideology binds the leadership. Khomeini in Iran can't just go to a gay party or eat during Ramadan. Putin (and his ilk like Maduro) does not want to get limited in any way.
> the foundational ideology of a fascist state is "interests of state trump any and all rights/freedoms/interests of an individual"
If you want to talk about fine details of political science, then fascism is not necessarily totalitarian. It can be practiced in a far-right authoritarian state. Nazism is indeed different, and it _is_ a totalitarian ideology.
Nazism had its foundational work ("Mein Kampf") and a doctrine fortified by a set of "scientific" proofs of German superiority. And they had plenty of true believers, including the actual core of the Nazi party. It also imposed binding restrictions on everyone. For example, nobody in the Nazi party could (openly) marry a Jewish person and expect to stay in power.
Putin doesn't want any of this. He loves that one day the US is the enemy number one for him, and the next day Trump is his best friend.
> The state TV openly talks about "Ukrainess" being a brain decease needing eradication (reminds a lot how "Jewishness" was talked about back then in Germany).
Yes, and these TV channels now have less popularity than gardening channels. This is another point of difference. In a totalitarian state, the ideology must be, well, _total_ and omnipresent.
The Russian government is trying to make sure the war stays as invisible as possible. Try to find any mentions of it here: https://yandex.com/maps/-/CPVwbS-t
> It definitely lost any chance of being even remotely comical when they actually declared and started that eradication in 2022.
Unfortunately, you don't need ideology to wage wars.
> State ideology never requires true believers.
It does. And that is the true difference. A significant part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran really sincerely believes that they're fighting for Islam. It's not _just_ a way for them to get into power to run protection rackets.
>Yes, and these TV channels now have less popularity than gardening channels.
Nobody knowing anything about Russia would make such a gross mistake like you've just made. It is like you'd be discussing physics problems while not knowing Newton's laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Russia
"Television is the most popular medium in Russia, with 74% of the population watching national television channels routinely "
As it happens you just don't know what you're talking about. Most of the other things you said about Russia is similarly just incorrect. It looked strange to me how and what you've been arguing about, and in good faith i thought that we're discussing while each being well informed, and may be you just have different opinion/view and may be a bit less understanding and information than me. Well, it happens you just don't know basically anything about Russia. In such a case instead of arguing, you should just look for and consume the information, and not waste other people's time with uninformed arguments.
Only the best people
The real paradigm shift is coming in 2028.
I don't think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was a celebrity buffoon/reality show personality for decades before "politics". Stupid people eat that up. Other Trumpy candidates have not been able to reproduce his success. Let's not assume this is the new normal.
I heard some of the best advice I ever heard at a Subgenius devival in Dallas in the 80s: "Act like a dumb-shit and they'll treat you like an equal." Every year that quip seems more and more relevant.
I don’t think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was the only candidate explicitly saying they were working to Make America Great Again, as opposed to foreign interests or illegals.
I recently read one of the best descriptions of why middle of the road, non wealthy voters went for Trump in the book "The King in Orange," a book about the "magickal" aspects of the 2016 campaign by John Michael Greer, the former (?) head of the Ancient Order of Druids in America.
I expect cogent commentary about ritual magick by a Druid, but was a little surprised to find well laid out political commentary. I guess that was a failure of my imagination. Worth a read, even if you consider the topic bollocks. Greer sticks mostly to psychology and musings about using metaphor to engineer the mass imagination. Much less woo-woo than you might expect.
I mention it in support of the previous poster's commentary about the Dems messaging being irrelevant to most Americans. Seemed to me middle America doesn't love Trump as much as they weren't able to hear Harris address any issues they were concerned about.
I can recommend The King in Orange, What's the Matter with Kansas and Metaphors We Live By for more musings about such things.
Wat we are witnessing is not just traditional totalitarianism, but the emergence of a suicidal state driven by a fascist death drive.
Under MAGA, the state no longer pretends to be guided internally by reason and progress, but is instead founded on non progress and terror, a scorched earth approach to slashing government agencies, and the accelerated destruction of state institutions: rather than seeking to resolve societal crises, MAGA produces constant crises to feed off of, preferring to annihilate its own systems rather than stop the destruction.
Yes, the world has changed. We have entered a reality where insanity has become the goal of the authoritarians, ie the self-destruction itself is the actual end goal.
BRING IT ON
I'm no fan of this administration, at all, but this seems like a big fat nothingburger. They hacked a personal gmail account, not a government account, not government infra. Why is this not a failing of Google instead of the government? And surely the hackers would have eagerly released anything damning, but nothing damning seems to exist. What am i missing here?
Remember when this admin used a Signal group chat to coordinate an operation against Houthi forces in Yemen and left in some journalists. Do you think he cares care whether he sent an email with his gov email on a gov device or if he sent it with his personal email?
you don't think that it's relevant and concerning that the director of the FBI didn't take operational security seriously enough that his account got compromised? even if they didn't get anything incriminating (which maybe they did and are going to blackmail him later) that show a shocking lack of competency for someone in that kind of position.
we don't even know how it was compromised. was his password "password", or did the hackers exploit a gmail/google vulnerability?
i think the facts of the matter are that a gmail vulnerability is on the very low likelihood kind of event. they wouldn't burn their insanely valuable vulnerability on showing how much of a fratboy kash is. the most likely possibility is that he either clicked on something dumb and gave access through phishing(really bad) or had a really weak password without 2fa(also really bad).
are you suggesting the former is not a demonstration of a shocking lack of competency?
I'm suggesting we don't know how the account was hacked, which is true. could be due to incompetence or not. i don't know, nor do you
True, but don't you think the FBI director should be held to higher standards of security hygiene than average people? Because I'm interpreting your tone as "it could happen to anyone". At some point the doubt is gone and there's no more benefit to give...
Comments in this thread mostly reflect people’s own biases, that is a shallow projection based on the headline.
Did the director have his email on a vulnerable server? Yes. Yes he did.
He should have known better.
Operational security doesn’t apply to personal accounts, no? Otherwise, they wouldn’t be personal.
It's not a big deal, for the reasons you mentioned. But it's interesting to a lot of people, and therefore newsworthy.
it's definitely newsworthy, no doubt there. but i see so many people in this thread pointing to this as somehow a failing of the fbi, which it's not. i'm all for calling out this administration for its many many failings, but this is not one of them, and calling this a failure of the administration just hurts the credibility of everyone pointing out real issues with this administration.
True yeah. but uh anyway what about HILLARYS EMAILS we need to hear about those for the next 4 decades (no convictions despite "Lock Her Up" slogans for 5 years)
People are concerned because every government official uses their personal email for work.
The director of the FBI should not be hacked in anyway ever for any reason.
If Gmail isn’t secure, he should be using something else.
How is this a failing of Google? They can't be blamed for users who fail to secure their own accounts.
just think of what could someone do if they got into your personal email account?
yes, and...?
Major public figure who is currently in a position of power in the USA. That’s bad news because it reveals sensitive details which may lead to their further compromise. Imagine you’re compromised by a corrupt administration with pics of CSAM or something already, now imagine a foreign actor also having compromised you. It’s a sticky situation.
Yes, that's all true, all potential issues in theory. I'm still not seeing why this points to or supports the (valid) claim of incompetence in the FBI. That seems to be the angle most posters in this thread are taking, and it seems...misguided to me. Tilting at windmills. Let's call out the admin for their real failings, not nonsense like this. Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional.
> "Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional."
Doesn't it though? Especially when your profession involves the security of a nation and you can't even secure your own personal email account successfully?
Shouldn't the FBI be protecting its own members -- especially its executives -- personal digital footprint, given the risk?
Leaking one’s credentials to sensitive personal repositories of information is a “real failing” lol, how could one think any differently? I would be mortified and immediately rectify the situation.
> Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional.
Why not? Most professionals at larger organizations have to do security training. These kinds of attacks are far less likely to succeed on anyone who follows the basic precautions taught in such training. E.g., if he had MFA enabled on his account - as he certainly should have had - they would not have been able to compromise it externally, i.e. it would have had to be much more than his email that was hacked.
I don’t get the propensity some people seem to have for defending this shameful collection of incompetent criminals, bullies, and clowns.
> Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional
If you work in security: it *absolutely does*, because 99+% of the time you are the primary contributing factor, whether from password reuse or downloading malware or clicking bad links or opening random emails or being susceptible to social engineering, etc.
If you are the head of a security organization: obviously you should not expect to retain that job, as your poor reputation is now an albatross around the company's neck.
If you are the head of the FBI: lol. lmao. what the actual fuck. my money is on someone spearfished him with an email subject about a book deal and he'll just click fucking anything.
Certainly the FBI and GMail having gaps in their operational information security isn't news.
Do you think the FBI manages his personal email?
Kind of defeats the purpose of it being a personal email don't you think?
The FBI does because he is included in "the FBI"
I read the headline and first thought was seriously, that's it? Surely this is one of the least concerning things about the administration
Iranian. Not bloody likely! Try Israeli-tied propagandists. Poke the hornets nest much?
Aren't most exploits that get used, shared through black markets anyway? So Saying Xcountry-linked hackers, is just saying who ponied up the bitcoin to pay for the attack?
This is quite misleading and partisan to present this as "FBI director's personal email" when the emails far predate his current role.
If I had downloaded those emails, which I haven't because I know of no website that archives the internet, and if I had read them, which I haven't because that would be a breach of someone's privacy, then certainly I would have figured out that it contains no spicy state secrets. But why spend one hour assessing an information when you can get clicks by suggesting something bigger?
Those supposedly Iranian hackers surely know how to hack the western media to get attention.
I found it actually more informative to read on the sad history of the Dena, the ship whose victims this leak was dedicated to, so it's not been a complete waste of time.