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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email
gigatexal wrote 7 hours 6 min ago:
Itâs 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.
gsibble wrote 8 hours 42 min ago:
JFC. This does not belong on HN. Look at the discussion. Nothing but
politics.
WhereIsTheTruth wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
I can't help but interpret these stories as psyops
vcryan wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
This is one of the risks of dating a Mossad agent.
Teknomadix wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
Iranian. Not bloody likely!
Try Israeli-tied propagandists. Poke the hornets nest much?
totetsu wrote 8 hours 33 min ago:
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?
KnuthIsGod wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
I wonder if the Nazi cabinet was as bizarre as the current America
cabinet...
Bender wrote 11 hours 31 min ago:
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.
phtrivier wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
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 ?
dijit wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
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.
marcosdumay wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
> 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.
cineticdaffodil wrote 8 hours 42 min ago:
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.
zzzeek wrote 10 hours 8 min ago:
Why not look for historical examples? There should be hundreds not
to mention the obvious ones?
greenavocado wrote 10 hours 24 min ago:
> can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge ?
Absolutely, it happened before on January 30, 1933
pqtyw wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
> border-line (to be polite) corrumption
Hard to imagine what would constitute "full blown corruption" based
on this standard?
panta wrote 9 hours 37 min ago:
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?
philipov wrote 9 hours 25 min ago:
Yes. Only people who are used to living in non-corrupt countries
presume corruption is covert.
hillarycliton wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
Referencing Hillaryâs 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.
LightBug1 wrote 8 hours 42 min ago:
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.
eszed wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
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.
cagenut wrote 12 hours 30 min ago:
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.
miki123211 wrote 11 hours 7 min ago:
"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.
SmirkingRevenge wrote 8 hours 45 min ago:
> 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.
craftkiller wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
I'd say the bigger issue in 2016 was the Russian interference,
which has been proven and has lead to convictions: [1] >
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.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_th...
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge...
rattlesnakedave wrote 7 hours 50 min ago:
The Russian collusion narrative has been completely debunked.
esseph wrote 7 hours 27 min ago:
Really?
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_investigation_o...
ses1984 wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
How was Cambridge analytica debunked?
whoiskevin wrote 10 hours 36 min ago:
"Both sides" is the biggest cop out of the last decade.
b00ty4breakfast wrote 12 hours 36 min ago:
>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
bergoid wrote 13 hours 55 min ago:
>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).
URI [1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/clinton-emails-l...
windexh8er wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
> HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails
couldn't be more different.
But it is literally no different than what the Trump administration
did [0] after all of their finger pointing. Idiocracy runs deep
across both political camps.
[0]
URI [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/18/federal-officials...
jasonlotito wrote 9 hours 28 min ago:
> 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.
phainopepla2 wrote 7 hours 36 min ago:
> 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.
tootie wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
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.
UncleMeat wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
Was it equally grave when Colin Powell did the same thing?
hillarycliton wrote 11 hours 35 min ago:
Yes. That man lied us into the Iraq war. He is a traitor.
testaccount28 wrote 10 hours 38 min ago:
my standard for criminal acts is also whether i don't like the
guy.
_heimdall wrote 13 hours 16 min ago:
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.
bananalychee wrote 8 hours 15 min ago:
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.
YZF wrote 7 hours 56 min ago:
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.
jasonlotito wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
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.
greenavocado wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
> 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
URI [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220331092216/https://www.a...
azinman2 wrote 10 hours 45 min ago:
I think we all know the answer to thatâ¦
razakel wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
The coup has already happened.
edg5000 wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
We'd have to look at the longest-running democracies and observe how
they handled periodic refactorings
kingleopold wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
âA 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.â
â Alexander Fraser Tytler
ineedasername wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
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.
kergonath wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
> 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".
tolciho wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
Athens spending like drunken sailors during the Peloponnesian
War and the subsequent Oligarchical Coup dâEtat comes to
mind. Or must the dictator be just one person and not a bunch
of Orwell's pigs?
hluska wrote 8 hours 0 min ago:
If the Central Intelligence Agencyâs definition of âloose
fiscal policyâ is good enough, Pinochetâs rise is a good
example.
epsteingpt wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
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.
hluska wrote 7 hours 59 min ago:
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.
blurbleblurble wrote 8 hours 18 min ago:
It'd be hilarious if it was a fiction, some bitter comedic
cautionary satire
convolvatron wrote 8 hours 27 min ago:
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.
jkaplowitz wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
That doesnât 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.
a022311 wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
If that's what you call a democracy, sure... I don't think most
people will agree with you though.
xpe wrote 10 hours 56 min ago:
"A witty saying proves nothing." â 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.
saxonww wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
It's not a Tytler quote anyway, and as mentioned by others it's
demonstrably false. [1]
URI [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20110723192744/http://www....
URI [2]: https://freakonomics.com/2009/01/our-daily-bleg-what-q...
mpalmer wrote 11 hours 51 min ago:
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 powerâa
passion visible in an infant, and common to us even with the
inferior animalsâhe 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 peopleâthrough 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.
hammock wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
Relevant quote today but seems to misunderstand the U.S.
framersâ 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 governmentâ¦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.
mpalmer wrote 11 hours 55 min ago:
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.
xvector wrote 11 hours 4 min ago:
40% of Americans pay nothing in federal income tax
testaccount28 wrote 10 hours 36 min ago:
do you think these are the ones voting?
kortilla wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
Definitely. They are the reason republicans spend time
trying to make voting difficult
fn-mote wrote 11 hours 22 min ago:
> The Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the
wealthy.
And now the Iran War, wait for it.
alchemism wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
Wellâ¦.they tended to collapse after a couple centuries.
Razengan wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
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.
Ms-J wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
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!
Ms-J wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
Real link from Handala (dead): [1] Archive: [2] Download: [3] Password:
handala
URI [1]: https://handala-team.to/kash-patel-current-director-of-the-fbi...
URI [2]: https://archive.ph/ILFFH
URI [3]: https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxoxwyp7qosgdwldereecudqpbva/po...
rixed wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
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.
lern_too_spel wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
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.
throwawaysoxjje wrote 23 hours 8 min ago:
But his emails!
mjmsmith wrote 23 hours 32 min ago:
"Iran, if you're listening..."
PilotJeff wrote 23 hours 35 min ago:
BRING IT ON
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
Certainly the FBI and GMail having gaps in their operational
information security isn't news.
bloppe wrote 1 day ago:
I read the headline and first thought was seriously, that's it?
Surely this is one of the least concerning things about the
administration
hmokiguess wrote 1 day ago:
Was he running openclaw on his unpenetrable system by any chance?
dlev_pika wrote 1 day ago:
I still canât get over the fact that *Kash âStay in my laneâ
Patel* is heading the FBI
reddozen wrote 1 day ago:
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]
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/TPF_e2E5F74
EdwardDiego wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
What the actual hell did I just listen to. I really hope those kids
were paid decently at this.
upheaval7276 wrote 1 day ago:
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?
reddozen wrote 1 day ago:
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)
drfloyd51 wrote 1 day ago:
The director of the FBI should not be hacked in anyway ever for any
reason.
If Gmail isnât secure, he should be using something else.
claaams wrote 1 day ago:
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?
nradov wrote 1 day ago:
How is this a failing of Google? They can't be blamed for users who
fail to secure their own accounts.
wmf wrote 1 day ago:
People are concerned because every government official uses their
personal email for work.
weaksauce wrote 1 day ago:
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.
jimbob45 wrote 19 hours 55 min ago:
Operational security doesnât apply to personal accounts, no?
Otherwise, they wouldnât be personal.
upheaval7276 wrote 1 day ago:
we don't even know how it was compromised. was his password
"password", or did the hackers exploit a gmail/google
vulnerability?
drfloyd51 wrote 1 day ago:
Did the director have his email on a vulnerable server? Yes. Yes
he did.
He should have known better.
weaksauce wrote 1 day ago:
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).
pkilgore wrote 1 day ago:
are you suggesting the former is not a demonstration of a
shocking lack of competency?
upheaval7276 wrote 1 day ago:
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
jeroenvlek wrote 1 day ago:
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...
alexandre_m wrote 1 day ago:
Comments in this thread mostly reflect peopleâs own
biases, that is a shallow projection based on the headline.
margalabargala wrote 1 day ago:
It's not a big deal, for the reasons you mentioned. But it's
interesting to a lot of people, and therefore newsworthy.
upheaval7276 wrote 1 day ago:
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.
sv123 wrote 1 day ago:
Clowns, all the way down.
themafia wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
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.
kjellsbells wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
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.
themafia wrote 17 hours 0 min ago:
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.
Jordanpomeroy wrote 1 day ago:
When the clown moves into the palace it doesnât make him the king,
the palace becomes a circus
longislandguido wrote 1 day ago:
Did you write the software that allowed him to get hacked in the
first place?
mikkupikku wrote 1 day ago:
Unfair to clowns, a noble profession.
jjtheblunt wrote 19 hours 48 min ago:
counterexample is serial killer John Wayne Gacy:
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy#/media/File:...
xeonmc wrote 1 day ago:
Prefer the title âjestersâ
roysting wrote 21 hours 16 min ago:
Thatâs arguably even more objectionable of a term. Jesterâs
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 âfoolâ is the applicable
term.
bryanrasmussen wrote 1 day ago:
the sensible middle of the road between clowns on the left and
the jokers on the right.
jameson wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder how many others are hacked but remain undiscovered
longislandguido wrote 1 day ago:
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.
themafia wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
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.
detourdog wrote 1 day ago:
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 canât believe they arenât using there AI to
figure this out.
k310 wrote 1 day ago:
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] [1] > Prophecy, not politics, may also shape Americaâs clash with
Iran
So, is prophecy OK in a pitch deck? Asking for a friend.
URI [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/29/us/iran-israel-evangelicals-pro...
afpx wrote 1 day ago:
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
k310 wrote 21 hours 24 min ago:
No. DRAFT ICE!
⢠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.
Oh, and ...
⢠It's them or Barron.
conception wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
No, Iâm convinced the one thing that Trump wants to do is to
launch a nuke before he dies. Thatâs what he wants his legacy to
be. and his name everywhere.
idiotsecant wrote 1 day ago:
Its both dumber and more dangerous than that. Competent people are
not valuable to governments that value loyalty more than competence.
noosphr wrote 1 day ago:
Imagine a world where gpg encryption was the norm instead of something
that only works reliably in Emacs.
noncoml wrote 1 day ago:
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
mr_mitm wrote 9 hours 49 min ago:
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.
jonathanstrange wrote 1 day ago:
This wouldn't have happened if Kash Patel used Emacs, that's right.
AndrewKemendo wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
You know, thats really my main takeaway from all this. Once you
really boil it down
unparagoned wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs all fine since he didnât use it for official business right,
rightâ¦
jnaina wrote 19 hours 38 min ago:
apparently it was a gooner account for one of the popular adult
websites.
drfloyd51 wrote 1 day ago:
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 weâre more than family photos hacked?
pnw wrote 1 day ago:
Based on the links in the articles, it's personal photographs and a
resume from an old Gmail account. The resume dates from 2017.
justonceokay wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
If they got into the account they got everything. The publicly
released pictures are more of a taunt meant to publicly signal that
heâs 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.
chao- wrote 1 day ago:
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 FBIâs security was nothing more than a joke".
calvinmorrison wrote 1 day ago:
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
tomjakubowski wrote 1 day ago:
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.
dhosek wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
Ameritech.net was backed by yahooâs mail and IIRC,
joefish@ameritech.net and joefish@yahoo.com would be the same
mailbox.
trhway wrote 1 day ago:
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.
rexpop wrote 21 hours 12 min ago:
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.
0xbadcafebee wrote 23 hours 57 min ago:
The real paradigm shift is coming in 2028.
conductr wrote 1 day ago:
If Idiocracy was made today, I wonder how far in the future theyâd
place it. In 2006, they thought 500 years which seems optimistic now.
mattkevan wrote 1 day ago:
Weâre 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 couldnât 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 thatâs not even thinking about the industrial levels of
fuckery and bullshit theyâve perpetrated over the last year.
jrumbut wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
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.
nyc_data_geek1 wrote 21 hours 26 min ago:
Go away, 'batin'!
antonvs wrote 1 day ago:
> caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Excess mortality in the US during the pandemic was around 1.2
million.
ModernMech wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
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 didnât 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.
[1]
URI [1]: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/robert-f-kennedys-gran...
add-sub-mul-div wrote 1 day ago:
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.
dogemaster2025 wrote 1 day ago:
I donât 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.
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
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.
ToucanLoucan wrote 1 day ago:
âTotalitarianism 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.â ~Hannah Arendt
trhway wrote 1 day ago:
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.
cyberax wrote 22 hours 53 min ago:
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.
trhway wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
>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.
cyberax wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
> 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.
trhway wrote 18 hours 36 min ago:
>There are no mass rallies in support of the government.
for example [1] >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
DolchstoÃlegende 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.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzaoHPWfkbE
cyberax wrote 16 hours 49 min ago:
> for example [1] That was electoral event with mandatory
presence. This is nothing like Stalin's rallies where
people themselves organized and attended, e.g.: [2] > 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: [3] > 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.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzaoHPWfkbE
URI [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6bzBTmmhU
URI [3]: https://yandex.com/maps/-/CPVwbS-t
trhway wrote 15 hours 53 min ago:
>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. [1] "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.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Ru...
Fricken wrote 1 day ago:
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.
epistasis wrote 1 day ago:
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.
parineum wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
>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)?
fooster wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
The Russians certainly did interfere in the 2016 election. It
was not bullshit.
parineum wrote 16 hours 42 min ago:
Define "interfere". Be specific.
the_why_of_y wrote 15 hours 10 min ago:
[1]
URI [1]: https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/137381...
URI [2]: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/defaul...
caaqil wrote 1 day ago:
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.
BenFranklin100 wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm surprised no group has hacked the Epstein files, given the
extreme interest.
saltyoldman wrote 17 hours 36 min ago:
hacking groups are generally funded by the people that are in the
files. -> government leaders.
fmajid wrote 1 day ago:
GMail, like Apple, has specific enhanced security programs available
for Politically Exposed Persons: [1] 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.
URI [1]: https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/
sysguest wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
> 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 :( ?)
ab_testing wrote 1 day ago:
Was that landing page written by Google India team !
bedatadriven wrote 1 day ago:
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:
URI [1]: https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/
FreePalestine1 wrote 1 day ago:
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.
ErroneousBosh wrote 16 hours 11 min ago:
> 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.
nsenifty wrote 15 hours 45 min ago:
> or (currently) about $11,000 US dollars
$110,000 US dollars
ErroneousBosh wrote 14 hours 43 min ago:
Oops, you're right. Don't do currency conversions in your
head, folks.
thaumasiotes wrote 1 day ago:
Well, it was written to target Indian English. You can find the
American version of the page at [1] .
URI [1]: https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/
connorgurney wrote 1 day ago:
Not sure what difference the nationality of the copywriters
makesâ¦
bobsmooth wrote 19 hours 1 min ago:
"Gmail blocks over 10 crore phishing attempts every day."
SanjayMehta wrote 1 day ago:
Petty racism, probably linked to the FBI director's ethnicity.
lazide wrote 19 hours 28 min ago:
Crores are pretty distinctive.
echoangle wrote 1 day ago:
It doesnât 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.
throwaway290 wrote 17 hours 47 min ago:
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
billfor wrote 1 day ago:
Read the article he wasn't the director of the FBI: "The stolen
emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"
GeorgeRichard wrote 15 hours 12 min ago:
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.
coke12 wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
He was well known in the first Trump admin.
hughw wrote 1 day ago:
He's had over a year to enable it.
sysguest wrote 15 hours 23 min ago:
woah but even I haven't heard about that gmail feature...?
maybe google doesn't advertise about this much?
thephyber wrote 14 hours 56 min ago:
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 USâs premiere
domestic intelligence service!). If he wanted to be secure, all
he had to do was not get in the way of the FBIâs natural
processes.
Also, this wouldnât have happened if POTUS had hired someone
with relevant FBI experience instead of a political hack.
sysguest wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
> 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...
dessimus wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
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]
URI [1]: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber
sysguest wrote 13 hours 29 min ago:
well by that logic, you can argue every top gov officials
who didn't sign up for [1] 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?
URI [1]: https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedpr...
dessimus wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
>well by that logic, you can argue every top gov
officials who didn't sign up for [1] 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.
URI [1]: https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advanced...
sysguest wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
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?
saulapremium wrote 14 hours 59 min ago:
"Even you"?
Are you someone who would be inclined to look into something
like that?
sysguest wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
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
dessimus wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
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?
DaSHacka wrote 1 day ago:
Why would he, when he wasn't director of the FBI then?
thephyber wrote 14 hours 52 min ago:
Youâre right. He was merely [checks notes]:
- Chief of Staff to the United States Secretary of Defense
(2020-2021)
- Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (2020)
Not a big deal. No need for OpSec in those positions.
hughw wrote 1 day ago:
Agree only a smart person would the sense in it.
buzzerbetrayed wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
Sick burn. Bet the dopamine hit was sweet.
Betelbuddy wrote 1 day ago:
It would be poetic justice to get the unredacted Epstein files via
Iran...
kevin_thibedeau wrote 1 day ago:
It's possible it was breached in 2022 and they've held on to it until
now.
thephyber wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
He held very important positions in the US government before 2022,
including in the SecDefâs 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.
andsoitis wrote 18 hours 17 min ago:
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"
leereeves wrote 1 day ago:
It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting
anything worth hacking on gmail.
stickfigure wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
It is also possible he is an idiot. There are few valuable
sentences that begin with "it is possible..."
leptons wrote 17 hours 46 min ago:
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.
thephyber wrote 14 hours 44 min ago:
The same idiot who pushed him into SecDefâs office and DNI
in 2020.
He shouldnât be FBI Director and he shouldnât 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 guyâs first act as FBI Director was
to waive most of the investigations into his staff to bypass
security clearance checks.
Sorry if Iâm not disagreeing with you. Sarcasm is a bit
hard to identify these days.
nkrisc wrote 15 hours 45 min ago:
Worldâs largest spy network? The FBI wouldnât even be the
largest spy network within the US.
eps wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
The FBI is not a spy network.
thephyber wrote 14 hours 36 min ago:
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
âspyingâ in the way we saw in The Sopranos.
The FBI is also the premier counter-espionage organization
within the US, so it is tasked with spying on suspected
foreign / turned spies.
It is much more than a spy network, but it is exactly that
as well.
kevin_thibedeau wrote 11 hours 19 min ago:
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.
leereeves wrote 10 hours 16 min ago:
> 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.
kevin_thibedeau wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
It's buried in EO12333
ArnoVW wrote 15 hours 46 min ago:
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.
pdpi wrote 19 hours 29 min ago:
Security in depth. Even if you think you don't have anything
particularly valuable in there, you still protect it as if you
did.
leereeves wrote 16 hours 4 min ago:
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".
thephyber wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
Bad take.
Patel specifically bypassed security clearance protocols for
Bongino and other staff he hired. His top priority isnât
protecting government secrets â itâs to take down what he
thinks is the part of the US government that resists bending
to Trumpâs will.
And you are wrong that the FBI shouldnât care about
securing the Directorâs 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 â thatâs like
handing away a maximum severity zero day for the most common
OS in the federal government. Thereâs 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 didnât enable the high security setting on
the FBI Directorâs private email account, they might not
have known what, if any, compromising materials were in
there.
kevin_thibedeau wrote 11 hours 17 min ago:
Trump bypassed clearance protocols for unclearable Jared.
Nobody cares with an unaccountable executive.
ndsipa_pomu wrote 15 hours 9 min ago:
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.
leereeves wrote 15 hours 2 min ago:
There's so much speculation about how this hack could
conceivably be damaging, but so little evidence that it
actually contained anything damaging.
thephyber wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
âThe 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.â
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 guyâs security is, but
only after I already used the best stuff to blackmail him
months ago.
leereeves wrote 12 hours 1 min 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.
ndsipa_pomu wrote 14 hours 58 min ago:
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.
leereeves wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
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.
ndsipa_pomu wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
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.
paxys wrote 1 day ago:
I feel like sending phishing emails for penis enlargement pills would
take down half the current administration.
penguin_booze wrote 1 day ago:
I know someone who will be interested in bigger hands--big beautiful
hands.
Muhammad523 wrote 1 day ago:
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
disantlor wrote 1 day ago:
worth a try
b8 wrote 1 day ago:
Not surprising as email providers like Yahoo's security are a joke. A
former CIA director got his personal emailed pwned as well.
ck2 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm sorry but nothing can ever be more embarrassing for that man who
wrote this book to get that job [1] 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
URI [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/1955550...
autoexec wrote 1 day ago:
> 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
gverrilla wrote 1 day ago:
> Why would anyone bother to attack us now?
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_U...
autoexec wrote 1 day ago:
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.
morkalork wrote 1 day ago:
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.
nullable_bool wrote 1 day ago:
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.
dominicq wrote 12 hours 12 min ago:
Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?
BigTTYGothGF wrote 1 day ago:
> Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles of
high power in the government
What, like J.Edgar?
cushychicken wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
Fair critique. Mueller was a pretty upstanding example of how to
run the FBI, however.
TheGRS wrote 1 day ago:
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.
snovymgodym wrote 1 day ago:
> I feel sorry for his mother.
In all likelihood his upbringing is what made him this way.
acuozzo wrote 1 day ago:
You think so? Peers, in my experience, have an even greater impact,
especially between the ages of 10 and 25.
stingraycharles wrote 19 hours 24 min ago:
And itâs your upbringing that has the biggest impact on who
your peers will become.
acuozzo wrote 5 hours 8 min ago:
My parents were great, but if we were forced by circumstance to
live in the worst parts of the US (e.g., Appalachia), then no
amount of having a "good upbringing" would shield me from
having a peer group which would routinely put it to the test.
mplanchard wrote 1 day ago:
Link if you want to look:
URI [1]: https://bsky.app/profile/ddosecrets.org/post/3mi2iokglyn2w
Ms-J wrote 16 hours 41 min ago:
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): [1] Archive: [2] Download: [3]
Password: handala
URI [1]: https://handala-team.to/kash-patel-current-director-of-the-f...
URI [2]: https://archive.ph/ILFFH
URI [3]: https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxoxwyp7qosgdwldereecudqpbva/...
pogue wrote 1 day ago:
Anybody dug through it yet?
smrtinsert wrote 1 day ago:
Is it legal to download something like this?
Ms-J wrote 16 hours 48 min ago:
Of course it's allowed. The gov will happily steal and buy all of
your info. No problem to have it done to them.
kaliqt wrote 1 day ago:
Legality matters now least of all to either side.
Muhammad523 wrote 1 day ago:
I dont know. I think downloading it with Tor would make it almost
impossible to find out you downloaded this stuff anyway.
fluidcruft wrote 1 day ago:
You can't prove you didn't (and the fuzz will produce evidence you
did).
paxys wrote 1 day ago:
Legal or illegal doesn't really matter. If the regime wants to come
for you they will.
FlamingMoe wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting comment:
"if Iran ends up responsible for regime change in the US, i will be
overjoyed as i die from irony"
demosito666 wrote 17 hours 37 min ago:
And it is more than likely. US and Iran probably canât defeat
each other militarily (us obviously can, but it requires full scale
ground invasion which is not even contemplated at the moment). And
both canât 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
itâs 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.
LtWorf wrote 9 hours 36 min ago:
USA cannot do a full scale invasion without major internal
unrest.
esseph wrote 7 hours 6 min ago:
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.
[1] (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)
URI [1]: https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2026-03-2...
demosito666 wrote 3 hours 44 min ago:
This is all fine and well, but misses one little detail:
drones. In the past conflicts US troops were more or less
unreachable for the enemy unless they were advancing on the
ground in a challenging terrain like dense jungles or
mountains, where an enemy could ambush them. Other then that,
US had air superiority, overwhelming firepower and excellent
reconnaissance.
After the war in Ukraine things are very different. US troops
are not safe as long as they are reachable by an FPV done,
i.e., the enemy has to only make it ~20km to US positions.
Given the area and terrain in Iran this will be happening all
the time. So any troops positioned on Iran's territory will
be under constant attacks by FPV drones. This means heavy
casualties.
But even if the US forces will manage to clear the FPVs, this
is still not enough, because there are dozens of other types
of winged long range drones, the most famous being of course
Shahed. They are less precise and not so deadly for the
troops. They are also much easier to intercept. But that
means that you effectively can't set up a safe stationary
base, because it will be attacked by hundreds of drones from
hundreds of miles away 24x7. There is not enough interceptors
to stop that.
This means that a new approach will have to be used by US
armed forces which they never tried before. This guarantees
heavy losses on the initial stage which will raise a real
political shitstorm back home. It looks like the current
administration doesn't particularly care about that, but
chances are they will not be able to contain the
consequences.
esseph wrote 2 hours 23 min ago:
> This is all fine and well, but misses one little detail:
drones.
That's why A-10s are patrolling the 6 mile wide straight
for 2 hours a flight. They can take out the larger Iranian
drones much cheaper than any other platform we have. The
small dones can't get very far and the US is exceptional at
electronic warfare. But that doesn't really change
anything, it just maintains the status quo of the straight
being too risky for oil tanker insurers.
Ultimately, even if the US goes into the island tunnels
after the ballistic missiles and larger drones, it would
take huge sums of money to try and keep it open militarily
for... who knows how long.
carefulfungi wrote 5 hours 25 min ago:
Fwiw, peak deployments to Afghanistan was ~100k troops. Iran
is ~2x the land mass and population.
demosito666 wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
IRGC is also 10x more advanced than whatever forces were in
Afganistan.
7174n6 wrote 1 day ago:
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.
athrowaway3z wrote 1 day ago:
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?
ebiester wrote 1 day ago:
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?
SirFatty wrote 1 day ago:
You're assuming that he didn't use personal email for his FBI "work".
pixl97 wrote 1 day ago:
>âThis isnât an FBI compromise â itâs someoneâs personal junk
drawer,â 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.
sirbutters wrote 1 day ago:
Most incompetent administration in the modern era.
griffzhowl wrote 1 day ago:
But just a personal account with materials reportedly from 2011-2022,
not an FBI breach
jameskilton wrote 1 day ago:
But ... but her emails!
Levitz wrote 1 day ago:
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.
basisword wrote 1 day ago:
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.
rationalist wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
Lots of personal opinions and low-effort jabs in this thread.
nickburns wrote 1 day ago:
Negative voting.
mattbis wrote 1 day ago:
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.
danso wrote 1 day ago:
I too am very curious about this. Even if his password was exposed
and he didnât have 2-factor auth, doesnât Google by default ask
for confirmation â e.g. texting a number or backup email associated
with the account â when seeing an unrecognized device? Maybe he
didnât have any alt contact methods associated with his account?
(which might not be that unusual, heâs 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?
mattbis wrote 1 day ago:
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 ...
ffsm8 wrote 1 day ago:
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
mattbis wrote 1 day ago:
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.
ffsm8 wrote 1 day ago:
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
mattbis wrote 1 day ago:
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...
paxys wrote 1 day ago:
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.
Wololooo wrote 1 day ago:
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.
Capricorn2481 wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
> 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.
quantified wrote 1 day ago:
"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.
legacynl wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
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.
Drakim wrote 1 day ago:
In English, you can say "we" or "they"
chrisjj wrote 11 hours 17 min ago:
But "they" excludes the speaker.
firefax wrote 1 day ago:
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.
fn-mote wrote 1 day ago:
OPM was much more serious. Equifax had already leaked the social
security data and more.
macNchz wrote 1 day ago:
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.
^
URI [1]: https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/cisa-senior-official-de...
40four wrote 1 day ago:
I forget all the details but a hacker group associated with Iran
already hacked the infrastructure of a major US health care tech
company
derwiki wrote 1 day ago:
Stryker. FWIW a friend in ER medicine said it had very very limited
effect.
40four wrote 1 day ago:
Thatâs right thanks. The same
Hacker group as this story. Yeah I didnât 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 wouldnât call that minor.
Also thatâs what I get for commenting before reading the story,
they mention the Styker incident in the story lol
mandeepj wrote 1 day ago:
> To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced cyber
capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back.
Iran isnât alone!! They are a quad along with China, Russia, and
North Korea.
Painsawman123 wrote 1 day ago:
that's the thing that people overlook the most in regards to this
war.iran isnât doing this on its own. Russia, China and north
korea have been backing it from the start. theyâre 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
limagnolia wrote 1 day ago:
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.
kasey_junk wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
There has been speculation that China is letting Iran use their
satellites for targeting but itâs not confirmed.
China is for sure providing material for drone and rocket
manufacturing as well as air defense systems.
URI [1]: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/01/28/how-china-aims-t...
epolanski wrote 1 day ago:
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.
40four wrote 1 day ago:
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. Itâs 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 arenât 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.
mandeepj wrote 1 day ago:
> 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 doesnât even remember what he
said 5 mins ago. If he had planned or even had any clue about
wars, weâd 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 Chinaâs help
just last week, letâs wait for it, to act against their
friends, which you called their subsidiaries :-). You canât
script this horror show, even if you wanted to.
epolanski wrote 1 day ago:
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.
chirau wrote 1 day ago:
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.
kstenerud wrote 1 day ago:
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.
1234letshaveatw wrote 11 hours 41 min ago:
The corpses of Iransâs leadership have us right where they
want us
SmirkingRevenge wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
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.
mlmonkey wrote 1 day ago:
> 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:
URI [1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-ira...
megous wrote 1 day ago:
not all of them, search harder
AnimalMuppet wrote 1 day ago:
So, to echo the previous comment, got a link?
"Search harder" is a pretty unfriendly response to a request for a
link...
megous wrote 1 day ago:
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.
bcjdjsndon wrote 1 day ago:
Looking good there, murica, looking good
ThaDood wrote 1 day ago:
If you check their telegram channel they have some humorous photos and
his resume.
kevincloudsec wrote 1 day ago:
Forget the Iran attribution for a second. The FBI director's personal
email was already in leaked credential databases from prior breaches.
bcjdjsndon wrote 1 day ago:
Every now and then something happens that makes me wonder how the
fuck America is number one, this being one of them.
bobsmooth wrote 18 hours 57 min ago:
One of the largest populations, and by extension, GDPs.
chanux wrote 10 hours 20 min ago:
Bretton Woods, Petro dollar and Lindy effect?
XorNot wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
Also the only major economy which didn't fight World War 2 on its
own territory.
OJFord wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
Boy are there some angry Pearl Harbour comments incoming...
vrganj wrote 1 day ago:
Don't worry, it's on its way out.
basisword wrote 1 day ago:
Number one based on what metric other than they constantly say
they're number one?
krapp wrote 1 day ago:
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.
mna_ wrote 15 hours 15 min ago:
Plus huge amounts of braindrain from all over the world after WW2
(originally from Europe, but nowadays mainly from India and
China).
bpt3 wrote 1 day ago:
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.
1234letshaveatw wrote 1 day ago:
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
jorts wrote 1 day ago:
Because America is a lot more than a podcaster put into a position
that he has no qualifications for.
CrzyLngPwd wrote 1 day ago:
Where did the article go?
nickpinkston wrote 1 day ago:
Iran... if you're listening...
We'd love to see all of those Epstein files.
shagie wrote 1 day ago:
Is this a reference to [1] > "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.
URI [1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...
nickpinkston wrote 1 day ago:
Haha - yes exactly.
shagie wrote 10 hours 34 min ago:
They'd be a couple years late on that. [1] (reported last year)
URI [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/foreign-hacker-2023-com...
nickpinkston wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
Better late than never...
everdrive wrote 1 day ago:
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.
renegade-otter wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
But his girlfriend, though...
URI [1]: https://www.tabletmag.com/the-scroll/articles/march-25-kash-...
GorbachevyChase wrote 1 day ago:
Weâre not getting any juicy leaks from it because itâs just full
of 20-year-old memes and meeting invites to look busy.
bitwank wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, the fact they announced it proves itâs nothing. I saw a
picture of him smoking a cigar. Weâve already seen him drinking
beer and acting foolish; probably enough to get you executed in
Isfahan, but a giant nothining in the USA.
JeremyNT wrote 1 day ago:
> 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!
rurp wrote 1 day ago:
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.
conception wrote 1 day ago:
I believe âifâ is doing a tremendous amount of work in
parentâs comment.
firefax wrote 1 day ago:
>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
BigTTYGothGF wrote 1 day ago:
Those "should"s are doing a lot of heavy lifting.
throwaway27448 wrote 1 day ago:
I think this is actually the opposite of the correct
conclusionâjust look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife
was ( [1] ). 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.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal
austin-cheney wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
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 dudeâs penis during forced sodomy?
Amezarak wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
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.
defrost wrote 12 hours 28 min ago:
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?
Amezarak wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
> 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.
defrost wrote 11 hours 46 min ago:
> 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.
Amezarak wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
> 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.
ziml77 wrote 10 hours 58 min ago:
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.
Amezarak wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
If youâre talking about Trump, you may remember
that E Jean Carroll won a lawsuit against him.
Sheâs walking the earth and continuing to live a
public life.
And again, millions of dollars are available from
settlement funds if Epstein was involved, thereâs
already some of the best lawyers in the country
begging to represent you, and thereâs people
volunteering to pay for your security needs.
Youâre also ignoring the many victims that came out
before Epstein died.
This is just an excuse to perpetuate the conspiracy
theories. It doesnât hold water. And of course if
anything was released from super secret âthe
filesâ theyâre definitely still covering up,
theyâd become publicly known.
Surely you see how this line of reasoning is
identical to that of any other conspiracy or moral
panic.
esseph wrote 7 hours 19 min ago:
> And of course if anything was released from super
secret âthe filesâ theyâre definitely still
covering up, theyâd become publicly known.
They've been caught trying to do Trump related
reactions at least three times now.
Amezarak wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
You misunderstand my point. Iâm saying that if
there are any credible accusations in âthe
filesâ beyond those well-documented ones
against Epstein and Maxwell, then the accusers
would be known publicly anyway when theyâre
disclosed.
The whole thing falls apart the moment you
examine the actual evidence and think about it.
Itâs really disappointing that smart people on
even this forum get wrapped up into this junk.
esseph wrote 2 hours 56 min ago:
> You misunderstand my point. Iâm saying that
if there are any credible accusations in âthe
filesâ beyond those well-documented ones
against Epstein and Maxwell, then the accusers
would be known publicly anyway when theyâre
disclosed.
The whole thing falls apart the moment you
examine the actual evidence and think about it.
Itâs really disappointing that smart people
on even this forum get wrapped up into this
junk.
Did you know that Epstein's hard drives were
removed by a private investigator, and that the
FBI and DOJ never had them to begin with? They
were removed before they were searched by law
enforcement. [1] [2]
URI [1]: https://abcnews.com/US/house-oversight...
URI [2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffre...
URI [3]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/...
Amezarak wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
And? What does that have to do with the
absence of witnesses of a sex trafficking
ring involving anyone else?
This isnât even news, it was a big deal
back in the day and is covered extensively in
the report about the DoJâs conduct. Read
the reports and consider the context; this is
a nothingburger. But because the conspiracy
theory has been started, everything that
happens will be read as supporting it.
Epstein had very good reasons for destroying
evidence of his own deeds without any need
for anyone else being involved. (The evidence
the DoJ collected was very weak and they
werenât sure it would sustain a
prosecution, which is partly why they were
glad to go with a plea deal.) Youâre coming
in primed to believe thereâs already a
conspiracy about something else altogether.
esseph wrote 2 hours 0 min ago:
> And? What does that have to do with the
absence of witnesses of a sex trafficking
ring involving anyone else?
Did you just ask, in a post about evidence
being taken and keep from investigators,
why there isn't evidence?
> This isnât even news, it was a big deal
back in the day and is covered extensively
in the report about the DoJâs conduct.
Then why is it news FROM TODAY/YESTERDAY?
---
In a March 19 deposition with the House
Oversight Committee, Darren Indyke,
Epstein's longtime personal attorney, said
he learned after Epstein's 2008 conviction
that the hard drives were in the possession
of Riley Kiraly, a private investigations
firm.
"The Committee requests that you make
yourself available for a transcribed
interview to provide insight into the
contents, removal, storage, and location of
materials removed from Mr. Epstein's Palm
Beach home," the letter to Riley says.
source:
URI [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/je...
austin-cheney wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
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. Itâs in the
documents released by the government that the government has
confirmed as authentic.
Amezarak wrote 11 hours 37 min ago:
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.
> Itâs 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.
aqme28 wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
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.
ls612 wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
From the news Iâve read the most âembarrassingâ 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
scandalâ¦
ikr678 wrote 11 hours 29 min ago:
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.
kortilla wrote 8 hours 43 min ago:
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
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 14 hours 51 min ago:
My favorite explanation of the Petraeus scandal:
URI [1]: https://vimeo.com/100348256
_fat_santa wrote 1 day ago:
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
nixon_why69 wrote 1 day ago:
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.
bjourne wrote 14 hours 44 min ago:
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.
throwaway27448 wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
> 90% of US media is not aligned with the Democrats
The media works for the same people both parties do. If capital
wanted to manufacture Democrat-aligned outrage they could
easily do so overnight.
But it's a complete mistake to think about politics in a
partisan manner at all. Of course the democrats won't ever
fight for you. Doing anything decreases chances of getting
elected again.
Whatever force will depose capital won't come from the
two-party system.
stevenicr wrote 2 hours 58 min ago:
I can't tell if this a sarcastic statement or you believe this
to be true.
Hikikomori wrote 17 hours 37 min ago:
How can you way that with a straight face when this book exists.
URI [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/1...
sysguest wrote 15 hours 15 min ago:
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
Hikikomori wrote 12 hours 21 min ago:
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.
sysguest wrote 10 hours 35 min ago:
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?
Hikikomori wrote 9 hours 14 min ago:
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.
nixon_why69 wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
I did not know about that book, yeah that is cringe.
mikeyouse wrote 1 day ago:
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: [1] ), he has a number of sketchy moneymaking
side-businesses, he was formerly living with a GOP megadonor
'Timeshare Tycoon' as roommates in Vegas ( [2] ), 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..
URI [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the...
URI [2]: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/trump-fbi-pick-...
quantified wrote 1 day ago:
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.
sysguest wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
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
nixon_why69 wrote 1 day ago:
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.
embedding-shape wrote 1 day ago:
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.
kelipso wrote 12 hours 1 min ago:
A sitting FBI director testifying under oath about details that
are clearly false is tradition at this point.
nickburns wrote 1 day ago:
So you mean to point out that the sitting FBI director is a bro's
bro.
close04 wrote 1 day ago:
> 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.
mc32 wrote 1 day ago:
The press was stupid. They were doing stupid gotchas like
swiftboats, fake reports on GWB (Dan Rather), but couldnât 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.
jyounker wrote 5 hours 54 min ago:
* 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: [1] )
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.
URI [1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-barnes-on-bush...
treebeard901 wrote 1 day ago:
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...
sysguest wrote 15 hours 13 min ago:
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
MyHonestOpinon wrote 1 day ago:
Well, if the president sets the example. What can you expect from
the rest ?
Jare wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know, these days skeletons seem to be treated as funny
decoration and we're in a permanent state of Halloween.
scrollop wrote 10 hours 51 min ago:
Trump doesn't have a few skeletons in his closest, he boasts a
series of catacombs.
redanddead wrote 1 day ago:
Sullying Halloween's good name
hypeatei wrote 1 day ago:
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.
Loughla wrote 1 day ago:
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.
throwaway27448 wrote 1 day ago:
Dan Quayle also had the charisma of a potato. Let's not overfit
this curve.
embedding-shape wrote 1 day ago:
> 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.
drnick1 wrote 1 day ago:
> 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.
esseph wrote 7 hours 16 min ago:
URI [1]: https://www.404media.co/the-signal-clone-the-trump-admin...
krisoft wrote 15 hours 2 min ago:
> 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.
mikeyouse wrote 1 day ago:
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!)
nickburns wrote 1 day ago:
It was a custom (presumably DoD-approved) build. And the story
gets much better than that:
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/KFYyfrTIPQY&t=724
embedding-shape wrote 1 day ago:
Ok? Signal is not the topic of my comment really, nor has anyone
claimed it's less secure than other chat apps.
dmix wrote 1 day ago:
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.
apical_dendrite wrote 1 day ago:
Source?
dmix wrote 1 day ago:
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 âwidespread
useâ of Signal began under the Biden administration, adding
that âat ODNI, when I got my phone, it was pre-installed.â
URI [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/inside-the-ha...
apical_dendrite wrote 1 day ago:
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, âit was almost
exclusively restricted to scheduling purposes,â such as
letting their boss know that theyâll be late to work
because of personal circumstances.
âThatâs why Signalgate is all the more staggering â
because these senior leaders were doing the exact opposite of
what even my most junior intelligence officers knew not to
do,â 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.
dmix wrote 1 day ago:
> 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
fc417fc802 wrote 17 hours 30 min ago:
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.
everdrive wrote 1 day ago:
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."
tencentshill wrote 1 day ago:
Surely we are currently clean on OPSEC. There couldn't be any
precedent for government officials using private email servers for
confidential information!
vessenes wrote 1 day ago:
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.
the_why_of_y wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
That can't be the first one. Colin Powell used a personal email
account during the GWB administration. [1] Of course that pales
in comparison with the practices of the GWB White House:
URI [1]: https://www.npr.org/2016/09/08/493133413/colin-powells-w...
URI [2]: https://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/george-w-bush-white-...
bookofjoe wrote 1 day ago:
Check this out (can't wait til mine arrives):
URI [1]: https://www.clicks.tech/
connorgurney wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve been using a Clicks case since the early days and have
personally loved every second of it but itâs definitely an
acquired taste. Let us know how you find it.
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