Hacker News

I don't know, these days skeletons seem to be treated as funny decoration and we're in a permanent state of Halloween.

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.

I'd like to chime in and say that that Kash Patel, while completely unprofessional and incompetent, is way less of a weirdo than the rest of the administration.

His scandals are all about shirking job responsibilities to party and sightsee. That's not great from the FBI director but its way more normal than the rest of them.

I was just reading a X thread that published some of the more notable things and overall it's pretty innocuous. The most "controversial" thing thus far is he took a trip to Cuba

My favorite explanation of the Petraeus scandal: https://vimeo.com/100348256

> look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was

Those times have passed. I'll restate what I said in a comment some days ago:

>> 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today presidents are "impeaching" the press

The current strategy is "keep the outrage hose on full blast and eventually people get desensitized". It works.

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...

There is so much corruption and impropriety in this administration that skeletons don't matter anymore. Looking at what sunk officials in previous administrations provides a sense for just how far gone we are, but it's not an indicator of what future consequences will be.

Like what? We have two presidents, including the current one, that took multiple trips to a pedophile island. What skeletons could be greater than accusations of punching a child in the face after they bit the dude’s penis during forced sodomy?

obligatory - that first famous private server was done because someone wanted a blackberry like Obama had, and was told no by NSA. Man that BB keyboard was good.

I believe “if” is doing a tremendous amount of work in parent’s comment.

Yes, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was classified information in there. I struggled with wording, but what I meant was "you're not supposed to be able to find classified or sensitive information in personal email, but I who knows what will be the case here."

> Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?

Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out there, but it is obviously not immune to human error or social engineering.

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.

Maybe it's borderline because it's coming from the other direction. Corruption presumes some kind of "covertness", when you break all the rules without even trying to be discreet can you still talk of corruption?

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”

― Alexander Fraser Tytler

Well….they tended to collapse after a couple centuries.

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.

We know for a fact that the current DoD are using private Signal messages for coordinating military action. We know they are constantly using private emails. We are sending the president's son-in-law to negotiate with foreign countries despite not being a government employee and also have massive conflicts of interest.

> HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.

That's not what the "but, her emails..." reference implies. It's not saying they are the same thing. It's saying that the amount of attention and excitement made about her emails was a show. And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it. Same thing with the signalgate from last year, or all the previous times the Trump administration used private emails or private communication for government business as well.

So, no. The fact that it is not the same is immaterial. Which makes the rest of your comment immaterial.

Was it equally grave when Colin Powell did the same thing?

You are correct.

On the other hand, Patel's emails "appear to show a mix of personal and work correspondence". We already know that people in government - this isn't a partisan point: folks of all factions do it - use private communication channels to discuss "official business" specifically to avoid mandated disclosure and archival requirements. If (and I emphasize "if", because we don't yet know if this was the case), if Patel was doing that, and especially if he was sharing / discussing classified material, then the facts of the case would bump right up against what Clinton and Powell did.

Please. Same shit, different day.

Trying to distinguish between the two acts is like splitting hairs on the same arse.

Just makes you look silly.

"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.

> And I'm not even American.

Well over here, 30% still approve of it and they will openly praise how much money DOGE "saved us." It's quite eye opening talking to them. They live in a totally different reality

Any time they act like they disapprove of something the administration is doing, like the aimless war, they will change their tune in a few weeks when Fox gets it's talking points down.

"We" is such an imprecise word for a pool of people. I believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the listener too, and "women" excluding the listener. Obviously "we" did not elect Trump, only "a majority of the US voters who voted", and even the others may sadly use "we" though they didn't, because they are members of the political body that did. Just like the "they" of Israel that harass Palestinians and throw up West Bank settlements do not reflect all of Israel, and the average Soviet citizen did not reflect the behavior of the Soviet government.

OPM was much more serious. Equifax had already leaked the social security data and more.

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

Fair critique. Mueller was a pretty upstanding example of how to run the FBI, however.

You think so? Peers, in my experience, have an even greater impact, especially between the ages of 10 and 25.

that's the thing that people overlook the most in regards to this war.iran isn’t doing this on its own. Russia, China and north korea have been backing it from the start. they’re the ones helping with intel on US base locations across the Middle East, supplying drones, and working out strategies to drag things into a stalemate, plus whatever else iran needs along the way

Stryker. FWIW a friend in ER medicine said it had very very limited effect.

What the actual hell did I just listen to. I really hope those kids were paid decently at this.

Maybe the family un-friendly kind?

If they got into the account they got everything. The publicly released pictures are more of a taunt meant to publicly signal that he’s fucked. I would bet (figuratively) that anyrhing of actual value is either being sold or leveraged. After all this is a man that has shown an almost infinite capacity for humiliation.

And it is more than likely. US and Iran probably can’t defeat each other militarily (us obviously can, but it requires full scale ground invasion which is not even contemplated at the moment). And both can’t back out of the conflict. So the likely outcome is that the conflict escalates until one of the regimes snaps and it becomes to somehow politically possible to back out.

Collapse of the regime in Iran seems unlikely at the moment because it’s hard and zealous dictatorship with unlimited power and will for violence within the country. In the US OTOH the elections are coming. An administration that started a stupid and absolutely preventable war and then effectively lost faces quite a challenge there despite everything else. This seems like a perfect moment for Iran to create a deterrent for US: attacking us ends your presidency.

Legal or illegal doesn't really matter. If the regime wants to come for you they will.

Of course it's allowed. The gov will happily steal and buy all of your info. No problem to have it done to them.

Legality matters now least of all to either side.

I dont know. I think downloading it with Tor would make it almost impossible to find out you downloaded this stuff anyway.

You can't prove you didn't (and the fuzz will produce evidence you did).

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 ...

So, to echo the previous comment, got a link?

"Search harder" is a pretty unfriendly response to a request for a link...

One of the largest populations, and by extension, GDPs.

Loads of natural resources, no local military threats, and historically a government that stayed out of the way and allowed individuals to reap the rewards of their efforts.

The first is almost impossible to screw up, though we're really trying on the last front.

We're ranked number one based on the summation of all the angsty teen America bad comments on social media. At least that is the stat the press goes off of I believe

Don't worry, it's on its way out.

America had the advantage of getting through WW2 relatively unscathed with lots of resources and intact infrastructure that it used to leverage against the reconstruction of Europe, Japan and the USSR and entrench its cultural and economic hegemony. Also the US essentially colonized the West with nuclear weapons under the guise of "Pax Americana" and making the dollar the reserve currency.

That's really it. Not moral superiority, not technical ingenuity, not the indomitable American spirit. Just imperialist opportunism.

Number one based on what metric other than they constantly say they're number one?

Because America is a lot more than a podcaster put into a position that he has no qualifications for.

Are you suggesting that he was targeted before he became the director of the FBI? That seems unlikely. Once he became an obvious target surely the FBI should have secured his past, present and future communications. But I have no idea what protocols there are for such things, I'm just going off common sense, a notoriously sketchy starting point in the crazy world of the current US administration.

He's had over a year to enable it.

He held very important positions in the US government before 2022, including in the SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020-2021.

This is just a sad story of a partisan hack who failed upwards into one of the most sensitive and powerful offices in the nation, simply for being a loyal sycophant, not merit.

From the article, he wasn't the director of the FBI for the time period the emails are from: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"

It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting anything worth hacking on gmail.

Uh yeah, the locale in the link is specifically an Indian locale. If you find it it disorienting you can change en_in to en_us:

https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/

Not sure what difference the nationality of the copywriters makes…

Well, it was written to target Indian English. You can find the American version of the page at https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/ .

"Competent" people are not valuable and over rated because they will flake out in such jobs when the group holds them responsible for all sorts of things they have no control over. They are the first people who recognize lumits. Their own, their teams and the systems. But people dont want to hear about Limits. They want saviors and messaihs. They want fantasy and magic. So the system runs not optimized for efficiency but illusion of control, for damping of anxieties and fears.

and that will be there eventual downfall luckily.

No, I’m convinced the one thing that Trump wants to do is to launch a nuke before he dies. That’s what he wants his legacy to be. and his name everywhere.

No. DRAFT ICE!

  • 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.  

  • It's them or Barron.

That’s depressingly common with politicians the world over because Signal supports disappearing messages.

So I wouldn’t expect someone who uses Signal to automatically be the kind of person to use personal email for work.

The leak is from 2011-2022. He wasn't in the government then!!!!

counterexample is serial killer John Wayne Gacy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy#/media/File:Jo...

Prefer the title “jesters”

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.

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.

Not just that, clowns and jesters played critical and culturally significant roles.

“Fools” is not only not an insult to clowns and jesters, but it’s far more accurate.

I would even say without any necessary religious perspective, these people are like the origins of the term and concept of “demons”, entities representing the most heinous and nefarious instincts and impulses of humanity so vile and repulsive that they had to be emanations of hell. How would you even makes sense of such evil behavior back then. They didn’t know what the dark triad of personality flaws was, narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism (yes, I understand it’s an erroneous label, but it’s the one used).

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.

Because they are experts in acquiring riches and power, not experts in computer security.

Think about it this way, this administration is the most competent administraion we've ever had at being incompetent.

You know, thats really my main takeaway from all this. Once you really boil it down

I think it's a pretty cynical take that an Emacs user will never be made FBI director.

GPG keys are typically guarded much better than emails, that's the whole point. Accessing e-mails can be done by guessing a password, to get to the key you basically need command execution on the target's client system.

https://dangerousthings.com/product/apex-flex/

Haha - yes exactly.

> Why would anyone bother to attack us now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

We’re way beyond Idiocracy now, we left that timeline six years ago.

For all his flaws, Camacho was a good leader - he recognised there was a problem, knew he couldn’t fix it and actively rallied the world around the one person who could.

This bunch of dipshits expressly denigrated the experts, refused to take the slightest precaution to protect themselves and others from a deadly virus and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

And that’s not even thinking about the industrial levels of fuckery and bullshit they’ve perpetrated over the last year.

It would literally just be a compilation of TikToks

Future? I'm thinking a Borat style mockumentary in the present.

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.

I heard some of the best advice I ever heard at a Subgenius devival in Dallas in the 80s: "Act like a dumb-shit and they'll treat you like an equal." Every year that quip seems more and more relevant.

I don’t think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was the only candidate explicitly saying they were working to Make America Great Again, as opposed to foreign interests or illegals.

we don't even know how it was compromised. was his password "password", or did the hackers exploit a gmail/google vulnerability?

Operational security doesn’t apply to personal accounts, no? Otherwise, they wouldn’t be personal.

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.

yes, and...?

The FBI does because he is included in "the FBI"