[HN Gopher] Payments crisis of 2025: Not "read only" access anymore
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Payments crisis of 2025: Not "read only" access anymore
Author : shinryuu
Score : 428 points
Date : 2025-02-04 15:05 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.crisesnotes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.crisesnotes.com)
| taylodl wrote:
| This isn't a payments crisis; this is an auditing crisis. There's
| no way to ensure proper accounting procedures are being followed.
| At this point, Congress' continued inaction is bordering on
| criminal.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277...
| weard_beard wrote:
| At this point the US government would not pass a SOX audit.
| liontwist wrote:
| SOX is for public corporations.
| hyperbrainer wrote:
| Yes, but that standard should probably be met and exceeded
| by the government of the largest economy in the world,
| don't you think?
| liontwist wrote:
| It sounds like you think SOX auditing means "super secure
| and careful accounting".
|
| SOX is a specific law with the motivation of giving
| markets more confidence in public stocks (for example
| must hire external auditors, certain board member rules,
| how certain assets must be valued, etc).
|
| The SOX audit is to make sure that law is followed.
|
| One criticism of SOX is that encouraged many startups and
| other businesses to remain private.
|
| So long story short, no. Our government does not resemble
| a public stock corporation and these things don't have an
| analog.
| epistasis wrote:
| > One criticism of SOX is that it partially nationalizes
| control of the organization,
|
| If that is a criticism of SOX for private companies, then
| it would mean that it should be a baseline for national
| accounting, no?
| liontwist wrote:
| > it should be a baseline for national accounting
|
| What does this mean? Let me repeat. SOX is not a method
| of accounting, its rules about roles and reporting for
| public corporations
|
| > It sounds like you think SOX auditing means "super
| secure and careful accounting".
| epistasis wrote:
| Yes, rules and roles for reporting, ie accounting.
|
| I don't know what you think you are implying with the
| "super secure and careful" comment, we are looking for
| the roles that ensure the accountability of SOX.
|
| Your complaint is that SOX "nationalizes" companies
| because apparently it becomes so transparent, or
| something? If that's what you mean by "nationalize"
| shouldn't that be used for our nation's accounting?
| weard_beard wrote:
| I specifically meant the parts of SOX related to access
| controls, infrastructure, and codebase management to
| ensure a baseline level of security for processing
| payments and PII to ensure this does not represent a risk
| to the valuation of the enterprise.
|
| These measures are universal to running any payment
| platform, not a public/private issue.
|
| *No, I'm not thinking of PCI, but that is also a valid
| measure here. There are recent updates to SOX in the past
| few years covering these aspects of payment operations.
| Some old-school SOX experts may not be familiar and the
| strictness on these aspects of the audit varies by
| auditor in my experience. I recently helped a client
| navigate these developing and responding to a very strict
| audit process covering their entire IT landscape
| including process flows, deployment planning and
| user/role management.
| liontwist wrote:
| I don't believe all of those are from SOX.
|
| > I specifically meant
|
| You didn't leave the comment. Was that your alt account?
| weard_beard wrote:
| I'm the GP.
| amluto wrote:
| Are you perhaps thinking of PCI or SOC2?
| Bloating wrote:
| Same could be said about health & retirement benefits
| cdme wrote:
| I'm not sure 19 year olds using gmail addresses are
| concerned with SOX.
| liontwist wrote:
| I'm not sure you know what SOX is.
| fastball wrote:
| The DoD has already been failing audits[1] for a while now.
|
| [1] https://breakingdefense.com/2024/11/pentagon-fails-7th-
| audit...
| cdme wrote:
| Elon and his inexperienced cronies are the last people who
| should be trusted with any government access. They don't even
| have clearance.
| fastball wrote:
| I don't think you need clearance for this, so not sure how
| that is relevant.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I've read in multiple articles that people were placed on
| leave for trying to require proper clearances from him and
| his team as obligated to by law, and this article also
| references how clearances impact the fact that nobody knows
| what they're actually doing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| As someone who has had to clear an SF86 for a USDS hiring
| cycle (IRS and DHS systems), I would be shocked if you can
| get this access without a clearance.
| mathw wrote:
| If they don't have clearance aren't they committing a number
| of offences under various acts of national security and
| computer misuse and thus liable for arrest?
| malfist wrote:
| Yes. But who is going to arrest them and charge them?
| cdme wrote:
| Yes, but the GOP senate and house members are unwavering
| sycophants. The Supreme Court has also been stacked.
| gigatexal wrote:
| It's a coup many years in the making and we all watched
| as it happened. The folks behind project 2025 have been
| plotting this for years and years.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >If they don't have clearance aren't they committing a
| number of offences under various acts of national security
| and computer misuse and thus liable for arrest?
|
| Arrested by who? The executive branch who ordered his
| actions? Americans voted for this, and now we have to live
| with it.
| dartos wrote:
| No, the judicial branch which is supposed to enforce the
| law regardless of who was voted for...
|
| Yknow... the branch that's supposed to check the power of
| the executive branch...
| tyre wrote:
| The Justice Department, including the FBI and federal
| prosecutors, are run by appointees of the president.
|
| The president can replace them.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >No, the judicial branch which is supposed to enforce the
| law regardless of who was voted for...
|
| The judiciary has zero enforcement power. They make the
| laws which the executive is meant to enforce. If the
| executive fails to enforce a law, congress can impeach.
| That's not happening.
| dartos wrote:
| That's not how it works.
|
| The executive branch runs the country.
|
| The legislative branch makes the laws.
|
| The judicial branch enforces them...
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| The legislative branch makes the laws. The Judicial
| branch judges whether laws were broken. The executive
| branch has the power to enforce laws (or to not enforce
| them, as they see fit).
|
| The current executive branch will not enforce laws
| against itself, and nobody else is legally allowed to
| enforce the laws, so all the courts & congress can do is
| write strongly worded letters.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You're almost right. The thing is that Congress
| absolutely has the power to impeach the president and
| strip them of all legal office. Of course, most of
| Congress is perfectly happy with what's going on, so this
| won't happen.
| dboreham wrote:
| Those are just...guidelines.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| I'm afraid you let that ship sail. You now have a king
| and a court with untrammeled power - good luck when a
| successor needs to be found.
| taylodl wrote:
| Seems like we've jumped into the wayback machine and set
| a course to a year before 1215...
| taylodl wrote:
| The judicial branch can't prosecute, that's what the
| executive branch does, and it's the executive branch
| that's doing these things. The legislative branch has the
| power to keep the executive branch in check, but they're
| not exercising that power - which I'm saying is bordering
| on criminal. Obviously, the executive branch is unlikely
| to prosecute the legislative branch for not taking action
| against the executive branch. Our constitution has the
| implicit assumption that all three branches wouldn't be
| in cahoots with one another, and should they be, the
| electorate was expected to have enough sense to vote out
| the legislators and replace them with ones that would
| keep the executive in check. The million dollar question
| is how much pain and destruction will be endured until
| that happens?
| WOTERMEON wrote:
| 4 years of it, if I remember correctly
| taylodl wrote:
| Two years - Congress is replaced every two years. 1/3 of
| the Senate is replaced every two years. Given that
| they've only been in office for two weeks, two years
| seems like a _long_ way off.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| House not Congress. Elected not replaced. It is unlikely
| enough senators will be replaced in 2026.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Arrests don't need prosecutors involved unless they need
| a warrant.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Arrests need warrants. And if you're thinking about the
| police, that's also part of the executive, mostly. Judges
| can't do anything unless some other branch of the
| government asks them to.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Arrests need warrants.
|
| Arrests need probable cause. They can either be done on a
| warrant _or_ without a warrant (in the latter case, in
| the federal system, a complaint must be filed and the
| arrested person must be brought before a magistrate for a
| hearing on probable cause within 72 hours after arrest.)
| sundaeofshock wrote:
| No, we did not vote for this. Show me the campaign ad
| that said Trump was going to give Musk and his gang of
| losers complete control over the treasury.
| epistasis wrote:
| If you think that a politicians advertisements are the
| full picture of what they will do, I have a bridge you
| may be interested in buying.
|
| That said, DOGE was well announced and widely publicized
| prior to the election, by Musk and the media. Musk was up
| on the stage with Trump quite a bit.
|
| Those who did not know this was going to happen are
| either easily fooled or were paying no attention.
| exe34 wrote:
| I'm over across the pond - it was pretty obvious to me
| that Elon was going to take a wrecking ball to the ship
| of government. if it wasn't clear to you, I'm afraid you
| can only blame yourself and possibly your diet of
| information.
|
| Trump said Elon would get to run a new department called
| "department of government efficiency". if you know what
| he did at Twitter, you can easily join the dots.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| It's all spelled out in the project 2025 doc that was
| widely publicized as the game plan.
|
| Also, trump was impeached last time because he tried to
| shut down funding approved by congress. So, if you're
| surprised it's happening again, I suppose you can't be
| helped
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Oh, the one that Trump heavily distanced himself from?
| Project 2025 was something skeptics pointed out as being
| the game plan, but Trump denied (or agreed, then denied).
| jethro_tell wrote:
| You're saying that like I'm the gullible one but he's
| following it to a t so . . ..
| codingdave wrote:
| If we are going to discuss this, we should be clear about
| the details. "Americans voted for this" is a hot take.
| Some did. Many did not vote at all. Of those who voted,
| Trump barely won those votes. It was just enough to get
| the electoral college votes. Even those who did vote for
| him did not vote for his current Project 2025-based plan.
| On the contrary, his campaign denied he was going to do
| all this.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| > On the contrary, his campaign denied he was going to do
| all this.
|
| People believed the wolf when he said he wasn't going to
| hurt the sheep.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| If you don't vote, you effectively vote for the winner.
|
| When the 49ers lost the 2024 Super Bowl, the second and
| third string players didn't go around saying they didn't
| really lose because they never hit the field. No, they
| lost.
| taylodl wrote:
| Excellent analogy!
| subsection1h wrote:
| > _If you don 't vote, you effectively vote for the
| winner._
|
| Yes, if the Electoral College wasn't a thing.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Trump has been the dominant figure in American politics
| for almost a decade now. It's quite obvious who he is and
| what he stands for. And he's more popular now than ever
| before. That's the reality. Accepting that and planning
| around it is the first step to countering it. Burying
| your head in the sand and saying "people don't actually
| want this!" is unactionable talk.
| troyvit wrote:
| > Many did not vote at all.
|
| If they didn't vote they voted for the winner. America
| (including me, because voting wasn't enough) earned this
| 100%.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > [...] _and thus liable for arrest?_
|
| If these are federal statues they can be pardoned by the
| President (like the January 6 folks were).
| voisin wrote:
| Trump would just pardon them.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| While they are absolutely committing crimes, the complicit
| Trump administration justice department and Republican
| congress are happy to let it go, at least thus far.
| bradarner wrote:
| You misunderstand how clearance works. Any one can get "read-
| on" to anything with the proper authorities giving them
| access.
|
| It is an administrative step. It might undergo review but
| access does not need to be prevent until the review happens.
| It is all about who is granting the access.
|
| The commander in chief has considerable authority to provide
| access.
| queuebert wrote:
| Clearance could be granted on a whim by POTUS, as far as I
| can tell, so that has no leg to stand on. The biggest threat
| would be that one of the DOGE employees is a foreign actor.
| Hope they did some vetting...
| cdme wrote:
| Does Elon qualify as a foreign actor? He's certainly
| malign.
| immibis wrote:
| He's an illegal immigrant from South Africa. I don't know
| the diplomatic status of the USA with South Africa, but
| the current party in power would certainly not agree to
| the idea that illegal immigrants should be given total
| control of the Treasury.
| belter wrote:
| And...it's flagged :-))
| dredmorbius wrote:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9562917>
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| No one needs a standing clearance. Anyone can be read into
| any program by someone of sufficient authority on an ad hoc
| basis.
|
| There seem to be a lot of misconceptions flying around about
| what "government access" entails.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| This was not the case when I worked in the Federal
| government. There were different levels and kinds of
| clearances and while it was true that you could work with
| less sensitive stuff while the background check process
| worked its way through, you couldn't go into and view
| anything elevated w/o the right clearance, or even be in
| the room pretty much.
| kdmtctl wrote:
| Did you often encountered anyone on a POTUS ad hoc
| mission while being there? There will be background
| checks maybe, but the winner takes it all.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This has always been the case, though you generally need
| to be a US citizen as a practical matter. Whether or not
| you are exposed to it likely depends on which part of the
| government and who you are. The common case is when they
| need the help of outside subject matter experts.
|
| For the sake of timeliness and being able to move
| quickly, some people in government are authorized to make
| a judgment about the risk/benefit tradeoff when someone
| doesn't have an active clearance. It isn't a case of
| waiting for a background check process, you don't even
| need to apply. Some organizations will do an informal
| check of their own in the background if they don't
| already know who you are. Sure, they would _prefer_ if
| you already had formal clearance, but it isn 't strictly
| necessary.
| paleotrope wrote:
| I could see many people with this abstract concept of a
| system that governs itself with it's own rules and
| policies, not quite understanding that it's all customary.
|
| It's like people thinking that the President can't
| declassify a document or make foreign policy decisions
| without the NSC's advice or consent.
| liontwist wrote:
| Are they making new accounting records?
| cdme wrote:
| Of course not. They're wreaking having based on Elon's whims.
| Much like when he drove Twitter into the ground.
| helge9210 wrote:
| Twitter is very much alive.
| cdme wrote:
| Ah yes, short form 4chan. It's Elon's blog -- the
| remaining users are commenters.
| queuebert wrote:
| Best description I have seen yet.
| lawn wrote:
| In the metaphor then Twitter is wiggling around on the
| ground.
|
| Not truly dead but a shell of it's former self.
| troyvit wrote:
| I guess I know why you're getting downvoted. Saying
| Twitter is at death's door is like saying that sanctions
| are going to crush Russia any day now. People really
| really want to believe it despite all the evidence.
| Twitter is very much alive, and it's doing exactly what
| Musk wants it to do.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Exactly. When he fired 90% of the employees everyone here
| and on Reddit said it would fall apart within days due to
| the complexity of the systems that Elon's employees and
| the remaining traitor engineers had no hope of
| maintaining.
|
| When it didn't fall apart in days, the goalposts were
| moved to "technical issues won't become obvious right
| away, give it a few months".
|
| It's been over 2 years and on a technical level running
| better than ever. You can disagree with the content and
| users all you wish, but pretending it's dying because you
| hate the bad orange and mars man is delusional.
| lowercased wrote:
| >"It's been over 2 years and on a technical level running
| better than ever"
|
| Isn't it also simply _doing_ less? Weren 't some APIs
| shut off or reduced? My limited memory is having me think
| they reduced or shut down some functionality altogether,
| which would also help something run smoother. Fewer
| things running means fewer things can break.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| (and fewer _users_ means lower _load_ , as a bonus)
| transcriptase wrote:
| No. Grok, spaces, community notes, long form videos, user
| payouts. It's doing far more now than ever before.
| dicknuckle wrote:
| Nitter etc are locked out as far as I know. That was
| likely a huge load on the site.
| mandeepj wrote:
| Well, did he fire 90% of engineering team? I don't think
| so. That's the critical piece of mass thinking you are
| missing.
| transcriptase wrote:
| I'm not missing anything, seeing as I wasn't part of the
| crowd convinced the site would be non-functional as a
| result of Elon's decisions.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| I don't think those are comparable. Russia is running a
| war economy. Those run perfectly fine till they don't run
| at all.
| archagon wrote:
| "Move fast and break things" seems like a _horrible_
| approach when things like Social Security and Medicare
| payments are on the line. If a few thousand random tweets
| get lost in a refactor, nobody cares. If somebody stops
| receiving their checks because Whiz Kid #3 doesn't know
| how to work with an enterprise database system, what does
| that person do? Who do they escalate to?
| rcpt wrote:
| It takes a long time to build up a strong nation. It
| takes a few weeks to tear it down.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Yahoo search is up there for you to use. I wouldn't call
| that alive...
| smitelli wrote:
| Twitter/X -- _the site_ -- is essentially fine.
|
| Twitter -- _the community_ -- is dead and rotting.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Twitter the business pretty much killed itself. The ads
| in my following feed right now: Temu, Temu, Whatnot,
| Temu, Temu.
|
| Maybe that's influenced by me blocking a lot of garbage
| ads? IDK.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Shouldn't ublock origin be stopping you from getting
| _any_ ads?
| solumunus wrote:
| It's a straight up coup.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| From "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45", an
| interview with a German about what it was like living during
| the rise of the Nazis:
|
| Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a
| little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait
| for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when
| such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow.
| You don't want to act, or even talk alone; you don't want to
| "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not?--Well, you are
| not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear
| of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine
| uncertainty.
|
| Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of
| decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the
| streets, in the general community, "everyone" is happy. One
| hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak
| privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as
| you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or
| "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."
|
| And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead
| to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings,
| yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the
| end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the
| one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party,
| intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you
| as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close
| friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought
| as you have.
|
| But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off
| somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no
| longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now,
| in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you
| are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the
| reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further
| and serves as a further deterrent to--to what? It is clearer
| all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must
| make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a
| troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
|
| But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of
| thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the
| difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had
| come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands,
| yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked--if, let
| us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately
| after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish
| shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In
| between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of
| them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be
| shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B,
| and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at
| Step C? And so on to Step D.
|
| And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever
| sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-
| deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my
| case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying "Jewish
| swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything
| has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world
| you live in--your nation, your people--is not the world you
| were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched,
| all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the
| mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the
| holidays.
|
| But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the
| lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is
| changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the
| people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when
| everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live
| in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.
| The system itself could not have intended this in the
| beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to
| go all the way.
|
| Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you
| are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you
| haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of
| us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning
| meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others
| would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter,
| a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one
| rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart
| breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
|
| https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
| watwut wrote:
| Hitler started by imprisoning those suspected of being in
| opposition. First concentration camps started right after
| he took power. The estimation is that they locked 50,000 of
| political opponents arresting 100,000. Purge of SA happened
| a year later.
|
| In 1933, right after getting power, Jews were excluded from
| civil service, their numbers in schools were limited and a
| year later they could not be actors. The restrictions came
| in quick and were felt a lot by their targets.
|
| So, this extract kind of underplays the beginning of it
| all. It was violent from the start.
| dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp wrote:
| "deportation" flights to Guantanamo Bay have begun.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/deportation-flights-military-
| indi...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
| lif wrote:
| what is?
| nessbot wrote:
| I'm going to assume (foolishly) that this is an honest
| question. The answer would be: The DOGE situation as
| described in the article this comment chain is about.
| duped wrote:
| I think Elon Musk and his lackeys' action is literally
| criminal, but law enforcement work for the same team. And
| Congress is controlled by the same team.
| queuebert wrote:
| That is literally the power of the Executive, to choose which
| laws to enforce and which to not. Congress makes the laws,
| and the Courts adjudicate. That is the whole basis of the
| federal government.
| duped wrote:
| I mean that's what they teach 8th graders but it's
| reductive. Congress makes plenty of laws that restrict
| _how_ the executive performs its functions (including how
| they allow people within the executive to do so), and it 's
| an open question over how much power the executive has to
| create departments and appoint people to run them.
|
| At the moment though, what they're doing is very much
| illegal. They just have a bunch of collaborators in the DOJ
| who won't bring charges or arrest anyone, because they're
| co-conspirators.
| queuebert wrote:
| The 8th-grader understanding is that each branch does
| what it's supposed to do with virtuous motives. The adult
| understanding is that they exercise as much power as they
| can until forced to stop.
| XorNot wrote:
| I mean if that was true then the current situation
| wouldn't be happening. The story of the US Congress over
| the last two decades (probably longer) is they have ceded
| an enormous amount of power to the Executive via
| inaction, and continue to do so.
|
| The problem with simplistic narratives where you give
| stuff names is it masks what's actually happening: the
| Executive is near enough to a dictatorship - power and
| authority is deliberate vested in one person. This makes
| it _very_ different to Congress, which only wields power
| by the collective decision making of hundreds via
| majority or even super-majority vote.
|
| So "Congress" doesn't really exist as an entity: because
| there is no guiding consciousness or collective in it
| which is deliberately trying to seize more power, and the
| story of its power is the exact opposite: it keeps giving
| it away (because the individual members of Congress can
| only retain that position and it's local benefits by
| staying in Congress, best accomplished by deliberately
| avoiding responsibility of any kind).
|
| If you've ever tried to get 4 people to decide what to
| get for dinner, the guy who simply says "Let's get tacos"
| usually gets his way because everyone else keeps
| deferring.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The executive is formally required to execute _all_
| constitutional laws by the take care clause of article two.
| It 's been politically expedient for most presidents to
| ignore a few policies they dislike, but it's very much not
| a central pillar of the American government to grant them
| that power.
| nessbot wrote:
| and it's looking like a legit CONSTITUTIONAL crisis.
| queuebert wrote:
| How so?
| nessbot wrote:
| The executive branch can't decided what to spend, only
| congress can.
|
| Its in the first article of the constitution.
| queuebert wrote:
| It's not that simple. Congress can't specify every pen
| and pencil expense, so they allocate large buckets. The
| executive can decide how each bucket is spent. Like when
| your mom gives you $20 to go to the movies. She doesn't
| care what movie you see, but she'd be mad if you skipped
| the movies and spent it on weed.
| nessbot wrote:
| And what they are doing now is "skipping the movies and
| spending it on weed." Shutting down USAID, even if
| eventually Rubio came in and rolled that back is what you
| just described. That was an office created by congress.
| bbarnett wrote:
| No, what they're doing is skipping the movie, saving up
| money, hiring a lawyer, so mom loses the right to say
| "don't spend it on weed".
| abracadaniel wrote:
| A better analogy might be that mom bought groceries for
| the starving family down the road with a check and you
| cancelled the check, stole the checkbook, and changed the
| bank account password.
| normalaccess wrote:
| Correct, the executive branch can always opt to not spend
| the money it was allocated.
|
| It's just that as far as I can recall no one has ever
| really tried to spend less in the government.
|
| EDIT: I was mistaken, please look up _Impoundment of
| appropriated funds_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated
| _fu...
| nessbot wrote:
| That is simply not true. They'd have to go to congress to
| have the apportioned spending rescinded.
| normalaccess wrote:
| I stand corrected!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated
| _fu...
| hamburga wrote:
| Wrong; impoundment is illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu...
| normalaccess wrote:
| Oh, you learn something new every day. Gracias
| lesuorac wrote:
| Keep in mind, the current administration sees the
| Impoundment Control Act as unconstitutional so you might
| unlearn something another day.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5281438/understandin
| g-t...
| taylodl wrote:
| _> Correct, the executive branch can always opt to not
| spend the money it was allocated._
|
| No, they cannot. Trump was impeached during his first
| term over this very issue. Congress had appropriated
| funding for the Ukraine, Trump didn't want to provide it
| without obtaining concessions from Zelenski. Just like
| Trump doesn't want to provide California any FEMA money
| for the LA fires without concessions. Trump has been
| through this before, he _knows_ it 's illegal, but _he
| doesn 't care._ It's kinda funny that people expect a
| felon to care about the law.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| Well, Biden tried to not spend money to build a wall on
| the border. And he essentially ran out the clock in that
| one, so I guess there has been recent success.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The false equivalence is so tiring. It's okay to admit
| things are unprecedented.
|
| _When asked about the news on Oct. 5 that new border
| wall construction would indeed commence under his
| administration, Biden told reporters: "The border wall --
| the money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried
| to get to them to reappropriate it, to redirect that
| money. They didn't. They wouldn't. And in the meantime,
| there's nothing under the law other than they have to use
| the money for what it was appropriated. I can't stop
| that."_
|
| Trump intended to build the wall with no environmental
| assessments or permits and congress wrote in a waiver
| since the border was "an emergency" but Biden chose to
| rescind the emergency declaration and follow the long-
| established federal construction process instead of using
| the waivers which does indeed slow things down.
|
| That's nothing like what is happening with Musk
| "deleting" entire departments or unilaterally stopping
| funding because he doesn't like the phrasing of the
| grants.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| I wasn't trying to claim any equivalence. I was replying
| to "It's just that as far as I can recall no one has ever
| really tried to spend less in the government." Biden did,
| in fact, try to spend less than was appropriated.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Congress mandated the creation of USAID in 1961. I don't
| hthink the executive branch has the legal authority to
| just abolish it by fiat or change its status from
| independent to a subordinate organ of the state
| department.
| labster wrote:
| It doesn't matter if Trump has the authority to do
| something if no one stops him. Laws are just words on
| paper.
|
| America is no longer a nation of laws. Period. We are a
| nation ruled by Trump and Musk.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Eh that ship hasn't sailed (yet) and this type of
| commentary isn't productive toward preventing it from
| setting sail.
|
| We are in fact a nation of laws and we ought to demand
| enforcement.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| The supreme Court already said administrative decisions
| need to follow the laws so Congress is the only ones who
| can decide which pencils get bought.
| xmprt wrote:
| I get how the system works but I also don't understand
| how congress can force the executive branch to take out a
| loan but also sets a debt ceiling which could shut down
| the government unless it's raised by congress. So
| congress blames the president for taking out debt, which
| they force, and refuse to raise taxes to reduce the
| deficit. Something in that loop is broken. I don't think
| the president should have unilateral power but I also
| don't think congress should be able to set both the
| spending and the debt limit.
| nessbot wrote:
| Then what you want is an amendment to the constitution.
| There's a process for that; this ain't it.
| generj wrote:
| That disconnect is why some people argue the debt limit
| is unconstitutional - Congress authorized the spending
| and if they didn't authorize enough revenue the executive
| is still obligated to spend regardless.
|
| To do otherwise the executive has to pick and choose what
| to fund.
|
| The topic usually gets raised every time we get close to
| a debt limit. If we truly broached the limit it's
| possible the Biden and Obama administrations would have
| just ignored the limit since the consequences of the full
| faith and credit of the US failing are so dire and
| there's a solid argument it's the least bad option
| Constitutionally.
| tlb wrote:
| It's shocking how many billions of spending are completely
| unaudited. Official gov't auditors have tried for years, but
| the target agencies stall and stall. You have to assume there
| is some malfeasance there.
|
| Doing an audit starting with the treasury department seems like
| the right first step. Every outflow of money ultimately has to
| start there. It's the root node of the Sankey diagram. Then you
| follow the money outwards from there.
| cdme wrote:
| I wouldn't trust a 19 year old to do my taxes let alone audit
| all of federal spending.
| reustle wrote:
| Those are a couple of people within a much larger team.
| cdme wrote:
| Ranging from 19-24.
| ubercore wrote:
| Much larger? How much larger? I thought it was a pretty
| small group.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| I wouldn't trust my teenager with a "large" team of
| people in control of the federal payments system.
| MisterTea wrote:
| But we trust them with billions in military hardware and
| defending the nation.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I mean, not individually.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| After super intensive training and supported by an ultra-
| regimented social and technological infrastructure?
| lowercased wrote:
| Audits can be done 'read only'. Audits don't actually have to
| impact the behaviour and operation of an organization either.
| Stopping all activity because of an 'audit' is ... wrong.
| kdmtctl wrote:
| Write only is not an audit. This is a crisis management
| style.
| Naklin wrote:
| [flagged]
| franktankbank wrote:
| > You wouldn't start by looking at a giant list of wire
| transfers from/to the company's bank accounts
|
| Might be the first data you secure though.
| saghm wrote:
| In what way is this "securing" the data?
|
| > a top DOGE employee, 25 year old former SpaceX employee
| Marko Elez, has not only read but write access to BFS
| servers
|
| > One senior IT source can see Mark retrieving "close to
| a thousand rows of data" but they can't see the content
| because the system is "top secret" even to them. No
| source I have has knowledge of what DOGE is doing with
| the data they are retrieving
| Naklin wrote:
| Every report on this shows the data has been made much
| LESS secure now.
| franktankbank wrote:
| I was referring to how you'd conduct an audit. I don't
| mean adding extra security, I mean taking backups so they
| can't be tampered during the audit.
| Naklin wrote:
| That's the same thing though.
|
| You think the treasury doesn't have a metric ton of
| procedures, and laws, on data management, integrity,
| access, backup and retention?
|
| Breaking these protocols by giving unfettered write
| access to this data to ridiculously inexperienced and
| ignorant goons exponentially increases the risk of data
| tampering and corruption...
|
| It makes any kind of audit LESS likely to be accurate.
|
| But they're very obviously not doing any kind of credible
| audit. As mentioned, that's literally impossible and
| nonsensical to do this way.
| taylodl wrote:
| Untrained "auditors" will do an "audit" and blast the
| "results" all over X, Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN. Seems
| legit.
| tlb wrote:
| Not if the company had up-to-date audited financials, no.
| You'd start with those.
|
| The problem is agencies that haven't been audited in a
| decade. The agencies literally don't report how much money
| they get, their current balances, or where it goes.
|
| Here's the DOD proudly announcing that they now have clean
| audits for 11 of their 28 departments:
| https://www.defense.gov/News/News-
| Stories/Article/Article/39.... Surely nothing bad is
| happening in the other 17.
| Naklin wrote:
| I'm all for better accounting practices and better
| tracking of government spending as well as eliminating
| waste. Absolutely.
|
| But pretending that Musk and co are doing an audit by
| accessing treasury records and payment systems or that it
| will help with government waste in any way is laughable.
|
| Again, literally no one would be able to make any kind of
| credible department spending audit out of the bank
| records of a mid-sized company.
|
| This is the US government's treasury we're talking about
| here! This is several orders of magnitude bigger and more
| complicated!
|
| Not to mention an audit would not require any write
| access.
| archagon wrote:
| Based on Musk's tweets, the depth of this "audit" seems to be
| entirely surface level, e.g. "Lutheran in the name? DELETE."
| (Not that they could do any better even if they wanted to
| given the blitzkrieg nature of the audit, size of the team,
| and complete lack of expertise.)
| taylodl wrote:
| Based on Musk's tweets we had a fully-functioning FSD years
| ago and CyberTruck sales have been a runaway success...
| mikeodds wrote:
| 1 billion sent to the fluffer
| dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp wrote:
| You're shocked by how many billions go completely unaudited?
|
| okay then...how many billions are completely unaudited?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Bigly huge numbers! No one knows how many billions except
| for me: and it's many! That's what people are saying!
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Ok, let's go hire someone..not...let random billionaires
| decide what to do
| belter wrote:
| If you were panicked when a developer at GitLab accidentally
| deleted the production database, just wait until some coder
| merges a half-tested patch into the Treasury's production
| environment. The Musk bros might lose the US ability to
| reassure the global bond market... Hopefully Spacex has
| policies with this Dutch Insurance
| company...:https://youtu.be/3r7mIDycJsE
| basementcat wrote:
| Congress was elected by the people and in a representative
| democracy, the voters decide (through their elected
| representatives) what is a crime.
| thrance wrote:
| The voters don't directly decide what is a crime. At best,
| they elect congress that can change the laws and constitution
| that in turn rules out what is or isn't illegal. None of this
| was done, none of this is democratic. This is nothing else
| than a coup perpetrated by the richest man on Earth.
| basementcat wrote:
| I'm sure the current Supreme Court (which was selected by
| elected Presidents and Senators) will have no trouble
| explaining how recent events have been "reasonable" and
| 100% followed constitutional procedures.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Nah, this kind of thing is fun for judges who know what
| decision they want to make. It's like a logic puzzle.
| normalaccess wrote:
| As far as I can tell Elon has had security clearance since 2019
| because Space X was (and still is) contracted to do work for
| the DOD. However I don't know what kind of clearance it was at
| that time.
|
| Please correct me If I'm wrong.
| tmaly wrote:
| I think he should open the data and methods minus any PII data
| and let the open community decide if his methods are sound.
| skepticATX wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but it would seem that Elon and Doge employees are
| exposing themselves up to significant legal liability here. Maybe
| Trump pardons Elon (if they don't fall out before then), but is
| he going to pardon everyone who has a hand in this? And it seems
| likely that state crimes are being committed as well. The
| president may have broad immunity, but Elon does not.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| He does if the President says he does! That's the beauty of a
| pardon. There's not a limit, as many people can be pardoned as
| Mr. Trump wants.
|
| And you can't arrest the president because he's immune from
| prosecution for official acts: pardoning is an enumerated
| constitutional power!
|
| So what's left is impeachment for the president and congress
| does not want to do this.
|
| And none of that will fall on Musk or DOGE. The government has
| made itself unable to prevent this.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| So is there a legal way to stop what is happening?
|
| If the current legal framework were software, I would say
| that this is an exploit chain that gives root access to the
| government / country.
|
| If there is not legal way to stop it, what is the
| alternative?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Ideally, not electing a person who would abuse those
| powers. Secondarily, the "immune from prosecution" was a
| supreme court decision as a result of the events of January
| 6th, so the 2024 election was a pretty important one.
|
| The current legal method available _now_ is an impeachment
| process, iterated until we have a president who values
| societal norms and stable government. (Depending on how you
| feel about JD Vance not also pulling this shit.)
|
| Currently 28 of the 51 republicans in the Senate are up for
| re-election in November of 2026; this is a possibility for
| a makeup change, but a remote one.
|
| It appears a large enough percentage of americans _want_
| this that there's no real possibility of changing course at
| this point; even the assassination attempts have failed.
| Understand that over 40% of americans _do_ want what is
| happening now, as backed up by current polling. Never
| comply in advance, do not follow illegal orders, and make
| good friends with your neighbours.
| Filligree wrote:
| The legal way to stop it is impeachment. Full stop. Nothing
| else can do with a president that's gone this far rogue;
| the courts can at best slow him down, but at worst nothing
| stops Trump from ignoring them.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > That's the beauty of a pardon. There's not a limit, as many
| people can be pardoned as Mr. Trump wants.
|
| It's really quite an odd power; very few developed
| democracies have a _personal_ pardon power today (some kind
| of vaguely pretend to; in the UK pardons are done by the
| monarch _at the direction of the government_, say). I think
| the US just stuck it on the presidency because at the time of
| independence the president was kind of a stand-in for the
| monarch, and the British monarchy had it at the time. The US
| then failed to get rid of it when everyone else did, instead
| relying on norms and basically on everyone behaving
| themselves to regulate it.
| timbit42 wrote:
| I expect Trump to ignore Biden's presidential pardons in the
| near future.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Same. The rationale for doing so doesn't have to stand up,
| it just needs to be a soundbite that is easy for MAGA
| supporters to remember and repeat.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You missed state-level action. The president cannot intervene
| in such matters (at least not in any legal, direct sense).
| Naklin wrote:
| I mean, with the extreme politicization of DOJ and FBI already
| under way by Trump and his cronies, and the dismantling of
| safeguards like inspector generals there's literally no chance
| that these people get indicted or even investigated under this
| administration.
|
| > is he going to pardon everyone who has a hand in this?
|
| How can anyone have any doubts after the jan 6 pardons?
| skepticATX wrote:
| Clearly it's not happening tomorrow, but eventually Democrats
| (and maybe even Republicans who want to uphold the
| constitution!) will be in the majority.
| apothegm wrote:
| That makes the big assumption that we'll ever have free and
| fair elections here again.
| jordanpg wrote:
| Yep. For all of these sensational headlines we're seeing
| recently, we need to keep in mind that we are only seeing
| the tip of the iceberg of what's happening, and that we
| are seeing exactly nothing of what's happening behind
| closed doors. In fact, the fiascoes may be specifically
| intended to keep the public's eye off the ball.
|
| I would be very surprised to learn that there are not
| teams working in every state to weaken the integrity of
| the electoral process.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| Demographic changes also make it much harder for the
| Democrats to win in the future
| (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-future-
| crisi...).
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If that were the case then no dictatorship anywhere would
| ever get embedded. Contrary to the widespread cultural
| belief in the US, people everywhere like freedom and
| integrity in public life; they're just not as
| individualistic about it, because most countries were
| settled many centuries earlier, and there is not an ethos
| of pioneering based on the idea of infinite free land and
| resources.
|
| The problem with dictatorship is that of first-mover
| advantage; once a dictatorship becomes embedded it's hard
| to dislodge. There's _de facto_ control of the legal,
| electoral, and cultural infrastructure which the regime can
| use to (ostensibly) re-legitimize itself every few years,
| while in the meantime suppressing dissent through violence
| and fear. That would be very much in line with the stated
| goals and actions of the administration so far. And I don
| 't mean this hyperbolically; Trump stated that he would be
| a dictator on day one, and while his supporters brushed
| this off as a joke his autocratic behavior since entering
| office is wholly consistent with that.
|
| Barring abrupt reversals in the next month or two, I think
| this is going to become a long-term situation, and there is
| simply no way the US can go back to two party pendulum
| politics after this. It would be like getting out of
| hospital after a stroke or a heart attack and heading
| straight back to an all-you-can-eat steakhouse.
| dboreham wrote:
| Great comment in 2021 but today we know laws are not enforced
| against powerful people and their lackeys.
| jordanpg wrote:
| Also, pardons are for criminal liability. They do not absolve
| you of civil liability (i.e., they can still be sued).
| malfist wrote:
| Is anyone not concerned by this? Paying the bills due is not a
| political issue, making payroll is not a political issue.
|
| Elected or unelected, politicians with an agenda should not be in
| charge here.
| affinepplan wrote:
| A lot of people are very concerned about it. but what am I
| supposed to do about it? I voted, canvassed, and donated as
| hard as I could already. and I lost.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| We wait for the order for the general strike, and then we do
| our part.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| I'm not being facetious but genuinely curious: who would
| issue such an order with enough authority for you to follow
| it?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Not OP, but someone with a significant national platform
| and an _explicit_ call (dates, details, support from
| other prominent folks), not a generic "we should do
| something!" hint.
|
| I'd find calls from, say, AOC or Taylor Swift more
| interesting than rando red rose LARPers.
| rsanek wrote:
| Swift? i don't think we should be looking to entertainers
| for political leadership, that's just following in the
| footsteps of how we got Trump.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You're not gonna get a general strike without people with
| significant national influence pushing for it, and it's
| not gonna be Chuck Schumer.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| They're not gonna push for it without grassroots
| organization, which means doing things at the local and
| online level to get the idea in wide circulation. It's
| not a startup.
|
| Absent this, people will get more and more frustrated
| which will eventually manifest as riots as it did in
| 2020. So if you prefer a more peaceable outcome, I think
| it's better to talk up the idea of a general strike
| rather than talk it down.
| morkalork wrote:
| It could get blown out like occupy wallstreet, or, if a
| natural leader arises to keep momentum focused, they
| could end up like MLK...
| lm28469 wrote:
| If you wait for someone else to do the hard work nothing
| will happen, look at the French yellow vests, it started
| from nothing, and the causes were laughable compared to
| what the US is going through now
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You do not wait for an order, because there is no central
| authority for a general strike. That's what gives it
| legitimacy.. You canvass, wheatpaste, recruit or whatever
| sort of political organizing/agitating you find
| appropriate. You have to meme it into existence.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Call your senator. Republican or Democrat or Independent or
| whatever. Call them, tell them you expect them to cease all
| routine business in the senate until accountability is
| restored. They do listen, it does matter.
| residentraspber wrote:
| As somebody who has never done this before, how do I go
| about this (past Googling their phone number)?
|
| I remember a while back with SOAP and PIPA there were
| templates you could read, do those exist for this case?
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| https://5calls.org
|
| I know using the phone can be uncomfortable if you don't
| do it often and that's okay. It gets easier the more you
| do it, and you don't need to word everything perfectly.
| The important thing is that you get your point across.
| "My name is x, I live in county y, and I'm calling to say
| I expect a yes/no vote on issue z."
| bens74 wrote:
| I just did this for the first time, I found all three of
| mine had websites with a form to fill in which I used to
| leave my message. I hope filling in the form counts as
| much as a phone call? I left one a phone message too, but
| do kind of hate calling people...
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Email is NOT as good! Phone calls are the most effective
| means by far. I know it's uncomfortable, it is for me
| too, but you need to power through that feeling. It gets
| easier the more you do it.
|
| I called and kept calling until I got through. There were
| busy signals for 30 minutes before I got in. Be
| persistent. Keep trying!
| atoav wrote:
| Protest.
|
| Or how do you think your ancestors got democracy and kept it
| in the first place?
| eCa wrote:
| > what am I supposed to do about it?
|
| Watching from Europe, I think you are getting close to the
| point where 75 million people need to hit the streets
| (preferably in DC).
|
| It appears they are trying to beat the 53 days record.
| pastureofplenty wrote:
| If those people hit the streets they'll be hit by chemical
| weapons (i.e. tear gas) that are illegal for our government
| to use in war but perfectly legal to use on peaceful
| protesters. Just something to keep in mind in case anyone
| is wondering why Americans don't really protest.
| kace91 wrote:
| I keep reading this as if it was not the case for most
| major protests and riots around the world.
| BryantD wrote:
| French police use tear gas on protestors, and in 1980,
| the South Korean government fired on and killed
| protestors. I don't think it's just the tear gas; I think
| it has more to do with the fact that we're way more
| distributed (it's very practical for most French people
| to descend on Paris than it is for US residents to
| descend on DC) and culturally not in the habit.
| barnas2 wrote:
| Tear gas is illegal to use in war because of a fear of
| escalation/retaliatory strikes due to an enemy thinking
| you're using other more dangerous chemical/biological
| weapons (chlorine, sarin, mustard, phosgene, etc).
|
| It's not banned in war because it's as dangerous as
| chemical weapons, it's banned in war so people don't
| think you're using chemical weapons.
| rcpt wrote:
| Immigration protests are picking up in Los Angeles and, for
| maybe the first time ever, the cops are not busting them
| up.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Wherever you are, find friends, bring family, go to the
| closest government building, camp in front of it. Block the
| main street of your city, block highways, block ports, &c.
|
| It really isn't rocket science, German hardcore ecologists
| put more efforts on a random Tuesday morning than Americans
| during a coup, it's mind boggling.
|
| They gave you an online "public square" so that you can all
| scream in its void, get the fuck out and protect what's yours
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A general strike is a worthwhile outlet. Electoralism is
| notthe only form of political activity.
| tayo42 wrote:
| And lost with a popular vote.
|
| We can't convince the other half that wants this...
| rcpt wrote:
| Not sure everyone is still happy about their vote.
|
| Also DT had a minority of the popular vote after you
| account for 3rd party.
| kccoder wrote:
| I'd wager a solid 20%-30% of the people who voted for Trump
| were poorly informed, or deliberately misinformed, and
| simply wanted "change" because they weren't pleased with
| the current state of their life / country. Unfortunately
| they didn't take the time to appropriately attribute the
| cause of their ills and made the grave mistake of thinking
| Trump and his administration would do anything at all to
| help them and their kind, not recognizing the narcissistic
| sociopath in front of them, and realizing that such people
| are wholly incapable of caring about any other person,
| under any circumstance. They were conned by a lifetime
| expert conman. Sad!
| latentcall wrote:
| Probably this at this point:
|
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/
|
| Organize into a political party. Spread pro worker
| information and convince the working class to join.
| Democratic Party is not it, in my opinion.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Musk isn't a policitican.
| Hayvok wrote:
| Ideally, trying to reform the government & its activities
| shouldn't require a team to burrow all the way down to the
| literal payments system & call individual balls and strikes.
|
| But I assume that is indicative of how unresponsive the
| bureaucracy has become to political direction from the
| president & secretaries.
| drawkward wrote:
| Try this assumption on for size: this team just wants to
| break the government and make it serve the party, not the
| country.
| jenkstom wrote:
| Bureaucracy is there to protect us from people like Trump and
| Elon. Congress can pass laws and the president can issue
| orders. This action threatens the US financial system, which
| threatens the economic stability of most of the world. In
| terms of human suffering this could have massive impact. We
| now have a psychopath (well, at least one) with his fingers
| around our throats. We're all waiting to see what comes next,
| but it won't be good.
| dionian wrote:
| Sunlight is the best disinfectant
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If you think you're gonna get sunlight form Musk you're a
| rube. There isn't any transparency going on here.
| generalizations wrote:
| There's been a lot so far. More than we've had in a
| while.
| hypothesis wrote:
| Alright, I'll bite. Any congress critter went onto the
| floor and started reading "transparency" files? Or is it
| the usual partisans with Xitter files?
| kuschku wrote:
| > unresponsive the bureaucracy has become to political
| direction from the president & secretaries
|
| You call it unresponsive, the founding fathers called it
| "checks and balances"
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Look I get where you're coming from, but those "checks and
| balances" can't be the thing you defend because they've
| largely done neither and in fact allowed this insanity in
| the first place.
| vkou wrote:
| The people who can do anything about it aren't concerned.
|
| The SP500 is normal today, institutional money is fine with
| this.
| archagon wrote:
| Yeah, because Microsoft is not affected the slightest if
| someone arbitrarily loses their research funding or stops
| receiving social security checks.
| vkou wrote:
| That's not the important risk here.
|
| The important risk is a runaway executive that feels
| completely unconstrained by law, with the blessing of both
| other branches of government. Today, it's blocking members
| of the legislature from entering government buildings and
| is unilaterally shutting down an agency that exists on a
| directive of Congress.
|
| Tomorrow, will it carry out any legislature that congress
| passes?
|
| In a year, will it comply with an impeachment?
| jghn wrote:
| You'd be surprised how much AWS, Azure, GCP, etc take in
| indirectly from research science.
| abeppu wrote:
| Yeah, what's up with that?
|
| Does this treasury department payment system not also cover
| the payments made to bondholders?
|
| Every time Congress delays raising the debt ceiling until the
| last minute, people get anxious and worry about a default and
| the full faith and credit of the US, etc. Are we now saying
| that the US could default _even when funds are available_ if
| an un-elected guy and some junior programmers decide that
| would be a good idea or just mess up when dealing with a
| complex and arcane legacy system, and that 's not scary to
| markets?
|
| I would think every financial model that references a "risk-
| free rate" now has to be revisited while people consider
| whether any information visible to the Treasury Department
| might link their account to someone who has said something
| disparaging about Musk on twitter.
| EasyMark wrote:
| The blatant ignoring of laws shows that Trump thinks it's fine
| to be lawless as long as it serves his chaotic agenda to sew
| discord and distrust in the government so he and his Elon goon
| squad can install more autocracy into the system.
| blindriver wrote:
| I'm happy this is being done. This is the first time the veil
| of undocumented or secret government payments has been pierced
| and it's going to shed a lot of light into the corruption
| behind government spending.
|
| Keep going, and don't stop until everything is investigated.
| abeppu wrote:
| > This is the first time the veil of undocumented or secret
| government payments has been pierced and it's going to shed a
| lot of light into the corruption behind government spending.
|
| ... is there somewhere that DOGE people with access are
| publishing the stuff they see? _If_ this were about
| transparency, that could be good, but that purpose could be
| served with read only access.
|
| I'm not saying there isn't serious corruption in government
| spending, but this administration and Musk aren't in a
| credible position to fight it, especially not this way. The
| Treasury Department should refer stuff to Justice who should
| convene a grand jury, present some evidence, and prosecute
| corrupt contractors etc. We're supposed to be a country of
| laws.
| kccoder wrote:
| Why in the world would you trust Elon and his cadre to do
| that investigation? The man has no self-control, has the
| temperament of a spoiled teenager, and by all accounts is a
| drug addict. He also has a shocking number of conflicts of
| interest.
|
| I wouldn't trust Elon to water my plants!
| nielsbot wrote:
| My worry is it could become a political issue. Agency you don't
| like? Employee you don't like? US state you don't like? Just
| don't pay them any more. And who would be able to do anything
| about it?
| bbor wrote:
| Where were you when the empire fell? I was at my computer, trying
| not to cry...
| esafak wrote:
| The empire comes after the republic.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Or, if one happens to be France, after, before, after, and
| before (they had two 'empires', interleaved between republics
| and a monarchy or two).
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| I was in my bed, reading Worm fanfiction
| bbqfog wrote:
| Musk already gained access to everyone's private Twitter data. He
| also gathers data from Tesla sensors. Now he has access to
| private citizen's federal data. Very dangerous for _any_ private,
| unaccountable individual to have this level of access and
| especially someone as malicious as Musk.
| gammarator wrote:
| Serious question: is there anything other than their own scruples
| keeping these guys from siphoning off a few billion dollars for
| themselves?
| fastball wrote:
| Criminal prosecution?
| wtfwhateven wrote:
| Why would they be prosecuted? The FBI has been gutted and
| they'd just be pardoned
| fastball wrote:
| Seems like a good wake-up call that all of these
| responsibilities shouldn't be the unilateral purview of the
| executive branch then.
| apothegm wrote:
| Wake-up call? It's a little late to close the barn doors.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Who else would they be?
|
| The government has to appoint somebody to actually carry
| out law. There must always be an executive branch to
| execute the law.
|
| The people running these agencies are all appointed by
| congress. If congress didn't want DOGE to have access to
| these systems then they wouldn't've confirmed the
| appointment of people who would give them access. Or
| conversely, they would impeach the appointees if the
| didn't like it.
|
| This is the strength and weakness of a single-party
| system (grant US has multiple parties but one party is
| actually in control currently). The party does what the
| party wants and if it's not what you want then it's
| tough.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The US Constitution at its heart is based on a system of
| checks and balances, both between branches of government
| and the Federal government and States:
|
| "Checks and Balances in the Constitution"
|
| <https://www.usconstitution.net/checks-and-balances-in-
| the-co...>
|
| That balance has been largely eviscerated presently.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| We do require a different constitutional order, but I
| wouldn't hold my breath on it being established any time
| soon.
| belter wrote:
| You know the answer.
| nicce wrote:
| Imagine adding intentional rounding error for a system that
| handles trillions. How many transactions is that? Take 2 cents
| from every transaction?
| drawkward wrote:
| I, too, saw Superman 3!
| soupfordummies wrote:
| Or something like when the sub routine compounds the interest
| and uses all these extra decimal places that just get rounded
| off and so they round them all down, and drop the remainder
| into an account they opened
| kurthr wrote:
| Yes, they're too busy siphoning off a few trillion dollars.
| headsman771 wrote:
| Hmm. If its possible now I wonder if it was happening before?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Unless the systems are so fragile that they can remove all
| traces of it (and I want to believe the systems are so complex
| and redundant that no infiltrator like these people can see the
| whole picture), they would / should face severe consequences
| for defrauding the state. They are not above the law, and if
| Trump pardons them for it (assuming he's still in office by
| then), the pardon should not apply because he'd be in on it. I
| don't know what checks and balances are available for that case
| though.
| coldpie wrote:
| > they would / should face severe consequences for defrauding
| the state. They are not above the law
|
| I don't know how to reply to a statement this naive. What
| about the past 8 years makes you think these people are not
| above the law?
|
| > I don't know what checks and balances are available for
| that case though.
|
| SCOTUS declared the president immune to prosecution. The only
| check on a rogue president is a 60+ seat majority of the
| opposite party in the Senate, which hasn't happened since the
| 1980s.
| drawkward wrote:
| There are other, extralegal, checks on a rogue president. I
| do not advocate them. But they do exist.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| "should not apply" - ha. Did you not just see the January 6th
| pardons? This is the new coup.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| There are no remaining checks and balances; the Republicans
| control all three branches of government and will pardon
| everyone involved.
| LorenDB wrote:
| It's spelled "federal", not "fedaral".
| shinryuu wrote:
| Fixed :)
| DinoDad13 wrote:
| This is a coup.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| This is what Trump campaigned on and he won.
|
| "It's a democracy when I like it and a coup when I don't!"
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Blue no matter who. 2024, 2026, 2028. This was preventable
| Etheryte wrote:
| I'm not from the US, so I don't really have a direct horse in
| this race. Don't you think that polarization like this is
| exactly what led to the current situation? Culture begets
| counter culture and demonizing the other side turns into a
| rallying call in turn.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| There's also a lot more nuance here and I definitely wouldn't
| say demonization of Democrats as a party is what lead to the
| current situation, that's seems a very oversimplified take. I
| would say more demonization of LGBT people, immigrants,
| scientists, government workers, media, etc. and demonization
| of those people is very different than demonizing the
| partisan apparatuses. I'm honestly on board with hating the
| Democrat political apparatus.
|
| You should be allowed to hate on a political party, it's
| weird to think that's inherently an issue (especially in the
| current climate). I think a big part of the problem is in the
| US we're only allowed 2 parties so if one doesn't stuff you
| find unacceptable you sorta just need to support the other.
| Gotta love the "land of the free".
| Etheryte wrote:
| That's all fair, but you do understand that a large part of
| your point boils down to saying the problem isn't us
| demonizing them, the problem is them demonizing us, right?
| tdb7893 wrote:
| I'm saying demonizing political organizations isn't a
| problem, demonizing broad classes of people is.
|
| For example: there's a difference between saying
| immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country"
| (direct Trump quote) and "I would never vote for a
| Republican". The latter is generally fine and expected in
| any democracy. People have party preferences.
|
| Edit: there's also context and matters of degree that
| matter here but this is an HN comment and I'm not gonna
| write an essay.
| archagon wrote:
| Yes; but in my view, one of the political parties in the
| country has gone completely off the rails. I was raised right
| and actually have some core values, so how can I respect
| someone who enthusiastically voted for president "grab 'em by
| the pussy"? There is nothing left to demonize: his sins and
| crimes are completely out in the open and his followers love
| 'em. An impeached felon and rapist who tried to blatantly
| steal the last election is our head of state, and I feel like
| I have nothing in common with half the country anymore.
|
| In truth, though, I don't think much of this is organic.
| Right-wing TV and radio (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Carlson, etc.)
| have been rotting brains around the country for decades. Our
| current situation is the result of a concerted propaganda
| campaign by the powerful and wealthy going all the way back
| to the Nixon impeachment, not some day-to-day disagreements
| about taxes or culture war issues.
| lbrito wrote:
| "Polarization" is an awful, borderline evil way to understand
| the world today. I hate that is mainstream.
|
| Every single time an extreme right-wing populist runs against
| any opponent who is _not_ extreme right-wing, the media
| portrays the election as a "sad reminder of our polarized
| world". That is absolute bullshit.
|
| Anywhere in the world, the histrionics, the deranged
| conspiracy theories, the chtonic racialism always come from
| one side alone, while the other side - which is more often
| than not garden variety right-wing, mind you - mumbles "let's
| not do that". But somehow mainstream media successfully
| portrays this dynamic as "polarization" and "a fight between
| two extremes".
| watwut wrote:
| I do not think op has duty to enable. It is not even
| polarization to say you wont vote for a party.
| queuebert wrote:
| Blue no matter who is exactly how we got here. DNC needs to
| start now coming up with a platform and a viable candidate.
| They need to retire the geriatrics and start cultivating new
| young blood.
| chikere232 wrote:
| A blue geriatric would do far less damage than this.
|
| Also, don't wait for an election, start protesting now. There
| may never be a free election again
| drawkward wrote:
| No. I demand better of the Democrats than what has been
| offered.
| yladiz wrote:
| And if they don't give someone better, in your opinion, then
| what next? Inaction?
| jayGlow wrote:
| vote for a different party that aligns with your views?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| with the voting system present in the US, it is
| essentially impossible for a 3rd party to come into
| existence that has any hope of significant federal or
| even state level power.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The USA is the opposite of pluralistic. No third party
| has managed to build any serious political infrastructure
| at the local level and expand it regionally or
| nationally. That's why there are so many frivolous third
| party candidates for president; they're desperate to get
| a percentage of votes that will generate some federal
| funding to sustain organizational growth, and running for
| President is one of the few ways to get sufficient
| attention for that nationally.
| timeon wrote:
| Yes that is normal thing to do in pluralist democracies.
| Unfortunately not an option in two-party system.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'll go farther. To a degree, Democrats _caused_ this by
| offering such terrible options.
|
| (I mean, no, they are not the Single Root Cause - clearly
| not. They're a part of the causal chain, though. If they had
| run a solid candidate in any of the last three elections, we
| wouldn't be here.)
| almosthere wrote:
| The democrats offered him the chair. I still think Jill and
| Joe may have actually voted for Trump.
| chikere232 wrote:
| Do you think Trump is better? Because that is what you're
| getting from a policy of holding out for a good enough
| opponent
|
| You're free to be a Trump supporter of course, but if you're
| not and you're still enabling Trump to win because you don't
| like the Democrats "enough", your actions aren't aligning
| with your best interests
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| the dems could have won easily if they ran a half way competent
| campaign
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Yeah, I think everyone knows this was preventable.
|
| The idea that "people failed the Dems" causes me a lot of anger
| at this point, because the folks who had the power to prevent
| this preferred to slip ever rightward in their platform instead
| of recognizing any number of highly popular non-conservative
| positions.
|
| People often say "elections have consequences" but they are
| rarely saying "the democrats need to take this as an objective
| lesson about how badly they failed to represent their
| constituencies".
|
| Instead Democratic party apologists go into fantasies about
| Bernie Bros and Russian Interference, while they materially
| fail to do literally anything useful about the very real
| current issues.
|
| The Democrats need to understand that the election was so close
| that they could have won if they hadn't worked against
| themselves at the party level at every turn- if they had a
| primary of any kind they might have won.
|
| I absolutely don't agree that "voting blue" would have fixed
| this- I think this is the consequence of "voting blue" in 2020
| and giving the DNC the idea that they can literally run a piece
| of toast and win against trump.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I _tend_ to agree. I think the early energy of the Harris
| campaign was in part because the highly paid centrist
| consultants hadn 't gotten their hooks in yet; there was a
| _notable_ shift in tone as "these people are fucking _weird_
| " disappeared and "we've got Cheney endorsing us!" replaced
| it.
|
| I get, to some extent, why they're gun shy on this; centrism
| _feels_ like it should be compelling with a crazy person on
| the other end... but I think the party needs to run an AOC
| style firebrand soon. Time to at least _attempt_ being a bit
| leftist for once.
| almosthere wrote:
| I mean if you're going to be for "leftism" it might need to
| be redefined because the reason your side lost (the side I
| used to be on) is that it went fucking nuts.
| roughly wrote:
| The next person to suggest the Dems need to swing right
| needs to be thrown in a volcano, or at least outed as an
| obvious fifth columnist. Harris ran so far to the right she
| was campaigning with Liz Cheney on being tough on
| immigration, and she lost the election to a geriatric felon
| autocrat with no coherent plans because Democratic turnout
| was down. There's no credible argument for that style of
| campaign anymore, and anyone suggesting otherwise is either
| dangerously incompetent or dangerously disingenuous.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "Centrism" is doing a lot of work. I call it "slow
| fascism", in contrast with the "fast fascism" of Trump.
| Believe me, while centrists pretend to like rules and
| procedures, those procedures can rapidly melt away when
| it's in their interest to. There's a lot of people in the
| Democratic Party who were personally responsible for, say,
| selling out the working & middle classes[0]. Hell, Ronald
| Reagan was a Democrat that jumped ship because the
| Republican Party is easier to infiltrate.
|
| In the middle of the Harris campaign, there was a concerted
| effort by cryptocurrency whales to primary electorally
| successful Democrats, purely to send a message: "we will
| absolutely fuck with you if you don't get in line with us".
| It was up in the air whether or not Harris would even keep
| Lina Khan on. The Harris campaign blinked so hard their
| eyes were stuck shut for the rest of the election.
|
| We need an actually progressive _party_ , not just a
| handful of progressive politicians acting as veneer over
| the centrist turd that is the DNC. We had that once before
| with Obama, who was very good at virtue-signalling progress
| while letting his own party tell him "no" at every
| juncture. We need to purge the DNC of people who think only
| about narrowly winning the electoral game so that their
| machine can perpetuate itself.
|
| To be clear, this doesn't mean purity tests. It means doing
| shit so obviously good and beneficial for _everyone_ that
| it makes your opponent 's rainbow coalition of fascists
| second-guess why they're brown-nosing a good candidate for
| the biblical Antichrist just to get one thing out of him. I
| happen to be in a family full of Trump bootlickers, and
| _every single one of them_ wants trust-busting back on the
| menu. They want right to repair. They want click to cancel.
| That 's shit the Democrats should have been howling from
| the rooftops. But they didn't, because the _Democratic
| Party does not want it_.
|
| Until the DNC can be _proud_ of what they do for the
| country, instead of ashamed that they didn 't loot it hard
| enough, they will continue to lose to a coalition of the
| weirdest weirdos America has to offer.
|
| [0] To be clear, in America, "middle class" just means
| "working class and lying to themselves about it.
| watwut wrote:
| No, people who caused this are the ones who picked Trump for
| candidate and then voted for him. Conservatives did not had
| to pick Trump and his fellow travelers, they did. It should
| not be responsibility of democrats to become moderate
| republicans. It should be responsibility of moderate
| republicans to moderate their party. If you are moderate
| republican who voted Trump because you cant stomach the
| democrat establishment allows transexuals to transition or
| whatever, then you are someone who knowingly voted someone
| who you knew will do exactly what is going on now. There is
| nothing new or shocking about Trump or conservatives being
| anti-democratic or breaking the law.
|
| It is absurd that all the bad stuff conservatives do ends up
| being blamed on left and center. But somehow, when left do
| something bad, conservatives are never blamed.
|
| > the democrats need to take this as an objective lesson
| about how badly they failed to represent their constituencies
|
| The elections were quite close. They failed to represent
| moderate republicans who prefer fascists anyway. They lost in
| elections. But the constituency voting for Trump was not
| theirs.
|
| It would be cool if anti-Trump right would stop blaming
| everyone but themeselves. Especially when those anti-Trump
| people voted for Trump second time.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| "It would be cool if anti-Trump right would stop blaming
| everyone but themeselves."
|
| I agree, but from where I stand to the left, the Democrats
| -are- the anti-Trump right.
|
| "It should not be responsibility of democrats to become
| moderate republicans."
|
| I also agree with this, and I think that they would have
| won if they had not tried to be come GOP-Lite.
|
| "It would be cool if anti-Trump right would stop blaming
| everyone but themselves. Especially when those anti-Trump
| people voted for Trump second time."
|
| It'd be cool, from my far-left anti-war, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-
| capitalist position, if the Democrats would "stop blaming
| everyone but themselves." Especially when they keep losing
| because they don't run moderate right-wing candidates who
| don't represent their constituencies- that's explicitly the
| reason why they lost, not because a lot of folks voted for
| DT, but because a big chunk of folks realized that they
| weren't served by voting for Harris.
|
| The Dems didn't have to run Harris. Or they could have
| setup a platform to appeal to the folks who ultimately
| didn't trust her.
|
| But they didn't do those things and they lost an election
| they could have won.
| resters wrote:
| Everyone from Elon to Luigi want to just "burn it down". They see
| no benefit in following democratic processes to achieve the
| desired ends.
|
| I used to respect Elon for risking a lot of his own capital on
| new ventures. But now he's turned into a socially conservative
| internet troll.
| Bloating wrote:
| Unless its your party-tribe is lighting the fires
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Conservatives" are, in theory, interested in stability and
| status quo.
|
| The correct term, IMO, is regressive.
| orwin wrote:
| Reactionary?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I think reactionary would be more likely to catch on. Some of
| them embrace it.
| queuebert wrote:
| > following democratic processes to achieve the desired ends
|
| That has been failing for a while now. Congressional approval
| is in the 20% range, much lower than even Trump's. An odd fact
| never mentioned in the media. The U.S. is toast if it can't
| reverse Citizen's United.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Political pundits for major outlets (538, New York Times,
| Washington Post) reference this constantly. It's mentioned
| all the time in media to the point where when people talk
| about congressional approval I turn my brain off because I
| know they'll say some version of "congressional approval is
| low but people generally approve of their congressman".
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| ... are you both sidesing elon and luigi?
| resters wrote:
| Sadly I think both are dealing with mental breakdown of some
| kind.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Those democratic processes stopped working decades ago. They're
| marginally more effective than the "close door" button on an
| elevator, but not by much. Everyone in Congress is either too
| bought or too old to listen to you. The Presidency is a
| glorified popularity contest that the Democratic Party[0] has
| figured out how to consistently lose with razor-thin margins.
| And the judicial branch was never democratically accountable to
| begin with.
|
| Elon was never going to follow democratic processes, that's not
| how moneybag men think. Do you think he ran X.com, PayPal,
| Tesla, SpaceX, or Twitter as democracies? Hell no. Musk fires
| or buys-out people who disagree with him. Same with the
| healthcare CEO Luigi assassinated. There is no process in the
| current version of America that would allow the people to
| counter the power of billionaires. The people have been routed.
|
| The difference between the two is that Luigi targeted a thing
| that actively hurts people and, in any democratic world, would
| have been illegal. Elon is burning down the things that stop
| him from hurting people.
|
| [0] Which isn't democratic; nor is the Republican Party
| republican. Canada and Australia's Liberal Parties aren't
| liberal, either. Hell, Japan has a two-fer: a Liberal
| Democratic Party that's neither liberal nor democratic.
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| total financial control by 5 20 years who've never written
| anything but Python, this should be great
|
| who tf downvoted this show yourself groyper
| drawkward wrote:
| they won't, because "groyper" and "coward" are synonyms
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| just find it hard to believe you could be on hacker news and
| be like "this is good" unless you yourself was a 20 internet
| troll you know?
| drawkward wrote:
| turns out, a lot of tech took a hard right turn in the last
| decade or two.
|
| I think it is explained by the idea that, when tech
| overtook finance as the best shot at accumulating supra-
| human wealth and power, the young sociopaths started going
| into tech instead of finance.
| olelele wrote:
| This here rings true to me.
| desumeku wrote:
| 20 year old internet troll here. This is good.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| For those not up on the lingo:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers>
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| This coming from the same people who shut OPM employees out of an
| HR database, citing (legitimate) security and oversight concerns,
| because they had broad un-auditable access.
|
| How can this department turn around and do this and still
| maintain they're doing the right thing? By their own admission
| they know this a bad idea
| archagon wrote:
| > _Overnight Wired reported that contrary to published reports
| that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to
| 'read only' access to department payment systems, this is not
| true. A 25 year old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has
| admin privileges on these critical systems which directly control
| and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the US government
| including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all
| contract payments. I can independently confirm these details
| based on going back to the weekend. I can further report that
| Elez not only has full access to these systems and has already
| made extensive changes to the code base for this critical payment
| system._
|
| > _Josh, are you a little crestfallen they beat you to it? Well,
| sure but this is a business is an ocean of 'arrgghhs' and
| honestly the information being out is the big thing. Here are the
| additional details._
|
| > _I'm told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received
| full admin level access on Friday January 31st. The claim of
| 'read only' access was either false from the start or later fell
| through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez
| for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive
| changes to the code base for the payment system. They have not
| locked out the existing programmer /engineering staff but have
| rather leaned on them for assistance which they appear to have
| painedly provided hoping to prevent as much damage as possible -
| 'damage' in the sense not of preventing the intended changes but
| avoiding crashes or a system-wide breakdown caused by rapidly
| pushing new code into production with a limited knowledge of the
| system and its dependencies across the federal government._
|
| > _Phrases like "freaking out" are, not surprisingly, used to
| describe the reaction of the engineers who were responsible for
| maintaining the code base until a week ago. The changes that have
| been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block
| payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been
| blocked. I want to emphasize that the described changed are not
| being tested in a dev environment (i.e., not live) but have
| already been pushed into production. This is code that appears to
| be mainly the work of Elez who was first introduced to the system
| probably roughly a week ago and certainly not before the second
| Trump inauguration. The most recent information I have is that no
| payments have as yet been blocked and that the incumbent
| engineering team was able to convince Marko to push the code live
| to impact only a subset of the universe of payments the system
| controls. I have also heard no specific information about this
| access being used to drill down into the private financial or
| proprietary information of payment recipients, though it appears
| that the incumbent staff has only limited visibility into what
| Elez is doing with the access. They have however looked into
| extensively into the categories and identity of payees to see how
| certain payments can be blocked._
|
| https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219987126
| cratermoon wrote:
| I sure hope none of the systems the DOGE boys are recklessly
| accessing end up having some dangerous malware like StuxNet on
| them that ends up disabling or destroying the DOGE systems.
| hamburga wrote:
| Why was this flagged?
| throw16180339 wrote:
| Most stories about Musk are flagged regardless of the topic. He
| might be using bots, he's certainly petty enough to do so.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Musk stuff tends to be; his horde of weird sycophants is alive
| and well.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Purely political posts are against the guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Because enough users flag it.
|
| I usually flag anything related to the US political circus.
| polotics wrote:
| Just asking for a friend. Are CIA and NSA salaries being paid by
| the systems that are being fraudited right now? Does this extend
| to payments to intermediaries inclusive of foreign intermediaries
| / banks?
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I think the nasty parts of the TLAs will be fine with just the
| money they make off drugs, human trafficking and so on. I
| assume there are a significant number of "straight" employees
| that would be fucked by the whole system blowing up, but maybe
| they'd just pay them with cash too. AFAIK it's still legal to
| pay people that way as long as they get a proper pay slip with
| the cash envelope. Alternatively they might move them to
| contractor positions in regime-friendly firms.
|
| But not realistically it seems like the goal is to be more
| targeted: pay your shooters, cut off your enemies'.
| macawfish wrote:
| Maybe hasty de-dollarization is the plan of this organization
| literally named after a cryptocurrency?
| belter wrote:
| This a list of the data these SpaceX bros might now have on their
| drives, for every single US citizen:
|
| - Tax Return Info: Name, SSN, address, income, deductions,
| payments/refunds.
|
| - Enforcement Records: Audit trails, payment plans, liens/levies.
|
| - Federal payments (e.g., tax refunds, Social Security), direct
| deposit info, delinquent debt details.
|
| - Accounts for U.S. Treasury securities (personal data, account
| activity).
|
| - Sanctions Enforcement: Basic identifiers (name, address),
| transaction details for compliance checks.
|
| - Financial Crime Data: Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs),
| Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs), limited personal/transaction
| info tied to money laundering or terrorist financing
| investigations.
|
| - Investigative files related to Treasury programs (potentially
| includes personal data).
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Thanks for the summary! The article is clearly written by
| someone who knows all of this, but didn't bother to spell it
| out like this.
| rsynnott wrote:
| He seems to be an economist who writes a lot about central
| banks etc, so likely suffering from XKCD 2501:
| https://xkcd.com/2501/
| offmycloud wrote:
| > Tax Return Info: Name, SSN, address, income, deductions,
| payments/refunds
|
| Can you please provide a source for the claim of release of IRS
| taxpayer confidential data?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _the data these SpaceX bros_ might _now have on their drives_
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The takeaway should be that _every_ government administration
| has access to all of this, so maybe we shouldn 't be doing the
| mass surveillance that causes it all to exist in a central
| database.
| mandeepj wrote:
| Musk got himself into this hole, so if a democrat president comes
| in 2029, there's a high chance now, he'd be deported. Can happen
| sooner as well, depending on midterms.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| You don't deport citizens though...
| mmastrac wrote:
| Well that might be changing soon:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jn5291p52o
| saturn8601 wrote:
| If they could prove he was in the country illegally and
| breaking laws maybe they could revoke his citizenship?
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/CgV2KzyWKx0?t=794
|
| He often talks about the most ironic outcome being the most
| likely so this could fit lol.
| erentz wrote:
| So I just found this a few pages down at rank 129, where its
| ended up in only 3 hours, despite garnering 250 points in that
| time. That's abnormal for such a popular post. What gives?
| EasyMark wrote:
| Probably marked as "political" and demoted
| shinryuu wrote:
| People flagged it. Seems like it got moderated and is now
| unflagged.
| yalogin wrote:
| Weird that the first instinct of his is to eliminate all aid
| local and international. No mention of looking at the military
| spending. I guess cutting elsewhere will help funnel that into
| spacex and whatever ai insanity musk comes up with to "serve the
| government"
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| There's a logical fallacy in believing simply because Elon has
| had some success in business, he can have success here.
| edanm wrote:
| I'd hardly call that a logical fallacy. I'm fairly sure there's
| _some_ correlation between success in business and success in
| other domains.
| lm28469 wrote:
| The problem is that a company has nothing to do with a
| country, the goal isn't to have a positive balance at the end
| of the excel spreadsheet
| edanm wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Still, it's not a logical fallacy to think "someone very
| successful at X is more likely to be successful at Y", in
| many cases. Do _you_ think that there is literally zero
| correlation between massive business success and success at
| whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do now?
|
| (I agree it's a fallacy if you think is' _assured_ he will
| succeed, as opposed to this just being a correlation in
| your mind. I just bumped on the use of "logical fallacy"
| to describe something that is not a fallacy at all!)
| thecosas wrote:
| I think you may have captured the point best in the way
| you phrased this: "whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do
| now"
|
| That it's not entirely clear makes it impossible to know
| if it _might_ be something he could have success in.
| tayo42 wrote:
| He's had more failures then successes
|
| Fired from PayPal, Twitter, neurolink, the tunnel thing
|
| He bought his way into Tesla, and SpaceX, though suppsedly
| he's not actually the one running it (believable I think
| there's not enough time)
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Quantitatively, he's had more success than anyone ever
| thecosas wrote:
| Most money? Sure. Most success? That depends on what
| you're quantifying.
| edanm wrote:
| Look, if you're trying to argue that Musk isn't a
| successful person in many ways, my only question is "then
| who is?". You're talking about literally the richest person
| in the world, and one that has had several successful
| companies.
|
| And having failures is not that uncommon, especially for
| serial entrepreneurs. You've gotta accept some failures to
| get to successes.
|
| As for the whole "he bought his way into Tesla" thing, this
| is just making the idea of a "founder" some kind of
| sacrosanct thing. By most histories I've read, he is the
| reason the company is the success it is today.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > "then who is?"
|
| The local Bodega down the street has been profitable for
| 40 years. They seem to be doing just fine and as a bonus
| they haven't burned billions in subsidies _or_ hijacked
| public transportation initiatives.
| tayo42 wrote:
| There are plenty of successful people. How do you want to
| define success? Elon got rich by turning TSLA into a meme
| stock. Do you think he would be rich or as rich right now
| if twitter never existed? He got rich on paper once, with
| TSLA stock, every other attempt at making a business has
| been a failure. He doesnt have a track record, and the
| financials for tsla are not inline with how the company
| is actually doing. Sales now are slipping.
|
| > And having failures is not that uncommon, especially
| for serial entrepreneurs.
|
| IDK how you can call this anything else but luck. He got
| forced out of paypal with a ton of money and was able to
| keep taking risks because of the safety nets he had that
| most do not.
|
| He also threw a fit and left openai, that was a poor
| business decision.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Those other domains might be seriously limited in scope and
| number though!
| hoppp wrote:
| Exactly. Also the are different kinds of success. He might be
| rich but everyone who isn't sucking up to him thinks he is a
| neo nazi.
|
| He does not have success with public opinion.
| kace91 wrote:
| The way you word it makes it seem like him being considered a
| neo nazi is a failure of marketing on his part, rather than a
| very intentional public display.
| dionian wrote:
| merely "believing" is always a logical fallacy, even when
| people are highly qualified
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| So let me get this straight-- there is a box in a Treasury
| building that, if the janitor accidentally unplugs it-- immediate
| financial apocalypse and a fifth of the US economy "stops."
|
| Why isn't the very existence of this box the problem?
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> So let me get this straight-- there is a box in a Treasury
| building that, if the janitor accidentally unplugs it--
| immediate financial apocalypse and a fifth of the US economy
| "stops."
|
| It is mission-critical finance system. Guaranteed it's multiple
| redundant boxes in an highly access-controlled data center. No
| one _should_ have access without serious vetting.
|
| >> Why isn't the very existence of this box the problem?
|
| The money doesn't move around on magic and rainbows. What were
| you expecting?
| lm28469 wrote:
| I mean if you simplify things to that extent Trump has a suit
| case with a red button that can end the world. Real life is a
| bit more complicated
| paulsutter wrote:
| Full on panic from start to finish, but not one actual problem
| described
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of
| the most sensitive systems in the US government.
|
| ...
|
| >All that is known is that Marko can "access and query" SPS and
| that there was someone who gave Marko a "tour" of the facilities.
| We do not know where they are in operationalizing any control.
| One senior IT source can see Mark retrieving "close to a thousand
| rows of data" but they can't see the content because the system
| is "top secret" even to them. No source I have has knowledge of
| what DOGE is doing with the data they are retrieving.
|
| So the (d)evil remains hidden in every one of their details! What
| does 'write code' actually mean? A DB query? What exactly are
| these 'most sensitive' systems in the US government? A COBOL DB??
|
| Compare the backups.
|
| You DO have them off-site?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The most likely explanation is that the system either doesn't
| have the capacity to provide full read access without write
| access, or they were ordered to be provided "full access" and
| then the part of the bureaucracy implementing that directive
| interpreted it as including write access.
|
| This is obviously not ideal, but the real question is, are they
| actually modifying anything (and if so , what?), or it is just
| a permissions level they're not actually using for anything?
|
| We also can't rule out media hysteria yet, e.g. "write code"
| could plausibly be something like "write SQL queries" which
| doesn't inherently imply any modification to the database
| tables.
| samsk wrote:
| Oh, can't wait for the article on Medium on how they rewrote that
| old COBOL thing in React Native and NodeJS in 3 days and saved
| bilions (by not delivering them).
| liontwist wrote:
| Many reasonable and civil comments I and others made earlier
| today are being flagged. Whats going on?
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| So to me this seems like an issue, set aside the
| constitutional/legal issues.
|
| It sounds like, from the reporting, one person is modifying a
| large complex system that handles trillions of dollars and
| pushing directly to production.
|
| Also he is not familiar with the system, having first encountered
| it a week ago.
|
| Also the people who do normally have access to this system do not
| know what he is exactly doing, because normally, it is illegal
| for them to even access the system in the same way.
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