[HN Gopher] Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Soc...
___________________________________________________________________
Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security
data to new job
Author : raldi
Score : 553 points
Date : 2026-03-11 13:52 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| saalweachter wrote:
| I feel like when I was a twenty- something I would have been at
| risk of exfiltrating data like this not for any specific
| nefarious purpose or money-making scheme but just out of data
| hoarding.
|
| Anymore I have zero desire to keep any copy of work code or other
| data on any personal device. Nope, never gonna need it, don't
| want it, just a potential legal headache with no upside.
|
| But when I was younger? I could totally imagine getting a big
| juicy dataset like that and wanting a copy for myself. It'd make
| me feel special, having information no one else had.
| tw-20260303-001 wrote:
| > having information no one else had
|
| A broken logic. Of course the people who you would have stolen
| the data from, had it. A question pops up, though... what's in
| your possession you should not be in the possession of.
| kreco wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you can adjust the logic from "no one else"
| to "very very very few" and the logic just works the same...
| tw-20260303-001 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
| simonw wrote:
| Even in your twenties would you have then taken that data and
| attempted to share it with a future employee?
| saalweachter wrote:
| I don't think I would have offered to sell it or accepted an
| offer to buy it, but I think I could have easily been talked
| into sharing it, in a "I think my boss is a cool guy and I
| want him to like me and/or impress him" situation.
|
| I'm not doing anything wrong! It's not like I'm _selling it_!
| I 'm just showing off the cool data no one else has! I'm
| saving the day, probably, by letting us solve a problem with
| my cool data that would be impossible otherwise.
| estearum wrote:
| This is why we normally have hiring standards for USG.
|
| I had access to insane amounts of highly sensitive data as
| an early 20-y/o and never once felt inclined to share it or
| brag about it with anyone.
|
| Hiring processes around these roles should distinguish
| between past-me and past-you.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Eh, over time I've come to believe having systems that
| manage insider risk is more important than expecting to
| be perfect in hiring.
|
| Like, any system will fail if too many of its members
| don't care about maintaining it, but you're going to hire
| the wrong person from time to time.
|
| It's important to design your systems to minimize access,
| both in terms of not allowing everyone access to
| everything and to only allow people as much access as
| then need to do their jobs, to require multiple people to
| sign off on temporary access grants, to create audit
| trails and to actually audit them and have consequences
| for violating the rules.
|
| (Which, in this case, DOGE purposefully dismantled.)
|
| It doesn't just protect the data from nefarious villains,
| it also protects young idiots from themselves, who don't
| realize you can cause harm just by being curious.
| estearum wrote:
| Sure, I'm not proposing that we shouldn't have systems to
| mitigate insider risk.
|
| I'm proposing that we both have systems to mitigate
| insider risk _and_ we try to avoid hiring ideologically
| motivated and ethically compromised goobers to highly
| sensitive government jobs.
|
| And I'm proposing that we don't write this off as, "welp
| he's a kid!"
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... The buck still has to end at some point. Somebody
| will have the power to override process or access things
| directly.
|
| At DOGE, those somebodies were a bunch of red-piled
| barely adults that worshiped Musk.
| mnmnmn wrote:
| Wow you're dumb as hell
| saalweachter wrote:
| Personally, I like to think I just _was_ dumb as hell,
| and now am only kind of stupid.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| And further, I would absolutely leverage it to get myself a
| job.
|
| Oh, wait. No I would never have done that. That's just insane.
| freejazz wrote:
| How would you get it in the first place?
| saalweachter wrote:
| I mean, insider risk is insider risk.
|
| In the DOGE case, they specifically broke all the controls
| that existed to manage insider risk and keep people from
| making copies like this, but (especially 20-30 years ago)
| I've been on plenty of networks that just had no concept of
| insider risk and everything was just open for anyone to
| access (or protected by shared passwords everyone knew).
| tantalor wrote:
| > they specifically broke all the controls
|
| Is there a reference or citation for this? I didn't see in
| the article.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I don't know about this person specifically, but the news
| from when DOGE was active was full of "employee of
| department fired for trying to prevent DOGE employees
| from directly accessing system no one is allowed to
| directly access".
| freejazz wrote:
| So you're saying that if you worked there you would also
| steal the social security data? What am I supposed to be
| taking away from this besides the fact that you would make
| poor choices and lack ethics? Didn't seem like it was a
| problem for people who worked in gov't prior to DOGE
| existing, so I'm not really getting any other takeaway
| here.
| saalweachter wrote:
| _Steal_?
|
| Oh no no no no no, not once, not ever.
|
| But look around the network, see what file shares are
| world readable, maybe see if there's any FTPs or Telnet
| servers with no username/password (or at least, no
| password stronger than "guest")? That's just being
| curious. And if I see any interesting files, and I make a
| copy to look at later, that's not a crime, is it?
|
| I'd like to think my younger self, if he'd been hired at
| the SSA or somewhere similar, would see the difference
| between "the personal data of hundreds of millions of
| people" and the networks I actually had access to at the
| time. I know I wouldn't be trying to sell the data or
| trying to otherwise leverage it for financial gain, but I
| don't really have such a high opinion of my younger
| self's judgement that I would completely rule out making
| a copy for objectively dumb reasons.
| sigmar wrote:
| It may not have been your intent, but this comment seems to
| downplay the crime here. It's a crime to take the data even if
| he wasn't shopping it around as alleged. and the fact that he
| was 'young and stupid' makes the circumstances of how this
| happened much more important for an investigation by the IG (ie
| why was an immature person given so much power?)
| swasheck wrote:
| yeah. ignorantia juris non excusat applies to both the speed
| limit and passive data theft
| rz2k wrote:
| I think it's a great reaction to news stories to imagine how
| you could have made the same bad decisions. Furthermore this
| public confession of being able to imagine making bad
| decisions might encourage a similarly minded to 20-something
| to wonder why an older version of themself is so afraid of
| even having such a dataset. It might even prompt someone to
| destroy some long forgotten cache of data they exfiltrated a
| long time ago.
|
| I don't think there's a risk that it will influence a rare
| person in power to enforce the rules to go lighter. I just
| think it encourages people to be less reckless with hoarding
| data who might otherwise put themselves in danger.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> zero desire to keep any copy of work code or other data on
| any personal device_
|
| Same. I won't even have Teams or Authenticator on my phone
| unlike most others here (though wrt Teams, that is at least as
| much about not wanting work to bother me as it is about the
| danger of data seepage). I need the authenticator to do the
| job, but I have an old factory-reset phone that has that (and,
| just in case, Teams) on it.
|
| _> But when I was younger? I could totally imagine getting a
| big juicy dataset like that and wanting a copy for myself._
|
| I'm pretty sure I never would have done. I've always resisted
| knowing credentials and personal information that aren't mine
| (so if anything untoward happens with/using that information
| there is no way it can be my fault/doing, as well as the less
| selfish reasons) despite people falling over themselves to do
| things like tell me their passwords & such when they were
| wanting some for of tech support.
|
| But I think there is a different attitude to data risk in that
| age group today. They've grown up in a world where very little
| is really private, and every app and its dog has wanted their
| contact details and other information (and all too often
| information about their friends & family), do the idea that
| data is a free-for-all is dangerously normalised in their
| heads.
|
| I find older people are similarly very lax with their own data,
| in fact often being rather too trusting of others generally,
| but not so much with other peoples. There are a lot more people
| who are appropriately careful (or even paranoid) in their
| 30s/40s/50s (I'm late 40s myself) - I think we are lucky to be
| in the middle, being exposed to information dangers enough to
| not have that "naivety or age" and not desensitised by having
| lax information security pushed at us from an early age.
| GJim wrote:
| > But I think there is a different attitude to data risk in
| that age group today. They've grown up in a world where very
| little is really private, and every app and its dog has
| wanted their contact details and other information
|
| Counterpoint from a UK/EU perspective.....
|
| Anybody new being onboarded is given (company compulsory)
| GDPR training if their role involves any handling or
| processing of personal data whatsoever. Data security and
| privacy is being treated quite seriously here; though
| unfortunately not seriously enough IMO.
| enoint wrote:
| Check out FreeOTP if you want an alternative to Google
| Autheticator.
| elicash wrote:
| I don't think you deserve downvotes; I think it's totally
| plausible that some people would steal this data just to feel
| special.
|
| But:
|
| 1) That's why we have traditionally had the safeguards that we
| have had, to protect against this sort of crime, and
|
| 2) The allegation in this case is that he later approached
| coworkers to do something with this data, even if they
| ultimately didn't help him do it. So it doesn't appear to be
| hoarding just for the sake of it here.
| Antibabelic wrote:
| So like Harold T. Martin who took 50 terabytes of data from the
| NSA because he was a data hoarder and was sentenced to nine
| years in prison?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_T._Martin
| speefers wrote:
| > "Martin reportedly stole the information simply by walking
| out of his various secure workplaces with it in his
| possession"
|
| "secure" eh?
| sumeno wrote:
| "Secure" workplaces means that you have to have the
| appropriate clearances and background checks to be allowed
| in and out. I'm sure there are _more_ secure workplaces,
| but the security of your average SCIF largely depends on
| the people allowed inside of it not being bad actors.
|
| Outside of strip searches upon arrival and leaving I'm not
| sure how you could eliminate that risk.
| mothballed wrote:
| It's probably safe to assume any non-classified information you
| provide to the government is for sale on the dark web.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Like the stolen-art market, I wonder if anyone with a large zip
| file of fake data could sell it as the "DOGE files" and make
| mucho crypto.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, recently it's pretty safe to assume any classified
| information the government has is stored in a fucking bathroom
| and is for sale.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Ex-employee alleges data copied to a flashdrive.
|
| Agency: "Social Security initially denied Borges's allegations
| and said the data referenced in his complaint is stored in a
| secure environment walled-off from the internet."
|
| Ah walled of the internet, so no one can get there and copy the
| data to a flashdrive. Move on, move on!
|
| You can't make that up.
| doomboiardee wrote:
| The only way someone could get that data is if they demanded
| physical access and fired anyone who stood in the way. An
| impossible task if you ask me!
| hotsauceror wrote:
| If I recall, that was exactly what happened early on in
| DOGE's tenure. Senior personnel were explicitly directed to
| grant admin access to DOGE personnel, and auditing/logging
| were disabled. This was widely reported at the time. I don't
| remember whether there were threats of termination, but it
| would not surprise me.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Yes, that's the joke
| hotsauceror wrote:
| Sorry. I started switching off of coffee this week...
| wat10000 wrote:
| While it's hard to overestimate the clownishness of this
| administration, I'd want to see the original wording of this
| denial before concluding that they said something that stupid,
| versus the author of this article paraphrasing it in a stupid
| manner. I'm not sure if this is what they're referring to, but
| the only response from the SSA that I found with a brief search
| doesn't say anything so foolish:
| https://dailycaller.com/2025/09/02/social-security-administr...
| tw-20260303-001 wrote:
| Nothing nerve wrecking like that but come on. They claim "the
| information could not have been stolen because the security
| practices" but "evidence has been published online, is now
| available to anyone and therefore it is dangerous" is a clown
| situation. It doesn't matter how it happened, it happened.
| Them trying to dispute the method is a clown camp.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The agency's statement says that PII is secure but that the
| complaint included internal emails and documents with info
| about the agency's systems and employees. That's not
| contradictory.
|
| I suspect the whistleblower is correct, but I don't think
| it's proven to the point where we can confidently state
| that "it happened." SSA isn't trying to dispute the method,
| they're trying to dispute the fundamental claim.
| tw-20260303-001 wrote:
| It might be worth waiting for the outcome of the
| investigation before trying to dispute anything in public
| statements.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Kristi Noem doesn't operate like that either. It's a
| pattern.
| mrmanner wrote:
| I mean technically a flash drive could be "a secure environment
| walled-off from the internet"
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| An intranet could be a secure environment walled off from the
| internet
| croes wrote:
| Technically they could claim it's a backup
| vntok wrote:
| An unplanned, decentralized, public backup?
| manwe150 wrote:
| And it is not connected to the internet, the internet is
| connected to it (I'm not in here with you, you're in here
| with me)
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Hard disagree. How can it be "walled off" from the internet
| if it's not connected? Despite the jokes, cutting access on
| its own is not the same as air gapping or a firewall. As soon
| as it's plugged in there are zero controls.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| > You can't make that up.
|
| Unfortunately it seems quite believable. This is the same
| outfit that fired a bunch of people responsible for overseeing
| the US Nuclear Arsenal. [0] The combination of arrogance and
| stupidity was breathtaking.
|
| [0] https://thebulletin.org/2025/04/doges-staff-firing-fiasco-
| at...
| tantalor wrote:
| > secure environment
|
| > copied to a flashdrive
|
| Both of these cannot be true. A secure environment does not
| allow trivial data exfiltration over USB.
| vntok wrote:
| Maybe it wasn't trivial?
| HillRat wrote:
| Contemporaneous reporting was that DOGE people demanded root-
| level access across multiple systems (disallowed by federal
| policy, so political appointees had to demand the access) and
| without background checks or onboarding, after which they
| extracted protected data and shoved it in some S3 buckets.
| Just blew a hole right through the entire federal data
| protection model; you can't plan for "the President orders
| everyone to ignore all privacy and security controls" as a
| threat model.
| Uvix wrote:
| True, but you can at least correctly label it and no longer
| refer to it as a "secure environment".
| tw04 wrote:
| It was absolutely a secure environment prior to DOGE
| laying waste to all the layers of security in place.
| Presumably those safeguards are now back in place post-
| DOGE razing.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Was it though? Haha
|
| You sound like the guys I know who work at banks, talking
| about all this policy, how secure they are.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Not unless they rebuild all of the infrastructure from
| scratch. Far too believable that something nefarious was
| left behind.
| input_sh wrote:
| After you know someone already had root access to
| everything?
|
| There's absolutely no way to guarantee that ever again.
| tantalor wrote:
| Indeed. The story should be that DOGE compromised these
| environments (at the direction of President), which
| allowed data to be exfiltrated by randos.
| nxobject wrote:
| That would be an admission of culpability, sadly.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47327367#47327394
|
| And: https://archive.is/Mw5bh
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is probably a good time to mention that they court-martialed
| Chelsea Manning for exfiltrating Army documents.
|
| I have a sinking suspicion this engineer won't see the inside of
| a jail cell.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Fraud as governance. Cool.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I've always wondered what the endgame of that farce was. Cost-
| cutting was clearly always a pretense and a bad one at that.
| There's made up claims about 300 year olds getting Social
| Security but I think this only proves that the SSA database was
| an explicit goal and that was cover.
|
| But why? The only conclusion I can come to is "stealing
| elections". I'll include this partial list I made of Republican
| voter suppression efforts going back decades [1].
|
| I believe out there someone is collecting all this data into an
| AI model to predict how people will vote, something that
| Cambridge Analytica was a toy version of. But it goes beyond how
| people will vote but whether they will vote. Likewise, data will
| be constructed to strike off people from voter rolls if the
| system believes they won't vote how you want. We've seen efforts
| like this where similar-sounding names of felons in other states
| are used to strike off people from voter rolls. And that's a real
| problem because people might not know they're no longer
| registered to vote and in some states you have to register 30 or
| more days before the election.
|
| There is essentially infinite money available to fund Republicans
| stealing elections because it results in public funding cuts to
| give even more tax breaks to billionaires.
|
| You can't directly use the SSA databsae obviously so any effort
| must be small enough to not draw attention, involve part or all
| of the computing done overseas to avoid legal scrutiny and/or
| "washing" that data through data provider services. I would bet
| if you started exhaustively looking at various companies in or
| adjacent to these spaces, you'd find some pretty dodgy stuff.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053453
| estearum wrote:
| I think a lot of these people are literally dumb. Or so naive
| or Twitter-brained that they're effectively dumb.
|
| https://www.onthewing.org/user/Bonhoeffer%20-%20Theory%20of%...
| mwigdahl wrote:
| I think it's simpler than that. I believe (as some others do)
| that DOGE was a useful piece of theater to distract the media
| while the Administration got down to business implementing a
| huge number of executive orders to roll back social protections
| and establish control over the civil service. This would have
| been a lot more controversial without Musk acting as a
| lightning rod for press coverage.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Cool. Investigate it. If they really did take data off a
| government system without permission, charge them with the most
| serious thing you can find in a district where they're likely to
| be convicted. Then send them to prison to delete years or decades
| off their lives.
|
| See if Musk was in any way involved, or acted with such reckless
| disregard for known security standards that he could be civilly
| or criminally liable. Do the same as above for him.
|
| The only way this stops is if consequences are introduced.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| It would be lovely if they did that. I very much doubt it will
| happen in this administration, if at all
| Natfan wrote:
| explain to me the incentives for the trump administration to do
| a complete 180 of crimes? why would they stop now?
| axus wrote:
| Distract from crimes of those currently in favor?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Removal of their personal freedom for months, years, or
| decades.
|
| Did this joker take things from a computer that they weren't
| supposed to while in a state that has laws against that sort
| of thing? If so, have a local prosecutor build up a case, and
| arrest and charge them.
|
| The Supremacy Clause should be tested in this way.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Federal charging will be countermanded from the top, or
| pardoned. Got to wait at least four years.
| collingreen wrote:
| That doesn't mean don't file them. Don't allow evil deeds to
| be done merely by threat - force immoral people to take the
| immoral action in public if they want to behave that way.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Then do state or local charges.
| fallinghawks wrote:
| Unfortunately, consequences have been largely absent for anyone
| in this administration since the last time they were in power.
| That's part of why this round they've been flaunting it so
| egregiously.
| 5upplied_demand wrote:
| Can any of the administration's defenders explain to me how this
| is actually a good thing and not the exact thing people were
| warning about a year ago?
| everdrive wrote:
| No they cannot. They don't offer real arguments, they make pre-
| textual arguments and they bullshit. (bullshit in the formal
| Harry G. Frankfurt sense of the word.) If an argument they make
| suits them, they will stand by that argument. If an argument
| ends up not suiting them, they will readily discard and
| fabricate a different justification.
|
| So many years of dealing with this administration, and people
| are still attempting to point our hypocrisy and hold people to
| standards with regard to principle, past statements, character,
| etc. None of it will work here.
| 5upplied_demand wrote:
| I agree. I'm not trying to point out the hypocrisy, it is
| obvious to anyone watching. I am more interested in testing
| the limits of how people will justify actions to themselves
| and others. It is fascinating to see the twisting happen in
| real time.
| 0xy wrote:
| It's a pretty easy argument. You have Biden's admin presiding
| over the largest cybersecurity failure in U.S. history
| resulting in China stealing data on millions of Americans
| including both campaigns [1] versus an isolated lone actor
| stealing much less data.
|
| Allowing China god mode access to U.S. telecommunications
| infrastructure versus one guy with a USB stick.
|
| Biden's senior FBI officials and National Security Advisers
| admitted they didn't even have the logs to determine when or
| how they were breached, and the hack was via law enforcement
| portals.
|
| Breathtaking incompetence. The 2024 election was completely
| compromised due to this security lapse, as both campaigns
| were wiretapped.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/chinese-hackers-have-
| infil...
| paxys wrote:
| "Musk says he'll fix the corrupt Democrat-run government and
| reduce two trillion in spending and given his track record I
| have no reason not to believe him."
|
| Real quote from a friend when this whole thing was going down.
| askl wrote:
| Given his track record, spending should be at four trillion
| now, right?
| mnmnmn wrote:
| Your friend is a prick
| raverbashing wrote:
| > A young programmer asked if he should go work for DOGE, or
| whether it would end in disaster. I told him that it would at
| least be interesting, and that if he was worried it would end
| in disaster, that was all the more reason to take the job.
| Maybe he could help prevent that.
|
| https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1888555241055948981
|
| I guess this aged like Windows Me
| miltonlost wrote:
| I'd switch friends.
| glaslong wrote:
| Given his track record of raising ever more money on
| idealistic claims only to deliver less and less... I think he
| delivered exactly as expected
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Musk's goal was never to reduce government spending or waste.
| It was to get unrestrained access to government spending data
| to serve his own goals.
|
| It's a conspiracy theory - I don't have any real evidence to
| support it, but I tend to believe it.
| croes wrote:
| What does he say now?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Americans love their conmen.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| > "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of
| the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks
| are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing
| themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use
| words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites
| have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse
| for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the
| seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in
| bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument
| but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too
| closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by
| some phrase that the time for argument is past." -- Jean-Paul
| Sartre
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Anyone know where I can buy/borrow an ebook version of "Anti-
| Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate"?
| Can't find it anywhere.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| amazon sells a kindle version for ~$6. looks like deadtree
| copies retail under $10 online (or ~$17 from PRH). IA has
| it but it's covered under their stupid pseudo-library false
| scarcity bargain so you might have to get in line. if
| you're okay with physical, i bet your local library has it.
|
| otherwise... can't check from work, but perhaps anna's
| archive/slsk has you covered?
| tokai wrote:
| Your local library can get it through ILL.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Openlibrary has a scanned copy in French and English it
| seems:
|
| https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1161327W/R%C3%A9flexions_su
| r...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I'm not sure the unsanctioned actions of an individual are the
| best attack that someone could make on the Trump
| administration.
|
| I don't believe anyone here if they say that is honestly a
| standard that they held through previous administrations.
|
| I think there are plenty of ways to criticize Trump without
| abandoning my own principles.
| miltonlost wrote:
| SO you're not defending the administration, you're just
| attacking everyone who does attack it. Nice.
| red_hare wrote:
| That person's actions were only possible because the
| administration explicitly decided to put that much unchecked
| power into poorly vetted individuals.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > poorly vetted individuals.
|
| Interesting choice of words and application when discussing
| gripes against entire administrations.
| caconym_ wrote:
| The Trump administration is 100% responsible for setting up
| the conditions where this kind of breach is effectively
| inevitable. They created "DOGE", staffed it with (among other
| specimens) teenage hackers with established records of
| malfeasance and names like "Big Balls"---presumably without
| any serious attempt at checking backgrounds and/or responding
| appropriately to any findings---and (by many accounts I've
| seen) granted them the authority to demand root level access
| to government systems without auditable logging or any other
| record of their actions. There appears to have been
| effectively zero oversight within "DOGE" itself, and the
| organization evidently failed to accomplish its stated goals
| by an enormous margin. AFAIK The Trump administration never
| publicly acknowledged any of this or took any visible steps
| to investigate the allegations.
|
| If I was aware of any remotely comparable precedent in any
| recent administration, I would certainly _criticize_ them for
| it. But the "DOGE" episode was so far beyond the pale that I
| can't think of anything else like it.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| If you enable reckless behavior, you are even hyping it I
| believe you are responsible for this behavior too.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > If you enable reckless behavior, you are even hyping it I
| believe you are responsible for this behavior too.
|
| Are the people mad at ICE complaining that immigration was
| perhaps a little too lax under Biden's admin, and possibly
| creating a situation where so many people felt inclined to
| vote for the Mass Deporations Guy?
|
| Is there retroactive anger for Biden Admin? Note that I'm
| talking about a conservative voter's right or wrong stance
| on the popular-at-the-time migrant caravans and not the
| actions of a specific person in a mid level position.
|
| Not that I've seen, ymmv.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| From my point of view, people are angry at ICE not mainly
| because deportations exist, but because of the methods
| being used, and those methods are clearly encouraged from
| above. Who else would be responsible, if not the
| policymakers themselves?
|
| You can argue about whether immigration was a real
| problem or mostly fearmongering. In that case, any
| realistically achievable level of deportations under the
| previous administration would probably have been
| dismissed as insufficient anyway so the outcome would the
| same. But if policymakers deliberately loosen rules, they
| can be blamed for the consequences.
|
| It is no different from weakening medicine purity
| standards and then acting surprised when people die. In
| that case, responsibility clearly falls on the people who
| made the policy too.
|
| It may sound blunt, but assigning blame is a normal part
| of politics. Politicians are there to make decisions, and
| they should be praised or blamed for the results.
| 5upplied_demand wrote:
| > the best attack that someone could make on the Trump
| administration.
|
| It doesn't need to be, nor should we measure things against
| eachother by their ability to be used as an attack. We should
| measure this on it's own, based on what has happened.
|
| In this case, an agency created by the President's Executive
| Order, that reports directly to the President made
| significant personnel and security access changes. There have
| been many security issues coming from that new personnel and
| department. If this doesn't fall on the administration, what
| does?
| mrweasel wrote:
| What kind of job would you realistically take this data to? What
| company would even so much as look at data procured in this
| manor. I can think of one that's evil enough and probably have
| the protection of the US government, but it's not like they could
| acquire the data directly, if it was necessary.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Ad Tech, I would bet its ad tech.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| If this goes within the Ad Tech industry and knowing how Ad
| tech industry is, I don't feel quite surprised if we might
| see foreign adversarial nation buying the Social Security
| data from Ad tech/ (this Doge person in general either
| directly or through multiple layers) even in secretive manner
| at this point.
|
| Either way this data is definitely going to spread behind
| closed doors.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Nobody in Ad Tech is going to risk jailtime for a slightly
| higher CPM.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| I think you are more correct than you realize
| NickC25 wrote:
| I disagree - it's 100% a factor of how much money you have
| to pay in legal fees.
|
| Zuck would be happy to take that data, and because he's
| worth a cool $350 billion, he'll do whatever the fuck he
| wants with that data, and we'll thank him by cutting his
| taxes.
|
| You think Donald Trump would put him in jail?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You have no idea what you are talking about.
|
| Nobody wants to fuck with PII, platforms will blackball
| you in a second if they think you have sensitive data. If
| you haven't worked in adtech, be quiet and do even the
| most trivial research before spouting nonsense.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > If you haven't worked in adtech, be quiet and do even
| the most trivial research before spouting nonsense.
|
| if you have, i won't take ethically-compromised advice
| from you.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Lol. It takes some work to contort being retarded into
| epistemic sanitization, but I'm impressed, you got there.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| charitably, i think the choices one makes to enter into
| that profession belie a lack of consideration for the
| broader good of humanity in order to profit a select few
| - choices that necessarily include misdirection and
| manipulation of actual people. choices that that lead me
| to take behavioral advice from such folks as essentially
| worthless.
|
| slur me if you like.
| afinlayson wrote:
| My understanding is stats canada gets offered a lot of money
| for this data after being anonymized. A lot of employers might
| not ask questions if someone had really good data they could
| use to help market their product. Especially politically
| aligned think tanks
| mrweasel wrote:
| Maybe not under the current administration, but that's the
| kind of risk that could kill your company, if you got caught.
| It might be why I'm not rich, but that seems like a massively
| irresponsible risk to take.
| afavour wrote:
| If I had to make a wild guess, xAI. The article states they
| took a job at a government contractor.
|
| It's interesting (horrifying) to think of the implications
| actually. People wouldn't buy this data directly, it's too
| obviously illegally procured. But laundered through an LLM to
| provide "insights" without citation? That's plausible
| deniability.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Also meta or any other data broker.
| dmschulman wrote:
| In addition to all the other answers here, foreign governments
| would fall over themselves to get this kind of data.
| esseph wrote:
| "What kind of job would you realistically take this data to?"
|
| Banks
|
| Sales/Marketing
|
| Healthcare
|
| Palantir
|
| xAI
|
| Any social security scammers
|
| Etc.
| enoint wrote:
| You can't just _donate_ these tables to the Republican Party;
| they're evidence. You need to repack them for deniability.
| These will be used to cross-check if voters can be ruled
| vaguely ineligible.
| joquarky wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Americans are about to find out why data protection laws exist in
| the EU, and why even the government has to follow it.
|
| Nobody should have permission to query 70M Americans, it's a huge
| security flaw for the average citizen. But Pentagon has been
| doing this for a while a la Snowden, and the average american
| doesn't seem to be worried. With Snowden becoming a menace rather
| than a hero.
|
| Once private government data from Americans starts being heavily
| used to mess up elections, or even worse, persecute people with a
| different opinion than the ruling party...
|
| Americans will finally wake up that GDPR doesn't stiffle
| innovation, but rather protect its citizens from an evil actors.
|
| But it may be too late, like when NSDAP started chasing jews and
| migrants. There was nothing they could do other than to flee to
| survive.
| betaby wrote:
| Unlikely. Also it doesn't work well where it needed in the EU.
| vibe_assassin wrote:
| The US has laws to handle stuff like this. The real problem is
| that the pardon power is completely broken and it needs to be
| removed.
| philipov wrote:
| Who are you to quote laws to those carrying swords?
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very
| short, and the pen is very sharp.
|
| - Terry Pratchett
| shimman wrote:
| Don't know why this is getting downvoted, it's well known
| that DOGE had goons to forcibly remove people that stood in
| their way.
| Schmerika wrote:
| > Don't know why this is getting downvoted
|
| Paul Graham and Garry Tan were both _big_ cheerleaders of
| DOGE, so, keep that in mind.
|
| A shocking number of the biggest stories about DOGE over
| the past year were flagged here, probably including the
| stories about goons physically removing people.
|
| Posts questioning this suppression/censorship were flagged.
|
| Some people like to argue that since any story about Musk
| becomes toxic - _for some reason_ - it 'makes sense' to
| flag every story about anything to with him. You know, like
| Israel, or US torture, or Assange, or Snowden, or Epstein,
| etc.
|
| For we are but naive children here in the tech industry,
| and must have a safe space to discuss PCB specs and the
| meaning of 42 without too much 'current affairs', lest the
| site 'lose its focus'.
|
| It's not like almost the entire top of the industry is
| neck-deep in collaboration with all this or anything,
| right?
|
| ... Anyway, if people here don't know much about DOGE, the
| massive flagging that's gone on here is probably a big
| factor as to why.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Yeah, you can't rely on HN to get important information.
| It will be flagged to death. There could be a holocaust
| going on and it'd get flagged for being "controversial".
| ModernMech wrote:
| "Shocking number" being "pretty much all of them" to the
| point I discovered https://news.ycombinator.com/active
| which shows topics where discussions are happening even
| if they're flagged.
|
| That's the only way I browse HN now because this place is
| clearly brigaded to bury certain topics.
| Herring wrote:
| The rich have known they're in a class war since at least
| Occupy Wall Street.
| Sabinus wrote:
| I watched this happen and I'm still pretty mad about it.
| It was so clearly an important tech topic of discussion
| and it was just buried.
| cyberax wrote:
| Usually the opposition party, once it gains power.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Sadly, the Sicilians and Marians definitely did not regain
| power after Pompey said that to them. They did get purged
| though.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I mean enforcing the laws on the books would be a good start.
| Corruption quickly breeds more and more corruption if it isn't
| rooted out and punished. Everyone who isn't corrupt starts
| losing and the benefits of not being corrupt evaporate
| Steuard wrote:
| In principle, flagrant abuse of the pardon power is blocked by
| Congress's ability to impeach and remove a President who
| engages in such abuse.
|
| In practice, that has always been an ineffective threat against
| Presidents who are within days of leaving office anyway. And
| more importantly, the framers of the Constitution seemed to
| have entirely failed to imagine a party like today's
| Republicans who value strict personal loyalty to the President
| over every other principle of government.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I wonder how anomalous this presidency really is. Trump is
| not the first strong man bullheaded president who engaged in
| cronyism and systemic corruption. Most people don't know the
| history of presidents though especially from centuries past.
| Maybe this broken state of the office we observe today has
| always been a viable option for people who payed attention
| enough to see it and are also evil enough to use it. Maybe
| this power has been specifically maintained intentionally for
| some time. Like a big open secret for those tasked with
| approving laws.
| atmavatar wrote:
| Please enlighten us: _which_ former presidents have been
| similar strong man caricatures engaging in anywhere near
| the level of cronyism and systemic corruption as the
| current administration? What precisely did they do which
| demonstrates such behavior?
|
| We've certainly had some colorful presidents in the past,
| but the current president is engaged in a lot of blatantly
| impeachable behavior, and as far as I know, we've never had
| such a passive and complicit Congress before.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I'd probably guess there were plenty of bad eggs. Andrew
| Jackson for example. Who learns about him in school
| though? Who talks about his administration today? And he
| probably isn't the only one either. 1700s government was
| still in flux with plenty of cases of selfish infamous
| people and behavior. 1800s worldview among people in
| power was pretty notoriously ruthless. 1900s not much
| different. FDR was certainly a strongman above norms too,
| luckily many of the things he did with his share of
| political power had great benefits to people.
| wil421 wrote:
| The Feds love to wait. I doubt the next president will be as
| lenient with pardoning. Maybe there's a market I can bet on
| pardoning.
| GJim wrote:
| Many of us would like you to be right about that.
|
| However, the people of the USA _voted_ for Trump. Twice.
|
| I fear things have changed and Trump'ism is here to stay.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > I fear things have changed and Trump'ism is here to stay.
|
| The first time they got Trump lite. They didn't like him,
| and ditched him after one term.
|
| The next president has the misfortune to get elected during
| a worldwide recession. They liked the recession even less
| than they liked Trump lite. So they re-elected Trump lite.
|
| But they've now found the person they re-elected was Trump
| heavy. He's doubled down on all the things they disliked
| about Trump lite, and will probably land them in a
| recession entirely of his own making.
|
| I'd be stunned if Trump heavy or anybody following in his
| footsteps won an election for a decade or two. Memories
| will have to fade.
| Spivak wrote:
| Guess we'll find out at the midterms if you're right, I
| certainly hope so. We're at the point where even the
| major policy differences between Democrats and
| Republicans are insubstantial compared to just getting
| people in office that aren't openly mustache twirlingly
| corrupt.
| saltyoldman wrote:
| I would have LOVED to have a Polymarket bet when Biden said
| he will NOT Pardon his son.
| saulapremium wrote:
| If you have a problem with that, you must be incredibly
| upset about the current administrations admission of
| pardons for blatantly corrupt reasons!
| saltyoldman wrote:
| I didn't say I had a problem with that. I said I would
| have LOVED to have a polymarket bet on it!
| gslin wrote:
| https://ghostarchive.org/archive/F9qjY
| gslin wrote:
| archive: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/F9qjY
| aestetix wrote:
| > The Post is not naming the former DOGE member or company
| because it has not independently confirmed the accusations in the
| complaint.
|
| Why not? Shouldn't the public be allowed to learn who all the
| DOGE employees were? Federal employees are public record, are
| they not?
| WarmWash wrote:
| The public is...unintelligent, and generally incapable of
| differentiating between an accusation and a conviction.
| aestetix wrote:
| There are two stories here. One is the alleged wrongdoing.
| The second is the fact that the Washington Post has a name of
| a former DOGE employee. I'm far more interested in the second
| story than the first.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Asking for a list of all DOGE employees is different than
| asking for the name of the single accused employee. It
| wouldn't make any sense for the media to publish a list of
| every DOGE employee in the context of this story.
| ajross wrote:
| Right, because indiscriminately hoovering data about
| people and their activities and affiliations for the
| benefit of someone else is clearly immoral.
|
| Oh, wait.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| Not like the current admin and AI companies are helping with
| that at all. Also, anyone in that department has brought
| great harm to the entire country and their employment should
| be public knowledge.
| tastyface wrote:
| Every DOGE member is complicit, and every single name should
| be published. They knew what they were getting into.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Something DOGE relied on when publicizing all those 300 year
| old people claiming benefits.
|
| Who turned out not to exist.
|
| Or when they put loshed that website full of their savings.
|
| Which turned out not to exist.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_of_the_Department_of_G...
| aestetix wrote:
| Oh wow! I hadn't seen that. That's really great! All of them
| should be listed there, and should have been public all
| along.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Where can I see a list of all other government employees?
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| They're not naming them because they haven't been able to
| confirm the wrongdoing, not because they can't publish the
| names of DOGE employees.
| paul7986 wrote:
| DOGE was headhunting me late July through end of December.
|
| Their recruiters are all anonymous when they reach out as
| they do not provide their names. I constantly questioned to
| myself and them directly if they were legit even if their
| email address showed as RecruitingUSDS@doge.eop.gov (their
| public email address seen on USDS). The first recruiter I
| demanded a video call with and asked him to bob and weave his
| head (lol). He never gave me his last name (all his emails
| came from that public address and they signed their emails
| with first name only) but I found him on Linkedin. He was
| late 20s to late 30s. From there I was asked to do/turned in
| a case study and after the govt shutdown I was invited to
| interview with a DOGE employee whom then her email showed her
| full name. I didnt make it past her as there was another step
| in their process which is an in person interview at USDS's
| office or within another govt agency DOGE working at.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Such information would purely be used for harassment.
| ipython wrote:
| This admin has no problems doxxing people for harassment,
| listing their personal home address on official social media
| posts: https://x.com/dhsgov/status/1912567112733753563?s=46.
| So why the double standard?
| charcircuit wrote:
| The court filing provides more information than just giving
| ammo to harassers so I do not see them as directly
| equivalent. I also do not agree with the premise that if
| one person does something bad it would justify someone else
| in doing so.
| kbos87 wrote:
| It's an allegation, and the names of alleged perpetrators of
| crimes are rarely protected like this. Certainly feels like
| special treatment.
| ipython wrote:
| Typically you prevent publishing the names of minors accused of
| a crime /s
|
| That said there is a list by propublica:
| https://projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-doge-tracker/
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Because in a civilized society, _everyone_ is presumed innocent
| until _proven_ guilty and the accused are given some level of
| privacy until that happens.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Say who? Literally the entire news media _loves_ airing
| trials before they 're proven innocent or guilty.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Depends who it benefits
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Which is one reason why the legacy news media is
| disregarded/disrespected by the general public. People have
| caught into the games that they play such as trying to
| paint people as pre convicted
| batch12 wrote:
| Someone should tell that to the people who publish the gas
| station mugshot magazines.
| sylos wrote:
| We no longer live in a civilized society
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| But we are in the USA, where the majority of convicted
| criminals were never proven guilty because the system relies
| on coercing them into not going to trial.
| joquarky wrote:
| Civilized societies don't shut down the paths for people to
| air their grievances.
| starkparker wrote:
| If the Post named you as someone who did something, and you
| didn't do that thing, and that thing harmed you in some way,
| you would sue them. That would cost the Post money, and they
| obviously don't want to spend money on anything that their
| staff does.
| ajross wrote:
| I knew it. I was saying from the instant they started we'd have a
| scandal like this. Bunch of tech bros walking into the government
| with personal MBPs and administrative authority to demand data
| from anyone and everyone was a privacy crisis happening in real
| time.
|
| Yet here on HN, what have we been arguing about? Big tech. Google
| and Meta have been allowed to become boogeymen in this community
| out of all proportion to the actual threat they posed[1].
|
| While the actual boogeyman stealing our data to exploit in the
| market? _It was us._
|
| [1] I mean, lets be honest, while everyone has abstract
| complaints the truth is that they've actually been remarkably
| benign stewards of our data over the past 20 years. Much, much,
| _MUCH_ more responsible than the glibertarian dude in the cubicle
| next to you, as it turns out.
| troyvit wrote:
| Yep, and we're only hearing about this because in this case
| there was a whistleblower. Call me cynical but I'm sure that
| there is plenty of data DOGE workers exfiltrated from SSA and
| other places that we'll never directly know about.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i dunno. NSA letters are a real thing and i have no reason to
| believe there's not at least some exfiltration of personal data
| from "big tech" to other actors.
| ajross wrote:
| > have no reason to believe there's not at least some
| exfiltration
|
| Is it genuinely your opinion that that activity (just look at
| all the equivocation!) constitutes a risk at the same level
| as alleged by the linked article?
|
| This is _exactly_ what I 'm talking about. HN has a tunnel
| vision disease on this subject. "Yes yes, DOGE bros stole the
| SSA database, but let's please talk about how awful Google
| is." It's clinical at this point.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| yes, 641A being the prime example, but i suppose it depends
| on how wide a net you cast to define "risk". plus:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/targeted-
| advertising-g...
|
| i'm not saying it's not like these big tech firms don't
| have their hands legally tied by NSA letters, but that's
| entirely divorced from whether i trust them to steward my
| data.
| ajross wrote:
| And I repeat: you are refusing to engage with the privacy
| crisis _right in front of our eyes_ and insisting instead
| we treat with your personal crusade against a threat that
| is almost entirely theoretical. That 's just not rational
| discourse, it's a vendetta. And you're hardly alone.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i don't understand your combative tone. i'm not _for_
| DOGE twerps stealing PII.
| enoint wrote:
| Posts predicting this were apparently flagged as "political".
| For example, Bruce Schneier's warning [0]. For a site called
| Hacker News, DOGE unfortunately attracted a different priority
| of notoriety than, say, the numerous merger and acquisition and
| VC maneuvers reaching the front page. If hacker punks nominally
| subvert the established order by flaunting laws and
| authorities, then DOGE was very much hacking. Tina Peters is an
| unsophisticated hacker punk, She doesn't live up to the social
| engineering chops of Kevin Mitnick, but _her plan did involve a
| Geek Squad uniform_. Legendary but too "political". Attracts
| too much noise, not enough signal. That's why you didn't see an
| elevation of the developed thoughts you're talking about.
|
| Since the beginning of DOGE, it has not been especially bold to
| predict:
|
| - DOGE will cost more than it saves. The seminal errors,
| mistaking $ millions for $ billions, world-write permissions on
| their Drupal site, etc. convinced us that we can't expect
| deliberate professionalism.
|
| - The very first whistleblower, out of NTSB, convinced us that
| exfiltration was the goal. This is within the top 5
| whistleblower stories here. The critical detail was their
| instruction that access logs be scrubbed.
|
| - And the general public smelled it, too. No one doubts that
| threats against Tesla dealerships were civil libertarian
| radicals, not recently-fired USAID bean counters.
|
| - When Peter Theil's FBI handler, Johnathan Buma, went
| whistleblower a few months into DOGE, it wasn't about Theil. He
| saw a Russian active measure influencing Musk's inner circle.
| One of Kash Patel's first acts as FBI director was to order
| Buma arrested.
|
| So, the commentary worrying about "big tech" was commentary
| within Y Combinator's sphere.
|
| [0] : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43035977
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47327367
| mnmnmn wrote:
| Heil Elon lol
| scroot wrote:
| This comes on the heels of the AHA and other parties in the suit
| against the government posting the video depositions of some of
| the DOGE people to youtube [1], which are fascinating to watch.
|
| Justin Fox not being able to say what DEI is really tells you
| everything you need to know about how grants were cancelled.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@historiansorg
| adamors wrote:
| He says it just fine. It's about "females" and "elevating the
| voices of marginalised groups" that he thinks is clearly
| "discriminatory". Don't think for a second that these people
| are dumb, they knowingly support this, just refuse to
| incriminate themselves further in front of people who can hold
| them accountable. It's no accident that he tries to sound like
| Musk.
| Linkd wrote:
| Exactly. By repeatedly saying "the definition is exactly what
| the EO said," he's essentially deflecting responsibility and
| shifting the accountability upstream.
| robby_w_g wrote:
| It's both "exactly what the EO says" and "I can't remember
| what the EO said". He's blatantly lying
| helpfulclippy wrote:
| What I hate about it is that I listen to that and hear not so
| much actual brazen idiocy, as yet another example of flaws in
| an obviously defective process being exploited to deflect
| accountability. The meta for depositions at this point is such
| that the ideal witness is a lot like someone who has just
| experienced severe head trauma. They can sound insane, idiotic,
| clueless, lazy, forgetful, obtuse, anything in the world except
| liable.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Its almost like the worst people among us have discovered
| that in high-trust societies if you have no morals you can
| engage in any behavior you wish.
| lostlogin wrote:
| And they are succeeding.
|
| Challenge it and they escalate.
|
| What's the solution?
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Well, the solution to the paradox of tolerance is to
| utterly void the social contract with those violating it
| as they have already seen fit to void it themselves. So
| the response is to immediately see their escalation and
| escalate beyond all reasonable measures. The wrath of a
| good man is not to be tempted and the fury of a patient
| man is to be avoided at all costs. Both _wrath and fury_
| are the appropriate response to one side of a social
| contract breaking said contract.
|
| These folks will push until the dam breaks. When it does,
| all will be washed away by wrath and fury.
| watwut wrote:
| A little later, he explicitely says that documentary about WWII
| jewish female slaves is "inherently discriminatory" because it
| "amplifies marginalized voices".
|
| Imo, he knew exactly what he means. Imo, he was told by a layer
| that is better to look like idiot then say what it means to
| him.
| glitchc wrote:
| Society can only support so many sociopaths (~ 1 in 5) before it
| starts to collapse. We may have reached the tipping point.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/Mw5bh
| himata4113 wrote:
| looking at https://doge.gov seems to be defunct for around 7
| months now? Also a little bit of review made me learn that
| doge.gov/spend is wrong lol.
| rglover wrote:
| Makes sense. IMO it was always a wank operating as a smoke
| screen while access was given to private parties that couldn't
| get it through legal/traditional means. This story increases
| the probability quite a bit.
| lateforwork wrote:
| Also relevant: The DOGE team set up a Starlink satellite at the
| White House [1].
|
| DOGE staff installed the terminal on the Eisenhower Executive
| Office Building roof in February 2025 without notifying White
| House communications or cybersecurity teams, ignoring their prior
| warnings [2]. The resulting "Starlink Guest" Wi-Fi used only a
| password--no usernames or two-factor authentication--unlike
| standard networks requiring full VPN tunneling and device
| logging.
|
| This allowed devices to evade monitoring, transmit untracked data
| outside secure channels, and potentially enable leaks or hacks,
| as noted by former officials and experts like ex-NSA hacker Jake
| Williams. A confrontation ensued with Secret Service when DOGE
| accessed the roof unannounced [3].
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/elon-musk-
| sta...
|
| [2]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/06/07/starlin...
|
| [3] https://www.wired.com/story/white-house-starlink-wifi/
| DominoTree wrote:
| > This allowed devices to evade monitoring, transmit untracked
| data outside secure channels, and potentially enable leaks or
| hacks
|
| Pretty sure that was the point
| wil421 wrote:
| The intelligence agencies should already have taps into
| Starlink and should be able see the data. Whether do anything
| is another story.
|
| Or Starlink uses an encryption scheme somewhere in the network
| only the big boys can break.
| halJordan wrote:
| They don't "just have taps" in whatever isp you come across.
| And they certainly, and i cannot be clear enough on this,
| they don't just spy on Americans. It's literally the one
| thing they expressly forbidden from doing
| Amezarak wrote:
| I'm not sure there was ever a time when they didn't have
| taps, but this is definitely not true.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
|
| Even in the days of telegrams, FDR was opening and reading
| millions of American's telegrams to use the information
| therein to target his political enemies.
|
| You can't build centralized systems that enable spying and
| not expect people to do the "forbidden" thing. We have to
| build systems that make this impractical.
| EchoReflection wrote:
| -Overall, we rate the New York Times Left-Center biased based on
| wording and story selection that moderately favors the left.
|
| - Overall, we rate The Washington Post as Left-Center biased
| based on editorial positions that moderately favor the left. Due
| to a few failed fact checks, they earn a Mostly Factual rating.
|
| - Wired: These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal
| bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded
| words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using
| appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These
| sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require
| further investigation.
|
| https://youtu.be/tRq-vVptMOk?si=t6xzvtqdhOZm80un | Victor Davis
| Hanson: The Left's Rage is a Symptom of a Movement in Decline
|
| https://profrjstarr.com/the-psychology-of-us/the-need-to-be-...
|
| "this too shall pass"
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