[HN Gopher] Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal e...
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Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email
https://ddosecrets.org/article/kash-patel-emails
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/doj-confirms-fbi...
Author : m-hodges
Score : 403 points
Date : 2026-03-27 14:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| everdrive wrote:
| Interesting, and not all that implausible. The real test: his
| personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff
| like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends /
| family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be
| anything in there which should make the news. It'll be
| interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
|
| If they wanted to maintain access, they certainly wouldn't
| celebrate it publicly, which is why I assume they want to release
| information. But, there shouldn't be anything damning to release.
| ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting
| professionally. We'll see how the facts bear out. I also suppose
| it's possible they're just going for any win they can and there's
| nothing interesting here whatsoever, or it's a really boring
| secondary address or something.
| tencentshill wrote:
| Surely we are currently clean on OPSEC. There couldn't be any
| precedent for government officials using private email servers
| for confidential information!
| vessenes wrote:
| obligatory - that first famous private server was done
| because someone wanted a blackberry like Obama had, and was
| told no by NSA. Man that BB keyboard was good.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Check this out (can't wait til mine arrives):
| https://www.clicks.tech/
| connorgurney wrote:
| I've been using a Clicks case since the early days and
| have personally loved every second of it but it's
| definitely an acquired taste. Let us know how you find
| it.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| That can't be the first one. Colin Powell used a personal
| email account during the GWB administration.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2016/09/08/493133413/colin-powells-
| ways-...
|
| Of course that pales in comparison with the practices of
| the GWB White House:
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/george-w-bush-white-
| hous...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for
| stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends
| / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there
| shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news.
| It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
|
| Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a
| journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that
| very chat?
|
| Color me surprised if these people haven't heard of opsec
| before, and mix their work/personal life all over the place.
| everdrive wrote:
| Yes, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was classified
| information in there. I struggled with wording, but what I
| meant was "you're not supposed to be able to find classified
| or sensitive information in personal email, but I who knows
| what will be the case here."
| dmix wrote:
| Signal started being used during the Biden administration,
| the issue was how they were managing contacts which could be
| added to groups. They weren't carefully vetting access and a
| journalist with the same name as another military guy was
| added to the group by accident.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| Source?
| dmix wrote:
| The public record of a contract to the Israeli company
| which handled archiving Signal chats for the DoD was done
| during Biden admin. And it's been well reported if you
| just Google it:
|
| > Alexa Henning, spokesperson for the Office of the
| Director of National Intelligence, tweeted last week that
| "widespread use" of Signal began under the Biden
| administration, adding that "at ODNI, when I got my
| phone, it was pre-installed."
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/inside-the-hazy-
| fra...
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| You're missing some key distinctions. The issues are: 1)
| putting classified information into a non-classified
| system; 2) putting information that needs to be preserved
| under laws like the presidential records act into systems
| where it's set to be auto-deleted. Both are illegal.
| Simply saying that the Biden administration pre-installed
| Signal is irrelevant. There are legitimate uses.
|
| Your own article makes this exact point: > Matthew
| Shoemaker, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst
| who left the agency in 2021, said that while Signal was
| used during his time in government, "it was almost
| exclusively restricted to scheduling purposes," such as
| letting their boss know that they'll be late to work
| because of personal circumstances. "That's why Signalgate
| is all the more staggering -- because these senior
| leaders were doing the exact opposite of what even my
| most junior intelligence officers knew not to do," he
| said.
|
| You're doing bullshit partisan whataboutism. "well the
| democrats did it first".
|
| This has nothing to do with adding the wrong contacts. It
| has to do with putting highly-sensitive material into
| Signal to circumvent the law around records preservation
| and as a result creating a situation where it's possible
| to accidentally add the wrong contact and therefore
| exposing that information to a journalist.
| dmix wrote:
| > This has nothing to do with adding the wrong contacts.
| It has to do with putting highly-sensitive material into
| Signal to circumvent the law around records preservation
|
| My comment above already mentions public records of the
| DoD contracting out archiving of the Signal chat, so it
| doesn't in fact circumvent laws around preservation.
|
| > You're doing bullshit partisan whataboutism. "well the
| democrats did it first".
|
| I don't think it's a huge sin for government workers to
| be using Signal, remote work and messaging is the new
| norm and they will use something whether we like it or
| not, and Signal is the least bad option. I don't blame
| the Biden DoD for experimenting down that road at all, as
| I'm skeptical they'd build something better internally -
| and to your hyperpolitical points I don't see large
| distinctions between these type of tech choices between
| administrations (the DoD staff largely remains the same
| even when presidents change).
|
| The issue with encryption and security will always be
| human security practices come first-and-foremost,
| technology second. They failed an OPSEC checklist when
| using group chats and need to implement better
| identification management. That's the sort of lesson that
| large organizations frequently need to re-learn the hard
| way when adopting new (and often better) things.
|
| This was just a good lesson in security hygiene
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I'm not clear on the verdict here.
|
| 1. Classified information. Was it legal to put that into
| the DoD approved Signal build? The media coverage at the
| time gave me the impression that it was not.
|
| 2. Records keeping. Were the Trump admin chats in
| question properly archived then? I had been led to
| believe that they weren't. Do you believe that to be
| incorrect?
|
| > I don't blame the Biden DoD for experimenting down that
| road at all
|
| The person you're replying to never criticized them for
| such.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal
| with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations
| in that very chat?
|
| Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out
| there, but it is obviously not immune to human error or
| social engineering.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Ok? Signal is not the topic of my comment really, nor has
| anyone claimed it's less secure than other chat apps.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Also wildly illegal to use to conduct government business,
| especially confidential government business. (and yes the
| messages were auto-deleting and largely lost before anyone
| chimes in with _technically they could be archived!_ )
| nickburns wrote:
| It was a custom (presumably DoD-approved) build. And the
| story gets much better than that:
|
| https://youtu.be/KFYyfrTIPQY&t=724
| krisoft wrote:
| > Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms
| out there
|
| That might be true amongst the communication platforms
| available for the average Joe. It is definietly not the
| most secure communication platform available for someone
| high ranking in the USA government.
|
| > it is obviously not immune to human error or social
| engineering
|
| Nothing is immune. But there are systems more and systems
| less prone to these issues.
| esseph wrote:
| https://www.404media.co/the-signal-clone-the-trump-admin-
| use...
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| I think this is actually the opposite of the correct conclusion
| --just look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal). I seriously
| doubt that Kash Patel doesn't have a bunch of skeletons to dust
| off and show the world; the man is a weirdo (much like the rest
| of the administration).
|
| EDIT: I actually misread the comment; I think we're likely in
| agreement. My bad.
| hypeatei wrote:
| There is so much corruption and impropriety in this
| administration that skeletons don't matter anymore. Looking
| at what sunk officials in previous administrations provides a
| sense for just how far gone we are, but it's not an indicator
| of what future consequences will be.
| Loughla wrote:
| Dan Quayle lost a serious bid because he couldn't spell
| potato.
|
| Now look at where we're at. It really is wild. Right,
| wrong, or indifferent. How far we've shifted is absolutely
| wild.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| Dan Quayle also had the charisma of a potato. Let's not
| overfit this curve.
| Jare wrote:
| I don't know, these days skeletons seem to be treated as
| funny decoration and we're in a permanent state of Halloween.
| redanddead wrote:
| Sullying Halloween's good name
| scrollop wrote:
| Trump doesn't have a few skeletons in his closest, he
| boasts a series of catacombs.
| treebeard901 wrote:
| Maybe the hackers will release information connecting Patel
| to the Noem and Lewandowski grift operations with govt
| contracts. Out of the four companies allowed to bid for the
| $220 million advertising contract, 3 were linked to Noem and
| Lewandowski and one to Patel.
|
| Im sure they are all doing it...
| MyHonestOpinon wrote:
| Well, if the president sets the example. What can you
| expect from the rest ?
| sysguest wrote:
| well if you're listing your hopes, not talking from what
| those hackers brought...
|
| that just means the operation is a dismal failure --
| nothing to see
|
| this really undermines iran hackers' claims regarding 'big
| things' on trump administration
| close04 wrote:
| > look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was
|
| Those times have passed. I'll restate what I said in a
| comment some days ago:
|
| >> 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today
| presidents are "impeaching" the press
|
| The current strategy is "keep the outrage hose on full blast
| and eventually people get desensitized". It works.
| mc32 wrote:
| The press was stupid. They were doing stupid gotchas like
| swiftboats, fake reports on GWB (Dan Rather), but couldn't
| care less about things like the CIA and the crack cocaine
| connection[1], or lots of other things the government gets
| away with (including Clappers total information awareness
| unconstitutional surveillance efforts) The press is always
| carrying water for someone but that someone is rarely the
| public unless is just pure coincidence.
|
| [1] there was one reporter who dared but the toll from the
| story resulted in his suicide, some years later. His
| colleagues poo-pooed his reporting on the connection.
| jyounker wrote:
| * The Swiftboat thing was completely an ad campaign if I
| remember correctly. I remember most media covering it as
| BS.
|
| * The contents of Dan Rather report on GWB was true.
| There was one document which was sketchy, but the whole
| report didn't hinge on the one document from an officer's
| office. (E.g. Ex-senator Ben Barnes's interview is
| reasonably indicting:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-barnes-on-bush/)
| The media did fall down though. Only one outlet went to
| the the Officer's secretary (who was still alive)
| to ask if she had typed the document. She looked at
| it and said (summarizing here) that it wasn't the
| document she typed, but it was the same contents.
|
| What's interesting is how easily the media is distracted.
| What's even more concerning though, is that when the more
| centrist major media has tried to be less gullible,
| they've been vilified. (E.g. trying not to be suckered by
| miraculous appearance Hunter Biden's laptop.)
|
| It's a mess, and the only way out of it is probably
| limits own media ownership.
| nixon_why69 wrote:
| I'd like to chime in and say that that Kash Patel, while
| completely unprofessional and incompetent, is way less of a
| weirdo than the rest of the administration.
|
| His scandals are all about shirking job responsibilities to
| party and sightsee. That's not great from the FBI director
| but its way more normal than the rest of them.
| nickburns wrote:
| So you mean to point out that the sitting FBI director is a
| bro's bro.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I dunno, a sitting FBI director testifying under oath about
| details that are clearly false, goes above and way beyond
| "to party and sightsee". At least in my world it puts him
| up there together with the rest of the weirdos.
| kelipso wrote:
| A sitting FBI director testifying under oath about
| details that are clearly false is tradition at this
| point.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| That's not remotely true of his history.. he's a full on
| Jan-6er, deep into Q-Anon, he was involved in numerous
| serious scandals during the first Trump admin (Nunes Memo /
| Russiagate 'parallel' investigation:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-
| men...), he has a number of sketchy moneymaking side-
| businesses, he was formerly living with a GOP megadonor
| 'Timeshare Tycoon' as roommates in Vegas
| (https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/trump-fbi-pick-
| kash...), he collected enemies' lists for Trump which
| resulted in firing of most of the Iran counterintel team
| right before we started launching attacks because they had
| the termerity to investigate why Trump was showing donors
| top-secret maps of Iran after he left office..
| nixon_why69 wrote:
| I'm not defending or advocating for the guy, just saying,
| if you're gonna be a piece of shit, he seems more
| relatable than the rest of them.
| quantified wrote:
| In the current environment, those are more expecteds than
| scandalous. Insider trades around government activities,
| same-sex behavior, overt racism for example might nudge
| the needle.
| sysguest wrote:
| yeah that world-event gambling stuff gotta stop...
|
| I mean, if I can send troops, I would bet on sending
| troops, wont I?
|
| those gamblers who aren't Trump or any 'event initiators
| themselves' must be idiots of extraordinary quality
| Hikikomori wrote:
| How can you way that with a straight face when this book
| exists.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-
| Patel/dp/19555...
| nixon_why69 wrote:
| I did not know about that book, yeah that is cringe.
| sysguest wrote:
| idk if you have to dig in and link to some amazon link...
|
| this iran hack is a dismal propaganda failure...
|
| nothing much to see I guess
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Dig in? Was already aware of his book, and he's made many
| more weird books. Trump's cabinet are all weird little
| goblins, some more Nazi than others, like Miller.
| sysguest wrote:
| isn't that "hackers" supposed to get some unknown secret
| scandalous stuff?
|
| if you're digging amazon FOR them, what's the point of
| their activity?
|
| and by "digging", yes it's digging because is that link
| THE FIRST RECOMMENDED THING from amazon?
|
| gosh I didn't even say "trump cabinet is the best and
| perfect"...
|
| ...damn did you get like 300 on SAT reading?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Why do you assume I did any digging at all? I just said
| we might find out some fun stuff in his emails about his
| weird book, which I already was aware of. Presumably the
| SAT includes properly written words and sentences, not
| whatever you spew out.
| bjourne wrote:
| 90% of US media is not aligned with the Democrats and as
| such they do not possess the same power to manufacture
| outrage as the Republicans do.
| stevenicr wrote:
| I can't tell if this a sarcastic statement or you believe
| this to be true.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I was just reading a X thread that published some of the more
| notable things and overall it's pretty innocuous. The most
| "controversial" thing thus far is he took a trip to Cuba
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| My favorite explanation of the Petraeus scandal:
| https://vimeo.com/100348256
| aqme28 wrote:
| I think theirs was the right conclusion, but for the wrong
| reason. If there was anything really damning, Iran would
| rather use that as leverage.
|
| The fact that they released it publicly means that the most
| embarrassing part of it is just the hack in itself.
| ikr678 wrote:
| If I was Iran I'd leak the innocuous stuff first to let
| them know I had access to potentially more damning things,
| to try and force the US to the table.
| kortilla wrote:
| That would only work if there was something damning to
| Trump or someone in charge of Iran negotiations. Trump
| has no problem cutting people loose otherwise
| ls612 wrote:
| From the news I've read the most "embarrassing" things in
| his personal email are photos of him smoking cigars,
| holding a bottle of rum, and posing in front of a supercar.
| What a scandal...
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Like what? We have two presidents, including the current one,
| that took multiple trips to a pedophile island. What
| skeletons could be greater than accusations of punching a
| child in the face after they bit the dude's penis during
| forced sodomy?
| Amezarak wrote:
| There is no credible evidence that either of the Presidents
| you alluded to visited "the island". It's amazing to see
| conspiracy theories promulgated on HN.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| There is lots of evidence that these two presidents were
| on the pedophile island many times, and one of their
| wives. That is well established.
|
| There is no evidence released to the public directly
| linking those two men to specific sex acts by name. There
| is unnamed evidence released by the US DOJ specifically
| describing the assault I described in the prior comment.
| Again, none of this is theoretical, conspiracy, or
| conjecture. It's in the documents released by the
| government that the government has confirmed as
| authentic.
| Amezarak wrote:
| No doubt you are aware that the claims about Clinton
| originated with the founder of the Epstein Mythos,
| Virginia Giuffre, who we know for a fact was a serial
| confabulator. While she was inarguably one of Epstein's
| victims, she also made several claims that were
| demonstrably untrue, she could not keep her own stories
| straight, the FBI concluded internally that she was
| totally unreliable and that she was _even lying about
| what the FBI told her_ , other victims contradicted her,
| and she was herself forced to recant on several subjects,
| including admitting that her "autobiography" book was a
| work of fiction. If you doubt me, feel free to read the
| FBI memo about her.
|
| In the case of both Clinton and Trump, there is no
| evidence that either of them visited Little St. James,
| and plenty of evidence otherwise - for example, Epstein
| even says so about Clinton in an email.
|
| > It's in the documents released by the government that
| the government has confirmed as authentic.
|
| The documents are "authentic" in that yes, a real schizo
| did really tell the government he heard it secondhand 30
| years ago that this happened and also that he discovered
| Hilary Clinton was behind the WTC bombing. (For some
| reason, people like you always leave that part of the
| bombshell revelations out.) I am for total transparency
| generally, but this whole saga has been a major
| disappointment for me in that the level of public
| discourse is so lazy and low that its clear that in a
| purely utilitarian way, it would have been better to
| _not_ release it. Hopefully long-term the sacrifice of
| many people whose reputations are being destroyed over
| little or nothing is worth it. Every crank call about
| celebrities is being treated as gospel.
| defrost wrote:
| Remarkable that Epstein confined his pedophile activities
| to a single location.
|
| No, wait: In 2008, Epstein reached a plea
| deal with prosecutors after the parents of a 14-year-old
| girl told Florida police that Epstein had molested their
| daughter at his Palm Beach home.
|
| Hmm ... would that be the same Palm Beach home that Trump
| visited a good many times back when he was best of chums
| with Jeffrey and sending him the nude outline sketches?
| Amezarak wrote:
| > Remarkable that Epstein confined his pedophile
| activities to a single location
|
| Correct, the vast majority of his criminal activity
| appeared to be in his Palm Beach home and in New York,
| where he recruited high dozens to hundreds of high school
| girls for his personal sexualized massages. It actually
| appears only a very small amount of his illicit activity
| ever took place on the island, which makes it all the
| more ironic that's what the conspiracy theorists focus
| on.
|
| I was willing to be more than openmminded about the
| conspiracists' mass trafficking _ring_ (ie, beyond the
| two people charged) angle, but the ironic thing is about
| the Epstein files is they revealed it was almost all
| smoke. Of course, in the conspirational mindset, all
| contradicting evidence is _actually_ , secretly, when you
| apply the correct hermeutics, even _more_ damning, or
| else evidence of a coverup.
| defrost wrote:
| > the ironic thing is about the Epstein files is they
| revealed it was almost all smoke.
|
| and a few massive conspiracy shaped holes - eg: the
| references to missing content regarding Trump and a few
| other. Oh, and the shortfall between what has been
| released Vs what has been indexed, the black paging, and
| the hints from those that have seen but are sworn to not
| tell about that which they have seen but cannot recount.
|
| Still, at least we seem to agree that PedoIsland is a
| misdirect when it comes to determining who did what to
| whom and where.
|
| I can't see Pam Bondi coming clean here anytime soon.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > the hints from those that have seen but are sworn to
| not tell about that which they have seen but cannot
| recoun
|
| The people who were victimized by anyone other than
| Epstein and Maxwell could come forward at any time, just
| as dozens of Epstein's victims have. They have some of
| the highest-powered civil lawyers in America, hundreds of
| millions of dollars in settlement funds available, and
| vast swaths of the country behind them.
|
| That they haven't should tell you something.
| ziml77 wrote:
| It tells me that they are afraid of their safety and the
| safety of their families. They would risking backlash
| from a billionaire who loves intimidation tactics, who
| currently has the highest amount of power of any
| individual in the US, and who has nutty followers who
| would act on his behalf and let him pretend he was not at
| all happy about what they are doing.
|
| The people who have come forward about Epstein's abuses
| have little to worry about because that man is dead and
| he's a perfect scapegoat for all the the other ultra-rich
| who took part in the abuses.
| Amezarak wrote:
| If you're talking about Trump, you may remember that E
| Jean Carroll won a lawsuit against him. She's walking the
| earth and continuing to live a public life.
|
| And again, millions of dollars are available from
| settlement funds if Epstein was involved, there's already
| some of the best lawyers in the country begging to
| represent you, and there's people volunteering to pay for
| your security needs.
|
| You're also ignoring the many victims that came out
| before Epstein died.
|
| This is just an excuse to perpetuate the conspiracy
| theories. It doesn't hold water. And of course if
| anything was released from super secret "the files"
| they're definitely still covering up, they'd become
| publicly known.
|
| Surely you see how this line of reasoning is identical to
| that of any other conspiracy or moral panic.
| esseph wrote:
| > And of course if anything was released from super
| secret "the files" they're definitely still covering up,
| they'd become publicly known.
|
| They've been caught trying to do Trump related reactions
| at least three times now.
| Amezarak wrote:
| You misunderstand my point. I'm saying that if there are
| any credible accusations in "the files" beyond those
| well-documented ones against Epstein and Maxwell, then
| the accusers would be known publicly anyway when they're
| disclosed.
|
| The whole thing falls apart the moment you examine the
| actual evidence and think about it. It's really
| disappointing that smart people on even this forum get
| wrapped up into this junk.
| esseph wrote:
| > You misunderstand my point. I'm saying that if there
| are any credible accusations in "the files" beyond those
| well-documented ones against Epstein and Maxwell, then
| the accusers would be known publicly anyway when they're
| disclosed. The whole thing falls apart the moment you
| examine the actual evidence and think about it. It's
| really disappointing that smart people on even this forum
| get wrapped up into this junk.
|
| Did you know that Epstein's hard drives were removed by a
| private investigator, and that the FBI and DOJ never had
| them to begin with? They were removed before they were
| searched by law enforcement.
|
| https://abcnews.com/US/house-oversight-panel-seeks-
| testimony...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-safe-
| diamond...
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/27/epstein-
| private-...
| Amezarak wrote:
| And? What does that have to do with the absence of
| witnesses of a sex trafficking ring involving anyone
| else?
|
| This isn't even news, it was a big deal back in the day
| and is covered extensively in the report about the DoJ's
| conduct. Read the reports and consider the context; this
| is a nothingburger. But because the conspiracy theory has
| been started, everything that happens will be read as
| supporting it. Epstein had very good reasons for
| destroying evidence of his own deeds without any need for
| anyone else being involved. (The evidence the DoJ
| collected was very weak and they weren't sure it would
| sustain a prosecution, which is partly why they were glad
| to go with a plea deal.) You're coming in primed to
| believe there's already a conspiracy about something else
| altogether.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| Those "should"s are doing a lot of heavy lifting.
| firefax wrote:
| >his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for
| stuff like HIPAA
|
| medical diagnoses can be incredibly useful in understanding
| past and future actions
|
| >there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there
| ought not to be if the director is acting professionally
|
| that "if" is doing some heavy lifting given who we are
| discussing
| rurp wrote:
| Are we talking about the same FBI director here? Professional
| and competent are not how I would describe Kash Patel. Given
| his overt buffoonishness and the whole administration's disdain
| for procedure and expertise I would be shocked if he didn't
| have extremely inappropriate content in his inbox.
| conception wrote:
| I believe "if" is doing a tremendous amount of work in
| parent's comment.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _The real test: his personal email should be pretty
| uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases,
| communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But
| other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which
| should make the news._
|
| I have _no idea_ why this would be the default assumption for
| somebody as sloppy and erratic as Patel. Look at how many
| people were emailing damning stuff to /from Epstein's personal
| email accounts from their own personal email accounts!
| bitwank wrote:
| Yeah, the fact they announced it proves it's nothing. I saw a
| picture of him smoking a cigar. We've already seen him drinking
| beer and acting foolish; probably enough to get you executed in
| Isfahan, but a giant nothining in the USA.
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| We're not getting any juicy leaks from it because it's just
| full of 20-year-old memes and meeting invites to look busy.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| But his girlfriend, though...
|
| https://www.tabletmag.com/the-scroll/articles/march-25-kash-...
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Iran... if you're listening...
|
| We'd love to see all of those Epstein files.
| shagie wrote:
| Is this a reference to
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...
|
| > "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the
| 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be
| rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said in a July 27, 2016
| news conference.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Haha - yes exactly.
| shagie wrote:
| They'd be a couple years late on that.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/foreign-
| hacker-2023-comprom... (reported last year)
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Better late than never...
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| Where did the article go?
| kevincloudsec wrote:
| Forget the Iran attribution for a second. The FBI director's
| personal email was already in leaked credential databases from
| prior breaches.
| bcjdjsndon wrote:
| Every now and then something happens that makes me wonder how
| the fuck America is number one, this being one of them.
| jorts wrote:
| Because America is a lot more than a podcaster put into a
| position that he has no qualifications for.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| We're ranked number one based on the summation of all the
| angsty teen America bad comments on social media. At least
| that is the stat the press goes off of I believe
| bpt3 wrote:
| Loads of natural resources, no local military threats, and
| historically a government that stayed out of the way and
| allowed individuals to reap the rewards of their efforts.
|
| The first is almost impossible to screw up, though we're
| really trying on the last front.
| krapp wrote:
| America had the advantage of getting through WW2 relatively
| unscathed with lots of resources and intact infrastructure
| that it used to leverage against the reconstruction of
| Europe, Japan and the USSR and entrench its cultural and
| economic hegemony. Also the US essentially colonized the West
| with nuclear weapons under the guise of "Pax Americana" and
| making the dollar the reserve currency.
|
| That's really it. Not moral superiority, not technical
| ingenuity, not the indomitable American spirit. Just
| imperialist opportunism.
| mna_ wrote:
| Plus huge amounts of braindrain from all over the world
| after WW2 (originally from Europe, but nowadays mainly from
| India and China).
| basisword wrote:
| Number one based on what metric other than they constantly
| say they're number one?
| vrganj wrote:
| Don't worry, it's on its way out.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| One of the largest populations, and by extension, GDPs.
| XorNot wrote:
| Also the only major economy which didn't fight World War 2
| on its own territory.
| OJFord wrote:
| Boy are there some angry Pearl Harbour comments
| incoming...
| chanux wrote:
| Bretton Woods, Petro dollar and Lindy effect?
| ThaDood wrote:
| If you check their telegram channel they have some humorous
| photos and his resume.
| bcjdjsndon wrote:
| Looking good there, murica, looking good
| mlmonkey wrote:
| > On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said . . .
| .
|
| Anybody have a link? You know, for science ...
|
| Edit: Apparently, just last week the DoJ snatched their domains:
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-i...
| megous wrote:
| not all of them, search harder
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| So, to echo the previous comment, _got a link?_
|
| "Search harder" is a pretty unfriendly response to a request
| for a link...
| megous wrote:
| Just saying that there's a working link if you search. It's
| a useful information on its own.
|
| There's no reason to post it directly. Their server is slow
| today even without adding lazy (ok, HN readers not
| interested in applying some effort to the matter) HN
| readers to the mix.
| macNchz wrote:
| I've been wondering if we'd see a cyber campaign emerge in this
| conflict. To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced
| cyber capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back.
| Gloves-off cyber war doesn't sound good to me. The US CISA
| already been cut back, has lost "virtually all of its top
| officials"^, doesn't have a permanent director, and is operating
| at a further reduced capacity because of the DHS shutdown.
|
| ^ https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/cisa-senior-official-...
| mandeepj wrote:
| > To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced cyber
| capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back.
|
| Iran isn't alone!! They are a quad along with China, Russia,
| and North Korea.
| Painsawman123 wrote:
| that's the thing that people overlook the most in regards to
| this war.iran isn't doing this on its own. Russia, China and
| north korea have been backing it from the start. they're the
| ones helping with intel on US base locations across the
| Middle East, supplying drones, and working out strategies to
| drag things into a stalemate, plus whatever else iran needs
| along the way
| epolanski wrote:
| Can you blame them? Iran is fighting for its own survival
| and has to find help where it can.
|
| If the US had an educated administration not composed by
| lap dogs they would've known that attacking Iran was going
| to be a terrible idea.
|
| Saddam did the same mistake in 1980.
|
| He thought that the Iranian Kurds, the political opponents,
| the Iranian Arabs, civilians were going to raise against
| the regime.
|
| None of this happened. None. In fact, hundreds of thousands
| of people, even kids, rallied around the banner. There are
| documented stories of 13 year olds, jumping on barbed wire
| to use their bodies as bridges for infantry. Disgusting,
| yet telling of the fact that the Persians will do
| everything to defend their land even if they don't like its
| leadership.
|
| It's very difficult to convince people you're bombing left
| that you're helping them get rid of a regime (which, you
| never know for sure how popular or unpopular it is).
|
| Iranians, yet again, are rallying around the flag for what
| is effectively a foreign aggression.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Iran has been preparing for this war for 40 years. So has
| Israel. They will engage in a battle of supremacy over
| the Middle East. Both want the USA knocked out so that
| the Americans can't use their influence there anymore
| (both consider the USA a nuisance).
|
| As soon as ground troops land in Iran, it's over for the
| USA. As it is, oil and goods shipping via the Persian
| Gulf and the Red Sea will be controlled by Iran for a
| very long time to come. All Iran has to do is withstand
| the pummeling, which it very likely will do. And they'll
| get plenty of support from China, since this plays into
| the South China Seas plan quite nicely as the USA moves
| carrier after carrier out of Asia.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| The corpses of Irans's leadership have us right where
| they want us
| SmirkingRevenge wrote:
| It's relative. We're in a pretty bad spot relative to
| where we were before the attack, and so is the world
| economy.
|
| The Iranian regime is doing much better so far, relative
| to where they should be after a joint military attack
| from the US/Israel and maybe even relative to where they
| were just a few months ago.
|
| The previous Ayatollah was 86 and had multiple bouts of
| pancreatic cancer. He was on deaths door, Iran was
| destabilizing with bouts of protest and repression, the
| regime itself suffered major military blows, and a
| potentially rocky and fractured transition was imminent.
|
| Thanks to the war, the regime survived a transition, and
| seems consolidated around the son of the former
| Ayatollah, who's entire family was killed by our strikes,
| and the US seems largely impotent as Iran chokes off a
| large portion of the worlds oil supply and strikes at
| energy assets in the ME.
| 40four wrote:
| The thing getting overlooked is all of the recent moves
| by Trump all lead back to China. Venezuela, Cuba, now
| Iran. These are all tentacles of China. The aggression
| against these 3 countries is not a coincidence. It's a
| concerted and indirect attack on China in an attempt to
| weaken their subsidiaries. In the eyes of this
| administration, this is unpleasant, but necessary
| housekeeping that should have been done decades ago but
| no one was willing to spend the political capital to do
| it.
|
| In Iran, Trump was clearly hoping (and verbally
| requested) the same thing you say about Sadam. I think we
| actually do know how unpopular the regime is, the mass
| protests demonstrated that. But the religious hardliners
| are the ones with the guns. And they clearly aren't
| afraid to use them. So while there was some momentum,
| after everyone got gunned down in the streets by the IRGC
| it quickly deflated. So asking unarmed protesters to step
| up again is kind of big ask, without any material
| support.
| chirau wrote:
| Iranian protesters were not calling for US interference.
| Let's be very clear about that. They were doing it for
| their own regime change, not some US imposition. What
| they think of the US or whether they are for this war or
| supposed regime change by the US is a totally different
| consideration.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > The thing getting overlooked is all of the recent moves
| by Trump all lead back to China.
|
| Are you trying to frame the twice accidental president as
| some sort of visionary? He doesn't even remember what he
| said 5 mins ago. If he had planned or even had any clue
| about wars, we'd not be in this mess. He insulted
| Zelenskyy last year but ended up asking for his help.
|
| Do you recall orange phenomenon was asking for China's
| help just last week, let's wait for it, to act against
| their friends, which you called _their subsidiaries_ :-).
| You can't script this horror show, even if you wanted to.
| epolanski wrote:
| Also, he's pushing the world towards China.
|
| And rightfully so. China isn't killing and kidnapping
| world leaders, supporting genocides in Gaza, launching
| military operations, threatening its allies of annexation
| or overtly interfering in their democratic process.
| limagnolia wrote:
| Russia and North Korea are obviously doing so, but I
| haven't seen any direct evidence that China is providing
| intelligence support to Iran, do you have any links? It is
| certainly plausible, China would love to see Russia tied up
| in Ukraine and the US tied up in Iran.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| There has been speculation that China is letting Iran use
| their satellites for targeting but it's not confirmed.
|
| China is for sure providing material for drone and rocket
| manufacturing as well as air defense systems.
|
| https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/01/28/how-china-aims-to-
| bloc...
| 40four wrote:
| I forget all the details but a hacker group associated with
| Iran already hacked the infrastructure of a major US health
| care tech company
| derwiki wrote:
| Stryker. FWIW a friend in ER medicine said it had very very
| limited effect.
| 40four wrote:
| That's right thanks. The same Hacker group as this story.
| Yeah I didn't hear much after the initial breach so I
| assumed it was minor.
|
| Edit: apparently 80000 employee workstations got remotely
| wiped. So not so I guess I wouldn't call that minor.
|
| Also that's what I get for commenting before reading the
| story, they mention the Styker incident in the story lol
| paxys wrote:
| A couple of DOGE teenagers were able to casually walk in and
| steal the entire country's social security and healthcare data
| (and probably more), and we were cheering them on. There is still
| no accountability, and it has probably already been sold to the
| highest bidder. So this would be the least surprising thing in
| the world.
| firefax wrote:
| Allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment and propose that
| maybe DOGE did loudly what the Solarwinds paired with OPM
| breach did quietly years prior.
| fn-mote wrote:
| OPM was much more serious. Equifax had already leaked the
| social security data and more.
| Wololooo wrote:
| We? I don't think I've seen anyone but the people absolutely
| not understanding the gravity of the situation were cheering
| on. And I'm not even American.
| quantified wrote:
| "We" is such an imprecise word for a pool of people. I
| believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the
| listener too, and "women" excluding the listener. Obviously
| "we" did not elect Trump, only "a majority of the US voters
| who voted", and even the others may sadly use "we" though
| they didn't, because they are members of the political body
| that did. Just like the "they" of Israel that harass
| Palestinians and throw up West Bank settlements do not
| reflect all of Israel, and the average Soviet citizen did not
| reflect the behavior of the Soviet government.
| Drakim wrote:
| In English, you can say "we" or "they"
| chrisjj wrote:
| But "they" excludes the speaker.
| legacynl wrote:
| We isn't an imprecise word at all, it's very precise in
| it's definition.
|
| I can honestly not come up with a single example of the
| distinction between 'zanmen and women' being useful besides
| this specific case where you really want to be able to say
| in 1 sentence that you identify as the same group as
| someone else, but that that group is subdivided into 2
| groups, and you're talking about the sub-group that you're
| specifically not a part of.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| > And I'm not even American.
|
| Well over here, 30% still approve of it and they will openly
| praise how much money DOGE "saved us." It's quite eye opening
| talking to them. They live in a totally different reality
|
| Any time they act like they disapprove of something the
| administration is doing, like the aimless war, they will
| change their tune in a few weeks when Fox gets it's talking
| points down.
| mattbis wrote:
| I really want to know how they did it.. was it some terrible
| password?
|
| He doesn't strike me as the kinda person even using a local
| password manager; like keepass.
|
| Somebody needs to find this out.
|
| I doubt it was gmail support... surely it could not be via his
| phone sim, and if he didn't have two factor on; That would be so
| funny.
|
| I'm tempted to check out the dark web or the telegram, but i'd
| rather not do either of those things.
| danso wrote:
| I too am very curious about this. Even if his password was
| exposed and he didn't have 2-factor auth, doesn't Google by
| default ask for confirmation -- e.g. texting a number or backup
| email associated with the account -- when seeing an
| unrecognized device? Maybe he didn't have any alt contact
| methods associated with his account?
|
| (which might not be that unusual, he's old enough to have
| opened a gmail account upon launch, before extra info hoops
| were put in place, and maybe he never touched his account
| config in the past 2 decades?
| mattbis wrote:
| You are probably right... I tend to change my password semi
| often. It's always a super complex impossible to remember
| string - and always keep an eye on the account activity.
|
| Not to mention ; you would assume he should have more than
| one device linked to the account and then that adds another
| layer, since Google will ask you " is this you trying to
| logon ". <-- that is the only way to get Google to do the
| unrecognized flow you mention.
|
| If you are suggesting it was exposed and he didn't
| immediately randomise all his passwords.. WORDS FAIL ME
|
| It's all security 101 the irony is immense...
|
| if the US government / FBI need someone to give some talks on
| how to do security ...
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Changing a password that's randomly generated is security
| theatre. It doesn't meaningfully improve security
|
| Also it's entirely possible they only compromised a
| honeypot.
|
| Considering their track record, that's actually more likely
| tbh
| mattbis wrote:
| Honeypot sure I didn't think of that.. But I was under
| the impression the FBI confirmed it ? So we can rule it
| out.
|
| Making the password impossible to guess - how could that
| not be?
|
| Since then you know you have a breach, as its randomised
| gibberish, if you then get the 2nd device asking " is
| this you trying to login " you can definitely know you
| are compromised....
|
| I can't see your logic here, that isn't " theatre " ????
|
| If you think that is theatre what is better then? Words
| and numbers.. easily brute forced.. Sorry can't agree.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Why would they willingly destroy their successful
| honeypot if the other party announced they've access to
| it?
|
| I haven't seen what's in it either though, but I would
| not rule it out yet, especially when the FBI is involved
| - which love those tactics
|
| When you're compromised, changing the password is
| obviously not theatre - but changing a password which is
| randomly generated with enough entropy is what's
| pointless theatre. A secure password is secure, esp. If
| you're already using a password manager then the act of
| changing isn't meaningfully increasing your security
| (unless you're aware that your password was compromised)
| because the way to compromise it is what...? Having a
| keylogger on a device you logged in on? Then the changed
| password will be just as compromised
| mattbis wrote:
| That's why keepass is really useful since you aren't ever
| typing in the password.. its generated and then copied to
| the clipboard.. That clipboard is then wiped after X
| seconds.
|
| So then you know that you have been rooted => If that
| fails to resolve it.
|
| Reduce the number of vectors to know what you have to
| change asap. in this scenario you don't want to be
| guessing about how they did it.
|
| The randomised gibberish just means you can rule out
| certain things. I can agree on part of what your saying
| but a string high entropy password, makes it harder to
| brute..
|
| Many services don't really do that whole retries thing
| properly. So make it take as long as possible.
|
| If you don't use a random gibberish your password can be
| cracked on any consumer device in a surprisingly short
| amount of time...
|
| This way you can then focus on that a session token is
| probably how they got in.. It's the most common vector
| these days...
| basisword wrote:
| How the heck is the buried down to page 4 after one hour?? The
| head of the FBI having his email hacked is a pretty big tech
| story.
| nickburns wrote:
| Negative voting.
| rationalist wrote:
| Lots of personal opinions and low-effort jabs in this thread.
| jameskilton wrote:
| But ... but her emails!
| Levitz wrote:
| I mean, yes? You can give whatever weight you want to the whole
| thing, but the core issue with Hillary Clinton and the emails
| was that she was storing material on a private server rather
| than in official infrastructure.
|
| If Patel didn't do such thing here, the breach should only
| expose personal stuff, if he did, then it's much more of a
| problem, but either way this is a really clear example of why
| concern was raised back at the time.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| But just a personal account with materials reportedly from
| 2011-2022, not an FBI breach
| pixl97 wrote:
| >"This isn't an FBI compromise -- it's someone's personal junk
| drawer," he said.
|
| Eh, with how many people in the current administration seem to
| use out of band channels to communicate _very_ important things
| who knows what else they located.
| sirbutters wrote:
| Most incompetent administration in the modern era.
| helterskelter wrote:
| Think about it this way, this administration is the most
| competent administraion we've ever had at being incompetent.
| Muhammad523 wrote:
| I dont know why your comment got grayed out but it made me
| smile.
| ranyume wrote:
| This isn't a written by a human -- it's a AI-accelerated piece.
| Spellinator wrote:
| As if this is the first time this has ever happened.
|
| How many former officials used personal accounts about
| government business?
|
| How many corporate executives communicate business via personal
| accounts to avoid legal discovery?
|
| How many individuals communicate outside their main email
| accounts to avoid scrutiny or attribution?
|
| Point is, nobody should feel superior or shocked that such
| things like this happen. I understand some enjoy the privacy of
| their perceived enemies being exposed, but IMHO, nobody should
| be happy about invasion of anyone's privacy.
| 7174n6 wrote:
| I'm sure it will be embarrassing for him personally, but not a
| breach of U.S. government systems.
|
| Kudos to CNN for publishing a balanced take on it.
| SirFatty wrote:
| You're assuming that he didn't use personal email for his FBI
| "work".
| 7174n6 wrote:
| The leak is from 2011-2022. He wasn't in the government
| then!!!!
| phonon wrote:
| Are you kidding? He had extremely sensitive roles as Devin
| Nunes' House committee aide from 2017-2019 in the House
| Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, National
| Security Council aide and deputy director of national
| intelligence (2019-2020), and then Chief of staff to the
| secretary of defense (2020-2021).
| enoint wrote:
| I wonder how much of 2021. Two FBI agents reported that
| he was the bag man for payments to alter Jan 6 cases.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/us/politics/house-
| weaponi...
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Maybe something fun about his book.
| https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-
| Patel/dp/19555...
| Muhammad523 wrote:
| What a weird looking book. The cover shows Trump as the
| king, lol Anyways, if i were a parent, i'd certainly try
| to do everything to prevent my kids (under 10) from
| getting into politics. Let them live as normal kids
| should.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Patel is a weird little goblin for sure.
| awkwardpotato wrote:
| per Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
|
| > In some cases, Patel appears to have sent emails from his
| former Justice Department email address in 2014 to his
| Gmail account. TechCrunch found that the emails sent from
| Patel's DOJ account also appeared to be authentic.
| ebiester wrote:
| These are a group that used outside signal chats to discuss war
| plans. What odds do you have that he didn't use a personal
| email to avoid future accountability?
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That's depressingly common with politicians the world over
| because Signal supports disappearing messages.
|
| So I wouldn't expect someone who uses Signal to automatically
| be the kind of person to use personal email for work.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| The US media has a clear understanding that their reporting on
| the war needs to be filtered and biased. This is not some
| coming-to-their-senses against sensationalism, but a
| nothingburger they know they can't sensationalize without great
| risk.
|
| As is the case in any administration; let alone with an admin
| as vindictive as Trump's.
|
| This "balanced take" warrants kudos?
|
| We're not even pretending to lift the bar off the ground when
| it comes to mainstream media, are we?
| mplanchard wrote:
| Link if you want to look:
| https://bsky.app/profile/ddosecrets.org/post/3mi2iokglyn2w
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| Interesting comment: "if Iran ends up responsible for regime
| change in the US, i will be overjoyed as i die from irony"
| demosito666 wrote:
| And it is more than likely. US and Iran probably can't defeat
| each other militarily (us obviously can, but it requires full
| scale ground invasion which is not even contemplated at the
| moment). And both can't back out of the conflict. So the
| likely outcome is that the conflict escalates until one of
| the regimes snaps and it becomes to somehow politically
| possible to back out.
|
| Collapse of the regime in Iran seems unlikely at the moment
| because it's hard and zealous dictatorship with unlimited
| power and will for violence within the country. In the US
| OTOH the elections are coming. An administration that started
| a stupid and absolutely preventable war and then effectively
| lost faces quite a challenge there despite everything else.
| This seems like a perfect moment for Iran to create a
| deterrent for US: attacking us ends your presidency.
| LtWorf wrote:
| USA cannot do a full scale invasion without major internal
| unrest.
| esseph wrote:
| If the newest batch of 10,000 is approved, we're up to
| 17,000 combat troops deployed for this. (Marines there as
| of Mar 27, another 3,500 in about two weeks, and then at
| least 1 battalion of the 82nd Airborne, plus another
| 10,000 requested)
|
| I have heard other units getting pre-mobilization /
| warnings.
|
| https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2026-03-27/8
| 2nd...
|
| (This would not nearly be enough troops for large scale
| ground conflict, but it might be enough to go into the
| island tunnels looking for drones and ballistic missiles
| while the US tries to hold open the straight by force
| for... However long that takes)
| carefulfungi wrote:
| Fwiw, peak deployments to Afghanistan was ~100k troops.
| Iran is ~2x the land mass and population.
| demosito666 wrote:
| IRGC is also 10x more advanced than whatever forces were
| in Afganistan.
| demosito666 wrote:
| This is all fine and well, but misses one little detail:
| drones. In the past conflicts US troops were more or less
| unreachable for the enemy unless they were advancing on
| the ground in a challenging terrain like dense jungles or
| mountains, where an enemy could ambush them. Other then
| that, US had air superiority, overwhelming firepower and
| excellent reconnaissance.
|
| After the war in Ukraine things are very different. US
| troops are not safe as long as they are reachable by an
| FPV done, i.e., the enemy has to only make it ~20km to US
| positions. Given the area and terrain in Iran this will
| be happening all the time. So any troops positioned on
| Iran's territory will be under constant attacks by FPV
| drones. This means heavy casualties.
|
| But even if the US forces will manage to clear the FPVs,
| this is still not enough, because there are dozens of
| other types of winged long range drones, the most famous
| being of course Shahed. They are less precise and not so
| deadly for the troops. They are also much easier to
| intercept. But that means that you effectively can't set
| up a safe stationary base, because it will be attacked by
| hundreds of drones from hundreds of miles away 24x7.
| There is not enough interceptors to stop that.
|
| This means that a new approach will have to be used by US
| armed forces which they never tried before. This
| guarantees heavy losses on the initial stage which will
| raise a real political shitstorm back home. It looks like
| the current administration doesn't particularly care
| about that, but chances are they will not be able to
| contain the consequences.
| esseph wrote:
| > This is all fine and well, but misses one little
| detail: drones.
|
| That's why A-10s are patrolling the 6 mile wide straight
| for 2 hours a flight. They can take out the larger
| Iranian drones much cheaper than any other platform we
| have. The small dones can't get very far and the US is
| _exceptional_ at electronic warfare. But that doesn 't
| really change anything, it just maintains the status quo
| of the straight being too risky for oil tanker insurers.
|
| Ultimately, even if the US goes into the island tunnels
| after the ballistic missiles and larger drones, it would
| take huge sums of money to try and keep it open
| militarily for... who knows how long.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Is it legal to download something like this?
| paxys wrote:
| Legal or illegal doesn't really matter. If the regime wants
| to come for you they will.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| You can't prove you didn't (and the fuzz will produce
| evidence you did).
| Muhammad523 wrote:
| I dont know. I think downloading it with Tor would make it
| almost impossible to find out you downloaded this stuff
| anyway.
| kaliqt wrote:
| Legality matters now least of all to either side.
| Ms-J wrote:
| Of course it's allowed. The gov will happily steal and buy
| all of your info. No problem to have it done to them.
| pogue wrote:
| Anybody dug through it yet?
| Ms-J wrote:
| While it's appreciated, that isn't the original link and Ddos
| "secrets" gate keeps info to people they personally allow. The
| person who runs it also has been to court for a name change,
| citing something along the lines of wanting to work in
| intelligence.
|
| Not a source I would trust unless there is no other option to
| get the dumps or leaks.
|
| Real link from Handala (dead): https://handala-team.to/kash-
| patel-current-director-of-the-f...
|
| Archive: https://archive.ph/ILFFH
|
| Download:
| https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxoxwyp7qosgdwldereecudqpbva/...
|
| Password: handala
| nullable_bool wrote:
| Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles of
| high power in the government. He is a real embarrassment and I
| feel sorry for his mother.
| snovymgodym wrote:
| > I feel sorry for his mother.
|
| In all likelihood his upbringing is what made him this way.
| acuozzo wrote:
| You think so? Peers, in my experience, have an even greater
| impact, especially between the ages of 10 and 25.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| And it's your upbringing that has the biggest impact on who
| your peers will become.
| acuozzo wrote:
| My parents were great, but if we were forced by
| circumstance to live in the worst parts of the US (e.g.,
| Appalachia), then no amount of having a "good upbringing"
| would shield me from having a peer group which would
| routinely put it to the test.
| TheGRS wrote:
| Gone only because current leadership kicked them all to the
| curb and told them to get out of Washington. Only loyal talking
| heads are wanted there now.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles
| of high power in the government
|
| What, like J.Edgar?
| cushychicken wrote:
| Fair critique. Mueller was a pretty upstanding example of how
| to run the FBI, however.
| dominicq wrote:
| Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?
| morkalork wrote:
| No worries. As long as rigorous due diligence was followed when
| vetting him as a candidate, there will surely be nothing
| embarrassing or harmful found in his personal emails.
| ck2 wrote:
| I'm sorry but nothing can ever be more embarrassing for that man
| who wrote this book to get that job
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/19555...
|
| What an absolute clown
|
| But far more seriously, imagine the danger he has put this
| country into by firing so many critical people, some specifically
| and uniquely for Iran and Middle-East defense
|
| Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days
| because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it
| coming, maybe even on purpose
| Oarch wrote:
| How am I only finding out about this now... my sides
| autoexec wrote:
| > Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days
| because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it
| coming, maybe even on purpose
|
| Why would anyone bother to attack us now? This entire
| administration has done more to make The US weak and vulnerable
| than any outside attacker could have hoped to accomplish. They
| can just sit back and watch rome burn
| gverrilla wrote:
| > Why would anyone bother to attack us now?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni.
| ..
| autoexec wrote:
| We've given a lot of people a lot of reasons to hate us
| sure, but no matter how much you hate someone, if you see
| them kicking their own ass it just makes sense to let them
| finish before you jump in.
| b8 wrote:
| Not surprising as email providers like Yahoo's security are a
| joke. A former CIA director got his personal emailed pwned as
| well.
| paxys wrote:
| I feel like sending phishing emails for penis enlargement pills
| would take down half the current administration.
| disantlor wrote:
| worth a try
| penguin_booze wrote:
| I know someone who will be interested in bigger hands--big
| beautiful hands.
| Muhammad523 wrote:
| I must say, i'd prefer if my hands remained the same size
| they are now. I dont want to lose my dexterity. Slightly
| offtopic
| fmajid wrote:
| GMail, like Apple, has specific enhanced security programs
| available for Politically Exposed Persons:
|
| https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/
|
| The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of this
| just reiterates how incompetent he is, in addition to being
| corrupt as heck.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's possible it was breached in 2022 and they've held on to it
| until now.
| leereeves wrote:
| It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting
| anything worth hacking on gmail.
| pdpi wrote:
| Security in depth. Even if you _think_ you don 't have
| anything particularly valuable in there, you still protect
| it as if you did.
| leereeves wrote:
| I'd rather he worry about securing government secrets,
| not spend one second worrying about "personal photographs
| of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an
| antique convertible, and making a face while taking a
| picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of
| rum".
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Obviously government secrets need to be properly secured,
| but the personal info/photos of a top official can often
| be used for blackmail or for determining close friends
| that could be used to compromise Patel.
| leereeves wrote:
| There's so much speculation about how this hack could
| conceivably be damaging, but so little evidence that it
| actually contained anything damaging.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Security through luck?
|
| The reality is that officials are targetted by various
| states looking to get some leverage, so not properly
| securing an email account is a serious failing unless
| it's part of a wider honeypot scheme. Personally, I'm not
| convinced that the current U.S. administration is
| competent enough to plan ahead and implement honeypots.
| leereeves wrote:
| No point in going round and round with personal opinions
| and general speculation. The debate is easily settled:
| just point to some actual harm done by this hack.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I don't think you really understand how blackmail works.
| If the information is public, then that's a failed
| blackmail attempt. Also, the U.S. administration is
| unlikely to provide public information on how top
| officials have been compromised.
|
| It's not really much of a debate as it's widely
| acknowledged that letting enemy states get access to the
| email accounts of officials is a really bad idea.
| thephyber wrote:
| "The enemy broke into our nuke silo, killed our Air Force
| manned crew, stole the nuke codes, launched the missile.
| Not a big deal because we shot it down before it hit its
| target."
|
| Most of the time, actual harm is the most important
| issue. In this case because that office holds so much
| centralized power and authority over many aspects of
| American life (domestic law enforcement, some foreign law
| enforcement, domestic counterterrorism /
| counterintelligence / counterespionage, and security
| clearance background checks for all VIPs), the means are
| equally as important as the ends.
|
| And I would throw in a wrinkle: what evidence is there
| that the dumps were not stripped of the most useful
| blackmail material? If I were in charge of a hack
| operation, I would dump the low impact stuff to show the
| world how much of a joke this guy's security is, but only
| after I already used the best stuff to blackmail him
| months ago.
| leereeves wrote:
| The scenario you're proposing is more like "They broke
| into our silo and launched a nuke, then they shot it down
| themselves."
|
| A successful blackmailer doesn't want the security breach
| exposed or investigated, they want to continue to use the
| victim.
| thephyber wrote:
| Bad take.
|
| Patel specifically bypassed security clearance protocols
| for Bongino and other staff he hired. His top priority
| isn't protecting government secrets -- it's to take down
| what he thinks is the part of the US government that
| resists bending to Trump's will.
|
| And you are wrong that the FBI shouldn't care about
| securing the Director's private life information.
| Anything and everything can and will be used to blackmail
| him by foreign governments, criminals, political actors.
|
| I highly doubt the first public dump of messages would
| include the most compromising content -- that's like
| handing away a maximum severity zero day for the most
| common OS in the federal government. There's no logical
| reason to do that for free, so I suspect the really
| incriminating/ salacious stuff was withheld for private
| use.
|
| And if the FBI didn't enable the high security setting on
| the FBI Director's private email account, they might not
| have known what, if any, compromising materials were in
| there.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Trump bypassed clearance protocols for unclearable Jared.
| Nobody cares with an unaccountable executive.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It is also possible he is an idiot. There are few valuable
| sentences that begin with "it is possible..."
| leptons wrote:
| To be fair, he probably _never once_ in his _wildest
| dreams_ ever thought he would be head of the FBI. So he
| probably didn 't think he needed the extra security,
| because what idiot would put him in charge of the world's
| largest spy network.
| eps wrote:
| The FBI is not a spy network.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| While I understand why you would say that, I think the
| way "spy network" was meant, was in the way that their
| job is to spy within the US. And given the resources at
| their disposition, and the size of the US, "worlds
| biggest spy network" is not wrong.
|
| Also, they do head up the main counterintelligence effort
| of the US.
|
| How the mighty have fallen.
| thephyber wrote:
| You are being pedantic.
|
| I have 2 family members who are/were special agents for
| the FBI. Much of their job is harvesting evidence to
| build cases by spying, which frequently comes more in the
| form of "spying" in the way we saw in The Sopranos.
|
| The FBI is also the premier counter-espionage
| organization within the US, so it is tasked with spying
| on suspected foreign / turned spies.
|
| It is much more than a spy network, but it is exactly
| that as well.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at
| any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their
| life. You don't have to be a suspect to fall within their
| panopticon.
| leereeves wrote:
| > All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search
| at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their
| life.
|
| That claim deserves a source.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's buried in EO12333
| nkrisc wrote:
| World's largest spy network? The FBI wouldn't even be the
| largest spy network within the US.
| thephyber wrote:
| The same idiot who pushed him into SecDef's office and
| DNI in 2020.
|
| He shouldn't be FBI Director and he shouldn't have been
| in the DNI or Secretary of Staff for SecDef either. All
| of those are high positions of responsibility and require
| tremendous OpsSec. This guy's first act as FBI Director
| was to waive most of the investigations into his staff to
| bypass security clearance checks.
|
| Sorry if I'm not disagreeing with you. Sarcasm is a bit
| hard to identify these days.
| andsoitis wrote:
| From the article, he wasn't the director of the FBI for the
| time period the emails are from: "The stolen emails appear to
| date from around 2011 to 2022"
| thephyber wrote:
| He held very important positions in the US government before
| 2022, including in the SecDef's office and DNI in 2020-2021.
|
| This is just a sad story of a partisan hack who failed
| upwards into one of the most sensitive and powerful offices
| in the nation, simply for being a loyal sycophant, not merit.
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| It would be poetic justice to get the unredacted Epstein files
| via Iran...
| billfor wrote:
| Read the article he wasn't the director of the FBI: "The stolen
| emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"
| hughw wrote:
| He's had over a year to enable it.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Why would he, when he wasn't director of the FBI then?
| hughw wrote:
| Agree only a smart person would the sense in it.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Sick burn. Bet the dopamine hit was sweet.
| thephyber wrote:
| You're right. He was merely [checks notes]:
| - Chief of Staff to the United States Secretary of
| Defense (2020-2021) - Principal Deputy Director of
| National Intelligence (2020)
|
| Not a big deal. No need for OpSec in those positions.
| sysguest wrote:
| woah but even I haven't heard about that gmail feature...?
|
| maybe google doesn't advertise about this much?
| dessimus wrote:
| If only the Director of the FBI had access to some sort
| of investigative team, maybe more than one, maybe even
| enough that they use a collective term for it, something
| like, I don't know: bureau?
| saulapremium wrote:
| "Even you"?
|
| Are you someone who would be inclined to look into
| something like that?
| sysguest wrote:
| no but I've been interested in cryptography/anonimity
| stuff, so I see a lot of suggestions/advertisements
| related to those: signal, telegram, proton-mail, etc
| thephyber wrote:
| They absolutely advertised it when it was released and
| every journalist knows about it.
|
| Kashmir Patel went out of his way to bypass security
| protocols for onboarding his political hires (for the
| US's premiere domestic intelligence service!). If he
| wanted to be secure, all he had to do was not get in the
| way of the FBI's natural processes.
|
| Also, this wouldn't have happened if POTUS had hired
| someone with relevant FBI experience instead of a
| political hack.
| sysguest wrote:
| > POTUS had hired someone with relevant FBI experience
| instead of a political hack.
|
| well what percentage of highly-rated FBI people have
| actually enabled that feature?
|
| did FBI had some internal recommendation to enable that
| feature?
|
| FBI isn't NSA people...
| dessimus wrote:
| What are you talking about? There's literally a Cyber
| Crimes[0] division of the FBI, and they run the National
| Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF). They
| probably know a thing or two about cyber security for
| high-ranked governmental officials.
|
| [0] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber
| sysguest wrote:
| well by that logic, you can argue every top gov officials
| who didn't sign up for
| https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/
| is incompetent, BECAUSE NSA IS part of the government ?
|
| dude at least you should have brought an internal
| recommendation memo targeted all fbi people, not "but fbi
| has this and this division..."
|
| lets say your college have astrophysics and other big
| departments. Are you really expert on those areas? Can
| you expect all highly-regarded professors to know most
| things from other departments? Do all 'competent' art
| professors know about astrophysics?
| dessimus wrote:
| >well by that logic, you can argue every top gov
| officials who didn't sign up for
| https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/
| is incompetent
|
| I would, yes. Maybe a director in the Small Business
| Administration is lower on the target list of gov
| officials that would need to be concerned, but certainly
| anyone in the Departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland
| Security, State, Transportation, Treasury, and probably
| Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for sure.
|
| > BECAUSE NSA IS part of the government ?
|
| I don't know why multiple times in this comment section
| you allude to the NSA as being the only Federal agency
| tasked with any sort of cyber security responsibility,
| that is just plain wrong.
|
| >you should have brought an internal recommendation memo
| targeted all fbi people
|
| Yes, because I have access to any and all _internal
| memos_ provided by the FBI to their employees. _Internal
| memos_ are by their very nature are _internal_ , so are
| generally not available for public consumption.
|
| Also, your higher ed example is terrible, because as
| someone with a work history at a flagship state
| university's IT department, I can assure you that we
| provide all sorts of "memos", trainings, and tools to
| combat cybercrime, including special onboarding sessions
| to ensure new hires are protecting themselves and the
| university. We don't depend on the Art and Physics
| departments to make sure they keep their faculty 'in-
| line' following best practices in cyber security.
| sysguest wrote:
| wow... how dense are you?
|
| do you even know what your soap your janitor uses?
|
| do you even understand why I ask whether "internal
| recommendation memo for that product" exists? what
| differences it makes?
|
| "as someone with a work history at a flagship state
| university's IT department, I can assure you..." ...ok so
| wtf was that advertisement? I did NOT ask what you do,
| but whether your 'customers' actually care and know the
| stuff.
|
| ...do you have an intelligence of a parrot? or are you
| some llm?
| GeorgeRichard wrote:
| Are you suggesting that he was targeted before he became the
| director of the FBI? That seems unlikely. Once he became an
| obvious target surely the FBI should have secured his past,
| present and future communications. But I have no idea what
| protocols there are for such things, I'm just going off
| common sense, a notoriously sketchy starting point in the
| crazy world of the current US administration.
| coke12 wrote:
| He was well known in the first Trump admin.
| ab_testing wrote:
| Was that landing page written by Google India team !
| connorgurney wrote:
| Not sure what difference the nationality of the copywriters
| makes...
| echoangle wrote:
| It doesn't really tell you where the copywriters were from
| but you notice that the locale of the page is Indian
| because the numbers are given in crore.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| if this was a few years ago I would even say here on
| "hacker" news we could probably notice the indian locale
| in the damn URL and save an entire subthread of racial
| offtopic
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| Petty racism, probably linked to the FBI director's
| ethnicity.
| lazide wrote:
| Crores are pretty distinctive.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| "Gmail blocks over 10 crore phishing attempts every day."
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, it was written to target Indian English. You can find
| the American version of the page at
| https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/ .
| bedatadriven wrote:
| Uh yeah, the locale in the link is specifically an Indian
| locale. If you find it it disorienting you can change en_in
| to en_us:
|
| https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/
| FreePalestine1 wrote:
| The confusing thing is that googling "google advanced
| protection program" takes you to the en_in locale, even if
| you are in the US. An American has no clue what a crore is,
| so it is just an SEO failure on Google's part, which is
| funny. I didn't know there was an en_us equivalent to the
| page when I googled the topic.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > An American has no clue what a crore is
|
| Really?
|
| It's ten million of something, or (currently) about
| $11,000 US dollars in money.
|
| You might also see "lakh" which is one hundred thousand
| of something, or about $1100 when it's used to describe
| money.
|
| Now you know.
| nsenifty wrote:
| > or (currently) about $11,000 US dollars $110,000 US
| dollars
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Oops, you're right. Don't do currency conversions in your
| head, folks.
| sysguest wrote:
| > The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of
| this
|
| well even I haven't seen/heard about this...
|
| maybe google should advertise more?
|
| (or... maybe I don't look important to google :( ?)
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| I'm surprised no group has hacked the Epstein files, given the
| extreme interest.
| saltyoldman wrote:
| hacking groups are generally funded by the people that are in
| the files. -> government leaders.
| caaqil wrote:
| If you read the news with enough cynicism, you'll realize that
| rules like formality, password strength or cybersecurity hygiene
| are for the average Joes, not the morons/perverts who run the
| world.
| trhway wrote:
| Hegseth - Signal app
|
| Noem - habeas corpus definition she gave at the Congress hearing
|
| Kennedy Jr - vaccines and the rest of his view on medicine
|
| Now Patel's unhackable FBI.
|
| I think the world has changed, and i really need to update my
| expectations of what is new normal. It is like in tech when
| paradigm shift happens, and you're either go with the new
| paradigm or get irrelevant.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| "Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate
| talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots
| and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still
| the best guarantee of their loyalty." ~Hannah Arendt
| trhway wrote:
| i'm from USSR, so pretty familiar with it. The issue here is
| whether it is a fluke, or the world is really going into new
| phase where totalitarianism and authoritarianism are going to
| become dominating state of affairs.
|
| For example many attribute rise of totalitarianism back then
| in 20th century to the power of broadcasting radio and
| "formation of mass society". We have a similarly
| transformative factor now - social media. And with the new
| tech power - propaganda (sounds dated, today it is more like
| mind control) through social media and total surveillance
| plus AI "minority report" - we can get a hyper-
| totalitarianism orders of magnitude more totalitarian than
| those of the 20th century. And may be we're witnessing the
| birth of such a new world order.
| epistasis wrote:
| The people of the US were converted into functional Putin-
| subservient Russians for the last election, and the media
| environment is not getting better, and in fact seems to be
| getting much worse.
|
| However there is revolt amongst a good chunk of the
| fractured coalition that barely brought Trump into office.
|
| Trump's Epstein coverup and sheltering of Ghislaine Maxwell
| took off the shine with a large number of people. The
| ghastly behavior around the deaths of major figures takes
| off more. Exempting producers of the pesticide glyphosate
| has taken off most of the MAHA coalition. And then, of
| course the wars, when he promised not to launch any and
| accused his opponent of doing exactly what he's currently
| doing...
|
| It remains to be seen just how permanent this is, and
| whether the post-Trump US can be reattached to reality
| instead of reality TV, but I use hope.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Unfortunately that leaves us with the Democrats who have
| shown time and again that they are unwilling or unable to
| confront this movement for what it is.
|
| I'm frankly far more concerned that the Republicans lose
| next election, and we get Democrats in power who then
| prioritize "getting back to normal" and once again
| utterly failing to hold accountable the utter BUFFET of
| mediocre wannabe dictators who brought us to the brink
| already.
|
| I also hope. But I'd be lying if I said I thought it was
| rational.
| Avicebron wrote:
| The real fear is that they don't solve any of the
| problems that caused this in the first place... it's not
| about some vindictive punishment, it's about solving the
| problem.
| nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
| I beg to differ, as I see it, it's both. Solving the
| problem necessarily entails punishing the malicious
| actors attempting to subvert and demolish our governance,
| justice system, society and way of life. Allowing Jan 6th
| to go unpunished at the highest levels was a key factor
| in what brought us here.
| Avicebron wrote:
| > demolish our governance, justice system, society and
| way of life
|
| "Our" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There were
| many "ours" whose ways of life, governance, and society
| were destroyed on the road to making the Jan 6th thing
| possible..
| parineum wrote:
| >The people of the US were converted into functional
| Putin-subservient Russians
|
| It's crazy that you continue to push this narrative
| despite the entire "Russia-Gate" thing turning out to
| total bullshit oppo followed by Trump being currently at
| war with one of Putin's allies and having jailed another.
|
| The evidence supporting this claim is what, he wasn't
| nice to Zelenskyy that one time (despite still
| financially supporting Ukraine in their war against
| Russia)?
| fooster wrote:
| The Russians certainly did interfere in the 2016
| election. It was not bullshit.
| parineum wrote:
| Define "interfere". Be specific.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl
|
| https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/d
| ocu...
| Fricken wrote:
| Authoritarianism is a spectrum and all states are on it. We
| all have brain slugs now, it was voluntary. We'll be going
| back to that old time religion, but with a new twist. With
| AI every man will, in a much more literal way, be able to
| have an ongoing private conversation with god. And you
| won't need money or the government anymore. God has a
| special plan for you and you follow it.
| gzread wrote:
| Totalitarianism and authoritarianism has been the norm for
| the majority of human history. The last century of
| technological progress created a bubble where the power of
| sycophancy wasn't strong enough to counteract the power of
| actual technology. Now that the technology is widely
| distributed and easily available to sycophants, and that
| they've had time to learn how to leverage the technology,
| sycophancy again brings an advantage.
| cyberax wrote:
| Totalitarianism is not becoming more popular. Russia is not
| totalitarian, Venezuela is not totalitarian, and even China
| is not really totalitarian anymore.
|
| These are authoritarian countries. Meaning that they don't
| have an official ideology, the real one that has people
| willing to die for it. If anything, they are focused on
| suppressing people and keeping them passive.
|
| Iran is a notable exception here. They _are_ a totalitarian
| theocratic state, and this makes them more resilient. They
| are not governed by a single person but by ideology, even
| if it's unpopular among the people.
|
| Authoritarian states are fragile in comparison. They
| struggle to survive the removal of their leader, especially
| the ones that had governed for a long time. The long-time
| ruler inevitably becomes the arbiter between the elites, a
| focal point of their undercover agreements.
|
| And once the ruler is gone, the elites are now faced with a
| new round of struggles. So the smarter ones decide that
| perhaps it's a good idea to have some kind of collegial
| power, where people can discuss their disagreements rather
| than shoot each other. This usually results in the country
| becoming milder and not so carnivorous towards its
| citizens.
|
| The USSR was a good example. Stalin died, and his
| successors decided that a new Stalin was not a good idea.
| Instead, they gave power to the Politburo, where the
| General Secretary was "the first among equals". The USSR
| did not become a human rights paradise afterwards. But it
| never had any more mass purges, deportations, or mega-
| projects built with slave labor of GULAG inmates.
| trhway wrote:
| >Totalitarianism is not becoming more popular. Russia is
| not totalitarian,
|
| Russia is totalitarian today. It transitioned from
| authoritarian to totalitarian slowly starting about
| second half of 201x and very quickly down hill during
| 2022 with the introduction of all those "discreditation"
| laws and the likes and especially with extreme hardening
| of application of such laws.
|
| >Meaning that they don't have an official ideology, the
| real one that has people willing to die for it.
|
| That is the point. In a contrast to being just a
| kleptocracy for the first ~15 years of Putin, Russia does
| have such an ideology at the state level today - "Russian
| world" (known outside as "Russian fascism" - "rushism")
| with Ukranian war (where at least several hundred
| thousands of Russians have already died) being one of the
| real-world implementations of that ideology.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Russia is totalitarian today.
|
| It's really not. There is no ideology. There are no mass
| rallies in support of the government. No official sets of
| books, there's no "My Struggle" by Putin that everyone in
| the country needs to have.
|
| > That is the point. In a contrast to being just a
| kleptocracy for the first ~15 years of Putin, Russia does
| have such an ideology at the state level today - "Russian
| world"
|
| Not really. It's trying to do that, but it looks comical
| even for people inside Russia. Even true believers in
| "Russian World" are now either dead or silenced. Russian
| government systematically punishes _any_ true belief.
|
| Another example to watch is Venezuela. I predict that
| it'll slowly transform into being a more open country,
| with at least some electoral freedom. It won't become a
| liberal democracy overnight, but it won't be completely
| authoritarian for long.
| trhway wrote:
| >There are no mass rallies in support of the government.
|
| for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzaoHPWfkbE
|
| >No official sets of books,
|
| new unified history textbook. The "Talks about Important"
| school ideology lessons. Putin's propaganda article on
| Ukraine history (of course no relation to real history).
|
| >It's really not. There is no ideology.
|
| the foundational ideology of a fascist state is
| "interests of state trump any and all
| rights/freedoms/interests of an individual". One can see
| that in Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Mussolini's
| Italy, and in Putin's Russia these days. Of course that
| was also the case in Germany in 1933-1945, yet the
| Germany went further - it was a fascism where state had a
| political nationalism as an official ideology. Similarly
| Russian state in recent years took "Russian world" as its
| official ideology, and thus now you see Lebensraum,
| Volksgemeinschaft, Blut and Boden and Dolchstosslegende
| in the words and actions of Russian state.
|
| >Not really. It's trying to do that, but it looks comical
| even for people inside Russia.
|
| There is nothing comical here. One of the cornerstone of
| "Russian world" ideology is Russians being the master-
| nation (and by the way the words to pretty much that
| effect were even put into the Russian Constitution in
| 2020) while Ukranians are declared "inferior". The state
| TV openly talks about "Ukrainess" being a brain decease
| needing eradication (reminds a lot how "Jewishness" was
| talked about back then in Germany). It definitely lost
| any chance of being even remotely comical when they
| actually declared and started that eradication in 2022.
|
| >Even true believers in "Russian World" are now either
| dead or silenced. Russian government systematically
| punishes _any_ true belief.
|
| State ideology never requires true believers. Even more -
| true believer may happen to follow his/her beliefs even
| when state orders the other way - that of course would
| conflict with the basic tenets of totalitarian state.
| cyberax wrote:
| > for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzaoHPWfkbE
|
| That was electoral event with mandatory presence. This is
| nothing like Stalin's rallies where people themselves
| organized and attended, e.g.:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6bzBTmmhU
|
| > new unified history textbook. The "Talks about
| Important" school ideology lessons. Putin's propaganda
| article on Ukraine history (of course no relation to real
| history).
|
| Yup. They are _trying_ but without at least semi-coherent
| ideology, it just looks comical. I suggest reading that
| textbook, it's just trash. It's badly written and is just
| a collection of unconnected facts. All it can teach is
| the late USSR norm: "Say what they want to hear, think
| what you want, and do what you actually need to do".
|
| There can be no ideology in an authoritarian state,
| ideology binds the leadership. Khomeini in Iran can't
| just go to a gay party or eat during Ramadan. Putin (and
| his ilk like Maduro) does not want to get limited in any
| way.
|
| > the foundational ideology of a fascist state is
| "interests of state trump any and all
| rights/freedoms/interests of an individual"
|
| If you want to talk about fine details of political
| science, then fascism is not necessarily totalitarian. It
| can be practiced in a far-right authoritarian state.
| Nazism is indeed different, and it _is_ a totalitarian
| ideology.
|
| Nazism had its foundational work ("Mein Kampf") and a
| doctrine fortified by a set of "scientific" proofs of
| German superiority. And they had plenty of true
| believers, including the actual core of the Nazi party.
| It also imposed binding restrictions on everyone. For
| example, nobody in the Nazi party could (openly) marry a
| Jewish person and expect to stay in power.
|
| Putin doesn't want any of this. He loves that one day the
| US is the enemy number one for him, and the next day
| Trump is his best friend.
|
| > The state TV openly talks about "Ukrainess" being a
| brain decease needing eradication (reminds a lot how
| "Jewishness" was talked about back then in Germany).
|
| Yes, and these TV channels now have less popularity than
| gardening channels. This is another point of difference.
| In a totalitarian state, the ideology must be, well,
| _total_ and omnipresent.
|
| The Russian government is trying to make sure the war
| stays as invisible as possible. Try to find any mentions
| of it here: https://yandex.com/maps/-/CPVwbS-t
|
| > It definitely lost any chance of being even remotely
| comical when they actually declared and started that
| eradication in 2022.
|
| Unfortunately, you don't need ideology to wage wars.
|
| > State ideology never requires true believers.
|
| It does. And that is the true difference. A significant
| part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran
| really sincerely believes that they're fighting for
| Islam. It's not _just_ a way for them to get into power
| to run protection rackets.
| trhway wrote:
| >Yes, and these TV channels now have less popularity than
| gardening channels.
|
| Nobody knowing anything about Russia would make such a
| gross mistake like you've just made. It is like you'd be
| discussing physics problems while not knowing Newton's
| laws.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Russia
|
| "Television is the most popular medium in Russia, with
| 74% of the population watching national television
| channels routinely "
|
| As it happens you just don't know what you're talking
| about. Most of the other things you said about Russia is
| similarly just incorrect. It looked strange to me how and
| what you've been arguing about, and in good faith i
| thought that we're discussing while each being well
| informed, and may be you just have different opinion/view
| and may be a bit less understanding and information than
| me. Well, it happens you just don't know basically
| anything about Russia. In such a case instead of arguing,
| you should just look for and consume the information, and
| not waste other people's time with uninformed arguments.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I don't think people appreciate enough how much it mattered
| that Trump was a celebrity buffoon/reality show personality for
| decades before "politics". Stupid people eat that up. Other
| Trumpy candidates have not been able to reproduce his success.
| Let's not assume this is the new normal.
| dogemaster2025 wrote:
| I don't think people appreciate enough how much it mattered
| that Trump was the only candidate explicitly saying they were
| working to Make America Great Again, as opposed to foreign
| interests or illegals.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| I recently read one of the best descriptions of why middle
| of the road, non wealthy voters went for Trump in the book
| "The King in Orange," a book about the "magickal" aspects
| of the 2016 campaign by John Michael Greer, the former (?)
| head of the Ancient Order of Druids in America.
|
| I expect cogent commentary about ritual magick by a Druid,
| but was a little surprised to find well laid out political
| commentary. I guess that was a failure of my imagination.
| Worth a read, even if you consider the topic bollocks.
| Greer sticks mostly to psychology and musings about using
| metaphor to engineer the mass imagination. Much less woo-
| woo than you might expect.
|
| I mention it in support of the previous poster's commentary
| about the Dems messaging being irrelevant to most
| Americans. Seemed to me middle America doesn't love Trump
| as much as they weren't able to hear Harris address any
| issues they were concerned about.
|
| I can recommend The King in Orange, What's the Matter with
| Kansas and Metaphors We Live By for more musings about such
| things.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| I heard some of the best advice I ever heard at a Subgenius
| devival in Dallas in the 80s: "Act like a dumb-shit and
| they'll treat you like an equal." Every year that quip seems
| more and more relevant.
| conductr wrote:
| If Idiocracy was made today, I wonder how far in the future
| they'd place it. In 2006, they thought 500 years which seems
| optimistic now.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Future? I'm thinking a Borat style mockumentary in the
| present.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think it's the future of entertainment. Ruthlessly
| mocking idiots in power (and others). To be honest it's the
| present of some entertainment.
| petre wrote:
| What's the use of mockery after they bombed a girls'
| school and killed at least 175 innocent people? I'd like
| to see the IRGC erased off the face of the Earth, but not
| like this. This is exponentially worse than Bush jr.
| reading a children's book on 9/11.
| mattkevan wrote:
| We're way beyond Idiocracy now, we left that timeline six
| years ago.
|
| For all his flaws, Camacho was a good leader - he recognised
| there was a problem, knew he couldn't fix it and actively
| rallied the world around the one person who could.
|
| This bunch of dipshits expressly denigrated the experts,
| refused to take the slightest precaution to protect
| themselves and others from a deadly virus and caused hundreds
| of thousands of deaths.
|
| And that's not even thinking about the industrial levels of
| fuckery and bullshit they've perpetrated over the last year.
| antonvs wrote:
| > caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
|
| Excess mortality in the US during the pandemic was around
| 1.2 million.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Yes, people forget that in the early days of the
| pandemic, they were playing political games with PPE,
| sending it to red states with no population or cases,
| while NYC was running out of space in hospitals. It got
| so bad, RFK's grandson became a whistleblower because he
| was dismayed that he and other 20-somethings with no
| relevent experience were in charge of the government
| response. It "was like a family office
| meets organized crime, melded with Lord of the Flies,"
| Kennedy said. "It was a government of chaos." Kennedy
| says was shocked that he and a dozen other twenty-
| somethings with no experience in the medical sector were
| tasked with procuring much-needed PPE for the country,
| using their personal laptops and email addresses.
| "We were the team. We were the entire frontline team for
| the federal government." Kennedy added, "It was the
| number of people who show up to an after-school event,
| not to run the greatest crisis in a hundred years. It was
| such a mismatch of personnel. It was one of the largest
| mobilization problems ever. It was so unbelievably
| colossal and gargantuan. The fact that they didn't want
| to get any more people was so upsetting." [1]
|
| That kind of executive negligence and dereliction of duty
| absolutely cost lives.
|
| What Kennedy described during COVID is now the entire
| government from top to bottom. DOJ, FBI, DOD, FEMA, DHS,
| ICE, NASA, USPS, SSA etc etc, rotting from the head.
|
| [1]: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/robert-f-kennedys-
| grandson-w...
| jrumbut wrote:
| Camacho is aspirational at this point. I would have a lot
| of sympathy for someone trying to do the right thing but
| unaware what that is.
| nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
| Go away, 'batin'!
| mcmcmc wrote:
| It would literally just be a compilation of TikToks
| pwarner wrote:
| Only the best people
| root_axis wrote:
| Don't forget "the files are on my desk" and many other
| classics.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The real paradigm shift is coming in 2028.
| rexpop wrote:
| Wat we are witnessing is not just traditional totalitarianism,
| but the emergence of a suicidal state driven by a fascist death
| drive.
|
| Under MAGA, the state no longer pretends to be guided
| internally by reason and progress, but is instead founded on
| non progress and terror, a scorched earth approach to slashing
| government agencies, and the accelerated destruction of state
| institutions: rather than seeking to resolve societal crises,
| MAGA _produces_ constant crises to feed off of, preferring to
| annihilate its own systems rather than stop the destruction.
|
| Yes, the world has changed. We have entered a reality where
| insanity has become the goal of the authoritarians, ie the
| self-destruction itself is the actual end goal.
| chao- wrote:
| From the administration that brought us "We are currently clean
| on OPSEC", I can't claim surprise. Disappointment, but not
| surprise.
|
| Nor, however, can I take the statements of malicious actors at
| face value. They hacked a personal email address, but that does
| not mean "the FBI's security was nothing more than a joke".
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| These government officials are idiots. Jeffery Epstein, idiot.
| Why do even rich and powerful use easily hackable stuff?
|
| Lest us not forget bObama@yahoo.com or the IT guy who worked
| for the Clinton foundation who posted about bleachbit on recdit
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Obama's old personal email was at defunct ISP ameritech.net,
| not Yahoo. I only remember because that's the ISP I grew up
| with.
|
| Trump using yourefired as his Twitter password well into his
| 2016 campaign was amazing, too.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Idiots
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm surprised he put the 'e' on 'you're'.
| dhosek wrote:
| Ameritech.net was backed by yahoo's mail and IIRC,
| joefish@ameritech.net and joefish@yahoo.com would be the
| same mailbox.
| gzread wrote:
| Because they are experts in acquiring riches and power, not
| experts in computer security.
| unparagoned wrote:
| It's all fine since he didn't use it for official business right,
| right...
| justonceokay wrote:
| Or more likely unofficial business
| pnw wrote:
| Based on the links in the articles, it's personal photographs
| and a resume from an old Gmail account. The resume dates from
| 2017.
| justonceokay wrote:
| If they got into the account they got everything. The
| publicly released pictures are more of a taunt meant to
| publicly signal that he's fucked. I would bet (figuratively)
| that anyrhing of actual value is either being sold or
| leveraged. After all this is a man that has shown an almost
| infinite capacity for humiliation.
| drfloyd51 wrote:
| The FBI just made a bounty to find who hacked family photos.
|
| I am sure the FBI will do that for my family too right?
|
| Or we're more than family photos hacked?
| kingo55 wrote:
| Maybe the family un-friendly kind?
| jnaina wrote:
| apparently it was a gooner account for one of the popular adult
| websites.
| noosphr wrote:
| Imagine a world where gpg encryption was the norm instead of
| something that only works reliably in Emacs.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| This wouldn't have happened if Kash Patel used Emacs, that's
| right.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I think it's a pretty cynical take that an Emacs user will
| never be made FBI director.
| razingeden wrote:
| are you saying someone can't key information into an NCIC
| profile with EMacs? Ha! _furious typing_
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| aw damn, you're keying my information into an NCIC
| profile right now aren't you!!?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| You know, thats really my main takeaway from all this. Once
| you really boil it down
| noncoml wrote:
| How would GPG help? GPG is as safe as your private key is. If
| someone gets "hacks you" and gets access to your private key,
| it's over
| noosphr wrote:
| https://dangerousthings.com/product/apex-flex/
| mr_mitm wrote:
| GPG keys are typically guarded much better than emails,
| that's the whole point. Accessing e-mails can be done by
| guessing a password, to get to the key you basically need
| command execution on the target's client system.
| k310 wrote:
| A great many experts in the military, medicine, disaster relief,
| and cybersecurity { the list goes on } were fired.
|
| It's almost as if the nation were being weakened on purpose.
|
| Don't get mad, get Vlad. Or just prepare for the long-desired
| Rapture.[0] and which politicians seem to be working very hard to
| being about (the Apocalypse part, anyway)
|
| [0] https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/29/us/iran-israel-
| evangelicals-p...
|
| > Prophecy, not politics, may also shape America's clash with
| Iran
|
| So, is prophecy OK in a pitch deck? Asking for a friend.
| RobRivera wrote:
| When do the Raptor puppets go on sale?
| leereeves wrote:
| Were any of the people fired responsible for security on
| personal gmail accounts?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Its both dumber and more dangerous than that. Competent people
| are not valuable to governments that value loyalty more than
| competence.
| gotwaz wrote:
| "Competent" people are not valuable and over rated because
| they will flake out in such jobs when the group holds them
| responsible for all sorts of things they have no control
| over. They are the first people who recognize lumits. Their
| own, their teams and the systems. But people dont want to
| hear about Limits. They want saviors and messaihs. They want
| fantasy and magic. So the system runs not optimized for
| efficiency but illusion of control, for damping of anxieties
| and fears.
| genxy wrote:
| Over 90% of my managers got into their positions by either
| stabbing someone in the back, or walking across their dead
| body.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| That's how hierarchies work. It's an circumstantial
| constraint. Some people just keep trying to make
| hierarchies permanent for whatever reason.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| and that will be there eventual downfall luckily.
| vrganj wrote:
| The Manchurian Candidate.
| afpx wrote:
| For real, I wouldn't be shocked if Trump drafted everyone
| between 18 and 42, sent them all to Iran and then let Israel
| nuke Iran
| conception wrote:
| No, I'm convinced the one thing that Trump wants to do is to
| launch a nuke before he dies. That's what he wants his legacy
| to be. and his name everywhere.
| k310 wrote:
| No. DRAFT ICE! * They are already "trained"
| (in random violence against civilians. Checks one box)
| * Bonespur "victims" have already been weeded out. *
| They are already government employees and must go where
| assigned. (saves TONS of paperwork) * They already
| have weapons, and unspent budget money. * They
| already have swell masks to protect from radioactive dust
| that bombing reactors creates, and (this is big) *
| Their kill to loss ratio is infinite.
|
| Oh, and ... * It's them or Barron.
| nickvec wrote:
| no paywall for the CNN article: https://archive.ph/Pz81T
| refurb wrote:
| Yes, the "experts" like the head of the HHS that was a lawyer
| and former DA in California.
| sv123 wrote:
| Clowns, all the way down.
| jameson wrote:
| I wonder how many others are hacked but remain undiscovered
| longislandguido wrote:
| Considering 95% of spam that hits my inbox originates from
| compromised Gmail accounts, I'd say it's a few.
|
| Because Google is too big to fail, all Gmail traffic is
| essentially whitelisted and they can't be bothered to do
| anything about it.
| detourdog wrote:
| Almost all phishing attempts at my domain are from google.
| Many Norton subscription bills for around $350. I report
| every single one to google. I can't believe they aren't
| using there AI to figure this out.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| > I can't believe they aren't using there AI to figure
| this out.
|
| Why would they burn compute on it when they have zero
| incentive to fix the problem?
| gzread wrote:
| Google was banned from Usenet once, so there's hope. Every
| single provider was so fed up with spam they just blocked
| the whole network.
| themafia wrote:
| Meanwhile have a complaint volume of more than 0.1% and
| they'll consider you extremely suspicious and start
| actively interfering with your deliveries.
|
| Then you get into the forgotten early 2000s era google
| "postmaster tools" to try to poke through the chicken
| entrails to divine the nature of your issue.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Unfair to clowns, a noble profession.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Prefer the title "jesters"
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| the sensible middle of the road between clowns on the left
| and the jokers on the right.
| seemaze wrote:
| Its hard to keep this smile off my face
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| _...here I am stuck in the middle with you... _
| kstrauser wrote:
| _flicks open a straight razor_
| roysting wrote:
| That's arguably even more objectionable of a term. Jester's
| role was often a critical one in the court system, serving
| as deliverer of uncomfortable messages in light hearted
| ways and often also confidant to the monarch.
|
| These rather evil and cruel bumbling fools are an insult to
| clowns and jesters alike. Maybe "fool" is the applicable
| term.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| counterexample is serial killer John Wayne Gacy:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy#/media/File:Jo.
| ..
| longislandguido wrote:
| Did you write the software that allowed him to get hacked in
| the first place?
| Jordanpomeroy wrote:
| When the clown moves into the palace it doesn't make him the
| king, the palace becomes a circus
| maximilianburke wrote:
| More than clowns, they're all fools.
| roysting wrote:
| Not just that, clowns and jesters played critical and
| culturally significant roles.
|
| "Fools" is not only not an insult to clowns and jesters, but
| it's far more accurate.
|
| I would even say without any necessary religious perspective,
| these people are like the origins of the term and concept of
| "demons", entities representing the most heinous and
| nefarious instincts and impulses of humanity so vile and
| repulsive that they had to be emanations of hell. How would
| you even makes sense of such evil behavior back then. They
| didn't know what the dark triad of personality flaws was,
| narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism (yes, I
| understand it's an erroneous label, but it's the one used).
| themafia wrote:
| It always will be. The FBI is scandal prone and a stranger to
| success. I'm not entirely sure a large federal apparatus is
| needed anymore. It maybe made sense when local police were
| poorly trained and psychics were seen as credible investigative
| tools, but, I think we're well past that. I think it should be
| chopped into 50 pieces and handed over to the states to
| operate. A small coordinating office is all that should be
| left.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Username checks out, I guess!
|
| Seriously though I'm not so sanguine about local forces.
| Assuming the local PD is well trained seems like a big if, to
| say nothing of the risk of localized pressure or corruption.
| Eg would the local sheriff of a county with a very large
| employer be able to effectively investigate and bring charges
| against it? Being able to bring in federal LE brings a
| certain impartiality to those sorts of cases.
| themafia wrote:
| With FOIA and Body Worn Cameras I think we're in far better
| position to demand accountability from local police and
| sheriffs. Two tools the FBI are not compelled to comply
| with or deploy and which many state police agencies also
| resist using.
|
| In any case I think you'd want to remove their enforcement
| mandate and instead refocus them on information gathering
| and rapid secure distribution, tailored forensic
| investigations, and on creating, monitoring and refining
| police best practices and training programs.
| upheaval7276 wrote:
| I'm no fan of this administration, at all, but this seems like a
| big fat nothingburger. They hacked a personal gmail account, not
| a government account, not government infra. Why is this not a
| failing of Google instead of the government? And surely the
| hackers would have eagerly released anything damning, but nothing
| damning seems to exist. What am i missing here?
| margalabargala wrote:
| It's not a _big deal_ , for the reasons you mentioned. But it's
| interesting to a lot of people, and therefore newsworthy.
| upheaval7276 wrote:
| it's definitely newsworthy, no doubt there. but i see so many
| people in this thread pointing to this as somehow a failing
| of the fbi, which it's not. i'm all for calling out this
| administration for its many many failings, but this is not
| one of them, and calling this a failure of the administration
| just hurts the credibility of everyone pointing out real
| issues with this administration.
| m_ke wrote:
| just think of what could someone do if they got into your
| personal email account?
| upheaval7276 wrote:
| yes, and...?
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| Major public figure who is currently in a position of power
| in the USA. That's bad news because it reveals sensitive
| details which may lead to their further compromise. Imagine
| you're compromised by a corrupt administration with pics of
| CSAM or something already, now imagine a foreign actor also
| having compromised you. It's a sticky situation.
| upheaval7276 wrote:
| Yes, that's all true, all potential issues in theory. I'm
| still not seeing why this points to or supports the
| (valid) claim of incompetence in the FBI. That seems to
| be the angle most posters in this thread are taking, and
| it seems...misguided to me. Tilting at windmills. Let's
| call out the admin for their real failings, not nonsense
| like this. Getting your gmail account hacked does not
| reflect on you as a professional.
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| Leaking one's credentials to sensitive personal
| repositories of information is a "real failing" lol, how
| could one think any differently? I would be mortified and
| immediately rectify the situation.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on
| you as a professional."
|
| Doesn't it though? Especially when your _profession_
| involves the _security_ of a _nation_ and you can 't even
| secure your own personal email account successfully?
| eclipticplane wrote:
| Shouldn't the FBI be protecting its own members --
| especially its executives -- personal digital footprint,
| given the risk?
| antonvs wrote:
| > Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on
| you as a professional.
|
| Why not? Most professionals at larger organizations have
| to do security training. These kinds of attacks are far
| less likely to succeed on anyone who follows the basic
| precautions taught in such training. E.g., if he had MFA
| enabled on his account - as he certainly should have had
| - they would not have been able to compromise it
| externally, i.e. it would have had to be much more than
| his email that was hacked.
|
| I don't get the propensity some people seem to have for
| defending this shameful collection of incompetent
| criminals, bullies, and clowns.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on
| you as a professional_
|
| If you work in security: it _*absolutely does*_ , because
| 99+% of the time _you_ are the primary contributing
| factor, whether from password reuse or downloading
| malware or clicking bad links or opening random emails or
| being susceptible to social engineering, etc.
|
| If you are the head of a security organization: obviously
| you should not expect to retain that job, as your poor
| reputation is now an albatross around the company's neck.
|
| If you are the head of the FBI: lol. lmao. what the
| actual fuck. my money is on someone spearfished him with
| an email subject about a book deal and he'll just click
| fucking anything.
| weaksauce wrote:
| you don't think that it's relevant and concerning that the
| director of the FBI didn't take operational security seriously
| enough that his account got compromised? even if they didn't
| get anything incriminating (which maybe they did and are going
| to blackmail him later) that show a shocking lack of competency
| for someone in that kind of position.
| upheaval7276 wrote:
| we don't even know how it was compromised. was his password
| "password", or did the hackers exploit a gmail/google
| vulnerability?
| pkilgore wrote:
| are you suggesting the former is not a demonstration of a
| shocking lack of competency?
| upheaval7276 wrote:
| I'm suggesting we don't know how the account was hacked,
| which is true. could be due to incompetence or not. i
| don't know, nor do you
| jeroenvlek wrote:
| True, but don't you think the FBI director should be held
| to higher standards of security hygiene than average
| people? Because I'm interpreting your tone as "it could
| happen to anyone". At some point the doubt is gone and
| there's no more benefit to give...
| alexandre_m wrote:
| Comments in this thread mostly reflect people's own
| biases, that is a shallow projection based on the
| headline.
| weaksauce wrote:
| i think the facts of the matter are that a gmail
| vulnerability is on the very low likelihood kind of event.
| they wouldn't burn their insanely valuable vulnerability on
| showing how much of a fratboy kash is. the most likely
| possibility is that he either clicked on something dumb and
| gave access through phishing(really bad) or had a really
| weak password without 2fa(also really bad).
| drfloyd51 wrote:
| Did the director have his email on a vulnerable server?
| Yes. Yes he did.
|
| He should have known better.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Operational security doesn't apply to personal accounts, no?
| Otherwise, they wouldn't be personal.
| wmf wrote:
| People are concerned because every government official uses
| their personal email for work.
| nradov wrote:
| How is this a failing of Google? They can't be blamed for users
| who fail to secure their own accounts.
| claaams wrote:
| Remember when this admin used a Signal group chat to coordinate
| an operation against Houthi forces in Yemen and left in some
| journalists. Do you think he cares care whether he sent an
| email with his gov email on a gov device or if he sent it with
| his personal email?
| drfloyd51 wrote:
| The director of the FBI should not be hacked in anyway ever for
| any reason.
|
| If Gmail isn't secure, he should be using something else.
| reddozen wrote:
| True yeah. but uh anyway what about HILLARYS EMAILS we need to
| hear about those for the next 4 decades (no convictions despite
| "Lock Her Up" slogans for 5 years)
| dlev_pika wrote:
| I still can't get over the fact that *Kash "Stay in my lane"
| Patel* is heading the FBI
| reddozen wrote:
| you mean best selling children's book author Kash Patel who is
| desperately trying to scrub the internet of his music video[0]
| revising the Jan 6 insurrection
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/TPF_e2E5F74
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| What the actual hell did I just listen to. I really hope
| those kids were paid decently at this.
| hmokiguess wrote:
| Was he running openclaw on his unpenetrable system by any chance?
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Certainly the FBI and GMail having gaps in their operational
| information security isn't news.
| bloppe wrote:
| I read the headline and first thought was seriously, that's it?
| Surely this is one of the least concerning things about the
| administration
| buttersicle wrote:
| Do you think the FBI manages his personal email?
|
| Kind of defeats the purpose of it being a personal email don't
| you think?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The FBI does because he is included in "the FBI"
| PilotJeff wrote:
| BRING IT ON
| mjmsmith wrote:
| "Iran, if you're listening..."
| throwawaysoxjje wrote:
| But his emails!
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| This is the end of his high profile bureaucrat career.
| Inevitably, something will show up in the emails that will get
| airplay as embarrassing to Trump, and Trump will just say that he
| should have protected his password better and ask for his
| resignation.
|
| He doesn't have a face for Fox News, so he'll have to try to
| parlay his past closeness with the administration for lobbyist
| money, but if he gets shunned by the people left in the
| administration, he's got to go back to his public defender job.
| rixed wrote:
| This is quite misleading and partisan to present this as "FBI
| director's personal email" when the emails far predate his
| current role.
|
| If I had downloaded those emails, which I haven't because I know
| of no website that archives the internet, and if I had read them,
| which I haven't because that would be a breach of someone's
| privacy, then certainly I would have figured out that it contains
| no spicy state secrets. But why spend one hour assessing an
| information when you can get clicks by suggesting something
| bigger?
|
| Those supposedly Iranian hackers surely know how to hack the
| western media to get attention.
|
| I found it actually more informative to read on the sad history
| of the Dena, the ship whose victims this leak was dedicated to,
| so it's not been a complete waste of time.
| Ms-J wrote:
| Real link from Handala (dead): https://handala-team.to/kash-
| patel-current-director-of-the-f...
|
| Archive: https://archive.ph/ILFFH
|
| Download:
| https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxoxwyp7qosgdwldereecudqpbva/...
|
| Password: handala
| Ms-J wrote:
| This is great.
|
| It couldn't happen to a more corrupt person and organization!
|
| The Handala group has promised even more.
|
| Get it while it's hot!
| Razengan wrote:
| Oh a while ago everything bad that happened to or in the US was
| the fault of Russians, now I guess it's gonna be Iranians.
| phtrivier wrote:
| I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
|
| But it feels million years away.
|
| It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of
| incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the
| highest level.
|
| Putting those people in charge was quick ; sure, a future
| administration could put them out quickly enough ; but how long
| will there be decently skilled people willing to take those
| positions ? How long until the only ones who want to put their
| toes in the swamp are those who really enjoy the mud ?
|
| Put differently: can a liberal democracy organize a "just"
| version of a purge ?
| edg5000 wrote:
| We'd have to look at the longest-running democracies and
| observe how they handled periodic refactorings
| alchemism wrote:
| Well....they tended to collapse after a couple centuries.
| kingleopold wrote:
| "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
| It can only exist until the voters discover that they can
| vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that
| moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates
| promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the
| result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal
| policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of
| the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These
| nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage
| to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage;
| From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From
| abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From
| apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage."
|
| -- Alexander Fraser Tytler
| mpalmer wrote:
| The quotee would be surprised to see how little voting is
| being done by the people receiving the largesse in the last
| 20 years.
|
| Not to mention how little voters had to do with the
| decisions which caused the deficit to rise the most. The
| Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the wealthy.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > The Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the
| wealthy.
|
| And now the Iran War, wait for it.
| xvector wrote:
| 40% of Americans pay nothing in federal income tax
| testaccount28 wrote:
| do you think these are the ones voting?
| kortilla wrote:
| Definitely. They are the reason republicans spend time
| trying to make voting difficult
| mpalmer wrote:
| You know, it's very funny. This is the most reproduced
| quote from Tytler, and yet you also have these chestnuts:
| While man is being instigated by the love of power--a
| passion visible in an infant, and common to us even with
| the inferior animals--he will seek personal superiority in
| preference to every matter of a general concern.
| The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign
| power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is
| true they elected governors; but how are these elections
| brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of
| a people--through the influence of those governors
| themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and
| disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery.
| But those governors once selected, where is the boasted
| freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and
| control, with the same abandonment of their natural
| liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of
| their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch.
| hammock wrote:
| Relevant quote today but seems to misunderstand the U.S.
| framers' idea of what the U.S. govt was set up to be,
| namely by consent of the governed. It is
| not enough that a law is just, nor that the judge should
| be convinced of its justice; those from whom obedience is
| expected should have that conviction too. -Tertullian,
| 1st century. The power used by government...is
| justified merely because it is a better way of protecting
| natural right than the self-help to which each man is
| naturally entitled -Sabine explaining John Locke
|
| Therefore if the governors ever fail the criteria of said
| justification, the consent is removed by default,
| irrespective of their elected term length or anything
| else.
|
| One particular democratic election or another is not the
| contract. The Constitution itself is the contract,
| countersigned by the 50 U.S. states.
| xpe wrote:
| "A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire 1767
|
| Tytler's quote is trying to say too much. It might be
| acceptable as historical commentary, but it carries little
| weight to me; it seems overly confident about what the
| future might hold.*
|
| Tytler died in 1813. We have learned much since then: much
| about human nature, institutions, experimentation,
| statistics, evidence, constructing good theories, and
| governance.** Sure, the quote is worth some reflection; it
| has grains of truth, but it should not be given undue
| weight.
|
| * I am _not_ saying "we can predict nothing"! Far from it.
| I am ok with predictions (even bold ones) to the extent
| they are deeply rooted in the best understandings and
| models we have available.
|
| ** I'm talking about what motivated people figure out
| through careful reasoning and evidence, not simply how the
| _median_ person funnels information from their ears to
| their mouth. And I 'm certainly not commending the effort
| and thought that the _median_ person puts into stewarding
| their democracy (if they have one). While we (in the USA,
| for the time being?) have something like one.
| saxonww wrote:
| It's not a Tytler quote anyway, and as mentioned by
| others it's demonstrably false.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110723192744/http://www.lor
| enc... https://freakonomics.com/2009/01/our-daily-bleg-
| what-quotes-...
| epsteingpt wrote:
| The whole reason the US founding fathers are amazing is
| that they proved him concretely incorrect. US will
| celebrate 250 years of democracy this year.
| a022311 wrote:
| If that's what you call a democracy, sure... I don't
| think most people will agree with you though.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| That doesn't disprove him at all: if the average one
| lasts 200 years and not all last exactly 200, then some
| will necessarily last more than 200. This is a
| mathematical consequence of what an average means.
| convolvatron wrote:
| what better way to celebrate the democracy by combining
| it with a celebration of the birthday of the Great
| Leader, with a soviet style military parade and an
| admonition that any protest will be met with the harshest
| of consequences.
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| It'd be hilarious if it was a fiction, some bitter
| comedic cautionary satire
| hluska wrote:
| I know that math makes it harder to come up with
| political zingers but if there are two civilizations; one
| lasted 150 years and the other lasted 250 years the
| average is 200.
| kergonath wrote:
| > the result that a democracy always collapses over loose
| fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
|
| Except, of course, that this is historically wrong.
| Transitions from democracy to dictatorship are common, but
| I cannot think of one that happened because of "loose
| fiscal policy".
| hluska wrote:
| If the Central Intelligence Agency's definition of 'loose
| fiscal policy' is good enough, Pinochet's rise is a good
| example.
| tolciho wrote:
| Athens spending like drunken sailors during the
| Peloponnesian War and the subsequent Oligarchical Coup
| d'Etat comes to mind. Or must the dictator be just one
| person and not a bunch of Orwell's pigs?
| ineedasername wrote:
| Pithy. But a made up quote by Tytler, he never said or
| wrote that.
|
| Tyler expressed some skepticism of Democracies but nothing
| like this. The too on-the-nose nature of this often passed
| along bit of propaganda should also be the giveaway that it
| might be one of those rare things on the internet that
| someone may have been less than honest about the origins,
| and go look and see.
| razakel wrote:
| The coup has already happened.
| bergoid wrote:
| >I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
|
| HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails
| couldn't be more different.
|
| The first one is, in the words of a federal District of
| Columbia judge: "one of the gravest modern offenses to
| government transparency". [1]
|
| The second one is the malicious leaking of some private emails.
| These emails are frankly none of our business (unless you are
| part of Kash Patel's family or friends).
|
| [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/clinton-
| emails-l...
| _heimdall wrote:
| Not sure why this is being down voted.
|
| There is a difference for sure between hosting your own email
| server and using it for official government communications
| and having your own personal email address used for personal
| communications.
|
| The issue that seemed to completely disappear related to the
| use of Signal messenger for official white house
| communications seems more aligned to the email server issue.
| It was reported heavily at the time what the reporting
| requirements were and that they would have to submit the full
| chat histories within 30 days or something like that to stay
| within the law. I never heard whether that actually happened
| or not, the story just died.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I think we all know the answer to that...
| greenavocado wrote:
| > I never heard whether that actually happened or not, the
| story just died.
|
| It wouldn't be the first thing related to her that died htt
| ps://web.archive.org/web/20220331092216/https://www.arkan..
| .
| jasonlotito wrote:
| It's beind downvoted because "but, her emails..." is not
| saying it's the same thing, but rather, that so much fuss
| was made about her emails, and then when something similar
| happens, the right conveniently ignores it. For example, as
| you mentioned, signalgate, or the times members of the
| Trump administration used their "own email server and using
| it for official government communications and having your
| own personal email address used for personal
| communications."
|
| It's being down voted because it's attacking a strawman. No
| one is saying they are the same exact thing. It's that you
| will see people activatley defending this as a big
| nothingburger when in truth, it's still a security breach
| that has the potential to lower our defenses.
| bananalychee wrote:
| HN is overrun by partisans whose majority does not care
| about factual interpretations of current events and flags
| level-headed comments in favor of cheap shots, double
| standards, hyperbolic misconstructions, and ad hominem. I
| don't think it's difficult to be critical of the government
| without resorting to such low-brow commentary, but it is
| what it is. I once offended some people by comparing HN to
| Reddit, but the lines are getting more blurred by the day.
| YZF wrote:
| The moderators need to take a more active stance on
| getting these hot button political topic wars off HN.
| We're seeing some sort of brigading and/or manipulation
| going on here with behaviors (like flagging) that are not
| consistent with what I think we want to have on the
| platform. Certainly no following of the guidelines. Just
| look at the top comment here.
|
| "Normal" people are stuck in two modes, either they
| ignore it or they need to descend to the same level. I
| put normal in double quotes since I honestly don't know
| what's normal any more. I would like to believe the
| majority of the kind of community we used to have here on
| HN does not operate at this level of discussion.
|
| To some extent this is a reflection of broader
| polarization, tribal behavior, and social media
| manipulation. Even Reuters IMO have chosen a
| sensationalist headline and seem to have an agenda here.
| There's an easy tell - can you tell the political
| orientation of the author by reading the article/comments
| etc.
|
| This topic could be an interesting one and we could
| actually have some good discussions about security.
| Instead it degenerates into what's essentially a
| political bashing flame war.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Was it equally grave when Colin Powell did the same thing?
| hillarycliton wrote:
| Yes. That man lied us into the Iraq war. He is a traitor.
| testaccount28 wrote:
| my standard for criminal acts is also whether i don't
| like the guy.
| tootie wrote:
| We know for a fact that the current DoD are using private
| Signal messages for coordinating military action. We know
| they are constantly using private emails. We are sending the
| president's son-in-law to negotiate with foreign countries
| despite not being a government employee and also have massive
| conflicts of interest.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails
| couldn't be more different.
|
| That's not what the "but, her emails..." reference implies.
| It's not saying they are the same thing. It's saying that the
| amount of attention and excitement made about her emails was
| a show. And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with
| cases like this where something equally bad happens and
| nothing will come from it. Same thing with the signalgate
| from last year, or all the previous times the Trump
| administration used private emails or private communication
| for government business as well.
|
| So, no. The fact that it is not the same is immaterial. Which
| makes the rest of your comment immaterial.
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| > And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases
| like this where something equally bad happens and nothing
| will come from it
|
| How is this case equally bad? It's just his private email
| being hacked, he did nothing wrong.
|
| There are probably about a thousand things you could point
| to in the Trump administration that are worse than
| Clinton's private email server, but this isn't one of them.
| windexh8er wrote:
| > HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails
| couldn't be more different.
|
| But it is literally no different than what the Trump
| administration did [0] after all of their finger pointing.
| Idiocracy runs deep across both political camps.
|
| [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/18/federal-
| officials-n...
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| >It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of
| incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the
| highest level.
|
| you get out when the thing dies because these kinds of
| organizations always end the same way; competence is usurped by
| sycophancy and flattery until there's no one left to keep it
| functioning and it collapses under the weight of it's own
| bullshit.
|
| hopefully, there will be something to salvage but the longer
| these folks are in charge the bigger the splash will be when
| they finally bottom out
| cagenut wrote:
| honestly, look internally. after the plane from qatar. after
| the son-in-law's real estate dealings. after the visible-to-
| everyone kalshi and oil futures bets frontrunning the
| administrations announcements. for you to still feel the need
| to frame things as "border-line (to be polite)" is, in and of
| itself, the perfect example of the overall problem.
|
| take your inability to draw a clear-as-day conclusion and state
| it plainly and multiply it by another ~50M "centrists" who
| continue to believe that staying "not political" and "avoiding
| the news" is a viable strategy to just wait the problem out.
|
| until the checked out cowards realize that strategy isn't going
| to work, things will continue to get worse.
|
| "no politics" might as as well be the second maga slogan.
| miki123211 wrote:
| "no politics" is the immune response to the social-media-
| fueled, conspiracy-theory-driven "we are the good guys, you
| basically deserve to die" craze.
|
| Both sides are culpable here. In the US, both parties were
| literally claiming that the elections were stolen
| (Republicans in 2020, Democrats with the since-debunked 2016
| Cambridge Analytica scandal). Other countries had different
| issues, but the shape of the problem was basically the same
| everywhere.
|
| If you keep being called bad words for years for no reason,
| seeing your side do the exact same thing, no surprise you
| tune out.
| whoiskevin wrote:
| "Both sides" is the biggest cop out of the last decade.
| ses1984 wrote:
| How was Cambridge analytica debunked?
| craftkiller wrote:
| I'd say the bigger issue in 2016 was the Russian
| interference, which has been proven and has lead to
| convictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interfer
| ence_in_the_20...
|
| > Simultaneously, the Republican-led Senate and House
| Intelligence Committees conducted their own investigations
| into the Russians' activities. The Senate committee's
| report, released in five volumes between July 2019 and
| August 2020, found that the Russian government had engaged
| in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in
| favor of Trump
|
| I'm also curious how you think Cambridge Analytica was
| debunked. I don't see any mention of debunking on their
| wikipedia page, but I do see facebook being fined billions
| for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Camb
| ridge_Ana...
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| The Russian collusion narrative has been completely
| debunked.
| esseph wrote:
| Really?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_investigation_origin
| s_c...
| SmirkingRevenge wrote:
| > In the US, both parties were literally claiming that the
| elections were stolen
|
| This is not even remotely true.
|
| One party broadly mobilized a country wide effort to
| overthrow an election and usurp the incoming duly elected
| government, culminating in a violent attack on congress
| itself.
|
| The other party had concerns about foreign interference in
| our elections.
| hillarycliton wrote:
| Referencing Hillary's email would be kinda silly. She self
| hosted the email account she used for official government
| business. It was loaded with classified information.
|
| This guy, while incompetent, had his personal email hacked.
|
| Important distinction.
| eszed wrote:
| You are correct.
|
| On the other hand, Patel's emails "appear to show a mix of
| personal and work correspondence". We already know that
| people in government - this isn't a partisan point: folks of
| all factions do it - use private communication channels to
| discuss "official business" specifically to avoid mandated
| disclosure and archival requirements. If (and I emphasize
| "if", because we don't yet know if this was the case), if
| Patel was doing that, and especially if he was sharing /
| discussing classified material, then the facts of the case
| would bump right up against what Clinton and Powell did.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Please. Same shit, different day.
|
| Trying to distinguish between the two acts is like splitting
| hairs on the same arse.
|
| Just makes you look silly.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > border-line (to be polite) corrumption
|
| Hard to imagine what would constitute "full blown corruption"
| based on this standard?
| panta wrote:
| Maybe it's borderline because it's coming from the other
| direction. Corruption presumes some kind of "covertness",
| when you break all the rules without even trying to be
| discreet can you still talk of corruption?
| philipov wrote:
| Yes. Only people who are used to living in non-corrupt
| countries presume corruption is covert.
| greenavocado wrote:
| > can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge
| ?
|
| Absolutely, it happened before on January 30, 1933
| zzzeek wrote:
| Why not look for historical examples? There should be hundreds
| not to mention the obvious ones?
| cineticdaffodil wrote:
| Those that got fired where the good ones. Sometimes the best
| career move is to get fired. Reminds me of the old faces
| running the BRD after the war. Democratic floatsome in a thin
| crust residing over an ocean of collaborators.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Put differently: can a liberal democracy organize a "just"
| version of a purge?
|
| This is how all of them started.
|
| But once you have a liberal democracy, people will refuse
| another purge. For very good reasons.
| dijit wrote:
| Sorry, as much as I despise Trump (though I'm thankful it
| caused Europe to wake up to the idea that the US is an
| unreliable ally); "Her emails" were:
|
| A) Used for _Official business_ as secretary of state
|
| B) Full of national security strategically important decisions.
|
| C) Improperly secured.
|
| FBI directors personal email feels less _cutting_ in that
| context.
|
| Breaching _my_ personal email (or my own mail server, I host
| one) will tell you literally nothing about my employer except
| perhaps the conversation from when I joined and my own
| employment contract.
| Bender wrote:
| _Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director 's personal email_
|
| Perhaps a little embarrassing related to communications security
| but come on, of all the people's email to grab they had to grab
| one of the most boring individuals? Ice hokey, cigars, classic
| cars...? Is that taboo in Iran? It is not taboo in the USA.
|
| Be careful Iran. The country you are targeting know how to use AI
| and can make ultra realistic videos and images of your leaders
| doing unspeakable things and upload them to decentralized
| platforms. Such things can not be erased from the internet.
| KnuthIsGod wrote:
| I wonder if the Nazi cabinet was as bizarre as the current
| America cabinet...
| Teknomadix wrote:
| Iranian. Not bloody likely! Try Israeli-tied propagandists. Poke
| the hornets nest much?
| totetsu wrote:
| Aren't most exploits that get used, shared through black
| markets anyway? So Saying Xcountry-linked hackers, is just
| saying who ponied up the bitcoin to pay for the attack?
| vcryan wrote:
| This is one of the risks of dating a Mossad agent.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| I can't help but interpret these stories as psyops
| gsibble wrote:
| JFC. This does not belong on HN. Look at the discussion. Nothing
| but politics.
| gigatexal wrote:
| It's an administration filled with incompetent fools whose only
| expertise is in grifting.
|
| This hack of his emails is hilarious, though. And it made my day.
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