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from the blatantly-obvious-is-hard-to-comprehend dept.
John Arquilla at ACM writes:
What a pity that senior leaders in the American government and intelligence community have decided to play political football with the alleged Russian hacks of John Podesta's and other Democrats' emails. By using these intrusions to gin up fears about the "integrity" of the electoral process—which is already befouled by the focus on finding and spreading dirt on the opposition—the real story is being neglected. And what is that real story? It is that, despite more than two decades of consistent public warnings that have reached the highest levels of government, cybersecurity throughout much of the world is in a shameful state of unpreparedness.
Take the United States, for example. Since the mid-1990s, there have been approximately 200 cybersecurity bills brought before Congress. Only one has passed, quite recently at that, and it only calls for voluntary information-sharing about cyber incidents. Legislation aside, there have also been several government-sponsored commissions and top-level exercises focused on understanding and illuminating the cyber threat. Each of these has signaled that "the red light is flashing;" that is, American cybersecurity is in very poor shape. Indeed, former cyber czar Richard Clarke and Robert Knake, in their book, Cyber War, list the U.S. as having the poorest cyber defenses among the leading developed countries.
TL;DR: The lesson(s) are: we must improve defenses, better use of strong encryption, and don't wait for government policy to protect you.
Previously:
Obama Orders Sweeping Review of International Hacking Tied to U.S. Elections
How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell's Gmail Accounts
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:52PM
Its important to distract away from the content by endlessly discussing the action (or lack thereof)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:42PM
Except when it came to Hillary's email server, where the important thing was to discuss the action (what she did) rather than all the top secrets and terrible things that were discovered as a result of it (basically nothing).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by butthurt on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:56PM
Those e-mails were supposed to have been archived, to become part of the public record. Instead tens of thousands were deleted.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:04PM
When Clinton's aides deleted those emails rather than turn them over as ordered by subpoena, they committed the crime of "obstruction of justice". Those 33,000 emails or so are her version of the good old 18:33 gap on the Nixon tapes. I'm sure we'll never know exactly what was in them, but I sure wish I did.
Her explanation of the stonewalling? They were "personal". Which means she was sending 10-20 personal emails a day. Somehow, I don't think we're talking about "Hi Chelsea, how are the grandkids?" If I had to hazard a guess, it's that she's spending a lot of time trying to shut up women who've been propositioned by Bill.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snow on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:09PM
This is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen posted to this site... and that's saying something.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:27PM
Why? Do you really think that over his entire political life, Bill's only gone after 5 women that worked for him (Broaddrick, Jones, Flowers, Willey, Lewinsky)? Guys like that usually don't just stop after the first few, and it would not be much of a stretch to think there are dozens more out there who we never heard of. Which means that there's a reason we've never heard of them, namely they've been convinced to keep their mouth shut. I wouldn't be all that surprised if Hillary Clinton was involved in doing some of that convincing.
Whatever she was hiding, she was risking a criminal conviction to do so.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Snow on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:56PM
I think that:
1) It doesn't matter who Bill is or isn't fucking.
2) The narrative that Bill is a pervy old man is exactly the narrative that Trump (the other pervy old man who makes Bill look like a gentleman) wants everyone to think.
3) Even if she was 'covering up' for Bill fooling around, it doesn't take 10's of thousands of emails to do it. (And if she was, then that would have been a legitimate use of a private email server, since that is not state business).
4) It doesn't matter who Bill is or isn't fucking.
If I were to hazard a guess I'd guess that most of the emails were filled with communication to/from various donors. Some of them may or may not have been 'shady' we may never know, but that's not as exciting as your narrative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:12AM
This goes back to Thexalon's comment of "Those 33,000 emails or so are her version of the good old 18:33 gap on the Nixon tapes. I'm sure we'll never know exactly what was in them, but I sure wish I did."
Who knows what was in those 33,000 emails. They really could have been as innocent as "I love you." "No, I love you more." "No, I love *you* more." They could have been as guilty as, "I told you to launch the nuclear missiles at the white house at noon yesterday!" Who knows?
Many people are doing what the Courts do all the time (and I think is actually codified in law). Specifically, they are seeing the erasure as trying to hide evidence, and assuming the evidence is as damning as possible.
Regardless of official law and what is provable, I think you will admit that Thexalon has a point that this erasure *looks* incredibly guilty.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:22AM
I never said it didn't. Check my original comment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by caffeine on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:27AM
I'd be a lot more interested in seeing any emails from/to donors that they felt needed deleting.
I think the abuse of democracy by lobbyists and donors is treason.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:30PM
If I had to hazard a guess, it's that she's spending a lot of time trying to shut up women who've been propositioned by Bill.
My guess is, that boat having long since sailed, she probably doesn't even yell at him about it anymore and they're just non-divorced for political or financial reasons.
Now having said that, Bill is having his way adult young women, some willing, some less so, but at least they're adult women, and Hillary having her own needs, and everyone in the press keeping very quiet about that aspect of her life, obviously she's got relationships going that she perceives she can't talk about in public. My guess is her and Bill tolerate each other because they have the same interest in adult young women. Bill gets the straight ones, Hillary gets the feminists, and maybe they trade switch hitters between each other.
I'm libertarian enough that I don't care, as long as they're willing adults (admittedly Bill isn't very concerned with asking permission so you gotta wonder about Hillary) and frankly I find the idea that she thinks she still needs to cover that stuff up in 2016 is more interesting than what she's actually doing. I suppose when she was trying to run for prez she didn't want to be the first woman and first bi at the same time.
Or maybe its not just that shes into chicks but she has a kink that might be harder to sell, like she only has sex with married middle eastern women like her "aide" Huma or she's really into getting tied up or whipped or something. Maybe she only does black secret service agent men, like that doctor of hers who follows her around and medicates her, maybe he's giving her more injections than we know about, if you know what I mean. I could see a kinkier lifestyle being harder to sell in 2016 than mere lesbianism which is totally accepted, although whatever her story, whatever she's been doing to get off for the last couple decades married to Bill, its gotta come out sometime.
(Score: 4, Funny) by edIII on Thursday December 29 2016, @02:26AM
Dear fucking lord dude, how much do you think about their sex lives? I only ask because you left entire plots for pornographic films starring the two. It was wild, we went from Secretaries of State Teaching Teens to the darker Tie Her Up!
At least you emphasized informed consent, which can help you appeal to more viewers :)
I suspect, you have a series on your hands.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.