SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 1, Flamebait) by mcgrew on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:56PM
A Trump supporter must have written either the article or summary, because this is the first I've heard of anyone besides Trump not believing the FBI, CIA and NSA on this.
Shameful reporting on someone's part.
Be a chump, vote for Trump! Oh wait, you gullible chumps already did...
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Francis on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:11PM
Perhaps, but who else should people vote for? I did a write in because I'm in a state where my vote doesn't count, but voting for Clinton would have been a disaster as well. She was running on a platform where she promised absolutely nothing except being a woman and got her ass handed to her because the other guy was making promises. It remains to be seen just how much of that turns out to be true, smart money is on very little, but at least he understood that he had to actually offer something to the voters.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:05PM
LOL, I just upset a butthurt Clinton supporter.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 29 2016, @09:24PM
True, but completely besides the point, which was that the US intelligence community says they have [roof it was Russia, and it's damned troubling to have the President Elect who is either lying (normal for a politician... drain the swamp?) or doesn't credit his workers with knowing what they're doing.
I agree that there were no good choices in any of the four parties.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:14PM
Really? Who has been charged (in absentia)? Where has the evidence been presented?
So the CIA says that Russia hacked the DNC to help Trump. Maybe they should leak... sorry, release the evidence supporting that conclusion.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:39PM
The CIA is a protection racket of liars and cheats who will say anything to get more money.
As a group based on historical evidence they make a $5 crack whore look honest and trustworthy.
The purpose of the CIA is to honeypot liars and psychopaths and sociopaths into clustering into one ignorable department.
The meta question is that gang of war criminals proudly announces how they interfere in every GD election on the planet supposedly other than the USA election. Turnabout being fair play, if, theoretically, one time, once country got even by publicizing the truth just once, I'm not all that bothered.
I'm just saying that even if you take the blue pill and think the score on election day was CIA 0 "Russia or rest of world" 1, ya gotta admit the long term score is like CIA 35619 "Russia or rest of world" 1.
What goes around comes around.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:43PM
I wonder if the CIA employs small-time science fiction authors.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:15PM
Honestly I don't think as a group they're creative enough to come up with the stuff we know the CIA has lied about, Gulf of Tonkin this and Iraq WMD that... and now Russians hacking the election ... who knows how laughable that is going to appear in 50 or 100 years when the truth comes out.
It is interesting to think about the level of BS required to write CIA analysis and reports. Asimov could never make that much shit up with a straight face. Weber and Ringo wrote the Empire of Man series ("march upcountry" etc) and thats BS-ish enough to reach CIA levels but its cheating to have two guys just to qualify in an individual race. On the other hand, Ringo's Aldenata series, maybe there is enough crazy BS in there to reach the level of a CIA report...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:30PM
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says President-elect Donald Trump is at odds with nearly the entire Senate over whether Russia interfered in the election.
“There are 100 United States senators. ... I would say that 99 percent of us believe that the Russians did this, and we’re going to do something about it,” Graham told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “The Situation Room” on Tuesday.
citation [thehill.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @09:19PM
It *may* have been the Russians if you ignore the fact that wikileaks has said it is an internal DNC person. A berner got pissed about what was going on and dumped the whole lot on them, or 'the russians' did it. Which would you consider more likely? Both showed what the DNC was up to.
Dont worry though once RNC emails are leaked they will take it seriously and the DNC will be calling them conspiracy theory nutters. Why because it will make the RNC look bad.
The DNC is so busy trying to deflect what happened than to try to discuss what they were doing. Many top people in the DNC have resigned or were fired over the contents. They are not mad because of what was going on they are mad because they were caught. Hell they might even be pedos. This is something we the people probably should know about. If you think that is 'fake news'. You can go read the emails yourself. Then ask yourself what is a 'pizza related map' and why must 'it be taken care of' and is not just garbage from a pizza party?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday December 28 2016, @10:06PM
Wait, wait, wait?
You believe the U.S. spy agencies? The same ones that found WMD in iraq? The same ones that say "Golly gee, disregarding ALL EVIDENCE, Oswald killed Kennedy"?, etc.???
I'm sorry: Trump says "If Hillary wins, the election was hacked" and he is told to STFU, there is no hacking. Now they say the Russians are deep involved while 'yesterday' it was the Chinese doing the bad, bad stuff (while the U.S. spy agencies THEMSELVES are doing equally evil stuff).
I don't believe a SINGLE WORD coming out of those agencies... they are like the National Enquirer: they may say the truth once in a blue moon, but how do you tell the single grain of truth from the beach of lies they tell?
Nope....might not have been a Trump supporter. May only have been a person who knows 'they' lie! A LOT!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Thursday December 29 2016, @04:44AM
This is utter insanity. First off it's clear 'the Russians' did not 'hack' the emails, they were leaked. Leaked. Likely leaked by an insider who was shocked and ashamed at how corruptly the DNC was operating. This is painfully obvious even if all you look at are the official words intended to point you the other way, if you'll only read the words carefully.
Second, what if they had 'hacked' them? We're supposed to be angry at the Russians because they told us the truth? The same truth our government and representatives conspired to keep from us?
What kind of fantasy world do you live in where that would make any sense? If the Russians actually had any role in exposing this then we the people owe them a big thank you.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?