A personal email account of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was hacked, according to an email obtained by Buzzfeed via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. "As we discussed ... my folks are nervous about the emails you send and ask that you no longer include them on any postings," Kelly wrote. "Then there is hacking which one of my own personal accounts has suffered recently. I do almost everything now by phone or face-to-face comms."
The FOIA email confirms previous reports from Politico that Kelly used a compromised smartphone for months. If it's the same incident (the White House never confirmed the original reports), the attack happened during Trump's transition in late 2016 while Kelly was secretary of homeland security.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/11/john-kelly-hacked-foia-request/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:30PM (9 children)
head - meaning, in charge of
homeland - that's like, everything, right?
security - supposed to mean well informed, smart, sophisticated, insightful, among other things. Amirite? How am I doing so far?
hacked - someone brighter than you gets into all your stuffs
(for) months - that's like a long, long, time?
So, what this all adds up to is, the best informed person in the US, this really bright, intelligent dude, who is supposed to protect all of us from the boogeyman, was hacked, and stayed hacked, for MONTHS!!
Hmmmph. Some people watch soap operas, others actually watch opera - and we're stuck with some poor security theater.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:34PM (2 children)
Look on the bright side, mate - at least it is not a cheap theatre. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:34PM (1 child)
Not sure of your meaning for "cheap theater"?
On the Canadian side of the Niagara River (border towns) there are/were some strip clubs that the Americans called, "Canadian ballet"...is that similar innuendo?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 12 2018, @11:32PM
The price for the ticket, mate, check it out in the US budget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:41PM (1 child)
Who's watching the wa^H^H soap then?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:47PM
Well, YOU ARE!! Would you mind picking it up for me?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:27PM (1 child)
Hmm, I want to go for the famous O Fortuna of Carmina Burana, but then this whole thing seems more like the Götterdämmerung part of the larger Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle. Perhaps we can call it Kapitaldämmerung instead.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:49PM
I think we found one!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:30PM (1 child)
It's also telling that this public servant isn't worried about the Chinese or the Russians or other hostile foreign powers listening in. He's worried the American public might find out what he's up to:
“FOIA is real and everyday here in the cesspool, and even federal court action on personal accounts is real.” - White House Chief of Staff John Kelly
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday June 12 2018, @07:27PM
In one sense, he should be. At least in theory, we're the ones he has to answer to.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:05PM (9 children)
We got to see all kinds of stupidity within the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign already. Fair's fair, let's see the stupidity that's not already public record within the Trump administration.
Although I have to assume that unlike in Rachel Maddow's dreams, they won't contain anything along the lines of "Vladimir Putin instructed us to anger Canada at the G-7."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:32PM (8 children)
Most people on both sides are lapping up this donkey and elephant show, and not putting their thoughts towards next election cycle when they COULD ACTUALLY ELICIT CHANGE by choosing third party candidates. Hell, as long as both the Rs and the Ds chose partisan candidates which were not current nor former republicans/democrats American society as a whole would be better off. Whichever new candidate won, the establishment would have lost.
But instead we have people choosing the '3rd party candidate supported by the first party' and we end up with shit like Sanders and Trump who turn out to just be part of the establishment anyway. (They may be whackjobs but their choices both show them to be establishment tools.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:38PM (5 children)
What I'm looking for in my politicians and political parties as a basic standard is 3 things, in this order:
1. Competence: I want some reason to believe that a candidate I vote for will have some idea what the job they are running for entails, and will be able to do it reasonably well. This is the Joel Spolsky "Smart, and Gets Things Done" standard. It's not hard to find examples of politicians utterly failing this standard, and it invariably turns out badly.
2. Self-sacrifice: I want demonstrations that the candidate is capable of putting the needs of others, i.e. their constituents, ahead of their own needs. Examples of those demonstrations include military service or being a volunteer firefighter. It's not hard to find examples of politicians failing here, too, and they can cause similar kinds of damage.
3. Long-range outlook: Politicians are often called on to make decisions that will last long past their current term, and sometimes long after they've retired. The good ones are aware of this, and think about the 20-year projections and such. Even if it means losing the next election (see the "self-sacrifice" standard). Politicians that fail on this point are also not hard to come by, and the problem is that they'll always opt for the short-term bandage rather than fixing the reason the patient is bleeding.
There are politicians in a most political parties that meet those standards. There are a lot more politicians, again across party affiliations, that don't. I'm not interested in voting for an incompetent self-interested Green or Libertarian any more than an incompetent self-interested Democrat or Republican.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:53PM (2 children)
And you don't like Bernie Sanders because .... ? He's got higher points in those three categories than any politician I can remember.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 12 2018, @06:11PM (1 child)
I didn't say a word about my opinion of Bernie Sanders in any of the above, so I don't know why you concluded I didn't like him.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday June 13 2018, @02:39AM
Sorry, GP, not you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @05:36PM (1 child)
are you stupid or full of shit? you don't have to worry about the competence of the 3rd party candidates for years. the point is to stop funding the controlled two parties, like a stupid fucking slave, and throw a couple bucks at getting 3rd party candidates into debates and whatnot. just 3rd party candidates bringing up inconvenient subjects would be beneficial, instead of allowing their psyop to play uninterrupted.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 13 2018, @09:26PM
Neither: I'm a guy who's sometimes voted for third-party candidates, rarely gives a dime to any candidate (usually in primary races), and has chatted with enough third-party candidates to know that some of them are complete idiots who should never be given any kind of authority over anything.
I get it: You want to disrupt the 2-party system. You don't succeed in that by electing a bunch of Libertarians or Greens who are so stupid they immediately foul up what they're in charge of and are gone within 2 years.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 12 2018, @09:29PM (1 child)
No they can't because that's not how your electoral system is set up.
You have two state-sponsored parties, set up for the benefit of the people who pay for them, to continue to pass the laws they pay for.
Third parties are not ever going to be a feature of American government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @12:58AM
because it is too easy for the issues & memes that power 3rd party movements to be co-opted by the 2 major parties (Tea Party movement), or the 2 major parties work together to cut off the oxygen (Ross Perot), or the 3rd movement just has no real general merits besides "we're differenter than they are!" Sorry libertarian, green, constotutional, Independent et al parties in the US.
Granted, in hindsight it looks like the Peroistas, by way of Tea Party movement, managed to hijack the Republican Party...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:08PM (2 children)
At least this sort of thing could never happen to our big giant head, @realdonaldtrump.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:16PM (1 child)
I say we organize a campaign to replace the current POTUS with our own @realDonaldTrump in 2020. Or sooner. Maybe. Probably.
UID 6614! UID 6614! UID 6614!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @11:52PM
What if it's really Ethanol and not @realDonaldTrump?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:11PM
"We've seen how much trouble email's paper trail can cause, so lets just talk face to face".
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:49PM
How was it "hacked" exactly? Let me guess, the password was "12345", the same as on his luggage.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday June 12 2018, @06:45PM
Giving your password to Putin is not the same as being hacked.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Tuesday June 12 2018, @10:51PM
Oh no wait, they're in cahoots, so it couldn't be them... its the Hillary!
*ducks*