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  • Copy and pasting from a similar thread - tldr is that lapses in infosec are fucked because it's a direct attack on YOUR security; and any official info running through other-than-official channels is fucked because that's an attack on your rights as a citizen by circumventing FOIA or accountability. When that happens, you should be pissed off regardless of which side of the aisle the culprit resides on.

    Anyway...

    I keep seeing Hillary's server brought up to highlight the red team's hypocrisy, but there's some introspection to be had for us as well on that topic.

    Hillary's email server was one of many stepping stones on the path of increasingly fucked infosec. Now, the vast majority of neanderthals foaming at the mouth over her emails only gave a damn about it because of the (D) next to her name, but those idiots getting angry at it for the wrong reasons doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal.

    My perspective on all that when the story was first breaking: I was fairly new e-nothing junior enlisted medic in the USAF. The closest thing to classified info I ever dealt with was 'confidential' medical shit covered by HIPAA, and like people's social security numbers. That's it. But even with zero-access to military secrets, at the absolute rock-bottom of the chain of command, I still had to take lengthy infosec courses every year (or every quarter? idr) to ensure I knew how to identify and properly handle classified information. Fuckups in infosec are NOT tolerated: like if I took a single page of classified info home without authorization, that'd be a court martial / potential jail time / stripped of rank / dishonorable discharge level offense. Then we have a fucking Secretary of State - someone who handles classified info all the time and should be a subject matter expert on the do's and don'ts of it - running her own shady-ass server away from the prying eyes of FOIA, claiming to not recognize classified indicators?? Then before anything could be done about it, we got the whole bleach-bit and hammer-to-harddrives scene, so some nice destruction of evidence as the cherry on top.

    100% we should have crucified her.

    Just like we should have crucified the dipshits before her using private email platforms like gmail or some shit to send or receive official / classified communication. Every one of those fuckers knew better.

    Then Trump happens and makes everything prior, Hillary and all, look like fucking j-walking compared to the scale and blatancy of his crimes. 'Crucified' doesn't even begin to describe what needs to happen to that fucking traitor.

    ...but the dismissiveness regarding the email server does kinda strike a nerve for me - she fucked up BAD, and we dropped the ball by not holding her accountable, as that left the door open for dipshits like Trump to continue the trend of worse and worse infosec.

    Again, it's peanuts compared to Trump - I hate writing shit like this for even the flicker of a possibility of drawing a false equivalence. There is no equivalence here. But I really wish we'd collectively change our tone about handwaving the 'buttery males!' shit because it is hypocritical to do that and then get pissy about the red team's conceptually-similar-albeit-orders-of-magnitude-more-severe fuckups.

    At the end of the day, we should expect our leaders to do their job and do it correctly. If they don't, then get angry - it's your security they're playing with. None of them get the benefit of the doubt, regardless of which color their campaign stickers are.

    • A weather report can be classified. Something that's been published in the NY Times might be classified.

      Something the Secretary of State writes themselves might be classified. Even saying "I was talking to Prime Minster whoever last week" could be classified even when there's a photo of the Sec State standing next that Prime Minister on the front page of that country's biggest newspaper.

      There is no risk if someone stamps something innocuous as classified, but there's hell to pay if something that's sensitive doesn't get stamped classified. So a lot of shit is labelled classified when it doesn't need to be.

      Not all classified information is about a military operation that's set to kick off in a few hours.

      Hillary Clinton was very thoroughly investigated and the classified information was a big nothing-burger. Or do you honestly believe the Trump administration gave her a pass because they're benevolent?

      running her own shady-ass server away from the prying eyes of FOIA

      It's illegal to use government property for campaign purposes. Obviously Clinton was working towards a presidential campaign (she was working towards it her entire life) so the laws necessitated her to have emails related to that not be on a government server (government property).

      Sorry, Hilary's emails wasn't anything. You were just told that over and over again until it started to sound like there might be something to it. But it was nothing.

      • A weather report can be classified. Something that’s been published in the NY Times might be classified ... could ... could ... could ... could ... could ...

        Not all classified information is about a military operation that’s set to kick off in a few hours.

        ...and? Not all classified info is benign shit either. I didn't personally assess the contents of Hillary's server, or Bush's server, or all the idiots using private email, but I'm not going to give any of them the benefit of the doubt and assume their specific infractions are harmless. Fuck that. They know the rules, they need to follow them.

        Hillary Clinton was very thoroughly investigated and the classified information was a big nothing-burger. Or do you honestly believe the Trump administration gave her a pass because they’re benevolent?

        Nothing ever happens to any of these dipshits. Every fucking administration gives the one before it a pass for this shit, and that's what makes me so mad about it this. It needs to stop.

        It’s illegal to use government property for campaign purposes. Obviously Clinton was working towards a presidential campaign (she was working towards it her entire life) so the laws necessitated her to have emails related to that not be on a government server (government property).

        It's also illegal to store classified info on the non-government machine you're using to run a campaign. Classification aside, is it really too much to expect her to know the difference between work related vs private communication? Most people have a pretty solid hold on that about 5 minutes after accepting their first job that requires them to use a company/agency email...

        Sorry, Hilary’s emails wasn’t anything. You were just told that over and over again until it started to sound like there might be something to it. But it was nothing.

        No, I was active duty when the situation was first breaking, and joined the DoD in a collective facepalm and angry "this shit again?!" cuz if any of us did it, we'd be court martialed.

        You may not want it to be anything, and you might try to rationalize that by assuming a best case scenario or contrasting it against fuckers like Trump who are orders of magnitude worse, but that doesn't give Hillary or anyone before or after her a pass.

    • Here's the thing about that email server: it was standard operating procedure for the White House at the time.

      Email starts to be used for official communication under Bill's administration, but everyone is still trying to figure out this Internet thing back then. It was standard for the Secretary of State to run their own email server all through the Bush II administration. Hillary was simply following what was already established. It was only when John Kerry took the office that this was changed to bring their email server under White House IT staff control.

      Which is what should have happened within a few years of Bush II's first term. As someone who has managed their own email server before, it's hard to setup an email server that works correctly. It's even harder to set it up in a way that doesn't immediately become a spam gateway and security hazard. As soon as the government was getting a handle on this Internet thing, all staff email servers should have been run by government IT directly.

      That isn't on Hillary alone. It's a decision that crossed three different Presidential administrations and both major parties.

      FOIA was followed, though. The DOJ got plenty of Hillary's emails by way of FOIA.

    • That's all bipartisan system and predetermined positions. Can't attack your own camp because at the pres race you'd hurt already choosen pres candidate and would be seen as your own camp's traitor to target so-called allies. Even after she is irrelevant, for it gives a signal you can do this to everyone else, and gives free fuel to the opponent's platform. Playing favorites in cases of infosec breachea seems wild, but here we are.

      Since it was dropped in the heat of the race, I can get why it was downplayed as a rep-based attack on Hilary, but she's still okay after all of that, and I fear, she is still pickable for the next pres race instead of any other better candidate.

      • In the heat of the race, absolutely. As shitty as it is, that's strategy. Leading up to the 2024 election I was PISSED at the Biden campaign over its ongoing support for genocide; but I kept that shit to myself. It would have done no good to whine about 'genocide joe' if all that could accomplish is '10x worse genocide don'. Was ready to vote for Biden, then they switched to Harris, and same complaint, same silence, and same vote plan - she got my vote. ...not that that did any good.

        Same with Hillary. I didn't like her either, but in a race of her vs Trump it's no contest - she looks like a literal angel next to the orange traitor. So I kept the criticism to myself in hopes of walking out of it with the lesser evil.

        Both times, we got the greater evil. Cuz collectively we're some combination of apathetic, stupid, or evil.

  • Given that Google probably trains their LLMs based on the content of people's Gmail inboxes, how long until a prompt convinces Gemini to spit out Waltz's emails verbatim?

    Or, could use this profile:

    • Former military officers
    • Graduates of Virginia Military Academy
    • Married men in their early 50s
    • Men Living in Washington DC
    • Fathers of teenage daughters
    • ...

    Then microtarget ads that will be shown only to him. I can guarantee that a guy this bad at OPSEC doesn't know how to use an ad blocker.

    (And if you're a North Korean hacking group, you make sure the ad has a malicious payload that gives you control over his computer.)

  • ButHillaryAcidWashedHerJeansIMeanHerServerUGUYZ

    ( In all seriousness, why can't these dumbfucks even get the basics about BleachBit right? )

77 comments