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Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

reuters.com

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Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#201

Post by remarkEon »

eli wrote: post #140
txcwpalpha wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's trying to make things sound more nefarious than they were, and it's playing the guilt by association card Are we reading the same article? If anything this article seems like a submarine PR puff piece to me, made to increase the image of Beto by making him seem "cool" and "hip" by associating him with the typically-seen-as-sexy "hacker" scene. This article is very similar to the pro-Beto stuff that was all over…

We are in a world where the exact same video of Beto skateboarding was posted by both opponents and supporters and each saw what they wanted in it. I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate. Recall that “hacking” was a bit of a problem in 2016.

>I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate.

I agree with this. It seems an odd stance to take (assuming O'Rourke commissioned, or was at least okay with, this piece) given how other candidates are taking an explicitly hostile stance toward Big Tech. The media has done a fantastic job of convincing people that "election hacking" was a huge problem in 2016 (it wasn't), so it's curious why whatever consultant is working for this campaign decided this was good positioning.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#202

Post by djur »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #191
dragonwriter wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonderfully interested that you think the DNC would allow that to happen after just two year of being shown explicitly that they will do whatever is needed to make sure that does not happen. It's not the same DNC. While the Sanders faction didn't gain control after the 2016 election, they essentially got a power-sharing agreement and, more importantly, they've gotten a bunch of reforms, including mostly neutraliz…

I don't at all agree. The DNC had a system to allow rigging, and I'd willing to bet my lunch they still do. If they had a system of rigging - why do you think they would give that up what would their incentive be to do that? They didn't want Bernie then, they don't now, it's the same people in the organization. But... Because neither of us can possibly prove it. I guess we'll just wait and see. I believe they just wo…

What "system" did the DNC have to allow "rigging"? How did it work? Who operated it? What evidence is there that it existed, much less that it was used?

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#204

Post by specialp »

gaze wrote: post #73

Why are all the articles about Beto about how cool and antiestablishment he is? Just absolutely nothing about what he really intends to do, how he intends to do it, and most importantly, how do we reconcile his conservative voting record with this contrary image he presents?

He has to vote as to what his constituents want. Also having more swing votes in each party is exactly what we need. We don't complain about Susan Collins voting with the democrats on occasion. The fact that we have parties overwhelmingly voting 100% lockstep on issues that affect localities different is troubling. I am not a binary person that goes left/liberal on every issue myself, so why should I expect anyone else to?

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#205

Post by Brakenshire »

toast0 wrote: post #138
Brakenshire wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do texts that contain bomb-making information really fall under the first amendment in the US?

The government can't exactly ban chemistry textbooks, can it? Anyway, for this type of censorship to be effective to prevent dissemination of knowledge, it would need to happen before distribution, and prior restraint is generally considered unconstitutional in the US, except in matters of national security. National security could likely include planned troop movements and nuclear weapons manufacturing procedures (a…

There's a pretty big difference between a chemistry textbook on the one hand, and a step by step layman's guide on how to make a bomb, avoid detection and so on on the other. And then of course beyond that you can go into progressively more dangerous weapons. Would a guide to building IED's with shaped explosives fall under the protections, for instance? I was just watching a documentary yesterday about Iran taught these techniques to Shia militia in Iraq. And then you can get into progressively more dangerous weapons.

The interesting thing is where the line is drawn, how far 'national security' is interpreted.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#206

Post by remarkEon »

wybiral wrote: post #152
gaze wrote: post #73

Why are all the articles about Beto about how cool and antiestablishment he is? Just absolutely nothing about what he really intends to do, how he intends to do it, and most importantly, how do we reconcile his conservative voting record with this contrary image he presents?

> how do we reconcile his conservative voting record with this contrary image he presents? Because a good representative represents their people. And as a Texan, I can assure you that his left-leaning constituents weren't always the majority he had to represent. Any politician who blindly ignores a large segment of their constituents (even the ones that didn't vote for them) isn't someone you want in office. I don't…

>I can assure you that his left-leaning constituents weren't always the majority he had to represent.

This is definitely the case. It's interesting to watch Texas, as demographically it shifts from a traditionally conservative white voting block to a much more diverse state that will naturally vote democratic. Give it another election cycle or two and turning at least one Senate seat blue is almost assured.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#207

Post by dragonwriter »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #191
dragonwriter wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonderfully interested that you think the DNC would allow that to happen after just two year of being shown explicitly that they will do whatever is needed to make sure that does not happen. It's not the same DNC. While the Sanders faction didn't gain control after the 2016 election, they essentially got a power-sharing agreement and, more importantly, they've gotten a bunch of reforms, including mostly neutraliz…

I don't at all agree. The DNC had a system to allow rigging, and I'd willing to bet my lunch they still do. If they had a system of rigging - why do you think they would give that up what would their incentive be to do that? They didn't want Bernie then, they don't now, it's the same people in the organization. But... Because neither of us can possibly prove it. I guess we'll just wait and see. I believe they just wo…

> The DNC had a system to allow rigging,

No, it didn't have a “system to allow rigging”, beyond partisans of one candidate being in near-total control of the DNC.

They did have and leverage a system which helped promote a public inevitability narrative for a candidate that sewed up institutional support early by way of superdelegate voting rights, which led to then being included by media in delegate counts, reinforcing an artificial image of momentum which is demonstrated to drive subsequent voting behavior. This was dismantled when superdelegates voting privileges were reformed.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#208

Post by saalweachter »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #147
barbecue_sauce wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'typically-seen-as-sexy "hacker" scene'? By who? His association with At The Drive-In gives him more street cred than any tenuous relationship with hacking.

Society glamorizes hackers hard . Have you ever seen War Games? The Matrix? Live Free or Die Hard? Mr Robot? Blackhat? Any recent spy movie? What about the multitude of other movies/shows where hackers aren't the focus, but are certainly glamorized, a la NCIS, CSI, Limitless, etc. There's an entire genre of film & television about hackers and they are almost always portrayed as cool, attractive, powerful people with…

... have you seen War Games?

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#209

Post by djur »

ratling wrote: post #45

I don’t believe this. The GOP is desperate to discredit him because he puts Texas into play a couple years early. This smells like a weak hit job. I’m not sold as Beto as the candidate but this is a weak meme. 2/10 be best.

The author of this piece writes books about hackers. In the process of writing a book about a famous hacking group, he learned that a major political figure was a member when he was younger. That seems newsworthy and not like a "hit job" at all.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#210

Post by peterwwillis »

busterarm wrote: post #79

Having been involved in the community for most of my life, my very first thought was "oh that's cool he's one of us" and then I remembered that historically hackers have been phenomenally bad people to give any kind of real power to.

There have been a few bad hackers, and thousands upon thousands of ones that haven't done anything bad at all.

The knowledge that hackers have is immensely powerful. Hackers know how to root boxes, take down networks, pick locks, impersonate people, infiltrate virtually any secure area, falsify records, circumvent protection devices... They can steal from banks, screw with the phone system... hell, they can hack into cars on the highway. The ones with government jobs can screw with entire countries' telecom systems, disable satellites, jam telecommunications, spoof and reroute individual communications, and cause rolling waves of disruption to the power grid across entire regions of a country. Hackers have the knowledge to systematically destabilize virtually all the infrastructure of our civilization.

But a small handful of people do dumb shit and suddenly all hackers aren't trustworthy? The fact that the world still operates at all is testament to the fact that they aren't abusing their power.

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