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Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

theintercept.com

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Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#51

Post by drak0n1c »

thereisnospork wrote: post #25
sebazzz wrote: post #2

This isn't right. Group behavior should not affect individuals in this way.

Why shouldn't it? Putting on a uniform assumes responsibility for the positions and actions of the represented organization - here the various police forces and unions of the United States. Police officers aren't being judged or punished for the color of their skin, creed, religion, or sexuality but their choices. I find it hard to stomach the idea that people shouldn't be judged for the organizations they choose to…

What if there was personal address doxxing of all software engineers claiming we're creepy hackers? Would such be justified because a number of us have had some small degree of indirect or direct contribution toward mass privacy violations?

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#52

Post by mc32 »

thephyber wrote: post #42
mc32 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whenever there is a federal statute that criminalizes something means states shouldn’t have redundant laws doing the same?

I would argue we are already way too far down the road of "redundant statutes". According to the book "3 Felonies a Day", there are well over 300,000 crimes in US jurisdictions, which is far beyond what any person could read, know, understand, and internalize. At this point, if you're not a convicted felon, it's simply because the government isn't efficient at prosecuting, not because you haven't broken a law.

There should be periodic de duplication of laws. And also removal of laws are are now archaic —like being able to sue a spouse for abandonment or laws that impinge on civil liberties but aren’t enforced.

For every new law they should remove one or two that are redundant or archaic.

Theft is illegal but then they have other provisions to make sure it really is illegal. Once is enough.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#53

Post by RangerScience »

iRobbery wrote: post #39
RangerScience wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Should" is a funny word. Seems to be used mostly when one's ideas about how reality "should" work come up against how reality "does" work; from orbital procession to the photoelectric effect. "Should" is an opportunity many don't take to go "huh, that's funny" and learn something about reality. "Group behavior should not affect individuals in this way" according to what principles and theories? It does - so, which o…

I start every git commit with "Should ..." :-)

True tho innit? "These code changes _should_ result in these functionality changes, _if_ I have reasoned and programmed correctly, and haven't missed anything."

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#54

Post by RangerScience »

sebazzz wrote: post #44
thereisnospork wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it? Putting on a uniform assumes responsibility for the positions and actions of the represented organization - here the various police forces and unions of the United States. Police officers aren't being judged or punished for the color of their skin, creed, religion, or sexuality but their choices. I find it hard to stomach the idea that people shouldn't be judged for the organizations they choose to…

> Police officers aren't being judged or punished for the color of their skin, creed, religion, or sexuality but their choices. No, many police officers are now being punished for being police officers. You would just be doing your job properly - no racist actions anything unjust - and now these details leak out. Yes there are police officers which are racist, I don't have data so I won't say few nor many, but there…

> being punished for being police officers.

Some of the logic is that bad police behavior is widespread enough that every "good" cop works closely enough with at least one "bad" cop, and yet via observation of outcomes, does not correct that bad cop's behavior (or doesn't correct it enough). They're thus complicit AKA bad cops themselves, and thus there are _no_ good police - everyone is sufficiently tainted.

The Godwin's Law version of this logic at work elsewhere is the German saying "if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis."

The folk wisdom encoding "a few bad apples spoil the bunch". Doesn't matter if they were good apples going in, they're all bad apples now: the bunch is spoiled.

(Not expressing an opinion on the correctness of this thinking, just explaining what I know of it)

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#55

Post by RangerScience »

drak0n1c wrote: post #51
thereisnospork wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it? Putting on a uniform assumes responsibility for the positions and actions of the represented organization - here the various police forces and unions of the United States. Police officers aren't being judged or punished for the color of their skin, creed, religion, or sexuality but their choices. I find it hard to stomach the idea that people shouldn't be judged for the organizations they choose to…

What if there was personal address doxxing of all software engineers claiming we're creepy hackers? Would such be justified because a number of us have had some small degree of indirect or direct contribution toward mass privacy violations?

What percent of software engineers have to be creepy hackers for the rest of us to be complicit in their actions? 50%? 75%? 10%?

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#56

Post by RangerScience »

jb775 wrote: post #49
thereisnospork wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it? Putting on a uniform assumes responsibility for the positions and actions of the represented organization - here the various police forces and unions of the United States. Police officers aren't being judged or punished for the color of their skin, creed, religion, or sexuality but their choices. I find it hard to stomach the idea that people shouldn't be judged for the organizations they choose to…

I don't think this logic is beneficial for humanity. If you take the worst parts of any organization or group and generalize it across the entire group, you end up with stereotypes, bias, and discrimination...the very things that led us down this path in the first place. There are better ways to approach this.

> There are better ways to approach this.

What do you see as some better ways?

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#57

Post by handedness »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #4
sebazzz wrote: post #2

This isn't right. Group behavior should not affect individuals in this way.

I don't disagree, though it's worth noting that the CIA seems to engage in the same practice. https://news.yahoo.com/secret-trump-order-gives-cia-more-pow...

The fact that state-level actors are doing this kind of thing is all the more reason to foster a domestic culture of refusing to be manipulated by it.

Otherwise, we'll wind up in a place where relatively small digital ad buys by foreign actors can create years-long mass hysteria.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#58

Post by throwawayway9 »

anonymousiam wrote: post #46
rndgermandude wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikileaks actually redacted a lot of (personal) data to protect people (tho some people like to claim again and again they did not). BlueLeaks, it appears, does not, and contains home addresses and other personal information of cops. Create transparency, investigate and show police misconduct? Great! Put cops and their families at risk? Nope!

The Julian Assange "poison pill" link was posted on Twitter, and later the password to the archive was also posted. This provided FULL UNREDACTED versions of all the leaked info.

Could you please enlighten us about this "poison pill" link?

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#59

Post by 5555624 »

driverdan wrote: post #35
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly that's the most interesting part (at least until people sift through the data more) of this story. Why the heck are they storing sensitive data on what appears to be a CMS for e-commerce site?

Home addresses aren't considered sensitive information. If you own your home that information is public. Cops read people's addresses (and SSNs) out over the radio all the time for anyone to hear. I'm not saying I agree with this, privacy should be protected better, but that's the US.

Home addresses are "Public PII" under 2 CFR § 200.79 - Personally Identifiable Information (PII), as opposed to "Protected PII." A lot of places don't make the distinction. (We do a semi-annual PII Audit and don't make the distinction.)

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#60

Post by thephyber »

mc32 wrote: post #52
thephyber wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue we are already way too far down the road of "redundant statutes". According to the book "3 Felonies a Day", there are well over 300,000 crimes in US jurisdictions, which is far beyond what any person could read, know, understand, and internalize. At this point, if you're not a convicted felon, it's simply because the government isn't efficient at prosecuting, not because you haven't broken a law.

There should be periodic de duplication of laws. And also removal of laws are are now archaic —like being able to sue a spouse for abandonment or laws that impinge on civil liberties but aren’t enforced. For every new law they should remove one or two that are redundant or archaic. Theft is illegal but then they have other provisions to make sure it really is illegal. Once is enough.

I agree. There needs to be more maintenance effort to reduce the "technical debt" of accumulated laws.

Sadly I think it's not done because there is no incentive. Voters don't vote out incumbents who add too many news statutes or who don't remove outdated/irrelevant/unconstitutional ones. I think it's a lot like refactoring code without the ability to write unit tests or know if the change had any secondary side effects for years or decades after.

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