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Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

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Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To prevent unauthorized entry, Capitol Police would have had to put up a fight. Seems they were unwilling to do so. If America continues down this path Russia (and others) are just gonna have a field day.

The Capitol Police were either incompetent or complicit. There are literally no other options. They knew there would be a big protests, numbers put it around 200k~300k (a tiny percentage of which actually went into the capitol building mind you). If they weren't prepared for this: incompetence. But there are videos of people getting selfies with guards, and staying within the velvet ropes when coming in. Something is…

They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#42
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Pelosi's desktop was logged on and unlocked, there's a fair chance the laptop was too which would render full disk encryption useless. As long as whoever stole it didn't close it and send it to sleep anyway.

Logged on, unlocked and unattended? That shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

They quickly evacuated. Presumably they simply forgot to lock it in the confusion.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#43
post #7

>Nancy Pelosi told fellow House Democrats that she had received reassurances about safeguards to prevent Donald Trump from launching a nuclear attack Maybe this is too political or HN, but this is the bigger news on that page. It tells me we don't have a functioning chain of command and our government is currently responding to a hard coup attempt with a soft coup which is also pretty scary. Trump should either be re…

I would hope all entities with nuclear capabilities have de facto safeguards in place to prevent anyone from actually launching a nuclear attack. Although, I would also hope they wouldn't talk about them as it diminishes the deterrent effect that is the only potentially good thing about such weapons. Nuclear weapons should never be used but people who can use them should not say that.

The safeguard is mostly a bunch of literal guards.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To prevent unauthorized entry, Capitol Police would have had to put up a fight. Seems they were unwilling to do so. If America continues down this path Russia (and others) are just gonna have a field day.

You're being downvoted, but it's been proven police helped the rioters and even took selfies with them.

It has not been proven. This is false. Please stop spreading it. Multiple people were killed in clashes with the police. They did not help the rioters. This is the type of misinformation that caused all these problems.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To prevent unauthorized entry, Capitol Police would have had to put up a fight. Seems they were unwilling to do so. If America continues down this path Russia (and others) are just gonna have a field day.

The Capitol Police were either incompetent or complicit. There are literally no other options. They knew there would be a big protests, numbers put it around 200k~300k (a tiny percentage of which actually went into the capitol building mind you). If they weren't prepared for this: incompetence. But there are videos of people getting selfies with guards, and staying within the velvet ropes when coming in. Something is…

Something isn't right? Perhaps that nearly half of the elected officials present were either complicit or actively encouraging what happened?

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#46

Beyond the information security risk around the loss of this specific device, what really worries me is the physical security implications here. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but it seems to me like, in a building like the US Capitol, it should not be anywhere near this easy for unauthorized people to waltz into an office or conference room in the first place. Let alone walk away with items from within that…

I've traveled to countries before whose offices of government are behind very large fences, protected by unfriendly looking men standing behind heavy machine guns in armored vehicles – and the guide books are very clear that you are not to take photos of them.

I much prefer the approach taken in the USA, where our offices of government are accessible to the people that the government serves. It's very good that I can protest out front without worrying about that unfriendly man with his finger by the trigger to the Browning M2.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#47

Beyond the information security risk around the loss of this specific device, what really worries me is the physical security implications here. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but it seems to me like, in a building like the US Capitol, it should not be anywhere near this easy for unauthorized people to waltz into an office or conference room in the first place. Let alone walk away with items from within that…

To prevent unauthorized entry, Capitol Police would have had to put up a fight. Seems they were unwilling to do so. If America continues down this path Russia (and others) are just gonna have a field day.

Firing on a mob is risky as hell and not morally clear. I can't blame Capitol Police--at least for the actions after it already got out of hand.

If federal security at Court House shoots BLM protestors who are entering a federal court house, those security people would probably get charged with murder.

It's unreasonable to expect Capitol Police to make that sort of moral choice in the moment. And if you give cops the greenlight to shoot people to protect property, there will be a lot of unnecessarily death going forward.

That said, they may (probably?) screwed up containing the crowd contained in the first place. Though to play devils advocate, the President had just told a mob to go "wild." Not sure if Capitol Police could successfully manage that.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being downvoted, but it's been proven police helped the rioters and even took selfies with them.

It has not been proven. This is false. Please stop spreading it. Multiple people were killed in clashes with the police. They did not help the rioters. This is the type of misinformation that caused all these problems.

Without any specific knowledge on this case one way or the other, both of these things can be simultaneously true: Some Capitol police stuck to their duty and tried to keep the insurrectionists out, while others agreed with them, let them in, and took selfies with them.

"The Capitol Police" is not a single, monolithic entity; it's made up of individual people, with their own political views.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#49
post #33
post #4

Clearly a big deal and congressional IT staff are going to have a crazy few weeks ahead of them. However, my understanding is that any classified information would have to be in a SCIF. I assume that would be the case with congresspeople as well. I've also heard that the congressional paging system locks devices when an emergency is announced, but haven't seen that corroborated anywhere. Anyone know if that's true?

Counter evidence: the protesters were saying that they saw computers unlocked with email still open.

Uhh yeah, probably because the congresspeople were evacuated in a hurry because there was an angry mob storming their building?

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#50
post #20

The link appears to be some sort of live news feed and right now unrelated stuff about covid, articles of impeachment, and Trump's power to launch nukes is dominating the page, you really have to scroll to get to the laptop story I think this is the direct link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jan/08/donald-... The "story" is also really just a link to this tweet: https://twitter.com/Drew_Hammill/status…

Thanks. I did post the direct link but it seems to have been truncated
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