Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 747 posts

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

#251

Post by jquery »

djsumdog wrote: post #171
amyjess wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They took selfies with the insurrectionists. They were complicit.

> insurrectionists Peaceful protestors. Were the BLM people who stormed city hall in Seattle insurrectionists? Where the Black Panthers who took the California State Capitol in the 1970s insurrectionists? Stop with the bullshit name games. These were not rioters. They didn't set anything on fire. They should not have stolen or broken anything. That's wrong and bad and should be condemned. Those people should get fede…

> But man...you have to admit...there is something beautiful about the peasants entering the royal court, and the town idiot putting his feet up on the table that belongs to the Hand of the King. >The villagers entered the royal court and the senators clutched their pearls.

I agree. Although I’m definitely anti-Trump and condemn his garbage about the election being stolen, and while I don’t condone the behavior of the protestors, I don’t really see how this so much worse than business owners who had their livelihoods destroyed during the BLM riots over the summer. I don’t remember CNN or Democrats tripping over themselves to see who could use the harshest language for what had happened.

Again I’m not condoning this, but honestly, given what happened, the only real tragedy was a woman was shot because a jumpy police officer shot blindly into a crowd. Our pride was embarrassed but that’s ok. Let’s learn from this and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The real problem with what happened is Trump incited it. But that’s another story.

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

#252

Post by debt »

whalesalad wrote: post #136

> belonged to a conference room and was used for presentations Yikes. My first though was - oh this should be no big deal chances are there are good policies in place for laptops that go home with people. Then I realized it is a shared/central machine which means it probably has the most effed up and relaxed security in the fleet, post-it notes with passwords taped to the palm rests, and god knows what else. IT depar…

"no big deal"

A stolen laptop is usually not considered "no big deal" basically everywhere I worked.

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

#253

Post by stagger87 »

jeffbee wrote: post #202
doomslice wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this will change your mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=20m04s&v=cJOgGsC0G9U

I admire the restraint on display here, but if even one of those guys had been black, the cops would have iced every one of them. Imagine someone grabbing a cop's gas mask at a BLM march and not being dead 2 seconds later.

Hyperbole, this kind of stuff happened all the time at BLM protests. There is literally hundreds of videos of this stuff. No one was getting 'iced'.

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

#254

Post by romwell »

baldfat wrote: post #198
omarhaneef wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to bet: -- someone accidentally stored something -- that thing is no big deal, perhaps technically a secret -- people who get ahold of it and read it will make up conspiracy theories about it

People who make up their truths that can't be disproven already have all that they need. a missing laptop.

Behold the EVIDENCE of GREAT CONSPIRACY!

Breaking! This below was found on Pelosi's laptop!

-----====POWER POINT PRESENTATION====----

ALL GOVERNMENT ARE PEDOPHILES EXCEPT TRUMP

PROOF: CIA REPORT

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

#255

Post by mumblemumble »

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #46
mumblemumble wrote: post #14

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…

This is a false dichotomy, though. There is an enormous gamut of security steps in between turning the capitol into a fortress, and locking the door to your office when you're not there.

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

#256

Post by Bedon292 »

jjkaczor wrote: post #149

Myself, I would be more worried about any keyloggers, or wifi/cell interception, "man-in-the-middle" devices being left behind...

While not congress, so I can't say for sure, I have been around government and other enterprise systems. Some measures they had in place:

- Disabled USB Ports (except whitelisted peripherals)

- User accounts don't have permission to install anything at all

- If you plug a deceive with a different mac address than expected into an ethernet port the port locks down until a sysadmin verifies it and manually unlocks it

- Remote imaging of systems, including remote system verification

- No wifi on actual network

While its all a pain in the ass to deal with. Hopefully at least some of that is in place and reduces the likelihood of many of those issues.

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

#257

Post by hanniabu »

laurent92 wrote: post #186
Grazester wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say I hope it was encrypted. Being a laptop I hope the IT person saw it fit to have it encrypted just because it is more easily prone to theft.

I mean, why are we paying the NSA, if Congress has unencrypted laptops. Literally their role to recommend security methods for encryption of companies and US interests. That is what I wonder every time I’m required to throw away my bottle of water and remove clothes to board a plane.

Fooled me. I thought their role was to spy on American citizens and create vulnerabilities by strong arming backdoors into everything.

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

#258

Post by _ph_ »

slg wrote: 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…

There are plenty of szenarios where you don't want to launch a nuclear attack without several people checking the attack order. To my knowledge, the president can't just order an attack, this has to be at least confirmed by one member of a small group of people of necessary rank. Beyond being mostly a political move, Nancy Pelosi reminded by this this group, that a possible launch order most likely is bogus and they should be extremely careful before confirming it.

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

#259

Post by snowwrestler »

cobookman wrote: post #173

I'm surprised congressional office's laptops do not embed remotely detonated explosives/destruction devices triggered with sat or cellular comms.

There is nothing remotely that important on the laptops in a typical Congressional office.

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

#260

Post by swebs »

vernie wrote: post #214
doomslice wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this will change your mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=20m04s&v=cJOgGsC0G9U

It's a real testament to the effectiveness of the BLM protests that the police took a good hard look at themselves and decided to use a light touch from here on out.

The police shot and killed an unarmed woman, Ashli Babbitt.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55581206

Post reply on HN