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

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

#681

Post by aksss » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

eplanit wrote: post #666

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…

Or, we get some really good transparency regarding the affairs of elected officials, and the workings of Congress.

Wikileaks? It will be dismissed as Russian misinformation.

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

#682

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:13 AM UTC

fphhotchips wrote: post #527

kenniskrag wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as they could just access the harddrive directly regardless of OS security policy. I think that's wrong if you consider disk encryption.

From what I've read, full disk encryption was optional in the House until very recently. If this was a shared machine it's almost certainly not encrypted.

[deleted]

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

#683

Post by aksss » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

ladyanita22 wrote: post #240

geofft wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The presentation machines at my workplace (in addition to being desktops in a locked cabinet, because why would they leave the room?) just allow you to remote desktop back to your real workstation or to a VM. They have nothing locally. I think that's a good solution to avoiding over-granting privileges.

How can you lock up Windows like that?

You can lock up windows to where all a user can do is shut the computer down. Group policy, etc.

When our company used conference room PCs (instead of room systems) we had a program that would reboot them nightly to reload the known good image. I suppose some risk of file recovery was present, but this was also a half-way decent approach as long as the machine wasn't deeply compromised (bios level or something).

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

#684

Post by rufus_foreman » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:19 AM UTC

I guess the bright spot of all this is we haven't heard anyone talking about abolishing the police for a couple days now.

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

#685

Post by aksss » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:19 AM UTC

jerzyt wrote: post #309

jerkstate wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Every place I have worked with more than about 50 employees has used full drive encryption, so a laptop being stolen is not an infosec risk at all.

Really? When I worked at one of the Big Four a stolen/lost laptop was DefCon 4, despite all of the security precautions. We were actually required to notify a partner in the firm before contacting law enforcement.

Uh.. I think it's standard security policy in most enterprises to discuss matters internally before getting law enforcement involved. That's just prudent. If I walked into a company where the policy was "let IT staff talk to LE first, then notify chief counsel" I'd change that on day 1.

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

#686

Post by jandrese » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #649

jandrese wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll probably give it to that computer repair guy in Deleware so he can pull off all of the emails from March of 2021 and somehow lose them in the mail when he tries to send them to Fox News.

Time to update your internet boogeymen memes. Fox News and Trump are enemies. He's into Newsmax now.

I was making an allusion to the actual Hunter Biden laptop story.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...

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

#687

Post by O_H_E » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #612

bcrosby95 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 second videos don't tell much of a story. That is them falling back because they didn't have enough people to hold the perimeter. Here is a longer video of them at one of the entrances of the building: https://youtu.be/cJOgGsC0G9U?t=140

My mistake. It was a chaotic, violent situation. I shouldn't make snap judgements from cherry-picked shots. Sorry.

One gotta love a reply like that these days. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for being an awesome human being.

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

#688

Post by Twixes » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:32 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #375

121789 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reasonable conclusion I can think of is that the security team had no worry that politicians would be in any danger (e.g. easy, isolated, fast escape routes) and that it would be hard to rationalize to bring out the troops/big security forces with a threat of violence for a group of people that was supported by the current president and a significant fraction of congress and the senate. The whole situation f…

I think there are many plausible (but not necessarily "reasonable") alternative explanations. As far as I can tell, this event seems to have had an extremely persuasive effect on the psyche and opinions of the average person. Who might benefit from this change in the mental state of the population, and in what ways? Most people seem to find the very idea of thinking such thoughts to be extremely unpleasant, if not do…

What? Who?

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

#689

Post by O_H_E » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

davidw wrote: post #82

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seems like it ought to be possible to have both, to some degree. I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this. I mean... the US spends massive amounts of money on the police and military. I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.

> I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.

I love that so much.

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

#690

Post by mmmBacon » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:34 AM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #671

kube-system wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also walked into my congressperson’s office when I was on a field trip as kid. The security was similar to going to the airport. > Might as well argue that you should be able to just walk into the white house and speak to the top public representative. Entirely different situation. The reason that people need to talk with the legislature is because those are the people’s representatives.

> Entirely different situation. The reason that people need to talk with the legislature is because those are the people’s representatives. Totally different, were it not for the fact the president is also the Chief of State: The chief public representative of a country. Besides, even if this wasn't the case, humor me and suppose it was (which it actually is), would you then conclude that the president should simply…

I think you’ve mischaracterized the discussion.

Where did anyone say any of the things you are claiming?

The statement was simply that the People have a right to entry into the building and physical access to lawmakers and the law making process. Further, the statement is that access is a foundational principle to the US implementation of liberal democracy since our Nation’s founding. It’s so foundational that it’s also quite literally built into the building as there are galleries for public viewing of Senate and House proceedings.

It is also an ideal that we strive for like equality and justice. We recognize our union as imperfect yet these ideals are what drive us as a Nation.

Your comment I feel confuses implementation with the discussion of ideals. The implementation should follow the ideals as guiding principles with access being the default.

Lastly, historically the building and lawmakers were much more accessible. This was during my lifetime. We had lots of people then too.