311–320 of 1001 posts
Is it the same Edward Big Baller that tweeted that Elon stole the election and is setting up more computers within the government to be hacked? https://bsky.app/profile/cartwright776.bsky.social/post/3lhr...
Why is there no one explaining this?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Elon has the authority of the President who can override clearances. US government was simply never designed for scenarios like this.
So.... The US government was designed to -deny- the executive branch oversight and answers from the departments and agencies that the exutive branch runs? Or it was designed such that the exutive branch may not appoint or use independent organisations or consultants to perform audits? I dont think that is accurate.
What is extraordinary is doing so with (a) no thought to privacy or security, (b) using teenagers with no security clearances, (c) by a billionaire who seems to just be going after his enemies e.g. USAID was investigating SpaceX.
I recall an aphorism that government is self-governed 90% by norms and 10% by law. I don’t know if American law is being violated but certainly it is alarming to observe from the outside when the norms are totally disregarded. The US looks unstable and untrustworthy.
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Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.
Why do we care so much about classified information? Why is there a reverence for our government hiding information from its people? Why shouldn't the government operate out in the open in all ways? Something something terrorism, but i don't buy it. terrorism is the scapegoat for which we have massively eroded privacy and rights, in the same way that CSAM is the scapegoat for trying to ban encryption every 5 years.
Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored. This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of…
The amount of commercially and politically valuable information there is in these systems is incredible. If these people are scooping up this information you can imagine they might be tempted to monetize or weaponize it at some point, or use the threat of such for their own gain. This is absolutely chilling when you think about it.
Why this unvetted person(s) has been allowed to even touch or access critical systems speaks volumes about the state of US government. We are at the neoliberal endgame. Billionaires and multibillion dollar corporations received massive tax cuts during the first term, and this will likely continue under the second term. He’s going all out for this billionaire donors, buddies, and of course himself. We have a kleptocra…
Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? NOW it's a concern because the idea occurred to people that who might have access to data is important? Imo the faux outrage is so far beyond rational that it turns people away. Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response…
The reason security clearances are so important, and why people are so upset about randos going through so much sensitive government information, is that things like this can be used by adversaries to lean on these employees in the future. One of these kids might have worse skeletons in their closet. Given how well-known their names are, adversaries of the USA are likely combing through their own intelligence archive…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea. This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org…
I don't see how this kind of story is on-topic for HN. Yes, we all appreciate that HN is more than just a website for discussing garbage collection algorithms, graph algorithms, javascript frameworks, etc (i.e. computer science and programming) but isn't it meant to be about things that hackers would find interesting by virtue of being hackers ? My understanding of that broader topicality was that it was intended to…
Dang’s anti-flagging mechanism is the human factor that balances that very blunt automated system. People don’t seem to vouch for articles as much as for comments.
The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?
> team of teenage Maybe it's a question of wording, but I would agree if the word were "inexperienced" instead of teenage (in reality, they are young adults). I have no horse in this DOGE race and all the discussions, but I find this "reverse ageism" (for lack of a better term) quite sad, 'cause it does not sound condescending but infantilizes youth and hides one of the biggest elephants in the room in the modern wor…
Who would you trust more, a teenager with active military training and awareness on how to handle a gun or a teenager picking up a gun off the floor for the first time?
If these teens all had followed proper protocol, went through a full security clearance process and training on how to handle sensitive data there would be no issue. They did not. And they are definitely not old enough to have had experience dealing with highly sensitive systems. So you've got people that are not qualified to handle data, working on systems they are not experienced enough to work in, kicking over load-bearing pillars that they can't see.