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Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

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Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#41

Post by yardstick »

CheezeIt wrote: post #23
bpodgursky wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also pretty much impossible for a big tech company to filter against this during hiring without risking catastrophic discrimination suits.

That’s the big problem. It’s absolutely insane that tech companies can’t keep foreign nationals and people with foreign ties from sensitive positions.

I know what you are trying to say, but for many people outside the US, Facebook is a foreign tech company. What makes US nationals any better in safeguarding sensitive data/access about the companies customers than people from UK or Canada or Germany or Norway or Australia or New Zealand etc?

Should a tech company silo its data and operations so each country has its own independent unit? No, too infeasible and defeats the purpose for a lot of their services.

Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#43

Post by throwawaylinux »

tester34 wrote: post #34
CheezeIt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the big problem. It’s absolutely insane that tech companies can’t keep foreign nationals and people with foreign ties from sensitive positions.

You're kinda right, but on the other hand how I'll get visa and steal some faamg jobs if they'll not accept foreigners? /s ok, just kidding, now serious take: US population: 330kk Rest of the World: 8kkk Delta (8kkk-330kk) Even if we assume that distribution of highly skilled people is not uniform (lack of decent higher edu places, harder access to computers/internet) then you still lose shitton of outliers edit. ops…

Are you using kkk as a unit prefix for billion? I've never seen that before. I can't say I would recommend the practice.

Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#44

Post by _8j50 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #15
onionisafruit wrote: post #9

Whether twitter was negligent or not the bigger lesson here is that you should assume every big tech company is compromised by every state that cares to do so. Don’t trust any company with compromising information. The bigger the company, the higher the chance that they employ a spy for your adversary.

It's also pretty much impossible for a big tech company to filter against this during hiring without risking catastrophic discrimination suits.

Discrimination is for protected classes.

Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#45

Post by _8j50 »

imajoredinecon wrote: post #16
onionisafruit wrote: post #9

Whether twitter was negligent or not the bigger lesson here is that you should assume every big tech company is compromised by every state that cares to do so. Don’t trust any company with compromising information. The bigger the company, the higher the chance that they employ a spy for your adversary.

I'm sure this is true to a certain extent, but it'd be interesting to see how it varies in degree. For instance * do some companies have good enough insider risk controls to make it expensive or risky to access particular kinds of sensitive data? * not all nation state actors are equally well-resourced (and not all of them have equally large populations of computer science grads from which to recruit potential spies)…

Insider risk can be reduced, not eliminated. Let's say a company has more stringent checks than TS//SCI and pays employees that handle sensitive info well. People can always be turned, if not direct then indirect extortion through loved ones and family. You don't need that much money to develop an asset (it can be a lot but even the poorest nation would find it trivial).

If you can't get to data handlers then you can go after developers and the software supply chain. You have to understand, people can cooperate with threat actors without implicating themselves by getting paid or coerced to allow an intrustion (fall for a phish link or email, install seemingly legit software, insert a USB drivr they found in the parking lot,etc..). Worst case they get fired.

Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#46

Post by tester34 »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #43
tester34 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're kinda right, but on the other hand how I'll get visa and steal some faamg jobs if they'll not accept foreigners? /s ok, just kidding, now serious take: US population: 330kk Rest of the World: 8kkk Delta (8kkk-330kk) Even if we assume that distribution of highly skilled people is not uniform (lack of decent higher edu places, harder access to computers/internet) then you still lose shitton of outliers edit. ops…

Are you using kkk as a unit prefix for billion? I've never seen that before. I can't say I would recommend the practice.

>Are you using kkk as a unit prefix for billion? I've never seen that before.

afaik it's pretty common within gaming communities

e.g

1k - 1 000 (of gold)

1kk - 1 000 000 (of gold)

1kkk - 1 000 000 000 (of gold)

>I can't say I would recommend the practice.

Oh, I just realized that somebody may think about other kkk...

damn, but with number in front of it it's just like yet another unit - I guess?

Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#47

Post by yardstick »

tester34 wrote: post #46
throwawaylinux wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using kkk as a unit prefix for billion? I've never seen that before. I can't say I would recommend the practice.

>Are you using kkk as a unit prefix for billion? I've never seen that before. afaik it's pretty common within gaming communities e.g 1k - 1 000 (of gold) 1kk - 1 000 000 (of gold) 1kkk - 1 000 000 000 (of gold) >I can't say I would recommend the practice. Oh, I just realized that somebody may think about other kkk... damn, but with number in front of it it's just like yet another unit - I guess?

Not in any of the games I’ve played.

Why not use use m for million and b for billion? That’s the standard that everyone understands.

Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#48

Post by sneak »

onionisafruit wrote: post #9

Whether twitter was negligent or not the bigger lesson here is that you should assume every big tech company is compromised by every state that cares to do so. Don’t trust any company with compromising information. The bigger the company, the higher the chance that they employ a spy for your adversary.

More importantly: stop giving your phone number and GPS position to services.

Your phone number is the same as your home address, because it is linked to same in a million databases.

Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#49

Post by sneak »

CheezeIt wrote: post #23
bpodgursky wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also pretty much impossible for a big tech company to filter against this during hiring without risking catastrophic discrimination suits.

That’s the big problem. It’s absolutely insane that tech companies can’t keep foreign nationals and people with foreign ties from sensitive positions.

The problem isn't just foreign nationals. There's plenty of CIA inside FAAMG.

It is always a mistake to use nationality as a proxy for trustworthiness.

Being a US person, personally I'm much more concerned with the negative impacts of US spies spying in the US than foreign spies spying in the US.

Foreign governments don't regularly go around mass murdering and torturing Americans the way the US government does.

Americans have a lot more to lose from CIA spying than they do from Saudi intelligence agency spying.

Re: Twitter is being sued for letting Saudi spies inside the company

#50

Post by sneak »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #27
l33t2328 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say FAANG has been an intelligence front since the beginning?

PRISM would seem to support that idea.

Front suggests secret ownership/control. More likely is that they are simply compelled by the state to spy, willingly or not.
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