Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

Sorry. I have a point -- towards the end. Even if it's one that gets me downvoted:

In my personal life, I've been wrestling with the decision to "do the right thing" and, for example, pay for digital media I consume. Help a friend in need, who doesn't really reciprocate (because, "the children", among other things). Purchase the health care insurance that takes away money I could otherwise spend on immediate treatment.

In each area, I've felt increasingly screwed over.

Shrinking catalogs, and money I paid spent on lawyers ensuring ever-greater rent-seeking as opposed to actual access to content.

My friend's health on the rebound, while mine has suffered, including from the depression induced by their abandonment of our friendship once I was, apparently, no longer necessary.

A health care system that keeps jacking prices and trying also by legislative manipulation to push me out the door of coverage, regardless of my best efforts to work with it.

In all these matters, I'm coming to think that part of my failed response comes down to a simple matter: Don't pay. Stop paying the very systems and people that or who are screwing you over.

So, here we have the NSA, that is (who are) ever more showing themselves to be incompetent with regard to what we hope they would accomplish, and outright aggressive and abusive with regard to us and matters that we consider commercial contract law, not their business, distracting rather than helpful, etc.

Helping prop up private IP rights and rent-seeking. Domestic spying. Accumulating so much data on everything that they can't see the needle for the haystack -- so, grow the haystack!

I'm hardly one of these bullsh-t "Conservative" (that's with a big "C", to differentiate from the actual noun/adjective, "conservative"), "shrink/starve the government" types. Government plays an essential role: It is the definition of our collective organization and governance.

But in some areas, I really want to say, let's simply stop paying for this shit.

Because when we pay for it, we only make it stronger. Not the effective governance we aspire to. Instead, this incompetence that also threatens aggression against its own society.

I find these allegations are deserving of some scrutiny. The entire story is quite bizarre when you begin to consider it. The NSA is apparently leaking like a broken pipe with this information. And it's peculiar because this is information that makes our intelligence agencies look completely inept. That is a very good thing if this story is fake, but a very bad thing if its true.

It is stupefying that NSA contractors/employees would be genuinely copying classified information that is heavily related to national security, and then just loading it up on their personal Windows PC with no apparent encryption or access controls. For instance why in the world wouldn't they have OS level software restricting read access of a certain secure partition (or removable media) to a specific whitelist of processes? Or why wouldn't they use an airgapped machine? Then there are issues like the NSA being so anxious and happy to leak this information, and then them indirectly 'wink wink' confirming it publicly completely destroying the purpose of we don't comment on speculation --- when you start commenting on certain speculation, it indirectly says something about other speculation that you actually choose not to comment on. They're also seemingly unconcerned that somebody is leaking information that, if true, shows the NSA to be incompetent and also exposes attack vectors for enemy actors. There are also things like Kaspersky previously volunteering to provide complete source access to the government. Our government declined the offer. How does this make sense?

Since Iraq I have become much more critical of pretty much everything. Our media and our government lied to generate a case for war. And I feel lately that they are now trying to build a case for some sort of conflict, presumably cold, against Russia. Or at the minimum start Red Scare 3.0. I have no idea why they would want to do this, but I tend to abide Occam's razor, and this all being true requires a lot more effort than this just being "Yellowcake 2.0."

My apologies - I read your meaning as 'we are falling behind the Russians!'

It's a legitimate argument that could have been made (As the capabilities of both countries are obviously different), but not one that I've seen convincing evidence for.

Government drone copies NSA malware onto a system with Kaspersky security software installed for the purpose of detecting malware.

Brilliant

Putin is screwed the minute Trump leaves.