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

611–620 of 747 posts

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

#611

Post by justin66 »

cperciva wrote: post #41
djsumdog wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Capitol Police were either incompetent or complicit. There are literally no other options. They knew there would be a big protests, numbers put it around 200k~300k (a tiny percentage of which actually went into the capitol building mind you). If they weren't prepared for this: incompetence. But there are videos of people getting selfies with guards, and staying within the velvet ropes when coming in. Something is…

They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.

> They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.

This is all true but might be crediting the Capitol Police leadership with a little more coordination and planning than they truly exhibited. There were clearly some law enforcement officers who did not simply step aside and let the rioters have their way once lawmakers had been evacuated.

Based on some of the comments here I get the feeling it's not common knowledge yet that at least one involved law enforcement officer has died [1] and a couple of dozen were injured. Possibly they could have done better for themselves if they'd all been as easygoing about things as the officers photographed in the rotunda.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sic...

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

#612

Post by JoeAltmaier »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #588
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, the police waved them through. It was in cooperation with Capitol police. No 'overwhelming' necessary. Which is worrisome in a whole nother way. https://twitter.com/bumbera_steven/status/134727096998817382... video

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.

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

#613

Post by californical »

thesuitonym wrote: post #506
californical wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry but if you’re a couple of police officers in a room full of literal terrorists, of course you’re going to try to be as restrained and friendly as possible. You’re horribly outnumbered. They would be murdered if they tried to take on the crowd. They needed to wait for reinforcements to arrive, and meanwhile do their best to keep the crowd from going fully insane. They managed the situation with very few peop…

They had no problem tear gassing protesters this summer even though they were outnumbered.

I agree, that was an insane thing to do for those protests. It still bothers me.

But I think we should all be in favor of the police response being more restrained and minimizing force, like we saw this week. We should be advocating for more of this in general.

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

#614

Post by fragmede »

kenniskrag wrote: post #574
fphhotchips wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

full disk encryption is also possible with a shared computer. TPM and PBA are some keywords

Possible? Very. Likelihood of the computer's login password and thus hard drive decryption key attached to the computer's screen with a post-it note thus obviating the protection gained from full disk encryption? On a shared computer, high.

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

#615

Post by vharuck »

mmmBacon wrote: post #369
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…

As a huge democrat (lower case d) I totally agree. Locking down the Capitol is antithetical to the notion of open democracy. Lawmakers and the law making process needs to be physically accessible by the People. This was what the Founders intended. Of course there is some risk here and Jefferson himself noted this. That’s the price we pay for living in an open and transparent society. While I don’t condone or support…

The security risk is also less of a problem in a mostly rational society, which is what we have had for a long time. You'll get lone wolves, but finding a group of people so angry with a politician they're willing to conspire to kill them? Very, very rare. Violence is a last resort for people who feel totally powerless. So, in a dark way, easy access keeps politicians from pissing off their constituents too much.

Which is why the stream of "fraudulent election" lies is so dangerous. A person in a position that confers trust is telling people the government is openly defying them. For people who believe that, violence is the only logical way to affect politics.

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

#616

Post by salawat »

dylan604 wrote: post #458
edgyquant wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

deep-state-war-plans.doc

opening this doc opens a video of a guy singing about never giving up

That's why you jave to open deep-state-war-plans.doc:ze_real_plans

Damn alternative data streams.

Speaking of which, I always wondered why windows didn't make better use of those. Seems like it would cut down on the FS bloat.

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

#618

Post by sonotathrowaway »

rhino369 wrote: post #391
ghaff wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That said, they may (probably?) screwed up containing the crowd contained in the first place. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight, there should have been a much stronger show of force/barricades/etc. Should that have been obvious even without hindsight? Don't know. That said, once the Capitol Police were outnumbered and things were getting out of hand, I'm pretty sure the best outcome if they had used deadly for…

And the real damage was to our rule of law. That was already accomplished when the supposed President directed a mob against congress. The actual level of violence done by the mob is relatively tame. Shooting a bunch of people in the halls of Congress isn't going to stop the damage to the rule of law. And it would have what? Prevented a few laptops from being stolen, a couple doors from being broken down, etc. It's n…

There’s photographs of one of the “peaceful” protestors in bdus and a helmet with zip ties, and there was multiple videos of the mob yelling to grab the politicians. It was relatively peaceful because congress was able to evacuate before they could be kidnapped and held hostage, with them safely away the pipe bombs wouldn’t have had much point.

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

#619

Post by elihu »

djsumdog wrote: post #36
Fauntleroy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To prevent unauthorized entry, Capitol Police would have had to put up a fight. Seems they were unwilling to do so. If America continues down this path Russia (and others) are just gonna have a field day.

The Capitol Police were either incompetent or complicit. There are literally no other options. They knew there would be a big protests, numbers put it around 200k~300k (a tiny percentage of which actually went into the capitol building mind you). If they weren't prepared for this: incompetence. But there are videos of people getting selfies with guards, and staying within the velvet ropes when coming in. Something is…

It's also possible they were competent but don't have the required staff to handle a large protest. Under normal circumstances, they might request help from other groups (DC police, national guard, whatever) but due to jurisdictional restrictions help can't come unless it's approved at high levels and no approvals were given.

In other words, they may have been set up to fail.

(There's still the issue of that video of protesters being let in, which would imply that capital police do have some explaining to do.)

Post reply on HN