Posted by m-hodges 17 hours ago
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/doj-confirms-fbi...
https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/
The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of this just reiterates how incompetent he is, in addition to being corrupt as heck.
If they wanted to maintain access, they certainly wouldn't celebrate it publicly, which is why I assume they want to release information. But, there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting professionally. We'll see how the facts bear out. I also suppose it's possible they're just going for any win they can and there's nothing interesting here whatsoever, or it's a really boring secondary address or something.
EDIT: I actually misread the comment; I think we're likely in agreement. My bad.
His scandals are all about shirking job responsibilities to party and sightsee. That's not great from the FBI director but its way more normal than the rest of them.
https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/19555...
Im sure they are all doing it...
Those times have passed. I'll restate what I said in a comment some days ago:
>> 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today presidents are "impeaching" the press
The current strategy is "keep the outrage hose on full blast and eventually people get desensitized". It works.
[1] there was one reporter who dared but the toll from the story resulted in his suicide, some years later. His colleagues poo-pooed his reporting on the connection.
Now look at where we're at. It really is wild. Right, wrong, or indifferent. How far we've shifted is absolutely wild.
medical diagnoses can be incredibly useful in understanding past and future actions
>there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting professionally
that "if" is doing some heavy lifting given who we are discussing
Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?
Color me surprised if these people haven't heard of opsec before, and mix their work/personal life all over the place.
Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out there, but it is obviously not immune to human error or social engineering.
Let me guess, the "leak" was intentional just to break a bunch of laws and to cause a bunch of people to get fired and leave their posts?
> Alexa Henning, spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, tweeted last week that “widespread use” of Signal began under the Biden administration, adding that “at ODNI, when I got my phone, it was pre-installed.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/inside-the-hazy-fra...
Your own article makes this exact point: > Matthew Shoemaker, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who left the agency in 2021, said that while Signal was used during his time in government, “it was almost exclusively restricted to scheduling purposes,” such as letting their boss know that they’ll be late to work because of personal circumstances. “That’s why Signalgate is all the more staggering — because these senior leaders were doing the exact opposite of what even my most junior intelligence officers knew not to do,” he said.
You're doing bullshit partisan whataboutism. "well the democrats did it first".
This has nothing to do with adding the wrong contacts. It has to do with putting highly-sensitive material into Signal to circumvent the law around records preservation and as a result creating a situation where it's possible to accidentally add the wrong contact and therefore exposing that information to a journalist.
My comment above already mentions public records of the DoD contracting out archiving of the Signal chat, so it doesn't in fact circumvent laws around preservation.
> You're doing bullshit partisan whataboutism. "well the democrats did it first".
I don't think it's a huge sin for government workers to be using Signal, remote work and messaging is the new norm and they will use something whether we like it or not, and Signal is the least bad option. I don't blame the Biden DoD for experimenting down that road at all, as I'm skeptical they'd build something better internally - and to your hyperpolitical points I don't see large distinctions between these type of tech choices between administrations (the DoD staff largely remains the same even when presidents change).
The issue with encryption and security will always be human security practices come first-and-foremost, technology second. They failed an OPSEC checklist when using group chats and need to implement better identification management. That's the sort of lesson that large organizations frequently need to re-learn the hard way when adopting new (and often better) things.
This was just a good lesson in security hygiene
1. Classified information. Was it legal to put that into the DoD approved Signal build? The media coverage at the time gave me the impression that it was not.
2. Records keeping. Were the Trump admin chats in question properly archived then? I had been led to believe that they weren't. Do you believe that to be incorrect?
> I don't blame the Biden DoD for experimenting down that road at all
The person you're replying to never criticized them for such.
I have no idea why this would be the default assumption for somebody as sloppy and erratic as Patel. Look at how many people were emailing damning stuff to/from Epstein's personal email accounts from their own personal email accounts!
What, like J.Edgar?
In all likelihood his upbringing is what made him this way.
I am sure the FBI will do that for my family too right?
Or we’re more than family photos hacked?
Meanwhile how would Hunter Biden, not a government employee nor having access to government systems, get that data in the first place?
^ https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/cisa-senior-official-...
Iran isn’t alone!! They are a quad along with China, Russia, and North Korea.
If the US had an educated administration not composed by lap dogs they would've known that attacking Iran was going to be a terrible idea.
Saddam did the same mistake in 1980.
He thought that the Iranian Kurds, the political opponents, the Iranian Arabs, civilians were going to raise against the regime.
None of this happened. None. In fact, hundreds of thousands of people, even kids, rallied around the banner. There are documented stories of 13 year olds, jumping on barbed wire to use their bodies as bridges for infantry. Disgusting, yet telling of the fact that the Persians will do everything to defend their land even if they don't like its leadership.
It's very difficult to convince people you're bombing left that you're helping them get rid of a regime (which, you never know for sure how popular or unpopular it is).
Iranians, yet again, are rallying around the flag for what is effectively a foreign aggression.
As soon as ground troops land in Iran, it's over for the USA. As it is, oil and goods shipping via the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea will be controlled by Iran for a very long time to come. All Iran has to do is withstand the pummeling, which it very likely will do. And they'll get plenty of support from China, since this plays into the South China Seas plan quite nicely as the USA moves carrier after carrier out of Asia.
In Iran, Trump was clearly hoping (and verbally requested) the same thing you say about Sadam. I think we actually do know how unpopular the regime is, the mass protests demonstrated that. But the religious hardliners are the ones with the guns. And they clearly aren’t afraid to use them. So while there was some momentum, after everyone got gunned down in the streets by the IRGC it quickly deflated. So asking unarmed protesters to step up again is kind of big ask, without any material support.
Are you trying to frame the twice accidental president as some sort of visionary? He doesn’t even remember what he said 5 mins ago. If he had planned or even had any clue about wars, we’d not be in this mess. He insulted Zelenskyy last year but ended up asking for his help.
Do you recall orange phenomenon was asking for China’s help just last week, let’s wait for it, to act against their friends, which you called their subsidiaries :-). You can’t script this horror show, even if you wanted to.
And rightfully so. China isn't killing and kidnapping world leaders, supporting genocides in Gaza, launching military operations, threatening its allies of annexation or overtly interfering in their democratic process.
Edit: apparently 80000 employee workstations got remotely wiped. So not so I guess I wouldn’t call that minor.
Also that’s what I get for commenting before reading the story, they mention the Styker incident in the story lol
He doesn't strike me as the kinda person even using a local password manager; like keepass.
Somebody needs to find this out.
I doubt it was gmail support... surely it could not be via his phone sim, and if he didn't have two factor on; That would be so funny.
I'm tempted to check out the dark web or the telegram, but i'd rather not do either of those things.
(which might not be that unusual, he’s old enough to have opened a gmail account upon launch, before extra info hoops were put in place, and maybe he never touched his account config in the past 2 decades?
Not to mention ; you would assume he should have more than one device linked to the account and then that adds another layer, since Google will ask you " is this you trying to logon ". <-- that is the only way to get Google to do the unrecognized flow you mention.
If you are suggesting it was exposed and he didn't immediately randomise all his passwords.. WORDS FAIL ME
It's all security 101 the irony is immense...
if the US government / FBI need someone to give some talks on how to do security ...
Also it's entirely possible they only compromised a honeypot.
Considering their track record, that's actually more likely tbh
Making the password impossible to guess - how could that not be?
Since then you know you have a breach, as its randomised gibberish, if you then get the 2nd device asking " is this you trying to login " you can definitely know you are compromised....
I can't see your logic here, that isn't " theatre " ????
If you think that is theatre what is better then? Words and numbers.. easily brute forced.. Sorry can't agree.
I haven't seen what's in it either though, but I would not rule it out yet, especially when the FBI is involved - which love those tactics
When you're compromised, changing the password is obviously not theatre - but changing a password which is randomly generated with enough entropy is what's pointless theatre. A secure password is secure, esp. If you're already using a password manager then the act of changing isn't meaningfully increasing your security (unless you're aware that your password was compromised) because the way to compromise it is what...? Having a keylogger on a device you logged in on? Then the changed password will be just as compromised
So then you know that you have been rooted => If that fails to resolve it.
Reduce the number of vectors to know what you have to change asap. in this scenario you don't want to be guessing about how they did it.
The randomised gibberish just means you can rule out certain things. I can agree on part of what your saying but a string high entropy password, makes it harder to brute..
Many services don't really do that whole retries thing properly. So make it take as long as possible.
If you don't use a random gibberish your password can be cracked on any consumer device in a surprisingly short amount of time...
This way you can then focus on that a session token is probably how they got in.. It's the most common vector these days...