@revelette2,
First a few notable excerpts:
Quote:The party’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had to step down after party officials were shown to have taken sides during the primaries.
Even the NY Times acknowledges that the DNC had done what it swore it hadn't. Why, though, would anyone be surprised by this? What is more surprising to me is the way Reince Priebus actually did manage to keep the RNC from throwing it's weight to one of the candidates. I think it's safe to say that for much of the primary season Reince and his underlings really didn't want Trump to come out the winner, but there's no evidence (or allegations) that the RNC actively supported one candidate over another. His major early accomplishment was to get Trump to sign the pledge to support the eventual nominee. A lot of people, including me, considered Trump taking the pledge to be about as binding for him as tissue paper, but I didn't expect "principled" men like Jeb Bush, John Kasich or even Ted Cruz to renege on the promise they fervently wanted Trump to make.
Quote:Mr. Segal said that the stolen data ( from Office of Personnel Management) included information on government employees’ sex lives, relationships, finances, contacts with foreign governments and a host of other private details.
The OPM keeps information on government employees' sex lives? Anyone else find this concerning?
I get why they would want to know if someone in a sensitive spot might be vulnerable to blackmail by a foreign government, but if they found they were, why would they go ahead and hire them or give them the post?
If it was decided to go ahead with the hire, why keep the information in a file? Irrespective of hacking threats, why would the government need to retain a file on an employee's sex life? My Goodness, it can't be because government officials liked the idea of having leverage over employees, could it? The back-ground checks may have been well intentioned, but the retention of the "dirt?"
Look, this kind of stuff has been going on as long as people have vied with one another for power in a process that precluded them from just killing each other.
American politicians, including those in governmental positions, have done it for a very long time. The only thing new about this is the way it plays out in the Digital Age.
1) Governments have means of obtaining and retaining massive amounts of very detailed data on their employees, and their citizens
2) Governments have the technological means of stealing all this data from thousands of miles away. No need for on the ground agents who might get caught.
I'm not sure why, but it's not gotten much attention that whomever hacked the DNC Server, stole data from their "Opposition Research" files aka
"Whatever dirt they could find on opponents." Both sides engage in this process, although the Dems seem much better at it than the GOP.
There is no reason to believe that the Russians wouldn't have been delighted to find "dirt" on Trump. For all we know, they could be using the hacked info to assist Trump in getting elected because they think they have more leverage on him that they would Clinton. I have no idea as to whether this is the case, it's speculation used to point out that the hack and the Wikileaks data dump is most likely part of a plan that goes far beyond simplistic reasoning like "Putin hates Hillary," or "Putin like Trump."
Finally this story underscores the need for better and better Cyber-Defense. Four Star General Jack Keane was on TV a couple of days ago telling his interviewer that the US is far and away the best Cyber-
Attacker in the world. He said Russia is second and China third. This actually is good to learn, however if we can't sufficiently defend ourselves against #'s 2 & 3, it's not that great an advantage. Having 1,000 more nukes than the other guy sounds great unless the other guy already has 50,000 of them. Unless the guy with 51,000 nukes can mount an effective defense against 50,000, the extra destructive power is fairly moot.
A largely impenetrable Cyber-defense is obviously not a simple thing to build or we wouldn't be seeing significant hacks of private and public sector systems every year.
However this doesn't mean, as as actually been argued by at least one pundit and one A2K member, that it doesn't really matter if the Secretary of State sent and received classified information on a private e-mail server with less protection than G-Mail. The incredibly ridiculous argument being that since the Russians seem to be able to break in everywhere, why bother to try and keep the stuff secret? To top it off, the argument was made that some canny folks in the State Department took to using private e-mail as a way to fool those nasty Russian hackers.
Defense of digital data is obviously a lot less easy than concocting crazy defenses for the gross negligence of one's choice for the next president.
