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FBI cyber cop: Salt Typhoon pwned 'nearly every American'

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287 points Bender | 5 comments | 30 Aug 25 12:43 UTC | HN request time: 1.199s | source
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michael1999 ◴[30 Aug 25 15:52 UTC] No.45075658[source]▶
The security community warned that making Lawful Access easy and automated would guarantee that bad people would penetrate the network.

And now we have China using CALEA-crippled systems to slurp up the entire USA network. Exactly as predicted.

And this - "outside of the norms of what we see in the espionage space" - LOL. ROTFL even. The NSA tapped Google's backbone! Have we forgotten Room 641A? MAINWAY? Poindexter and TIA? Palantir?

The NSA used to play defence and offence, and has gone full-offence for a generation. Did anyone really believe that only the USA could play offence?

Morons.

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tempodox ◴[30 Aug 25 16:58 UTC] No.45076126[source]▶
Maybe this idiocy could be explained by the idea that the powers that be are more afraid of their own citizens than of any foreign threat.
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1. michael1999 ◴[30 Aug 25 22:26 UTC] No.45078535[source]▶
I wish. They are mostly dumb racists who believe you can invent magic encryption that only white Americans can crack.
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2. godelski ◴[31 Aug 25 04:17 UTC] No.45080339[source]▶
Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to stupidity.

Does anyone here think even a decent portion of government officials are tech literate? (I'm not even convinced half of hacker new or half of programmers are tech literate! Instead only have basic literacy and high confidence) There's a few, but I'm not convinced it's that many. The vast majority of Congressmen don't even have an aid who specializes in tech. So do you think it takes any more than someone at the NSA saying "it's encrypted and only we can access it" for them to believe in this magic key? (And this is something we've seen NSA officials say)

Remember, in the senate only 12 members are under 50, 33 are 60-69, and 33 are over 70! In the house 20% are over 70, 43% over 60, and 70% over 50. Only 8% are under 40. Almost none of these people have ever programmed. Just think about how tech illiterate the average 20 year old is (even worse on a technology subreddit!) and we're talking about.

Come on guys. It's a choice between stupid old people and hyper intelligent deep state actors that are acting idiotically. I'd put money on aliens before I'd put money on the later

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3. figassis ◴[31 Aug 25 06:27 UTC] No.45080847[source]▶
You can get aides so I’m not worried about their ages. Problem is how do you convince a competent tech aide to work for them at crap salary vs a tech company? Maybe get part time aides? Or just pay for some consulting hours?
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4. godelski ◴[31 Aug 25 06:45 UTC] No.45080930{3}[source]▶

  > You can get aides so I’m not worried about their ages.

  >> The vast majority of Congressmen don't even have an aid who specializes in tech.
The problem is aids cost money. I happen to have a senator with one, and actually had a long conversation with them. The main difference with my senator? They have way more aids than most other senators. I'll admit, I'm mostly going off of his word, but it doesn't seem all that trivial to check who the aids are or even how many. All I can seem to find is that the average number of staff members is around 30 and that's definitely not all domain expert aids.

What they also told me is that most of the expert advice tends to come through lobbying. Or "industry relationships" as he put it while using air quotes. It's a budgeting problem, not just that it is hard to get a competent tech aid at such a low salary but even just a handful of domain expert aids in the first place.

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5. figassis ◴[31 Aug 25 12:46 UTC] No.45082759{4}[source]▶
I see, that's interesting that there is not a budget allocated for, say, X aides per senator, that they can hire and dismiss based on their current needs. I also see how "industry" takes advantage, because their expert advice costs $$$ but is fully subsidized by the lobbying budget. Govt can't compete, but some rules and a sustainable budget can solve this problem.