Wow. Sometimes you'll see a think piece about how a director will call attention to certain parts of the frame (dressing the main character in vibrant clothing and extras in drab clothing for a New York sidewalk scene, for example). This is like that. No question about who the main character is in that shot.
amateur cinematography thoughts here, you've got a few things that make her stand out... First, the other guys are just standing around static. Second, there's three other people all going the opposite direction. Third, she's the only movement or person going away from the capitol in the shot. Additionally, in a crowd mostly composed of men who generally resemble the guys standing around, she's the only person in a skirt. The zebra print bag is also unusual for the environment.
And, she is moving in a hurry. Like if you showed that to me without context and asked "what do you think she's doing?" I would likely think she is trying to carry something away by how she's holding the bag close to her midsection. Is the correct term for this "conspicuous af"?
It’d be very easy for a foreign agent to sneak in with the crowd. In one of the latter videos on that thread, it looked like she was directing/encouraging people to push forward.
With everyone filming everything all the time, I've always wondered just how fully we can capture all that is happening in a given place. Capitol events shows that in a situation like that, you can almost pick any person, and with enough effort, perhaps find everything that happened to them at any given time.
I'm going to hazard a guess and posit that Speaker Pelosi uses something like a Yubikey. The Obama campaigns used them [1]. They weren't invented yesterday. Speaker Pelosi takes security very seriously.
The fed were tipped off by an ex. The most telling part of the terrorist attack on the capital is how many family members, coworkers, and acquaintances couldn’t wait to turn them in. There was a story this morning about a wife turning in her husband for threatening to shoot their children if the children “snitched.”
Why does it feel like whenever these nimrods do something really really stupid or really really atrocious, there is always people coming out of the woodwork and trying to show that if you squint really hard while looking at the situation through a TV playing Fox or OAN you will find some part of it that's maybe possibly could be explained as something being off (but still requires a massive conspiracy)?
Like, what's more likely that this woman became radicalized by watching propaganda all day every day and in a misguided attempt to be a patriot committed a crime? Or that there is some massive web that at every turn explains why it's never the alt right's fault? Remember the 75 year old that was pushed down by the police in Buffalo, NY and cracked his skull on the pavement? Well if you believe some, he was wearing a blood sac in his mouth and there was a little tube you can kinda see in the video that allowed him to squirt the blood out and make it look like he was hurt. Someone legitimately tried to argue this with me, in an in-person discussion. And let's break it down:
1. Police officers that pushed him were either in on it, I guess with some ulterior motive to make themselves look bad, or were comically bad at showing any evidence or giving testimony that there was a blood sac.
2. The first responders that came didn't notice the lack of wound or the fake blood, or were also all in on it.
3. The bystanders did the same as above.
4. The probably at least a dozen hospital staff that interacted with the man in the multiple days that followed when he stayed in the hospital all ignored the fact that we wasn't actually hurt.
5. The hospital had him stay there for multiple days for no reason because, you know, our hospitals here are really awesome about letting people just stay if they aren't sick/hurt.
6. The multiple reporting crews that came to see him all failed to notice that he wasn't hurt.
7. The entire video is a deep fake or filmed in a controlled environment and none of it was real.
How hard do you have to squint to believe that any of the above is possible? And that's one story of thousands, each of which has an explanation as simple as "crisis actors" or "antifa staged it" or "false flag".
And back to the original assertion, what about the woman whose daughter tipped off the FBI? What about the siblings? Does everyone have a conflict of interest and we should dismiss all these cases because of them despite the photo and video evidence we have?
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've unfortunately been doing a ton of that, and if it keeps up we're going to have to ban you.
People that are unhinged in their view of reality enough to think that they're going to just
- Take a week off work
- Book a hotel room
- Board a plane
- Take down the government
- Fly home
- Go back to work
People who think that can be integrated into "just another day" are likely unhinged enough that they'd become violent when "challenged" at home on much smaller issues
This is going to be a major generalization here, but "they aren't sending their best". One of the people at the riots was flying two flags: a US flag and a Georgia flag below that. That is Georgia the country, because he didn't think to check what the state's flag actually looks like. These people walked for an hour between the two ropes in the Statuary Hall. These people took selfies while committing multiple federal felony crimes.
I don't know how this relates to domestic abuse, but it certainly points to few people there using their brains to full capacity.
Pretty much every Islamic terror attack in Australia (which is a small sample, I know) involves domestic abuse as a pre-cursor, for example. The links between misogyny and Islamic extremist groups are pretty well-documented.
Given the degree to which research suggests that a similar current exists in right-wing extremism in the US[1], it's not a reach.
One of the reasons why a blanket full disk encryption policy and encrypted data-at-rest policy is needed in large organizations. Laptops go missing and get stolen all the time.
Or even small organizations, or individuals. Our phones storage is uniformly encrypted by default now and have been for several years. There's absolutely no reason that Windows installs and Linux distros should offer unencrypted storage as anything but a hidden option for experts.
That said: there's no particular reason to think this laptop wasn't encrypted.
Because it doesn’t matter to most people outside of a business setting. Forgetting your password and losing your backup key is a bigger risk especially some backup drive of pictures/videos.
I think best practices will emerge eventually, that strike a balance. Like having a password but writing it down and putting it in an offsite safe deposit box. Or maybe something based on shamir's secret sharing.
We need to see a lot of failures (both failing open and closed) and do postmortems before one strategy is recognized as winner, that's what I believe.
You can always store disk encryption password in iCloud or Microsoft account. Actually, macOS and Windows don't even allow you to enable disk encryption, without either storing the password in a cloud/filesystem, or printing it out.
Of course, this doesn't help you if the police or the government is after you, but that's irrelevant for 99,99+% of people.
Just an anecdote, but I installed Debian on my laptop two years and I was impressed with how easy full-disk encryption with LUKS was to setup. All it took was checking the box and creating a password. No issues so far! It definitely does seem like something that could be opt-out rather than opt-in.
> There's absolutely no reason that Windows installs and Linux distros should offer unencrypted storage as anything but a hidden option for experts.
People unfortunately have been coddled by consumerism, or are coddled by job titles like "director" and "officer", and expect to be able to get passwords reset and access recovered by someone if they forget.
The correct way to do disk encryption is to not store the password anywhere, and define total loss of data as acceptable if the password is unknown. This puts vendors and subordinate-to-revenue-generation IT departments in a bad situation if a customer forgets their password and suddenly loses years' worth of family photos, small-business tax documents, etc.
> Our phones storage is uniformly encrypted by default now and have been for several years.
Only because phone storage is basically unimportant - most people sync everything (either of their own volition or via OS provider or via apps) from their phone to multiple cloud services and then the benefits of encryption-at-rest are honestly only their to protect and enforce the local app store and payment apps.
> subordinate-to-revenue-generation IT departments
If your company is large enough to have an IT Department, even if it's just one person with a sufficient amount of clue, they should know how to set up FDE with a recovery key manually stored in a secure location (even printed on a piece of paper locked in a safe of the CEO, or something).
I did this for my moms work when I was a teen. I didn't really know what I was doing but I figured it out. Backup keys in the fire safe. It all went smoothly.
Then a month later HQ relented because too many branches couldn't figure it out. These were financial advisors offices, in the days when client data was stored locally. Brokers being too lazy to enter the passphrase trumped information security I guess.
I don't really know how the "enterprise" solutions work, but I imagine they get the disk decryption key from AD or something, and thus the IT support team can "reset" disk encryption.
There are a variety of threat models, and whether or not this is acceptable depends on the worry that you have. If you are concerned that the IT department is going to decrypt executives' laptops and leak confidential information, then this isn't a good model. But if you're merely concerned that someone leaves their laptop in an airport, it's fine -- whoever picks that laptop up and resells it won't hack your directory system and be able to decrypt it.
A long memorized passphrase that only one person knows is the best possible way to prevent unauthorized access, but that isn't necessarily the problem that you're trying to solve with disk encryption.
> I don't really know how the "enterprise" solutions work, but I imagine they get the disk decryption key from AD or something, and thus the IT support team can "reset" disk encryption.
They don't get it from AD so much as Group Policy can be configured to have the device store the key in AD, but otherwise yes that's how it works.
>People ... expect to be able to get passwords reset
I think it works like that with Apple. When I turned on encryption it says do you want the key stored in the icloud thing and presumably in a locked out situation I get on to Apple to get it. Seems quite a good solution.
Indeed, the first thing I thought of when I saw this headline was the pair of clueless hustlers in the movie awkwardly trying to pitch what they believe to be a CD-R of classified information in the visitors area of the Russian embassy.
> According to the affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the FBI received a tip from someone who stated they were a former romantic partner of Williams.
> The tipster said Williams “intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service,” the affidavit stated.
> According to the tipster, “the transfer of the computer device to Russia fell through for unknown reasons and Williams still has the computer device or destroyed it,” the affidavit stated. The investigation remains open.
I can’t help but feel great curiosity as to what’s on that laptop. If it was anything important I think the government would be reacting far more aggressively. In my opinion it matters less the documents on the system, than what might be contained in emails or chat transcripts.
House speaker is 2nd in line for the president, and she has the highest security clearance in the government and is briefed on all major intelligence / national security operations -- although I doubt any of that was on this computer.
The house decides the budget for the entire federal government (so black budgets, NSA, etc.) and most of their work is public, but at least some of it is classified and other parts are politically sensitive.
Imagine the use of the word deplorable to describe certain people. This would be then used in an election campaign to favor an opposition candidate who would vote against Russian sanctions.
I don't understand why they say "to Russians" or "to the Russians" instead of "to Russian intelligence". It's like being Russian is the crime itself. They wouldn't write "tried to sell the computer to Jews".
Taking it that you aren't trolling (which I'm not certain you aren't) ignorance is an excuse. It is not a good excuse when knowledge is common but it is a great excuse when knowledge is uncommon (as is the case here, at least to Americans). Unless you expect everyone to be omniscient then this is exceedingly disingenuous and will just lead to people thinking you're being a jerk.
The other part I need to add is that this is also how we typically talk. "The British...", "The Irish...", "Americans...", etc. I'll admit that we could have more nuance and better communication by being more specific but what is stated here follows the Cooperative Principle[0][1]. It is implied in all these examples that what is meant is the government of the country and not the people of the country. Typically we'd say interpreting it as the latter would be in bad faith. Not that people don't do this (and that this isn't becoming more common) but that this is how people typically use language.
But if you're trying to just get people to yell at one another and feel angry (i.e. trolling) I'd ask that you please take your comments elsewhere because that's not the environment we are trying to create at Hacker News.
In this case, the accusation is that she literally wanted to sell the laptop to some Russian acquaintances, with the assumption that they would handle the secondary sale to the Russian government.
> They wouldn't write "tried to sell the computer to Jews".
From the article - “intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service"
Maybe that friend weren't ethnically russian, no one cares, the point is that it sounds more villainous.
Their national affiliation is the salient point, and there's no way in hell she'd successfully make contact directly with a Russian intelligence agent. They work through civilian operatives, so your replacement would be incorrectly specific.
Your example doesn't apply, because "Jews" is an ethnicity and "Russians" is a nationality.
They're both, heck you can even be a russian jew and a citizen of some other country that is not Russia. The English doesn't make a difference. Here's one kind of Russian peoples that are not ethnically russians but the majority are citizens of Russia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatars
Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait to HN, regardless of how strongly you disagree with or feel about something. It leads to significantly lower-quality discussion. Perhaps you don't owe them better, but you owe this community better if you're posting here.
"you can make *ignorant* people believe just about any message if you deliver it a certain way and often enough."
I don't want to be 'that guy' but even smart and well informed people can be manipulated with the right techniques. Anyone can be manipulated and none of us should ever think we are immune. We're all human.
Furthermore the belief that I, a smart and well informed person, am immune to manipulation is a vulnerability those seeking to manipulate you can exploit.
You're right of course. We're all susceptible. I still maintain that ignorance is the dry kindling to misinformation's fire, while a well-educated populace is more like damp log.
While I agree that everyone can be manipulated and we should never consider us immune to manipulation, I would still argue that certain groups of people are more easily manipulated.
I doubt anyone thinks that, expect that some people who say they are patriots believe that Pelosi is acting detrimentally when it comes to the common good in America. That is a reasonable criticism in general. Politics involves a great deal of claiming that someone else’s policies are detrimental. No one would claim Putin is “more aligned”, only perhaps less of a danger. They may also believe that Putin is at least instrumentally better for Russia than Pelosi is due America.
Can we say "the Russian government" or "the Russian secret services" or something similar? Why always this tone with the Russians, the Russians are wonderful people, like everyone else trying to live their lives with the hand they were dealt. Am I the only one that sees how offensive this trope is to about 150 million people?
While I agree with your general sentiment, in this specific case the person appeared motivated to literally just sell the laptop to some Russian people, with the expectation that they had the ability to resell the laptop to the Russian government.
The people who broke into the Capitol and stole things are not the smartest or most well-connected people.
More details are available in some of the court docs that are floating around the internet. The entire situation is stunningly disconnected from reality.
The frightening bit is that in their "reality", the deep state with the help of Communist Party of China (or are they lizard people?) stole the election, the judges are part of the theft, MSM is just lying to the brainwashed masses, etc, etc. And that they're the patriots trying to save the country.
The funny bit is how they're crying that it's China (oops, I mean, Chinese government) who's controlling Biden. Why couldn't it be Putin? Is it because the Russians (oops, I mean, Putin) are their friends now? Or that they subconsciously know that Trump was Putin's poorly-trained lapdog?
>The people who broke into the Capitol and stole things are not the smartest or most well-connected people.
Imagine you stole Putin's personal laptop, the secret special one with no password that he hides under his pillow. If you email info@state.gov and offer to sell it to them, it auto-replies with a warrant. They'll definitely take it, but they will not pay for it.
Better to sell it to some random American who thinks they won the lottery.
Edited to add: I guess a Russian warrant wouldn't mean much in the article's case. She basically paid a premium to not deal with a government.
Edited to add: best to not steal it in the first place, obviously. Obviously don't steal state secrets, don't loot your capitol, and just be cool.
I'm trying to get into her headspace so I can understand her. I think what she did was bad.
I’m Syrian-American and I hate it when people say “the Syrians” when they really mean the barbaric Assad regime. I do, however, think it’s more out of stupidity than malice; it stems from a statist worldview rather than an intentional desire to demonize the people subject to a given state’s rule.
I agree that saying "the Syrians" feels incorrect, but how do you feel about saying just the name of the country as shorthand for the country's government? For example
America donated fidget spinners to Syra
vs
The American government donated fidget spinners to the Syrian government
(but not 'The Americans donated fidget spinners to the Syrians')
I'm pretty sure we all know that the ultimate consumer of something like this is not a Russian neighborhood bread store owner, but the Russian government. I don't think it needs to be said to be understood.
Well, this language isn't useful, a Russian friend of mine, who is quite modern, not a fan of Putin or anything, said she'd prefer Trump to win, because Biden said "Russians are our enemy" (not sure if Biden actually said that, and even if he said "Russian government", the media could've edited "government" out of that quote).
Unless you're Joe Biden, you don't... but if he or his admin wants to not alienate the ordinary Russian people, he should emphasize "Russian government" or Putin and make sure the media notices what he's saying.
As an American living in Russia, not really. Russian people overall have a very positive attitude towards the US and Americans and are able to differentiate people from their government. Even the official Russian propaganda (Channel 1, etc) has a less harsh depiction of America compared to how US media portrays Russia. All the Russia hate in the US right now doesn't even make an effort separate the politics from the people, which is really disappointing.
You are living in a bubble. General prevailing opinion of Americans - the proverbial stereotype - is that they are arrogant cowboys, and that being put mildly. You ain't likely to hear that directed at you, but it slips through the cracks all the time. You just need to pay a bit closer attention.
Most people tend to be able to differentiate individuals from paper-thin stereotypes. Sure we get exposed to stereotypes all the time, but when you get to know people you see through that.
Most people behave differently too, once you really get to know them.
Your claim about the prevailing opinion is not what is being discussed here which is how regular Americans are portrayed in Russian media, which is favourably.
I don’t fully understand your statement, but I spent 5 years in Canberra and regularly deal with government. I think the stereotypes are exaggerated, but do exist to some eccentric (think: ABC’s Utopia, as opposed to bogans muttering ‘the gubbament don’t do nuffin’) to be fair I think our gov gets caught in big organisation syndrome.
Canberra people are in general, awesome. Little art/fashion culture compared to other cities, but per capita are the most educated people. That doesn’t fix the nightlife situation though :P
I have read that in the 1930s, the city of Rome, Texas, sent a letter to the New York Times to protest that it was not the Rome that had just invaded Ethiopia. I guess this could be an apocryphal story.
"Can we say "the American government" or "Central Intelligence Agency" or something similar? Why always this tone with the Americans, the Americans are wonderful people, like everyone else trying to live their lives with the hand they were dealt. Am I the only one that sees how offensive this trope is to about 330 million people?"
Why do you have to be so obtuse? Everyone with some common sense knows that in a political context, “the Russians” means the Russian state. Any support from the general Russian populace is secondary (though not entirely unrelated since the state is generally a product of its society). I refuse to believe that you don’t understand this to be the case.
Unfortunately everyone doesn't know. I live in Russia and am constantly having to explain to people in the US that yes, you can own property, start a business, not everyone is an alcoholic who fights bears etc there. Americans understanding of modern Russia is often very much out of date.
> yes, you can own property, start a business, not everyone is an alcoholic who fights bears etc there
Not American, but as the only Russians i met were "security detail" from Crimea and as my mother used to help Georgians exiles between 2005 and 2015, i would put asterisk everywhere in your sentence except at "who fight bears".
Do you also tell them that all ISPs are obliged to route all traffic via government servers and if some FSB general likes the successful business you started it will be taken by him easily?
I've heard some stories and no doubt there are problems. My point is that Americans have a pretty poor understanding of what modern Russia is like. They either think it's still a grey communist dystopia or the crazy 1990s (Adidas track suits and mafia).
The same appiles to "the Chinese". Heck, just look what happened to Asian Americans here at the beginning of the pandemic, when all we knew was that the virus started in China. "Kung Flu" and stuff, some people are just plain retarded.
Legally speaking: Breaking and entering a federal government building, stealing information, conspiring with a foreign national to sell the information to a foreign state intelligence service.
I think life sentences have been handed out for smaller forms of treason...
Yeah under US law I think you'd have to giving the info to a nation the US was at war with for it to be treason. That came up a bit in the whole Trump Russia collusion debate.
i have the impression that most people that rioted just got carried away. it’s easy to do crazy things if you join a mob. however the 3 letter agencies will make sure they all get heavy jail time. it’s one thing to hate on the president but now it’s serious.
Yep! Likely broke off the relationship because she is some combination of dangerous/crazy - partners know a lot of the crazy stuff you've done and not been caught for.
If people are to be judged by the assertions of their jilted former lovers then we are all in for a very bad time.
Any time there is a headline with a very serious and inflammatory claim, like the one above, you would do well to scroll down past the hyperbole and look for the evidence offered (if any) for such a serious charge. The only evidence cited by this article in this accusation of a series of treasonous felonies is purportedly an accusation by an ex-lover. Unfortunately the level of mania is so frenzied in the country right now that rational thought is out the window. Especially concerning to see on Hacker News, where presumably necessary skepticism and critical thinking would be in higher supply.
You mean except for the fact that her participation in the invasion of our capital, attempted overthrow of our government, and theft of intelligence was live streamed for literally the entire nation to see.
The only assertion we are relying on from the ex for is the fact that after committing multiple felonies on camera she was planning to commit one more.
Furthermore although she is entitled to assumption of innocence in a court of law we are required to provide nothing of the sort.
If he was merely trying to get back at her why not just turn her in for all the crimes we saw on camera. The simplest explanation is that he is telling the truth.
There is video of her leaving the Capitol. Look, if you commit murder but your ex is the witness that points to irrefutable evidence of your guilt, do you get a free get out of jail card because your ex and you aren't together anymore?
It's a stolen laptop, there's physical evidence. And she's on camera in the capitol. Seems like we're judging her on a lot more than just the "assertion" of her "jilted former lover".
I mean, this guy's tip that she had the laptop turned out to be correct! But you're saying trusting him about her intent to sell it to Russia demonstrates a lack of "skepticism and critical thinking"?
