Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Burglary in the Senate
earthworm2 writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee have spied on confidential Democratic files for a year, studying their strategies and passing on the juicy bits to the media."
Let's see how they like "terrorism" charges brought aginst themselvs.
"A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password."
This is actually scary news for Americans!
DrkBr
If I leave the door to my house unlocked it isn't an invitation for people to come in. It may be dumb but anyone coming in is still trespassing.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Preach one thing, practise another!
Tell everyone that you're all for fair play, an even playing field for everyone but then read other people's confidential memos to gain an unfair advantage. How sleazy is that?
I wonder what Republicans who thought Bill Clinton getting a blowjob was worthy of impeachment have to say about Senators and their staffs committing crimes punishable by up to a year in prison?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
not everyone on /. adheres to that juvenile interpretation of the hacker ethos.
besides, this isn't the same. if you correctly interpret the 2600 definition of hacking, the GOP folks should have disclosed the security vulnerability, not exploited it for their own benefit.
Step 3 is optional because it assumes cluefulness on the part of political leadership, which I wouldn't want to assume. But there are some tech-savvy members of Congress (surely!) who might understand the honeypot concept.
I worked down in the Pentagon for two and a half years. I thought I had a really good grip on political machinations, having read a lot of polysci theory and having always been marginally decent at manipulating people. When I got down to Arlington I realized that the political power players are like sharks in a vast tank full of guppies.
I couldn't even believe the level of shit that people were capable of doing, willing to do, and doing every day to advance their careers and positions. A clever honeypot trick like this wouldn't be a wondrous masterstroke to top off someone's career - it'd be a move executed before they finished breakfast!
Sometimes I'm really upset by our divisive and angry Two Party System; it seems like nothing ever gets done. Other times I am very, very grateful that the government is not one gigantic unified son of a bitch, because then all those manipulative, controlling and totally evil tendencies would be aimed squarely at me.
Having clearly marked opponents gives them something to aim for and exert their energy upon.
they are all corrupt.
Interesting how we are supposed to trust a government that doesn't trust itself, eh?
Gah. I'm moving to Emland. It's a small island off the coast of your imagination. Right next to the Citgo, across the street from the Chinese takeout/wireless internet cafe/pizzaria/gas station/home depot/Publix.
Bah.
Sent from your iPad.
I don't remember anyone going to jail when Clinton illegally pulled the FBI records of some 500+ Republicians...
Not that it makes this right, but let's face it, since Watergate this kind of stuff has been happening with both sides and nobody has been punished yet.
Finkployd
Source code wants to be free (or so thinks 95% of the /. readership -- disclaimer: I'm part of that 95%), but I think you'd take an entirely different approach when you start talking about private memos.
If I access your computer and steal your private journals or letters to your sweetheart and leak them to the media is that "freeing information"? And don't go saying that they deserved it because it wasn't password protected (according to the article the techie neglected to put a password on the documents) -- if I steal handwritten letters to/from your sweatheart out of an unlocked filing cabinet does that make it ok?
The truely disgusting part about all of this is that the "Liberally-biased media" (in the eyes of Fox News and all the Conservative pundits) probably won't even pick up on this -- think we'll be seeing this on CNN or MSNBC anytime soon? I doubt it. Imagine the uproar if the Dems got caught doing something like this....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake
That wasn't a computer malfunction. The computer and the software worked exactly like the way they were supposed to work.
According to the article, the Republicans claim to have informed the Democrats about it along time ago. However, the Democrats say they were never told.
Since both parties are stinkin liars, I don't think you can believe either story.
> Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary
> Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year,
> monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically
> passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The
> Globe.
> Novak is also at the center of an investigation into who
> leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose husband
> contradicted a Bush administration claim about Iraqi
> nuclear programs.
So, Novak leaks the name of a CIA operator for political gain to hide the fact that Bush lied about Iraq trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons. Then he blows the cover of a CIA front operation to further his story. Why isn't this guy in jail?
More importantly, some Republicans keep doing crazy stuff like this. We still don't know which "senior Bush official" leaked the info to Novak, and Bush seems uninterested to find out who committed this crime. The Republicans have been desperate to bury Watergate's effect on their image, but stuff like makes it alive and well.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
So if I follow your logic correctly, since P2P music sharing is OK electronic espionage between political parties is permitted. Not exactly a tight chain of reasoning.
Let's assume for a moment that Senators and/or their staffers were illegally accessing systems that they were not supposed to be gaining entry to.
Using the same Draconian laws that they themselves enacted, these people could end up serving hard time for their deeds, losing their rights to privacy, vote and carry a gun. That and losing their jobs and pensions, not to mention medical benefits, etc. In other words, as felons, they become no-ones.
That to me, is the definition of irony.
You got'a love it! when anyone else looks at files they should not be looking at, it is "criminal hacking" when they look at the same stuff it is called "glitch" :)))
Ah. I see. Because it's commonly done by both parties, that makes it okay, and we can just ignore it.
Louis Freeh, the source that you're quoting authoritatively, is also the FBI Director who misallocated funds and agents to investigate Clinton's WhiteWater scandals.
In case you weren't familiar with those, the WhiteWater scandals were shown to be completely baseless. As a matter of fact, several independent government agencies acquitted the Clintons of wrongdoing from the very beginning. Despite this, Freeh continuned to play up to his Republican buddies in Congress.
While we're meditating on this era, let's remember the outrageous scandals that neo-conservatives used to ruin a great presidency.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
By want, I assume that you meant took. Maybe yes, maybe no.
But when you competitor does, it's pretty clear that it's theft.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Look it up: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=burglary
Trespassing *is* burglary, if you have is the intent to commit a felony (specific conditions vary by state). Given the possibility of jail time quoted in the article, this was a felony.
> the Republicans claim to have informed the Democrats
> about it along time ago.
Reminds me of that scene in the Simpsons when Bart and Lisa are arguing about hockey. Bart starts swinging his arms saying, "I'm going to swing my arms like this, and if you get hit, it's your own fault".
Simple point: these Republicans had no business digging through anyone's files. Saying, "oh, by the way, we've got access to some stuff that you don't want us to see. Hope you fix your security breach soon, or we're liable to dig through your stuff again!" isn't much of an excuse.
Unless these Republicans would like us to just assume from now on that they have no ethics and act accordingly.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
This is the political equivalent of an insider trading scandal or other form of corporate crime. Those who care about the law want it to be prosecuted to its full extent. However, everyday people look at corporate crooks or corrupt Republicans stealing Democratic memos off the network and think, "Damn! I wish I had gotten away with that!"
In this situation, the Republicans come away looking like the sly rogues who "got away with it," and the Democrats look like beleasguered victims... and at the end of the day, most people would rather be the victimizers than the victims, and thus will identify with the Republicans.
The law is, if it's meant to be secure (whether or not it actually is being immaterial) then accessing that information without permission is a major felony.
So, when will we see the perps in prison? Not that Whitewater, this-is-just-a-camp-with-a-fence type prison, but a real-live fuck-you-in-the-ass type prison? (Probably never.)
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Republicans cannot be trusted.
It seems like this should be a major scandal. The theft of confidential and private files is not small beans. There's hardly any information about it on the major news sites, however. Looking on Google News, I was able to find a few articles from small publications. I didn't see anything on www.cnn.com, www.msnbc.com, or news.bbc.co.uk.
There's a reply up there about "this is business as usual", but I can't think of any possible excuse or mitigating of extenuating circumstances for this sort of crime. Saying that "well it's been done before" certainly doesn't make me feel any better about it.
It's hard enough to take our government, and my role in it, seriously. Blowing off this kind of scandal certainly doesn't help.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Not sure I saw much outcry when someone posted internal memos from Diebold?
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
Translation: "I didn't do it, but even if I did you couldn't prove I did anything wrong."
Now we see the moral *squishiness* of the individuals involved. If these files had been national security documents (government documents) or salary action documents (also government documents), would Miranda still claim that they were open season for anyone who wanted to read them?
Does anyone still believe that the USA Patriot Act will be used exclusively for criminal investigations?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Allow me to coin the inevitable term for this Republican crime: "CyberGate". This time, we should be even more freaked out than in 1972. The stakes are higher now, with the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions on the line, even worse backfire threats than Vietnam. And more importantly, Republicans cracking the Democratic Senate files and leaking them to the press demonstrates their predatory menace to the privacy and security of all Americans, all people in the world. In the shadow of Nixon's Watergate breakin to spy on the Democrats in his 1972 reelection campaign, and their bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the 1972 Democratic convention, this obvious pattern of criminal behavior at the top of the Republican Party is intolerable. Senators should be jailed, GOP party heads should be jailed under RICO as mafia. Otherwise, the Republican mafia juggernaut will barrel through every hall of justice, leaving nothing but destruction.
--
make install -not war
Ahh, good old NewsMax. Now, there's a reputable and unbiased source for news, comparable in every way to the Boston Globe (est. 1872)
How would libtarianism deal with powerful civilian organisations like Microsoft?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
So they are "government documents" but not "official business." And it's not stealing because they were "disclosed" by someone making a mistake setting up security. You heard it straight from the Senate Majority Leader's staff: If a sysadmin mistake allows you to get into a system, then everything in the system is freely "disclosed" and there's no penalty for copying it.
Also, documents can be "government" but not "official" - presumably the Republican Party is the only "official" government by now?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Some people consider this to be like Watergate, but I see it as far worse. The original Watergate crime was a single breakin relating to a political campain, this has to do with private internal discussion of Senators about matters of government. Ok, sure there might have been some real partisan politics mixed in, but the Republican staffers would have had to wade through a lot of messages to get to the parts they wanted to publish. I don't think that it's treason, but it's damn near.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Oh just let him hang on to the illusions drawn by the liberal media.. [sarcasm]
I say if the media is so liberal, why doesn't it attack everything Bush does? Hell, I never even see anyone questioning anything.
I just want to know the status of a few things:
Where is my 9/11 report?
Where are the WMD?
What's the status of the anthrax investigation?
What's the status of the leak investigation?
I'm not disagreeing, just felt like bringing these up. This shit should be on the news, in the 45 minute loops, until the whole story is heard.
The current administration seems to have everyone so scared of terrorists, they've become distracted.
The fact that members of Congress and the President routinely usurp powers not granted to them (or even worse, explicitly denied to them) is criminal and is a direct violation of their oaths of office. The fact that we, the citizens of the US, have allowed them to do so without punishment, is shameful.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
If the files were supposed to be confidential, shouldn't they have been protected?
And if the Republicans are hackers doesn't that mean we should be supporting them??
Since information wants to be free and all.
You are probably trying to be funny, but what is not funny about this is if these computers were cracked by one of us and not a Republican staffer, these same Republicans would be howling for blood and nailing asses to walls. This is complete and total bullshit. There was a security problem that could be fixed and the Dems did not fix it. But the Republicans cracked their computers and shared confidential information. They broke the DMCA and several other anti-cracker laws in the process. Someone pointed out that the Dems have pulled this kind of thing as well, but two wrongs do not make a right. The staffers should be treated just as any other civilian would be in this case. And the Dem admin who refused to patch the machine should be fired and investigated to see if s/he is not part of this on the sly.
Some choice points from this article:
As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem.
Other staffers, however, denied that the Democrats were told anything about it before November 2003.
He said, she said. Regardless of the truth, the Republicans had no right to crack computers just because the potential for exploitation was there. Republican prosecutors and judges would never accept this as a defense for a cracking case, in fact they would laugh as they sent Mr. Cracker off to Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison and have done so repeatedly in similar cases. A cracker who informs his/her target of the potential exploit before using it to break into a computer is never afforded any kind of legal protection.
Reached at home, Miranda said he is on paternity leave; Frist's office said he is on leave "pending the results of the investigation" -- he denied that any of the handwritten comments on the memos were by his hand and said he did not distribute the memos to the media. He also argued that the only wrongdoing was on the part of the Democrats -- both for the content of their memos, and for their negligence in placing them where they could be seen.
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
Again, bollocks. These were confidential memos which were clearly meant only for their recipients, just like all office memos and business emails are. And I love the blame-the-victim here, where they try to put the blame on the Dems for having an exploitable computer. So by placing their confidential memos on a machine that can be cracked, they are in fact releasing this info to the public with no intellectual property rights (like copyright) asserted? Really? So if I crack the TIA computers that means the Republicans released the information for free into the public domain? The Microsoft Source that was stolen is actually legal, free, and clear? Can I get an affidavit from John Ashcroft to this effect?
All this adds up to prove that the Republicans' vaunted belief in the rule of law is complete bullshit. The party has been taken over by outlaws who seem to think the law does not apply to them. The fact that this kind of cracking can occur at the highest levels of government with NO investigation into prosecution leads directly to a determination of gross negligence on the part of Bush, since he is teh top cop in the country and it is his job to make sure the laws are enforced and obeyed, especially by the staff of his party members.
Morality and ethics aside - this is done everyday by both sides and is old news. It always surprises me how liberal the average Slashdot reader appears to be. Such a waste.
I can't believe you said such a thing. Morality and ethics aside? What sort of argument is that? Having expectations that government work in a smooth and orderly fashion, in a manner that will express the will of the people, is not a liberal position. Saying "morality and ethics aside" is like saying "notions of civilization aside". If being conniving, crooked and dishonest are your ideas of how a political philosophy should work, please point me to the other side.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Politicians work for themselves. People in power (such as in congress) have something to trade. They trade the power they have through control of government in return for things. They trade some of that power to the masses, in the form of "social services", redistribution of wealth, and sometimes just empty promises. In return, they get votes that allows them to stay in power.
They also trade some of that power to corporations and rich individuals in return (generally) for money so that they can buy votes so they can continue to get more power (or maintain the power they have).
A modern day witchhunt.
This isn't exactly a remote exploit, It is more like putting something on a public share that should have been on a private share.
Oh, really? So you know the exact nature of the computer glitch for a fact? Would you care to reveal your sources? Because the rest of us are pretty much guessing here. Or are you just pulling this out of your ass?
And I know that I have in bored times browsed around the various public shares at various workplaces and been appalled at the "private" information that was available.
I am sure that this is true. However, you are not supposed to be browsing around looking for unprotected shares to take data from. Even though you do not have to expoit any code flaws, you are exploiting other security flaws. Yes, doing this is illegal and it has been punished before. Yes, it does seem kind of silly. But basically when it comes to computers, or anything else for that matter, you are not suppose dto be browsing around where you do not have a legitemate right to be. To do otherwise is indeed wrong.
Even if this is what happened (perhaps the dems put this data in My Documents folders on public desktops running Windows 95 with those folders shared without a password!) it does not make the Republicans' accessing and use of the information kosher.
If any individual person (one of us, the slashdot reader, for instance) did something like this, we would be under investigation or arrest rather quickly. This is referred to in the media as "hacking". It doesn't matter one whit whether or not the victim was "wide open" or not. NOT have unbreakable defenses up on your computer does not make it A-OK for anyone to waltz on in and do whatever. It is considered a crime and many "hackers" have been prosecuted for this.
The Republicans are getting away with it. It is OK for them to do this but any human being (they aren't human) does the same thing and they're looking at jailtime.
Bullcrap! Say I. Equal enforcement of the law. Hacking into computers you do no own is considered a crime and it should be handled as such. It is obvious that Senator Hatch, hypocrit of all hypocrits, belongs in jail. His pukes did it (he probably thought it was cute and funny). How about I do it to his personal systems? Still funny? Still OK?
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
All these arguments about the Democrats being worse than the Republicans or the other way round is actually pointless. Saying, "But XXXX did that in 199x too" is a waste of time.
You guys in the US have a problem - both your major parties suck.
Plus, you've got all these unelected bureaucrats behind the scenes, holding tons of power for decades, pulling the strings etc. Heh in a Disney movie those bureaucrats would be the evil Grand Viziers.
Heh and the US electronic voting systems are a big joke. With those crappy systems, sending UN/independent observers to monitor your elections won't help at all.
While it sounds like the Dems' tech guy is missing his distro of Clue, I wonder... what if he/she left the backdoor open on purpose?
I fail to see what difference it would make. Whether the Democrats laid a trap or not, the Republicans would have still violated computer fraud statutes and behaved unethically.
The Republican behavior would be particularly reprehensible because they keep running on "values" and "ethics". Unlike blow jobs in the White House, which are amusing but otherwise irrelevant, stealing political strategy memos is something that cuts to the heart of ethics in politics. If these allegations are confirmed, they would show the people involved to be completely unethical, and I would hope they'd get thrown in jail for it and barred from public office.
The sad thing is there are very bright people who have already designed very good electronic voting systems.
;).
Whereas you'd be likely to get something a bunch of jokers whipped out in VB which can't even ensure that the total vote counts aren't negative. Already happened in the US.
Shouldn't it be treason to ship code of such low quality for _supposedly_ such a critical purpose?
But maybe it doesn't really matter - in many countries the choice is between Evil or Wicked. It's just to keep the people satisfied.
If you notice there's never a choice for "none of the above" or "reopen nominations".
Neither is there an option for a negative vote - you can't say "No". You can only vote for and never against. It'll be more useful if people could say No to candidates. That way you could actually win but have a net negative score. That'll be rather more useful than spoilt votes. Can't brag if that happens
This is just Watergate brought to the new millenium .... why should you be suprised .... only their spokespeople are slack jawed rednecks
The newsmax story is rather improbable, if illegal leaking had been going on Kenneth Starr would have investigated it. In fact the only illegal leaking going on was by Starr's office. It is somewhat unusual for a prosecutor to demand immuity from prosecution themselves as a condition of dismissing charges, yet that is exactly what Starr did.
I have a theory that GW Bush is trying to be the worst President in US history by repeating every one of the worst mistakes of his predecessors:
- Watergate break in = Republicans spy on Democrats
- Vietnam = Iraq
- Reagan era deficits = Bush era deficits
- Hoover recession = Bush recession
- 1876 vote fraud = 2000 vote fraud
- Isolationism = Go it alone unilateralism
- Tea pot dome = Enron, Halliburton, Harken, etc.
Some day the lapdog republican news media will suddenly realise that Bush has sold them down the river along with the rest of the country.Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Yup. Few people realize that other parties exist. (I think it's funny they're called third parties, all of them.) USians have been raised to belive that voting for a third party is "throwing your vote away." Personally, I think it's the other way around. In truth, I really don't mind a two party system -- it's just that the two parties currently in power suck.
People can't find a candidate they trust, so when it comes time to vote, they either vote for the party their parents voted for, or the cute one. Unfortunately, they don't recognize the third party candidates' names because the Two Parties have made laws that make it tough for third parties to raise funds for a decent campaign.
Maybe this year I'll do a write in. CmdrTaco, maybe?
Yeah, I hate 'em. My state uses those stupid Diebold machines. *shudder*
But the Republicans got their independant council, remember? Unlimited budget, years and years of investigation, and he found (gasp) Clinton lied about an affair under oath. Oh Jesus someone save us!
Someone in Bush's whitehouse compromises an agent whose mission involves intercepting terrorists trying to buy weapons of mass destruction, compromising a front company set up by the CIA for such purpose, and you think it is the same thing. Even if the accusations from your questionable source are true, at worst it is making public investigations by people on the outside: it is not stealing internal papers of Congressman. It is not compromising national security. I thought Republicans cared about fighting terrorism. I guess that is just when it involves giving away defense contracts. When it comes to something that could actually be effective, it just doesn't rise to the same level of importance does it?
Not to mention the whole lying to Congress about WMD thing. Lying to Congress vs lying about an affair in civil court: which matters more? But since Bush lied in only 17 words, it doesn't count, right? I guess "I did not have sex with that woman." doesn't count either; I mean that is only 8 words.
Some of the stuff your link is talking about is public record anyway. I don't see indication of breaking and entering to obtain said files there. Even just obtaining the files in this case, was done illegally.
No one said Republicans have a monopoly on corruption in Washington, but they sure have perfected it.
- it was publicly disclosed that they were leaked -- Slashdot didn't steal the memo and then secretly use it to undermine Microsoft -- and
- more importantly, the Microsoft memos weren't leaked due to a security exploit -- they were leaked, not stolen -- and
- the programming community hasn't made any secret about exploits in Microsoft's security when they are found.
The Republicans' responsibility was to report the security breach, and to not exploit it regardless of whether it was fixed. (Leaving your door unlocked may be stupid, but it does not make it legal or ethical for others to steal your things.)This incident is really quite different from the Halloween Memo; it's much more akin to Cliton allegedy breaching the FBI files of political enemies. IMO, that would actually have been a valid foundation for an impeachment case
Now as a network admin, I am in a position of trust. I can more or less poke around the system at will, read any files I'd like, and sift through everyone's email. While it is techically possible, if I were ever caught doing this I would be fired.
I'm not even sure I would get to clean out my desk.
This is not a matter of Joe Hacker forwards an internal memo. This is a matter of one competing faction within an organization abusing his or her access to a computer system. That is bad enough. They had to take it a step further and PUBLICIZE the information they found.
Joe Hacker is an outsider acting on his own. The Halloween memos and such, he has an informant on the inside. He may embarrass a company. He may steer a lawsuit. The worst damages are monetary.
Jane Insider, on the other hand, is committing betrayal. She is seeking to influence elections and the operations of government. All this while working for an elected official.
Both Joe and Jane should probably get an extended stay at Uncle Sam's Federal Resort. Joe for theft, Jane for treason. It doesn't matter WHAT party you are working for. You do not fold mutilate or spindle and elected official's documents.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
For those of you who didn't read to the bottom of the article, the guy who is supposed to have done this has said:
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule. Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
These were not password protected files, they were on a network available to any members of the Judiciary committee. When the Republican's first learned of this (both sides were affected by the mistake) they fixed their files and told the Democrats to do the same. When they didn't, they took advantage of it.
It was unethical, but the only worse thing in politics is to be incompetent. Think for a minute now, if these had been paper documents which had been left alone in a place where any Senator could get to them, there would be no story here except that the Dems screwed up.
What good is the freedom to be a wage slave?
Women have had the right to work, but after WWII the family requires both spouses to work in order to pay the bills. That's not really any great leap forward for, uh, womankind. And for society as a whole, it's a step backwards.
I think I'm a neotraditionalist. I would gladly be a stay-at-home dad. But in my hypothetical family of the future, we probably couldn't afford that.
Do you see what I'm saying? Not that women must be kept at home. I'm saying that in terms of economic power, both men and women are so degraded nowadays that both must work to make ends meet. That's regressive. In other words, men and women are exploited equally. That's no victory.
That newsmax article is absurd. The writing is horrible, the quotes are unattributed, and the analysis is the definition of bias.
So what? What's that got to do with the subject matter? You discount the news, without even trying to verify it, just because of the source?
Aw, for pete's sake! Do I have to spell EVERYTHING oput for you?
As I've read many times here on Slashdot every time someone comes to the defense of various enchroachments of civil liberties: "If the Democrats haven't done anything illegal, what have they to worry about?"
Wake up, for Christ's sake! This is how power given to the government is abused. It will always be abused, which is why we have to protect our privacy at all costs.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
...I am very, very grateful that the government is not one gigantic unified son of a bitch...
Realize that now one party controls the executive, legislative, and judicial branch of our government.
Do we have a Two Party System anymore? And if you think we still do, will we for very much longer?
Wouldn't have mattered much which operating system they were using. From the Article:
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password
Basically, someone screwed up, and as we know, computers will do exactly what you tell them to do, not necessarilly what you want them to do. Whether this thing was running Windows, Linux, or DOS, if the person setting up the system didn't secure the folders properly, they are going to be avilable to anyone. The only question is, if they were publicly available, was it really illegal, or wrong, for the Republicans to view them? Wrong, is probably easy to answer, it should have been obvious from the content of the files that they were meant to be confidential, but illegal is another story. It would seem that the Democrats did not take reasonable steps to ensure confidentiality, so can they really claim that the Republicans broke into thier system and stole the documents? Or is it just a case of the Republicans getting lucky because of this oversight?
And lastly, what ever happened to testing? If the tech had spent a few minutes logging in as different users, and checking that they couldn't get to specific places, this should have been found.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Yes. The U.S. Government is evil. No, I mean it, I'm not kidding. I don't think there's much that could have prevented it from becoming so, but that doesn't make it right.
Yeah, both the major parties suck. And there's probably more of a problem there than you realize, since it seems you don't live here. My problem is this: Most people (maybe 60%, 70% of people I encounter) say, "I'm a Republican," or "I'm a Democrat." Never "I'm an independent thinker who can make individual choices on individual issues." It's amazing to me how many people think that not quite agreeing with part of their chosen party's platform is some kind of moral dilemma. I also know about 12 people who will mindlessly vote Republican because the party doesn't support abortion -- to the extent that if a rare Rep. candidate was pro-choice, they wouldn't have paid enough attention to know that and would vote for said candidate anyway.
Yeah, the system itself is a problem, but the citizens as a whole support it very, very strongly. And they do it automatically, too -- their opinions are so ingrained it usually looks more like indoctrination than free thought.
Any economist will tell you that deficit spending is a standard prctice for the govt. to get out of a recession. It worked for Reagan and looks like it's working for Bush as well.
Any historian will tell you that declaring war is a standard prctice for the govt. to get out of a recession. It worked for the great depression and looks like it's working for Bush as well.
Any economist of any reputation will tell you that the promise of a tax cut in ten years time has negligible effect on the economy. Also a tax cut that benefits people with very high disposable income already has little effect since these people usually run out of things to buy long before they run out of money.
I could easily go out an buy a new car, but I would have nowhere to put it. I could have the kitchen redone if I wanted to put up with the house being a wreck for 6 months and the associated stress.
I don't think you will find many economists with credibility outside the far right who will claim that cutting inheritance tax stimulates the economy short term.
The Bush tax cuts were justified by claims that the Clinton surplus would stretch out as far as the eye could see. You can hardly claim that they are crafted to bring about a recovery from recession unless you are willing to admit that Bush and the admin are total liars.
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But the Republicans got their independant council, remember?
Actually, as I recall, the independent council statute was passed after Watergate by a Democrat-controlled Congress. That statute had an expiry date which lapsed in the '90s. There were independent council investigations on every US president from Ford through Clinton. Nobody wanted it to be renewed because it had been used by both parties to whip the other party's presidents. If your statement were true, then when the expiration period occurred, the Republicans would have brought it back, as they have since come to dominate both chambers. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
No one said Republicans have a monopoly on corruption in Washington, but they sure have perfected it.
Perfected? I don't recall people close to a Republican president finding themselves suicided. I have not heard of a poll being kept open in Chicago to ensure a Republican President had sufficient electoral votes to be elected. In my home state of Arkansas, I've not heard of the Republicans filing a last minute law suit before a court to ensure that certain polling areas were kept open after they were supposed to be closed. (This last number was perpetuated in Pulaski County, AR by the Dems because they alleged the polls weren't opened long enough, although a law is on the books that says that if people are in line to vote, the polls remain open for them to vote. Those that were informed to remain open were in heavily Democrat areas.)
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
You *DO* and *SHOULD* "discount news without even trying to verify it" if the "news" starts out its life with no credibility. See, "news" without basic credibility is "gossip" and giving gossip a venue into the social discourse is a very bad idea.
Without this filter, we would each have to spend hours each day dealing with the un-discounted accounts of Bigfoot Performing Dark Rituals with Aliens on their UFO's to cause Devil Boy to Possess retired woman's Toaster in Desmoins.
So yes, unattributed "quotes" about unsubstanciated ideas that belch forth from untrustworthy sources can, and indeed must, be assumed to be crap, and therefor safe to ignore.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
The idea is that a tax cut for the wealthy
means increased capital investment, which
results in improved productivity.
The problem with that theory on this go-round
is that the attractive investments are in
China, Thailand, and Malaysia, not in the U.S.,
so that the funds are flowing to improve
productivity where that improved productivity
is likely to maximize its profitable return.
And it ain't here, bubba.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-