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Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn Had 'Forbidden' Internet Connection At the Pentagon, Says Report (businessinsider.com)
According to The New Yorker, President-elect Donald Trump's national security advisor, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, installed a secret internet connection into his office at the Pentagon even though it was "forbidden." Business Insider reports: The network connection was among other rules the former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency broke because he found them to be "stupid," including sometimes sneaking out of a CIA station in Iraq without authorization and sharing classified information with NATO allies without approval, according to The New Yorker. While Flynn -- who was recently tapped to be President-elect Donald Trump's national security adviser -- apparently had his own private connection, the New Yorker profile doesn't provide a clear picture as to why. It's likely his Pentagon office already had an authorized, unclassified connection to the internet called NIPRNet, which is separate from classified networks such as SIPRNet and JWICS, a former DIA analyst told Business Insider. All of those networks are monitored in some way. A separate, unknown network would not have had the same -- or possibly any -- level of monitoring. If it were implemented in secret, it would also not have the same protections from hackers that a known connection would have. It's also possible that Flynn's Pentagon office was known as a SCIF, or sensitive compartmented information facility -- a secure facility in which intelligence can be discussed without fear of it being compromised. Network connections in SCIFs are closely controlled, and outside electronics such as mobile phones are not allowed inside.
We sure can trust this choice better than the one Ms. Clinton would have made.
BTW, I have some bridges for sale...
Hillary using email doesn't sound so bad in comparison now does it?
Yes I know Hillary is old news and did far worse things than her email server, but I could not resist a smug "I told you so".
That's actually more serious than Snowden's leak to reporters who are US citizens.
However, if you think Clinton shouldn't be in jail, then don't act like this guy should be either. You either think both parties should be in jail when they do something corrupt, or you're an asshole.
The network connection was among other rules the former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency broke because he found them to be "stupid," including sometimes sneaking out of a CIA station in Iraq without authorization and sharing classified information with NATO allies without approval, ...
If I had a nickel for every rule or person I thought was stupid but had to follow anyway I could retire by now, but, like it or not, that's the job. Sure, at a certain level, it's also your responsibility to point things out and make recommendations, but if they are ignored, declined or overruled then you gotta live with it.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The Bubble
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Here's the relevant parts of the summary.
According to ... according to ... apparently ... doesn't provide a clear picture as to why... It's likely ... or possibly ... If ... It's also possible ...
Everything else in the summary is conjecture.
lucm, indeed.
Democrats have not only recently rediscovered the virtues of limit government, but also the virtues of following rules?
There are some serious machiavellian games afoot to prevent people from understanding how powerful technology is. The situation is this- Neither this instance (as far as I can tell from the summary), nor Hillary Clinton's home email server were things that surprised anyone with any technical proficiency. The powers that be understand better than the masses just how powerful each and every mobile phone and personal computer are along with the internet. Hillary blew it I think when it was discovered that amongst the thousands of emails she was reluctant to release for records keeping purposes, were thousands related to her work that were legally required to be archived by the state, and not withheld. If she had done a more perfect job of seperating the two sets, she wouldn't have been as damaged by the issue. This case however (again, just from the summary) doesn't appear to have any justifiable corner case for the existence of this non-organizational IT subversion. However just as Trump gets away with 'post-truth' flip-flops and such, I don't see his support base as being terribly bothered by this style breach of national IT security by 'one of their own'. Hypocrisy- Jesus taught me to get used to it.
Those paying attention knew that Colin Powell had done something similar long ago. I explained that in comments way back here with many sources I don't want to retype. So in that vein, if Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn really did this, then by all means, drop the hammer on him, Hillary, and Powell in accordance with the rules.
For as many people who worry about Russian hackers, we should really hammer the self-important luddites who insist on compromising our government's opsec.
And no, I won't excuse this kind of nonsense from anyone. I don't care what team he's on, he should play be the rules, and you can see above that I said the same damned thing about Powell weeks ago. I do wonder, though--does anyone know if they bothered to report on the doc showing Colin Powell doing this?
It seems Trumps new advisor is willing to call out stupid rules and even refuse to follow them (no idea if these were laws or internal policy). He seems to have done this stuff during the presidencies of Bush and Obama, and eventually got fired but not criminally prosecuted. I'm not familiar enough with the rules he broke to know whether they are laws, nor whether they are stupid. But he does seem like a good match for Trump.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
He's a pro-Russian General who ignores the advice of his intelligence people. He's visited Russia repeatedly, sometimes on official duty (e.g. give intelligence briefings), other times not. He was a paid speaker for RT, and insists there's nothing wrong with that.
He has this weird view on Iran, which is a Russia's allied puppet in the region. Iran is totally evil, and yet Russia is good, and proposes choices which would drive Iran further towards Russia.
He once suggested giving access to 5 eyes surveillance to Russia to help fight the threat of Islamic extremism. At the time he was pushing a book, but he's since talked up the Russian alliance as means of tackling muslim extremism since, even after being appointed by Trump:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/15/trump-adviser-michael-t-flynn-on-his-dinner-with-putin-and-why-russia-today-is-just-like-cnn/
And wants to undermine NATO:
"FLYNN: It’s like NATO. Why do three-quarters of NATO [countries] get away with not paying anything? They have to pay their bills. We’ve done a lot, for the better part of half a century, for these countries."
None of them pay *nothing*, they pay their NATO funding, quite a few have low defense spending which is presumably what he's complaining about in a 'Fox News' sort of hyperbole way, e.g. Germany only spends 1.2% of GDP on defense, France 1.8% of GDP.
Seriously? He had a non-DoD internet connection installed in his office at The Pentagon, and nobody noticed.
What happened? Some guy in a Comcast van showed up to do the install and security just waved them on thru to do whatever they felt like?
No chance. The comcast guy would install the connection point on the far side of the building from his office and he'd have to buy an extra long ethernet cable and string it through doors or over the roof.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I didn't vote for Trump... but I'm tired of seeing this drivel on Slashdot.
I've been here a LONG time (~15 years). I've seen tons of _crap_ come through this site in that time... but this stupid political stuff takes the absolute cake.
This is supposed to be a damn technology site! I come here to get away from the normal news cycle and talk about technology with others who are interested in it.
I hate to give it up... but I'm out for now. I'm sure I'll check back in a few months... but maybe not.
Bye guys, it's been fun (mostly).
(Cue people telling me I won't be missed... which I won't be)
Why would someone who wants any action that annoys a man that they wish could act as a King and thus declared treason give a shit about the Constitution? Look at his other posts. Bring back King George all the way.
For christ's sake, this is a dumb article.
If Flynn had an unfiltered Internet connection, good on him. They exist all over the place and for good reason. The NIPR connections are so sanitized, you can't get anywhere interesting or useful on them. Essentially, nowadays they are whitelisted to protect the stupid office staff from malware and to stop them from whacking off to porn in the office. SIPR/JWICS/etc connections obviously won't have any kind of net access, they are airgapped networks.
It's really easy to see why the head of the NSA would have a justification for an unfiltered connection at times.
As long as the TEMPEST rules are followed, the presence of another network connection is an irrelevancy. If you can't handle classification correctly, you belong in jail and out of the role of handling it (looking at you HIllary).
If some asshat came up with a rule preventing an unfiltered unclass net connection - which would be by its nature a local rule - that person was an asshat and should have been ignored. There are a lot of those in the government as well, sadly.
In terms of sharing classified information with other nations, there have been many ad hoc methods of transferring information to close allies over time to get around shitty procedures. When friendly lives are of concern, sometimes even foreign nationals get access to US-only networks and by definition, US-only intel.
I'd be more likely to judge based on the actual circumstances of the transfer than on what amounts to innuendo, which is all this article has to offer.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
More like a safe space for hordes of ACs who can't make up their minds whether their stiffies are for Trump or Putin, you mean?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Comey (not "Coney") gave a long speech *alleging* that HC may have broken the law. Unless and until she is actually charged and actually faces trial, that's all it is. *Alleged*.
Quoth the law of the land, no less.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
He "installed a forbidden internet connection" in the FUCKING PENTAGON? Excuse me? Either he had his very own cat6 ran through the building just for him, in secret (fucking impossible) or he tethered his fucking smartphone (big fucking deal.) Talk about a tempest in a teapot.
I was called in to help debug a problem with a server running on the NIPR. It seemed several out of every 100 TCP connections it made to the Internet failed inexplicably. An application level retry would immediately succeed but if you let the original TCP socket retry it kept on failing to connect.
So I investigated and it turned out about 2% of TCP -source- ports in the ephemeral range were blocked. Any TCP packet using those originating ports simply failed to arrive at the other side.
So, tracked down the firewall admin at Pearl and she explained that yes, they blocked those ports because they were commonly used by malware. Ports like 1234.
Okay, so even if I buy that that's reasonable, it would only apply to TCP -destination- ports, not TCP source ports. Went back and forth, back and forth. Eventually gave up and hacked the server to avoid the filtered TCP source ports.
And that level of incompetence is why I totally understand anyone who wants a direct Internet connection.
Then again, as someone involved in the Intelligence community he might just have wanted a commercial connection whose IP address wasn't associated with the military for some of his communications. You know, basic opsec.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
And here is what the rebuttal is. A phobia is an irrational fear of something. Like if one is scared of a butterfly or a spider, that's a phobia, since those 2 things are harmless.
You know some spiders actually have a really nasty bite, right? Also:
Since 9/11, there have been close to 30,000 jihadist attacks worldwide - be it the 7/7 attacks in London,
An average of 6 people per year have been killed by terrorists in the UK, 52 since 2007. If you think fear of terrorists is justified, you should be fucking terrified of buses. The Red Menaces have kill 3 times that number of people in London alone. And if you see a ladder, you ought to have a fainting fight over those runged death machines (60 deaths in a single year).
So, if you're not scared of buses, then being afraid of terrorists is irrational.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Dude, read a fucking dictionary. "fake news" does not simply mean news you don't like, reflects badly on your tribe or hurts your precious feelings. If means fake. As in did not actually happen. Like Obama not being a US citizen, or pizzagate or that quote about Trump saying he'd run as a republican because republicans are idiots. All those are fake because they're about things which never happened.
Actual news you don't like which might actually challenge some blindly held misconceptions of yours is not fake.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Good god, man. The world is not a video game.
Play Command HQ online
So...an article by Business Insider, which relies on an article in the New Yorker, wherein a reporter makes these claims.
No proof, no official findings, no investigations, just, "he told me" from a reporter and magazine that are unquestionably anti-everything that is not Democrat.
This shows all the hallmarks of Fake News as they have been explained to us by the media.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.