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Trump Proposes Joint 'Cyber Security Unit' With Russia, Then Quickly Backs Away From It (arstechnica.com)

In a series of tweets yesterday, President Trump proposed "an impenetrable Cyber Security unit" with Putin "so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe." The news came as a shock to just about everyone who got word of it, including congressional members of his own GOP party. Less than 24 hours later, Trump decided against it, tweeting: "The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can,& did!" Ars Technica reports: "It's not the dumbest idea I have ever heard, but it's pretty close," Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, said of the plan. Senate Republican Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted that "partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad on a 'Chemical Weapons Unit."' Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that Trump and the Russian president decided at a meeting during a Group of 20 nations summit in Hamburg, Germany, to embark on a joint "cyber unit to make sure that there was absolutely no interference whatsoever, that they would work on cyber security together." But on Sunday, after it was clear that the plan was going nowhere, Trump took to Twitter and said no deal. That didn't stop Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, from introducing on Monday an amendment to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that would bar a US-Russian cyber accord. He said: "Donald Trump's proposal to form a 'cyber security unit' with Putin is a terrible idea that would immediately jeopardize American cybersecurity... Trump must acknowledge that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and take strong, meaningful action to prevent it from happening again in future elections."

5 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. Why is this a dumb idea really?? by SuperKendall · · Score: -1, Troll

    I know "Russia" is now a trigger word for the left (despite the long Russian support of the American left, what ungrateful curs!).

    But why is this a bad idea? In certain respects the interests of Russia and the U.S. as world super-powers are aligned, and cyber-security is one of those areas. Why would it not be a good idea for both countries to share information as to potential ongoing attacks, and even have a similar kind of hotline akin to the Red Phone to have a dedicated 24x7 contact to ask if one country was really under attack from another, as it might appear...

    It's just like how people got all freaked out that Trump was sharing intelligence on terrorism with Russia, when every U.S. president has done so and it's simply a necessity in the world we live in that countries share this information.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  2. Come On by SuperKendall · · Score: -1, Troll

    Would you form a joint intelligence sharing with them?

    Yes, as stated.

    Because this is sort of like forming a joint intelligence unit. If you've every dealt with operational security, you'd know why this isn't likely to work well.

    I've been on corporate computer security teams for large companies, so I know why it would work, unlike you who can't seem to imagine how...

    It's not like you'd have a pipeline into the darkest NSA secrets (which they already have already anyway but never mind that)...

    Such an arrangement could easily benefit both without giving away much, from threats detected, to origin, and what the vector may be along with possible routes of attack.

    At best, it's reaching your unprotected arm into a snake pit every 15 minutes to count the snakes.

    A stupid metaphor but going with that, anything you know is better than what you didn't know before.

    While we may be able to get some small benefit, it would come at too high a cost in intelligence assets. For one thing, it would let them know how we conduct security, for a second, who is involved

    And we would let them know any of that why and how again??? Come on, think it through. You don't need to let on to any of that to gain some benefit from both sides.

    And I'll simply point out who leaked emails when, and where

    And from who - because they tried to hack the RNC too but apparently one party at least takes infused seriously. The DNC wouldn't even let the FBI run diagnostics on hacked servers...

    But sure, lets blame Russia for Hillary / the DNC being so contemptibly corrupt that leaking emails from them sank a presidential canaanite against a guy as easily beaten as Trump.

    You are just another tool who has lost his functioning analytical mind to sheer raw hatred of Trump, that seems to have overpowered what once were sounds technical abilities. Thankfully I am libertarian and think both parties are essentially corrupt so I'm immune from both sides from such nonsense and can simply analyze an idea on technical merits.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  3. Re:At least he has ideas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Then how's this for a "smart" idea: Let's subvert the entire concept of medical insurance to give everyone flat-rate, shitty, token medical coverage to score political points, write huge checks to the insurance companies to go along with the plan, count on tens of millions of young healthy people paying ever-increasing premiums for something they don't need to keep the system afloat, then pray the whole thing doesn't fall apart until we're out of office when we can rip the next guy for taking away everyone's insurance as he tries to pick up the pieces of our brilliant policy.

  4. Re:Invite Jeffrey Dahmer to join neighborhood watc by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 0, Troll

    Slashdot stopped being a tech website once it got taken over by this mob of gamer Pepe heads who think we should have a fox help set up a henhouse security system.

  5. Re:Who're you bullshitting now? Yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Awww, fatass virgin loser has got loose from the cunt farms internet isolation zone, all the signs are there, silly caps and bolding, using irrelevant symbols, delusions of adequacy, poor old apk. Must suck for a poor discredited malware author.