Interesting, and not all that implausible. The real test: his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
If they wanted to maintain access, they certainly wouldn't celebrate it publicly, which is why I assume they want to release information. But, there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting professionally. We'll see how the facts bear out. I also suppose it's possible they're just going for any win they can and there's nothing interesting here whatsoever, or it's a really boring secondary address or something.
I think this is actually the opposite of the correct conclusion—just look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal). I seriously doubt that Kash Patel doesn't have a bunch of skeletons to dust off and show the world; the man is a weirdo (much like the rest of the administration).
EDIT: I actually misread the comment; I think we're likely in agreement. My bad.
I'd like to chime in and say that that Kash Patel, while completely unprofessional and incompetent, is way less of a weirdo than the rest of the administration.
His scandals are all about shirking job responsibilities to party and sightsee. That's not great from the FBI director but its way more normal than the rest of them.
I was just reading a X thread that published some of the more notable things and overall it's pretty innocuous. The most "controversial" thing thus far is he took a trip to Cuba
Maybe the hackers will release information connecting Patel to the Noem and Lewandowski grift operations with govt contracts. Out of the four companies allowed to bid for the $220 million advertising contract, 3 were linked to Noem and Lewandowski and one to Patel.
There is so much corruption and impropriety in this administration that skeletons don't matter anymore. Looking at what sunk officials in previous administrations provides a sense for just how far gone we are, but it's not an indicator of what future consequences will be.
Like what? We have two presidents, including the current one, that took multiple trips to a pedophile island. What skeletons could be greater than accusations of punching a child in the face after they bit the dude’s penis during forced sodomy?
Surely we are currently clean on OPSEC. There couldn't be any precedent for government officials using private email servers for confidential information!
obligatory - that first famous private server was done because someone wanted a blackberry like Obama had, and was told no by NSA. Man that BB keyboard was good.
Are we talking about the same FBI director here? Professional and competent are not how I would describe Kash Patel. Given his overt buffoonishness and the whole administration's disdain for procedure and expertise I would be shocked if he didn't have extremely inappropriate content in his inbox.
Yeah, the fact they announced it proves it’s nothing. I saw a picture of him smoking a cigar. We’ve already seen him drinking beer and acting foolish; probably enough to get you executed in Isfahan, but a giant nothining in the USA.
> his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?
Color me surprised if these people haven't heard of opsec before, and mix their work/personal life all over the place.
Yes, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was classified information in there. I struggled with wording, but what I meant was "you're not supposed to be able to find classified or sensitive information in personal email, but I who knows what will be the case here."
Signal started being used during the Biden administration, the issue was how they were managing contacts which could be added to groups. They weren't carefully vetting access and a journalist with the same name as another military guy was added to the group by accident.
> The real test: his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news.
I have no idea why this would be the default assumption for somebody as sloppy and erratic as Patel. Look at how many people were emailing damning stuff to/from Epstein's personal email accounts from their own personal email accounts!
I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
But it feels million years away.
It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level.
Putting those people in charge was quick ; sure, a future administration could put them out quickly enough ; but how long will there be decently skilled people willing to take those positions ? How long until the only ones who want to put their toes in the swamp are those who really enjoy the mud ?
Put differently: can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge ?
Those that got fired where the good ones. Sometimes the best career move is to get fired. Reminds me of the old faces running the BRD after the war. Democratic floatsome in a thin crust residing over an ocean of collaborators.
Maybe it's borderline because it's coming from the other direction. Corruption presumes some kind of "covertness", when you break all the rules without even trying to be discreet can you still talk of corruption?
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
>It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level.
you get out when the thing dies because these kinds of organizations always end the same way; competence is usurped by sycophancy and flattery until there's no one left to keep it functioning and it collapses under the weight of it's own bullshit.
hopefully, there will be something to salvage but the longer these folks are in charge the bigger the splash will be when they finally bottom out
>I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.
The first one is, in the words of a federal District of Columbia judge: "one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency". [1]
The second one is the malicious leaking of some private emails. These emails are frankly none of our business (unless you are part of Kash Patel's family or friends).
There is a difference for sure between hosting your own email server and using it for official government communications and having your own personal email address used for personal communications.
The issue that seemed to completely disappear related to the use of Signal messenger for official white house communications seems more aligned to the email server issue. It was reported heavily at the time what the reporting requirements were and that they would have to submit the full chat histories within 30 days or something like that to stay within the law. I never heard whether that actually happened or not, the story just died.
We know for a fact that the current DoD are using private Signal messages for coordinating military action. We know they are constantly using private emails. We are sending the president's son-in-law to negotiate with foreign countries despite not being a government employee and also have massive conflicts of interest.
> HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.
That's not what the "but, her emails..." reference implies. It's not saying they are the same thing. It's saying that the amount of attention and excitement made about her emails was a show. And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it. Same thing with the signalgate from last year, or all the previous times the Trump administration used private emails or private communication for government business as well.
So, no. The fact that it is not the same is immaterial. Which makes the rest of your comment immaterial.
Referencing Hillary’s email would be kinda silly. She self hosted the email account she used for official government business. It was loaded with classified information.
This guy, while incompetent, had his personal email hacked.
On the other hand, Patel's emails "appear to show a mix of personal and work correspondence". We already know that people in government - this isn't a partisan point: folks of all factions do it - use private communication channels to discuss "official business" specifically to avoid mandated disclosure and archival requirements. If (and I emphasize "if", because we don't yet know if this was the case), if Patel was doing that, and especially if he was sharing / discussing classified material, then the facts of the case would bump right up against what Clinton and Powell did.
Sorry, as much as I despise Trump (though I'm thankful it caused Europe to wake up to the idea that the US is an unreliable ally); "Her emails" were:
A) Used for Official business as secretary of state
B) Full of national security strategically important decisions.
C) Improperly secured.
FBI directors personal email feels less cutting in that context.
Breaching my personal email (or my own mail server, I host one) will tell you literally nothing about my employer except perhaps the conversation from when I joined and my own employment contract.
honestly, look internally. after the plane from qatar. after the son-in-law's real estate dealings. after the visible-to-everyone kalshi and oil futures bets frontrunning the administrations announcements. for you to still feel the need to frame things as "border-line (to be polite)" is, in and of itself, the perfect example of the overall problem.
take your inability to draw a clear-as-day conclusion and state it plainly and multiply it by another ~50M "centrists" who continue to believe that staying "not political" and "avoiding the news" is a viable strategy to just wait the problem out.
until the checked out cowards realize that strategy isn't going to work, things will continue to get worse.
"no politics" might as as well be the second maga slogan.
"no politics" is the immune response to the social-media-fueled, conspiracy-theory-driven "we are the good guys, you basically deserve to die" craze.
Both sides are culpable here. In the US, both parties were literally claiming that the elections were stolen (Republicans in 2020, Democrats with the since-debunked 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal). Other countries had different issues, but the shape of the problem was basically the same everywhere.
If you keep being called bad words for years for no reason, seeing your side do the exact same thing, no surprise you tune out.
A couple of DOGE teenagers were able to casually walk in and steal the entire country's social security and healthcare data (and probably more), and we were cheering them on. There is still no accountability, and it has probably already been sold to the highest bidder. So this would be the least surprising thing in the world.
We? I don't think I've seen anyone but the people absolutely not understanding the gravity of the situation were cheering on. And I'm not even American.
Well over here, 30% still approve of it and they will openly praise how much money DOGE "saved us." It's quite eye opening talking to them. They live in a totally different reality
Any time they act like they disapprove of something the administration is doing, like the aimless war, they will change their tune in a few weeks when Fox gets it's talking points down.
"We" is such an imprecise word for a pool of people. I believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the listener too, and "women" excluding the listener. Obviously "we" did not elect Trump, only "a majority of the US voters who voted", and even the others may sadly use "we" though they didn't, because they are members of the political body that did. Just like the "they" of Israel that harass Palestinians and throw up West Bank settlements do not reflect all of Israel, and the average Soviet citizen did not reflect the behavior of the Soviet government.
I don't know if this is an irony thing I'm not getting, but we know they had untracked access to data they shouldn't have (violating data access rules and orders from a judge), and there is a whistleblower accusation that the data was retained and some DOGE staffers were at least talking with other groups who could use the data.
Meanwhile how would Hunter Biden, not a government employee nor having access to government systems, get that data in the first place?
Allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment and propose that maybe DOGE did loudly what the Solarwinds paired with OPM breach did quietly years prior.
Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles of high power in the government. He is a real embarrassment and I feel sorry for his mother.
Gone only because current leadership kicked them all to the curb and told them to get out of Washington. Only loyal talking heads are wanted there now.
I've been wondering if we'd see a cyber campaign emerge in this conflict. To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced cyber capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back. Gloves-off cyber war doesn't sound good to me. The US CISA already been cut back, has lost "virtually all of its top officials"^, doesn't have a permanent director, and is operating at a further reduced capacity because of the DHS shutdown.
that's the thing that people overlook the most in regards to this war.iran isn’t doing this on its own. Russia, China and north korea have been backing it from the start. they’re the ones helping with intel on US base locations across the Middle East, supplying drones, and working out strategies to drag things into a stalemate, plus whatever else iran needs along the way
you mean best selling children's book author Kash Patel who is desperately trying to scrub the internet of his music video[0] revising the Jan 6 insurrection
If they got into the account they got everything. The publicly released pictures are more of a taunt meant to publicly signal that he’s fucked. I would bet (figuratively) that anyrhing of actual value is either being sold or leveraged. After all this is a man that has shown an almost infinite capacity for humiliation.
And it is more than likely. US and Iran probably can’t defeat each other militarily (us obviously can, but it requires full scale ground invasion which is not even contemplated at the moment). And both can’t back out of the conflict. So the likely outcome is that the conflict escalates until one of the regimes snaps and it becomes to somehow politically possible to back out.
Collapse of the regime in Iran seems unlikely at the moment because it’s hard and zealous dictatorship with unlimited power and will for violence within the country. In the US OTOH the elections are coming. An administration that started a stupid and absolutely preventable war and then effectively lost faces quite a challenge there despite everything else. This seems like a perfect moment for Iran to create a deterrent for US: attacking us ends your presidency.
While it's appreciated, that isn't the original link and Ddos "secrets" gate keeps info to people they personally allow. The person who runs it also has been to court for a name change, citing something along the lines of wanting to work in intelligence.
Not a source I would trust unless there is no other option to get the dumps or leaks.
I too am very curious about this. Even if his password was exposed and he didn’t have 2-factor auth, doesn’t Google by default ask for confirmation — e.g. texting a number or backup email associated with the account — when seeing an unrecognized device? Maybe he didn’t have any alt contact methods associated with his account?
(which might not be that unusual, he’s old enough to have opened a gmail account upon launch, before extra info hoops were put in place, and maybe he never touched his account config in the past 2 decades?
You are probably right... I tend to change my password semi often. It's always a super complex impossible to remember string - and always keep an eye on the account activity.
Not to mention ; you would assume he should have more than one device linked to the account and then that adds another layer, since Google will ask you " is this you trying to logon ". <-- that is the only way to get Google to do the unrecognized flow you mention.
If you are suggesting it was exposed and he didn't immediately randomise all his passwords.. WORDS FAIL ME
It's all security 101 the irony is immense...
if the US government / FBI need someone to give some talks on how to do security ...
Loads of natural resources, no local military threats, and historically a government that stayed out of the way and allowed individuals to reap the rewards of their efforts.
The first is almost impossible to screw up, though we're really trying on the last front.
We're ranked number one based on the summation of all the angsty teen America bad comments on social media. At least that is the stat the press goes off of I believe
America had the advantage of getting through WW2 relatively unscathed with lots of resources and intact infrastructure that it used to leverage against the reconstruction of Europe, Japan and the USSR and entrench its cultural and economic hegemony. Also the US essentially colonized the West with nuclear weapons under the guise of "Pax Americana" and making the dollar the reserve currency.
That's really it. Not moral superiority, not technical ingenuity, not the indomitable American spirit. Just imperialist opportunism.
Are you suggesting that he was targeted before he became the director of the FBI? That seems unlikely. Once he became an obvious target surely the FBI should have secured his past, present and future communications. But I have no idea what protocols there are for such things, I'm just going off common sense, a notoriously sketchy starting point in the crazy world of the current US administration.
He held very important positions in the US government before 2022, including in the SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020-2021.
This is just a sad story of a partisan hack who failed upwards into one of the most sensitive and powerful offices in the nation, simply for being a loyal sycophant, not merit.
From the article, he wasn't the director of the FBI for the time period the emails are from: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"
A great many experts in the military, medicine, disaster relief, and cybersecurity { the list goes on } were fired.
It's almost as if the nation were being weakened on purpose.
Don't get mad, get Vlad. Or just prepare for the long-desired Rapture.[0] and which politicians seem to be working very hard to being about (the Apocalypse part, anyway)
"Competent" people are not valuable and over rated because they will flake out in such jobs when the group holds them responsible for all sorts of things they have no control over. They are the first people who recognize lumits. Their own, their teams and the systems. But people dont want to hear about Limits. They want saviors and messaihs. They want fantasy and magic. So the system runs not optimized for efficiency but illusion of control, for damping of anxieties and fears.
No, I’m convinced the one thing that Trump wants to do is to launch a nuke before he dies. That’s what he wants his legacy to be. and his name everywhere.
• They are already "trained" (in random violence against civilians. Checks one box)
• Bonespur "victims" have already been weeded out.
• They are already government employees and must go where assigned. (saves TONS of paperwork)
• They already have weapons, and unspent budget money.
• They already have swell masks to protect from radioactive dust that bombing reactors creates, and (this is big)
• Their kill to loss ratio is infinite.
These are a group that used outside signal chats to discuss war plans. What odds do you have that he didn't use a personal email to avoid future accountability?
The US media has a clear understanding that their reporting on the war needs to be filtered and biased. This is not some coming-to-their-senses against sensationalism, but a nothingburger they know they can't sensationalize without great risk.
As is the case in any administration; let alone with an admin as vindictive as Trump's.
This "balanced take" warrants kudos?
We're not even pretending to lift the bar off the ground when it comes to mainstream media, are we?
It always will be. The FBI is scandal prone and a stranger to success. I'm not entirely sure a large federal apparatus is needed anymore. It maybe made sense when local police were poorly trained and psychics were seen as credible investigative tools, but, I think we're well past that. I think it should be chopped into 50 pieces and handed over to the states to operate. A small coordinating office is all that should be left.
Seriously though I'm not so sanguine about local forces. Assuming the local PD is well trained seems like a big if, to say nothing of the risk of localized pressure or corruption. Eg would the local sheriff of a county with a very large employer be able to effectively investigate and bring charges against it? Being able to bring in federal LE brings a certain impartiality to those sorts of cases.
Not just that, clowns and jesters played critical and culturally significant roles.
“Fools” is not only not an insult to clowns and jesters, but it’s far more accurate.
I would even say without any necessary religious perspective, these people are like the origins of the term and concept of “demons”, entities representing the most heinous and nefarious instincts and impulses of humanity so vile and repulsive that they had to be emanations of hell. How would you even makes sense of such evil behavior back then. They didn’t know what the dark triad of personality flaws was, narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism (yes, I understand it’s an erroneous label, but it’s the one used).
Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email
Perhaps a little embarrassing related to communications security but come on, of all the people's email to grab they had to grab one of the most boring individuals? Ice hokey, cigars, classic cars...? Is that taboo in Iran? It is not taboo in the USA.
Be careful Iran. The country you are targeting know how to use AI and can make ultra realistic videos and images of your leaders doing unspeakable things and upload them to decentralized platforms. Such things can not be erased from the internet.
From the administration that brought us "We are currently clean on OPSEC", I can't claim surprise. Disappointment, but not surprise.
Nor, however, can I take the statements of malicious actors at face value. They hacked a personal email address, but that does not mean "the FBI’s security was nothing more than a joke".
>“This isn’t an FBI compromise — it’s someone’s personal junk drawer,” he said.
Eh, with how many people in the current administration seem to use out of band channels to communicate very important things who knows what else they located.
As if this is the first time this has ever happened.
How many former officials used personal accounts about government business?
How many corporate executives communicate business via personal accounts to avoid legal discovery?
How many individuals communicate outside their main email accounts to avoid scrutiny or attribution?
Point is, nobody should feel superior or shocked that such things like this happen. I understand some enjoy the privacy of their perceived enemies being exposed, but IMHO, nobody should be happy about invasion of anyone's privacy.
GPG keys are typically guarded much better than emails, that's the whole point. Accessing e-mails can be done by guessing a password, to get to the key you basically need command execution on the target's client system.
If you read the news with enough cynicism, you'll realize that rules like formality, password strength or cybersecurity hygiene are for the average Joes, not the morons/perverts who run the world.
No worries. As long as rigorous due diligence was followed when vetting him as a candidate, there will surely be nothing embarrassing or harmful found in his personal emails.
> "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said in a July 27, 2016 news conference.
All the time, just those military aged men don't call them their enemy because they know they aren't. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afganistan, etc, most people don't consider the majority of those peoples the enemy whether they are fighting or not because they don't think we should have been trying to kill or subjugate them in the first place.
The goals and ideals of politicians and powermongers rarely aligns with the majority of the population.
I’d never support a repressive theocracy like the current Iranian regime and will not cheer on their propaganda operations.
But let’s not confuse this Iran conflict with a legitimate war. Only congress can declare war and appropriate funds for a war. What we have is a rogue authoritarian executive that was incompetent enough to ignore military assessments and be manipulated by Netanyahu to strike.
People should protest like there is no tomorrow when la senile demagogue is destroying the international world order, free trade and freedom of the seas. That is not the same as rooting for the enemy!
But far more seriously, imagine the danger he has put this country into by firing so many critical people, some specifically and uniquely for Iran and Middle-East defense
Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it coming, maybe even on purpose
> Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it coming, maybe even on purpose
Why would anyone bother to attack us now? This entire administration has done more to make The US weak and vulnerable than any outside attacker could have hoped to accomplish. They can just sit back and watch rome burn
This is the end of his high profile bureaucrat career. Inevitably, something will show up in the emails that will get airplay as embarrassing to Trump, and Trump will just say that he should have protected his password better and ask for his resignation.
He doesn't have a face for Fox News, so he'll have to try to parlay his past closeness with the administration for lobbyist money, but if he gets shunned by the people left in the administration, he's got to go back to his public defender job.
I mean, yes? You can give whatever weight you want to the whole thing, but the core issue with Hillary Clinton and the emails was that she was storing material on a private server rather than in official infrastructure.
If Patel didn't do such thing here, the breach should only expose personal stuff, if he did, then it's much more of a problem, but either way this is a really clear example of why concern was raised back at the time.
Noem - habeas corpus definition she gave at the Congress hearing
Kennedy Jr - vaccines and the rest of his view on medicine
Now Patel's unhackable FBI.
I think the world has changed, and i really need to update my expectations of what is new normal. It is like in tech when paradigm shift happens, and you're either go with the new paradigm or get irrelevant.
We’re way beyond Idiocracy now, we left that timeline six years ago.
For all his flaws, Camacho was a good leader - he recognised there was a problem, knew he couldn’t fix it and actively rallied the world around the one person who could.
This bunch of dipshits expressly denigrated the experts, refused to take the slightest precaution to protect themselves and others from a deadly virus and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And that’s not even thinking about the industrial levels of fuckery and bullshit they’ve perpetrated over the last year.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” ~Hannah Arendt
i'm from USSR, so pretty familiar with it. The issue here is whether it is a fluke, or the world is really going into new phase where totalitarianism and authoritarianism are going to become dominating state of affairs.
For example many attribute rise of totalitarianism back then in 20th century to the power of broadcasting radio and "formation of mass society". We have a similarly transformative factor now - social media. And with the new tech power - propaganda (sounds dated, today it is more like mind control) through social media and total surveillance plus AI "minority report" - we can get a hyper-totalitarianism orders of magnitude more totalitarian than those of the 20th century. And may be we're witnessing the birth of such a new world order.
I don't think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was a celebrity buffoon/reality show personality for decades before "politics". Stupid people eat that up. Other Trumpy candidates have not been able to reproduce his success. Let's not assume this is the new normal.
I heard some of the best advice I ever heard at a Subgenius devival in Dallas in the 80s: "Act like a dumb-shit and they'll treat you like an equal." Every year that quip seems more and more relevant.
I don’t think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was the only candidate explicitly saying they were working to Make America Great Again, as opposed to foreign interests or illegals.
Wat we are witnessing is not just traditional totalitarianism, but the emergence of a suicidal state driven by a fascist death drive.
Under MAGA, the state no longer pretends to be guided internally by reason and progress, but is instead founded on non progress and terror, a scorched earth approach to slashing government agencies, and the accelerated destruction of state institutions: rather than seeking to resolve societal crises, MAGA produces constant crises to feed off of, preferring to annihilate its own systems rather than stop the destruction.
Yes, the world has changed. We have entered a reality where insanity has become the goal of the authoritarians, ie the self-destruction itself is the actual end goal.
Nothing anti-semitic about pointing out close ties between political allies. Like how Jared Kushner's family is so close with Netanyahu he slept in Jared's bed. If anything it's patriotic & pro-Israel.
For those who decried Hillary's E-Mail server but fail to apply the same standards to the current administration, it was never a real issue to begin with. Just performative nonsense.
This was an extremely limited leak. Just looked through the zip. I wouldn't doubt he does use his personal email for government purposes, but it's not in here.
I'm no fan of this administration, at all, but this seems like a big fat nothingburger. They hacked a personal gmail account, not a government account, not government infra. Why is this not a failing of Google instead of the government? And surely the hackers would have eagerly released anything damning, but nothing damning seems to exist. What am i missing here?
Remember when this admin used a Signal group chat to coordinate an operation against Houthi forces in Yemen and left in some journalists. Do you think he cares care whether he sent an email with his gov email on a gov device or if he sent it with his personal email?
you don't think that it's relevant and concerning that the director of the FBI didn't take operational security seriously enough that his account got compromised? even if they didn't get anything incriminating (which maybe they did and are going to blackmail him later) that show a shocking lack of competency for someone in that kind of position.
it's definitely newsworthy, no doubt there. but i see so many people in this thread pointing to this as somehow a failing of the fbi, which it's not. i'm all for calling out this administration for its many many failings, but this is not one of them, and calling this a failure of the administration just hurts the credibility of everyone pointing out real issues with this administration.
True yeah. but uh anyway what about HILLARYS EMAILS we need to hear about those for the next 4 decades (no convictions despite "Lock Her Up" slogans for 5 years)
Aren't most exploits that get used, shared through black markets anyway? So Saying Xcountry-linked hackers, is just saying who ponied up the bitcoin to pay for the attack?
This is quite misleading and partisan to present this as "FBI director's personal email" when the emails far predate his current role.
If I had downloaded those emails, which I haven't because I know of no website that archives the internet, and if I had read them, which I haven't because that would be a breach of someone's privacy, then certainly I would have figured out that it contains no spicy state secrets. But why spend one hour assessing an information when you can get clicks by suggesting something bigger?
Those supposedly Iranian hackers surely know how to hack the western media to get attention.
I found it actually more informative to read on the sad history of the Dena, the ship whose victims this leak was dedicated to, so it's not been a complete waste of time.
Interesting, and not all that implausible. The real test: his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
If they wanted to maintain access, they certainly wouldn't celebrate it publicly, which is why I assume they want to release information. But, there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting professionally. We'll see how the facts bear out. I also suppose it's possible they're just going for any win they can and there's nothing interesting here whatsoever, or it's a really boring secondary address or something.
I think this is actually the opposite of the correct conclusion—just look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal). I seriously doubt that Kash Patel doesn't have a bunch of skeletons to dust off and show the world; the man is a weirdo (much like the rest of the administration).
EDIT: I actually misread the comment; I think we're likely in agreement. My bad.
I don't know, these days skeletons seem to be treated as funny decoration and we're in a permanent state of Halloween.
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I think theirs was the right conclusion, but for the wrong reason. If there was anything really damning, Iran would rather use that as leverage.
The fact that they released it publicly means that the most embarrassing part of it is just the hack in itself.
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I'd like to chime in and say that that Kash Patel, while completely unprofessional and incompetent, is way less of a weirdo than the rest of the administration.
His scandals are all about shirking job responsibilities to party and sightsee. That's not great from the FBI director but its way more normal than the rest of them.
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I was just reading a X thread that published some of the more notable things and overall it's pretty innocuous. The most "controversial" thing thus far is he took a trip to Cuba
My favorite explanation of the Petraeus scandal: https://vimeo.com/100348256
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> look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was
Those times have passed. I'll restate what I said in a comment some days ago:
>> 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today presidents are "impeaching" the press
The current strategy is "keep the outrage hose on full blast and eventually people get desensitized". It works.
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Maybe the hackers will release information connecting Patel to the Noem and Lewandowski grift operations with govt contracts. Out of the four companies allowed to bid for the $220 million advertising contract, 3 were linked to Noem and Lewandowski and one to Patel.
Im sure they are all doing it...
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There is so much corruption and impropriety in this administration that skeletons don't matter anymore. Looking at what sunk officials in previous administrations provides a sense for just how far gone we are, but it's not an indicator of what future consequences will be.
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Like what? We have two presidents, including the current one, that took multiple trips to a pedophile island. What skeletons could be greater than accusations of punching a child in the face after they bit the dude’s penis during forced sodomy?
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Surely we are currently clean on OPSEC. There couldn't be any precedent for government officials using private email servers for confidential information!
obligatory - that first famous private server was done because someone wanted a blackberry like Obama had, and was told no by NSA. Man that BB keyboard was good.
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Are we talking about the same FBI director here? Professional and competent are not how I would describe Kash Patel. Given his overt buffoonishness and the whole administration's disdain for procedure and expertise I would be shocked if he didn't have extremely inappropriate content in his inbox.
I believe “if” is doing a tremendous amount of work in parent’s comment.
>his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA
medical diagnoses can be incredibly useful in understanding past and future actions
>there shouldn't be anything damning to release. ie, there ought not to be if the director is acting professionally
that "if" is doing some heavy lifting given who we are discussing
Yeah, the fact they announced it proves it’s nothing. I saw a picture of him smoking a cigar. We’ve already seen him drinking beer and acting foolish; probably enough to get you executed in Isfahan, but a giant nothining in the USA.
> his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news. It'll be interesting to see whether or not that bears out.
Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?
Color me surprised if these people haven't heard of opsec before, and mix their work/personal life all over the place.
Yes, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was classified information in there. I struggled with wording, but what I meant was "you're not supposed to be able to find classified or sensitive information in personal email, but I who knows what will be the case here."
> Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?
Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out there, but it is obviously not immune to human error or social engineering.
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Signal started being used during the Biden administration, the issue was how they were managing contacts which could be added to groups. They weren't carefully vetting access and a journalist with the same name as another military guy was added to the group by accident.
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But his girlfriend, though...
https://www.tabletmag.com/the-scroll/articles/march-25-kash-...
We’re not getting any juicy leaks from it because it’s just full of 20-year-old memes and meeting invites to look busy.
Those "should"s are doing a lot of heavy lifting.
> The real test: his personal email should be pretty uninteresting except for stuff like HIPAA, amazon purchases, communications with friends / family. (good for HUMINT) But other than that, there shouldn't be anything in there which should make the news.
I have no idea why this would be the default assumption for somebody as sloppy and erratic as Patel. Look at how many people were emailing damning stuff to/from Epstein's personal email accounts from their own personal email accounts!
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I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
But it feels million years away.
It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level.
Putting those people in charge was quick ; sure, a future administration could put them out quickly enough ; but how long will there be decently skilled people willing to take those positions ? How long until the only ones who want to put their toes in the swamp are those who really enjoy the mud ?
Put differently: can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge ?
Those that got fired where the good ones. Sometimes the best career move is to get fired. Reminds me of the old faces running the BRD after the war. Democratic floatsome in a thin crust residing over an ocean of collaborators.
> border-line (to be polite) corrumption
Hard to imagine what would constitute "full blown corruption" based on this standard?
Maybe it's borderline because it's coming from the other direction. Corruption presumes some kind of "covertness", when you break all the rules without even trying to be discreet can you still talk of corruption?
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The coup has already happened.
We'd have to look at the longest-running democracies and observe how they handled periodic refactorings
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler
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Well….they tended to collapse after a couple centuries.
> Put differently: can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge?
This is how all of them started.
But once you have a liberal democracy, people will refuse another purge. For very good reasons.
>It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level.
you get out when the thing dies because these kinds of organizations always end the same way; competence is usurped by sycophancy and flattery until there's no one left to keep it functioning and it collapses under the weight of it's own bullshit.
hopefully, there will be something to salvage but the longer these folks are in charge the bigger the splash will be when they finally bottom out
>I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.
HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.
The first one is, in the words of a federal District of Columbia judge: "one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency". [1]
The second one is the malicious leaking of some private emails. These emails are frankly none of our business (unless you are part of Kash Patel's family or friends).
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/clinton-emails-l...
Not sure why this is being down voted.
There is a difference for sure between hosting your own email server and using it for official government communications and having your own personal email address used for personal communications.
The issue that seemed to completely disappear related to the use of Signal messenger for official white house communications seems more aligned to the email server issue. It was reported heavily at the time what the reporting requirements were and that they would have to submit the full chat histories within 30 days or something like that to stay within the law. I never heard whether that actually happened or not, the story just died.
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We know for a fact that the current DoD are using private Signal messages for coordinating military action. We know they are constantly using private emails. We are sending the president's son-in-law to negotiate with foreign countries despite not being a government employee and also have massive conflicts of interest.
> HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.
That's not what the "but, her emails..." reference implies. It's not saying they are the same thing. It's saying that the amount of attention and excitement made about her emails was a show. And you know it was a show, a mockery, because with cases like this where something equally bad happens and nothing will come from it. Same thing with the signalgate from last year, or all the previous times the Trump administration used private emails or private communication for government business as well.
So, no. The fact that it is not the same is immaterial. Which makes the rest of your comment immaterial.
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Was it equally grave when Colin Powell did the same thing?
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Why not look for historical examples? There should be hundreds not to mention the obvious ones?
Referencing Hillary’s email would be kinda silly. She self hosted the email account she used for official government business. It was loaded with classified information.
This guy, while incompetent, had his personal email hacked.
Important distinction.
You are correct.
On the other hand, Patel's emails "appear to show a mix of personal and work correspondence". We already know that people in government - this isn't a partisan point: folks of all factions do it - use private communication channels to discuss "official business" specifically to avoid mandated disclosure and archival requirements. If (and I emphasize "if", because we don't yet know if this was the case), if Patel was doing that, and especially if he was sharing / discussing classified material, then the facts of the case would bump right up against what Clinton and Powell did.
Please. Same shit, different day.
Trying to distinguish between the two acts is like splitting hairs on the same arse.
Just makes you look silly.
Sorry, as much as I despise Trump (though I'm thankful it caused Europe to wake up to the idea that the US is an unreliable ally); "Her emails" were:
A) Used for Official business as secretary of state
B) Full of national security strategically important decisions.
C) Improperly secured.
FBI directors personal email feels less cutting in that context.
Breaching my personal email (or my own mail server, I host one) will tell you literally nothing about my employer except perhaps the conversation from when I joined and my own employment contract.
honestly, look internally. after the plane from qatar. after the son-in-law's real estate dealings. after the visible-to-everyone kalshi and oil futures bets frontrunning the administrations announcements. for you to still feel the need to frame things as "border-line (to be polite)" is, in and of itself, the perfect example of the overall problem.
take your inability to draw a clear-as-day conclusion and state it plainly and multiply it by another ~50M "centrists" who continue to believe that staying "not political" and "avoiding the news" is a viable strategy to just wait the problem out.
until the checked out cowards realize that strategy isn't going to work, things will continue to get worse.
"no politics" might as as well be the second maga slogan.
"no politics" is the immune response to the social-media-fueled, conspiracy-theory-driven "we are the good guys, you basically deserve to die" craze.
Both sides are culpable here. In the US, both parties were literally claiming that the elections were stolen (Republicans in 2020, Democrats with the since-debunked 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal). Other countries had different issues, but the shape of the problem was basically the same everywhere.
If you keep being called bad words for years for no reason, seeing your side do the exact same thing, no surprise you tune out.
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> can a liberal democracy organize a "just" version of a purge ?
Absolutely, it happened before on January 30, 1933
A couple of DOGE teenagers were able to casually walk in and steal the entire country's social security and healthcare data (and probably more), and we were cheering them on. There is still no accountability, and it has probably already been sold to the highest bidder. So this would be the least surprising thing in the world.
We? I don't think I've seen anyone but the people absolutely not understanding the gravity of the situation were cheering on. And I'm not even American.
> And I'm not even American.
Well over here, 30% still approve of it and they will openly praise how much money DOGE "saved us." It's quite eye opening talking to them. They live in a totally different reality
Any time they act like they disapprove of something the administration is doing, like the aimless war, they will change their tune in a few weeks when Fox gets it's talking points down.
"We" is such an imprecise word for a pool of people. I believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the listener too, and "women" excluding the listener. Obviously "we" did not elect Trump, only "a majority of the US voters who voted", and even the others may sadly use "we" though they didn't, because they are members of the political body that did. Just like the "they" of Israel that harass Palestinians and throw up West Bank settlements do not reflect all of Israel, and the average Soviet citizen did not reflect the behavior of the Soviet government.
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I don't know if this is an irony thing I'm not getting, but we know they had untracked access to data they shouldn't have (violating data access rules and orders from a judge), and there is a whistleblower accusation that the data was retained and some DOGE staffers were at least talking with other groups who could use the data.
Meanwhile how would Hunter Biden, not a government employee nor having access to government systems, get that data in the first place?
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Allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment and propose that maybe DOGE did loudly what the Solarwinds paired with OPM breach did quietly years prior.
OPM was much more serious. Equifax had already leaked the social security data and more.
I feel like sending phishing emails for penis enlargement pills would take down half the current administration.
I know someone who will be interested in bigger hands--big beautiful hands.
I must say, i'd prefer if my hands remained the same size they are now. I dont want to lose my dexterity. Slightly offtopic
worth a try
Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles of high power in the government. He is a real embarrassment and I feel sorry for his mother.
> Gone are the days of the strong silent type running the roles of high power in the government
What, like J.Edgar?
Fair critique. Mueller was a pretty upstanding example of how to run the FBI, however.
> I feel sorry for his mother.
In all likelihood his upbringing is what made him this way.
You think so? Peers, in my experience, have an even greater impact, especially between the ages of 10 and 25.
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Gone only because current leadership kicked them all to the curb and told them to get out of Washington. Only loyal talking heads are wanted there now.
Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?
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If “woke” means asinine politically motivated witch hunts and hiring practices then yeah, and rightfully so
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I've been wondering if we'd see a cyber campaign emerge in this conflict. To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced cyber capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back. Gloves-off cyber war doesn't sound good to me. The US CISA already been cut back, has lost "virtually all of its top officials"^, doesn't have a permanent director, and is operating at a further reduced capacity because of the DHS shutdown.
^ https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/cisa-senior-official-...
> To my knowledge Iran seems to have pretty advanced cyber capabilities and increasingly fewer reasons to hold back.
Iran isn’t alone!! They are a quad along with China, Russia, and North Korea.
that's the thing that people overlook the most in regards to this war.iran isn’t doing this on its own. Russia, China and north korea have been backing it from the start. they’re the ones helping with intel on US base locations across the Middle East, supplying drones, and working out strategies to drag things into a stalemate, plus whatever else iran needs along the way
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I forget all the details but a hacker group associated with Iran already hacked the infrastructure of a major US health care tech company
Stryker. FWIW a friend in ER medicine said it had very very limited effect.
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I still can’t get over the fact that *Kash “Stay in my lane” Patel* is heading the FBI
you mean best selling children's book author Kash Patel who is desperately trying to scrub the internet of his music video[0] revising the Jan 6 insurrection
[0] https://youtu.be/TPF_e2E5F74
What the actual hell did I just listen to. I really hope those kids were paid decently at this.
It’s all fine since he didn’t use it for official business right, right…
The FBI just made a bounty to find who hacked family photos.
I am sure the FBI will do that for my family too right?
Or we’re more than family photos hacked?
Maybe the family un-friendly kind?
Based on the links in the articles, it's personal photographs and a resume from an old Gmail account. The resume dates from 2017.
If they got into the account they got everything. The publicly released pictures are more of a taunt meant to publicly signal that he’s fucked. I would bet (figuratively) that anyrhing of actual value is either being sold or leveraged. After all this is a man that has shown an almost infinite capacity for humiliation.
Or more likely unofficial business
apparently it was a gooner account for one of the popular adult websites.
Link if you want to look: https://bsky.app/profile/ddosecrets.org/post/3mi2iokglyn2w
Interesting comment: "if Iran ends up responsible for regime change in the US, i will be overjoyed as i die from irony"
And it is more than likely. US and Iran probably can’t defeat each other militarily (us obviously can, but it requires full scale ground invasion which is not even contemplated at the moment). And both can’t back out of the conflict. So the likely outcome is that the conflict escalates until one of the regimes snaps and it becomes to somehow politically possible to back out.
Collapse of the regime in Iran seems unlikely at the moment because it’s hard and zealous dictatorship with unlimited power and will for violence within the country. In the US OTOH the elections are coming. An administration that started a stupid and absolutely preventable war and then effectively lost faces quite a challenge there despite everything else. This seems like a perfect moment for Iran to create a deterrent for US: attacking us ends your presidency.
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While it's appreciated, that isn't the original link and Ddos "secrets" gate keeps info to people they personally allow. The person who runs it also has been to court for a name change, citing something along the lines of wanting to work in intelligence.
Not a source I would trust unless there is no other option to get the dumps or leaks.
Real link from Handala (dead): https://handala-team.to/kash-patel-current-director-of-the-f...
Archive: https://archive.ph/ILFFH
Download: https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxoxwyp7qosgdwldereecudqpbva/...
Password: handala
Anybody dug through it yet?
Is it legal to download something like this?
Legal or illegal doesn't really matter. If the regime wants to come for you they will.
Of course it's allowed. The gov will happily steal and buy all of your info. No problem to have it done to them.
Legality matters now least of all to either side.
I dont know. I think downloading it with Tor would make it almost impossible to find out you downloaded this stuff anyway.
You can't prove you didn't (and the fuzz will produce evidence you did).
I really want to know how they did it.. was it some terrible password?
He doesn't strike me as the kinda person even using a local password manager; like keepass.
Somebody needs to find this out.
I doubt it was gmail support... surely it could not be via his phone sim, and if he didn't have two factor on; That would be so funny.
I'm tempted to check out the dark web or the telegram, but i'd rather not do either of those things.
I too am very curious about this. Even if his password was exposed and he didn’t have 2-factor auth, doesn’t Google by default ask for confirmation — e.g. texting a number or backup email associated with the account — when seeing an unrecognized device? Maybe he didn’t have any alt contact methods associated with his account?
(which might not be that unusual, he’s old enough to have opened a gmail account upon launch, before extra info hoops were put in place, and maybe he never touched his account config in the past 2 decades?
You are probably right... I tend to change my password semi often. It's always a super complex impossible to remember string - and always keep an eye on the account activity.
Not to mention ; you would assume he should have more than one device linked to the account and then that adds another layer, since Google will ask you " is this you trying to logon ". <-- that is the only way to get Google to do the unrecognized flow you mention.
If you are suggesting it was exposed and he didn't immediately randomise all his passwords.. WORDS FAIL ME
It's all security 101 the irony is immense...
if the US government / FBI need someone to give some talks on how to do security ...
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> On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said . . . .
Anybody have a link? You know, for science ...
Edit: Apparently, just last week the DoJ snatched their domains: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-i...
not all of them, search harder
So, to echo the previous comment, got a link?
"Search harder" is a pretty unfriendly response to a request for a link...
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Forget the Iran attribution for a second. The FBI director's personal email was already in leaked credential databases from prior breaches.
Every now and then something happens that makes me wonder how the fuck America is number one, this being one of them.
One of the largest populations, and by extension, GDPs.
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Loads of natural resources, no local military threats, and historically a government that stayed out of the way and allowed individuals to reap the rewards of their efforts.
The first is almost impossible to screw up, though we're really trying on the last front.
We're ranked number one based on the summation of all the angsty teen America bad comments on social media. At least that is the stat the press goes off of I believe
Don't worry, it's on its way out.
America had the advantage of getting through WW2 relatively unscathed with lots of resources and intact infrastructure that it used to leverage against the reconstruction of Europe, Japan and the USSR and entrench its cultural and economic hegemony. Also the US essentially colonized the West with nuclear weapons under the guise of "Pax Americana" and making the dollar the reserve currency.
That's really it. Not moral superiority, not technical ingenuity, not the indomitable American spirit. Just imperialist opportunism.
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Number one based on what metric other than they constantly say they're number one?
Because America is a lot more than a podcaster put into a position that he has no qualifications for.
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GMail, like Apple, has specific enhanced security programs available for Politically Exposed Persons:
https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/
The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of this just reiterates how incompetent he is, in addition to being corrupt as heck.
Read the article he wasn't the director of the FBI: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"
Are you suggesting that he was targeted before he became the director of the FBI? That seems unlikely. Once he became an obvious target surely the FBI should have secured his past, present and future communications. But I have no idea what protocols there are for such things, I'm just going off common sense, a notoriously sketchy starting point in the crazy world of the current US administration.
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He's had over a year to enable it.
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It's possible it was breached in 2022 and they've held on to it until now.
He held very important positions in the US government before 2022, including in the SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020-2021.
This is just a sad story of a partisan hack who failed upwards into one of the most sensitive and powerful offices in the nation, simply for being a loyal sycophant, not merit.
From the article, he wasn't the director of the FBI for the time period the emails are from: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022"
It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting anything worth hacking on gmail.
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> The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of this
well even I haven't seen/heard about this...
maybe google should advertise more?
(or... maybe I don't look important to google :( ?)
Was that landing page written by Google India team !
Uh yeah, the locale in the link is specifically an Indian locale. If you find it it disorienting you can change en_in to en_us:
https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/
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Not sure what difference the nationality of the copywriters makes…
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Well, it was written to target Indian English. You can find the American version of the page at https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/ .
It would be poetic justice to get the unredacted Epstein files via Iran...
Real link from Handala (dead): https://handala-team.to/kash-patel-current-director-of-the-f...
Archive: https://archive.ph/ILFFH
Download: https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxoxwyp7qosgdwldereecudqpbva/...
Password: handala
Was he running openclaw on his unpenetrable system by any chance?
A great many experts in the military, medicine, disaster relief, and cybersecurity { the list goes on } were fired.
It's almost as if the nation were being weakened on purpose.
Don't get mad, get Vlad. Or just prepare for the long-desired Rapture.[0] and which politicians seem to be working very hard to being about (the Apocalypse part, anyway)
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/29/us/iran-israel-evangelicals-p...
> Prophecy, not politics, may also shape America’s clash with Iran
So, is prophecy OK in a pitch deck? Asking for a friend.
Its both dumber and more dangerous than that. Competent people are not valuable to governments that value loyalty more than competence.
"Competent" people are not valuable and over rated because they will flake out in such jobs when the group holds them responsible for all sorts of things they have no control over. They are the first people who recognize lumits. Their own, their teams and the systems. But people dont want to hear about Limits. They want saviors and messaihs. They want fantasy and magic. So the system runs not optimized for efficiency but illusion of control, for damping of anxieties and fears.
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and that will be there eventual downfall luckily.
The Manchurian Candidate.
When do the Raptor puppets go on sale?
Yes, the “experts” like the head of the HHS that was a lawyer and former DA in California.
Were any of the people fired responsible for security on personal gmail accounts?
no paywall for the CNN article: https://archive.ph/Pz81T
For real, I wouldn't be shocked if Trump drafted everyone between 18 and 42, sent them all to Iran and then let Israel nuke Iran
No, I’m convinced the one thing that Trump wants to do is to launch a nuke before he dies. That’s what he wants his legacy to be. and his name everywhere.
No. DRAFT ICE!
Oh, and ...
I'm sure it will be embarrassing for him personally, but not a breach of U.S. government systems.
Kudos to CNN for publishing a balanced take on it.
These are a group that used outside signal chats to discuss war plans. What odds do you have that he didn't use a personal email to avoid future accountability?
That’s depressingly common with politicians the world over because Signal supports disappearing messages.
So I wouldn’t expect someone who uses Signal to automatically be the kind of person to use personal email for work.
You're assuming that he didn't use personal email for his FBI "work".
The leak is from 2011-2022. He wasn't in the government then!!!!
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The US media has a clear understanding that their reporting on the war needs to be filtered and biased. This is not some coming-to-their-senses against sensationalism, but a nothingburger they know they can't sensationalize without great risk.
As is the case in any administration; let alone with an admin as vindictive as Trump's.
This "balanced take" warrants kudos?
We're not even pretending to lift the bar off the ground when it comes to mainstream media, are we?
If you check their telegram channel they have some humorous photos and his resume.
This is great.
It couldn't happen to a more corrupt person and organization!
The Handala group has promised even more.
Get it while it's hot!
Clowns, all the way down.
Unfair to clowns, a noble profession.
counterexample is serial killer John Wayne Gacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy#/media/File:Jo...
Prefer the title “jesters”
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When the clown moves into the palace it doesn’t make him the king, the palace becomes a circus
I wonder how many others are hacked but remain undiscovered
Considering 95% of spam that hits my inbox originates from compromised Gmail accounts, I'd say it's a few.
Because Google is too big to fail, all Gmail traffic is essentially whitelisted and they can't be bothered to do anything about it.
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It always will be. The FBI is scandal prone and a stranger to success. I'm not entirely sure a large federal apparatus is needed anymore. It maybe made sense when local police were poorly trained and psychics were seen as credible investigative tools, but, I think we're well past that. I think it should be chopped into 50 pieces and handed over to the states to operate. A small coordinating office is all that should be left.
Username checks out, I guess!
Seriously though I'm not so sanguine about local forces. Assuming the local PD is well trained seems like a big if, to say nothing of the risk of localized pressure or corruption. Eg would the local sheriff of a county with a very large employer be able to effectively investigate and bring charges against it? Being able to bring in federal LE brings a certain impartiality to those sorts of cases.
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More than clowns, they’re all fools.
Not just that, clowns and jesters played critical and culturally significant roles.
“Fools” is not only not an insult to clowns and jesters, but it’s far more accurate.
I would even say without any necessary religious perspective, these people are like the origins of the term and concept of “demons”, entities representing the most heinous and nefarious instincts and impulses of humanity so vile and repulsive that they had to be emanations of hell. How would you even makes sense of such evil behavior back then. They didn’t know what the dark triad of personality flaws was, narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism (yes, I understand it’s an erroneous label, but it’s the one used).
Did you write the software that allowed him to get hacked in the first place?
Looking good there, murica, looking good
But his emails!
Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email
Perhaps a little embarrassing related to communications security but come on, of all the people's email to grab they had to grab one of the most boring individuals? Ice hokey, cigars, classic cars...? Is that taboo in Iran? It is not taboo in the USA.
Be careful Iran. The country you are targeting know how to use AI and can make ultra realistic videos and images of your leaders doing unspeakable things and upload them to decentralized platforms. Such things can not be erased from the internet.
From the administration that brought us "We are currently clean on OPSEC", I can't claim surprise. Disappointment, but not surprise.
Nor, however, can I take the statements of malicious actors at face value. They hacked a personal email address, but that does not mean "the FBI’s security was nothing more than a joke".
These government officials are idiots. Jeffery Epstein, idiot. Why do even rich and powerful use easily hackable stuff?
Lest us not forget bObama@yahoo.com or the IT guy who worked for the Clinton foundation who posted about bleachbit on recdit
Obama's old personal email was at defunct ISP ameritech.net, not Yahoo. I only remember because that's the ISP I grew up with.
Trump using yourefired as his Twitter password well into his 2016 campaign was amazing, too.
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Because they are experts in acquiring riches and power, not experts in computer security.
I can't help but interpret these stories as psyops
This is one of the risks of dating a Mossad agent.
Where did the article go?
I wonder if the Nazi cabinet was as bizarre as the current America cabinet...
It’s an administration filled with incompetent fools whose only expertise is in grifting.
This hack of his emails is hilarious, though. And it made my day.
>“This isn’t an FBI compromise — it’s someone’s personal junk drawer,” he said.
Eh, with how many people in the current administration seem to use out of band channels to communicate very important things who knows what else they located.
This isn’t a written by a human — it's a AI-accelerated piece.
As if this is the first time this has ever happened.
How many former officials used personal accounts about government business?
How many corporate executives communicate business via personal accounts to avoid legal discovery?
How many individuals communicate outside their main email accounts to avoid scrutiny or attribution?
Point is, nobody should feel superior or shocked that such things like this happen. I understand some enjoy the privacy of their perceived enemies being exposed, but IMHO, nobody should be happy about invasion of anyone's privacy.
Most incompetent administration in the modern era.
Think about it this way, this administration is the most competent administraion we've ever had at being incompetent.
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Oh a while ago everything bad that happened to or in the US was the fault of Russians, now I guess it's gonna be Iranians.
Not surprising as email providers like Yahoo's security are a joke. A former CIA director got his personal emailed pwned as well.
"Iran, if you're listening..."
How the heck is the buried down to page 4 after one hour?? The head of the FBI having his email hacked is a pretty big tech story.
Lots of personal opinions and low-effort jabs in this thread.
Negative voting.
Imagine a world where gpg encryption was the norm instead of something that only works reliably in Emacs.
This wouldn't have happened if Kash Patel used Emacs, that's right.
You know, thats really my main takeaway from all this. Once you really boil it down
I think it's a pretty cynical take that an Emacs user will never be made FBI director.
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How would GPG help? GPG is as safe as your private key is. If someone gets "hacks you" and gets access to your private key, it's over
GPG keys are typically guarded much better than emails, that's the whole point. Accessing e-mails can be done by guessing a password, to get to the key you basically need command execution on the target's client system.
https://dangerousthings.com/product/apex-flex/
But just a personal account with materials reportedly from 2011-2022, not an FBI breach
JFC. This does not belong on HN. Look at the discussion. Nothing but politics.
If you read the news with enough cynicism, you'll realize that rules like formality, password strength or cybersecurity hygiene are for the average Joes, not the morons/perverts who run the world.
No worries. As long as rigorous due diligence was followed when vetting him as a candidate, there will surely be nothing embarrassing or harmful found in his personal emails.
Iran... if you're listening...
We'd love to see all of those Epstein files.
Is this a reference to
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...
> "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said in a July 27, 2016 news conference.
Haha - yes exactly.
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All the time, just those military aged men don't call them their enemy because they know they aren't. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afganistan, etc, most people don't consider the majority of those peoples the enemy whether they are fighting or not because they don't think we should have been trying to kill or subjugate them in the first place.
The goals and ideals of politicians and powermongers rarely aligns with the majority of the population.
I’d never support a repressive theocracy like the current Iranian regime and will not cheer on their propaganda operations.
But let’s not confuse this Iran conflict with a legitimate war. Only congress can declare war and appropriate funds for a war. What we have is a rogue authoritarian executive that was incompetent enough to ignore military assessments and be manipulated by Netanyahu to strike.
People should protest like there is no tomorrow when la senile demagogue is destroying the international world order, free trade and freedom of the seas. That is not the same as rooting for the enemy!
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Maybe we need to get rid of the concept of "enemy" and "ally", as seemingly those labels matter less and less as time goes on.
Maybe one is the "enemy", and the others can be "less enemy" and "more enemy". So we're all enemies in reality, but some more enemies than others.
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Iran has done nothing to harm the average American. Who is the enemy, really?
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There are 193 countries in the world other than America and whichever country they are bombing this week.
this is where you find out you're the bad guy.
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The time is now, fellow old men.
—older #millenial (recently re-enlistable ha ha ha ja ha ha)
Who said they are the enemy?
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look up revolutionary defeatism.
I'm sorry but nothing can ever be more embarrassing for that man who wrote this book to get that job
https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/19555...
What an absolute clown
But far more seriously, imagine the danger he has put this country into by firing so many critical people, some specifically and uniquely for Iran and Middle-East defense
Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it coming, maybe even on purpose
> Let's hope we don't get another 9/11 in the next 1000 days because they are completely unprepared and won't ever see it coming, maybe even on purpose
Why would anyone bother to attack us now? This entire administration has done more to make The US weak and vulnerable than any outside attacker could have hoped to accomplish. They can just sit back and watch rome burn
> Why would anyone bother to attack us now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
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How am I only finding out about this now... my sides
This is the end of his high profile bureaucrat career. Inevitably, something will show up in the emails that will get airplay as embarrassing to Trump, and Trump will just say that he should have protected his password better and ask for his resignation.
He doesn't have a face for Fox News, so he'll have to try to parlay his past closeness with the administration for lobbyist money, but if he gets shunned by the people left in the administration, he's got to go back to his public defender job.
But ... but her emails!
I mean, yes? You can give whatever weight you want to the whole thing, but the core issue with Hillary Clinton and the emails was that she was storing material on a private server rather than in official infrastructure.
If Patel didn't do such thing here, the breach should only expose personal stuff, if he did, then it's much more of a problem, but either way this is a really clear example of why concern was raised back at the time.
I’m surprised no group has hacked the Epstein files, given the extreme interest.
hacking groups are generally funded by the people that are in the files. -> government leaders.
Hegseth - Signal app
Noem - habeas corpus definition she gave at the Congress hearing
Kennedy Jr - vaccines and the rest of his view on medicine
Now Patel's unhackable FBI.
I think the world has changed, and i really need to update my expectations of what is new normal. It is like in tech when paradigm shift happens, and you're either go with the new paradigm or get irrelevant.
If Idiocracy was made today, I wonder how far in the future they’d place it. In 2006, they thought 500 years which seems optimistic now.
We’re way beyond Idiocracy now, we left that timeline six years ago.
For all his flaws, Camacho was a good leader - he recognised there was a problem, knew he couldn’t fix it and actively rallied the world around the one person who could.
This bunch of dipshits expressly denigrated the experts, refused to take the slightest precaution to protect themselves and others from a deadly virus and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And that’s not even thinking about the industrial levels of fuckery and bullshit they’ve perpetrated over the last year.
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It would literally just be a compilation of TikToks
Future? I'm thinking a Borat style mockumentary in the present.
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Don't forget "the files are on my desk" and many other classics.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” ~Hannah Arendt
i'm from USSR, so pretty familiar with it. The issue here is whether it is a fluke, or the world is really going into new phase where totalitarianism and authoritarianism are going to become dominating state of affairs.
For example many attribute rise of totalitarianism back then in 20th century to the power of broadcasting radio and "formation of mass society". We have a similarly transformative factor now - social media. And with the new tech power - propaganda (sounds dated, today it is more like mind control) through social media and total surveillance plus AI "minority report" - we can get a hyper-totalitarianism orders of magnitude more totalitarian than those of the 20th century. And may be we're witnessing the birth of such a new world order.
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Only the best people
The real paradigm shift is coming in 2028.
I don't think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was a celebrity buffoon/reality show personality for decades before "politics". Stupid people eat that up. Other Trumpy candidates have not been able to reproduce his success. Let's not assume this is the new normal.
I heard some of the best advice I ever heard at a Subgenius devival in Dallas in the 80s: "Act like a dumb-shit and they'll treat you like an equal." Every year that quip seems more and more relevant.
I don’t think people appreciate enough how much it mattered that Trump was the only candidate explicitly saying they were working to Make America Great Again, as opposed to foreign interests or illegals.
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Wat we are witnessing is not just traditional totalitarianism, but the emergence of a suicidal state driven by a fascist death drive.
Under MAGA, the state no longer pretends to be guided internally by reason and progress, but is instead founded on non progress and terror, a scorched earth approach to slashing government agencies, and the accelerated destruction of state institutions: rather than seeking to resolve societal crises, MAGA produces constant crises to feed off of, preferring to annihilate its own systems rather than stop the destruction.
Yes, the world has changed. We have entered a reality where insanity has become the goal of the authoritarians, ie the self-destruction itself is the actual end goal.
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Is that the latest spin to defend the pedophile class?
I see you updated your comment, but in a way that doesn't make any sense. Of course the pedophiles in the files will say it's a hoax.
The DOJ acknowledges that over 100,000 files are still withheld.
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Nothing anti-semitic about pointing out close ties between political allies. Like how Jared Kushner's family is so close with Netanyahu he slept in Jared's bed. If anything it's patriotic & pro-Israel.
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Doesn't gmail opt people into 2fa automatically?
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>just a slow decline into incompetence.
Give them some credit, it’s been quite rapid.
when were they anything other than incompetent?
Remember when that was considered an actual issue in 2016? I remember congressional hearings over this.
For those who decried Hillary's E-Mail server but fail to apply the same standards to the current administration, it was never a real issue to begin with. Just performative nonsense.
This was an extremely limited leak. Just looked through the zip. I wouldn't doubt he does use his personal email for government purposes, but it's not in here.
And it's not a coincidence that they're also the ones who shout about "meritocracy" the loudest.
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Hacked
Leaked
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BRING IT ON
I'm no fan of this administration, at all, but this seems like a big fat nothingburger. They hacked a personal gmail account, not a government account, not government infra. Why is this not a failing of Google instead of the government? And surely the hackers would have eagerly released anything damning, but nothing damning seems to exist. What am i missing here?
Remember when this admin used a Signal group chat to coordinate an operation against Houthi forces in Yemen and left in some journalists. Do you think he cares care whether he sent an email with his gov email on a gov device or if he sent it with his personal email?
you don't think that it's relevant and concerning that the director of the FBI didn't take operational security seriously enough that his account got compromised? even if they didn't get anything incriminating (which maybe they did and are going to blackmail him later) that show a shocking lack of competency for someone in that kind of position.
we don't even know how it was compromised. was his password "password", or did the hackers exploit a gmail/google vulnerability?
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Operational security doesn’t apply to personal accounts, no? Otherwise, they wouldn’t be personal.
It's not a big deal, for the reasons you mentioned. But it's interesting to a lot of people, and therefore newsworthy.
it's definitely newsworthy, no doubt there. but i see so many people in this thread pointing to this as somehow a failing of the fbi, which it's not. i'm all for calling out this administration for its many many failings, but this is not one of them, and calling this a failure of the administration just hurts the credibility of everyone pointing out real issues with this administration.
True yeah. but uh anyway what about HILLARYS EMAILS we need to hear about those for the next 4 decades (no convictions despite "Lock Her Up" slogans for 5 years)
People are concerned because every government official uses their personal email for work.
The director of the FBI should not be hacked in anyway ever for any reason.
If Gmail isn’t secure, he should be using something else.
How is this a failing of Google? They can't be blamed for users who fail to secure their own accounts.
just think of what could someone do if they got into your personal email account?
yes, and...?
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Certainly the FBI and GMail having gaps in their operational information security isn't news.
Do you think the FBI manages his personal email?
Kind of defeats the purpose of it being a personal email don't you think?
The FBI does because he is included in "the FBI"
I read the headline and first thought was seriously, that's it? Surely this is one of the least concerning things about the administration
Iranian. Not bloody likely! Try Israeli-tied propagandists. Poke the hornets nest much?
Aren't most exploits that get used, shared through black markets anyway? So Saying Xcountry-linked hackers, is just saying who ponied up the bitcoin to pay for the attack?
This is quite misleading and partisan to present this as "FBI director's personal email" when the emails far predate his current role.
If I had downloaded those emails, which I haven't because I know of no website that archives the internet, and if I had read them, which I haven't because that would be a breach of someone's privacy, then certainly I would have figured out that it contains no spicy state secrets. But why spend one hour assessing an information when you can get clicks by suggesting something bigger?
Those supposedly Iranian hackers surely know how to hack the western media to get attention.
I found it actually more informative to read on the sad history of the Dena, the ship whose victims this leak was dedicated to, so it's not been a complete waste of time.