It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting anything worth hacking on gmail.

stickfigure 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is also possible he is an idiot. There are few valuable sentences that begin with "it is possible..."

To be fair, he probably never once in his wildest dreams ever thought he would be head of the FBI. So he probably didn't think he needed the extra security, because what idiot would put him in charge of the world's largest spy network.

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thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The same idiot who pushed him into SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020.

He shouldn’t be FBI Director and he shouldn’t have been in the DNI or Secretary of Staff for SecDef either. All of those are high positions of responsibility and require tremendous OpsSec. This guy’s first act as FBI Director was to waive most of the investigations into his staff to bypass security clearance checks.

Sorry if I’m not disagreeing with you. Sarcasm is a bit hard to identify these days.

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nkrisc 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

World’s largest spy network? The FBI wouldn’t even be the largest spy network within the US.

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eps 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The FBI is not a spy network.

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thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You are being pedantic.

I have 2 family members who are/were special agents for the FBI. Much of their job is harvesting evidence to build cases by spying, which frequently comes more in the form of “spying” in the way we saw in The Sopranos.

The FBI is also the premier counter-espionage organization within the US, so it is tasked with spying on suspected foreign / turned spies.

It is much more than a spy network, but it is exactly that as well.

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kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago | parent [-]

All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their life. You don't have to be a suspect to fall within their panopticon.

	▲	leereeves 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their life. That claim deserves a source.

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ArnoVW 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While I understand why you would say that, I think the way "spy network" was meant, was in the way that their job is to spy within the US. And given the resources at their disposition, and the size of the US, "worlds biggest spy network" is not wrong.

Also, they do head up the main counterintelligence effort of the US.

How the mighty have fallen.

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pdpi 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Security in depth. Even if you think you don't have anything particularly valuable in there, you still protect it as if you did.

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leereeves 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I'd rather he worry about securing government secrets, not spend one second worrying about "personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible, and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum".

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ndsipa_pomu 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Obviously government secrets need to be properly secured, but the personal info/photos of a top official can often be used for blackmail or for determining close friends that could be used to compromise Patel.

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leereeves 5 hours ago | parent [-]

There's so much speculation about how this hack could conceivably be damaging, but so little evidence that it actually contained anything damaging.

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thephyber 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

“The enemy broke into our nuke silo, killed our Air Force manned crew, stole the nuke codes, launched the missile. Not a big deal because we shot it down before it hit its target.”

Most of the time, actual harm is the most important issue. In this case because that office holds so much centralized power and authority over many aspects of American life (domestic law enforcement, some foreign law enforcement, domestic counterterrorism / counterintelligence / counterespionage, and security clearance background checks for all VIPs), the means are equally as important as the ends.

And I would throw in a wrinkle: what evidence is there that the dumps were not stripped of the most useful blackmail material? If I were in charge of a hack operation, I would dump the low impact stuff to show the world how much of a joke this guy’s security is, but only after I already used the best stuff to blackmail him months ago.

	▲	leereeves 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The scenario you're proposing is more like "They broke into our silo and launched a nuke, then they shot it down themselves." A successful blackmailer doesn't want the security breach exposed or investigated, they want to continue to use the victim.

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ndsipa_pomu 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Security through luck?

The reality is that officials are targetted by various states looking to get some leverage, so not properly securing an email account is a serious failing unless it's part of a wider honeypot scheme. Personally, I'm not convinced that the current U.S. administration is competent enough to plan ahead and implement honeypots.

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leereeves 5 hours ago | parent [-]

No point in going round and round with personal opinions and general speculation. The debate is easily settled: just point to some actual harm done by this hack.

	▲	ndsipa_pomu 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think you really understand how blackmail works. If the information is public, then that's a failed blackmail attempt. Also, the U.S. administration is unlikely to provide public information on how top officials have been compromised. It's not really much of a debate as it's widely acknowledged that letting enemy states get access to the email accounts of officials is a really bad idea.

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thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Bad take.

Patel specifically bypassed security clearance protocols for Bongino and other staff he hired. His top priority isn’t protecting government secrets — it’s to take down what he thinks is the part of the US government that resists bending to Trump’s will.

And you are wrong that the FBI shouldn’t care about securing the Director’s private life information. Anything and everything can and will be used to blackmail him by foreign governments, criminals, political actors.

I highly doubt the first public dump of messages would include the most compromising content — that’s like handing away a maximum severity zero day for the most common OS in the federal government. There’s no logical reason to do that for free, so I suspect the really incriminating/ salacious stuff was withheld for private use.

And if the FBI didn’t enable the high security setting on the FBI Director’s private email account, they might not have known what, if any, compromising materials were in there.

	▲	kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Trump bypassed clearance protocols for unclearable Jared. Nobody cares with an unaccountable executive.