Cause, on 11 January 2021 - 04:20 PM, said:
I can't help think this article is dangerous in its own way. It's easy to imagine the mob of maga as nothing but deadbeat dads, slow learners, losers etc but I I think that makes it too easy to dismiss them. There was a female
Air Force veteran there, there was a state lawmaker in the crowd. It won't help if we just mock them as the dregs of humanity.
These people have votes, they have agency. They are dangerous.
'It's easy to think of the siege of the U.S. Capitol as a clown show with accidentally deadly consequences. A bunch of cosplaying self-styled patriots show up, overwhelm the incomprehensibly unprepared Capitol Police, and then throw a frat party in the rotunda. The miscreants smear shit on the walls and steal laptops and smoke weed in conference rooms. [Note: the ones stealing laptops may have been foreign intelligence. ...]
Those rioters, the bozos, were the ones who talked to the press, who waved gleefully to photographers, who selfied and streamed the entire afternoon, without even a thought that there might ever be consequences. They were doing it for the 'gram, and their story overwhelms the narrative because their faces and voices dominated the day.
But there were other rioters inside the Capitol, if you look at the images. And once you see them, it's impossible to look away. [...]
Call the zip ties by their correct name: The guys were carrying flex cuffs, the plastic double restraints often used by police in mass arrest situations. They walked through the Senate chamber with a sense of purpose. They were not dressed in silly costumes but kitted out in full paramilitary regalia: helmets, armor, camo, holsters with sidearms. At least one had a semi-automatic rifle and 11 Molotov cocktails. At least one, unlike nearly every other right-wing rioter photographed that day, wore a mask that obscured his face.
These are the same guys who, when the windows of the Capitol were broken and entry secured, went in first with what I'd call military-ish precision. They moved with purpose, to the offices of major figures like Nancy Pelosi and then to the Senate floor. What was that purpose? It wasn't to pose for photos. It was to use those flex cuffs on someone.'
https://slate.com/ne...ialflow_twitter
They were also surprisingly adept at scaling the walls....
I imagine more competent insurrectionists may have assumed that a direct attack on the Capitol would be almost certain to fail. But after seeing how close they seemed to come... the next attack may be much worse. Particularly if sympathetic Republican congresspeople---such as the QAnon congresswoman (Boebert) who tweeted 'Today is 1776' that morning and also tweeted to let them know that Pelosi had left the chamber---give them more specific details about the layout and defenses. (Hopefully Boebert and others will not be informed of new security measures. Or even given misleading information....)
https://www.rawstory...oebert-twitter/
'Any Washington-based foreign spy who was not in this crowd by the time they got removed from the Capitol deserves to be fired by their government
Countless rioters wandered the halls of government without supervision. Members of Congress and their staff were evacuated so quickly that computers were left on with windows open and unlocked. [...]
For the next 3½ hours, the Capitol Police basically watched it happen. They were embarrassingly outnumbered and arguably had no way to exert any meaningful degree of control over the matter. They prioritized protecting the members of Congress, but they obviously could not be everywhere.
After hours in which the rioters were being publicly encouraged to leave, and even told by the police to leave, an announcement was made that the invaders had been purged from the Capitol building and things were now safe again. This was exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead of chasing them out the door, the police should've locked the doors and arrested everyone inside. Not to punish them (although they definitely deserved it), but to discover who they were and what they were up to.
[...] Hundreds of people wandering around with their smartphone cameras capturing every detail of the building, whether they're publicly accessible or not. Hundreds of people, none of whom were searched, with direct access to electronics, computers, and networks.
It's a cybersecurity truism that if you have physical access to the machine, you own the machine. Applying that to computers with direct access to the congressional networks is terrifying.
[...] While an intruder would not be able to access classified material on any of those computers or the default shared resources, they would have access to basically all of the leadership's deliberative material, emails, employee personnel files, privileged files, and even protected whistleblower disclosures, and likely quick access to personal accounts the computer's owner has accessed while in the office such as banking or Amazon, which may default to logged in and using a password manager to make access easy (which would allow for future coercion). Most importantly, you do not need extended access to the computer if you came prepared; a USB drive surreptitiously stuck into a machine with malicious code on it is the least sophisticated of numerous possible options for a bad actor to maintain extended access and control long after they have nonchalantly walked out the front door. It can even be done by accessing networking hubs or even cables if you have the right tools.
This is not a hypothetical threat either. A laptop was stolen from the office of Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who sits on the powerful (and exceedingly relevant to foreign adversaries) Senate Appropriations and Foreign Relations Committees.
[...] Locating surreptitious devices that could be attached to any electronic device in the building is going to be a logistical nightmare orders of magnitude more complex than searching for incendiary devices. Add in the need to look for malicious code and it will be months before Congress can be truly safe again.'
https://www.thedaily...security-threat
What if Russian agents help them?... I doubt the US or the EU could do much more, especially if it's difficult to prove. Economic sanctions by the US and EU are already in place, but no one's going to risk military action. Lukewarm cyber-war maybe....
This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 11 January 2021 - 05:24 PM
Help
