Argentinian Security Researcher Arrested After Tweeting About Government Hack (zdnet.com) 48
Argentinian police briefly detained and raided the home of a well-known security researcher last week on suspicion of hacking and leaking data from government systems. From a report: Following his release, Javier Smaldone, the security researcher, obtained and published court documents pertaining to his arrest on Twitter. The documents showed that authorities arrested and raided the security expert just for tweeting about a recent government hack, with no tangible evidence that he was involved. Smaldone claimed the entire affair was a witch-hunt, describing his arrest and raid as "political persecution." The researcher is a well-known cyber-security activist, previously testified in front of the Argentinian Senate against the use of electronic voting machines, and regularly publishes blog posts criticizing the government's plans to use such devices. Smaldone believes this is the government's revenge for past criticism.
Don't (Score:2)
cry for me, Argentia
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Your troll is weak, but it is a shame that people still allow persecution against real whistleblowers
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Because people are too polarized now, they see prosecution of whistleblowers a good thing if they only target political opponents. They're too short sighted to realize that you get more freedoms by granting them to everyone, because the political balance of tower is constantly changing.
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Indeed, there is far too much risk to whistle-blowing these days.
The light of day needs to shine or things get smelly, stagnant, and/or corrupt.
It is just simply not possible for citizens to make informed decisions about how their country is being run if the government can prosecute people releasing information about trouble the government, a business, or individual is causing.
This goes the same for court, judges can not constitutionally gag anyone, not even to protect business/trade secrets. The problems
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More like cherry picking history. You are blowing the "socialism" dog whistle.
I like the whistleblowers that brought real evidence, the ones experiencing real harassment in mass media and your silly social sites right now, not emotional idiots with nothing but hearsay witness testimony.
I am not taken by your tribal politics.
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"More like cherry picking history. You are blowing the "socialism" dog whistle."
How is calling the action of arresting someone trash talking the government, as being socialist, a cherry picking?
"I like the whistleblowers that brought real evidence, the ones experiencing real harassment in mass media and your silly social sites right now, not emotional idiots with nothing but hearsay witness testimony."
Lol, you have me pegged wrong you blistering moron. All whistle-blowers deserve speak without fear of repr
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All whistle-blowers deserve speak without fear of reprisal because while you may not feel it is important others might.
It's as simple as dirt. They have to bring evidence, or go back in with a wire. The situation here is bullshit until they do.
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:-) Good roll, but funny you should ask... The prez is definitely exposing D.C. corruption by doing it right there on camera, (obstructing the subpoenas). Real 3D chess?
No, I meant the persecuted whistleblowers from the past that brought in real records for us to peruse, not some notes on what a "visibly shaken" (not stirred) guy thought he heard.
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Trump is not exposing shit except how much of a moron he is.
DC corruption has been an open secret for decades, long before Trump even dreamed of being president. I don't see Hillary in jail yet do you? Until then you are going to have to just be like the rest of the political sheep running around here pining for their team like blind zealots.
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I don't see Hillary in jail yet do you?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Oh well, you definitely earned a "Funny" meta-mod from me!
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Dude perhaps you do not understand what a whistle blower is. This is just some political active dude who has some popularity on the internet at his time. The message from the autocratic Argentinian government to the people, shut the fuck up, we do not want to hear your opinion, make your opinion too loud and law enforcers will kick down your door, steal your stuff and a fifty fifty chance of them shooting you repeatedly for having a phone in your hand in your home (whether or not you actually had a phone in
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A whistleblower brings evidence of a crime. Without evidence it is gossip.
Re:Don't (Score:5, Insightful)
fairly on target here.
I hope the pro socialists understand this is what is waiting for them. There is an endless number of stories about citizens of socialism learning that you are not allowed to criticize or expose their government. You are only allowed to sing praises or beg for socialist salvation.
You keep using that word socialist. I do not think it means what you think it means. The correct word you are looking for is authoritarian.
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Socialist is better because it describes the type of "authoritarian" action being taken. Sure you can totally make a case that it could be communist instead but you get the idea.
Socialists demands individual obedience to the group think. This is why you see them accusing those among their ranks as being something else. They don't care, but they do care if you don't NPC everything the platform demands of you.
Socialists do not allow individualism. Example, Black Republicans are called Uncle Toms for a reas
Re:Don't (Score:4, Informative)
You do realize that the current government in Argentina, which the guy accuses and which ordered his arrest is a right wing party, right?
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left and right wing are different inside of every border.
Do not make the mistake that people on the right cannot have socialist ideas either. There were a lot of people on the right that will happily cheer on socialist agenda's when you get a non-socialist to advance them.
Take how easy it was for Reagan to get gun control laws instituted with the blessings of conservatives when they saw Black Men holding guns.
Take how many conservatives cheered Trump on when he said he wanted to challenge media licenses ov
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so, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning... yeah, socialism
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Snowden was a patriot... Manning tried to enrich himself by selling secrets to enemies so I am not so sure that was not treason. If someone can reasonably reveal otherwise I will change my position on Manning.
Any time you give information to the public you are protected by the 1st. There can be no exception to this if we expect to remain free people, yet we have so many that no one here even understands how bad it is.
Re:Don't (Score:4, Informative)
Please choose your bogey man more carefully!
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if a capitalist state does something that is socialist, its still socialism. It being 25%, 50%, or 75% capitalist does not change this.
If I am a Professional Football player occasionally play Basket Ball it does not suddenly make basket ball now foot ball and neither does it stop me from being a pro football player.
every government has a mix of ism's at play throughout multiple levels... but the point being... socialism gives government lots of control.... like what is displayed here. It does not mean tha
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If you are only going to say I am wrong and not point out what is wrong then I accept your defeat.
If you actually can point out what is a straw-man we can discuss it, but I bet you can't point one out... not at least without creating a straw-man in the process.
My point is that the people wanting socialism is going to get this exact thing. It really do not matter if the government at it's core is socialist or not. Governments can completely have a socialist position on one matter and a capitalist position
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You have also completely absorbed the right-wing American propaganda that socialism is the same as communism, and will always turn into a single-party state like the Soviet Union, completely ignoring all the multi-party democracies that have socialist parties in their parliaments (and often in their governments. I should know, I live in one).
Accept my defeat all you like, but when
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You are inmidst the No True Scotsman fallacy. "No true capitalist state will ever..."
Note to you: "I don't like it" and "It's socialism" are two different things. The most capitalist states ever have already imprisoned people they mistrust without any further evidence. That didn't turn them into socialist ones.
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Errmmm...take a look at the current Administration in the U.S. Last we heard, they weren't socialists.
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News flash, you do not have to be a socialist to advance socialist ideas.
Just like you do not have to be a drunkard to get drunk. What makes you something by label is the constant actions you take over time. Not that you once did something that was or was not that thing.
So shocker... a right wing government can totally take a socialist action!
Re: Don't (Score:1)
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I am not familiar with the idiot version of liberalism.
Under liberalism this guy would never have been arrested and instead would have been cheered.
I am an "original liberal" I know not many exist any more but I espouse maximum liberty at all levels. Your right to swing your arms stops at my nose type. You can say anything you want and insult anyone you want. The moment you do anything physically violent to anyone I do not hold them responsible for retaliation that seriously harms you because I will not
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Arrest the guy who budgets IT security. (Score:3)
Arrest the guy who budgets the IT security, not the guy who finds the hole.
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I once worked for an arms manufacturer. One of our customer was the Indian SPG [wikipedia.org]. Each time they would buy a batch of products from us, their QA rep would come over and check everything 5 times. And I mean CHECK EVERY-SINGLE-THING. They paid us extra for the privilege of doing such an extensive reception too.
One day I asked him why his organization bothered to spend so much money, and why he himself was so keen on doing QC, where all our other customers were happy enough to sample and pay less. He answered si
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Most IT security comes from companies with stacks of unapproved quotes for products/services and man power to protect the data.
The problem is security done right is expensive, and this covers a lot of the benefit advertised by the computer sellers who says their product will make your company run so much cheaper.
Because the companies don't have much personal risk if there is a big flaw, it means they will run as cheaply as they can get away with. Taking security incidents seriously, and finding and hitting
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Someone needs to mod this up... it's so on target!
Fundamentally Information Security is misunderstood, mismanaged, and generally missing sanity.
If it "looks good" on paper then it MUST be the gold standard and be enforced asap!
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Arrest the guy who budgets the IT security, not the guy who finds the hole.
Just arrest? That's pretty wimpy by Argentine standards. Back in the day they used to arrest folks like these, and them give them free plane rides on Death flights [wikipedia.org].
Hanlon’s Razor (Score:2)
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
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I hate this quote, it should be entirely the opposite.
Never attribute to stupidity, what can be adequately explained by malice.
You have to be more than just stupid to go out of your way to fuck someones day up with your stupidity!
Stupidity just is, it is infinite and never ending. Humans are 80% stupid, 80% of the times. No one is immune from this problem, not me, not you, not anyone. Professionals say stupid shit all the time, they do stupid shit all the time. Government is a monument to human stupidit
legit question.... (Score:2)
I've wondered about what happens between the moment the info is released to when some g-man come banging on your door. Does one of your 12 followers snitch? And to whom? Would I find that info in the blue pages (yeah blue pages punk, look it up)? do they receive some silver for snitching?
or mayb
This is a taste of the future (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm very close to Smaldone, we worked on the same group of e-voting vulnerability research.
From the 4 initial group members, 3 of them were already raided, only I remain un-raided and un-arrested. Yeah I don't feel very safe in here.
This is obviously a payback for the government, not unlike Chinese arrests. But this is happening in a western country, and using modern cyber tools. Let me explain this part: Basically the police have software that analyze social networks, mainly twitter. So the software tracks your tweets and the detective try to solve the case that way. You might thing, this is a stupid way to solve a crime, and you will be correct. Add to this, the utter ineptitude of police agents using this software, and you have a ridiculous case like this. Smaldone is obviously innocent and you cannot assume someone is a hacker because he tweets about python and java.
Persecution to e-voting researchers is not new. All researchers from Brazil had to go into exile. Gov don't like hackers messing with the elections, and much less, publishing bugs.
But look forward to a future (very near future) where all your social network posts are actively monitored by, not one, but several government groups, that make inept use of analysis software to make life-altering decisions. This is why anonymity is so fundamental.