Beltway press interest in politicians’ cybersecurity practices waxes and wanes. They regarded Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her term as Secretary of State as a potentially disqualifying scandal and grave national security crisis.
When the nothing-burger Clinton email scandal served its purpose and the Trumps occupied the White House, the corrupt clan’s serial use of unsecured phones and private email and chat services was mostly met with yawns.
Now that the sensitive national intelligence-broadcasting Trumps have been ejected from the White House, it’s time for Beltway gossip rags to become cybersecurity scolds again. But this time, in the opposite direction, as in “why is Vice President Harris so paranoid about Bluetooth?” I shit you not:
While wired headphones have re-emerged as a hip vintage accessory among Gen Z, Harris’ embrace of them is less about fashion than caution. Former aides say that the vice president has long been careful about security and technology — with some describing it as prudent and others suggesting it’s a bit paranoid.
It’s a recurring theme. An aide on her 2016 Senate bid said Harris often preferred texting to email for security reasons. And another former aide when she was attorney general in California said that when a person arrived for a meeting, staff were instructed not to allow them to wait in Harris’ office alone. Instead, the person was asked to wait outside.
Bluetooth probably is a security risk if you’ve got sophisticated state-funded hackers probing for weaknesses 24/7. And it probably is a good idea not to allow visitors unsupervised access to high-ranking officials’ workspaces.
The excerpt above is from Politico, and to be fair, the tone is lighthearted. But damn, the double standard is exhausting sometimes.
Open thread.
Doug
And another former aide when she was attorney general in California said that when a person arrived for a meeting, staff were instructed not to allow them to wait in Harris’ office alone. Instead, the person was asked to wait outside.
I was early for a pretty low-level meeting at a US Embassy. Not only was I asked to wait outside the office in a sitting area, a person came to sit with until the meeting started. It wasn’t just politeness, it was making sure that I didn’t wander. Politico gotta politico, I guess, but the article really is very stupid.
Phylllis
Politickin’ while female; nothing she does will be ‘correct’. My job does entail some sensitive (student) data, which I take care to keep secure. I still wouldn’t want anyone waiting in my office for me. I think that’s pretty standard business etiquette. I also like the ‘former aides’, because they’ve set and continue to reinforce the narrative that she can’t keep employees due to her personality/management style.
p.a.
Who is it who said something like: the big secret parents don’t tell their kids is that all life is like junior high school. MSM and kool kid kulture, setting the agenda. Conservatives discovered/stumbled upon the fact that the kool kids can be punched into submission with no pushback from them.
MagdaInBlack
Doesn’t matter what she does , they’re going to hate on her. And me being me, that just makes me like her more.
It’s fkn 14 degrees in Chicago. Gah!
Central Planning
If IT security recognizes Bluetooth is an attack vector, they could just push a policy to the phone that prevents users from enabling it. I don’t see his using Bluetooth can be ok sometimes but not others.
Betty Cracker
@MagdaInBlack: 14 degrees! I was just filled with self-pity because it’s in the low 60s so I have to wear socks! Thanks for providing some perspective. ;-)
Van Buren
To echo what others point out-if she WAS using bluetooth, sooner or later, Politico would criticize her for being so careless. She’s black and female, she will NEVER get the benefit of the doubt from the kool kids.
raven
It’s the 80th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
ant
The unstated subtext, is that VP Harris, is a threat to the power structure of the white straight christian patriarchy.
She aint knowin her place.
Some people are more equal than others.
Americans who vote for republicans are very concerned about this. So concerned that they disregard all other policy choices and policy outcomes. That typhoid trump was in contact with over 500 people in the days after testing positive for covid (including Biden/Harris), and lied about a “2nd negative test”, doesn’t qualify as a failure of leadership for these people, because their only concern is the power structure. Why else would somebody vote for a walking/talking garden salad of antisocial personality disorders to represent them?
They are demanding that we give up equality as a goal, essentially. That, or American democracy dies. Democrats in South Carolina who voted in the 2020 presidential primary saw this clearly when they refused to even consider anything other than a white man to vote for. Frustrating, but a clear headed assessment from my perspective.
I will face a similar choice in the WI primary next year to try to unseat the odious fucking moron Ron Johnson. I will be voting for the white man, regardless of how much I like the other candidate with more darkness to his skin, or women, or atheist, or non- hetero. I know my place.
geg6
Why would anyone, let alone someone with sensitive materials, let someone just sit in their office unsupervised to wait? Almost every office has a sitting area where visitors can wait.
I have very sensitive materials about students/families in my office. I not only lock it when I’m not there, but a visitor would never be let in to wait for me.
And everyone knows Bluetooth is not secure.
sab
@Doug: Who the fuck lets other people wait in one’s office alone? That is just irresponsibly careless. We don’t let them past the receptioness. Rummage through our papers freely? I think not. These reporters really think we are all idiots out here.
Rusty
As a lawyer I have always cleaned up my office before seeing a client. Put away the files, make sure the computer screen isn’t showing another clients documents. That’s basic client confidentiality protection. I wouldn’t let someone sit in my office alone either. That’s just good attorney practice. The Trumps had money, went to the right schools, and were white. The Clinton’s and Harris come from poor backgrounds, or are women, or are black, or some combination thereof. They will never be accepted by insider Washington.
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker: High of 25 today, wooo hooo ! ?
Phylllis
@raven: John Ford’s Decemeber 7th is showing on TCM at 1:30 pm. It was banned through most of the war as a ‘detriment to morale’.
OzarkHillbilly
Just because one is paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Wasn’t that the lesson of Emailgate?
Phylllis
@OzarkHillbilly: Yep. Even paranoid people have enemies.
sab
@geg6: Our last car used to have my husband’s phone connected to the car’s bluetooth. I came home from work one day, parked in the driveway, and was accidentally able to listen in on a phone call he was having with his brother. Nothing important but Yikes.
PAM Dirac
@raven: My father was at Bellows Field, shooting at the Japanese planes with a pistol because no one could come up with anything better. It was one of the few things from WWII that he would talk about some.
laura
Using any errant bullshit, the beltway press, their assistants to the regional manager, and always unnamed, always amorphous former “aides” gossip monger and demean the Vice President on the daily and its not going unnoticed. The misogynoir is right out there plain as day and intended to sully and smear her because she will be the likely frontrunner for President one fine day. Call this bullshit out whenever and however possible. I ain’t having it!
sab
@p.a.: Politics is like junior high school. In a lot of the rest of life we can avoid that toxic culture.
lowtechcyclist
@Phylllis:
Paranoia: you only have to be right once to make it all worthwhile.
OzarkHillbilly
@Phylllis: As Hillary said, there is a vast right wing conspiracy.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us
I’m a Federal employee and we are banned from using Bluetooth with our government issued IT equipment. So she couldn’t, or shouldn’t, even use Bluetooth headphones with her government issued phone. You’d think they could have done enough research to find that out and maybe mentioned it.
raven
@PAM Dirac: My old man was standing in front of the Y in San Diego. They came on a loudspeaker and told everyone to get back to their ships. He said they went to sea, escorted a cruiser to Pearl, with crew members who had been in the Navy for ONE day! Your story reminds me of the pilot at the Battle of Samar who dive-bombed the biggest battleship in the world and threw a coke bottle at it because that was all he had.
NotMax
A graceful exit.
End of an era: Germany’s Merkel bows out after 16 years
raven
@NotMax: Not good weather for a ceremony.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
My uncle was stationed there. Just lying on his bunk reading when the attack happened.
sab
@NotMax: What a life’s trajectory she has had.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: Sunday mornin. . .
NotMax
@raven
Yeah, pretty crappy out there. Oahu getting slammed. Took two hours to fire up the emergency generators at Maui’s airport Sunday night when the widespread blackout here hit. (Power chez NotMax restored after just shy of 18 hours.)
Trivia: the survivors of the Utah traditionally hold their commemoration ceremony at sunset on Dec. 6th.
sab
@sab: It does irk me when alleged reporters criticize someone for doing what everyone in professional life does as standard practice.
Either the reporter has seen too many 1980s tv shows, or the reporter is lying. My default position is that when in doubt the reporter is lying.
That is how I receive my news.
raven
@NotMax: And the USS Ward fired the first shot of WW2 sinking a Japanese Mini-sub.
Geminid
@raven: And yesterday was Georgia’s Churl Harbor: former Senator David Perdue announced for Governor and Donald Trump immediately endorsed him.
Soprano2
I work for city government; they are paranoid about security. If the tone of the article were different with the exact same content it could easily be praising her for being so careful! It’s nuts, everyone knows security like that is important.
I once drove a rental car; I paired my phone to the Bluetooth, but unlike several others I deleted it before I turned the car in! I was stunned to see some people hadn’t deleted their info.
raven
@Geminid: I think that’s great, eat their own.
PAM Dirac
@raven: On this day I always take some time to think about so many just barely adults (my father was 21 at the time of the attack) that were thrown into chaotic life and death situations with the feeling that the world was depending on them to get it right.
raven
@PAM Dirac: I went in on my 17th birthday so, yea, I get it. My old man was 19 and his brother in law were both in the Navy as well and neither left the states. He spent every day of the war on that tin can and ended it off Okinawa. This was taken on one of their trips back to Pearl later in the war.
narya
@MagdaInBlack: I’m waiting for the sky to lighten a little before I go out for my run . . . and definitely extra layers today. Not looking forward to this. I suspect the “breeze” off the lake is going to be bitey.
Betty
The author may have intended a light-hearted tone, but once they used the word paranoud, they crossed a line. Politico is getting quite a bit of criticism on Twitter, and, boy, do they whine about it!
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: I saw something on the news about the torrential rain and wondered how you were faring.
sab
@Soprano2: Back before the neighbor bought and demolished my parents house: Neighbor on one side was a medical professional getting reports from work. We could always plug in to his network, because nobody challenges doctors and how their offices run.
Neighbor on the other side worked for the local university and taught printmaking and other art. We could never plug in to his network, because enforced academic standards.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Personally, okay. High enough above sea level (and on a slight slope) not to experience flooding of any depth. To get a taste of the sheer amount of rain, check out the short video of what’s coming down the cliffsides on the highway connecting Lahaina to the rest of the island.
Was really, really glad to have the X-torch for emergency lighting in the domicile.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
@SiubhanDuinne:
On December 7, 1941, my Uncle Doug was a young officer in a US Army coastal artillery battalion, posted to Pearl Harbor. He was lying on his bunk reading on the morning of the attack; he later wrote about getting weapons into the hands of his men, who shot down at least one Japanese aircraft. Uncle Doug lived another 60 years, eventually retiring from the Army as a Colonel.
NotMax
FYI.
Crowdfunding campaign comes through for 101-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Holy moly.
raven
@NotMax: Is that near the Lavender farm?
matt the somewhat reasonable
Politico: Kamala Harris takes that security stuff seriously! What a peasant!
sab
@NotMax: Be grateful you live on a slope. That rainfall in Ohio would have but us under water for six months at least.
raven
So, yea, they probably used small arms and maybe a water cooled 50 cal.
NotMax
@raven
Where I reside? In roughly the same area, but some miles away from them.
raven
@NotMax: No, the slide. I’ve got a pretty good idea of where you are.
NotMax
@raven
Oh, the waterfalls video. West side of the island. Lavender farm is upcountry in central Maui.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@NotMax: My neighbor across the street in my current neighborhood was a USS Utah survivor. He just recently passed away a few years ago. A very interesting man to talk to but did not talk about that particular day. A not uncommon thing, from what I have heard…
Kay
The photo where they show the wires crumpled in her hand is hysterical. Busted! They needed it circled with an arrow.
She cooks AND she uses wired headphones. Will this woman just cut it out with the crimes?
Soprano2
I was thinking about the office thing and realized exactly how ridiculous it is. How many places have you ever worked where they would allow someone to sit in the boss’ office unattended for any amount of time? We don’t do that here – people wait in the lobby until he’s ready to talk to them! It’s perfectly normal behavior that they’re trying to make sound abnormal. They’ve definitely got it in for her.
Feathers
@Soprano2: They are hoping to shame people into letting reporters wait alone in their offices. Been watching too many movies where important information is found by snooping in empty offices.
whomever
True story: I work for a very large very well known tech company you have all heard of. We are extremely restricted in what bluetooth peripherals we can use with our corporate devices because bluetooth is in fact a steaming pile of insecurity. This is coming from some of the top security people in the industry, so…
wenchacha
I’ve been watching the last few seasons of “Homeland,” and I wonder if anyone at Politico ever did? Security is kinda important. Tfg didn’t give a rat’s ass about it, except to conceal his criming.
Miss Bianca
@PAM Dirac: My paternal grandfather was the Marine Barracks Commander at Pearl Harbor. He was out on maneuvers at the time and hundreds of sea miles away. My grandmother managed to get out on a plane, but one of her dogs (she had many) was killed before the evacuation (she was still mad about that years later!).
My dad immediately volunteered for Navy duty. He was only 16 at the time, had to lie about his age to sign up. According to family lore, my grandmother was mad about that, too – not because he’d volunteered, but because by moving his birthdate up he’d officially made himself a bastard! Which reflected on *her*!
Ruckus
@wenchacha:
If it doesn’t concern his popularity or income he doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
And he’s not that good at that, like not any better than he is at anything else. Which is not good at all. Even his rat’s ass is defective.
VOR
@Doug: I’ve visited companies who required us to have someone accompany us on a trip to the bathroom. They would wait outside the bathroom, but we were escorted down the hallway.
JaneE
Anything Harris does must be criticized by certain segments of the media. She is almost everything the right hates rolled up in a single package. They could hardly hate her more if she were lesbian and trans.
I still think the GOP is not so much careless about security as actively supplying intel to foreign governments, but of course I can’t prove that. Not surprising that someone who is aware of security and possible exposures is seen as almost paranoid.
You might think that with all the news about how hackers can access your phone, your cards in your wallet, your home and its smart devices not to mention your wireless that the media would realize that not exposing sensitive information is really a necessity these days. Ordinary people only get their bank accounts targeted. Harris has access to information that foreign governments have whole departments trying to get their hands on. If she is more careful than ordinary people she has a good reason to be careful.
LongHairedWeirdo
Anyone suggesting it’s a bit paranoid has no understanding of computer security. It’s a risk, of unknown danger, and the price of avoiding the risk is probably negligible (for her).
Anyone saying “it’s a bit paranoid, because XYZ cryptography, and blahblahblah, it’s secure enough” *might* be saying something sensible – but if the person saying that was a security professional, they’d probably admire her instincts, more than criticizing her choice.
Kayla Rudbek
What kind of trustafarian idiots do they have working for Politico? I can’t even plug unauthorized devices into the USB ports on my work computer, let alone connect it to Bluetooth.