Gee, who could’ve foreseen this happening after a gang of techbro goons forced their way in and opened backdoors on all those computers…
Forced their way in, were given the keys and explicit orders to take all the data and put it in massive back-door ridden places for themselves and Russia, potato, potahto
They (the DOGE bros, especially Elon) deserve prison time for their fuckery.
I don’t think it was a “random” cloud server at all. I think the people who bought the data already have it now.
Half right. OP’s title is massively misleading. Private SSA cloud, the complaint is about where oversight comes from.
OP, please revise your title to match the article, it is currently misinformation.
The complaint is about where the oversight comes from. This is not some random cloud server.
“S.S.A. stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information,” he said. “The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a longstanding environment used by S.S.A. and walled off from the internet. High-level career S.S.A. officials have administrative access to this system with oversight by S.S.A.’s information security team.”
BUT WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE SENSATIONALISM?
I agree that “random server” is a bad choice of words, but do want to add additional information context as the concern isn’t necessarily unwarranted. Another qoute from the article:
“I have determined the business need is higher than the security risk associated with this implementation and I accept all risks,” wrote Aram Moghaddassi, who worked at two of Mr. Musk’s companies, X and Neuralink, before becoming Social Security’s chief information officer, in a July 15 memo.
Its also sounds like they did spin up a new database with limited security/oversight to “move” faster. Why that’s worrisome is they aren’t denying there is a risk or lack of security, they are just saying it’s justified.
Could you please explain like I’m 10?
The SSA stores a lot of sensitive data. Normally with sensitive data you want to be very careful with who can access it and how.
What is potentially worrisome in this situation is it seems like the SSA is taking on the “move fast and break things” attitude of Silicon Valley.
More technically, most government agencies use AWS and Azure (cloud providers) to host data. So spinning up a new server isn’t inherently bad. However, creating a new server that is secure and has the correct access controls (user permissions regarding who can see/change content) can be challenging. The whistle blower believes they are not doing this right, and it sounds like the head of the SSA isn’t disagreeing, just saying he thinks the risk is worth it.
That makes sense, thanks for the explanation
Oh yea, agree it’s a dumb move. This should be on-prem data IMO.
DOGE employees should be executed by firing squad. In fact, we should bring back a whole bunch of capital punishments- hanging, beheading, drawing and quartering, burning at the stake; unless you meet the fascists at their level you’ll never scare them enough to keep their political views private. Like what happened to Mussolini was TOO GOOD for every single person involved in the executive branch right now.
Do this to everyone Trump hired or part of his cohort including him. They are all evil gangster criminals.
At this point I think you can legally opt out of any type of data collection by the government like the Census. You’re required by law to participate but they are also required by law to keep your information safe, that’s no longer possible in this administration and there’s plenty of relevant data to back it up.
I think we should be able to have a national class action against DOGE. 100% serious, all US citizens for sure, and anyone else with data in the Social Security database, should sue the individuals responsible for this.
Then we take the money and start a company that contracts out to the government to create a national digital ID system that is the most secure in the world, and allows for amazing anonymity.
You know, at some point you actually do something to put out the fire, you leave, or you burn.
It’s times like this I wonder about the like/dislike paradigm I.E. “I like/dislike knowing this and/or appreciate the perceived reputability of the source” vs. “This is good news/I fucking hate this.”
This one just got a “I fucking hate this” from me.
More of the first, but not exactly. It’s “Other people should see and know about this too” and “This isn’t worth anybody’s time/is factually wrong and shouldn’t have been posted.”
Because that’s what upvoting does, makes it higher in the page so more people are able to see it.
SSN is a good example of the illusion of freedom for Americans, why have a standardized Photo ID when you can have a set of numbers that when leaks can ruin your life.
We‘re getting closer to a cyberpunk world every day
Once a nuke goes off in a major city, we are pretty much guaranteed it from what I understand about multiple cyberpunk-style worlds
“I just cloned it onto my server because my connection is not really good!”
Good, let everything go wrong in America, they might eventually wake up and realise what a clusterfuck they’ve allowed themselves to become and actually do something about it.
Gee, thanks from the rest of us who already know that.
Gee, you know and are doing what about it exactly? To the rest of us looking in, it looks like you’re paying lip service to it, a few demonstrations and some cardboard signs? Is that how you manage to overthrow fascism, weekend protests? good luck.
Sure is easy to spout bullshit on an internet forum. You know absolutely nothing of both what is being done here and the situation most people face.
If you have nothing productive to contribute, kindly fuck off.
I have cousins in Texas, I will kindly fuck off and live happily knowing you’ve bowed down and gone into the good night with a whimper. It’s going to be fun to watch DC and Chicago turning into some random ME country. You have the army on the streets and you do fuck all. You have Nazi flags and call that free speech. Sad to say but you reap what you sow.
May you find the peace online you never could in real life.
I genuinely appreciate the sentiment, peace is small fleeting moments. Anger is the over riding emotion, the state of the world is cause for anger. Bless you.
They elite cackle when we do their work for them and are at each other’s throats over giant generalizations online. Make them work for it. We should all offer to help each other, not whatever this thread is.
Help who? No one can help them, it’s really up the americans to sort their shit out.
Help whoever you can with whatever you can. Everyone is different. My strengths and weaknesses are different than yours friend. No one person is a lost cause, and history has taught us that no one country is either.
No one person is a lost cause, and history has taught us that no one country is either. >> Agreed, but for now it’s a hard transition, and hopefully this has shown that your constitution and checks and balances need to be revised in the future to prevent another authoritarian takeover.
What are you champ doing to stop genocide in Palestine?
Aren’t you able to stick to the topic of the thread? There are many Palestine threads, go harass people there.
Accelerationism like that never works. When it all settles, you get extremely mild improvements for a whole lot of hurt.
What do you propose then, I’m asking in good faith. It’s fairly obvious to anyone with common sense that Trump, the GOP and the entire MAGA movement and their ilk need to be removed from power. How can people fight the government that is back by billionaires who control your entire lives?
Protests must be more sustained instead of the bursts of activity we’ve seen. Even direct action will fail if it’s not combined with large scale protest methods. Unfortunately, people get worn down doing constant protesting.
Trump won’t be around in another 10 years one way or another. It’s rare to find cults of personality that outlive their leader. But if we use Nazi Germany as an example of what happens next, it’s basically a return to liberalism. Half the country went to that almost immediately, and the other half just took longer. Granted, Germany has a better social safety net than America does now, but it’s hardly anti-capitalist.
TBH, I don’t have a good answer. I’m mostly doing the anarchist thing of using social groups to get people to rely less on capitalism and more on each other. That’s more of a long term thing, though.
I appreciate the honest reply, I agree with most things, I think large scale protests must include a general strike. This administration is all about the bottom line, and a sustained general strike will hit them hard. I’m well aware of the argument of people living paycheck to paycheck seemingly unable to do that, however the alternative is very bleak. I wish you luck and keep it up
Just to address the idea of a general strike, you pretty much have to get sustained protests going first. More specifically, they have to encourage people from different backgrounds to work together outside of capitalist structures.
I forget the exact example, but I think it was the 1934 San Fransisco general strike. Whole city shut down, including restaurants. One problem was that there were a lot of young men who worked in the factories and lived in small apartments with no kitchens at all. They went to the general strike committee and made it known that they rely on the restaurants for their daily meals. The committee understood and had some restaurants approved for opening along with delivery trucks so they could operate. Problem solved.
Point is that you need organization around that sort of thing where even marginal groups can have their problems heard. Without getting people into organized groups, it’s going to fail. If nobody listened to those young men and did something, then they would have had the choice of starving or crossing the picket line.
Those are all excellent and valid points, do you think normal thinking Americans will manage that, sustained protests followed by strike action. I completely understand the point made about the young men, the elderly and most vulnerable groups will need support. Right now all I see is some protests in some states but nothing indicates this will evolve.
Honestly, no. US infrastructure for this stuff is scaffolding, at best.
Accelerationism can work if you are in position to lead the rebellion. But for the vast majority of us, you’d be a foot soldier, probably die before ever seeing the day of victory.
Zero details or sources other than one disgruntled employee, yeh I’m not buying this at all. They probably count azure or AWS as a “random cloud server”.
Really scraping the bottom of the barrel for anti-doge/elon content these days.
Yeah, god forbid we have people who aren’t fucking idiots taking care/maintaining our information.
I’ve got him tagged as “likes Elon” just as a heads up.
Don’t recognize clanker pronouns, that’s a bot!
But again - this has zero information. What cloud storage is it on? How is it not secure?
If you read the article, the current head of the SSA acknowledges they did set up the system being discussed and that he’s accepted the increased risk of the implementation as there is a “business need”.
What cloud servers are they using?
Given it’s the government it’s most likely AWS or Azure. That really isn’t inherently bad, it’s more the attitude of “move fast and break things” doesn’t necessarily work for secure systems with sensitive data.
So again, it’s all just bullshit hopes and dreams by the anti-doge people. No data has been exposed or hacked, no evidence of it actually being on anything insecure.
In cyber security you may never know if a bad actor got access to your systems/data. The issue with not following good security practices is that you increase the risk of this happening.
Its like saying we should stop mandating vaccines cause the diseases aren’t around anymore. When you let down your defenses you end up with outbreaks that shouldn’t have happened and are harder to control.
In cyber security you may never know if a bad actor got access to your systems/data. The issue with not following good security practices is that you increase the risk of this happening.
If they’re using Azure or AWS then they have a level of built in good security practices. These people aren’t morons, they know what they’re doing. In fact, using AWS or Azure you have to fuck things up to make it insecure, because by default they’re all pretty locked down.
Its like saying we should stop mandating vaccines cause the diseases aren’t around anymore.
I’m 100% a pro-vaccine person, but vaccines should not be mandatory. “My body, my choice” - isn’t that the saying? Or is that only for women wanting an abortion? If someone doesn’t want to get a vaccine then they can suffer the potential consequences while those who are vaccinated don’t (but they have to deal with the potential side effects of the vaccine).
While AWS/Azure do make the initial configs rather fool proof, that falls apart the moment you start configuring them for actual use. It’s also especially easy to mess things up when handling PII, at the SSA level it’s probably something that DOGE staff don’t have experience with.
As for vaccines. Largely through that out there cause it seemed like obvious bait for you, but I don’t think a single slogan “my choice my body” really encapsulates the arguments around abortion
