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New DOGE invasions: DOEnergy nuclear info; NOAA; Musk hackers and "social engineering" [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-07
Even as Republicans attempted to quell a storm of public alarm and anger over Musk's Dogebros getting unsupervised access to the U.S. Treasury Department's financial management machinery -- claiming, contrary to other reports, that the script kiddies' access was read-only; announcing DOGE was out of there for now;
and reportedly promising Congressional hearings next week -- this was going on:
Info about the U.S. nuclear weapons. Again, as at USAID and elsewhere, information that is undoubtedly classified reportedly was swept up by people eithout security clearances. If so, this would be another violation of the Espionage Act.
More from CNN:
A representative from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was granted access to the Energy Department’s IT system on Wednesday by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, two people with knowledge of the situation told CNN. Wright granted access to DOGE representative Luke Farritor — a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern — even over objections from members of the department’s general counsel and chief information offices, the people told CNN. The DOE chief information office is the department’s IT and cybersecurity office. Members of the general counsel and chief information offices “said this is a bad idea” because Farritor hadn’t had a standard background investigation needed to access the department’s system, one of the people told CNN. “He’s not cleared to be in DOE, on our systems. None of those things have been done.”
And the Weather Service:
Not to mention the chaos of different private firms lacking comprehensive coverage, consensus, or central authoritativeness to warn the public about coming qeather events and advise on actions to take. It will affect businesses too. This as global overheating pummels us with more frequent and severe weather disasters.
Guardian:
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information”… Rosenberg noted it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on Noaa data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services. He also argued there was no legal authority to abolish Noaa or reduce its budget, outside of reducing it through Congress.
And then these invaders at various agencies have used security to keep others, including members of Congress, out.
We wonder why agency employees, including those responsible for comp,iance with the Espionage Act and Privacy Act, allow these things to happen. Bear in mind: though this is kittle known, civil service employees swear essentially the same oath as military members on starting their enployment and are equally enjoined from following illegal orders.
I have some empathy for them. There are no energency procedure manuals for this sort of thing. No one is trained or drilled. When things go topsy-turvey, most people in general, not just civil servants, reflexively turn to the chain of command and follow the directions of whoever is in charge. I
f that person is clearly doing wrong, they look to higher authority.
But this is not working.
Further, they are warned but not trained or drilled to resist what hackers call "social engineering": the art of persuading people to do things that compromise computer security such as handing over passwords. DOGE has taken this into real space by making use of nonverbal signals that trigger automatic deference in most of us.
Look, for example, at the security guard in the above photo. One person holding a door agsinst how many? But a uniform. A practiced hand gesture. And well-socialized people will respond accordingly.
(I'm not criticising this group. Just pointing out how it works. People are inside looting data that belongs to the American people. Congress members are stiff-armed by one man. Could they have just elbowed him out of the way? As I wasn't there, IDK.)
DK's TheSheeple made this comment recently in another diary:
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