Obama's Mobile Phone Records Compromised, Shared 278
Tiger4 writes "Verizon has confirmed that some of its employees have accessed and perhaps shared calling records of President Elect Barack Obama (coverage at CNN, Reuters, AP). Verizon says the people involved have all been put on leave with pay as the investigation proceeds. Some of the employees may have accessed the information for legitimate purposes, but others may have been curiosity seekers and may have even shared the information around. The account was 'only' a phone, not a BlackBerry or similar device, and Verizon believes it was just calling records, not voicemail or email that was compromised. The articles do not mention the similarity to the warrantless wiretapping or hospital records compromises of recent months. But that immediately sprang to mind for me."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thats OK. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thats OK. (Score:4, Insightful)
never mind Obama, the people need to see Bush's call records, now that be interesting
Re:Thats OK. (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget Bush's records how about President Cheney's records..
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I think it's unlikely you will ever see those. After all, it's very hard to hack records written in blood.
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Sorry. The Vice President has records, but they don't have to be recorded.
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Bill Clinton had terrible taste in women. I really do not want to see any of his partners in *anything* transparent.
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That would be interesting. I wonder if Satan is part of Verizon's "In Network"
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President Bush has as much power to declare himself dictator as I do. Which is to say that he can do it, but he'll just be pissing in the wind.
In that case he can get a workshop [perezhilton.com] from Prince Willie!
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Other than Clinton, could you enlighten me on some of the picks that you think are "fantastic"? I've personally been very disappointed in Obama's nominations thus far, for exactly the reason you say you're happy with them, cronyism.
I don't want to drag this out into a long-winded rant or anything, so I'll just post what I believe to be an excellent summation of just the cronyism I'm leery of. The article I'm talking about [commondreams.org] is actually about worries over the possibility of a hawkish Obama foreign policy, but
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> "I've personally been very disappointed in Obama's nominations thus far,..."
Yet David Brooks, one of the token conservative columnists at NYT, begrudgingly admires [nytimes.com] Obama's nominations:
And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons (not to mention the incursion of a French-style government dominated by highly trained Enarchs), I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition.
Re:Thats OK. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Any sufficiently lost encryption key is indistinguishable from a one-time-pad
Re:Thats OK. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or to put it another way...
If you weren't buying illegal drugs, you would trust me with complete access to all your credit card information, right?
Transparency (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Transparency (Score:5, Funny)
Of course not. That's why we should get a law passed to make it mandatory. It'll be tough to pass, but I know a couple palms we could grease (off the record, of course)
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As much as I would like something such as that to happen, I think there are other ways to solve the problem that don't involve perverting the American ideal and putting our elected officials into hell.
Imagine being an elected official. You wouldn't be able to call your wife, your kids without it being recorded. Would you even be allowed to speak to them privately in your home? Would you be able to have a private discussion with their teacher? Would we grant them an exception for doctor patient confidentiali
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I agree but there's also the "matter of national security" paradox that there are no easy fixes for. I do think that the public has every right to know what their government is doing. Yet how do you prevent your enemies from accessing sensitive information that could compromise security while also letting the public know everything and not use "it's classified" as an excuse to pull the blinds over the public ?
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Actually, no...the phone is still fairly protected even in the work place. Unlike with email and the like which they can freely look at....they run into the wiretapping laws if they try to listen in on your phone conversa
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The problem isn't domestic spying. It's unaccountable domestic spying. The government has a legitimate reasons for eavesdropping on some conversations. However, the problem with the program is that the executive branch has structured the program so it answers to nobody for what it does. There is no way to limit the government's use of its eavesdropping capabilities, and given the behavior of the administration in situations we know about, we can probably assume it hasn't stuck to its legitimate limits
What legitimate purpose? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like what?
I doubt if Obama has any problem paying his phone bill.
Re:What legitimate purpose? (Score:5, Funny)
Reverse traces.
They were probably investigating a complaint from the Governor's residence in Alaska. All those mysterious calls that would just be insane, taunting laughter, then a hang-up.
Probably just a wrong number, but still, you can never be too sure.
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Maby he started getting calls from all those people who shared his number and he called Verizon to complain. Accessing the call records at that point may have been legitimate by those initiating the investigation.
Re:What legitimate purpose? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Like what?
Well, that's presumably why they're investigating.
There can be various technical reasons why a support tech or engineer or sysadmin or whoever looks at data that most people would think of as personal, but the engineer isn't seeing what other people are seeing. He's seeing technical stuff other people would never notice. I don't know a lot about phones, because I don't really support those, so I'll use email as an example instead. As a tech guy, I have on a number of occasions had reasons to look at a coworker's email (albeit, usually with their knowledge in my case), but if you'd asked me thirty seconds later who they'd received messages from or what they were about, I'd have had no idea. Maybe I was looking at whether messages were being retrieved from the server all the time in the background, or only when the inbox was open. Maybe I was looking at whether their outgoing messages were getting correct date headers and Message-IDs. Maybe I was sending a test message to myself to see how fast it went through, and the reply back. I'm sure there were other things, and I'm sure I don't remember every occasion, because it's not weird or unusual; it's a normal part of my job duties.
If I *wanted* to surreptitiously read the actual content of my coworkers' email, I would certainly be technically capable of doing that, and could be fairly confident of not being detected. But in the first place that wouldn't be ethical, and in the second place very little is of less interest to me than the content of my coworkers' email messages.
I am not saying the people who looked at Obama's calling records were doing so for legitimate reasons. I'm only saying that it's *plausible*, and the phone company is right to investigate _before_ taking any irrevocable action.
Incidentally, some people may be thinking that paid leave is letting them off easy, but having been through a situation where my employer had someone on paid leave for a while, I can say that in some instances the reason for doing this is because it allows the employer to place some kinds of restrictions on the employee that they wouldn't be able to place on them if they weren't being paid. I don't know for certain that this is the phone company's reason in this case, but it potentially could be. (It could also be they just don't want to penalize them until they investigate and determine for sure whether they did anything wrong. That could also be valid, from a cover-your-legal-self-in-case-of-lawsuits perspective if nothing else.)
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Maybe he had someone call about his bill? It's not like cell phone companies are famous for getting bills perfect.
I'm sure the way this report was done was that somebody simply listed their full audit table, saw it had a bunch of entries in it, and put everyone in the audit table on leave before checking whether they were actually looking into something for the customer.
So he loses his Blackberry? (Score:2)
So this means he WILL have to let go of his Blackberry after all. How secure is data passing to a Blackberry, (the server, towers etc..)?
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McAdam said the device on the account was a simple voice flip-phone, not a BlackBerry or other smartphone designed for e-mail or other data services, so none of Obama's e-mail could have been accessed.
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The Blackberry(tm) seems like a lost cause.
But it seems like the CIA could hook him up with something just like the Blackberry but secure.
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I'm pretty sure he'll have to get rid of it.
Let's face it -- POTUS has a whole fleet of people who make sure he's got secure and reliable comms, and a group of people to get him to his next appointment on time.
I just can't see it being practicable to have Obama running around with is own damned blackberry/cellphone.
If for no other reason, it just seems stunningly bizarre than anyone who travels in a motorcade and has a 747 at his disposal cramm
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I may be wrong about this but I seem to remember speaking to the guy in my IT organization about Blackberry and AES encryption on the Blackberry devices. He said that is an option but it is not the default configuration and you have to specifically configure it. My organization has about 250,000 e-mail accounts and does not use the AES encryption he said. He would know since he designed the system.
This happens often (Score:5, Interesting)
My brother worked at T-Mobile for many years. (since before they were T-Mobile). Most Hollywood stars have their agents get their phones for them. One day, something happened in the payment process, and Val Kilmer came into a store to make a payment on his phone, instead of his agent. Suddenly, his number was getting passed all over the company, and many employees (mostly young girls) actually called the number to talk to him. A ton of people were fired, and Val got a very nice check from T-Mobile.
Obama (Score:2, Interesting)
What will Obama take for his trouble? I wonder who he's been chatting with. I see here a few dozen calls to a payphone in Ottawa. For years people were suggesting the USA could annex Canada if a big enough crisis occurred. Little did they know that Canada would annex the USA after a major stock market crash.
Kilmer who? (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting observation, IMHO (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the media (for example, NPR on the radio today) talks about "unauthorized access by employees", while /. entry is about "sharing" (which is more sinister).
PS. That and unrelated modest and subdued coverage by CNN about yesterday's record Dow-Jones drop remind me of bias in the media.
oblig (Score:2)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/2008/nov/12/barack-obama-south-park [guardian.co.uk]
freedom of information act (Score:5, Interesting)
While this is improper and wrong, I think that if the government is allowed to wiretap us, then the same laws should make it legal (Freedom of Information Act or something like that) for us to wiretap them. In fact, all government employees' and officials' calls should be recorded and made available for everyone's listening pleasure at a youtube-like site. Call it govtube. Because we are not subservient to the government; it is subservient to us. We put those people in office for our benefit, and so it is our collective right to know what they're doing over there.
Why there are draconian rules at work. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Funny thing... The problem is often not draconian and overzealous IT, but alas, a small subset of users who abuse the system. Ninety percent of users may use the Internet at work responsibly, but there's that ten percent that will run a second business, browse porn, read slashdot (oh crap). For various reasons, a company may not be able to enforce rules on a subset of the userbase (for HR and technical reasons) so everyone must suffer.
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Constantly have these issues in health care (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time a celebrity lands themselves in an ER (especially hospitals not accustomed VIPs) then we can expect several violations of HIPAA by unauthorized hospital staff.
They just cannot resist no matter how many times they are warned about activity being logged and threats of dismissal upon violation.
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Hollywood is the US national religion, more popular even than Christianity. The mere sight of a film star drives the masses to ecstasy, people want to touch them...
Some religions would hold that at least one commandment is being violated - something about false gods or idols or something
The way our heathcare system does it . . . (Score:2)
The first is obviously education and awareness. We have annual training that talks about what people can and can't do.
We also have the ability to flag certain patients as "do not announce", which means that clinicians can't even mention folks are in the hospital. Furthermore, records can be marked as limited access, with only a few people being able to see them (this is rarely done, as preventing legitimate access is dangerous).
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So you think that only certain special people deserve privacy? *Every* patient and *every* cellphone customer should be treated the same, no special lists and extra protections for the important ones.
What's good for the Govt. is good for the people (Score:3, Insightful)
Since Obama voted for FISA it's only fair that the people have access to those records too. :)
Joe? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets see if they get the same slap on the wrist that government employees got for accessing Joe the Plumber's tax records, DMV records, medical records, and other supposedly private information.
Memorable Fight club quote comes to mind (Score:3, Insightful)
"...Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us."
Obama vs Palin (Score:2)
What's different about this case? Why is Verizon able to play this whole thing off as some minor internal thing that's no big deal really when Obama is such a high proile target?
Applied Common Sense (Score:2)
First, I believe that this whole situation, on multiple levels, is pretty messed up. I think when the Outrage, and Smirking, dies down, that the facts will most likely show that this was the act of a handful of people acting coy. And, for a short while, Obama's phone was our phone. But ignoring this article's implications, I think the tagging for this article should have been, "Warrentless, Wiretap, Felony, Stupid".
This points out the problem with ehealthcare (Score:2)
There has been a lot of talk about "automating" our health care and records as part of a move to Universal health care. This example of employees improperly accessing phone records should be cautionary when we think about automating health care records. We need to have logs of all access to anyone's records. We need to have strong security models and patient notification of any and all access to records. And, we need to change the law so that the media *MUST* reveal the source of any information leaked
Funny, but what sprang to mind for me was... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Clinton administration snagging secret FBI background checks on all the nation's leading Republicans.
2. Democrats illegally recording Newt Gingrich cell phone call and leaking it to the press.
3. Democrat breaking into Gov Palin's e-mail account and plastering the contents all over the web.
4. Hoards of Democrats in a bunch of state offices digging into every possible government record looking for dirt on Joe-the-plumber (the average citizen who dared question the messiah)
5. Both McCain and Obama having their passport records breached
6. The pregnancy of Palin's under-age daughter and details about her boyfriend being splashed all-over the papers.
7. Palin's minor daughter's cell phone info being leaked onto the web
Actually, I though of all the recent breaches by people in both parties, but there seems to be a fixation on Cheney/Bush, and a baseless presumption that Democrats value privacy, on the net that is a bit tiresome and some balance is required. The problem is NOT that the wrong people are in charge or the wrong people are the victims; the problem is that humans are corruptible and too much power in the hands of too few, with too little oversight, will always lead to trouble. No matter which side of the aisle you are on, eventually your people will be the victims and the other people will be the perps. Best that people on both sides hammer-out better rules to protect the privacy of everybody... while still protecting everybody from real harm. Anybody who only notices and gets upset when somebody in his political party is violated is somebody who does not truly care about privacy
Re:Justifications (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd hope so. The Video Privacy Protection Act [wikipedia.org] was passed after the rental records of a Supreme Court nominee became public. Seems like the only way we can get any privacy legislation passed is to demonstrate to the ruling class just how important it is by violating their privacy.
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No more coffee for you.
Re:What A Joke (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bingo. And in the meantime they don't want the bad ones in a position to get up to more trouble.
There are a lot of things that seem to make no sense until you dig a little deeper.
However, I wonder if the pay could be conditional and, in the case of the bad apples, recoverable.
all the best,
drew
There's an ongoing investigation (Score:3, Insightful)
If there is sufficient evidence to connect the suspected employee, they will most likely be fired or worse. Denying the suspected parties their pay is inappropriate until more sufficient evidence is found. Having them show up at work would be inappropriate as well.
No, it's not an ideal situation. But what would you propose?
Sure it's like a vacation. A vacation where you might be fired or charged with a crime. Yeah, I'm jealous.
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No, it's not an ideal situation. But what would you propose?
At least transfer them to some non-critical area where they can do some productive work. I think they ought to make them wander around in the boondocks checking how many bars they have and testing if people can still hear them on test calls. For some reason, it seems Verizon needs to deploy teams comprised of hundreds of people to handle this task, so I'm sure that they always need more help in that department.
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Re:What A Joke (Score:4, Informative)
Thank you.
For all the crud that comes around here about how Verizon Wireless is an evil company, I can tell you, they are a very fair and honest company. They truly believe in doing what's right - both by customers, and by employees.
Obviously, things like call records and such need to be kept for some amount of time, both for troubleshooting as well as legal issues (court orders, etc.) That's a pretty serious responsibility. That's why you have audits logs every time that data gets accessed.
The system works, apparently. The folks who got suspended with pay all had their hands in the cookie jar. From what it sounds like, they're going to be sorting out who was there for legit purposes (i.e. a technical issue, billing question, etc.) and who was doing something they shouldn't have been.
I think suspending with pay is quite fair. If you were in those records, doing legitimate work, that will come to light, and you'll have suffered no loss. If you did something you shouldn't have done, well, that'll come out too and when that's determined, due process will catch up to you.
Good call on their part, and frankly, I can't think of any better way to handle it. It's good to see that the right processes are in place such that employees can do their job when they need to, but it gets flagged when someone is doing something shady.
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Damn right! Once people have been suspected they should immediately be punished! They certainly shouldn't be temporarily moved to a position where they couldn't commit further crimes while an investigation proceeds.
In related news, I suspect that whisper_jeff is a child molester.
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Not to overload you with the level of idiocy these types of places can bring through fear of union action but you'll probably appreciate the story I'm about to tell you or simply lose the will to live once you find out how bad some people actually are at managing.
I used to work in local government over here in the UK. We had one guy who simply didn't turn up to work for 6months claiming he was ill yet never managing to provide a doctors note for anything other than the first month of sickness abscence. Sick
Re:Data Theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Really ? The people who illegaly obtained access to "Joe the plumber"'s records, and went on to check all sorts of things on him
["all sorts of things" means, specifically, his driver's record, and whether or not he owed child support]
are still perfectly gainfully employed by the government
And so are these people. Didn't you even read the summary??? Verizon says the people involved have all been put on leave with pay.
"leave with pay" == "still employed." Sounds like a bonus, not a punishment!
I guess it all depends what side you're on.
Apparently not.
Re:Data Theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Data Theft (Score:5, Insightful)
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There was no solid evidence prior to a vigilante breaking into Palin's inbox that any law was broken. There may have been an investigation in progress, I can't remember right now, but that is NOT the same thing as substantial evidence or a conviction.
With that single insight your entire argument about the relative moral and legal difference is destroyed.
Since you saw fit to throw in a politically based insult I will now do the same. Please sir, get your head out of Barak's colon and get some fresh air. Your
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Wow...talk about circular logic. How would we know if Obama is breaking law prior to getting his phone records? We don't, so we must first break in and get his phone records and only then can we make a determination.
This is the EXACT same situation as someone breaking into Pali
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All he did was ask a question.
He got mentioned more than 50 times in the following debate, that's much more than just a question. There's also the fact that had it been his blackberry or voicemail, there is potential for sensitive information to be leaked, something we don't have to worry about with Joe the Plumber.
Re:Data Theft (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nice red herring (Score:4, Insightful)
Presidents, President Elects and other high profile people are going to draw a far greater number of wackos than a private citizen vainly clinging to their fifteen minutes of fame. Obama's personal phone number and past calling patterns might well put him at risk and could very well put family, friends and associates at risk -- you might not be able to get at Obama directly, but how about a family member without a protective detail?
And I really doubt that McCain didn't even get Samuel Joe Wurzelburger a courtesy call before turning him into a party platitude. Regardless, he certainly didn't shy away from the spotlight: junior stump man, book deal and record deal. He's certainly embraced the role of public persona but, just like every other person, does not deserve to have his privacy violated. But doesn't change the fact that Wurzelburger's notoriety is several degrees from Obama and is much less of a "target" for the crazies.
For the parent poster to claim the reaction to this story is because people don't want to criticize Obama is beyond the pale. For me this story would carry just as much weight if McCain's phone rec were ords compromised or Bush's post-presidency records were compromised (presumably Bush and now Obama lose their personal line privileges due to public record laws.)
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Yup. Because EVERY person who expresses a bit of hope the country can be put back on track is an Obamajesus worshiping zealot whack job.
Dude, the religious whack jobs are in YOUR party. What was being chanted at that famous Palin rally? Do you remember that?
Stop projecting. Mobs of people chanting "kill him" are YOUR party asshole.
Re:Nice red herring (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny since 90% of the people I see referring to Obama as "messiah" are right-wing.
Re:Nice red herring (Score:4, Informative)
"I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year. Your new tax plan's going to tax me more, isn't it?"
Obama's response:
"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too"
The "Obama is a socialist" bandwagon was hitched up to Joe Wurzelbacher based on this exchange. It wasn't really so much of a "hard, serious question" than a rhetorical device. If Wurzelbacher had wanted to be more serious about the question, he should have left it more open-ended. I hope that he does better with "Secure Our Dream."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_the_plumber [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nice red herring (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't a hard question. It was just a question which Obama had a hard time answering due to he nature of his (polarizing) answer. A simple question which a simple person wanted clarification on. I highly doubt he intended for it to throw him into the national spotlight; he likely just wanted to know if he'd be financially hosed by the purchase, and whether he should go forward.
The thing that makes it such a "hard" question is because Obama's answer was halting and not planned for - it was ad lib. He didn't have a script to read by, and the true nature of his policy had a little light shone on it.
This is hardly the first or only example of how or why Obama is a socialist. There is hardly any evidence available to support that he isn't; he's been involved in far-left socialist - dare I say marxist? - agendas since he was a teenager, and his rhetoric reflects that.
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, you insensitive clod!
Re:Nice red herring (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither Joe the Plumber nor Barack Obama's records should have been compromised. To defend one instance while castigating the other is hypocritical.
But it is the nature of human grouping. People form groups and then expect their group to defend them when they have done wrong. If the group didn't, the group would not stay a group for long.
Personally I'm glad Obama's records were compromised because it might teach him the importance of taking privacy seriously. Hopefully then he will stop the warrantless wiretapping.
Re:Nice red herring (Score:4, Insightful)
Our politicians should not be keeping secrets from us. They are applying to be representatives of the people, and in most cases they already are.
They should be willing to protect our privacies without expecting any of their own. And every time they expect me to sacrifice my anonymity just so that I can speak up against injustice, it makes me very angry. Our founding fathers fought anonymously in every way they could and went the extra mile against British Tyranny because they had to.
And I keep seeing filthy redcoats wherever I look because people are so terrified of what's behind everyone else's curtains.
Re:Nice red herring (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you seen the entire footage of the exchange between Joe and Barack? Obama took a great deal of time to explain specifically how his plan would affect Joe's desire to buy this company. Frankly Joe looked a little stunned.
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You say that as if there aren't people who might hire a professional team of assassins to kill the President. Anyone who has the money and the motivation to kill Obama could easily pay off a low-level Verizon staffer, or coerce them into doing so through other means (e.g., by threatening their family). IMO, the main question Verizon should be asking itself isn't whether these employees should be fired (though they probably s
Re:Data Theft (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you think that the President Elect of the United States might have greater personal security concerns than McCain's version of a working class hero? This isn't a matter of "being critical of the president".
You know my first reaction to this? It's a good thing that this happened. Why? Because it would take a data breach of a major government official before anything really serious is done about the problem. There is a part of me that really hopes that the president and congress get all sorts of personnel data stolen/breached just so they'll start to take the subject seriously.
Now as far as the office of the President and the white house goes... I'd hope that however the white house has their cell phone plan that say that they have some contract and have 50-1000 (how ever many) phones and some peon is in charge of paying bills, setting up/backing up address books other info of officals and that the phone company shouldn't ever know which phones are assigned to which personnel. I'd actually want all their phone conversions encrypted and what not. (Actually, I'd want every cell phone call encrypted as well.)
Now, if this happened to be his personnel cell phone before he became famous president/government official, I can understand how this happened. I'd hope the President of the US or heck of any country or major business has more important things to do than fiddle with their personnel cell phones/tech support/data breaches.
I'll now have that mental image of the President spending an hour on hold trying to get through the cell phone tech support mini hell before he can complain to the cell phone management rather than spending time doing whatever it is presidents do most of the time.
Re:Data Theft (Score:5, Funny)
If he's doing nothing wrong he's got nothing to worry about.
Right?
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You can just go read all the pro-invade Palin's email on the hopes she did something wrong crowd here at /. to reveal just how warped this place has become. The number who defended getting to the email of a mere candidate were astounding and was purely driving my political leaning.
Go to a left-leaning site and you'll find an astounding number of left-leaning idiots. Go to a right-leaning site and you'll find an astounding number of right-leaning idiots. The fact that you claim that this was purely driving your political leaning makes me suspect you're one of them as well.
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You know it amazes me how sensitive people get about what was essentially a poorly thought out Republican publicity stunt.
With the landslide McCain won with, you'd think people would be ready to drop these two absurd figures of the campaign, Sarah Palin and especially Joe the Plumber. I could care less if the Republican party has a future or not, but trust me if it does it doesn't include these two fools in any serious capacity. At least Palin seems to get a passing grade (D, but still passing) as Govern
Joe was not an operative (Score:4, Insightful)
Joe was just a guy in Ohio. Obama came to his house to campaign. He wasn't an "operative".
Do you guys even care that you're lying? Your guy won. There's no need to continue to smear and lie about Joe the Plumber.
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The post I was replying to said:
No though, we're supposed to care that some egomaniac Republican operative's feelings might have been hurt.
Joe was not an operative. The OP was lying about Joe being an operative.
The campaign is over. You guys can stop lying for a few weeks. You can stop smearing Joe for asking a question.
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She surely scared the hell out of everyone outside the US...
The idea of a creationist ending up in charge of the US nuclear arsenal gave me the creeps
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Here is the link:
http://scienceblogs.com/afarensis/2006/10/27/intelligent_design_and_the_ala/ [scienceblogs.com]
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Alternate views have to be legitimate first and proven.
Just because your pastor told you that 2+2=5 it doesn't mean it has the right to be pushed in classrooms.
You're paying no taxes; no income I guess? (Score:2)
You're paying zero taxes. I presume your income is pretty much zero then; Personally I wouldn't brag about that.
But then, people that come up with such pathetic nicknames are probably without much of a life anyway. Tell us, is your room in your parents attic or in the basement? We'd just like to know.
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really? Ted Strickland suspended Director Helen Jones-Kelley of the Job and Family Services Department for one month without pay [western-star.com]
She, although currently employed, for the next month is not gainfully employed (unlike the people accused hear.)
Everything interesting that was disclosed was public record anyway, IE not a lic plumber, just a dream of someday making enough money to someday buy a business... Just a leading que
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The cost of a sense of humor to appreciate something like that is too high.
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Actually, that's very legitimate of Verizon to say when it comes down to it.
Verizon has zero legal authority in this matter. God only knows if anyone is ever going to get prosecuted in this case. You can't be brought up on legal charges for violating company policy if the actions were legal. And as you said, I don't know if there is a law against what those who violated company policy may have done.
So they may well be in violation of company policy and still be leg
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Didn't Rush tell you? It's because he's a crazy mixed-breed half A-Rab half Aztec TER'RIST! *waves hands spookily* Boogety boogety boogety!