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The entire US Social Security database was uploaded on a random cloud server, Whistle-Blower Says

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  • 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

  • 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.

    Yeah, more protests that aren't just like once a month. But I don't know how to organize that, and most of the platforms that people communicate on are owned by the worst people.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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    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.

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    I’ve said for a while that the SSA should do basically this exact thing. In a more controlled manner, but still the same result. Announce something like “in two years, we’ll make our database public. Every single name, DOB, and SSN will be publicly searchable.

    It sounds radical, but SSNs were never meant to be a secure form of ID. Old cards even said something like “do not use this as ID” on them. But organizations quickly latched onto it because they wanted to have a way to identify individuals with the same name and DOB. And SSNs were convenient because people already had them.

    It would force organizations to develop their own way to ID people. It would be a huge step towards making an actual secure form of ID. And the warning time would give people enough time to design the new system and roll it out, while still giving a hard deadline for when it needs to be done.

  • 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.

  • Honestly, no. US infrastructure for this stuff is scaffolding, at best.

    It's looking very bad eh...

  • 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.”

    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.

  • 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.

    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".

  • 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.

  • I’ve said for a while that the SSA should do basically this exact thing. In a more controlled manner, but still the same result. Announce something like “in two years, we’ll make our database public. Every single name, DOB, and SSN will be publicly searchable.

    It sounds radical, but SSNs were never meant to be a secure form of ID. Old cards even said something like “do not use this as ID” on them. But organizations quickly latched onto it because they wanted to have a way to identify individuals with the same name and DOB. And SSNs were convenient because people already had them.

    It would force organizations to develop their own way to ID people. It would be a huge step towards making an actual secure form of ID. And the warning time would give people enough time to design the new system and roll it out, while still giving a hard deadline for when it needs to be done.

    Exactly who I trust to create a logically organized database of all peoples within the United States. The current administration..

  • Do this to everyone Trump hired or part of his cohort including him. They are all evil gangster criminals.

    Drain the swamp by filling the capital buildings Miyazaki style.

  • I’ve said for a while that the SSA should do basically this exact thing. In a more controlled manner, but still the same result. Announce something like “in two years, we’ll make our database public. Every single name, DOB, and SSN will be publicly searchable.

    It sounds radical, but SSNs were never meant to be a secure form of ID. Old cards even said something like “do not use this as ID” on them. But organizations quickly latched onto it because they wanted to have a way to identify individuals with the same name and DOB. And SSNs were convenient because people already had them.

    It would force organizations to develop their own way to ID people. It would be a huge step towards making an actual secure form of ID. And the warning time would give people enough time to design the new system and roll it out, while still giving a hard deadline for when it needs to be done.

    I dont have a problem with that, but what I will object to is the current regime making the replament ID system. 1) there is no way they would design it well or securely, smart people capable of building such a system are usually the first to bounce to another country as they will have the means to do so. 2) it would be too easy for them to lord the new ID over peoples heads (like they are with immigration status now) and impliment a social credit score like China does.

    Your correct that SSNs should not be used as IDs, but getting the government to build a modern system for that opens too many avanues for abuse (especially with darth cheeto in charge).

  • Exactly who I trust to create a logically organized database of all peoples within the United States. The current administration..

    I don't love the idea of the Trump administration being in charge of creating a national ID system, but this maybe the best time to make one.

    If Democrats proposed a national ID database the crazy 'FEMA is coming to round us up' republicans would freak out about it. As proven with Trump sending the national guard into D.C., as long as Trump does it they don't care.

  • I’ve said for a while that the SSA should do basically this exact thing. In a more controlled manner, but still the same result. Announce something like “in two years, we’ll make our database public. Every single name, DOB, and SSN will be publicly searchable.

    It sounds radical, but SSNs were never meant to be a secure form of ID. Old cards even said something like “do not use this as ID” on them. But organizations quickly latched onto it because they wanted to have a way to identify individuals with the same name and DOB. And SSNs were convenient because people already had them.

    It would force organizations to develop their own way to ID people. It would be a huge step towards making an actual secure form of ID. And the warning time would give people enough time to design the new system and roll it out, while still giving a hard deadline for when it needs to be done.

    It could be why it's being done, because SSN are being used inappropriately. Potential leaks like this will force banks and other entities to begin making account access more difficult, and this will make it from difficult to next to impossible for a large number of seniors, those who've saved the most and have the biggest accounts, to access it. This would happen even if it was done in a two year controlled manner.

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    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.

  • You know, at some point you actually do something to put out the fire, you leave, or you burn.

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  • 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.

    Oh yea, agree it's a dumb move. This should be on-prem data IMO.

  • MAGA Puts Wikipedia in Its Crosshairs

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    George Carlin does a great bit on this. To the point that your second sentence was almost a direct quote. I thought you were about to make references.
  • Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good

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    In political science, the term polyarchy (poly "many", arkhe "rule") was used by Robert A. Dahl to describe a form of government in which power is invested in multiple people. It takes the form of neither a dictatorship nor a democracy. This form of government was first implemented in the United States and France and gradually adopted by other countries. Polyarchy is different from democracy, according to Dahl, because the fundamental democratic principle is "the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals" with unimpaired opportunities. A polyarchy is a form of government that has certain procedures that are necessary conditions for following the democratic principle. So yeah, you are right. A representative "democracy" is not a democracy. It's a monarchy with more than one ruler. A gummy bear is as much a bear as representative democracy is a democracy. I didn't know that, because i was taught in school that a representative "democracy" is a form of democracy. And the name makes it sound like one. But it isn't. It's not even supposed to be in theory. I am sure 99% of people living in a representative "democracy" don't know this. I hereby encourage everyone to abandon the word representative "democracy" in favor of polyarchy or maybe oligarchy. This makes it much clearer what we are talking about. Also i doubt the authors of this article know this, because they imply that representative "democracy" is desirable, but it is obviously undesirable.
  • Getting Started with Ebitengine (Go game engine)

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    This video complements the text tutorial at https://trevors-tutorials.com/0003-getting-started-with-ebitengine/ Trevors-Tutorials.com is where you can find free programming tutorials. The focus is on Go and Ebitengine game development. Watch the channel introduction for more info.
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    A whole article about how terrible this is, then towards the end they got clarification from Google and, surprise surprise, it was all an overreaction and they were fear mongering. “This update is good for users: they can now use Gemini to complete daily tasks on their mobile devices like send messages, initiate phone calls, and set timers while Gemini Apps Activity is turned off. With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models. It’s just giving Gemini more local assistant abilities.
  • 'I've been turned into an AI train announcer - and no one told me'

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    Yes, the use of the voice was intentionally misleading. That's why it was decided the way it was.
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    All hail our tiny head terminator overlords.
  • Converting An E-Paper Photo Frame Into Weather Map

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    Looks like East Anglia has basically disappeared. At least nothing of value was lost
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    It's an actively hostile act, regardless of what your beliefs are on the copyright system.