this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
153 points (96.4% liked)

United States | News & Politics

7108 readers
315 users here now

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
all 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 50 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They were kept in the open on a stage at MaL. They were kept in an unlocked bathroom next to a copier at MaL. They were repeatedly moved around to prevent the FBI from finding them, she the FBI didn't even search every place they were supposed to search.

Of course there are still documents he's kept, and he surely has xeroxes or photographs of everything that was "recovered".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

He ate papers he has been intentionally obscuring the information he's had access to the entire time that he's been receiving privileged information.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Why is it that my company keeps better track of random USB drives than the federal government does of classified documents?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (2 children)

For real, it's probably because some classified docs can't be tracked in an auditable format because the auditors would not have clearance to know those documents exist or any other info about them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's some Philip K Dick level dystopian shit. The auditor has to audit documents he's not allowed to know about. But he's also the guy who wrote the documents.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Philip k dick is SciFi I think you mean Orwell

I disagree with you because there should be strong opsec around certain topics, and auditors aren't the author of the documents, they are a 3rd party tracking their dissemination.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

No, I mean Dick. I pretty much paraphrased the plot of a Scanner Darkly. Have you read much of him? He got pretty freaky in the later years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Ha, I got the same vibes. Auditors wearing scramble suits. Bob Arctor with 2 little ones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

If this is about the concept of investigators being heavily siloed into independent investigations about the same crime... No this is the opposite. There are no investigators, because there is basically zero information about the activities.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I like that book, but it's been long enough you will have to lead me into the parallel you are making.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You don't need clearance to know a document exists, and you don't even need to know the contents or even the subject matter of the document. Just give the document an RFID sticker or similar and you can then track it pretty much anywhere on government property. So an audit would just be scanning tags and comparing with a database that says where those tags should be.

That's obviously simplistic, but it's a proof of concept that the people at places like the NSA or FBI could refine. It should be fairly easy to tell if a document is where it ought to be.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

With long range RFID readers existing that is bad opsec. You don't need to know the contents of a document to exploit it's dissemination, in certain cases.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I'm thinking something like this:

  1. All classified docs are kept in a secure room for storage with external RF blocking; the folder has an RFID (or similar) tag
  2. When an item is requested, the contents are moved to a new folder with a temporary barcode or similar
  3. When the item is returned, the temporary barcode is destroyed and the document is placed back in the secure room

Step 2 could use a temporary RFID tag as well, which gets replaced at each checkout. That way all an attacker would know is that an RFID tag is being used, they wouldn't necessarily know it's a classified document.

Obviously the approach would need to be refined (I don't deal with classified documents), but the general approach should work, especially if RFID is used for a bunch of less sensitive documents as well so RFID tags become commonplace.

What's nuts to me is that it took so long for authorities to track those documents down, and they didn't even get them all. They should have all been tracked down between the time Trump lost reelection and the time he left office, and perhaps confined to the White House.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I deal with consumer data analytics, and the scheme that you are positing does expose the frequency and density of specific actors and their access to classified information. This is really valuable, you can tell when someone gets a promotion and maybe has access to more info then they are used to or some other exploitable paradigm.

If it's just a printed barcode sure, it could be tracked like this without exposing information. Trouble is that classified documents are living documents, and the information only becomes classified when it's collected by some operative or officer, who may or may not register the documents with this central tracking authority.

The next issue is the capability of the central tracking authority to review, access, curate all of the reports that it has received, and their confidence that their internal staff do not breach the access rules on these documents hello Snowden.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Digital security (like the Snowden leak) is completely separate from physical document security.

For physical security, it seems plausible to just put a tag on every official document, whether mundane or classified, which would complicate tracking efforts by a potential enemy since they'd have to sift out the noise. If documents aren't out of storage very long, the tags can be cycled with other documents to further confuse an attacker. That's a bit "security through obscurity," but AFAIK that's kind of the game you okay with physical documents.

Also, I think the FBI/CIA would be more interested in knowing which of the documents went missing in the event of a leak than having a slight bit more obscurity to prevent long-ish range tracking. If they have a mole that can help them know which documents are interesting, they can just steal the documents anyway.

Then again, maybe this is why I'm not in OpSec for classified documents.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Basically collecting information on the movement of documents is a security risk in itself.

Papers in a flaming trash can are secured. Not much else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but it's not very helpful if most of those documents aren't very interesting. I'm suggesting we tag every official document, whether interesting or not. An attacker would need to know which tags are interesting to get any value from it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah don't do that

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I’m thinking there wouldn’t be enough secure rooms to house all the documents, without making it difficult to access them. I

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

The mundane documents don't need to be stored in a secure room, they just need to reuse tags from the secure vault to help obscure the classified documents.

Presumably secure storage already exists and blocks RF, so the main change here should be tagging.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It is sad for a number of reasons.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Because they haven't searched Bedminster yet?

My guess is that's the ace in the hole if Cannon shuts down the Florida case.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Well it’s not gonna fuckin matter if they don’t get their asses in gear and do something, because if he manages to win the election, the Tribunal of Six sure as shit will dismiss everything filed against him.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Where’s Gym Jordan when you need him?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

He's probably busy being a piece of shit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

In the locker room, I think.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Lol, I read that as "There's no reason to believe Trump still has classified documents", and I was thinking "bull shit there's not!"

The actual headline makes much more sense.