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Comment by maximente | Hacker News Reader

all of this makes me wonder when - not if - there's going to be House of Cards style blackmail + intrigue when it comes to leveraging data leaks like these over politicians or influential people.

"vote for this or we expose your $recent_embarrassing_breach data" is quite a powerful ultimatum, no? and the only way to win is not to play (e.g. never download + use a potentially embarrassing app), and we know that many aren't so digitally savvy, so this seems like a gold mine for nefarious uses.

i dunno, maybe it's too tin foily but it feels inevitable.

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Uh didn't this just happen with Bezos?

Although I heard they targeted a personal phone, I don't think it makes that much difference. Computers are insecure in all sorts of ways, whether it's your own phone or somebody's servers.

In that case they were trying to blackmail him into making some public statement, with pretty high stakes as far as I remember.

Kudos to him for not capitulating!

And it appears Jeffrey Epstein may have been using compromising information as blackmail the rich and powerful then laundered the money through a fraudulent hedge fund operation.

This is a tangent but is that what it appears to be? Some people must really like associating with their blackmailers if that's the case.

Maybe Epstein never actually needed to blackmail anyone? Maybe they were just happy to be sold tickets on the Lolita Express? I’m sure he kept some blackmail material regardless, which will soon be revealed.

> Some people must really like associating with their blackmailers if that's the case.

Or their blackmailers require the social engagements and outwardly positive attitude as part of the blackmail.

IIRC, the brother of Bezos' girlfriend sold the texts to the media. The good old way of getting the goods, just pay somebody close to it ;)

Bezos' investigator Gavin De Becker claims that the Saudis hacked the phone. National Enquirer already knew about the affair when they contacted the brother.

It’s well known that the FBI had dossiers on political opponents that were used to silence them, or attempt to silence them (Daniel Ellsberg, Martin Luther King). What you’re proposing would merely be the same concept with a different leverage mechanism. I’m sure private interests would also have the same ideas.

It is a lot easier to collect this kind of data as well.

You're right, and that's where the parallel I offered kind of breaks down: the digital-domain hacks can scale much more readily than the older ones could, and even at the targeted level, digital information-gathering may be less risky.

If there's anybody that actually thinks that conspiratorial, consider two mutually exclusive options, one of which must be true:

1) Companies collecting massive amounts of data will only use the data in a lawful and ethical fashion, even in cases where they perceive there to be a potential for significant gain in misuse.

2) Companies collecting massive amounts of data will, sooner or later, use that data in an unlawful or unethical fashion to exploit others in a way that stands to potentially significantly boost their power/influence/wealth.

I'm going a far step above beyond and suggesting the exploitation will come, not from leaks, but directly from the data harvesting companies. The reason is simple. Again, the two scenarios above are mutually exclusive and one must be true. So what would you place the probability weighting as? I think most of everybody would agree that the probability of #2 is very near 100%. It's also possible that it is literally 100%, in that it has already happened but we don't know about it. Truly effective blackmail would obviously not be headline news.

#2 Already happened:

"Hundreds of Bounty Hunters Had Access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint Customer Location Data for Years"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43z3dn/hundreds-bounty-hu...

It's entirely possible that this has already happened but no one knows other than the blackmailer and victim know.

It'a plausible but not very probable, at least as far as policy positions are concerned. With the current campaign financing laws, there are legal ways to coerce politicians into voting a certain way. It's more risky to blackmail them.

But money only goes so far. Some things cannot be bought, but they can be coerced.

Like what?

Compare Lindsay Graham re: Trump in 2015 vs. 2017

What?

He was very anti Trump and then later pro Trump. Though it's not clear it's a result of coercion or anything other than Graham capitulating to work to get stuff done

He's a republican. The approach he used - if you can't beat them then join them. Not sure if T has any dirt on him.

Along the lines - Chris Christie was also very anti T before T got the nomination.

He switch almost immediately after McCain died. Almost as if McCain had some kind of hold over him.

After this latest spiral down in the degradation of politics I feel like that kind of information would nearly be a badge of honor. When your highest seat of the government does pr0n stars, well, the bar is pretty low.

Maybe for the type of person that ‘rises’ to political office, but regular people probably still care quite a bit.

Do regular people care with their words or with their votes? Because if it just words then how much care is there? As Mitch McConnell's office has stated recently, "Boys will be boys."

Isn't that an informal assessment of American culture?

Certainly not of corporate culture. People get fired for stuff like that all the time. Johnah Friedland said the n-word and had to step down from Netflix and he didn't even use it in a racist context. He only said the word as he listed offensive words.

Weird sex stuff can certainly be used to affect people in powerful corporate positions.

McConnell’s office did not state that. Search the web for “mcconnell fake quote” for info.

> "You know the cream rises to the top!"

> "So does the scum," said Vimes automatically

-- Snuff by Terry Pratchett

My only real regret from reading Discworld was not keeping a set of notes of memorable quotes/thoughts.

> When your highest seat of the government does pr0n stars, well, the bar is pretty low.

So by that logic JFK and MLK were also pretty low? Oh wait--I'm not sure they were doing actual porn stars.

No, not much different. Not sure what it is about politics and/or power that somehow makes it so difficult to keep it in your pants.

>Not sure what it is about politics and/or power that somehow makes it so difficult to keep it in your pants.

Sexual aggression has been a virtue signal of male power and status since the days when kings compared the size of their slave harems. Modern men have been taught through all forms of commercial media that their value as people is directly proportional to the amount of casual sex they have. Culturally, power and sex have always been linked.

When Trump said he could just grab women by the pussy and get away with it, of course, he was right. At that level of privilege one often doesn't need to keep it in their pants. Propriety and chastity are for lesser men to whom legal and social consequences can be applied.

Yes, the badge of honor I mentioned earlier. Still disappointing. You'd think we'd be better than this, by now.

Two steps forward, one step back, unfortunately. It's difficult to make progress when rape culture is a billion dollar industry and we're in the midst of an anti-progressive social backlash. At least every now and then a Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein gets raked over the coals.

Maybe it's simply due to the existence of social media and an actual positive effect of "outrage culture" but a few decades ago such people would have been all but untouchable.

You've probably got the direction of causation backwards.

People who want lots of sexual partners seek ways to get that. Many people are attracted to the powerful. So people who can't stand to keep it in their pants are more likely to seek positions of power.

I think most people who are concerned are bothered by the non-consensual activity. The people most likely to make public complaints about marital infidelity only do so for their political opponents and and voted for him by something like 90%.

It seems like something obvious enough that I would be surprised if it wasn't already done.

The sheer volume of data and highly motivated state actors who are outside any legal risk both seem pretty high.

you can also win by presenting a public persona that is slightly degenerate/shambolic, so such an embarrassment will only add to your appeal in your support base...

Slightly??

The Trump / Johnson play.

I figured as much, and these are not slightly shambolic. (I can not say for Johnson, don't know enough about him.)

I would be shocked if this isn't happening all the time.

I actually worry more about the other threat implied by your use of dynamically inserting kompromat in a message.

Imagine sending emails like that at scale in key voting districts. Sure it would get shut down. Substantial, irrevocable damage could still be done in the form of voter suppression.

> Sure it would get shut down.

You mean it would get shut down if done officially? Otherwise, I don't really see an option of shutting it down once the emails are underway. I doubt that providers will manually kill emails from their users' mailboxes, even if they were allowed to.

One thing rarely discussed with a Gmail hack is that it isn't just email, it's location history, search history, backed-up photos, app store history (on Android) AND browsing history. With that data almost anyone could be a blackmail target.

I don't think you're far off. Plus, who knows how long the bad guys had to harvest this stuff prior to the good guys finding it. Or I wouldn't put it past some foreign hacker agency or even the NSA from scooping it up for a rainy day.

At some point, I think the public will just stop caring. American society has already reached that level in some ways. I can't imagine the President's supporters caring about anything bad he's ever done.

well, black mirror ( the TV series ) has played with this topic. It has already played out in some ways where there's been stories of people being manipulated because they get compromising video by hijacking peoples cams then they leverage that to get more. So, there is a good possibility it's playing out involving people of influence

What makes you think it hasn't already been done, exposed and dismissed as conspiracy theory?

It wouldn't matter if we weren't so uptight about sex (thanks, christianity!) Granted what goes on behind your doors may not be what I want to see, but it should not cost you much more than a red face and some banter down the pub if it comes out. And perhaps not even that. Sex is sex, let's chill out about it.

It would be somewhat surprising to me if this hadn't already happened.

This is the best explanation available for why the "black budget" grows ever larger. Who would dare vote against that? Maybe an angel? Maybe someone so obviously corrupt and disgusting that additional proof of those qualities wouldn't surprise any voter.... hmmmm.

Sex with more than one person at a time is corrupt and disgusting, apparently.

May I be allowed a different opinion?

Isn't the problem hypocrisy rather than group sex? You can perfectly legally have group sex in the UK (if all participants are legally consenting), the people most likely to object are those who think they're in a trusting monogamous/monoandrous relationship with one of the participants.

The primary reasons people can be blackmailed seem to be because they've not been forthright, or, they themselves perceive it as wrong.

I'd extend that to hypocrisy and/or dishonesty, and yes those are valid objections (IMO the only ones), but my problem is the apparent view that the act alone is socially reprehensible, not the secondary issues of being two-faced, or going behind your partner's back without their knowledge.

So yes I completely agree with you, once those 2 issues have been teased apart. The GP comment with "obviously corrupt and disgusting" was objectionable. TBF looking at other comments I see little or none of that.

Somehow you've completely misunderstood the comment above.

To be fair, the users could just be staff or interns. I don't believe anyone is suggesting Trump or Boris Johnson are using 3fun.

All it takes is staff or interns to compromise an entire political campaign. Just because they aren't the primary candidate doesn't mean they don't have access via blackmail to the information someone is looking for. It really is a huge security nightmare with people that have a candidate's calendar or even access to a candidate's email. Also, in terms of Trump possibly being compromised. Google Jeffrey Epstein.

To be clear, I do not have any illusory perception of the personal morality of Trump, it's just that location data isn't enough to really tie anyone to any official or important person. You can just claim it was an intern even if it was the politician was the user and fire the intern. My point is it's not as potentially damaging as say actual evidence of scandalous behavior is.

For example, there was the comedic Ted Cruz twitter scandal in which his account liked a pornhub video featuring incest play. He claimed it was a staff mistake and moved on.

If only all the people being paid to automate regular jobs could automate the government instead using open source software.

As pointed out in the article, it could be someone having a bit of cheap fun with a spoofed GPS.

when? right now!

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