We have a vibrant and sometimes political teams chat at my work, we would be toast if we were taken over by the magas. Yes we know it’s not private and do have also a group text. But haven’t ever worried since the whole organization is laid back regarding language and expression.
If I worked for the government? Hell no. No teams chat, not even “how was your weekend?” Nope nope nope.
My God NBC can’t even put the important fact in the headline? It was a political firing. Maybe they broke some rules but they weren’t fired for breaking the rules. They were fired because of the person that they were targeting.
to think, those fucking idiots thought they could bring down the US by flying planes into the twin towers when all they needed to do was wait for Republicans to get enough power.
I mean the rampant islamophobia and patriot washing of conservative media absolutely got more pervasive thanks in part to those planes. Probably not the domino, but certainly moved us in this direction.
it got dialed up, sure, but it was always there. it’s not like the US started the first Gulf War after 9/11. you were already moving in that direction for decades, 9/11 just happened to be spectacular enough to be an accelerant. they got to falsely justify more atrocities faster.
Bush 2 wouldn’t have been reelected if it wasn’t for 9/11.
We wouldn’t have had the patriot act.
We wouldn’t have spent trillions on the wars.
There’s absolutely no way we would have ended up where we are right now if it wasn’t for 9/11.
that’s where we disagree. just because this was used as justification for a lot of bullshit doesn’t mean something else wouldn’t be otherwise. it would’ve taken a bit longer but it was going to happen one way or another
russian mouthpiece doing what she is told by putin, also saying buzzwords on occasion, going on various platforms all right wing ones, and spoken on russia propaganda shows on one occasion.
This is an excuse and nothing more to consolidate power, remove oversight, and sabotage the American intelligence apparatus on behalf of Russia.
Sounds like they specifically targeted the gay and trans groups, which is infuriating but can’t possibly be surprising. They’ll be coming for any group that had their own chat rooms – minorities, Muslims, whatever.
This is America now.
Does anyone else not talk about that stuff on work accounts? They’re just used for work and I assume my boss and his boss and their bosses will all read everything.
I don’t think I’d be comfortable talking about stuff on a work chat, but this sounds like it was specifically a support group chat for lgbtq+ employees. The entire point of that would be to discuss that aspect of themselves.
Edit: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-new-mccarthyism-lgbtq-purges
That makes a bit more sense but I still wouldn’t trust it. We can get together outside of work.
I think for younger people, this is probably feeling like a betrayal. Almost like, “The boss said smoking was OK as long as we stayed in the smoking area and didn’t litter our butts everywhere, but then they just up and fired everyone that took smoke breaks the other day.”
“Don’t smoke at work” is an easy thing to say, and most people adhere to that in general. But it’s still fucked up to fire the smokers, when company policy just literal days before was “it’s fine, just follow these basic rules.”
Older people grew up keeping their private life private a lot more than younger people today, who have grown up online having their data mined constantly. Just by the nature of having grown up without ubiquitous data harvesting devices feeding analytics companies, we had more privacy as a default condition.
These particular folks were told they had a safe space for the chats they had, and then the rug was pulled from under them.
But it was a group chat for work. In anything even a little bit security driven it’s only for work related activities, just like email. I can’t imagine talking about anything related to sex or medical operations on teams.
It may have just been a meme dump, or a place to vent and get support.
Maybe someone is asking how well insurance covers a procedure or how to ask the doctor. Maybe someone is asking what is considered proper etiquette post-transition when they’re in a new social role. Maybe someone is asking who wants to get drinks after work.
I doubt it was gorey or pornographic. As you say, it’s work.
Spy work requires a fair amount of social skill and socially being aware of your partners and their ticks and habits and personality. Like in many professions, socializing is part of the job.
The firings stem from out-of-context chat logs leaked by far-right commentator Chris Rufo on Monday. Sources tell Erin in the Morning that the chat functioned as an ERG-adjacent LGBTQ+ safe space, where participants discussed topics like gender-affirming surgery, hormone therapy, workplace LGBTQ+ policies, and broader queer issues. Rufo, however, framed these conversations as evidence of misconduct, claiming that “NSA, CIA, and DIA employees discuss genital castration” and alleging discussions of “fetishes, kink, and sex.” To Rufo and his audience, merely talking about being transgender and the realities of transition is enough to be labeled “fetish” content.
I just watched the Jesse Waters clip linked in the above quote. He claims that the chat was pornographic and uses as justification an out-of-context quote from one trans woman saying she gets euphoria every time she pees after her bottom surgery, and that it’s easier than it’s ever been. No details, not even a “because I have a vagina now” or a “because I don’t have a penis”. She only said that peeing is now easy and makes her happy.
Every example you gave is still inappropriate, as they are not about work. I worked in the public sector and that would have been shut down. Federal employees are held to a higher standard, especially if they have a high security clearance. They get funny about spending because it is tax payers dollars. Using a work computer on a government account during paid hours to talk about personal things, nope. There are a bunch of rules they were breaking.
I’m not saying they they weren’t targeted, but they were still in the wrong.
Then I’ll repeat that they are spies, and socializing is part of the job. Being a spy is a social job. You are a better spy if you know and socialize with your coworkers and can recognize their patterns of speech and habits and actions. This makes for more unified and cohesive propaganda and social engineering. They are in fact getting paid to become better acquainted with each other and the work that the agency is doing so that they are more effective agents.
With virtual work, there is no watercooler or parkinglot. This is a virtual space for people to meet and chat.
I’ve never worked with someone that effectively reads anything other than the title or maybe the first sentance, but I would also not use work software or accounts for anything I wouldn’t want printed on 20ft billboards with my name attached. That’s about the least secure place to do anything.
You would think that intelligence officers would know that.
(Note that this doesn’t mean I think they should be fired, only that they should have known better than to have those conversations on a system operated by the fucking NSA.)
The people working in intelligence are not always the smartest, especially when it comes to technology.
First they came for the T’s
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a T
Then they came for the LGB’s
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a LGB
Then they came for the immigrants
And I did not speak out
Because I was not an immigrant
And then they came for the non-Christians
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a non-Christian
And then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Speak out! Use your rights, while you still have them!
“Someone might want to let Chris Rufo know that many of the best coders, hackers, and cryptographers are LGBTQ. The neurodivergent talent required for these skills often comes with divergence from the mean in other areas.”
Hrm. While I’m very sympathetic to their plight here I also hate this “Big Bang Theory” stereotype of people who work in technical fields.
I’ve been saying for years that I’ve never seen as many trans people in one place as defcon blackhat
I have a mix of friends and the most spicy ones are also the smartest and most talented. Stereotypes are true sometimes.
I fear it may be a bit of a self-fulfilling stereotype. Based on my experience (some extended family, some from when I grew up, and some from my kid’s schoolmates), “spicy” far from guarantees intelligence, and intelligence far from requires being “spicy”. Most of the folks I’ve encountered with mental health diagnoses are not particularly intelligent, excluding self-diagnosis, no more so than other folks, maybe a bit less since the sample includes low-functioning autistic.
One example of a high functioning autistic who was smart was a girl my kid knew. I’m not so sure about it, because she didn’t seem strange to me. Turned out her parents were loaded, and bemoaned the mental health industry because they had taken their kid to 4 child psychologists who all claimed she was normal before they finally found a “good” one that would actually diagnose her. They seemed quite proud to have a “special” kid with a mental condition that meant she was smarter than other people.
Which is a huge part of the issue, ever since Asperger’s became popularized back in the day. People heard “mental deficiency that makes it ok to be an asshole, and it means you are smart, and generally functional”. I’ve known a few people that self diagnose because they want to be considered smart and didn’t like considering other people’s feelings. They mistake “incapable” for “not liking to” when it comes to accommodating others.
People who are neurodivergent can be smart, but the diagnosis is diluted by a lot of self-diagnosers or mental health professional shoppers. This leads to some bad outcomes, like a story where a company declared they wanted to exclusively hire autistic people because they wanted the smartest.
Alan Turing?
… Okay?
deleted by creator
I’m going to hazard a guess that if they had been hating on trans people and culture, or promoting conservative values, in that work chat tool then they would still have jobs.
Russian Asset says what?
Maybe evil Russia became evil because of our constant demonization of them, an egregore of necessity. We are allowed to criticize Russia, Iran, Palestine, Cuba, communists, socialists, certain Democrats, Nicaragua, El Salvador. We’re not allowed to criticize billionaires, corporations, Republicans, Israel. Maybe we need to wonder about why. Maybe we need to wonder if Machines, Sinemas, Fettermans, Gabards are Blue Dog Dems or "sleeper agents.”
Btw, remember how Mayo® Pete went from unacceptable racist with zero larger scale transportation experience to all good for it on a national scale?
Maybe humans are shaped by opportunities (to grow in moral corruption or moral stature) and circumstance more than we like to remember when it doesn’t suit us. Maybe we could not over esteem good people, and try to work out ways of reshaping, re-educating and rehabilitating the worst, and money is appropriately fined according to ability to pay, that in no way allows repeat offenders to skip rehabilitation (which in my estimation is re-education without the scary connotations of prior failures at attempts to do that) and work toward quelling and wishing our own desires for retribution and vigilantly guarding, adequately funding the system to make rehab/re-ed more successful and from slipping into the abyss of retribution.
Gods help us, evolution is slow. But as I age it does seem more and more critical that it begins with the individual in the mirror, moment-by-moment, day-by-day.
Maybe our failure wasn’t the concept of Op Paperclip, rehab re-ed, but the execution of them. The human factor.
Are you younger than 30? I remember when we were trying to work with Post Soviet Russia. From Bush 1 all the way up to Obama. They had that chance. Then they took a giant shit in Syria and Crimea. 20 years of trying Rapprochment, at some point you have to draw a line and say these actions are not okay and we will not associate with a country that thinks they are.
Greg Palast spoke about vulture capitalism, bit I’m sure that has nothing to do with anything. Perhaps insult rather than taking a few moments to reflect or ask may indicate more about ourselves than the other. Perhaps we’d do well to temper ourselves toward reflection a bit more.
Anyway, you may or not disagree and may or not do a little digging, I have no control over you, nor do I wish to have; I’ve all I can do (and sometimes more) to manage my own disposition, and allotted time and resources. I wish you the best of days as I continue about mine.
Because Russian oligarchs care about people any more than American ones?
Oooooph. These people are fools for using a work app to talk about that crap.
Sounds like it was an app like slack or teams where you talk to your colleagues. That doesn’t seem like a weird thing to me if you are friends with someone at work you discuss your life with them.
I had a teams app at my previous gig and I was very close with the people in that app, but if it wasn’t work related, that conversation happened over iMessage, not in teams where the company had access
This Cruella De Vil looking twat was no business in the Intel world when any given one of those people have more knowledge of actual security matters than she could even begin to comprehend.
i thought she look like her, shes no glenn close.
So, a lot of experts are going to be trying to find the Trump pee tapes?
