Beyond the information security risk around the loss of this specific device, what really worries me is the physical security implications here. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but it seems to me like, in a building like the US Capitol, it should not be anywhere near this easy for unauthorized people to waltz into an office or conference room in the first place. Let alone walk away with items from within that room.
I've traveled to countries before whose offices of government are behind very large fences, protected by unfriendly looking men standing behind heavy machine guns in armored vehicles – and the guide books are very clear that you are not to take photos of them.
I much prefer the approach taken in the USA, where our offices of government are accessible to the people that the government serves. It's very good that I can protest out front without worrying about that unfriendly man with his finger by the trigger to the Browning M2.
Seems like it ought to be possible to have both, to some degree. I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this. I mean... the US spends massive amounts of money on the police and military.
I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.
American history[1] shows this probably isn't a requirement - beyond a foreign military attacking, which is clearly out of scope of policing, the other attacks were acts carried out by isolated people. "Storming the gates" hasn't happened before now.
I suspect the main reason that this hasn't happened before is that very large protests/gatherings are often met with a large show of police force to ensure the protestors know this isn't an option. Why that didn't happen today will be interesting to investigate. We all probably have a theory, but what comes out of the inevitable hearings on this will be interesting to see.
There are hundreds of thousands of people behind the camera, going all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. You can see some security milling around, but no large show of police force.
The Million Man March's attendance didn't include people with an established history of bringing weapons and wearing body armor at ostensibly peaceful demonstrations.
That couldn't be further from the truth. A large group of Black Panthers armed with assault weapons stormed the CA capitol in 1967 as part of a protest.
I think the reality is that we could have prevented it. We just chose not to murder half the crowd. Preventing it without using lethal force requires a much larger force than you want to keep on hand.
I actually really like this analogy. I'm curious if there's there's a term for that kind of playbook for folks who are more familiar with building security.
The only analogue that comes to mind is in financial fraud detection: moving money slowly or in a predictable pattern (monthly rent payments etc.) triggers no alarms, but large or unexpected transfers raise alarms.
I remember when I left my last job that my manager cautioned me against making any large file transfers since it would trigger IT alarms about employees trying to steal the company's IP.
Clearly, he didn't think I was a threat, or if I was, that I would have been smart enough to do it long ago, and slowly :-)
If the people really want to overthrow the government, some jacked up defenses around capitol buildings won't stop anything imho, it just means the resistance will bring heavier weapons to match.
Occupying buildings is, honestly, pretty silly if your goal is to overthrow the government.
A few years(?) ago, Mitch McConnell's dinner at a restaurant was interrupted by protestors yelling at him. And that was after what happened to Gabby Giffords.
Targets with higher ROI are available to people willing to take, ahem, kinetic actions.
There are, for instance, buildings with large areas that are open to the public and other areas which hold large amounts of money that are very important to protect.
> I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this.
And they would have, had the Trump Administration not denied the D.C
Mayor's request the day before for the D.C. National Guard to be deployed.
The Administration also delayed approval of requests by Virginia and Maryland to send Guard units to the Capitol in response to urgent calls for aid from Congressional leaders when it became clear the MPD and Capitol Police were overwhelmed.
Of course, it's a problem when the person inciting the insurrection has authority over important components of the security against it.
They (the people inciting it) were literally dancing and having a party and watching the start of the chaos on livestream while it went down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQDgBSSYjI
As a huge democrat (lower case d) I totally agree. Locking down the Capitol is antithetical to the notion of open democracy. Lawmakers and the law making process needs to be physically accessible by the People. This was what the Founders intended. Of course there is some risk here and Jefferson himself noted this.
That’s the price we pay for living in an open and transparent society. While I don’t condone or support what happened this week, the building belongs to the People and not the government and the People have every right to enter the building and demand accountability.
The way the US Capitol is right now feels very police-state to me compared to how it used to be. I have memories of running around the Capitol building with my Cub Scout pack including ending up in private areas. There were no assault weapons and we weren’t met with police. We were politely shooed away.
Today you cannot walk up the steps of the Capitol building. It’s fenced off and manned by armed guard. Last time I was there I stepped aside to let some people pass in a crowded area and crossed some arbitrary unmarked do not cross line but about 12 inches. I was physically grabbed by Police.
> the People have every right to enter the building and demand accountability.
the "People" can't just do whatever they want just because they feel like it. Can they go and bang hammers on nuclear warheads because the warheads "belong to the People"? Storm the doors of JPL and play horsey on the Mars Rovers?
When some subset of the "People" attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the other 99% of the People, they are traitors, and should be erased from society.
The security risk is also less of a problem in a mostly rational society, which is what we have had for a long time. You'll get lone wolves, but finding a group of people so angry with a politician they're willing to conspire to kill them? Very, very rare. Violence is a last resort for people who feel totally powerless. So, in a dark way, easy access keeps politicians from pissing off their constituents too much.
Which is why the stream of "fraudulent election" lies is so dangerous. A person in a position that confers trust is telling people the government is openly defying them. For people who believe that, violence is the only logical way to affect politics.
Compare a similar issue with schools; in the 80s, teenagers left their guns in their cars while they went to class. Now, schools are basically a rights-free zone.
Totally agree, great point! The fear mongering is only useful for states to impose more draconian rules. Its likely if there are further lockdowns, and more livelihoods are destroyed during the Biden admin, more people will be revolting. We don't want to give them the moral authority to Tiananmen square unarmed protesters, just because they fear their own people
I think that's nonsense. Access to a lawmaker or representative in a village may work like that. When you represent a state of 20 million, access means making an appointment and going through security clearance. There is a voting mechanism, a free press and various other mechanisms to back me up if I am consistently deterred from speaking to my public representative. But I'm in no way expecting to just walk in there, unannounced, without security clearance, at any time of the day, to demand attention.
Might as well argue that you should be able to just walk into the white house and speak to the top public representative.
> Entirely different situation. The reason that people need to talk with the legislature is because those are the people’s representatives.
Totally different, were it not for the fact the president is also the Chief of State: The chief public representative of a country.
Besides, even if this wasn't the case, humor me and suppose it was (which it actually is), would you then conclude that the president should simply be accessible at will by 300 million Americans? It makes absolutely no sense.
Just because something is publicly accessible doesn't mean you throw all reason out the window. Plenty of national parks are simultaneously open to everyone, as well as require registration and some basic ground rules to entrance. Similarly, it's entirely uncontroversial to argue that accessing the capitol is freely available to all, but there will be some minimum security checks, and some areas (e.g. private offices or places holding confidential data) are off-limits. Virtually all democracies have no problem separating visitor's areas from private working offices, and implementing appropriate controls in both.
The notion that the speaker of the house's laptop could be casually stolen by people without heavy equipment walking in is a joke, pure and simple. Claiming it has something to do with the fact she's a representative thereby implying her laptop should just be freely accessible instead of secured by some basic measures, as some (not you) have done in this thread, makes no sense if you ask me.
> Totally different, were it not for the fact the president is also the Chief of State: The chief public representative of a country.
It’s kind of a stretch to frame it that way. The president quite literally represents the states, not the people. The US does not require that states assign electors by popular vote, states have chosen to do that. And in the past, they have chosen to do it other ways. Before the civil war, there were states that selected electors without conducting a popular vote.
The way the US government is architected, the legislature is the extent of federal representative government.
6 of the 13 original states held a popular vote for president Washington.
But to respond to the bulk of your statement: it was like airport security back when I was a kid, and I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t also be appropriate on any other typical (i.e. not a special event) day. Angry mobs should never make it to the building in the first place. Crowd control happens outside of the building.
Where did anyone say any of the things you are claiming?
The statement was simply that the People have a right to entry into the building and physical access to lawmakers and the law making process. Further, the statement is that access is a foundational principle to the US implementation of liberal democracy since our Nation’s founding.
It’s so foundational that it’s also quite literally built into the building as there are galleries for public viewing of Senate and House proceedings.
It is also an ideal that we strive for like equality and justice. We recognize our union as imperfect yet these ideals are what drive us as a Nation.
Your comment I feel confuses implementation with the discussion of ideals. The implementation should follow the ideals as guiding principles with access being the default.
Lastly, historically the building and lawmakers were much more accessible. This was during my lifetime. We had lots of people then too.
No, now you're mischaracterising me. All this while I've spoken about implementation, I've never claimed that the public should not have access to representatives. I've claimed that it must be implemented according to the conditions necessary to ensure it is orderly and secure.
Indeed, access is the default. And in a village with a handful of visits and no armed psychopats plotting to kill your local representative, that default is all you need and may proceed as such.
But as you'll agree, the chief public representative (the president) lives in a different reality. Public unfettered access is a threat to his life. And while the public should have a form of access regardless, practically a 300 million to 1 communication relationship doesn't work, so you must implement it accordingly, differently. That's why most presidents had a habit of spending an hour a day reading letters from citizens, hosting debates, participating in public forums, holding press conferences, inviting people to the white house to discuss, speaking to various organisations representing people's causes etc. But walking into his office at 4PM to speak to the president? That's a joke. I'm fully aware that in a democracy a public servant works for the public, no need to discuss the ideal. I'm discussing the practical implementation, which is why I started with the village vs capitol example, which sees different outcomes on the basis of the same principles, which is exactly because the ideals are the same but the implementation cannot be. Similarly, you would organize access to certain parts of the capitol in a secure manner, e.g. those parts of the capitol holding a laptop of the speaker of the house.
In a post 9/11 world you cannot just say the capitol belongs to the people and access should be free (again, obviously talking about practice, not ideals, here), without concluding in the same breath that it should be freely accessible to any terrorist as well. And it's just an example. This week it were people thinking they were sent by Q or incited by Trump to de-facto participate in a coup (i.e. storming the capitol to prevent an elected official from being confirmed, while spreading propagandistic lies that the election was stolen, a direct attack on the democracy if you ask me). Next week it might be a psychopath thinking he is doing god's work. And yes, times have changed, if you're also interested in discussing how airport security used to be different back in the day, be my guest, I don't see the point.
Plenty of countries have well-functioning (and by many subjective and objective measures, better functioning) democracies, with high-level access to public representatives, while taking proper security and practicality measures.
> It’s so foundational that it’s also quite literally built into the building as there are galleries for public viewing of Senate and House proceedings.
You say some of these things as if access to public viewing of proceedings isn't the norm in countless democracies worldwide. But if I go to a viewing, I go through this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25690107
Not because I don't have access, but precisely because I do, as does everyone else, and that creates risks, which can be mitigated without reducing access. A basic measure which would've prevented the debacle at the Capitol altogether.
You don't need to fence the whole area off. Just a few reinforced doors at strategic places would have stopped anyone without heavy equipment. Also they would have been a place for the police to stand their ground.
Just all stairs going upwards should be easy to defend if the police stands their ground. Add a few police dogs and the officers wouldn't even have to engage themselves.
There was a smaller crowd trying to enter the German parliament just a few weeks ago, politically pretty close to the rioters of Washington. A whole three policemen were able to stop them by just consequently standing their ground, not armend beyond batons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc-56opg-Xg
I agree with the more open approach, but shouldn't her office have a simple keycard or combo lock on the door? Even Starbucks toilets have better security.
From the pictures I saw, she was still logged in and had the evacuation message onscreen. I'm guessing she didn't have 'require login after screensaver' option enabled. If the account is still logged in, this is a massive breach!
> I agree with the more open approach, but shouldn't her office have a simple keycard or combo lock on the door?
Congressional offices are frequent meeting spaces with people who do not work there. Their job, after all, is to represent the public. Locking the public out of their offices is kind of antithetical to the job description.
tl;dr: the government has appropriate computer security in place to prevent this sort of thing, and it's not clear what the deal was with that particular computer.
When you hear the mob screaming outside, glass breaking, and are likely being told to evacuate by messages on your computer and security outside? I wouldn't bet that I'd remember. Not locking your screen is as expected as it is forgivable under the circumstances.
They should beef up security. And keep it open. And not so obvious.
The simple fact of the matter is that a violent riot stormed the capitol building and nearly overwhelmed local forces. Congress asked for extra help and it wasn't provided. Governors asked if they could send in the guard to help and the man whom stoked the riot gave no permission.
It's a fucking miracle that January 6th wasn't one of the worst days in the history of the US.
They should have appropriate security when large events are going on outside. But I sure hope we do not see barricades between representatives and their constituents on a normal day. Democracies rely on trust in both directions.
This is a false dichotomy, though. There is an enormous gamut of security steps in between turning the capitol into a fortress, and locking the door to your office when you're not there.
> I much prefer the approach taken in the USA, where our offices of government are accessible to the people that the government serves. It's very good that I can protest out front without worrying about that unfriendly man with his finger by the trigger to the Browning M2.
And yet your government offices abroad (embassies) are the most fortified I've ever seen.
I've been to several countries' embassies and the US one was like entering a secret nuclear bunker. There was airport-style security, and everyone I talked to was behind a massive sheet of bullet-proof glass; never mind the gates and moat around the building. This was in a small, US-friendly and highly developed country.
Then there's the excessive amount of security around any US governmental visit to a foreign country.
So I think it comes to a surprise to many outside the US that one of your main government buildings has less security than a museum even when all the most important politicians are inside.
But yes I agree, I think government buildings should be 'friendly'.
Most days that’s fair. This week however, they should’ve had the unfriendly man with the M2. This was a predictable problem to literally everyone but the people in charge of protecting the capital.
According to some reports, the problem was in fact predicted, and that's why the National Guard chose not to prepare for forceful confrontation. Not wanting photos of armed uniformed soldiers in state buildings or some such.
I think more core to the issue is status quo bias. Cops are much more likely to agree or strongly agree to questions like “the current US system is fair and just” and similar pro-status quo ideas. Typically speaking left wing protestors are agitating to change the system, especially policing, which is why cops do not respond as well. Is it any surprise that cops respond worse to those protesting against the police, no matter the slogan, than they do against the “blue lives matter” crowd?
Oh, and cop organizations are run through with neo-nazis and white supremacists who have made a concerted effort to make inroads with police departments and military members.
What? This most recent was literally an attempt to take over the Capitol building, presumably to delay one step in the formal recognition of the next President, and perhaps worse.
This makes it sound like the people in charge of protecting the capital did not know that this was a legitimate threat. From the articles I've read, they did in fact help that it was a legitimate threat, which raises the question: why did they do nothing about it?
The only reasonable conclusion I can think of is that the security team had no worry that politicians would be in any danger (e.g. easy, isolated, fast escape routes) and that it would be hard to rationalize to bring out the troops/big security forces with a threat of violence for a group of people that was supported by the current president and a significant fraction of congress and the senate. The whole situation feels very strange and it feels like I'm missing some key facts.
I think there are many plausible (but not necessarily "reasonable") alternative explanations.
As far as I can tell, this event seems to have had an extremely persuasive effect on the psyche and opinions of the average person. Who might benefit from this change in the mental state of the population, and in what ways?
Most people seem to find the very idea of thinking such thoughts to be extremely unpleasant, if not downright inappropriate. But to me, this is simple risk management. The lack of this sort of thinking in society seems downright dangerous to me.
I sometimes wonder what the origin of such norms is - is it organic (a common characteristic derived from evolution), or might it be synthetic?
I truly am struggling to extract any coherent meaning from that comment. Democrats, controlling just the House – when Repulicans are running the federal gov't with the Senate and the presidency – have instituted this event? Some big capitalists maybe? Putin? The Jews?
The Democrat/Republican duopoly is mutually beneficial to both party. Grassroots populist candidates (Perot, Trump, Sanders) are a pain in the ass for both of them, as would future ones be.
Wouldn't it be convenient if a massive spectacle was to occur, whereby the US public could see in 4K HDR the danger that populist political candidates introduce to the system, how it "threatens our most sacred institution: Democracy.
And as luck would have it, along comes a massive throng of obviously angry and delusional Trump supporters, with well advertised (and well known to authorities) plans to descend on the US Capitol, to "rescue Democracy", or some such nonsense.
So, what do you do in a situation where you have hordes of angry (and possibly armed) political extremists heading towards a politically strategic location, on a particularly important day (in your democracy)?
Do you:
a) Beef up security
b) Not beef up security
It seems like option (b) was chosen. Depending on what variable one is optimizing for, this was a terrible choice, or an excellent one.
US embassies just about everywhere are like that. The one in Budapest has two inch thick metal bar gates and guards armed with machine guns. Lesson learned from the embassy hostage crisis in Iran.
Anyway, an angry mob of wacko rioters shouldn't violently force their way into the legislative's building. They should respect the outcome of the democratic vote and vote again in four years. Maybe if this was Iran I would say okay, people are fed up with the ayatollah and the revolutionary guards, but this is the US and the poor buggers are being manipulated, shot tear gas at and four of them got killed. For what? Absolutely nothing. The unfortunate officer died doing his job. This is very sad and scary, it looks like civil war brewing. A really bad thing to happen to a nation armed with nukes. Please do not let it happen, it is within your power to distance yourselves from these people and just say no to violence and vandalism.
I agree. One of my favorite aspects of visiting DC is the remarkable extent to which ordinary citizens have access to the workings of government. Sure, there's some security, but mostly to keep things orderly, not secret.
So just a couple hundreds of people can protest in front of the building, enter elected official offices and steal laptops most likely containing very sensitive data (hopefully encrypted though)?
I agree with you but I think there ought to be a little more protection of that.
For national security buildings (e.g. the NSA) it is the exact same as your foreign country experience. The guards around the perimeter are very quick to engage and ask what you are doing if you meander around the outside.
The NASA HQ administration building off 4th and E just south of the Mall has no armed guards posted outside, and there's even a NASA public credit union in the building, which does not require passing through the metal detectors or security post just a couple doors away in the same open lobby.
It is visited by plenty of non-NASA, non-government ordinary customers who could easily blend in with official foot traffic on a busy day and make just a dozen paces to the main elevator banks or stairwells looking for an opportunity.
I misread the OP as NASA, which was careless but I still think the observation is worth noting. Also worth noting is that there is a museum on the NSA campus (National Cryptologic Museum) that anyone can visit without any clearance, and though there are vastly trickier chicanes to contend with compared to the access at NASA administrative HQ, merely visiting the cryptologic museum ushers one past several otherwise highly restricted perimeter zones.
Yes, it is understandable that security works that way in a building occupied by people whose job it is to keep secrets... but that is not the way security should work at a building of democratic representatives where their job is to be publicly accountable.
A police force of 2200, just for one building. Compare that to the Atlanta Police Department which has 1800 officers for a city of 500,000+ people and a size of 136 sq miles.
Not one bldg. There are multiple House and Senate offices and the Library of Congress. It's a huge complex which does not seem well designed from a security standpoint. I don't know if they've fixed that, but after 9/11 it was a mess of access.
That’s just how the Capitol (and most US state houses) is. My wife has on multiple occasions waltzed down to the (non-public) underground subway that connects the Capitol to the Senate and House office buildings to chat with members of Congress. The Capitol Police usually say “well you’re not supposed to be here, but I guess it’s okay.”
I may be paranoid, and thus don't get why the downvotes?
1. The person specified he has a wife that chats with members of Congress out of usual channels of communications.
2. The person specified place where it happens in the open.
How hard for some non-friendly party to get there directly given the instructions above, or start tracking his wife through other means and get there through her?
They're configured one-way only, can be fully opened for high through-put or emergencies, but are otherwise single-person only. They can detect multiple people in various ways. The default for sensitive areas would be biometric (e.g. weight, some parlement members coming back from vacation a little overweight have had to get a manual override in the past). Of course bulletproof, and can be controlled at a distance by an operator.
It makes sense that not everything requires something like this, but the office of the speaker of the house of course should be in any situation. If she wishes to meet people in less-secure rooms it's entirely possible to create meeting rooms with fewer or even no significant entry or security controls if you wish, but your personal office, places where you store sensitive data etc... can't just have em behind a few wooden doors.
Of course some countries opted for the benefit of a modern building. The capitol is more than two centuries old, you can only retrofit it so much.
The US Capitol belongs to the people. There are risks from that which fall on the people who serve there. In counties with monarchs there are different traditions expressed by the architecture of public institutions and the seats of power.
Dutch Parliament has a visitors entrance and is (in non-covid times) easily accessible to the public. But for obvious security reasons their private offices are behind these kinds of locked doors. Since a few years I think you have to go through a metal detector to be allowed into the public areas.
It makes no sense at all that the US Capitol doesn't have stronger barriers between the public areas and the private offices. Every bank or other large company has such a setup for information security reasons.
But why does a public official's office need to be a public area? I'm sure you're not allowed to walk into it without an appointment, so having appropriate security barriers wouldn't stop them doing their job at all and would improve security.
Without referencing any source I'll just assume you made that up. As far as I know there's no difference between say the French or German republic or the Dutch (symbolic) monarchy in this regard.
Dutch representatives are accessible by the people. They have a walk-in hour, you can call them, email them, write them, you can join hearings and meetings where they're present, they go out into the country to talk to citizens. But what you can't do is waltz into their office. This has obvious reasons in a post 9/11 world, and it has nothing to do with the fact the Netherlands has a king who has a purely symbolic function and does not participate in politics, no different from say France which is a republic, or Germany which saw a mob storm the Reichstag a few months ago and was easily held off by the police, which is also a republic.
I think you should read up on how western countries typically prefer to have very light visible security in front of buildings like these. It sends a message of non-approachability if you have heavily-armed forces out front, which politicans don't like.
I'm assuming a similar security plan is in place in e.g. European countries' parliaments; extracting the high value targets is P1. The building is just a building; if it's damaged it can be repaired. And killing a bunch of people defending a building is a political no-go.
Looks to me like they stood down, being complicit with the insurrection. This often is how 3rd world nations are overthrown by dictators with the militarys help.
To prevent unauthorized entry, Capitol Police would have had to put up a fight. Seems they were unwilling to do so. If America continues down this path Russia (and others) are just gonna have a field day.
Firing on a mob is risky as hell and not morally clear. I can't blame Capitol Police--at least for the actions after it already got out of hand.
If federal security at Court House shoots BLM protestors who are entering a federal court house, those security people would probably get charged with murder.
It's unreasonable to expect Capitol Police to make that sort of moral choice in the moment. And if you give cops the greenlight to shoot people to protect property, there will be a lot of unnecessarily death going forward.
That said, they may (probably?) screwed up containing the crowd contained in the first place. Though to play devils advocate, the President had just told a mob to go "wild." Not sure if Capitol Police could successfully manage that.
> If federal security at Court House shoots BLM protestors who are entering a federal court house, those security people would probably get charged with murder.
Probably? Says who? In fact, multiple people have been shot (fatally or otherwise) during BLM protests, and actions against those officers have been very much the exception.
I'm not aware of police using live bullets against unarmed people to prevent them from entering a government facility. Though I could be ignorant of clear examples.
At least in Minnesota and Portland they let looters burn/occupy the buildings without contest.
I think it was a happy accident that possibly being complicit meant this didn't go as bad as it could have. We have a great example of de-escalation working.
>That said, they may (probably?) screwed up containing the crowd contained in the first place.
Certainly with the benefit of hindsight, there should have been a much stronger show of force/barricades/etc. Should that have been obvious even without hindsight? Don't know.
That said, once the Capitol Police were outnumbered and things were getting out of hand, I'm pretty sure the best outcome if they had used deadly force to stop a rush would have been headlines like "Dozens of Trump supporters dead after police open fire on crowd." Worse scenarios include the police getting overwhelmed anyway and many of them killed also leading to a firefight within the capitol.
There have been several pro-Trump rallies since the election. The city got locked down hard, but nothing happened. They were much more peaceful than the rallies this summer. (I drove by all of these because my wife’s office is a couple of blocks from the White House).
And the real damage was to our rule of law. That was already accomplished when the supposed President directed a mob against congress.
The actual level of violence done by the mob is relatively tame. Shooting a bunch of people in the halls of Congress isn't going to stop the damage to the rule of law. And it would have what? Prevented a few laptops from being stolen, a couple doors from being broken down, etc. It's not like they torched the place.
I personally don't think violence by a mob is acceptable. But it seems most people do--as long as they are sympathetic to the cause.
There’s photographs of one of the “peaceful” protestors in bdus and a helmet with zip ties, and there was multiple videos of the mob yelling to grab the politicians. It was relatively peaceful because congress was able to evacuate before they could be kidnapped and held hostage, with them safely away the pipe bombs wouldn’t have had much point.
I guess? I would have expected the doors to put up a fight, too. But it doesn't sound like there was much forced entry going on beyond getting into the building itself.
At my own workplace, all the areas that are not intended for public use - office blocks and most meeting rooms, for example - are locked at all times and have keycard access. Defense in depth, y'know? And we're not even a juicy target like the US Capitol, we're just some company.
Congress isn't really one office, though. It's hundreds of individually run ones, each intended to serve the public fairly frequently. You can (generally) pop in and see your congressperson and/or their staff if you want.
My office is likely set up the same as yours, or at least close enough to yours. You could absolutely pop in to visit me.
But you could also grab enough of your friends to obtain a decisive numerical advantage – let's say, you and twenty of your closest friends, that probably gets close to what we saw yesterday. Be sure one or two of them are visibly armed.
Once you have your buddies, you can go break through the glass door leading to the receptionist's desk. We saw that yesterday too.
Once you're in, game over: I don't expect Nancy to tackle you at the door, or my friend Brian to kick you when you try to come into the conference room. I expect when you're inside you'll get a guest badge – or an employees – and proceed to go about doing whatever you were interested in doing.
My office's threat model – and yours – is not based on defending against a mob of people storming the building.
> My office's threat model – and yours – is not based on defending against a mob of people storming the building.
That's sort of exactly the point I'm making. My office's threat model isn't even in the same league, and yet it still seems to have more thought put into physical security than the Capitol building. It would appear that, unlike in the hypothetical you're constructing, in the real event, people didn't even need keycards in order to freely move about the building after getting past the exterior doors.
So Nancy Pelosi's office is generally open to the public, and it's fine for people to go on in whenever they want, even when she's not there?
I've honestly never tried to visit a congressperson in DC, so I suppose I wouldn't know, but it sounds unlikely. My public library is even more intended for public use than the US Capitol, but I still need a key to go back into the offices.
> So Nancy Pelosi's office is generally open to the public, and it's fine for people to go on in whenever they want, even when she's not there?
Generally, yes. Their offices are suites with a reception that'll be staffed for constituent services most of the day. Staff are also typically there all day taking calls from the public.
You're being naive if you believe that Russia and others didn't already have a field day at the Capitol yesterday. I wouldn't worry as much about what these guys took from offices and server rooms as I would worry about what little digital gifts these guys may have left behind in the offices and server rooms.
Yep. The entire building needs to be completely scrubbed down and all tech needs to be taken and destroyed. A complete fresh start. Move operations to a new building while this is happening.
It honestly boggles the mind that capitol police announced the all-clear as soon as they did. I mean they found pipe bombs in the RNC and DNC headquarters. No way did the conduct the kind of thorough search that would ensure that nobody left a pipe bomb in an air vent or in a random filing cabinet.
And that goes double for mysterious flash drives randomly stuck in people's computers, or bugs hidden in planters etc. Just an absolute travesty.
The Capitol Police were either incompetent or complicit. There are literally no other options. They knew there would be a big protests, numbers put it around 200k~300k (a tiny percentage of which actually went into the capitol building mind you).
If they weren't prepared for this: incompetence. But there are videos of people getting selfies with guards, and staying within the velvet ropes when coming in. Something isn't right here and no one is talking about it.
They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.
They turned down an offer from the Pentagon to supplement manpower, days before the protest. Why?
A police department with an intelligence unit couldn't guess that things might get a little out of hand when 3 weeks before, the President publicly used Twitter to ask his followers[1] to attend a "wild" protest on January 6th? Not that an intelligence unit was required as the plans were in the open. I have great difficulty in putting this down to incompetence, all things considered.
Most obviously, if you invite the military in and ask them to secure a portion of the building, you're exposed to the risk that the commander-in-chief will order them out (or order them to stand aside); it's unlikely that forces could be redeployed fast enough to respond to such a defection. (And no, you can't avoid this danger by having all the forces working together everywhere; far too many command-and-control issues arise.) If you don't invite the military to assist in the first place... well, then you're not relying on them to guard your back.
There's also a fundamental democratic issue at stake: It's not by coincidence that the United States Capitol Police answers to the legislature and not to the executive -- indeed, this is seen around the world (e.g. Canada's Parliamentary Protective Service answers to the Speakers of the House and Senate) and arguably the principle that military forces should not be brought to the seat of legislative power dates back to the Roman Republic... which swiftly became the Roman Empire after Caesar crossed the Rubicon with an army at his back.
Those are all valid points. Though I will argue that the assumption that the Capitol Police answers to the legislature is shaky, at best (in practice). If I had to guess who is more likely to refuse an unlawful order, I'd say a member of the military, rather than the police, based on my limited knowledge of their respective cultures. Combined with the idea of police officers who believe they are part of a semi-secret, ad-hoc, patriot's army, things can go wrong indeed.
Let's do a thought experiment: let's say there are a few elements in the police who are active QAnon believers, sprinkled in at various levels. Let's also assume some more force members are not believers, per se, but sympathize with the cause, and are willing to look aside since they may dislike some legislators who they see as enabling BLM, Antifa and other un-American actors (in their eyes) and believe that something "weird" happened with the elections and/or the whole establishment is dirty. Would these individuals not listen to the orders of the commander in chief, even when not delivered via the official chain of command?
> Though I will argue that the assumption that the Capitol Police answers to the legislature is shaky, at best (in practice).
It's a matter of law that they answer to the legislature, this isn't an "assumption." Individually they have answered to a not very sharp police chief, and the Sergeants-At-Arms of the House and Senate, who are all in the process of resigning because of how badly they recently screwed up, if that's what you mean.
> It's a matter of law that they answer to the legislature, this isn't an "assumption."
I could have expressed myself better there - I was distinguishing between them being answerable to the legislature (de jure) in the logical, org chat way, and them "answering" to a mercurial president they ideologically agree with (de facto), in the here and now.
For this specific decision I think we can put it down to incompetence over malice - it'd presumably be easy for whoever was co-ordinating it dismiss all the riot talks as bluster and figure it'd just be yet another protest with a lot of shouting. I imagine we'll hear more about it, but I would be surprised if it was a co-ordinated effort in concert with the rioters (I don't know what to call them).
The footage of police opening barriers and stuff, and taking selfies is however a bit more worrying. I think it's pretty well known that individuals within the police could identify or sympathise with Q or the far right - so if it turns out that this footage was exactly what it's seems to be (and we know how easily things can be misrepresented and shown out of context) then I imagine some cops are gonna be in big trouble.
I agree with this take. It's possible that after a year of particularly intense criticism of police department's actions vs protesters across the country they didn't want to appear to be over-reacting (which could fan all kinds of flames) and didn't expect the crowds to be quite so wild.
I don't know what kinds of contingency planning may have taken place, but ultimately this event seems to have been ended and cleaned up pretty quickly compared to some other demonstrations we've seen recently.
Yeah we're definitely in speculation territory here so I'm wary of going too far. But I would imagine it was not a conscious attempt clean up their act and do their job with a less heavy hand. The idea that they'd suddenly decide to have a change of heart and that the first people who encountered this new, soft-touch policing happened to be right wingers - I don't buy it.
> it's pretty well known that individuals within the police could identify or sympathise with Q
This is worrying in its own terms. Policemen are adult, and shouldn't believe in fairy tales.
Being able to use deductive reasoning, understand basic principles of science (like the difference between cheratine and DNA), double-check the facts, and find the truth between the lies is THE work of the police.
Somebody unable to see a hole for years in theories that most 5 Yo curious children could dismantle in a hour is unfit for this kind of work. They simply shouldn't be policemen. Period.
Will end distroying the lifes of innocent people.
I'm not so certain; with the possibility of installed loyalists and/or 'regulatory capture' we may have intentional malfeasance to make a troubling situation worse.
If it is reasonable to assume that some individual members of the police force are sympathetic to the Q/Boogaloo cause, who is to say the person responsible for coordinating with the Pentagon wasn't a fellow traveler? Police forces, on the whole aren't exactly politically neutral: during primary season, I recall a republican politician getting a picture taken with a policeman who had a "Q" patch on his uniform.
There is not enough information to come to either conclusion, but I would like to think the DC police leadership didn't/doesn't plumb those depths of incompetence. The public (and congress) deserves answers on what happened and why.
They definitely deserve answers, you are right. But jumping to "This was an op and the DC police as a unit were in on it" is approaching wheelhouse of the crazies who instigated this whole debacle. That runaway cascade of believing lots of little things that could be possible is what led to millions believing in dumb stuff like Mole Children being kept as slaves by Hillary Clinton and friends.
Unless something more sinister emerges the simplest explanation is probably the best - there some cops who are far-right sympathisers and there are incompetently managed and organized Police forces. Both of those things are already demonstrably true and explain how the response quite well without introducing a grand conspiracy.
I was careful to say individuals - my point was that there is no reason to doubt the possibility of those sympathetic individual(s) being decision-makers in the force. I was careful to not suggest it was a group decision.
However, it is no secret that the FBI has long-reported (2006!) on white-supremecist infiltration of police forces[1] - this is not crazy talk. If someone joined the police as a rookie in 2006 to enforce their personal agenda, how far up the leadership hierarchy would they be now?
This can be correct, but so can GPs point: two possible findings are that the capitol police were deliberately left understaffed because
* higher level leadership judged the threat of the protestors to be insignificant (incompetence)
* higher level leadership wanted the potential for a mob to enter the building (complicity)
However they found themselves in the position, they did, and once there I think they had an unenviable task. And the fact that the occupants of the building were safely sheltered until a larger force came to clear the building shows that they made a good decision.
It's not murder if it's legal. If you don't want to get shot, don't invade the seat of government during a constitutionally prescribed transition of power, break through a barricade, ignore a cop's orders and approach a cop pointing his gun at you. Hard, I know.
I'd agree that police defenders often use the rhetoric of "approaching a cop with his gun drawn" or "being somewhere you shouldn't," but surely we can make a distinction between those killed in public areas versus this woman who was trespassing in a very important federal facility, specifically to impede a very important government procedure.
> trespassing in a very important federal facility
She was part of an armed mob trying in the process of breaking into the speakers lobby that posed an imminent threat to members of Congress, whom members of the mob had moments before loudly expressed concern were trying to leave.
And you assume that's everything that happened? Did she break through a barrier? People were walking right in.You don't know which group she cam in with. In the various videos, she was trying to get out. They all were.
The dude who fired the shot, are you really defending him? A man with no real reasonable threat to his life? None of the people in that shot were shown to be armed.
Honest question, what are your views on Jacob Blake? Do you defend him? Because he sexually assaulted a women who had a restraining order against him, ignored police orders to stop, got up after being tazed twice and reached into a car with children. The DA found the police were completely justified in shooting him 7 times in the back.
This is the double standard. If you say she had no excuse for getting shot, than neither did Jacob Blake, or Breyanna Taylor.
She was climbing through a broken window past a barricade that was the last line of defense to where members of Congress were taking shelter. The guard was pointing his gun at her and other people were warning about the danger. I don’t think she should have been shot, but the guard who shot her acted reasonably. It was a failure of the police present, who should have prevented the situation.
It doesn't matter if she's mother Theresa and came here with the cure for cancer. You cannot interrupt the transition of power. We have laws that must be followed. If you try to overthrow the government you will be stopped. I watched a video of her getting shot. She was breaking through a barricaded door and making her way towards officers with guns drawn.
There's multiple camera angles which captured the minutes leading up to her death, posted on major news sites like The Washington Post, so no assumption needed.
I still don't feel the shoot to kill was justified (especially as a shot in an area that would immobilize a person, like the chest or the gut, would've been safer of collateral damage vs a shot to the head, similar to the one taken, which unequivocally is a shot intended to kill), but trying to argue she was not completely and totally in the wrong is just absurd to me.
You betray your ignorance about firearms. You cannot shoot to immobilize. Every shot taken is practically and legally a shot intending to kill. Real life is not a hollywood movie.
> You betray your ignorance about firearms. You cannot shoot to immobilize. Every shot taken is practically and legally a shot intending to kill. Real life is not a hollywood movie.
Someone knowledgeable of the subject, which you imply I am not, would know that shooting someone in the middle of their body is the standard operating procedure (and is potentially less fatal, but yes legally still intended to kill) rather than taking an (essentially) headshot as this officer did.
Also notice I did not say what the officer did was "against policy" or illegal, I simply said I didn't feel it was justified (especially with where the shot hit). It's for the department and the courts to decide if the officer violated his duty.
Could have (likely was) aiming for center of mass but ended up a little high. Real life is not a shooting range with a target that is perfectly still.
Shooting a center of mass is not at all about being "less fatal" it is about it being the biggest target with the biggest chance of stopping your adversary.
> Shooting a center of mass is not at all about being "less fatal"
Did I say it was? I believe I used the word "potentially" in the reply you are commenting to. The officer was shooting from ~6ft away and had a firm grip and was well composed, if they can't hit the chest of a target that was mostly still at the moment of the shot then they need to be spending a lot more time in the gun range (at the absolute minimum).
>They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that they would have been overstaffed if the protestors had a different skin color.
In the 1970s, armed Black Panther members took the California State Capitol and no one died.
At least one officer is dead (this changes daily so who knows) and one protestor (she was unarmed, that's a protestor, trespasser at best) was shot by sorry excuse of a Capitol Officer who shot wildly into a crowd (almost hitting the other Federal Officer behind her!)
The lady that was shot was attempting to enter a hallway through a window while people in the hallway were pointing guns at her. Just because she didn't have a visible weapon doesn't mean she wasn't a threat. Climbing through a broken window into a hallway protected by a makeshift barricade is itself a threatening action. No one at the head of a mob climbing over a barricade ever did so for innocent and non-threatening reasons. Suggesting otherwise is ludicrously stupid.
Having seen multiple videos of the event it's clear the shooter was not firing wildly into the crowd. They were aiming specifically at the person trying to break into the area. She's dead because of her own actions.
Note that she was wearing a good sized backpack. The shooter was wearing plainclothes- possibly Secret Service. It appears he was protecting something or someone important. Pence?
You're not a protester if you are breaking into congress, breaking past a barricade, being told to stop, and walking towards an officer pointing his gun at you. You're suicidal.
I don’t think that’s clear at all. I’ve seen it often repeated by the media, but there is absolutely no evidence to support it. Repeating this is only driving the two sides further apart.
Being understaffed on a day when protesters have warned you they may take direct action is incompetence or complicity. They have agreements with nearby law enforcement who are often deputized in DC, yet didn’t activate those agreements until the perimeter had been fully breached.
> They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.
This is all true but might be crediting the Capitol Police leadership with a little more coordination and planning than they truly exhibited. There were clearly some law enforcement officers who did not simply step aside and let the rioters have their way once lawmakers had been evacuated.
Based on some of the comments here I get the feeling it's not common knowledge yet that at least one involved law enforcement officer has died [1] and a couple of dozen were injured. Possibly they could have done better for themselves if they'd all been as easygoing about things as the officers photographed in the rotunda.
To what end? Certainly the Capitol police leadership wasn't part of some conspiracy to overthrow the government- letting a few hundred protestors in wouldn't accomplish much.
So you are saying that the Capitol police succeeded in creating a honeypot that was meant to embarrass Trump?
I wonder if, since so many on HN feel that they are enlightened people, it is possible for us to give the benefit of the doubt to people who's jobs we don't do and probably know nothing about?
Just because we work in tech does not mean we know everything, and not having been there means we don't know the circumstances anyway. It is disgustingly arrogant of any of us to proclaim that these people must be incompetent or complicit like some armchair quarterback.
Christ, I mean, this is roughly the same mentality as the people who think the election was stolen based on some anecdotes and bullshit despite what election officials, courts, and other experts are saying.
Indeed, the hyperbole and conspiracy theories on all sides have lead me to detach myself from politics. There were a few hundred/thousand people who rioted at the Capitol, law enforcement in riot gear fought them with clubs and pepper spray, got overwhelmed, fell back, regrouped, and responded with a lot of force a couple hours later. One of the rioters was shot, dozens were arrested. Not a good scenario, but I've seen a lot of people who I had thought were more measured yelling about how police were assisting with an attempted coup attempt (even supposedly respected news stations were going off the deep end). It feels like the 24/7 news cycle has fried a lot of people's minds and turned everything into a final battle between good and evil.
If it's any consolation, US Capitol Police chief Steve Sund was forced to resign by Congress. Seems like it's not just armchair quarterbacks who were let down by their shitty response.
No doubt you are aware of the concept of a face-saving resignation. I'm not saying this is what happened here, I'm just saying the resignation itself is not really meaningful without more context.
The Capitol Police seem to be a facade and don't stop crowds. Here's a different example from 2 years ago:
"@womensmarch just took the Capitol. Women, survivors, and allies walked straight past the police, climbed over barricades, and sat down on the Capitol steps."
This Twitter thread is a gold mine for anyone looking for perspective on what happens when the “right” group versus the “wrong” group storms past baracades and into the Capital, while describing it as “taking the Capital”.
It's also possible they were competent but don't have the required staff to handle a large protest. Under normal circumstances, they might request help from other groups (DC police, national guard, whatever) but due to jurisdictional restrictions help can't come unless it's approved at high levels and no approvals were given.
In other words, they may have been set up to fail.
(There's still the issue of that video of protesters being let in, which would imply that capital police do have some explaining to do.)
Were the BLM people who stormed city hall in Seattle insurrectionists? Where the Black Panthers who took the California State Capitol in the 1970s insurrectionists?
Stop with the bullshit name games. These were not rioters. They didn't set anything on fire. They should not have stolen or broken anything. That's wrong and bad and should be condemned. Those people should get federal time
But man...you have to admit...there is something beautiful about the peasants entering the royal court, and the town idiot putting his feet up on the table that belongs to the Hand of the King.
The villagers entered the royal court and the senators clutched their pearls.
America has had a long history of occupying federal buildings. This is certainly not unprecedented.
These people were not a coup or insurrection. They had no plan. There was no person with a new founding document they were going to read. They didn't bring in an armed force and take and occupy the capital.
The overreaction to what happened is fucking insane, especially compared to what actual Rioters where allowed to get away with for the past year. In May, DC was literally on fire from the BLM riots, and we didn't see this type of DoubleSpeak.
> The overreaction ... In May, DC was literally on fire from the BLM riots
Speaking of overreactions ...
> They didn't set anything on fire. They should not have stolen or broken anything. That's wrong and bad and should be condemned.
Okay, so to be clear, there's a difference between breaking things with your hands and setting it on fire. One is "bad", and one is "rioting". Huh, interesting.
> Were the BLM people who stormed city hall in Seattle insurrectionists? Where the Black Panthers who took the California State Capitol in the 1970s insurrectionists?
No, because their goal wasn't to overturn a legally held election.
> The overreaction to what happened is fucking insane, especially compared to what actual Rioters where allowed to get away with for the past year. In May, DC was literally on fire from the BLM riots, and we didn't see this type of DoubleSpeak.
Not really when you consider that the protests in may were for the correct side with the media and elites fully on board. They were for all intents and purposes sanctioned events. The 6th mob was absolutely terrifying for the media and elite since they had zero control over it. What looks like just another mob riot to a common peasant appears to be an actual threat to those which never see threats.
> But man...you have to admit...there is something beautiful about the peasants entering the royal court, and the town idiot putting his feet up on the table that belongs to the Hand of the King.
>The villagers entered the royal court and the senators clutched their pearls.
I agree. Although I’m definitely anti-Trump and condemn his garbage about the election being stolen, and while I don’t condone the behavior of the protestors, I don’t really see how this so much worse than business owners who had their livelihoods destroyed during the BLM riots over the summer. I don’t remember CNN or Democrats tripping over themselves to see who could use the harshest language for what had happened.
Again I’m not condoning this, but honestly, given what happened, the only real tragedy was a woman was shot because a jumpy police officer shot blindly into a crowd. Our pride was embarrassed but that’s ok. Let’s learn from this and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The real problem with what happened is Trump incited it. But that’s another story.
Haha yeah, there wasn't this much outrage before because it was the peasant's businesses being destroyed. Protesting is now bad because it actually affected the rich, political class.
Look at how different the MSM response was. Destroyed businesses and disruption to innocent people's lives was a necessary sacrifice for BLM riots. And best of all, covid is only dangerous depending on what you're protesting for. But some people going into a building?! No! Stop that!
How many is that? I can't even count. More than 50, less than 100? Versus 10, possibly way less, depending on what kind of comparisons one wants to draw? [1]
Doesn't this point exactly to the significance of what happened on the 6th? Race riots have been happening in the United States for a hundred some years. They are obviously not significant in achieving the goals of the rioters. Meanwhile the storming of seats of power by an ousted leaders' supporters has the potential to change history. The former is a passing event, the latter is a rare event with some potential to change global history.
Inviting insurrectionists into the capitol to stop the certification of an election they didn't like by force is different from... giving their support to people who are against unarmed black people being murdered on sight.
It has not been proven. This is false. Please stop spreading it. Multiple people were killed in clashes with the police. They did not help the rioters. This is the type of misinformation that caused all these problems.
Re the second one - I also saw some footage where a couple of police were, I dunno, ushering them or encouraging them through barriers towards the building. Like "come on, come on!" - that kind of gesture.
I have to stress though that I agree with "danaris" one level up from from this comment - it seems perfectly believable that individual police sympathised and aided these people. However it's not "The Police" as an entity as some others are suggesting, that's venturing into Q territory and is a bit Conspiracy Theory for me.
Here are videos from 2 locations where protestors fought the police and pushed past them. That is the opposite of letting them in. IMO I think the instances where they were "letting people in" were because the barriers had already been breached on other sides so there was no point holding lines where there would already be people in behind them.
The video (letting them in) doesn't show what you think it does. Capital Police leadership planned poorly and their leadership is at fault. They had to fall back to more secure chokepoints because they were outnumbered and overwhelmed. The cops didn't let anyone in. They killed someone and one of them was killed in the fighting. Please don't stir up trouble with fake conjecture over a 30 second clip that doesn't show what really happened. It is what caused a lot of these problems. You are making it worse.
No... if those officers had fallen back, sure, all good. I don't see an issue there. But literally you have an officer (and yes, I get it, individual versus collective) who moves gates, and starts waving protestors through.
If you're falling back because you're overwhelmed by a surge, the last thing you do is _remove obstacles between you and the surge_!
Without any specific knowledge on this case one way or the other, both of these things can be simultaneously true: Some Capitol police stuck to their duty and tried to keep the insurrectionists out, while others agreed with them, let them in, and took selfies with them.
"The Capitol Police" is not a single, monolithic entity; it's made up of individual people, with their own political views.
> Multiple people were killed in clashes with the police.
"Multiple"? Do you have proof of this? There was one woman who was shot by police.
As far as I know, it is not yet clear how the others (excluding the Capitol officer) died. I've seen reports that one man got a heart attack after tasing himself and another fell off some scaffolding.
Ha! These people are in their 70's and 80's, getting any legitimate security is near impossible. Try telling your grandparents not to play flash games on their computer. The best security should have been by the entrances of the building.
Age isn’t the problem, lack of digital security literacy might well be.
My dad was born in ‘39, he did a degree in electrical engineering, and it took until something like his second job after graduation for his employer to send him on a two-day training course for the new-fangled [0] invention of something called “software”. He then worked in software from that course until retirement.
However, he never understood RSA despite working on UK military IFF systems.
[0] “new-fangled” was his description; the closest he came to acknowledging Ada Lovelace before I learned of her was to complain about the language Ada.
