Pylimitics

Everybody has expectations. Things they more or less assume to be true, based on all sorts of things; cultural norms, life experience, ethical principles, advice, reading, and so on. Some of these expectations are perceptual, and when you know that you can use people’s expectations to amuse them with a magic trick, captivate them with a clever optical illusion, steal from them with a scam, or for that matter, destroy much of a national institutional infrastructure because people’s expectations make it difficult for them to accept that somebody would actually do that.

Almost everybody, unfortunately, knows to take steps to protect their online privacy and security. There are things ordinary users do, and we expect that when the stakes are much higher, like when someone is charged with protecting corporate security or national defense secrets, there are much more robust things they do.

We’ve had plenty of evidence, until recently, that the practices followed to protect national security really were extensive. Probably still challenged, but at least in place. Now we know that thanks to the astonishing incompetence, ignorance, and maybe even treasonous intent of the current administration, none of that protection is there any more. And worse, they can’t even follow the basic security rules most people follow in their private business.

It’s difficult to accept many of the information still spewing out of the White House and other federal institutions. How could people go along with that comes to mind, and there wasn’t anybody actually thinking about that? From the classified documents stolen and dumped in the bathrooms at the damp and pathetic Florida golf club/resort/dacha Mar-a-Lago to duct-taping antennae to the White House because the secure communication systems are just too inconvenient so what the hell, and even to using sharable proxy software on private mobile phones to conduct government business.

Literally unbelievable. Which is what they were counting on. Maybe not as a result of thinking things through though. Grifters seem to develop an instinct about this stuff, and tacitly believe nobody will notice, care, understand, or if they do, the grifter will get away with it somehow.