Security quotes of the week [LWN.net]

Security quotes of the week

Posted Sep 19, 2021 16:07 UTC (Sun) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172)
In reply to: Security quotes of the week by corbet
Parent article: Security quotes of the week

I believe it is against your policy, but may I suggest you want to actually delete off-topic comments?

A certain type of person like to post factually wrong and slanderous comments somewhere they hope they will not be gainsaid because nobody cares. This allows them to refer to their comments elsewhere and brag about how they were un-refuted.

I find this practice detrimental to my enjoyment of LWN so I hope it can somehow be stopped.

to post comments

Security quotes of the week

Posted Sep 19, 2021 17:01 UTC (Sun) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (4 responses)

> A certain type of person like to post factually wrong and slanderous comments somewhere they hope they will not be gainsaid because nobody cares. This allows them to refer to their comments elsewhere and brag about how they were un-refuted.

I have used the username "jebba" or similar form ("Yeb" on slashdot) for 20+ years. I am Jeff Moe, from Loveland, Colorado. I have never once done what you assert above. If you can find an example of it, I will retract what I've said.

Security quotes of the week

Posted Sep 19, 2021 17:43 UTC (Sun) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (3 responses)

You accused Paul Vixie of lying and provided as evidence the fact that:

John Durham(special counsel for the Trump Administration) is alleging that Michael Sussmann said to the FBI that he was providing information of his own initiative and not as a paid lawyer for Clinton and that this was a false statement.

John Durham has spent about four years on this and has not provided any evidence that the *actual information* provided by Michael Sussman was in any way wrong.

With four years of investigation without any claims of misconduct on Paul Vixie's part I believe it is safe to assume the he was, in fact, telling the truth.

Security quotes of the week

Posted Sep 19, 2021 18:14 UTC (Sun) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (2 responses)

malmedal wrote: "With four years of investigation without any claims of misconduct on Paul Vixie's part I believe it is safe to assume the he was, in fact, telling the truth."

Yet even back in the day, few believed it, including Mueller:

> "The FBI investigated the allegations and determined that there was insufficient evidence to link Trump's business with Alfa Bank, and the former special counsel Robert Mueller did not address the issue in the report on his investigation."[1]

There's lots of news media about that from the time. Now we know who the source was pushing it, that's the relevant part. It was political, not tech. They literally just filed charges against the guy who was spreading Vixie's claim.

I'll also note, of all the text in this thread, I don't see anyone doing anything to substantiate Vixie's claims.

[1] https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/572662-grand...

Security quotes of the week

Posted Sep 19, 2021 18:32 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

So there are a lot of open questions about the Durham investigation and this charge in general; one should be careful about drawing any conclusions from it. I tend to follow such things and have an interest in them ... but in general I don't think they are on topic for LWN. Perhaps the original quote was a mistake to post — we were so young and naive back in 2016... At this time, though, I still think that this type of discussion is best held elsewhere. Can we bring it to a close please?

I really don't think we need to start questioning the character of anybody in this specific discussion — that is not the issue here. Please let's not do that.

More generally, we have occasionally pondered whether comments should be shut off after some amount of time has passed. But there is sometimes value in posting an update to an old story, so we've never done that.

Security quotes of the week

Posted Sep 19, 2021 19:03 UTC (Sun) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link]

> Now we know who the source was pushing it, that's the relevant part.

For me, something is either true or not. Whether I like the person pushing it or not is not relevant.

What is more relevant is that this thread is completely off-topic and detrimental to LWN and I would like to apologise and ask that this
discussion be deleted.

> I'll also note, of all the text in this thread, I don't see anyone doing anything to substantiate Vixie's claims.

Please read more closely. As I said, John Durham, whose job it is to find problems with Vixie's claims, has not found anything.