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Re:In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc by scarejunba on Saturday May 25, 2019 @04:36PM (#20011241)
I think his argument is that these bombs are readily available. US military-style bombs are not that easily available which is why it’s not a big deal. If you could practically get one of those things at the corner store, the fact that it was US military is more coincidence than real problem.
Re:In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc by belorn on Sunday May 26, 2019 @04:41AM (#20013856)
Back in 1945 a bunch of countries realized that they had unnecessary huge stockpile of bombs, mines, and chemical weapons after the war. It would had been a real shame if bad actors would pick them up, bad enough that most of it was dumped into the ocean.

Taking a minor look into history and we can easily find what happens with larger stockpiles of weapons if they don't get destroyed after wars (or cold wars). They get stolen or sold. They get used for new purposes which originally they never was intended for.

I find it a fair case to argue that countries who do not destroy their large stockpiles once the war end are to a degree responsible when the weapons are reused in later conflicts outside their border by people we would classify as bad actors.

Re:In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc by criddell on Saturday May 25, 2019 @05:05PM (#20011419)
> the fact that it was US military is more coincidence than real problem

No, that's the entire point of my example. The military's primary job is to defend us. It's a major failure when their weapons are used against US citizens.

Re:In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc by tptacek on Saturday May 25, 2019 @05:11PM (#20011468)
The point of my comment, at the root of this thread, is that calling these things "military weapons" is misleading; there's no real difference between this Win8 SMB bug and any of a whole variety of bugs that were discovered and exploited by private actors just in these last 12 months alone.

If you accept the premise of the article, that these were "broken arrow" military weapons, sure, I see how you can get yourself into a tizzy over it. But you should not accept the article's premise, because that premise seems self-evidently broken.

Re:In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc by acct1771 on Sunday May 26, 2019 @09:20AM (#20014778)
The military's primary job is to protect themselves.

Then political goals of their superiors.

Sometimes those two are reversed.

Then comes us.