Congress blocks Yahoo Mail

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So Congress might be prevented by ransomware from doing its work for a few days.

In the words of Deep Thought, “Who will that inconvenience??”

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Okay, so I know Congress has made some insanely dumb decisions regarding technology from a legislative standpoint (including abolishing its own tech advisory group), but is this necessarily a dumb thing to do as a stopgap measure from the perspective of the IT nerds running their computers? I mean, it’s not Paul Ryan down there fiddling around with server configurations. It’s somebody who presumably knows a fair amount about this stuff.

Can anyone explain if/why this is such a terrible idea, given that a ransomware attack on Congress (even if it failed to really deny Congress its files for very long) would be… interesting? It’s not ringing my “clueless encroachment on digital freedoms” bell just yet when the only people they’re inconveniencing are themselves.

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Shit, how is Hillary going to run her campaign now?

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Why would they need access to Yahoo mail anyway, or any commercial mail server? Shouldn’t they exclusively use a government email/server?

They can use their personal phones for their personal stuff.

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I believe Yahoo is blocked from send or receipt.

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Ah. That’s a different story.

  1. I use an email address that is now (thanks to AT&T) considered a part of the Yahoo Mail system. Does this mean Congress has blocked my ability to contact my representatives?

  2. Speaking of that Yahoo Mail email account, I have never gotten ransomware attacks on it, at least not any that weren’t automatically dumped into the spam folder. How stupid are these people, really?

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So how will I contact the yahoo that represents me?

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Yahoo and their security questions…

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Exactly. Long ago, I worked for the government, and we were forbidden to access private webmail, because exfiltrating secure or private data would be a pretty big problem. The big brands were also blocked, but it was forbidden regardless.

The astonishing thing is not Congress blocking Yahoo; it’s that they didn’t block it 20 years ago.

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Absolutely not. Platinum LevelTM campaign donors can expect regular phonecalls from their representatives and senators every election season.

Do you have to ask? Orrin Hatch is still in congress.

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IME they all have web forms now.

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