One thing I’ve never thought about regarding “defense in depth”: Say we have defense measures A, B, and C. If A does its job, B and C aren’t used. You don’t really know how useful they are until A doesn’t work, and in fact a politician can say B and C “don’t do anything” which is technically correct. It’s only when we steamroll Chesterton’s fence that the value of B and C become apparent.

You could get rid of the fire department and it would take some time to realize their value.

One of those defense in depth components here would have been not having extremely weird privacy defaults on Venmo. Because when we say “people don’t care about privacy” sometimes those people gain access to really important info.

As a general observation, I'm waiting with great interest for a time when people who are dismantling privacy all around the world, and especially fuckers in EU, will be targeted themselves through the very backdoors they have demanded from others. Now that would be a pleasant failure.

Given that this is a political figure at the center of a political story, it's no surprise that this story is surrounded by political takes. But I think there's also something to be said for, our modern, digital lives shed so much data incidentally, like a much worse dandruff.

One can decline “Allow Access to Your Contacts” but it’s funnier when one doesn’t.

Especially if one has "security" in their job title!

Perhaps the requirement that candidates be able to use modern digital services and devices, especially their security settings, should be included in the Senate hearing for the confirmation of a government official? :D

Now wait a minute. Isn't Venmo primary usage is for sending money? You are telling me that there is an open log of top10 ranking official sending or receiving money from journalists and that's not a corruption and bribery? And no one is being tried for that in court? Mind boggling.

And these people dare to say anything about corruption of other countries. Pathetic.

As a non-American non-Venmo user, I've gathered that it's somehow gamified or social-mediaised money transfers.

So everyone's transfers are by default public for some completely bonkers reason.

I suspect it will eventually come out that Waltz intentionally added the reporter in order to shine a light on what was going on. Maybe there’s still some decency in there.

I think it's very likely Waltz is the one who added him, but I think it's unlikely to have been intentional. I think he probably fat-fingered it.

Based on how he tried to smear the journalist, and implied that the contact was injected, you shouldn’t extend maturity to him.

Many media outlets reported Trump was mad that any of his staff had reporter contacts in the first place. If your assertion is true that would be the quick end to Waltz's short career.