Re: Rewriting SSA. Is This A Chance For GNU/Linux?

On 4/8/25 4:26 PM, -hh wrote:

On 4/8/25 10:28, c186282 wrote:

Oh, on-theme, apparently Team Musk's nerd squad
managed to CRASH a fair segment of the SSA customer
web sites while trying to add some "anti-fraud"
feature  :-)
>
PROBABLY no COBOL involved ... well, maybe ....

  Oh, its worse than that.
 "The network crashes appear to be caused by an expansion initiated by the Trump team of an existing contract with a credit-reporting agency that tracks names, addresses and other personal information to verify customers’ identities. The enhanced fraud checks are now done earlier in the claims process and have resulted in a boost to the volume of customers who must pass the checks."
 <https://gizmodo.com/social-security-website-crashes-blamed-on-doge-software-update-2000586092>    Translation:
 They *moved* where an existing credit agency check is done, but didn't load test it before going live ... and golly, they broke it!
 But the more important question here is:
 **WHY** did they move where this check is done?
 Because this check already existed, so moving where its done isn't going to catch more fraud.

   "Well ... just jam the new code in ... *somewhere* ..."
   Oh, DOUBT many/any even knew the checks WERE done,
   just somewhere ELSE.

Plus front-loading it before you've run your in-house checks means that your operating expenses to this contractor service go UP not down.  Yes, that's a deliberate waste of taxpayer dollars.
 The only motivation I can see is propaganda:  this change will find more 'fraud' at the contractor's check ... but not more fraud in total.

   There's a fundamental political rule, esp in 'democracies',
   that goes "ALWAYS be seen as *DOING SOMETHING*"
   Spin it however needed.
   ONLY possible maybe perhaps reason to move the checks
   is to not let fraudsters/Putin deeper into the system/
   process where there may be more little flaws to exploit.
   We know ALL code has those little flaws, logic/field/
   buffer issues. Even M$ can't clean all that junk out
   its products despite decades and 'AI' debugging and
   such. Check their security notes - there's still the
   dreaded "buffer-overflow vulnerability of the week".
   SO ... block perps earlier = less for them to attack.
   Maybe ....

Expect them to use the before/after contractor numbers only to falsely claim that they've found 'more' fraud.  No, they're committing fraud.

   Nah ! They're *doing something* !!!   :-)