Thread by @marcusdipaola

(THREAD) Everything you needed to know about Rod Rosenstein's appearance that ended about 15 min ago at Georgetown Law:

* He's never been on this floor of the building before. Complains it's hot.

* There's a story about a parrot. It's not great. DAG Rosenstein's humor is dad humor. He's goofy. Remember: he's a dad.

* People get their data stolen a LOT.

* About 5 min of talking that I'm going to summarize with a fake but accurate quote:"People are totally fine when technology companies and hackers steal your identity for nefarious reasons, but when the government grabs your data to protect you, IT'S LIKE WHOAAAAAAA! NO."

* DAG Rosenstein says deepfake videos are coming and they're going to be scary as all hell.

* Predicts unbreakable encryption coming soon (!!)

* Security needs to be just as important in the marketplace as novelty and convenience, and design technology accordingly.

* DAG Rod Rosenstein really really really really doesn't want to be called a luddite and says a bunch of rhetorical stuff to show us he isn't.

* Ransomware sucks, and he doesn't like it.

* RANSOMWARE COSTS $5 BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR (🚨🚨this is a new number!!!!🚨🚨)

* DAG Rod Rosenstein has a nice and very slight accent of some kind. I can't place it though.

* Cites an indictment that alleges two Iranian citizens extracted $6 million in ransom payments in one incident.

* He just used the word pernicious in public, as if it was OK.

* Now reminiscing, giving a play by play of the tech sector in the 90s/early 00s, as if we didn't all live through it. Come on, stop being a lawyer, get to the good stuff.

* DAG Rosenstein complains @Twitter choose convenience over security. Is that news? I think that's news.

* DAG Rod Rosenstein at Georgetown Law: complains that Americans don't know about IOTs and DDoSes (most of us do).

* Tells a story about a DDoS attack that I only half paid attention to. It was not important. Promise.

* Takes five minutes to explain "bad guy do bad thing, we find bad guy"

* "I hate to sound old, but I started prosecuting almost 30 years ago." HAHAHAHAHA I LOVE HIM.

DAG ROSENSTEIN:

* Tells a story about the good ole' days of white collar crime where you went to the building, arrested the criminal, got him AND his files physically.

* 🚨🚨Alleges communication companies chronically understaff law enforcement cooperation departments.🚨🚨

* 🚨🚨DAG Rod Rosenstein alleges communication companies sometimes don't produce information, in violation of court orders.🚨🚨

* Inexplicably alleges that pedophiles, not mathematicians, are responsible for the existence of darknet encryption. (????)

* He's talking about firemen now. It's not great.

* He's mad that academics are dismissive of law enforcement's needs.

* Basically if you think this is interesting, you should just watch @whoismrrobot. It's better.

* He's really into pedophiles and is shouting at the audience. I'm not even there and I'm intimidated.

* Rod Rosenstein claims he's not a technology expert after talking like a technology expert for the past 30 minutes.

* DAG Rod Rosenstein cracks a joke about how he reads a SCOTUS decision that didn't go in the government's favor as narrowly as possible.

* Rosenstein says in his meetings, he's always asked (presumably by Jeff Sessions) "how do we measure success?" He doesn't know.

* DAG Rod Rosenstein says "NOBODY SHOULD FEEL SAFE" (actual quote. He's talking about cybercrime, though.)

* He just took 15 minutes to answer two super techy questions, and I could tell you but honestly, @whoismrrobot did it better.

* MODERATOR Q: What keeps you up at night?
DAG Rod Rosenstein: Do I have to answer this honestly?
Q: Preferably.
Rosenstein: Um, yes.
*laughter*

* ROD ROSENSTEIN: I kinda -- I slept a lot there in my last job. The truthful answer is... as U.S. Attorney, your focus is more domestic obviously, so the thing I learned the most about in this job is national security. We were in the law enforcement business, and even though...

... each of our offices has its own national security division, the focus is on local threats, but one of the things we do get briefed on in the leadership position in Washington, which is the national threats, the international threats. You come to appreciate the scale of the...

... foreign threats that we face. The cyber threats, in particular, and that's something that I'm not -- that I didn't fully appreciate before. But this job, it is something that concerns me and the task force is one example, but anticipating things like deepfakes, challenges...

... we're going to face in the future, so my concerns me is the need for strategic thinking by the government. My administration was criticized recently prior to the election, saying we weren't prepared. We were. Far more prepared than anybody had been before, but it's gotta...

... be an ongoing effort and we need a lot of the smart people working with us to anticipate those challenges and develop effective ways to prevent that. So that's my honest answer to your question.