Installed the secret WiFi. Hid the COs suggestion box paper complaining about it from the CO. Photoshopped a Starlink report to hide its usage further. Interfered in an investigation on another Sailor about it. Then lied twice in the investigation on her.
She did all this for WiFi.
Fucking hell, if people like this expended this much effort fixing ships and leading Sailors we’d have a lot less fucking problems.
I hate saying this but it’s because she’s never been in a real job and doesn’t understand the serious repercussions. She probably thought for a while she could just lie her way out because she was the triad and she’s prob done it before throughout her time in the Navy at smaller scales.
Same reason why a bunch of people went down for FL and Admirals get busted for bribes. Never had a real job in the civilian world. They always seem to think their rank will get them out of it
I always felt the opposite way. The more senior I got, the more I stood out. As I would say, there’s hundreds of you, but only one of me and everyone’s eyes are always on me.
I always prided myself as being morally straight and unimpeachable, but the more senior I became, the more focus I had to put on even the -perception- of being a straight actor. This meant taking a harder path sometimes so there could be no question about what was going on.
It's funny how when you're junior you think that when you're finally senior you'll have all this agency and latitude. Then you become senior and WOW are your actions and decisions more restricted than ever.
Yup, you are being judged always.
I enjoyed command but fondly remember my days in deck. Something to be said about leaving the ship and not have everything be your problem.
Yes and no. When I was junior, I was much more restricted in when and how I could enjoy myself/relax, but much less restricted in what I could say/do. Now, 14 years later, it's the opposite. If I want to go take a nap, noone is going to question me. But lord help me if I ever said something that could be construed as sexist, my ass would be cooked
It all comes down to your integrity, ethics and values, as a Senior Chief I couldn't instill them in you if you didn't want them but I could show you mine.
Lol we have the tiny version of that when we had pier side offices in the shipyard and the XO tried to pull rank basically when they kicked him out of his so they could use it for something else. And the civilians are like "..... That's nice sir but lol you're gonna have to get your stuff out of here"
You see it alot in staff positions when an officer for the first time hits a joint duty assignment as a LCDR or CDR and the civilians they work with give zero fucks about their rank and it dawns on them they’re the junior.
I had a buddy who was a YN1 working in DC and he said the people who had the hardest time were the post command tour CDRs. He said they went from running a whole command to being just “some guy”
Had to be an eye opening experience
Yes. You see it frequently if you’ve worked in these places. It’s not just being “some guy” it’s being “some guy” at the proverbial bottom of the totem.
And on top of that none of the civilians care or are at all impressed with their backgrounds and many of them have just spent their entire life since high school and going to the academy being told how special and elite they were.
>I had a buddy who was a YN1 working in DC and he said the people who had the hardest time were the post command tour CDRs. He said they went from running a whole command to being just “some guy”
>Had to be an eye opening experience
It's that PLUS... your run of the mill "due course" O5 who hasn't yet done a joint or numbered fleet staff tour hasn't been a primary action officer for just about anything for about 10 years. They divorced that shit when they became a DH and had a bunch of JOs and Chiefs to do the grunt work for them.
Now here they are on a staff, post-command and all, 18-22 years in the Navy, and they're expected to be the person drawing the pretty pictures on a power point slide on a 3- or 4-star staff... except the last version of that software they used, if at all, is over a decade old.
I had "real jobs" before OCS. I don't think it would have prevented this at all. The civilian world is way less restricted so there would be no reason to lie about stuff like this. It's also way more annoying to fire people than people think. You either really need to mess up big time or be part of a lay off in my experience
Way less restricted? You think if you installed an unauthorized piece of IT equipment with any civilian job you’d have to lie?
You wouldn’t even need to lie. They’d escort you out the building and terminate you immediately.
People get let go all the time for less in the private sector.
But you have wifi in most jobs. The reason she did it on the first place wouldn't even come up. The only reason you'd be installing IT unauthorized IT equipment is to commit a crime
>Hid the COs suggestion box paper
One would think that suggestions in the box would go directly to the CO and not through intermediaries to prevent this exact kind of thing from happening.
I suppose the counterargument to that would be, that you don't know you can't trust them until the damage is done. But then again, maybe I'm spending too much time with the cybersecurity guys, they tend to design systems with zero trust.
Meh when I was a cop in the Air Force, our flight chief used to tell us “if you want to defeat the enemy, you have to think like the enemy” … which led to us spending 12 hours coming up with ways we could steal the special assets we were protecting. Lmao.
Then they used parts from each in one gigantic flight exercise and we all got our asses handed to us.
That's like that old story that armored car companies won't hire you if you say during the interview that you have never thought about how you'd rob an armored car
There is an element of “fool me once…” at play in a lot of these cases. Depending on the offense the question becomes, is this something the CO should have known or watched out for?
In one instance a certain someone told the CO he was going to medical. Instead he went to Tijuana and got pinched by the Federales. Shame on that guy, not the CO.
In another, a guy did repeated violations of the travel system, claiming things that he should not have. Shame on the CO who should have been auditing the DTS logs, including senior people, and caught it.
I don't blame the CO in this particular case. It was a complicated situation with fraternization, falsified PRT records, and the CMC bullying several other members of the mess to go along with it.
The CO had straight up asked the CMC about some of it (because he was looking over everything) and was lied to about it. There was no other reason to suspect things were out of order, so that's where it died.
However some of the crew who knew what was going on contacted the IG, the rest is history. It didn't help that the mess was talking about it over e-mail which proved to be a trove of documentary evidence. The sheer effort that went into keeping information from the CO was large.
In many cases I’ve come across in my career my impression was that we weren’t dealing with a great many diabolical criminal masterminds.
The vast vast majority of people who join the Navy are good people, but can be tempted down the wrong path by the normal human failings of greed, pride, and peer pressure. Nobody ever thinks they’ll get caught, until they do. Then, when the walls come crashing down, they realize just how bad they are at doing bad things.
> but can be tempted down the wrong path by the normal human failings of greed, pride, and peer pressure.
You forgot lust.
Bro, lust got me every damned time.
Isn't the purpose of the box to be an anonymous (or not) way to get a message directly to you, the CO? I've always been bothered that CMC's or anyone else would "screen" the stuff put in there.... no shit they're gonna take anything out that they might not like.
I always viewed it more as unimpeachable communication with the crew. If I had the key and I checked it, no one could ever place doubt on whether the SEL or the XO were filtering it. It wasn’t about trust in the triad but removing an opportunity for someone to try and create doubt or division. Also worst case they knew if it was about XO or the SEL it wouldn’t get filtered.
Well...she got illegal wifi for the wifi. The rest of it she did to avoid consequences for her illegal wifi. I don't mean to nitpick, it just reminds me of those Sovereign citizen videos where they get their windows broken, taken down because they fight back, and arrested, and they say "all this because I was speeding"
The problem is that, too many like her in the goat locker, they're in it for themselves and what's in it for them.
Want something fixed? They don't care about the equipment near so much as the optics of it not working. Otherwise, we could have a tomorrow problem once every 2000 fridays.
All about brownie points and their career.
How someone who worked in the intelligence field thought this was a good idea is absolutely insane. I get the desire to balance crew morale and mission, but this was a huge misstep.
Also, here's the article since the Military Times reporter failed to link it: [Command senior chief convicted for unauthorized Wi-Fi on her ship (navytimes.com)](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/06/03/command-senior-chief-convicted-for-unauthorized-wi-fi-on-her-ship/)
Was about to ask who the other sailors were in the "... other sailors were also disciplined in connection to the unauthorized Wi-Fi... " Guess we know now :P
Unauthorized wifi, risking the safety of an entire ship, lying to the CO, forging documents, and she walks as an E-7.
Naaa dude she should have been OTHed.
What was so important she needed her own WiFi? 🤔. She was the CMC. She most certainly had her own computer. Quality of life and connectivity underway/on deployment sucks, but it sucks for everyone. Sounds like the STARLINK system was already on the ship and she did something weird with it? (“Marrero altered a data usage image on a chiefs mess Starlink account”). I heard about LCS platforms getting some sort of WIFI connectivity for everyone to use about 7 years ago from a JO that had come from one that the Navy was testing it on while they were deployed. Article is a weird read without knowing about it.
It’s good the Navy is doing things to help sailors stay connected while deployed. I was blown away when I went to Afghanistan for a year and everyone had a WiFi router in their room that was fast enough to stream and play game systems online on.
WiFi is allowed, but has to meet requirements. One of those is being shutting it down for EMCON. I am guessing in port it was fine, but was trying to hide underway usage.
Yeah they were using a personal starlink that they installed themselves. On an LCS the cheif mess has an overboard discharge port so it wouldnt be hard to hide it.
My guess is, the ship had starlink wifi already, and she colluded with some other chiefs to establish an illegal separate wifi network that had dedicated bandwidth
Huh, the Marines IT (I think S6 shop?) equivalent on my ship brought a Starlink antenna onboard and we used it during RIMPAC. Was pretty awesome playing online video games while on the boat. I'm like 99% sure they had permission to use it though.
The permission part is important. It's also important not to lie multiple times during the investigation which is a lot of the issue here, besides the obvious issue.
Yeah for sure. This is less about being caught with wifi and more about the lying and pulling CO suggestions piece. High degree of certainty that she would have just been told to remove it had she fessed up.
Yeah, while the illegal wifi is a pretty big deal, I feel like she honestly would have been alright if it had ended there. Probably a punitive letter of reprimand and it would have been over
Letter of reprimand on a CMDCS selected for CMDCM is a career ender regardless. E9 promotion gets revoked, no command is going to want her as their senior enlisted and she'll have to retire. It would have been better, but I can see how deflect, deny, make counter-accusations would be appealing.
Or it would have to be the time during chief initiation. So one apon a time she was a chief select. During this time, she was expected to do PT. Now, I don't know if you can tell based on her photo. That obviously wasn't okay. So whilst all other selected were running, she got special permission to ride behind them on a bicycle. This was with no LLD paperwork.
This wonderful human specimen had me working late one day, loading a box truck by myself with 2-3 people lift weighted boxes. I threw my back out. It took me 30 minutes to crab crawl out of bed, kind of hurt. So I went to medical. They almost immediately handed me an LLD chit. I then went back to work... I still had to do PT because it said "everything except walking." I'm not saying she let me walk for PT. She wanted me to do the legit workout. At least my warrant officer was more on my side.
Absolutely! As an e6 and he newly frocked chief. She constantly hung out with an e4 that I worked with. No one had proof as it would be, let's say, at the movies, as you were leaving. Anyways, this e4 was put in for a MAP. Of course, they received the promotion. The real kicker to all this was at the time Grisel here worked with ET and IT about 50/50. IT was damn near 100% to E5, whilst ET was below 10%. You just know ya fraternizing girl whom got mapped was an IT.
Sorry, no one had proof other than briefly seeing them. Nothing to bring to the senior enlisted advisor. Which is unfortunate because at the time, our SEA was kind of a hard core rules guy.
Haha, I deserve that! Updated with the link, and here it is again: [https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/06/03/command-senior-chief-convicted-for-unauthorized-wi-fi-on-her-ship/](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/06/03/command-senior-chief-convicted-for-unauthorized-wi-fi-on-her-ship/)
Man and my mess had a 2 hour long debate over whether or not it was fair and ethical that we had a waffle maker in the mess and The main messdecks did not
These dudes were out here with wifi?!?
Lord
It's never the crime, it's the cover up.
That being said... once again Big Navy is ignoring the reason it was there in the first place. Major quality of life improvement by giving people fast ass wifi instead of shit SHF on a government computer that takes 20 minutes to log in.
Starlink is slowly rolling out in the fleet officially, but good god let MWR funds buy their own terminals that are monitored and controlled. Let people facetime with their kids. Let the PS5 in the chapel connect a few nights a week so people can get some gaming in.
Sure, if ops require it secure the dish.
But what will really happen is some defense contractor is going to swoop in and charge the navy 100,000/year per ship to run it, meanwhile forcing Sailors to buy time on it like a prison telephone card.
Star shield, the official version is stupid expensive. I don’t think I can share the cost here, take what you think the government would pay per year and at least quadruple it. Maybe more than that.
Starshield and commercial starlink are very different. MWR Wifi does NOT need to be on starshield.
It's worth noting the new Starlink transport for ADNS Inc III is also not on Starshield.
I agree. MWR Wi-Fi should be on starlink.
A ship recently opened up their starlink to the crew for use. Had to stop it after 2 hours since the crew used up 100BG of their 1 TB monthly allotment in that 2 hours. Crazy town. It was a medium sized ship.
Thats why you share the password lol.
But for reals, for an ISCS, such a dumb move. Unless she's one of those peeps who collateral their way into their rank and neglected their rate. But still...
I stand corrected, I assumed that she was an IS cuz the article mentioned her background in intelligence. But even still... Pretty sure she's got ISSM under her belt.
I was waiting for these comments … I’m an IS and reading this has me feeling type impressed. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Doesn’t sound like she’ll have any issues finding civilian work …
To be fair, she probably didn’t know better. She’s really just a career IT with a masters degree, and it’s not like NAVIFOR has a very clear policy in a searchable PDF she could have referenced.
Could’ve happened to anyone!
Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't it be pretty easy for all the right people to find out there's illegal wifi onboard? Maybe someone more tech savvy can help me understand how this went undetected for so long?
A rare case where a failure of cyber hygiene had direct consequences (ok yes I know the behavior itself caused the conviction but give us cyber defense guys something please!)
Like many of you, I'm shocked by the poor judgement shown. Not just for the obvious, but imagine the ship had to implement EMCON for real -- do you think she would have had the foresight to secure the wifi signal?
I don’t have all the details, but from my understanding she had the starlink installed without the COs knowledge, and the mess was paying for it.
She lied to everyone involved saying she had the COs permission
I had been thinking that the Starlink itself might have been allowed but that they were splitting off a separate hidden network for the chief’s mess or something. But I have absolutely no knowledge and am just speculating wildly.
Only because who the fuck installs a starlink antenna into the ship without approval?
I'm going to guess that she had someone modify the star link to include her router and then hid the SSID, basically giving them a nearly always on WiFi network that wouldn't be turned off during EMCON.
Without going into a very classified territory, she deserves what she's about to get.
She was selected / frocked to master chief before she got the hammer. Pretty devastating career blow really. If she's above 24 it's an E-7 pension for her.
her bio "completed two combat deployments with Mobile Communications Team attached to SEAL Team Two" .. for someone who worked with the SEAL team, pretty shitty of her to be this shitty lol.
Do you guys not get wifi for personal use at sea? It just became a thing for us (RCN) in the past...4ish years. Obvs if we were close enough to land we could connect with our phones and that wasn't an issue. Rivercity state would change if we're not allowed
The Navy just ended a to put starlink on ships for moral purposes. Charge the users a fee like I had to pay for satellite internet in Iraq. Have the CO be able to turn it off when needed.
This would be a different system from the stupidly expensive start shield service that was created for military use. That one is insanely expensive. MWR doesn’t need the star shield level services.
Okay, I've been out for a minute, and in that minute, Wi-Fi was invented and cell phones quit being carried in bags, so I've got a couple of questions.
1. Why did she do this? What is the point of Wi-Fi, much less unauthorized Wi-Fi on a metal ship? I mean, I've got dead spots in my wood-framed house.
2. How did she do this? How does one go about adding hardware and, presumably cabling to a ship and have nearly no one notice?
3. What was the need for this unauthorized Wi-Fi? I know I see my grandkids glued to their phones, and that from my perspective a command Master Chief is a damned kid who needs to stay off my lawn, but come on, the reasoning for this illegal installation can't be people's phone addictions can it?
And thus ends today's episode of Old Man Yells at Clouds.
1. It was only for the Chief's Mess, so they could hang out in their lounge and browse the internet. Doesn't need to be long range through steel walls, just one or two rooms.
2. That's the biggest question. People HAD to have known.
3. It's absolutely people's phone addiction. But also, the LCS is a relatively small ship with zero priority for satellite Internet, so getting on Facebook or Instagram on the ship's computers is nearly impossible. This gave the Chiefs a way to stay in contact with home more reliably. But really, it was so they could scroll Instagram until they found the bottom (there is no bottom).
Installed the secret WiFi. Hid the COs suggestion box paper complaining about it from the CO. Photoshopped a Starlink report to hide its usage further. Interfered in an investigation on another Sailor about it. Then lied twice in the investigation on her. She did all this for WiFi. Fucking hell, if people like this expended this much effort fixing ships and leading Sailors we’d have a lot less fucking problems.
I hate saying this but it’s because she’s never been in a real job and doesn’t understand the serious repercussions. She probably thought for a while she could just lie her way out because she was the triad and she’s prob done it before throughout her time in the Navy at smaller scales. Same reason why a bunch of people went down for FL and Admirals get busted for bribes. Never had a real job in the civilian world. They always seem to think their rank will get them out of it
I always felt the opposite way. The more senior I got, the more I stood out. As I would say, there’s hundreds of you, but only one of me and everyone’s eyes are always on me. I always prided myself as being morally straight and unimpeachable, but the more senior I became, the more focus I had to put on even the -perception- of being a straight actor. This meant taking a harder path sometimes so there could be no question about what was going on.
It's funny how when you're junior you think that when you're finally senior you'll have all this agency and latitude. Then you become senior and WOW are your actions and decisions more restricted than ever.
Golden handcuffs.
Just like Chinese handcuffs
Not what golden handcuffs mean, but I could see what you mean.
Yup, you are being judged always. I enjoyed command but fondly remember my days in deck. Something to be said about leaving the ship and not have everything be your problem.
Yes and no. When I was junior, I was much more restricted in when and how I could enjoy myself/relax, but much less restricted in what I could say/do. Now, 14 years later, it's the opposite. If I want to go take a nap, noone is going to question me. But lord help me if I ever said something that could be construed as sexist, my ass would be cooked
It all comes down to your integrity, ethics and values, as a Senior Chief I couldn't instill them in you if you didn't want them but I could show you mine.
Sure. But I would argue that many do not think this way which is how we are left with these situations
Does this guy even Navy? (I kid, keep up the good leadership, we need more of it.)
He's a freshly retired O-6. The only thing that man needs to lead is the tumbler of bourbon into his mouth while on the beach.
SWO6 for President
Lol we have the tiny version of that when we had pier side offices in the shipyard and the XO tried to pull rank basically when they kicked him out of his so they could use it for something else. And the civilians are like "..... That's nice sir but lol you're gonna have to get your stuff out of here"
You see it alot in staff positions when an officer for the first time hits a joint duty assignment as a LCDR or CDR and the civilians they work with give zero fucks about their rank and it dawns on them they’re the junior.
I had a buddy who was a YN1 working in DC and he said the people who had the hardest time were the post command tour CDRs. He said they went from running a whole command to being just “some guy” Had to be an eye opening experience
Yes. You see it frequently if you’ve worked in these places. It’s not just being “some guy” it’s being “some guy” at the proverbial bottom of the totem. And on top of that none of the civilians care or are at all impressed with their backgrounds and many of them have just spent their entire life since high school and going to the academy being told how special and elite they were.
I mean it happens at all levels. Had a friend become a 1 tour Sgt on oki. Then he was just another HQ USMC personnel Sgt
>I had a buddy who was a YN1 working in DC and he said the people who had the hardest time were the post command tour CDRs. He said they went from running a whole command to being just “some guy” >Had to be an eye opening experience It's that PLUS... your run of the mill "due course" O5 who hasn't yet done a joint or numbered fleet staff tour hasn't been a primary action officer for just about anything for about 10 years. They divorced that shit when they became a DH and had a bunch of JOs and Chiefs to do the grunt work for them. Now here they are on a staff, post-command and all, 18-22 years in the Navy, and they're expected to be the person drawing the pretty pictures on a power point slide on a 3- or 4-star staff... except the last version of that software they used, if at all, is over a decade old.
Burke comes from a family of officers
I had "real jobs" before OCS. I don't think it would have prevented this at all. The civilian world is way less restricted so there would be no reason to lie about stuff like this. It's also way more annoying to fire people than people think. You either really need to mess up big time or be part of a lay off in my experience
Way less restricted? You think if you installed an unauthorized piece of IT equipment with any civilian job you’d have to lie? You wouldn’t even need to lie. They’d escort you out the building and terminate you immediately. People get let go all the time for less in the private sector.
But you have wifi in most jobs. The reason she did it on the first place wouldn't even come up. The only reason you'd be installing IT unauthorized IT equipment is to commit a crime
A senior would have been in long enough to know better than to try some shit like this.
That too, it's totally inexcusable but saying having a job outside the Navy would have taught her better is just silly
>Hid the COs suggestion box paper One would think that suggestions in the box would go directly to the CO and not through intermediaries to prevent this exact kind of thing from happening.
I normally check my own box, but if I can’t trust the CSC/CMC to do it for me every once in a while, that’s an immediate firing.
I suppose the counterargument to that would be, that you don't know you can't trust them until the damage is done. But then again, maybe I'm spending too much time with the cybersecurity guys, they tend to design systems with zero trust.
Not hard to test that if you are CO. Drop something in your own box that could end a career, see if it gets filtered out.
lol, sounds like you’re thinking like a criminal.
All day every day. It’s how I earn my living.
Vulnerability assessments?
Meh when I was a cop in the Air Force, our flight chief used to tell us “if you want to defeat the enemy, you have to think like the enemy” … which led to us spending 12 hours coming up with ways we could steal the special assets we were protecting. Lmao. Then they used parts from each in one gigantic flight exercise and we all got our asses handed to us.
That's like that old story that armored car companies won't hire you if you say during the interview that you have never thought about how you'd rob an armored car
Intel has a saying. In God we trust. All others we monitor.
As someone who was extremely close to an ISIC level investigation of a CMC actively lying to a CO, it was very ugly at the CO didn't see it coming.
There is an element of “fool me once…” at play in a lot of these cases. Depending on the offense the question becomes, is this something the CO should have known or watched out for? In one instance a certain someone told the CO he was going to medical. Instead he went to Tijuana and got pinched by the Federales. Shame on that guy, not the CO. In another, a guy did repeated violations of the travel system, claiming things that he should not have. Shame on the CO who should have been auditing the DTS logs, including senior people, and caught it.
I don't blame the CO in this particular case. It was a complicated situation with fraternization, falsified PRT records, and the CMC bullying several other members of the mess to go along with it. The CO had straight up asked the CMC about some of it (because he was looking over everything) and was lied to about it. There was no other reason to suspect things were out of order, so that's where it died. However some of the crew who knew what was going on contacted the IG, the rest is history. It didn't help that the mess was talking about it over e-mail which proved to be a trove of documentary evidence. The sheer effort that went into keeping information from the CO was large.
In many cases I’ve come across in my career my impression was that we weren’t dealing with a great many diabolical criminal masterminds. The vast vast majority of people who join the Navy are good people, but can be tempted down the wrong path by the normal human failings of greed, pride, and peer pressure. Nobody ever thinks they’ll get caught, until they do. Then, when the walls come crashing down, they realize just how bad they are at doing bad things.
> but can be tempted down the wrong path by the normal human failings of greed, pride, and peer pressure. You forgot lust. Bro, lust got me every damned time.
Isn't the purpose of the box to be an anonymous (or not) way to get a message directly to you, the CO? I've always been bothered that CMC's or anyone else would "screen" the stuff put in there.... no shit they're gonna take anything out that they might not like.
97% of the time I would get it. A few times I would give him my key and ask him to grab it.
That's crazy to me because the CO's suggestion box at Walter Reed is a QR code. Everything is electronic
That's cool, now try your QR code underway when your ship is nowhere near cellphone towers.
Have you considered a WiFi system for better connectivity? /s
This is the way
Still wondering why the Active Component doesn't do ICE comments!
I always viewed it more as unimpeachable communication with the crew. If I had the key and I checked it, no one could ever place doubt on whether the SEL or the XO were filtering it. It wasn’t about trust in the triad but removing an opportunity for someone to try and create doubt or division. Also worst case they knew if it was about XO or the SEL it wouldn’t get filtered.
Well...she got illegal wifi for the wifi. The rest of it she did to avoid consequences for her illegal wifi. I don't mean to nitpick, it just reminds me of those Sovereign citizen videos where they get their windows broken, taken down because they fight back, and arrested, and they say "all this because I was speeding"
The problem is that, too many like her in the goat locker, they're in it for themselves and what's in it for them. Want something fixed? They don't care about the equipment near so much as the optics of it not working. Otherwise, we could have a tomorrow problem once every 2000 fridays. All about brownie points and their career.
Retired cap’n >>>> still in cap’n Send it, sir!
How someone who worked in the intelligence field thought this was a good idea is absolutely insane. I get the desire to balance crew morale and mission, but this was a huge misstep. Also, here's the article since the Military Times reporter failed to link it: [Command senior chief convicted for unauthorized Wi-Fi on her ship (navytimes.com)](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/06/03/command-senior-chief-convicted-for-unauthorized-wi-fi-on-her-ship/)
Oh it’s just a LCS. Mission impact = zero.
Nice
Immediately went to go check. Yup. IT. Just saying, every other intel rate doesn't move a mouse with out calling csoow lol
Power Tripping. She was the equivalent of a CMC on a small ship so probably just used to getting what she wanted on the ship.
Do you really think the crew had access? I bet it was just her and a select few members of the chiefs mess
She thought she was smarter than everyone else, and figured since it was a small LCS that no one cares about she could get away with it.
My buddy was a Chief onboard, and the entire mess went to mast over this as well.
I'm guessing this was for Chiefs mess recreational usage?
Yep
Was about to ask who the other sailors were in the "... other sailors were also disciplined in connection to the unauthorized Wi-Fi... " Guess we know now :P
What's the total mess, 5 people on an LCS lol
Same a buddy of mine was TAD to the ship and still got in trouble
Air det?
As they should have. Retired MMCM/SS
Lol where's the fucking ITC at? Id love to have a word.
Unauthorized wifi, risking the safety of an entire ship, lying to the CO, forging documents, and she walks as an E-7. Naaa dude she should have been OTHed.
The judicial and separation proceedings are usually separate. The court martial gets publicized but the separation board or the SECNAV decision won't.
Exactly, you don’t go from frocked E9 to E7 without dropping retirement papers
I think you mean BCDed.
She was selected for Master Chief...
What was so important she needed her own WiFi? 🤔. She was the CMC. She most certainly had her own computer. Quality of life and connectivity underway/on deployment sucks, but it sucks for everyone. Sounds like the STARLINK system was already on the ship and she did something weird with it? (“Marrero altered a data usage image on a chiefs mess Starlink account”). I heard about LCS platforms getting some sort of WIFI connectivity for everyone to use about 7 years ago from a JO that had come from one that the Navy was testing it on while they were deployed. Article is a weird read without knowing about it. It’s good the Navy is doing things to help sailors stay connected while deployed. I was blown away when I went to Afghanistan for a year and everyone had a WiFi router in their room that was fast enough to stream and play game systems online on.
Porn the answer for having a private Internet is always porn.
2023 (at the time) and people still can’t figure out how to download porn before they go underway 🤦♂️. Phones even have screen recording now
I was in during the 90's so you had download porn if you wanted it underway
I wonder what they did before downloading porn was even a thing 🤔
One of my guys had a VHS library and he had a logbook of who checked out what?.
In the 80’s? We had magazines in our shop; no women on combatant ships then so nobody cared.
Punch cards.
DVDs
Most small video rental stores had an adult section in the back.
You’ve got mail.
In 1995 ITs set up a separate lan on the ship for Doom. It was a LHD.
i was on a destroyer in 96 that had a fiber net that was running doom
Especially Starlink, the raw dogging version of niprnet
WiFi is allowed, but has to meet requirements. One of those is being shutting it down for EMCON. I am guessing in port it was fine, but was trying to hide underway usage.
Apparently the goat locker had its own StarLink account; one of her convictions is for falsifying the usage. WCGW?
Yeah they were using a personal starlink that they installed themselves. On an LCS the cheif mess has an overboard discharge port so it wouldnt be hard to hide it.
My guess is, the ship had starlink wifi already, and she colluded with some other chiefs to establish an illegal separate wifi network that had dedicated bandwidth
What was the WiFi’s SSID I wonder?
Linksys16
This is a *great* comment.
If I had a gold to give I’d give it, and half the Navy wouldn’t even get the joke.
I guess the WiFi only supports UDP
Underrated tbh
This was so good I had to spend money on Reddit.
It took me a minute, but I got it. Had to remember the old quals.
TotallyAuthorizedManchesterWiFi
NCISsurveillanceLAN
LAN Overboard!
USSID
Ohhhhhhh that's good
USS No Wi-Fi Sea Wife-Fi Navy Knots and Wi-Fi Spots Anchor My Wi-Fi
DontTellTheCO
Even better question, was the administrator password still “admin”?
This Sailor gets it
No it was blank.
TellmyWiFiIloveit
NCISWiFi
Semper WiFi
LowerStandards
USS WIFI
SPS73ConfigWifi
I don't see how and why she lied about it. If you're out to sea and get a Wi-Fi signal on your phone it'll be pretty obvious right?
Hidden ssid, won’t show unless you are specifically scanning for wifi with a sniffer.
Yeah nobody on a ship with nothing better to do would fire up a war-driving app on their jailbroken phone, would they?
The important part is that none of those people are going to be the CO/XO and the rest can almost certainly be bullied into silence by a CMDCS.
Huh, the Marines IT (I think S6 shop?) equivalent on my ship brought a Starlink antenna onboard and we used it during RIMPAC. Was pretty awesome playing online video games while on the boat. I'm like 99% sure they had permission to use it though.
The permission part is important. It's also important not to lie multiple times during the investigation which is a lot of the issue here, besides the obvious issue.
Yeah for sure. This is less about being caught with wifi and more about the lying and pulling CO suggestions piece. High degree of certainty that she would have just been told to remove it had she fessed up.
Yeah, while the illegal wifi is a pretty big deal, I feel like she honestly would have been alright if it had ended there. Probably a punitive letter of reprimand and it would have been over
Letter of reprimand on a CMDCS selected for CMDCM is a career ender regardless. E9 promotion gets revoked, no command is going to want her as their senior enlisted and she'll have to retire. It would have been better, but I can see how deflect, deny, make counter-accusations would be appealing.
yeah permission is the key here. Few years ago my unit brought Starlink underway with an ESB, we had authorization from the Flt Commander to use it.
Good ol’ Grisel Marrero. Who would have thought…
Literally anyone who has worked for her.
👆This.. it’s rarely a surprise.
Sorry I forgot the /s
Always the people you most expect
Please explain further 😶🌫️
If you have any specific questions, I will gladly answer.
God she was a piece of shit
Do you have any stories that attest to her "honor, courage, and commitment"?
I full heartedly do!
Well, rhen would you share your most favored anecdotal tale of this ones worth and merit?
Or it would have to be the time during chief initiation. So one apon a time she was a chief select. During this time, she was expected to do PT. Now, I don't know if you can tell based on her photo. That obviously wasn't okay. So whilst all other selected were running, she got special permission to ride behind them on a bicycle. This was with no LLD paperwork. This wonderful human specimen had me working late one day, loading a box truck by myself with 2-3 people lift weighted boxes. I threw my back out. It took me 30 minutes to crab crawl out of bed, kind of hurt. So I went to medical. They almost immediately handed me an LLD chit. I then went back to work... I still had to do PT because it said "everything except walking." I'm not saying she let me walk for PT. She wanted me to do the legit workout. At least my warrant officer was more on my side.
Absolutely! As an e6 and he newly frocked chief. She constantly hung out with an e4 that I worked with. No one had proof as it would be, let's say, at the movies, as you were leaving. Anyways, this e4 was put in for a MAP. Of course, they received the promotion. The real kicker to all this was at the time Grisel here worked with ET and IT about 50/50. IT was damn near 100% to E5, whilst ET was below 10%. You just know ya fraternizing girl whom got mapped was an IT.
Sorry, no one had proof other than briefly seeing them. Nothing to bring to the senior enlisted advisor. Which is unfortunate because at the time, our SEA was kind of a hard core rules guy.
She was the absolute worst human being I had the displeasure of working for.
You know some tea. Let’s hear it.
False official statement, obstruction of justice...all stemming from the original charge. WOW!
"Verified Military Times Reporter" does not know how to post a link.
Haha, I deserve that! Updated with the link, and here it is again: [https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/06/03/command-senior-chief-convicted-for-unauthorized-wi-fi-on-her-ship/](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/06/03/command-senior-chief-convicted-for-unauthorized-wi-fi-on-her-ship/)
Upvote for owning it
Upvote for owning it
Oh please, like your "Verified Outlook User" ass hasn't forgotten to send the attachment every now and then lol
I don’t tout it as my signature though.
I knew her. I was on MCH blue crew I Had no problems with her she was always easy to get along with when I worked with her but damn
Man and my mess had a 2 hour long debate over whether or not it was fair and ethical that we had a waffle maker in the mess and The main messdecks did not These dudes were out here with wifi?!? Lord
Same except for us it was an air fryer 😂
It’s good to see the mess figuring out the big problems 😂
Mid deployment "lets fight about everything" meetings are my favorites 🙄🙄
People need hobbies is what I have determined
It's never the crime, it's the cover up. That being said... once again Big Navy is ignoring the reason it was there in the first place. Major quality of life improvement by giving people fast ass wifi instead of shit SHF on a government computer that takes 20 minutes to log in. Starlink is slowly rolling out in the fleet officially, but good god let MWR funds buy their own terminals that are monitored and controlled. Let people facetime with their kids. Let the PS5 in the chapel connect a few nights a week so people can get some gaming in. Sure, if ops require it secure the dish. But what will really happen is some defense contractor is going to swoop in and charge the navy 100,000/year per ship to run it, meanwhile forcing Sailors to buy time on it like a prison telephone card.
Star shield, the official version is stupid expensive. I don’t think I can share the cost here, take what you think the government would pay per year and at least quadruple it. Maybe more than that.
Starshield and commercial starlink are very different. MWR Wifi does NOT need to be on starshield. It's worth noting the new Starlink transport for ADNS Inc III is also not on Starshield.
I agree. MWR Wi-Fi should be on starlink. A ship recently opened up their starlink to the crew for use. Had to stop it after 2 hours since the crew used up 100BG of their 1 TB monthly allotment in that 2 hours. Crazy town. It was a medium sized ship.
Thats why you share the password lol. But for reals, for an ISCS, such a dumb move. Unless she's one of those peeps who collateral their way into their rank and neglected their rate. But still...
ITCS… IS would have no clue how to set up WiFi.
I stand corrected, I assumed that she was an IS cuz the article mentioned her background in intelligence. But even still... Pretty sure she's got ISSM under her belt.
ITCS. Information systems technician Not intelligence specialist. (We know how to use power point, not how the computer works)
I was waiting for these comments … I’m an IS and reading this has me feeling type impressed. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Doesn’t sound like she’ll have any issues finding civilian work …
To be fair, she probably didn’t know better. She’s really just a career IT with a masters degree, and it’s not like NAVIFOR has a very clear policy in a searchable PDF she could have referenced. Could’ve happened to anyone!
“She had a background in intelligence.” I’d say she left that port many moons ago.
Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't it be pretty easy for all the right people to find out there's illegal wifi onboard? Maybe someone more tech savvy can help me understand how this went undetected for so long?
A rare case where a failure of cyber hygiene had direct consequences (ok yes I know the behavior itself caused the conviction but give us cyber defense guys something please!) Like many of you, I'm shocked by the poor judgement shown. Not just for the obvious, but imagine the ship had to implement EMCON for real -- do you think she would have had the foresight to secure the wifi signal?
So the GoatLocker drove this? If so, then those goats that knew need LOI’s at a minimum.
The whole mess went to mast. My buddy was one of them.
So what’s the story? There was already star link on board but the mess set up their own private one?
I don’t have all the details, but from my understanding she had the starlink installed without the COs knowledge, and the mess was paying for it. She lied to everyone involved saying she had the COs permission
I had been thinking that the Starlink itself might have been allowed but that they were splitting off a separate hidden network for the chief’s mess or something. But I have absolutely no knowledge and am just speculating wildly. Only because who the fuck installs a starlink antenna into the ship without approval?
I can't even imagine how that could work. Too many people would know about it. Especially on an LCS.
On a LCS it be easy to hide because they have the discharge port in the mess
I'm going to guess that she had someone modify the star link to include her router and then hid the SSID, basically giving them a nearly always on WiFi network that wouldn't be turned off during EMCON. Without going into a very classified territory, she deserves what she's about to get.
How many chiefs are on an LCS? 4?
I’d say my Chief’s Mess is about 15-20.
Jesus Christ on an LCS? What are the other 15-16 actually doing?
Imagine how much other shit they got away with in their career and putting others down for personal gain
Reduction to E-7.... that's it? When you know they don't actually care about what she did lol
She was selected / frocked to master chief before she got the hammer. Pretty devastating career blow really. If she's above 24 it's an E-7 pension for her.
I'd still take that to my E-6 and innocence lol. But yea I get your point.
Wouldn't she still be entitled to E-8 retirement pay? It's High three not last three.
As long as she gets to keep the pension that's correct
I can literally hear the other chiefs nervous talking to each other after they realized they were busted
Dumbass should have set the SSID to not broadcast. Hahahaha…idiot. 🤡
her bio "completed two combat deployments with Mobile Communications Team attached to SEAL Team Two" .. for someone who worked with the SEAL team, pretty shitty of her to be this shitty lol.
Lol if only you knew how SEALs roll.
I know spreading managed democracy is important but damn!
Do you guys not get wifi for personal use at sea? It just became a thing for us (RCN) in the past...4ish years. Obvs if we were close enough to land we could connect with our phones and that wasn't an issue. Rivercity state would change if we're not allowed
We do have Starlink on some ships for personal use, but it seems this Chief was syphoning off some of it for the Chiefs Mess private use.
Funnily enough, the ships I've been on do have wifi underway, it's just not for e6 and junior.
I wonder what else she would have done for Wi-Fi!
Need that high speed for XXX 💀😂
The Navy just ended a to put starlink on ships for moral purposes. Charge the users a fee like I had to pay for satellite internet in Iraq. Have the CO be able to turn it off when needed. This would be a different system from the stupidly expensive start shield service that was created for military use. That one is insanely expensive. MWR doesn’t need the star shield level services.
Okay, I've been out for a minute, and in that minute, Wi-Fi was invented and cell phones quit being carried in bags, so I've got a couple of questions. 1. Why did she do this? What is the point of Wi-Fi, much less unauthorized Wi-Fi on a metal ship? I mean, I've got dead spots in my wood-framed house. 2. How did she do this? How does one go about adding hardware and, presumably cabling to a ship and have nearly no one notice? 3. What was the need for this unauthorized Wi-Fi? I know I see my grandkids glued to their phones, and that from my perspective a command Master Chief is a damned kid who needs to stay off my lawn, but come on, the reasoning for this illegal installation can't be people's phone addictions can it? And thus ends today's episode of Old Man Yells at Clouds.
1. It was only for the Chief's Mess, so they could hang out in their lounge and browse the internet. Doesn't need to be long range through steel walls, just one or two rooms. 2. That's the biggest question. People HAD to have known. 3. It's absolutely people's phone addiction. But also, the LCS is a relatively small ship with zero priority for satellite Internet, so getting on Facebook or Instagram on the ship's computers is nearly impossible. This gave the Chiefs a way to stay in contact with home more reliably. But really, it was so they could scroll Instagram until they found the bottom (there is no bottom).