>The Russians hacked into both political parties and leaked their information selectively to support their agenda. They even got access to voting systems. There is no evidence AFAIK that they changed anything, but the most logical conclusion is that they did.
Actually there's no evidence that they hacked into anything -- it's all BS hearsay and "trust us" from secret agencies and no evidence pudding.
The evidence being some "because private security companies" said so? Those have even less credibility that state agencies, and will report anything you like for enough dinero.
Yes, the private security companies who performed the investigation said so (and provided plenty of evidence, if you take the time to look at the links). So did the intelligence community. So did Obama. So did John McCain and Mitch McConnell, who you'd think have a pretty good vested interest in not saying so.
What is your basis for disbelieving all of those people and groups?
They all have high motivation to arrive to exactly the conclusion they have arrived (and even higher motivation to arrive to some conclusion - it's a huge egg on your face to say "Russia hacked us", but it's much bigger egg on your face to say "Somebody hacked us and we don't even know who and have no way to really find out"), and they have means to select their subcontractors (e.g. choose specific security company that will agree to say what you want to be said - it's not the proof that's what happened but certainly the possibility of choice is there) to confirm what they want to conclude. These are pretty solid grounds for some measure of disbelief.
I personally looked through all technical evidence that was in public and that I could find (of course I could miss some, I am not perfect and I have a day job), and 90% of it is conjecture and references to some private data that I could not see. Maybe that private data shows what they say, maybe not - there's no way to see. The only semi-public info that I could see is that bit.ly fishing thing that shows that the fishing operation (which is only one of the multiple hacks that happen) is most likely performed by the same organization that performed a number of other fishing operations, which could be useful to Russians, and thus most likely is performed by Russians (either the government or private contractor working by the government order). There were also some scripts and sources of Ukrainian and Russian origin, seemingly, but those are traded on darknet so anybody could get their hands on them.
That is the only data I've seen in public that pinpoints the whole deal to Russia - all other things are "trust us, it's Russia". Which may very well be true - but "trust us" is not exactly a proof. It doesn't mean it's not Russia - very well may be - but the conclusive proof is still not there.
>They all have high motivation to arrive to exactly the conclusion they have arrived
That isn't the case for many of the involved parties (for example the Dutch government, or Mitch McConnell.) And I'm not sure I agree with your argument that "pin it on Russia" would be the most face-saving lie (compared to "just call it a leak" for example.)
Look, I share your desire to see the actual evidence first-hand; "just trust us" rarely sits well with me either.
But if this is a lie, it's a remarkably well-coordinated lie, apparently agreed upon by many sources with competing or even conflicting motivations and biases. Even in your description of your own research you appear to concede that there is evidence connecting the hacking to, if not necessarily the Russian government, then at least Russians; and that it was certainly in the Russian government's interest; and that what information is currently public tends to fall in line with the information we're told is still secret. (I hope I'm not mischaracterizing your statements here, I do appreciate the amount of detail and thought apparent in your comment)
It's true that the public doesn't have, as you say, "conclusive proof" at this time. But many people seem to be taking that lack of conclusive proof as evidence that it's all just fake news, a huge cross-party conspiracy to mislead the public.
(And the conspiracy theorists oddly always gloss right over the question of who did do the hacking if not the Russians, they're just certain that it wasn't the Russians, because the government and the media says it was the Russians, and everybody knows you can't trust the government or the media.) (And that mistrust, of course, is the precise goal of the Russian disinformation campaigns we do have conclusive proof exist. So that's an interesting detail.)
That's the part I can't get past. On the one hand you have a plausible, coherent explanation which fits all the available evidence; on the other hand you have... well... what? Unsupported free-form skepticism, as far as I can tell.
> That isn't the case for many of the involved parties (for example the Dutch government
True, the Dutch confirmation is much more valuable, as they have no apparent reason to be partisan on either side. So if it is confirmed with some evidence, it would be very heavy indication towards APT's indeed being Russian and being responsible for the hacks they are claimed to be responsible. It's one thing McCain - which has been at war with Russia since forever and grasping at anything anti-Russian he could reach - saying it and it's another thing Dutch with no partisan motivations saying that. When I rote the above I didn't know about Dutch confirmation, which makes me attribute more likelihood to the Russian attribution if I after some research I am convinced Dutch aren't mistaken and not motivated by something that I wasn't aware of (I know next to nothing about Dutch politics so no idea there).
> And the conspiracy theorists oddly always gloss right over the question of who did do the hacking if not the Russians
Oh, here might be lots of options. E.g.:
1. Russians, but not those Russians - I mean, independent Russian group which is not controlled by Kremlin. Who leaked the emails for lulz.
2. Independent group outside of Russia that has its interests aligned with Russia at the moment - say, Belorussians or Iranians or Kazahks or whatever, I'm not going to list all countries connected to the internet here.
3. Independent group outside of Russia having a beef with Clinton, but having no connection with Russia whatsoever and Russians just got lucky that they also hated Clinton.
4. Independent group outside of Russia not giving a tweet about politics but doing it for lulz and darknet bragging credits.
5. The emails were not published as a result of the hack, the hacks happened independently and the emails were leaked by the insider, unaware of simultaneously happening hack by any of the above.
6. No idea. I don't know a lot of things, and it's completely possible I wouldn't also know who leaked DNC emails. That's always a valid option.
I do not say any of those are true (except for the last one which very well might be true :) but they are certainly options for the answer of "who hacked it and leaked emails".
> And that mistrust, of course, is the precise goal of the Russian disinformation campaigns we do have conclusive proof exist. So that's an interesting detail.
Giving that mistrust of the government is pretty much written into US Constitution and, if one reads what the Framers wrote, was deeply on their minds when they wrote it, the Russians are about 230 years late to the table here.
> The evidence being some "because private security companies" said so? Those have even less credibility that state agencies, and will report anything you like for enough dinero.
There is no evidence in the post, only claims.
So is the only source you’ll accept is your eyes watching the hacking in person?
Probably good source data with explanation of chain of custody that reasonably ensures those aren't fake. I.e. if they produce code and logs and other artifacts that definitely link something to Russia, I'd probably believe they didn't fake the logs, binaries, screenshots, etc. if reputable enough people vouch for it. Also, faking real data is very hard, so if after reasonable time of public inspection nobody calls it fake, I'd believe they are genuine. Then explanation how these source data demonstrate what is being proved (e.g. "this IP has accessed the remote backdoor on this server, and it's routing points to the IP being in Russia and registered to the provider known from this and this to be a company engaging in cybercrime on behalf of Russian government") that would be pretty convincing for me.
Pretty much the same process evidence undergoes on criminal trial. You present it, you get it through adversarial process, if it survives, we have some reasonable (though not 100%, as well known) chance it's true.
Of course, a prosecutor saying "well, we've seen the evidence and we conclude the defendant is guilty" would not fly very well in court. But that's mostly what we have here.
Well... it happened in 2016, so yes, many of the articles about it are going to be from around then.
You may want to take a closer read of the editor's note prepended to the Nation article you linked to, which is a lengthy apology for the article's inaccuracy:
>we should have made certain that several of the article’s conclusions were presented as possibilities, not as certainties. And given the technical complexity of the material, we would have benefited from bringing on an independent expert to conduct a rigorous review of the VIPS technical claims[...] We have obtained such a review in the last week [...which] lays out several scenarios in which the DNC could have been hacked from the outside, although he does not rule out a leak.
Those are obviously-partisan opinion articles by a self-described "rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper."
Call me crazy but I'm going to side with the intelligence community (and Obama and John McCain and the Dutch government and even Mitch McConnell) on this one.
[edit: added adjectives, and the Dutch because they deserve it]
>Those are opinion articles by a self-described "rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper."
I was pointing to the arguments -- could not care less if Humpty Dumpty wrote them.
>Call me crazy but I'm going to side with the intelligence community (and Obama and John McCain and even Mitch McConnell) on this one.
I'd just call you gullible. If one actually wants to get out of the establishment bubble, that's the last source they'd want to slide with.
But of course they have such a great track record for people to be trusting them, from Operation Mockingbird to the Contras, WMDs, lying about surveillance, and so on...
OK. So if I'm following, we're supposed to disbelieve the intelligence community, the security researchers, leaders from both political parties, the Dutch government, and basically every reputable news outlet in the world. But the rogue prepper lady, she's got the goods, because she's outside the "establishment bubble".
Look, I'm no fan of the CIA, I share the frustration with not being able to see the classified evidence first-hand, and I'm all for skepticism when it comes to source bias and motivation. But when your argument boils down to literally everyone of significance is lying except for Donald Trump, that's no longer something that can be described as "skepticism".
We even had other countries confirm our conclusions before and it was still wrong.
I don't mean to say, it is definitely wrong, but I can't agree that is is almost certainly right either due to these same parties have all lied before.
> Call me crazy but I'm going to side with the intelligence community on this one
Because they have proven such integrity? I still remember the pictures being shown on TV from our intelligence community of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Granted. (You're conflating the "intelligence community" with the "Bush administration," which is a little iffy, but I take your point.)
And if this were just one source, or just one agency, or even just one political party, I might be more skeptical. (My usual routine when a story seems questionable is to check a source with the opposite political bias. If Fox and the WaPo both say something happened, I'm much more likely to believe that it did.)
It's definitely working - US political system is whipping itself into frenzy over "collusion" conspiracy theories while Putin comfortably arranges yet another rigged "election" for himself with no real opposition, suppresses dissent and imprisons anybody who dares to challenge him - and US can not even squeak a word about it since we're in the midst of declaring anybody from foreign country speaking about anything happening in another country to be a crime! If Putin indeed have foreseen it, and executed on this plan from a start, he's kinda genius. Or he's just lucky US politics happened to be insane in a way that benefits him.
Oh dear; now you've made me regret calling you "thoughtful" earlier.
In one short paragraph you've changed the subject from Russian election interference to the separate issue of Trump's collusion; you've characterized that collusion as a "conspiracy theory" for no apparent reason; somehow you've decided it's to blame for the rigged voting process within the Russian not-a-democracy; and I have no idea what the bizarre "declaring anybody from foreign country speaking about anything happening in another country to be a crime" is in reference to, if anything at all. Impressive!
But I'll give you this one:
> [Putin]'s just lucky US politics happened to be insane in a way that benefits him.
> In one short paragraph you've changed the subject from Russian election interference to the separate issue of Trump's collusion
I am glad you are able to see it as two issues. 99% of the press isn't.
> you've characterized that collusion as a "conspiracy theory"
Which it most definitely is, by definition - it's a theory (with no factual basis after two years of investigation) and it's about a conspiracy. What is it if not conspiracy theory?
> somehow you've decided it's to blame for the rigged voting process within the Russian not-a-democracy
I decided nothing of the sort. Of course US craziness is not to blame for Russian fake elections. But US craziness makes it harder for US to point to Russians that they just had fake elections, because Russians would say "didn't you just said telling other people about their elections is criminal? So please do shut up". US just shot itself in the foot on this one, and for no good reason whatsoever.
> I have no idea what the bizarre "declaring anybody from foreign country speaking about anything happening in another country to be a crime" is in reference to
Oh, you do have an idea, drop the pretense. You are perfectly aware what I am referring to, you just like to pretend it's not what it is saying. But, unfortunately, it is.
> it’s a theory (with no factual basis after two years of investigation)
Oh horsepucky. There’s a sliiiight difference between “no factual basis” and “ongoing investigation whose results have of course not yet been made public.” There’s also no shortage of publicly available information supporting it; I could reel off the long list of meetings and shady-looking emails and trump tweets and etc but I’m sure you’re quite as well familiar with it as I am.
> You are perfectly aware what I am referring to
I really, genuinely, honestly have no idea what that lunatic raving is. Feel free to explain it, if you like.
> There’s a sliiiight difference between “no factual basis” and “ongoing investigation whose results have of course not yet been made public.”
Yes there is. But given the way it has been conducted so far - where any information against Trump has been leaked very promptly - and yet in the whole time absolutely nothing confirming the "collusion" theory has been found, and everything that came out - e.g. Flynn, Manafort, Papadopulos & now Russian trolls' indictments - show nothing of the sort, it's pretty safe to conclude it won't be ever found, because there's nothing to find. Of course, one is free to believe otherwise, as one is free to believe we are yet to discover the lost city of Atlantis, the Yeti and the UFOs hidden in Area 51, we just didn't look well enough. Hope dies last.
> There’s also no shortage of publicly available information supporting it;
Yep, there is. If fact, there's none.
> I could reel off the long list of meetings and shady-looking emails and trump tweets
Yes, there were meetings and emails and tweets, none of them has any evidence of Trump colluding with anybody to do anything, let alone anything criminal or even out of the course of routine politics. They may be evidence of thousands of things, but not that particular one.
> I really, genuinely, honestly have no idea what that lunatic raving is
> you’ve chosen to fall back to playground-level argumentation.
It is a fascinating level of lack of self-awareness - telling me I'm on "playground-level" in the same sentence as as subjecting me to a playground-level insults!
OK, I will indulge your pretense. I was referring to the prosecution of Russian individuals under the theory that participating in US politics, by publicly expressing your opinion on social media, or other venues, while not being US citizen, can be criminal. Of course, there are also some instances of actual fraud in the indictment, like identity theft, which are different matter, but conduct like "tweeting about US politics", or even "tweeting about US politics while having a profile on Twitter falsely claiming you are an American" should not be part of any criminal prosecution or criminal indictment.
First off: You're right about the "playground" swipe. That was a cheap shot. FWIW I edited it out almost immediately -- presumably while you were typing your response -- but I shouldn't have said it in the first place. Apologies.
It may not come as a surprise that I think you're wrong about basically everything else in that comment, though.
> where any information against Trump has been leaked very promptly
This is a baseless claim. We have no knowledge of what information hasn't been leaked. Kind of by definition.
> yet in the whole time absolutely nothing confirming the "collusion" theory has been found
Strike "found", replace with "made public". Because, again, the investigation is still happening, and its contents are still secret. Don't declare victory before the game's over.
> none of them has any evidence of Trump colluding with anybody to do anything
Yet again, we have no way of knowing what evidence has been found by the FBI but not yet made public because, yet again, the investigation is still happening. We do have a lot of instances of Trump and associates trying to cover up various meetings, which isn't typical behavior for innocent people. Kushner's little backchannel hotline to the Kremlin isn't exactly routine politics either. (It's not a proof-positive slam dunk -- Kushner might be able to explain it as sheer incompetence on his part, that he literally had no idea how criminal it would appear to attempt to hide your communication with Russia from your own country's security apparatus -- but it merits investigation. Which, as we know, is ongoing.) That's just a couple examples from what you and I both know is a long list of actions that sure smell incriminating from here.
But there's little point in us arguing about all the many details, because, say it with me everybody you know the words: the investigation is still ongoing. We don't know what we don't know. We'll find out one way or the other when more indictments drop, or when they close up shop.
> I was referring to the prosecution of Russian individuals under the theory that participating in US politics, by publicly expressing your opinion on social media, or other venues, while not being US citizen, can be criminal.
Aaaah, I see. Well, in the spirit of avoiding playground-level discourse, I will withdraw my description of it as "lunatic raving", and in place say "such a wildly absurd mischaracterization of the contents of this indictment that I literally did not realize this indictment was what you were talking about."
It does not consist of "declaring anybody from foreign country speaking about anything happening in another country to be a crime". That's an absurd claim. "Tweeting about US politics while having a profile on Twitter falsely claiming you are an American" is not criminal behavior. Creating a multi-million dollar operation to generate thousands of propaganda-dispensing social media accounts, posing as everything from BLM activists to the Tennessee Republican Party (really!), buying political ads, and staging political rallies within the US, all with the explicit intent of manipulating the election, however... that's a different story.
> We have no knowledge of what information hasn't been leaked.
Ah yes, the famous Russell's teapot. I am sure it is full of evidence against Trump. But so far it hasn't been found in any other place. And there were enough leaks from all levels to demonstrate the capability and the willingness to leak. So one must ask, why this capability hasn't yet been deployed to reveal any real evidence of collusion? Obviously the theory that nobody is willing to leak stuff about this is false. What other theory is there?
> Strike "found", replace with "made public".
Russell's teapot again. You are of course free to believe in hidden evidence of anything you like. I prefer to believe in open one, and that one does not contain a smidgen of collusion.
> Creating a multi-million dollar operation to generate thousands of propaganda-dispensing social media accounts, posing as everything from BLM activists to the Tennessee Republican Party (really!), buying political ads, and staging political rallies within the US, all with the explicit intent of manipulating the election, however... that's a different story.
No it is not. It's exactly the same story - people saying words on the Internet (or in public on the streets, as it were). If it's a crime for 100 people to do it, then it's a crime for one person to do it. If it's a crime to do it for a million dollars, then it's a crime to do it for 10 cents and a lollipop. If it's a crime for a Russian to buy political ads and stage political actions - then it's a crime for any foreign national to do that. And that's exactly the theory major part of Muller indictment is based off - and that you just agreed you believe in too, in complete disregard for Constitutional freedoms and natural freedoms of every person, such as freedom of speech, association, etc. No amount of putting "the same, but with scary Russians" on it will change the basic premises of it.
Declaring your support for the constitutional rights of non-citizens is an interesting rhetorical choice. As is describing a large-scale propaganda mill as just the same thing as a rando spouting off on twitter. (Especially followed by the rhetorical flourish "then it's a crime for any foreign national to do that". Which, well, yes: it is. I even did that thing people do on the Internet where I looked it up for you, here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/11/110.20) And obviously I think your reading of who's leaked what, and what public evidence, both solid and suggestive, currently exists is quite selective. (I'm sure that feeling is mutual!) And most obviously of all, neither one of us is going to convince the other of... well, anything.
So: have a nice day. We can reconvene after the next round of indictments, if you like.
It wasn't just one source during the Bush administration either. It was both parties. Also, we supposedly shared our 'intelligence' with other Nations which all were convinced it was legit.
We already have one can of worms open, I have no interest in opening another can by relitigating the entirety of the Bush/Iraq years; they were exhausting enough to live through the first time around. I'll happily concede that the US engages in propaganda, and leave it at that. (Well, not "happily", but you know what I mean.)
It seems this should still be important, right? Before we take actions that lead to hostility between nations, possibly even wars, shouldn't we be absolutely sure?
The hack was recently publicly confirmed by a Dutch intelligence agency where they confirmed the DNC was indeed hacked, and that they were witness with recorded video and possibly logs of Cozy Bear committing the very hack that was proposed to be a leak.
Both of the opinion columns you posted seem to allege nefarious intent because classified information wasn't broadcast to the public during an attack and subsequent investigation. I'm not sure what your assertion is.
Wait, so if what the article says is true, for several months both FBI and DNC knew what they think is Russian intelligence are reading all their (DNC) mails, and then when Russians, after many months of having unfettered access with the full knowledge of FBI and DNC, finally publish their loot, they're all act surprised "ah, we were hacked!"? That sounds like astounding level of negligence from both FBI and DNC - effectively, DNC could be just CCing Kremlin on all their correspondence with the same result. And FBI knowing about a hack for months and doing nothing to stop it?
Who said they did nothing to stop it? If you would like there are plenty of reports about tactics used. Primarily, any initial entry into one government system they would use to snowball access to others, largely by spear-phishing attacks using government emails to gain higher level and wider access through legitimate accounts. By that time, it's a cat and mouse game.
I'm not sure about your anecdote regarding alleged surprise. The only surprise I really caught were the public reactions to the news.
OK, I admit, I took the optimistic route. The pessimistic one would be they knew for months, they tried for months to stop it, and they failed, and they didn't tell anyone about it. That sounds even worse to me.
> Primarily, any initial entry into one government system
I’m willing to believe it’s possible they failed. I recall talks by a former NSA director about the dire need for improved cybersecurity programs and it wasn’t well received at the time— in light of all the patriot act business
I mean, aside from the DNC's emails [2] [3] and gaining access to Arizona and Illinois voting records [1]. I'd personally put 1 to 4 odds against direct modification of voting numbers, given that voting machines are woefully insecure [4].
Voting machines are indeed woefully insecure - and has been for years - but accessing voter rolls doesn't do anything to it (but does a lot if you want to open a fake bank account or credit card, which is likely the motivation). Curiously, virtually nobody so seemingly concerned about voting security is advocating doing something about securing the actual machines or replacing them with more secure ones. Let alone taking more stringent measures on verifying the voter rolls, validating the voter's identity, etc. The argument immediately switches to "electoral fraud is insignificant and does not present enough threat to take measures that can lead to vote suppression". Which is fine, maybe the fraud is insignificant - but then probably the fraud done by hacking the machines - which is part of overall fraud, and probably one of the harder ways to pull it off - must be yet more insignificant? So is it a significant occurrence or not?
Depends on your degree of trust in the US and Russian governments.
Re: the DNC/RNC, even if they didn't hack anything, they did leak the information that they acquired - clearly to shape the political situation. Still reprehensible.
Note how the article says "voter registration rolls" but the headline says "voter systems", creating implication that these are systems that are used for actual vote, while maintaining plausible deniability in case they'd be called on it ("we didn't say voting systems, but voter systems!"). This is a pure journalistic malpractice, and it happens often enough to think it is done on purpose.
> they did leak the information that they acquired - clearly to shape the political situation. Still reprehensible.
This is not only legal, but has been done many times by all MSM outlets. Some got well-respected prizes for it. Some got movies made in their honor for it. May be still reprehensible, but certainly not something one usually gets indicted for.
Actually there's no evidence that they hacked into anything -- it's all BS hearsay and "trust us" from secret agencies and no evidence pudding.