President Barack Obama just sanctioned Russia and expelled their diplomats over the possibility Russia hacked the DNC, John Podesta, then recruited Julian Assange and Wikileaks to release those emails to throw a wet blanket on Hillary Cinton's campaign, costing her the election. Russia's goal? Tilt the election to Donald Trump, the more Russia friendly candidate and perhaps ultimately ensure Russia's global relevance. To corroborate Obama's actions, the FBI and DHS released a joint report detailing how malware similar to those used by the Russian FBS was found to have been used in infiltrating the DNC's servers.
One disclaimer I feel I should put out there is I am neither a malware expert, a Russian intelligence policy expert, nor a cyber security expert. I can only approach this based on what I have and will read on the subject. I personally lean towards Putin did have the agencies hack the DNC and Podesta, but I don't take it as far as some have (YouGov found half of Clinton voters think that Russia hacked voter tallies, which is not true), but I am not nearly certain enough to say anything more than "lean". Plus, I don't like the idea of "circumstantial" being tied to such a consequential accusation.
((NOTE: This topic presumes that there's not something out there the general public doesn't know that the US and US allied intelligence agencies do. For example, if the White House was tipped off by a Kremlin mole, they have a vested interest in keeping that secret for their mole's safety as well as to keep this alleged spy in cover. I don't think we can have a productive conversation or debate speculating about variables that may or may not exist, even if those could important pieces to the puzzle.))
So, things that I feel should be tackled:
How much certainty is there that Russia attacked the integrity of the 2016 Presidential Election?
Is what President Barack Obama done appropriate given what has been revealed to the general public so far?
What should be done about the calls that this is a Red Scare Hysteria?
Wasn't the hack traced back to accounts held by known Russian hackers? That doesn't prove it was Russian government behind the attack, but it was Russian.
Yes, threatconnect and crowd strike and more have both identified a number of signatures in APT28/29 (AKA Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear) and fingered them as who did this.
As for the Russian government, the actions of Sputnik/RT speak volumes. Particularly using wikileaks and getting Jill Stein to talk for them. It looks just like stuff Russia has being doing in Eastern Europe for years.
When Gary Mckinnon and other hacked into the Pentagon looking for evidence of UFOs and other relatively harmless stuff the relevant authorities in the UK and US were able to identify them fairly quickly and comprehensively as they were co-operating.
Russia and China are going to have exactly the same capabilities to find these people if they were inclined to do so. The fact that they haven't found them yet are blaming them on civilian hacktivists is speaking volumes, in that they are seeking plausible deniability in not directly saying they did it but not being able to find them and shut them down or present them for legal proceedings to be initiated.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
It’s very telling that the truth revealed by the hacks is speaking louder than the fact of the hack itself. That’s the public opinion touchstone, really. The crappy things that the DNC did are more important to people than how we found out. If they weren’t, then there’s no way that the US electorate finding out would have been of any sway on the election. People would just be upset that one of our political parties was hacked.
Think about it this way. Let’s say that a country like Ukraine is having an election being driven by a firmly entrenched political machine. A few ex-NSA/CIA/whatever type people in the US suspect that the entrenched politics don’t reflect the will of the people, and they hack servers to find out. They come upon something juicy and reveal it to the world, tipping the election.
How would we react to that as Americans? Would we consider that disruption of the political process of a sovereign state, or freedom fighting? I doubt that there would be a huge outcry for the government to track them down and bring them to court to make Ukraine happy.
What I think is also telling is your statistic above, that 50% of Hillary voters believe that Russia hacked the vote tallies. Just absurd that we still have media outlets that fail to report with any kind of temperance, and people are consistently misled into drawing the most extreme conclusion reflected by their side. I mean, they have to honestly believe that the US as run by the other party would do nothing, and not even ask for a recount if our vote tallies were tampered with. They have to honestly believe that the other side is so evil just for being part of the other side that they would look at something like that and shrug their shoulders.
And truth be told, the US has been meddling in the political process of other countries for decades, at every level short of vote tampering. The US is widely known to fund foreign candidates against other candidates that it doesn’t like. The US Green Berets have trained guerrillas against the wishes of the foreign states they came from. The freaking motto of the Special Forces is “free the oppressed”, and they have a very developed information operations branch that is different from NSA/CIA in that it’s authorized to train foreign nationals on those methods. The only thing to my knowledge that they haven’t done is directly tamper with voting, as everyone should be clear that Russia has not done either. So as the old adage goes, when you point a finger at someone, you’ve got four fingers pointing back at you.
As for the Russian government, the actions of Sputnik/RT speak volumes. Particularly using wikileaks and getting Jill Stein to talk for them. It looks just like stuff Russia has being doing in Eastern Europe for years.
I think I know what you're talking about with the Kremlin propping up political parties and both the political right and left* so long they could stir opposition to Kremlin's own political enemies. Is that what you are talking about?
One caveat I would like to point out is that when Jill Stein filed for recounts at the end of November, she was citing Russian hacking, so Russian influence may not be as tight on the US Greens or Dr. Stein as has been alleged, which in of itself can't last forever since the Russian oligarchy is the antithesis of "going Green." (Just ask the Russian Green Party living in exile!)
When Gary Mckinnon and other hacked into the Pentagon looking for evidence of UFOs and other relatively harmless stuff the relevant authorities in the UK and US were able to identify them fairly quickly and comprehensively as they were co-operating.
Russia and China are going to have exactly the same capabilities to find these people if they were inclined to do so. The fact that they haven't found them yet are blaming them on civilian hacktivists is speaking volumes, in that they are seeking plausible deniability in not directly saying they did it but not being able to find them and shut them down or present them for legal proceedings to be initiated.
Let's be clear on one thing. I have yet to find anything that would suggest that this was nothing short of a highly trained organization effort. I lean towards that organization being the Russian Government's cyber division, but there are concerns out there that this could be the left walking towards their own "There's no WMD's after all" moment, and these concerns are not just coming from the crazy political fringes.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
wrt: the comparison to Iraqi WMD, that wasn't the CIA saying Iraq had WMD. That was the White House themselves. They'd actually gotten the info from an Iranian agent, Ahmed Chalabi. They trusted the Iranians more than the CIA, just as Trump trusts the Russians more than the CIA.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
wrt: the comparison to Iraqi WMD, that wasn't the CIA saying Iraq had WMD. That was the White House themselves. They'd actually gotten the info from an Iranian agent, Ahmed Chalabi. They trusted the Iranians more than the CIA, just as Trump trusts the Russians more than the CIA.
And the CIA have even vindicated themselves on the whole Fidel Castro thing by finally taking him down through the classic "wait until he dies" approach. So their track record right now is actually looking pretty good.
Also, in all seriousness, with respect to what happened after the White House asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, there is essentially zero chance of us "regime-changing" Russia. And there wouldn't be even if we had a Russia hawk in office instead of a quasi-Manchurian candidate (Muscovite candidate?). Russia, after all, definitely has weapons of mass destruction, of the "obliterate New York City from halfway around the world" sort, and it has them precisely to discourage this sort of thing. So given that a war is a virtual impossibility, I'm not sure what Mockingbird is asking about exactly when he raises the question of an "Iraq WMD situation".
The problem? This is a lot more circumstantial than it sounds, so much so it's drawing comparisons to the allegations that Saddam Hussein held Weapons of Mass Destruction.
For starters, Russian malware does not necessitate the Kremlin necessarily used it. The comparison would be like that just because a Swiss Army Knife is a murder weapon, does not mean that the murderer is a Swede. (I read it online, but it seems a pretty self-standing statement though, so I'm not going to immediately hunt the link down). Second, stories that try to connect the Kremlin to the DNC hacks tend to fall apart. The Vermont Computer with the code? Blown out of proportion. The FBI report I posted in the opening? Has a disclaimer and this link only describes it as "moderately persuasive" and EDIT: Edward Snowden has provided two links to different experts that reflect critical responses that he himself did not write. Even Elvish Piper's thread about the Washington Post's investigation into Fake News linked to Russia? There's now a disclaimer at the start of the article about their primary source being challenged because it was. The Washington Post has been hit twice in less than two months for hyperbolic and inaccurate reporting on Russia. In fact, I've even now read that, essentially, Russia is the scapegoat so the political elites can train ordinary citizens to be a Pavlov Dog to keep Trump's legitimacy down by capitalizing and promoting Russian hysteria. (This last source is the most sketchy, and why I am creating this thread).
One disclaimer I feel I should put out there is I am neither a malware expert, a Russian intelligence policy expert, nor a cyber security expert. I can only approach this based on what I have and will read on the subject. I personally lean towards Putin did have the agencies hack the DNC and Podesta, but I don't take it as far as some have (YouGov found half of Clinton voters think that Russia hacked voter tallies, which is not true), but I am not nearly certain enough to say anything more than "lean". Plus, I don't like the idea of "circumstantial" being tied to such a consequential accusation.
((NOTE: This topic presumes that there's not something out there the general public doesn't know that the US and US allied intelligence agencies do. For example, if the White House was tipped off by a Kremlin mole, they have a vested interest in keeping that secret for their mole's safety as well as to keep this alleged spy in cover. I don't think we can have a productive conversation or debate speculating about variables that may or may not exist, even if those could important pieces to the puzzle.))
So, things that I feel should be tackled:
How much certainty is there that Russia attacked the integrity of the 2016 Presidential Election?
Is what President Barack Obama done appropriate given what has been revealed to the general public so far?
What should be done about the calls that this is a Red Scare Hysteria?
And other thoughts.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
As for the Russian government, the actions of Sputnik/RT speak volumes. Particularly using wikileaks and getting Jill Stein to talk for them. It looks just like stuff Russia has being doing in Eastern Europe for years.
Russia and China are going to have exactly the same capabilities to find these people if they were inclined to do so. The fact that they haven't found them yet are blaming them on civilian hacktivists is speaking volumes, in that they are seeking plausible deniability in not directly saying they did it but not being able to find them and shut them down or present them for legal proceedings to be initiated.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Think about it this way. Let’s say that a country like Ukraine is having an election being driven by a firmly entrenched political machine. A few ex-NSA/CIA/whatever type people in the US suspect that the entrenched politics don’t reflect the will of the people, and they hack servers to find out. They come upon something juicy and reveal it to the world, tipping the election.
How would we react to that as Americans? Would we consider that disruption of the political process of a sovereign state, or freedom fighting? I doubt that there would be a huge outcry for the government to track them down and bring them to court to make Ukraine happy.
What I think is also telling is your statistic above, that 50% of Hillary voters believe that Russia hacked the vote tallies. Just absurd that we still have media outlets that fail to report with any kind of temperance, and people are consistently misled into drawing the most extreme conclusion reflected by their side. I mean, they have to honestly believe that the US as run by the other party would do nothing, and not even ask for a recount if our vote tallies were tampered with. They have to honestly believe that the other side is so evil just for being part of the other side that they would look at something like that and shrug their shoulders.
And truth be told, the US has been meddling in the political process of other countries for decades, at every level short of vote tampering. The US is widely known to fund foreign candidates against other candidates that it doesn’t like. The US Green Berets have trained guerrillas against the wishes of the foreign states they came from. The freaking motto of the Special Forces is “free the oppressed”, and they have a very developed information operations branch that is different from NSA/CIA in that it’s authorized to train foreign nationals on those methods. The only thing to my knowledge that they haven’t done is directly tamper with voting, as everyone should be clear that Russia has not done either. So as the old adage goes, when you point a finger at someone, you’ve got four fingers pointing back at you.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
One caveat I would like to point out is that when Jill Stein filed for recounts at the end of November, she was citing Russian hacking, so Russian influence may not be as tight on the US Greens or Dr. Stein as has been alleged, which in of itself can't last forever since the Russian oligarchy is the antithesis of "going Green." (Just ask the Russian Green Party living in exile!)
Supposedly, the United States NSA already has the capability to even circumvent the need to ask foreign governments to look for these people because the massive surveillance system Edward Snowden exposed is actually effective at doing that. In the article, it also basically explains where the doubt is coming from, and looking to find something to back this, I found an article that muses that it's also possible the CIA may not have as a strong case as it claims.
Let's be clear on one thing. I have yet to find anything that would suggest that this was nothing short of a highly trained organization effort. I lean towards that organization being the Russian Government's cyber division, but there are concerns out there that this could be the left walking towards their own "There's no WMD's after all" moment, and these concerns are not just coming from the crazy political fringes.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
On phasing:
Also, in all seriousness, with respect to what happened after the White House asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, there is essentially zero chance of us "regime-changing" Russia. And there wouldn't be even if we had a Russia hawk in office instead of a quasi-Manchurian candidate (Muscovite candidate?). Russia, after all, definitely has weapons of mass destruction, of the "obliterate New York City from halfway around the world" sort, and it has them precisely to discourage this sort of thing. So given that a war is a virtual impossibility, I'm not sure what Mockingbird is asking about exactly when he raises the question of an "Iraq WMD situation".
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.