> Schneier said, "This kind of cyberattack targets the very core of our democratic process. " In this case, though, the attack targeted actors who prevented democratic process.

Parties choose their candidates. While it is democratic in the sense that people cast ballots; the process was never guaranteed to be a level playing field. Sanders was an outsider from the democratic party. The party has rules and systems to keep people like Sanders out. That is what super delegates are for. You and I may both have preferred Sanders, but we don't have a right to the DNC's private email.

As for the polls, in Canada we do a simple pencil and paper system that works extremely well. You might be able to get an extra vote or two here or there, but the process is essentially unbreakable.

The process was guaranteed to be a level playing field by the DNC charter (Article 5, Section 4):

In the conduct and management of the affairs and procedures of the Democratic National Committee, particularly as they apply to the preparation and conduct of the Presidential nomination process, the Chairperson shall exercise impartiality and evenhandedness as between the Presidential candidates and campaigns. The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process.

Is there any evidence that the bias of the DNC in this particular case is so uncommon as to be egregious? Candidates in both parties have cried foul that the process is 'rigged' (possibly with good reason) but only the Democrats are being accused of corruption.

I think it is always egregious, regardless of whether it happens all the time or not. For example, the USG is known to meddle with other countries elections. I don't think that's excusable. I assume the RNC played all kinds of tricks as well and that this is SOP for both parties. Wrong in every case.

We're talking about different meanings of the word "guaranteed". I'm talking about guaranteed in the sense that supports leaking private emails to the public by people outside the organisation (as opposed to an unbiased whistle blower). Article 5, Section 4 is the type of thing parties put in, but only as a way of making sure the backroom politicking doesn't become so egregious that it leaks into public view.

Again, I prefer Sanders, or even Johnson or Stein over Clinton; but with Trump on the other ticket this election is far too serious to let Russian fuck around with the other main side. We need to fall in line and support Clinton. Pulling the not-an-idiot vote three more ways between Sanders stay-at-homes, Johnson / Stein protest votes is going to lead to a disaster.

Paper votes makes a lot of sense, as it is possible to verify for non-experts.

I hate that he used the "Russians are coming" argument, but at the same time, he probably wouldn't have gotten even 1/4 of the attention if he just said "our voting machines aren't secure and anyone in the world, including our own government, could hack them."

He's playing on the Russian fear, which is what the Democratic party is really pushing right now (by the way, isn't this something the Republican party used to do - what's happening here?!). If this leads to a ban on electronic voting machines, then the methods may be excused by the outcome, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen, so this just ends up helping one party over another politically.

> He's playing on the Russian fear, which is what the Democratic party is really pushing right now (by the way, isn't this something the Republican party used to do - what's happening here?!).

During the USSR times, the project of Russia as a communist country was to be egalitarian and inclusive. It was a terrible place to live, but in the most abstract sense, lefties could identify with that goal, while righties saw it as fundamentally going against the social order. Thus the threat of "Russians" became a gloss for helping the poor, taxing the wealthy, minority rights, women's rights, etc.

Now that Russia is an oligarchy, the basic social structure appeals to righties, and has become a boogeyman to lefties. "Russians" are now a gloss for gangster/crony capitalism, oligarchs, etc.

Your argument might make sense in the abstract, but I think Bruce has a uniquely credible position with which to comment on the relative dangers posed by Russian hacking specifically.

>Were we exposed to fictitious narratives intended to advance pro-Russian agendas? Was truth revealed, without manipulation of content? It seems to be the latter.

Why assume the " narratives intended to advance pro-Russian agendas" need to be fictitious in order to be effective? You're presenting a false dichotomy that either the Democrats are corrupt, or Russia had nothing to do with the hacks. It can be the case that Russia exposed Democratic party corruption in order to advance their own agenda.

Just releasing a large number of hacked emails at the right/wrong time, even if they contained absolutely nothing of note could affect the candidate negatively if it distracts from their planned talking points and supports others.

Some might say that's exactly what happened.

Yeah. This is another moral question along the Snowden/Manning lines.

Here's the thing: breaking into somebody's house is illegal. If you do it, you're a criminal and should face some kind of legal proceeding.

If you break into their house and leave some personal items along the curb, like nude photographs? I'm probably going to gawk at them as I drive by. I don't like the fact that I do it, but I am human. You are still a criminal, and as long as I don't start sharing your personal items, I'm not. I'm just a schmuck.

If, however, you leave evidence of moral or criminal wrongdoing out on the curb for everybody to see? Then the community has an obligation to take action both against the robber and the person who's house was broken into. Simply because you were robbed doesn't mean that you get out of consequences for your actions once they become public.

I'm tempted to view the ramifications of the leaked emails as a purely internal DNC affair. Having said that, I am reading partisan attacks that say there are illegal activities in there. If so? Well, somebody needs to face some kind of legal proceeding. And somebody else is still a robber.

Whatever our views, it's important to come up with standards that apply no matter who's "side" you're on.

If you break into someone's house and find evidence of a murder or sexual assault, should you reveal those details? I would say yes, the crime of breaking and entering (and theft of the evidence) is still a crime, but a smaller one in the grand scheme of things. I would say both parties should be charged.

It's not so clear cut though; if I break into your house and find a few joints should that be treated the same way? I suppose it boils down to where on the continuum of severity you place corruption of the democratic process.

Encouraging someone to break into private property looking for evidence would still be a crime, IMO.

Note that you are answering a different question. I approached this issue framed as "what should society do?". My answers were about whether criminal proceedings should occur. How should the rest of us react when we see something like this?

Your question is of a moral nature: what should I do if I break in your house and find out that you are abusing your kids?

This is why they write fiction :) Not so easy to figure out, and it could easily vary by individual and circumstance.

As to advocating for people to become robbers, would I advocate for another Snowden to appear? I think that's impossible for me to answer without answering your moral question, without knowing what sorts of things would be revealed by the crime. Whether I advocated or not, though, it'd still be a crime. Not sure if my advocacy is a crime. If so, then I'm a criminal and the law is an ass.

My comment wasn't so much a direct response to the points you raised, and I wasn't disagreeing, the things I discussed were ideas which were inspired by your comment.

I hadn't considered whether I would advocate for another Snowden, but assuming being 'another Snowden' implies exposing corruption I would have to say that I would. I personally think that corruption in any form is one of the things holding us back as a species. See Africa for a wealth of examples.

"If you break into their house and leave some personal items along the curb, like nude photographs? I'm probably going to gawk at them as I drive by. I don't like the fact that I do it, but I am human. You are still a criminal, and as long as I don't start sharing your personal items, I'm not. I'm just a schmuck."

What you've just unknowingly (I hope) done is encouraged continuously violating people's privacy, property, and physical health using powers of state just in case something is found. Given most are innocent enough, that means innocent people will be hurt constantly to find some extra guilty ones. That's ridiculous from a moral perspective.

It also assumes the cops are all good: an assumption that's countered by existence of Bill of Rights itself. Not to mention steady stream of corruption cases, misrepresented evidence, lying to get fake confessions, and so on. Definitely not the kind of people that need any "right to ignore rights" if that should ever exist. Their incentive is to lock people up, not keep them free. So, the system should give us protection against that to force them to do it only when they have strong justification.

> Then the community has an obligation to take action both against the robber and the person who's house was broken into.

No. This is exactly what's wrong with parallel construction and why any evidence like this should always be treated like it simply does not exist.

The only times when you should be able to break that rule is if there is overwhelming social advantage to breaking it. And I'm not sure the case posted here is one of those.

I don't think so. In my response, if somebody used parallel construction? They'd be guilty of a crime. This is what we want, right?

No, it would be akin to anonymous tips leading to miraculous discoveries. After all, if the penalty would be to only be slapped on the wrist for the 'lesser' crime then that would up-end the whole system in place for evidence gathering, which is supposed to be lawful at all times.

Parallel construction is sneaky in that it allows otherwise in-admissible evidence into a case or allows one to jump-start a case that would otherwise not have existed in the first place.

Don't we already allow anonymous tips? Surely you're not saying we should disallow anonymous tips about crime, right?

I apologize. You must be making some point that I'm missing. If somebody breaks into your house, they are guilty of a crime. Period.

I didn't say anything about "slaps on the wrist" For all I care, you can make discovering a crime while breaking into the house the same as being complicit in the crime.

Along this entire subthread, there seems to be several topics conflated. Punishment is a separate matter from culpability, as is the state breaking the law during a criminal investigation, which you seem to be focusing on by bringing up parallel construction. The only thing I am addressing is how society should treat the discovery of random bits of information put into the public domain by thieves. That's it. Not how criminal investigations should be conducted, not the relative punishment for various crimes, not how a robber's personal morals should affect his decisions, and not whether it's okay to publish such information once it is made public.

These are all great topics. I'm just not talking about them.

"Don't we already allow anonymous tips? "

We allow anonymous tips that can get police's attention on something. Our rights then apply to restrict their behavior to what's sensible. Parallel construction is them violating our rights, producing (forging?) evidence, lying about the methods that produced it, then faking/finding a new route to convict us, and then we're convicted on weight of that and/or secret evidence. This poses extra risk due to (a) damage from parallel construction activities themselves, (b) ability to target dissenting/unpopular groups as FBI has long history of doing with permissive powers, and (c) inability to challenge the quality or effectiveness of their selection & evidence gathering process vs more open processes.

" The only thing I am addressing is how society should treat the discovery of random bits of information put into the public domain by thieves."

What's you've done is force the situation to be an extremely narrow case that doesn't represent how parallel construction is used at all. It's normally LEO's focusing on specific groups with surveillance, subversion, and informants. What they focus on vs what harms society most has a disconnect that reveals more political than protective reasons. One of reasons we have accountability measures in the first place. Analysis stemming from thieves breaking into a house & dumping evidence is a very, uncommon case.

Let's look at it anyway. Regular process usually involves searches that you would know about so you can make sure nobody plants evidence. Thief breaks into your house, leaves child porn there, delivers anonymous tip to authorities that you possess child porn, they search you, they find it, and you're convicted. Still trust public safety via thieves method?

Alternatively, a politician wants to be insanely powerful. All he has is parallel construction, police authority, and some surveillance tech. Starts using it selectively on key members of Congress, judges, media people, and so on. Finds dirt on them, but doesn't act on it: extorts them for appropriations, expanded legal powers, hushing on bad stories, and so on. Might be able to pull this stuff off for a long time with untold damage. Wait, why speculate: I'm talking about how J Edgar Hoover amassed power for him and his FBI. Process could be repeating with NSA's surveillance power & Congress constantly ignoring their corruption but we won't know because all of that is secret. ;)

Shifting power to executive branch for secret accusations against people with less and less protections only results in predatory behavior. Both U.S. and foreign history are pretty clear that this is what usually happens. So, it shouldn't be allowed. Our prior system worked well enough. Too well given number of wrongful convictions and false confessions. Reforming it is a better idea.

His point is that there are actors trying to influence the process by compromising technology, details of the DNC incident aside. In and of itself that is a very concerning threat to have and in general we have to take that into consideration when evaluating the role of technology in the election cycle, even if this time the hack seemingly had net positive benefit to the citizens. Next time we may not be so lucky.

As he pointed out, Schneier has been beating this drum for years. Computer security is not a high enough priority in politics, and with what we know is possible and see happening we can't assume elections will be free of tampering by default.

Not at all really. The leaks revealed the frustrations, biases, egos and banality of functionaries in a big political party.

There was no scandal -- everyone knew, including Sanders, that the party didn't like him or his candidacy. You can be sure that the RNC and associated actors had similar communications about Trump and Cruz.

What the leaks did is perpetuate the circus atmosphere of this election cycle. The longer and more absurd that atmosphere gets, the better for Trump. Trump is great for Putin, as Putin no doubt sees him as easier to manipulate for a variety of reasons.

If we care about foreign influence, shouldn't we be concerned about all the foreign money the Clinton's have taken?

Millions to their foundation (just while she was SoS):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/foreign-governments-...

Millions in speaking fees outside the US (just while she was Sos): http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bill-doubled-speaking-fees...

And it's doubly-ironic how much the left suddenly cares about Email security after getting let off by FBI.

The subject of this thread is the vulnerability of the networks and IT infrastructure involved with our democratic process, but fair enough.

We should be concerned about all the foreign money the Clintons have taken, and all the foreign money Trump has taken. We should be concerned about foreign influence in our elections in general, regardless of which party it benefits.

actually, if you read the article and the post, the subject is about foreign influence in elections, so my comment is on point.

I did read the article. Bruce Schneier didn't mention financial influence or the Clinton Foundataion anywhere. His entire post is, as would be expected, focused on network security, hacking and the vulnerability of our infrastructure.

Given that your comment exclusively refers to Clinton, when it could just as well apply to Trump or any number of candidates in either party and still be relevant, it appears your purpose was to polarize the topic for the sake of pushing your political bias. I agree with your comment in the general case, but derailing the thread into a discussion of how corrupt Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are is not on topic.

Actually, I didn't say financial influence, I said foreign influence and the article refers back to foreign influences in multiple places, just one example below:

If foreign governments learn that they can influence our elections with impunity, this opens the door for future manipulations, both document thefts and dumps like this one that we see and more subtle manipulations that we don't see.

I'm not derailing a thread if I'm reminding the readers that much of the foreign influence we are threatened by comes about through the complicity / corruption of domestic political actors.

Note that it's also very relevant to comment I replied to. Not being argumentative (or don't mean to be.) I'll admit when I'm wrong, but I feel this comment was relevant to the original comment in the thread and article and these are my reasons why.

In fact, I probably should have brought up another threat to fair elections, which is the lack of any voter ID requirement. Also very partisan, but essential for security.

"There's a strong moral argument in favor of the DNC leaks: the American people ought to know that its political process was corrupted by powerful actors within its own institutions."

Actually, the moral argument would be in favor of both DNC and RNC leaks. Selectively leaking a ton of dirt on one dirty party but not the other is not aiding democracy. Instead, it gives one the moral, high ground immediately. That one might be accused of facilitating the leak but many parties available to scapegoat in day & age where hacks and leaks happen all the time. So, this could be a setback for U.S. "democracy."

The thing is about the leaks, is that there's isn't anything there that anyone paying attention didn't already know. Of course DWS was putting the thumb on the scales for Hillary, who schedules something you want people to see on a Saturday night? [0]

As far as "corrupted" and "preventing" democratic process where's the evidence? Seriously. What votes were not counted?Where's the voter fraud? I'll tell you. Nowhere. It didn't happen. As Bernie Sanders's former press secretary, Symone Sanders, said, "We weren't cheated. We lost."[1]

Look, we know what a stolen election looks like. This ain't it. There's no reason to be an election truther.

[0] http://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2016-debate-schedu... [1] http://gawker.com/former-sanders-spokeswoman-we-lost-1784282...

"Putting the thumb on the scales" is itself a violation of the DNC's own charter, under which they are obligated to treat every Democratic candidate for president with impartiality and evenhandedness. There was a massive amount of coordination with the Hillary campaign, anti-Bernie stories were crafted and distributed from inside the DNC, and planting audience questions designed to undermine him was floated as an idea (even if it was never acted upon, that's an egregious misuse of DNC resources and an egregious breach of the charter). You don't have to hack a voting machine to "corrupt" the democratic process, you just have to violate the terms of your own party's charter.

I also wonder why you think the fact that DWS scheduled debates for low-visibility nights in order to help Hillary is so "obvious". I mean, maybe to us, but a few months ago bringing that up would get you labeled as a conspiracy theorist. It probably would even now.

And just one last thing -- on Symone Sanders. What else is she going to say? That they got cheated? She was the press secretary. If she wants any kind of future in politics she's going to take a graceful L.

I'm not saying that DWS and the rest weren't biased. They were. I'm saying that it didn't matter, because of both the strengths and weaknesses of candidates' campaigns, and the fact that biases were pretty minor league.

The reason why I said the Saturday debates were obvious, because they were reported that way at the time.[0] They were opposite NFL playoff games for crying out loud.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/19/ho...

I think you're right that people paying attention already knew. But there were denials from DWS that she was being unbiased. The same thing happened with the Snowden leaks. Most paying attention knew, but it was still upsetting when the proof came out.

Concerning election fraud, there are separate reports on that. For example the one from Election Justice USA http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/29/1554022/-Election-Ju...

You seem to equate "democratic process" with having a properly counted vote. There were elections with proper votes in East Germany, there just never was any actual choice in who you could vote for.

What's your point? I ask, because we were talking about a competitive two person race, where the non-establishment candidate won several contests, and had a major role in shaping the party platform and changing the narrative of the election. Are you saying that was all a grand charade?

The sheer banality of the "sabotage" found in the emails is honestly pretty good proof to me that there isn't anything truly horrible to be found- if there was, Sanders' folks would be trumpeting it, not "Sanders doesn't understand Democratic politics".

Yeah. My favorite of the truther conspiracies is that the DNC somehow called MSNBC up on the phone and had them kill a live segment. "Pull" means "get a copy" in this context.

It's as bad calling a cisco wifi repeaters a "white noise device".

I agree that folks are latching onto any "proof" they can find even when it's not true. I don't know what those devices were, but there are white noise devices that look like that. Also, it's not unheard of for these devices to be used by Clinton. Take a listen to these before/after videos. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-static-n...

You comment sounds a lot like the reaction to Snowden. There is a difference between allegations and evidence. I hope you can understand that difference.

By the way, controlling the media is a form of corruption.

There's a difference between mountains and molehills. I hope you can understand that difference.

By the way, controlling the media has been intrinsic to politics since drum signals.

Funny that the left all of a sudden cares about security in our elections.

Try to implement the most basic security that is common even in poor foreign countries, such as an ID requirement and the left is up in arms.

The truth is, the left doesn't care about election security, it just cares about the left.

What left? DNC is to the left of GOP, at best, but not left in any real sense.

Well, I would agree with you if the DNC leaks were accompanied by equivalent GOP leaks. Personally, I didn't find the DNC leaks that damning to be honest - I don't think the same standards of impartiality that you need for the general election need to be applied to how parties select their candidates. However if other people do find them damning it is information they should have. The rub is that I would be very surprised if there weren't similarly shenanigans from the GOP side, and if that's the case then if you let foreign actors select what gets leaked that's giving them a lot of power...

It wasn't just the open (amongst themselves) desire to keep Bernie out that was disturbing. The hypocrisy of the racist and homophobic comments from the people who are supposedly their champions is as smelly and toxic as creosote.

If you leak tens of thousands of emails by hundreds of people that the senders expected to remain private you are pretty much guaranteed to find some that you can read as racist, sexist, homophobic, or whatever you want.

In an ideal world we'd have leaks of every group involved in the election: DNC, GOP, Hillary campaign, Bernie campaign, Trump campaign, Trump's tax records, Clinton foundation donor list, etc. However, having a subset, which was selected by some actor with ulterior motives, leaked is IMHO strictly worse than no leaks at all.