So, right now, let's assume it was a Russian spy agency that hacked the DNC. They're sitting there, thinking, "wow, these FBI folks somehow figured out it was us.". Then after reading this paper, "hmm, that's not a whole lot of evidence, they must have some proof that they're hiding. They must have a mole in our office. Find him, now."
But who knows, maybe they are too busy spying on hundreds of millions of Regular Joes to watch out for all of the Russian attacks.
ex.https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/top-secret-snowden-docum...
This is an analysis report with information (including most significantly the IOCs in the accompanying files), some of which is previously released and some of which is newly declassified, for use in defending against and forensically identifying attacks by the threat groups identified.
No one is passing this off as evidence of anything.
1. Hackers drove a custom built tank that has Moscow factory markings.
2. Similar versions of the tank were used in other campaigns attributed to Russian intelligence.
3. Crew in the tank has been associated with Russian intelligence operations going back ten years.
4. The tank left from a building known to be associated with Russian intelligence hacking campaign.
Thus, the hackers probably take orders from Russian intelligence.
What about X-Agent? Seems like it would be harder to modify but I haven't looked into it.
>On top of that, it's entirely possible other completely unrelated attack is responsible for the leaks, but the malware used cleaned up after itself, leaving only the less sophisticated trail behind.
I like this point but it could be brought up in nearly all attributions.
Previous JARs have not attributed malicious cyber activity to specific
countries or threat actors. However, public attribution of these activities
to RIS is supported by technical indicators from the U.S. Intelligence
Community, DHS, FBI, the private sector, and other entities.
That's the point, its just another completely baseless, unsubstantiated accusation. This report contains nothing that suggests that the Russians were any more likely to be the source of the hack then countless other entities. The problem is that these baseless claims are being presented as evidence and being consumed uncritically as such. Take for example the headline in PcMag:
>Hacking Evidence in Hand, Obama Sanctions Russia
http://www.pcmag.com/news/350675/hacking-evidence-in-hand-ob...
Are you trying to live up to the username or using it ironically?
The accusation that people who find this credible are uncritical is unfounded and insulting. The question is not "would someone in a government agency lie for political reasons," it is "would this many people, in a bunch of different agencies that have a history of lying to and competing with and distrusting each other, all sign on to the same lie, publicly, even though it's almost certain to be disproven in a few months."
Meanwhile, here's the alternative theory:
1. Some Russian intelligence agency hacked the DNC's email servers
2. They left behind evidence
3. The FBI/NSA//DHS/etc found that evidence
4. They classified it and aren't going to put it in a press release
None of those are the least bit hard to believe, and they are collectively WAY easier to swallow than this hypothetical vast, high-level conspiracy to discredit Trump or whatever it's supposed to be for.
1. The DNC and their members are generally ignorant of good security policy and had an easily hacked system.
2. Some Russian intelligence agency hacked the DNC's email servers.
3. A bunch of other people/hackers/groups hacked the DNC's email servers, as it was "left out in the open", so to speak, and was a trivial target..
4. One group at least used trivial methods to do so and left behind evidence.
5. The FBI/NSA//DHS/etc found that evidence.
6. One of these hackers passed information to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has denied that it was Russians who did this.
7. The FBI/CIA claim that the Russians hacked the DNC servers.
8. The press and political opportunists jump to the conclusion that it was the Russians who released this information to Wikileaks.
9. The FBI/CIA classified what they found and aren't going to put it in a press release.
Whether someone else also hacked the DNC would be interesting to know, but it doesn't really impinge on the question of whether there is or is not a vast-but-also-ham-handed-and-kind-of-contradictory conspiracy pushing theory a.
Except that point 7 isn't at all controversial. EVERYONE hacks EVERYONE ELSE in cyber-espionage; even Canada was probably hacking the lame-ass security DNC email server, if only to fill a dossier. Remember that Clinton was set to be the next president of the United States; it is very much in Russia's (and anyone else's) best interest to know as much about her and her team as they can learn. It's the job of American spooks to prevent this, and they completely fucked it up.
Frankly, I find the suggestion that telling voters more about their candidate constitutes 'interference' to be repugnant; but assuming that we are going to engineer a scandal about this, we need to ask whether the Russians released that information to Wikileaks? All of the evidence (ie what Wikileaks says) says otherwise.
>Frankly, I find the suggestion that telling voters more about their candidate constitutes 'interference' to be repugnant
Really? By this argument, I take it you believe political candidates' email (or cough tax returns) should automatically be made public?
Much as I agree with transparency, I think we need to recognize that everyone--including political candidates--has some right to private communications.
> but assuming that we are going to engineer a scandal about this, we need to ask whether the Russians released that information to Wikileaks?
The publicly released circumstantial evidence about Russian backing of "Guccifer 2.0" is fairly convincing, I would say. But (contrary to your claim above) the media have not "jumped to the conclusion" that the Russians were the ones who released the leaked emails; the FBI claimed* Russia was not merely behind the attacks but behind the leaks.
You all can debate the merits of trusting intelligence agencies or not, but the situation you described--in which the IC only suggested Russia was behind some intrusions but not the leaks--is not in fact the world we live in.
* http://www.wsj.com/articles/top-russian-officials-shift-away...
No, they don't, unless you see the need for them to act against our interests without our knowleddge because markets or something, or see some sort of right for them to rule others.
What about non-email communication? Face-to-face conversations should all be public? Does this extend to classified briefings? Should, for example, discussions of "Olympic Games" have been public before it was executed?
It's like in Germany where they're up in arms against this and seem to have forgotten the revelation that the USA was tapping Merkel's phone...
How about the FBI/CIA/DHS/NSA don't like people who don't play by the accepted rules sticking their nose into their business, so they tell a little white lie to try to avoid that?
The three letter agencies have had plenty of people killed before, so "they'd never do that" isn't going to get you very far.
That's more believable than "Russia hacked the DNC and the FBI was honest about it"?
It's certainly not crazy to not trust these people. Deceit is their job.
It's been very difficult for me to wade through the muck on this one.
The reason this is unusual is because the intelligence agencies are being so matter-of-fact about this. They're not trying to convince anyone, like they did with Iraq's WMDs. They're not giving out pointed leaks and then officially denying them. They - meaning multiple agencies - are jut saying, "Yeah, it was Russia", as if it's a settled issue.
The conclusion I draw from this is that there must be very strong evidence. Could that evidence be forged? Sure! (Another reason why the "show me the evidence or I won't believe it!" people sound nutso - why would they think it wasn't forged?) But to believe it's forged we need at least a plausible theory as to who would forge it and why. Right now, I'm drawing a blank.
It's not their job to do the convincing, they leave that to CNN, MSNBC or FOX. They just give some superficial material to get the ball rolling. There was next to no in depth articulation as to how this was definitely Russia. They're still twiddling their thumbs and saying 'we're confident' it was them.
"The evidence there is not strong" https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4631568/clapper-wikileaks-con...
Also, you think it's a conspiracy theory that the DNC would attack Trump? So... you don't seriously think that the RNC's media allies attacked Clinton? That's, uhh, just not how it works.
The DNC has very good reasons to deflect this one. They funneled all the state-level money to Hillary and made their losses worse. They helped promote Trump and the other "pied piper" candidates in the media early on. Their token opponent, Sanders, got far more enthusiasm than Hillary and both candidates under-performed past ones, with Trump edging her out based on smaller losses and working the electoral college to his advantage--a failure reminiscent of how Obama beat Hillary by focusing on delegates. They have to pin the failure on someone else for their own survival. If the average voter saw the actual emails and realized just how much the DNC orchestrated just to shoot itself in the foot here, they'd demand their replacement.
You're being foolish if you trust a word the FBI says without solid evidence.
1) To delegitimize the President-elect 2) To foment war with Russia
I didn't vote for the guy but I don't think he's near so bad as his political opponents try to paint him. I'd like to at least give him a chance and to whatever degree he turns out to suck, I'll still blame the Clinton campaign for promoting controlled opposition 'pied pipers' rather than promoting a robust debate in the interest of the American people.
Wrt #2, I will certainly demand very strong evidence before yielding any resistance to that notion.
This is so, so insulting. There is no way a fair observer could read the comments here and conclude that the people who find Russia hacking the DNC credible do so because they have blind faith in Clapper or the FBI or anyone else.
Isn't that what you were more or less saying here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281736
The FBI has lied and will lie again, getting me to believe they lied about something is not hard, but they don't generally do it in big, obvious ways that are easy to disprove and involve a lot of co-conspirators and don't accomplish anything.
(Please remember what question we're trying to answer. It is not "Who hacked the DNC?". We are not in a position to know; hell, we don't even know there was a hack. It is also not "Is the FBI trustworthy?" Of course they're not. It is "Why are US intelligence agencies saying they have proof that Russia hacked the DNC?" The base hypothesis is "Because they do." The alternate hypothesis is what you're supplying.)
To quote you:
> No. I believe the official version
> What is the alternate hypothesis that's "marginally less likely"?
That Russia didn't hack the DNC. I think it's actually marginally more likely than that Russia didn't hack the DNC than that they did, but I was humoring you.
> "Why are US intelligence agencies saying they have proof that Russia hacked the DNC?" The base hypothesis is "Because they do." The alternate hypothesis is what you're supplying.
If these organizations are involved in questionable undertakings (it's their job, so I think we can agree the answer is yes), it's not much of a stretch of the imagination that they like to operate without supervision.
And yes, claiming that's all the evidence that exists is complete bullshit.
You've got access to all of his tax returns, and all the sealed details of his divorces, and all of his medical records, and all of his business records. You've got a whole squad of spies working for you, you can fabricate evidence, whatever you want. And this is a guy a guy who has outstanding loans from Russian banks in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and who has cheated on at least two of his wives. And this is what you go with? Accuse someone unrelated to him of hacking in to someone unrelated to him? That's your big plot? And you wait to do it until after the election? Via press release?
It's face saving through and through. And it makes a better story than "Trump beat us because we half-assed this election."
1. The Democrats ran a crap campaign based (in part) on racism and sexism. The probably would've lost by a wider margin to a ham sandwich than they did to Trump.
2. Russia probably is behind the DNC hacks and definitely tried to meddle in the election.
3. Russia definitely took hints on what would be useful from Trump and Trump probably actively collaborated with them.
Just because I think Russia meddled in the election doesn't mean that either domestic party ran a good campaign, or that Russia was ultimately able to sway the election.
The only question I want the intel community to weigh in on is the politically charged one they're avoiding: did Trump actively collaborate with a foreign power during the election?
That question is of pressing import (and disqualifies him from being president if he did). The rest of it is just details.
It has been couple weeks of non-stopped Russian blaming from the news. So far there's not much direct evidence beyond a unnamed CIA source. Now this lackbuster report and Obama expelling Russians happen on the same day. It really smacks an orchestrated political propaganda campaign.
Mind you I am not a blue dog Republican. I've voted 16 years straight for Democratic tickets including twice for Obama. Democratic Party has been a real disappointment this year, and Obama making this last partisan political act really tarnishes his legacy.
Clinton was the one saber rattling against Russia during the election, not Trump. So assuming your theory is Russia hacked the DNC, their motivations seem to be to avoid war, not escalate.
However, there is definitely a cultural war going on within Western civilization between cultural Marxists wanting a global, totalitarian state and libertarian civic nationalists wanting a decentralized, limited state.
Where Russia comes in, and what's really funny about all this, is that the "right" now finds itself aligned with former Soviet communists and the "left" finds itself aligned with the Islamic caliphate. Politics can make strange bedfellows indeed.
The Hackers drove a truck.
Russians drive trucks.
The Russians did the hacking.
While its insulting that our government would try to pass off this drivel as "evidence", I'm much more dismayed that so many of my fellow Americans will uncritically accept it as such.