It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government (or the American people). It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3 of the indictment [1]) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90).
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a]
[a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...
At the same time, some Russian activities seem to have risen to the level of espionage. According to the article, Russian agents traveled around the US, posing as Americans, gathering information. The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies.
Making a big deal over that stuff is hypocritical given US actions abroad over the past hundred years, but that's a separate issue. Maybe the US shouldn't be interfering in the elections of other countries, but every country probably has rules like these: https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ and every country seeks to minimize foreign influence on internal politics.
I remember the one after the election in NYC that was supposedly set up by BLM against Trump, but turned out to be organized by Russians on Facebook
How is it a "separate issue"? It seems to me the entirety of the issue. If you park in front of my house every day for a hundred years and block my driveway, you have forfeited the right to cry foul when I park in front of your house and block your driveway. By your actions (which are far, far more important than hollow rhetoric) you have declared that this behavior is completely legitimate. Your habitual and repeated engagement in the proscribed behavior has precluded you from credibly complaining about said behavior. Those who can't wrap their minds around the concept of moral authority and reciprocation simply cry, "whataboutism". Spreading foreign propaganda and influencing foreign elections (both kinetically via invasions and subversively via NGOs, funding and other methods) is not only "something we do" - its been the main thrust of our foreign policy for over a century. This is especially important in this case, because not only is this true as a general principle, but specifically as regards Russia. Our interference with Russian elections (actual interference, not a few twitter posts) is substantial and has been well-documented.
>Last winter Yeltsin's approval ratings were in the single digits. There are many reasons for his change in fortune, but a crucial one has remained a secret. For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's campaign.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,136204,...
I grew up in Russia in the 90s, and I witnessed the effects of US interference first hand. People literally starved to death in Russia after US gutted it.
Meanwhile, US continues to fuck over countries all over the world and having a good laugh about it on TV https://twitter.com/dcentralized/status/964900521793466374
No, they starved after the Soviet Union destroyed the economy by choosing to engage in a geopolitical competition—in large extent, a military spending competition—with the far more developed West, with predictable effects on the economy (and eventually the regime, but getting rid of that doesn't magically undo the damage.)
Any US election interference afterward is pretty much irrelevant to the outcome you describe, though it's a convenient way for, say, people who had been neck deep in the old regime to point the blame elsewhere (which itself is a good reason not to have done it, but no one ever adequately considers blowback when they do stuff like this.)
There has always been Russian espionage. Not only that - there has been Russian (or Soviet, same difference) agents in Manhattan project, high positions in State Department (see Alger Hiss) and so on. Recent kerfuffle has nothing on that. Russia sees itself as a geopolitical foe of the US, of course they are spying on the US. In fact, US spied on Germany, Britain and Israel (and Israel spied back on US as we know, others probably too but were not caught) - and those are close allies! Of course Russians would do the same. It's not something new that "have risen" recently.
> The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies.
So? US and US-related organizations funded and organized political and quasi-political activities in many countries. So do many other countries - EU finances a wide variety of NGOs that do all kinds of political campaigns, so does the US. All this fainting about "oh, Russians dare to have opinion about US politics and tell us about it using Facebook! Oh horrors! Our democracy is dead!" just sounds bizarre. Yeah, we live in a global world, Russians can have opinion about US politics, and Americans can have opinion about Russian politics, and both can publish real opinions or any crap they like on Facebook. Making a conspiracy of the century out of it is insane.
To quote the opening paragraph: US law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. US law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General. And US law requires certain foreign nationals seeking entry to the United States to obtain a visa by providing truthful and accurate information to the government.
Legally, Russians can have an opinion about American politics. But they can't pay for ads and rallies and other political oriented activity.
Obviously there's realpolitik regarding these type of laws, and obviously the US has been the most perfect actor in the past either. In the real world, everyone does a little propaganda, as you say. But in the real world as well, sometimes the propaganda is "pushed too far" for a government's liking. It is pretty clear that Russia's propaganda "pushed too far" for the US government's liking. So, the US government has responded.
All in a day of geopolitics, I suppose. But calling it "oh, Russians dare to have an opinion!" is glossing it over. Most countries don't like it when foreign nationals mess a bit with their political internals. It seems like some of the comments here are bordering on "how dare the US intelligence agencies have an opinion on the Russian interference!", which seems naive to me.
What's concerning is when the President of the United States himself seems to be speaking and acting out against his own government's counterintelligence investigations and in favor of his own country's geopolitical adversaries.
Reality: Don Trump Jr. met with Russian agents in Trump Tower to negotiate receiving hacking assistance.
A few days later, Trump Sr. delivered his famous "Russia if you're listening ... [deliver what was discussed in that meeting] ... you'll be rewarded" line.
Reality: Don Trump Jr. met with Russian agent, who inexplicably got entry visa she shouldn't be getting by direct involvement of Obama State Department, and who falsely promised to provide him some dirt on Clinton, in Trump Tower, and the agent in fact attempted to lobby him to remove Magnitsky Act sanctions. As soon as the ruse became apparent, Trump Jr. left.
FTFY.
The information that Veselnitskaya pretended to have is the same information Mueller is talking about now - about foreign financing of US electoral campaign, which everybody agrees now would be a crime, and certainly something one would want to hear about. But there was no information, it was a lie.
Note that by all reports DNC hacking happened as early as 2015. Podesta emails were hacked in March 2016. Trump Jr. met Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016, when all the hacking was already done. Unless Russians also mastered time travel, they couldn't really negotiate anything, as everything has already happened.
> Russia if you're listening ... [deliver what was discussed in that meeting] ... you'll be rewarded" line.
Fascinating. The full line is:
'Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,' Trump said. 'I think you'll be rewarded mightily by our press!'
You dropped the "by our press" part, because it didn't fit your narrative, and hoped I wouldn't notice? Or you genuinely didn't know what the full quote was?
And of course 30000 emails are the ones Clinton unlawfully concealed and then deleted from her records, which were supposed to be preserved, not the ones that were stolen from DNC or Podesta - which by then weren't published yet and Trump had no idea about.
Not to mention this was obviously a sarcastic joke.
But if that is what your "collusion" is, this is what mightiest security apparatus on a planet is busying itself for two years now - I think Trump is criticizing them way, way to mildly to reveal all the depth of the idiocy of this.
On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Rob Goldstone wrote:
> Good morning
> Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
> The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
> This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.
> What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?
> I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.
> Best
> Rob Goldstone
On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:53, Donald Trump Jr. wrote:
> Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?
> Best,
> Don
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/11/us/politics/d...
There are no "sources present in the meeting" who are not themselves the subject of the investigation. Their claims as to what transpired are simply not trustworthy.
*With the exception the NSA, which declined to say anything.
This topic is extensively discussed in other threads, but what it has to do with the meeting in question?
> There are no "sources present in the meeting" who are not themselves the subject of the investigation.
Depends on what you call "subject". If you mean that they spoke to that person, that probably is not true for all Russian participants and Goldstone. If you mean those who Muller team would like to talk to, that's probably all of them, which is not surprising - it's the best way to catch somebody on a lie or omission (which is a federal crime, for which they already indicted two people - instant win). If you mean those Muller would especially love to indict in something, that's probably true for Kushner, Manafort and Trump Jr. If you mean somebody Muller can actually get something on - that's only Manafort, and for things having nothing to do with Trump and that happened when Trump didn't even know Manafort existed.
But basically you are implying nothing people present at the meeting say about what happened there is to be believed. But we're still talking about it, so presumably we should believe people that actually hasn't been there to tell us what happened there, and disbelieve people that actually been there when they say that's not what happened. All this without any actual evidence. Doesn't seem like a good idea.
I am curious if you believe this is OK
> “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump”
Sounds like something one should report to law enforcement.
Please list some examples of other US politicians accepting election assistance from foreign governments.
Barack Obama: famously promised to Medvedev to be more flexible after the election, in exchange for Russian not pressing on the missile defense issue when it could hurt Obama's position.
Hillary Clinton: accepted money donations from foreign politicians with US interests many times. The fact that Clinton Foundation and Clinton Campaign were big buddies is an open secret by now. Though of course that happened not only connected to elections, so attributing it specifically to elections would probably be very limiting to the scope.
I would also bring Steele dossier here, but the involvement of specifically foreign government here is unproven - while I'd give more than even chance that many of the allegations there were created by Russian intelligence sources, it may also be a regular "our man in Havana" type affair, so it's not entirely sure.
But I don't see why it specifically must be the government. If it's OK to accept dirt on your opponent (let's limit ourselves to dirt that is true and exclude fraud for now), then why is it not OK to accept it from a foreigner? It doesn't become less true because foreigner touched it. And if it's ok to accept it from a random foreigner, why it's not OK to accept it from a foreigner which is paid by foreign government?
What seems to be less OK is to solicit it in an explicit quid-pro-quo arrangement, either monetary or otherwise. Of which, in Trump's case, there's no indication (though the first example is a classic specimen).
While the investigation is not complete, already one Trump campaign member has plead guilty with his specific statement of the offense attached to the plea being all about collusion with the Russians.
Collusion is no longer in dispute, only the details and extent.
Right, so I’m not sure why you’re suggesting we should just sit here and do nothing about it.
You realize you're on a site named "Hacker News", using the term to refer to influence operations, right?
> If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.
And this is exactly what classic Soviet/Russian propaganda wants you to conclude: "So in practice I guess the 'Democracy' system is no better than the Soviet Communist/Putinist system after all."
But guess what, the person that came up with the anti-vaxxer BS just wanted more money, and fuck whoever dies because of it. It's not an issue with lack of education.
BS is easier to produce than it is to refute. That's the fundamental problem
All democracies are subject to propaganda (be either external OR internal)
> were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population
Both parties are responsible for that, (though I'd say R makes it worse usually) but even then, populations love to shoot themselves in the foot
I don't think we really have any historical basis to make that claim since there was never such a tool for spreading global misinformation as the internet before. Maybe democracies won't be able to take it? Maybe they can, who knows. (I am somewhat optimistic though since the radical election results in the west can plausibly be explained even without foreign meddling.)
> “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.
> Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”
> Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house...
Then you need to have some sort of standards for how that is conducted or how truth is established. If people are fed a constant barrage of lies of lise then some portion of them will believe in those, and history furnishes us with numerous examples of foolish collective behavior when a sufficient portion of the population becomes enamoured of a bad idea.
A friend of mine observed last year that it's easier to weaponize fiction than to monetize truth in a market economy, because the truth includes things that many people don't want to hear.
But we can't really know that without tracking down all of their activity.
I abhor Trump, but he had plenty of organic and authentic support here in America. I don't think we'll ever find a smoking gun that says "Trump wouldn't have been president or won the primary if it weren't for this one Russian effort" (but stranger things have happened).
It would be weird if they had supported Hillary in any significant way before the election.
That being said, if Russia is able to interfere with voter registration, voting equipment, or state election boards, that is a very different problem which needs to be addressed aggressively.
Thought exercise: if Mueller cleared Trump of any wrongdoing today, do you think people would be waking up tomorrow with as much fervor to go after these Russians? Do you think people would not suddenly be searching for reasons to call into question the integrity of this investigation at that point, despite holding it up as of utmost importance to our democracy up to now? It seems obvious that public interest in these Russian hijinx would plummet if they were no longer potentially useful vectors towards achieving political goals.
My point is we shouldn't worry about this, because once the potential political implications of this investigation have been resolved, people will stop pressing our institutions to make radical changes to the way we live and work in order to prevent such interference. The reason Facebook is doing an overhaul, the reason big tech companies are speaking to Congress about this, etc, are because people are freaking out about it, and I think it's fair to say "this is a dangerous path we are going down" as the OP does. But if you consider the root cause for the sudden wave of public interest about this and the demand from the public to take action, and realize it's ephemeral and not a systemic crisis that will not go away until the issue being pressed is resolved, it's easier to sleep at night.
There have been countless issues in American public discourse that suddenly become important due to a major emotional trauma felt by the populace, reactions to which, if played out indefinitely, could be damaging. This is not one of the instances, in my view, where urgency and fervor will remain for a long period.
For example, the most likely outcome I believe is that it will turn out that we will get lots of indictments and new information about nefarious acts on the part of Russians, but people who are hoping that there will be a wave of indictments against the current administration are going to be severely disappointed. Once that becomes clear, I expect the focus to shift somewhere else that could bear fruit towards ending the current administration via legal proceedings, or peter out. We have already seen this happen in bursts when it became reasonable to discuss that there were obstructions of justice -- suddenly Russian interference was no longer the focus of headlines.
We have already seen someone within his administration get indicted (Flynn). Then we saw that person agree to a plea deal. Not sure what defines a "wave", but it's reasonable to think that Flynn was offered a plea deal in exchange for providing evidence on someone higher up than himself. Now, we have reports that Gates is locking in a plea deal (https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/politics/rick-gates-plea-deal...), we don't know what/who he is trading for the deal.
==suddenly Russian interference was no longer the focus of headlines.==
Here you are focusing on what the media reports instead of what the investigation has shown us. The investigation has now yielded 3 plea deals (one more being negotiated) and almost 20 indictments. These investigations aren't public (until indictments) and don't move at the media's preferred speed. Instead, they focus on things we can see and hear like Trump (and Nunes) actively obstructing justice.
What we have had instead are indictments against campaign members for either process crimes (like lying to the FBI) or crimes committed well before the Trump campaign even existed (Manafort's money laundering.) And now we have indictments for Russians doing the things we already knew they were doing -- trying to cause chaos in the election. You can speculate all day long about the implications of plea deals and what they mean but it's all speculative and in general, if it's assuming some more nefarious scheme that suits a particular political agenda, in my view wishful thinking.
It's a nice rhetorical trick by the media to say "former Trump campaign members have been indicted" to try to instill the narrative that actual crimes were committed by the Trump campaign towards influencing the election through coordination with Russians, but this rhetorical trick is in the same category as the "hacking the election" one cited by the OP -- deliberate framing to re-enforce a narrative that up to this point is still unproven.
Why would Flynn lie to the FBI about this if it was innocuous? Certainly, he knows the consequences. You would like us to assume a 4-star General lied to the FBI about communicating with a high-ranking Russian official, because reasons. The rest of us are combining this with information on Kushner trying to set up a Russian back-channel, Sessions lying about contacts with Kislyak, Manafort offering Deripaska campaign briefings, Trump literally asking the Russians to hack for him, Don Jr. meeting in Trump Tower, etc.
People are speculating because the Mueller investigation is not leaking any information. The flip side is people acting like he has "nothing", meanwhile surprise indictments are flying and people are cutting deals.
==And now we have indictments for Russians doing the things we already knew they were doing==
So, yesterday this "assumption" was valid, but any other assumptions based on the information we have are just wishful thinking. Logical pretzel.
In short: people who are fantasizing about their political enemies going to jail should expect to be disappointed, and as I said, I expect this chapter in American history orbiting paranoia about Russian bots posting spam on Facebook to generally be lost and forgotten within an election cycle.
A well-educated population capable of critical thinking is a threat to a ruling class that aims to take as much as they can from the world while pawning off all of society's problems on whatever boogeyman they see fit.
The campaign was not limited to propaganda, it included (that has been identified so far) hacking voter records in a majority of states and at least attempting to alter them in some.
It was absolutely both hacking and attempting to interfere with the election.
Unfortunately this is as obsolete as medieval ideas of chivalry and trial by combat in the age of nuclear weapons and poison gas.
In a two-party democracy, there might be some stable equilibrium where the parties agree not to wreck civic trust and institutions because they have to live there. This won't survive a third party coming in and releasing the informational equivalent of toxic gas, because they don't care if it makes peaceful democratic government impossible.
EDIT: voter roll != voter systems... edited so I don't spread FUD. Don't want to distract from the main point. The success of Russia's efforts may be only a symptom of the problems in the US - you still have to treat the symptoms.
No they did not. They did get access to voter rolls in one (or maybe two? it's unclear) case, but that's it. Voter rolls and voting systems are not the same thing.
> but the most logical conclusion is that they did
No it is not. Most logical conclusion is that reading the data is much easier than changing it, and thus it is more likely that they gained just read access than that they gained both read and write access. Even if they did, changing voter rolls would not give them much, unless they somehow managed to also convince hundreds of people, otherwise ineligible to vote, to actually show up in person and vote using fake voter records (which would be an excellent case for voter ID if anybody in US politics could be bothered to have a logically consistent opinion). But most likely scenario is using these data for identity theft - as it includes driver license numbers, partial or full SSNs etc. - in short, everything you need to open an account online. By far the most likely scenario is stealing this data for commercial purposes.
> Even if they didn't, they should rightfully be charged for penetrating the voting systems at all.
They did not penetrate voter systems, they accessed voter rolls (list of voters). For which the culprits, of course, should be charged, even though it's mostly useless as there's no chance US can punish them in any way unless they are so stupid as to visit the US or a country which extradites to the US. Which astonishingly is what some people are stupid enough to do. Thus only "mostly".
Target voters in enough locations likely to have large turnout for your opponent and you'd be able to tip the election in your favor, so long as you had any chance at all to win. This wouldn't be enough to help someone who is going to lose 83/17 but a 60/40 loss could be tipped your way and that's what most outcomes in the US are.
Do you think if it really happened we'd notice it? So far I am not aware of any case of vote being disrupted to any noticeable measure along the scenario you describe, anywhere. So this appears to be pure speculation.
> This wouldn't be enough to help someone who is going to lose 83/17 but a 60/40 loss could be tipped your way and that's what most outcomes in the US are.
Yet there is, as far as I know, not a single case of election ever being tipped this way. By other forms of fraud - surely, though even then it's very hard to connect specific instances of fraud to specific outcomes - but this kind of fraud, never happened.
2) Charging people with crimes for walking through open doors does not actually keep the doors closed. (And the utter disinterest in actually securing and auditing our voting systems relative to hunting heads only goes to show that we don't even care about locking the door, we just want a scapegoat to appease our rage.)
This is incorrect both on a practically every level.
First, the Russians, in other instances where they have 'leaked' emails have both changed contents and in fact inserted emails. See David Satter[0] Because the emails were private to begin with, you are taking an enormous leap of faith to trust them as fully accurate simply because they were 'leaked.' The absolutely easiest thing to do would be to leverage any potential misinterpretations or suggestions of impropriety by inserting things to make that worse.
Second, we see a group of people intentionally, aggressively, and dangerously taking things out of context and mislead others to drive a narrative. See Pizza gate.
Third, you entire argument relies on no one ever misunderstanding another person's communication. Has anyone ever misinterpreted your actions? your words?
Yes, political parties are sometimes skeezy, so are people. But the broader point here is that one group is leveraging and digging and amplifying some bad behavior into not just a believe that it is universal and unfixable (which you seem to already accept) but an actual undermining of the whole system.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/26/russi...
Those are different "Russians" - judging from the name (Cyber Berkut) they most likely not even Russians but Ukrainians, as "Berkut" is the name of the security force that has been, among others, protecting Yanukovich in Maidan events in Ukraine in 2014. Russian group would not likely take the name of Ukrainian security force - there are a lot of nice Russian names available. But pro-Russian Ukrainians (which there are a bunch of) would. In any case, the only relation of those to APT*s is that they also leaked emails. So far I don't think there was a credible claim of any Wikileaks-published DNC mails as being fake, were there?
> But the broader point here is that one group is leveraging and digging and amplifying some bad behavior
Wasn't that like what 90% of past electoral campaigns were doing - digging dirt on each other (going back to high school and beyond) and blowing it up into a huge deal? I don't think Russians exactly invented the whole "dig up some dirt on the opposition and talk about it incessantly" trick.
As far as the Clinton/DNC leaks go, there was actually nothing damaging in them. Yet somehow it got spun up into a giant conspiracy that they had evidence didn't exist, thanks to the leak!
“Oh yeah, door was wide open, I swear!”
Can we extend this a bit so that if you’re walking through a park at night, mugging you is kosher?
Did they actually do what is claimed? Maybe, but are they really doing anymore than anyone else? Less anyone doubt we might charge them with something they didn't do, remember we have fought wars over what countries were later proven not to do.
In the end, what was revealed by whoever is that our own democracy's greatest threat lies from within and most likely always will
Even beyond the domestic political implications of Russian involvement in our election, Russia is actively supporting groups that are likely shooting at Americans and our allies today (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/17/evidence-russian-mil... or https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/04/24...).
Is it hysterical to care about these issues?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia...
France: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/05/french-electio...
Germany: https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/the-impact-of-russian-...
Netherlands: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2017/06/06/rus...
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.
http://time.com/4600177/election-hack-russia-hillary-clinton...
Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee
https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
There is no evidence in the post, only claims.
What is your basis for disbelieving all of those people and groups?
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.
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.
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.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-departme...
Additionally, if you look at the private security company posts, they ALSO cross reference material of note.
https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
So is the only source you’ll accept is your eyes watching the hacking in person?
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.
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-qu...
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.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagate-explained-721c...
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagaters-are-the-very...
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagate-is-making-ever...
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/10-trump-administration-a...
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-problem-with-the-clin...
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/clintonists-suddenly-clai...
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-to-criticize-trump-wi...
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]
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...
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/spy-agencies...
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.
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.)
Not for nothing, but:
"The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation... is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-swede...
Seems like it's working.
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.
That's right on the nose.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We are quite good at propaganda also
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-b...
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?
https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-26/release-t...
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/dutch-official-admits-ly...
Seems to be quite a disingenuous summary of content
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
DNC is not government. At least not yet :)
I trust you understood what I meant, regardless.
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
Maybe it’s a wake up call?
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-i...
[2] https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-11-03/inside...
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/26/us/2016-presidential-campaign...
[4] https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-25/DEF%20CON%2025%20vot...
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.
> 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.
Hack that and people get turned away at the polls.
NIC ICA Report:
Like an old Chinese proverb: Mosquito only sting the eggs already with cracks.
The corruption is to a degree that anyone can influence US political system with comparably very insignificant cost.
At this juncture, how can you fix the external influence while the internal is so eager to cooperate? Like a stick without support on ground, are you going to put a sign that no one should touch it, but how can you keep it stand? And what's the point of disallow people touching it, which I can blow it off using my mouth...
Fix both of them. In any order. US has both a corruption problem (although less so than other countries IMO), AND an outside influence problem.
There are 300+ million people in the country and a budget of over $3 Trillion / year. We can afford the resources to simultaneously fix both problems. There's absolutely no reason to fix things one at a time.
I don't want to paint these issues in purely moral terms. In many ways they're attributable to the increasing complexity of a technological society and the momentum of economic relations. We don't have a good paradigm for self-governance in an increasingly networked society.
The list goes on and on and on for virtually forever. My point is: we work on ALL the problems, simultaneously, as much as possible. There should be no one suggesting that we only try to solve one or two of these at a time.
We will fail to fix some problems, but we will succeed in fixing other problems. And it will only happen because people will throw their hardest try at fixing all of the problems.
We are ahead in many respects: the population in general knows the wide variety of problems that this country has. So we're able to talk about it. So we're at least at step 1. It'd be nice if we could come to consensus faster, but politics has always been a painfully slow game (Civil Rights took over a decade of demonstrations for example to fix a single issue). This country has always been a bit slow on the uptake, but at least public awareness is generally good.
Even if you think the social networks should be trying to solve this problem (and some would argue that it's a hornets nest they would do well to avoid), acting as if they're being negligent or incompetent because they haven't figured it out already is a bit unfair.
If you're asserting that Facebook should say who's REALLY behind by the ads, you're basically asking for Facebook to hire a crack team of private investigators. Should they be responsible for figuring out that Nice Ad Buyers LLC is really a wholly-owned subsidiary of some other corporation, which some neo-nazi millionaire owns the controlling stake of?
Also interesting that Steele wasn't indicted, the guy is a foreign actor who took money to create a dossier with intent to influence our election. Why not Soros as well? He's a foreigner who donated 10s of millions not only for ads but for astroturfing online communities via Shareblue and Correct the Record and stoking violence and destruction by busing in agitators to protests.
Meanwhile, all of the studios are tripping over themselves to keep the Chinese market happy and unoffended.
You see the American people don't control their own minds. They only believe what they see and hear. Thus they should only see snd hear patriotic messages from the patriotic Hillary backing media or they will become confused. They are all little children and cannot tell what's fake and what's real. They must learn about the outside world from approved sources to prevent... confusion...
Geez... Why do we even have elections? We should just have a panel of anonymous leakers to the Washington Post choose who gets into office.
So it is easy to attempt to influence the public with fake news and a question mark at the end. Buzzfeed ran a profile of a news website which used to write border line fake news and made a ton of money.
I also think the notion that there's a way to prevent external actors from influencing internal affairs in an ostensibly free and open republic in a networked world is somewhat... ill conceived: a democracy so fragile it needs a great firewall of some kind to protect its citizens from "fake" and "unhealthy" views is probably already on the road to failure.
If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.
And of course that's not to mention all the inconsistent double standards. Where's the outrage over things like Confucius Institutes and other similar influence operations?
And that's not even getting in to the whole "do as I say, not as I do" aspect, where we try to pretend that dictatorships and totalitarian states should see our pro-democracy pro-human rights initiatives and NGOs and VOA and such as perfectly fine and friendly and obviously different than RT, etc.
The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well.