Making them public lets Russia know we're aware of their actions, which in turn may drive them to greater efforts to make these actions harder to detect and therefore harder to defend against. I also wonder if making these public, detrimental and unnecessary, is just a cynical ploy before an election to give the appearance that this administration has been tough on Russia, when actual toughness on Russia would mean not just indictments, but also sanctions and other tangible consequences.

On the other hand, absent legal accountability for these individuals and Russia itself, making these indictments public allows the rest of the world to see & know what Russia is up to. That might facilitate action through the softer power of diplomacy, and perhaps also put other countries on notice that they must take greater care in protecting their critical systems as well. And if it is the correct choice to do so, then any political benefit, cynically motivated or not, is an ancillary factor.

I suppose it may be a tough balance to strike. I think I come down on the side of making these issues public knowledge. Just as I similarly believe bad actions on the part of the US should be available for public scrutiny whenever it does not jeopardize the lives and safety of those who fight for our country.

That's not a bad thing for Russia's adversaries.

I'd have to think if you're an adequately-compensated-but-not-connected person in Russia, you'd be keeping a Plan B in your back pocket "just in case".

Yea, those damn Ruskies are so stupid they left their name and home address in the compiled files.

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1318277154908536833

Ни черта не умеют!

We nailed 6 of them. So what? Foreign intelligence agencies weed out a CIA spy every now and then, but that doesn't seem to deter the CIA.

an official statement issued by an intelligence agency to other agencies. It states that an asset or intelligence source is unreliable for one or several reasons, often fabrication, and must be officially disavowed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_notice_(document)

And yes, the video series of the same name is based on the concept.

Here it's effectively a reputational attack which renders its target only viable to, and therefore beholden to, the initiating actor for whom the work/activity triggering the notice was performed.

The notice also tips the issueing agency's hand as to surveillence and intelligence capabilities, and puts on notice others performing similar work, both specifically referenced by USDoJ.

A key aspect of much (not all) state-actor covert ops is impunity. This may be actual legal immunity (e.g., diplomatic cover), or simply the threats of national-level retaliation (across a wide range: sanctions, diplomatic, treaty, counterespionage or ops, military, international courts, UN or other internattional entity sanctions). The impunity is strong but not absolute.

The US DoJ's indictment has little power inside Russia, at least under that country's present leadership, but has significant import elsewhere, including outside the US, or under a possible future Russian government. Say, perhaps, one lead by targets of the present leadership.

https://europeangaming.eu/portal/latest-news/2018/09/11/2789...

In case you would like to know more about this kind of things check this: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/76/

Foreign powers are more than capable of identifying individual US operators, but so far they've opted to not participate in this game.

Here's an op-ed on the subject by an ex-NSA hacker https://www.thedailybeast.com/dont-punish-a-north-korean-hac...

At the end of the day, he has to accept that he is accountable for his action as should others, it comes with the job.

I'm more concerned with how candid Jake is (as are most of is former co-workers), but that's another story for another day and not really related here...

Question: Which military power has threatened to bomb the International Criminal Court in the Hague, if its military are brought before the court. a) The Russian Federation or b) The United States of America.

* and the answer is ‘b’

https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...

If you covertly come to the U.S. and shoot some people, you'll be put on trial, convicted, and then imprisoned or executed. If the other side has someone to trade for you, you might get released. This is how spying works.

It feels like this is a cop out: the US knows that it is the Russian government that’s responsible but charges individual officers so as to not cause any kind of international stir.

Even if these six were tried and convicted and sent to prison, nothing would change since I’m sure there are others who could take their place. The directive won’t change, just the people carrying it out.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/details?prodcode=IF1...

So what I'm asking for should be obvious: Additional sanctions for each additional hostile act. Keep making it harder and harder, the consequences higher, each time. Use diplomacy with our allies to get them to do the same.

Honestly, I don't mind cynical ploys as much if they involve an agency doing it's usual job. They might be trying to deflect attention or obscure underlying biases, but conducting an investigation and officially making an announcement based on the facts is a good thing. If only more "October surprises" were like this.

If anyone were to actually show up to face these charges, they will eventually be dismissed, as happened to two of the Mueller indictees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/concord-case-...

With the case set to go to trial next month, prosecutors recommended that the Justice Department drop the charges to preserve national security interests and prevent Russia from weaponizing delicate American law enforcement information, according to the official. The prosecutors also weighed the benefits of securing a guilty verdict against the companies, which cannot be meaningfully punished in the United States, against the risk of exposing national security secrets in order to win in court.

That they later dismiss the case strongly suggests that they never thought it would be prosecuted in the first place. Do you really believe that they thought there would be no discovery?

> These GRU hackers and their co-conspirators engaged in computer intrusions and attacks intended to support Russian government efforts to undermine, retaliate against, or otherwise destabilize: (1) Ukraine; (2) Georgia; (3) elections in France; (4) efforts to hold Russia accountable for its use of a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok, on foreign soil; and (5) the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games after Russian athletes were banned from participating under their nation’s flag, as a consequence of Russian government-sponsored doping effort.

So, sort of a paper tiger.

Does the US Government (as represented by these prosecutors) have a good faith belief these individuals committed these crimes? Probably, though you might believe otherwise. I would say my trust is very high in that statement, despite everything else going on in politics right now. The government doesn't make indictments like this lightly, and the grand jury saw at least enough evidence to establish probable cause. At the same time, there is a saying about ham sandwiches and indictments.

Will we ever see the underlying evidence? I doubt we will.

Should we trust the US Government's representations in this case? Again, I would - but you may have priors to suggest you shouldn't.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1328521/downl...

The evidence is presented at the trial, not in the initial press release announcing there has been an indictment.

One would expect that there is clear evidence, or there wouldn't be an indictment. You can't win a court case without evidence.

Which goes to show: the human link is still the weakest one.

> As The New York Times reported last October, Cyber Command operators sent direct messages to individual Russian staffers that they had identified as involved in election interference, and were tracking their activity. The Post reports that the IRA was troubled enough by those messages that they launched an internal investigation to identify potential leakers.

I have a feeling that the US and allied countries are pretty deep into the Russians with this stuff.

It's a super-organization that transcends what we think of elsewhere as being different sectors (of varying degrees of legality)

These are completely different things, it's downright silly to imply otherwise.

IRA staffers certainly aren't "GRU agents"

But nothing you say argues against what I said.

Also, there have been cases where authorities have been 'subcontracting' certain services or tools from local cyber criminals working on online financial fraud - where those criminals were later arrested abroad, and have agreed to testify against their former partners/employers.

CIA likely has human assets within the ranks of the military intelligence units that could provide information or details of written documents.

also google location services might have some data on them too

Meanwhile, the Dutch secret service AIVD had access to GRU HQ camera feeds.

Before all that happened a high ranking Russian police officer got reprimanded (IIRC send to gulag) for working together with the Dutch police on high level cyber crime.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41436213-sandworm

Maybe we have different definitions of "Russiagate", but I don't think anyone doubts Russian (or Chinese, American, Iranian, Israeli...) state-sponsored cyberattacks are a thing.

...because this is a SOP for global super powers. I don't think that the Russians do anything that the Americans don't do better and more secretly.

SOP= Standard Operating Procedure

America may do bad things, but these specific bad things generally aren't actually an attack vector on China or Russia.

Perhaps I haven't had enough coffee yet, but I'm having trouble parsing your comment. Would you be willing to say it differently?

"I will keep this [stored/saved/bookmarked] so that I can post it as counterargument under any comment claiming that 'Russiagate' didn't actually happen."

As to the efficacy of this counterargument, see the sibling comments of yours.

If they actually cared about catching these people, they'd keep the indictments secret so that they might go to a country that has an extradition treaty with the US.

They can have the trial without arrests. It happens all the time.

If convicted, then they are sanctioned, or face some other externally-viable penalty. Often through restricting their ability to travel to allied countries and use the banking systems outside their home country.

Even a public defender being present requires you to affirmatively agree to them being your lawyer, or else you defend yourself at trial.

There's no way to have a trial in the US without them being present.

The same way it was done all those times when American people sued the Iranian government in American courts. This is not new ground. This has been going on for at least half a century.

I am sure the authorities involved are well aware of these people's travel patterns when making these decisions.

If you're never going to catch someone, might as well name-and-shame them -- and send a warning to anyone else who might want to commit the same crimes.

When the announcement itself heavily impedes catching and trying the targets of the investigation, the announcement itself is the end goal.

So you're claiming if this was kept secret the odds of catching the person would increase dramatically?

What stats do you base this on?

>as would be standard under such situations

Where is this standard? There are plenty of indictments issued all the time followed by arrests. What evidence do you have that unsealed indictments has a higher arrest rate?

We extradited El Chapo, Abu Hamza al-Masri , Victor bout, Ira Einhorn, Roman Piscotti, and many others.

So if we’re just making claims on anecdotes, so far I’ve presented that 6 times as many people get extradited after indictments than your anecdote.

I figured you had more reason to make such strong claims than simply an opinion without data.

The point though is that, from the prosecutor's perspective, the end goal of trying and winning trials is ultimately hindered by making an indictment like this public, and that the option to make these indictments secret even in the case of extremely geopolitically charged indictments exists. Which leads one to the idea that of making this indictment public is contrary to the standard goals of prosecuting a crime, then there's a different goal in mind. That goal is intrinsically linked to making public declarations you can't execute on.

I can't think of a better definition of propaganda.

There are benefits to it - it opens doors, gets other law enforcement involved, can lead to public awareness to help apprehend, etc.

I think you formed an opinion not based on the evidence.

What "public awareness" is going to help bring these people in from Russia when we show them our hand of "we know who you are and what you do"?

Like what's specifically different about them versus Assange that makes it more likely to bring them to trial by publicly announcing the indictment?

It lets other countries know we're looking for someone. For example, here [1] is the US indictment from 2015 for Russian national Aleksei Yurievich Burkov. This let other countries know we wanted him. He was arrested later that year in Israel, and held because he was indicted by an ally country. He was extradited to the US in early 2020, tried, and sentenced to a long prison term.

Care to explain how public awareness does not get people arrested? Even from Russia?

There are plenty of cases like this. I see very few arrests and extraditions followed by public indictments. Do some searching in the DOJ court cases.

I'm done here. You form a lot of opinions based on very little data, and seem uninterested in solid statistical evidence before making claims, which is what I care about. Unfounded opinions are not useful to me.

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14431846/united-states-...

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.326720...

That's why he went to such a US friendly country like Israel in the first place; he didn't know for sure there was an indictment filed for him.

We don't need to unseal indictments in order to coordinate with other countries' law enforcement. We have mechanisms for privately working with them without making public announcements.

Indictment unsealed after arrest.

>Romano Pisciotti

Indictment unsealed after arrest.

>Viktor Bout

Indictment unsealed after arrest.

El Chapo and Ira Einhorn both fled after being made aware of their indictments.

The case for it being propaganda goes something like this: Barr's DoJ is making this charge publicly released so that the US can appear to be "tough on Russia." Despite Trump failing to condemn Navalny's Novichok poisoning or taking action regarding the intel on Russian blood-bounties on US soldiers. This would follow the pattern of other pro-Trump (painting him as a victim, or strong-man where convenient) politicized DoJ announcements such as 9 ballots being found in the trash, including noting that 7 of them were cast for Trump.

https://www.axios.com/trump-russia-bounties-taliban-putin-ca... https://www.axios.com/trump-alexei-navalny-poisoning-russia-... https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdpa/pr/revised-statement-us-at...

Or is everything involving Russia now its own "Russiagate"?

It is not technically collusion.

-- Reort on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

It's not possible to come to a legal conclusion on a question which lacks a legal definition.

So the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian election interference, of which there was a breathtaking amount[2]. It's also telling that Trump, who never has spared an unkind word for anyone, has never spoken ill of Russia for his entire term.

It's also worth noting that the special counsel was never allowed to indict the President, or even say that indictable conduct occurred, due to Justice Department policy. The absolute strongest available language that they could use was that their report didn't exonerate the President, and that's exactly what the report said.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-mueller-report-tr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interferen...

How does this end up on Wikipedia?

If you're interested in more, there's the very sizable list, "Links between Trump associates and Russian officials"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...

I am from NL, and I will raise you : our current Prime Minister promised all citizens € 1000. Guess what? We never got it.

Pretty basic garden variety bribery.

Is there any reason to believe the project would not have been approved without the alleged favors?