The hack was public knowledge in June of 2016, and it's only fairly recently that it's been known (asserted?) that Guccifer 2.0 was acting on behalf of the Russian government.
It also says, "GOP campaign consultant." That's a third party contractor--not quite indicative of a high level conspiracy. I think that's a far, far cry from what you're claiming.
Not to trot out the "what if this involved the DNC, the GOP would call for blood" meme, but it's certainly justified to feel outrage over a consultant for a party colluding with a foreign entity to influence an election. It's equally possible that the party knew about the actions of their contractor, since they were on their payroll.
Well, the leaks themselves revealed some pretty troubling (although not terribly surprising) friendliness between the mainstream media and the Clinton campaign, so it's not like we have nothing to compare it to.
The article alleges a GOP consultant worked with a hacker of unknown origin claiming to have opposition info.
The leaks (and Podesta's) revealed, though, a frankly disgusting level of cooperation between the mainstream media and the Clinton campaign. [1]
This whole idea that a contractor using hacked opposition info to his advantage in a way that may have unintentionally benefited Russian interests is in any way more scandalous than nearly all the mainstream media verifiably going to bat for Clinton campaign is selective outrage.
I think it's interesting that George Washington, in his Farewell Address[0], warned of political parties being an enemy of the government, and could provide a route to foreign governments and interests to have influence on our government. That linked section provides almost an exact description of what seems to be going on in the US currently. I would like to see the RNC and DNC dismantled by the people.
Especially since the "collusion" occurred after the breach.
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I should probably mention that if getting this data doesn't qualify as "receiving stolen property," it should. The consultant could learn a lot from Pepsi ( https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/07/marketingandpr... ), but there is a difference between coordinating with somebody to steal data and getting data that has already been stolen.
“Fairly recently” in this case meaning “within hours of release” – CrowdStrike was already publicly connecting the dots to military intelligence by June 15th:
A number of people find it easier to act as if this was a big post-election surprise but that's just wishful thinking to avoid having to consider the implications of many people knowing but not caring as long as it got the political outcome they desired or, in the case of the media, accepting responsibility for their coverage decisions.
A private third party making claims is not the same as the claims of the collective US intelligence agencies, which were made much more recently.
It's also irrelevant, because it was public knowledge by the time it was reported. My post is to debunk the assumption that the contractor knew the hacker was a foreign agent.
The intelligence agencies looked at the evidence and claim it was the Russians, and somehow tied it back to the Russian government.
The NSA leak weeks later that confirmed sophisticated and documented techniques for making hacks appear to come from somewhere else (e.g. by using existing known-Russian C&C servers) is unrelated, and it's apparently unfathomable to think anyone else would be able to use the same techniques.
Also, none of us have ever read history books, which are full of wars and witch hunts started over unverifiable claims by people in power that turned out to be mistaken (at best) or lies (at worst) to push their agenda.
So I'm not sure why you're asking for concrete evidence. They said it was the Russians trying to get Trump elected. Is that not good enough for you?
> They said it was the Russians trying to get Trump elected. Is that not good enough for you?
Only if it made sense. At nearly every angle you look at, it doesn't.
If the Russians wanted someone they could push around, then Clinton was their candidate. She's the one who signed off on the Uranium deal, and had several large donations she received as SCOTUS from the Russians. John Podesta (her campaign chair) had financial interests in a Kremlin funded company, and was also on several of the corporate the boards of said company.
Compared to Trump (some smoke, no hard evidence, lots of "anonymous sources"), the ties between Clinton and the Russians are way stronger and have far more substance to them. If this is the case, then why would the Russians want someone they know to be a wild card and prone to being impulsive compared to someone they already made deals with, and had far deeper, established relationships with?
If they were going to influence the election and wanted a puppet, it makes 110% more sense to discredit Trump and put Hilary in office.
What large donations from Russia did Clinton receive? Were they comparable to Trump's MANY funding streams from Russian banks? Or multiple of his campaign advisers (not to mention his pick for NSA) having deep Russian ties?
Also wasn't Trump the guy falling all over himself to praise Putin/Russia both on Twitter and in-person? Or explicitly asking for Russia to publish more leaks during one of the presidential debates?
Seems like you have your information pretty mixed up (or simply made up).
Can you post a substantial source for any of your claims?
>Or multiple of his campaign advisers (not to mention his pick for NSA) having deep Russian ties?
On this note, I just want to point out that Russia is the only European country in the world's 10 most populous countries, and that Russia controls more land than any other country on earth (almost twice as much as the second-largest landholder, China).
It should be no surprise that Americans involved in international business will have substantial connections to such a significant world entity.
It's really kind of silly to hear people holding any previous dealing in Russia against anyone that has a remote connection to Donald Trump.
Unfortunately no. All we have right now is the highest "levels of confidence" from our major intelligence agencies with their belief that Russian-promoted hacking agencies hacked the DNC, and released that information to wikileaks in order to make Hillary look worse.
The caveat is that they aren't disclosing the methods by which they came to this conclusion, so we can't know 100% for sure. It's dependent on our belief in our intelligence agencies to be acting independently and presenting true, unbiased information.
Full-disclosure, I voted for Johnson, and while I am sympathetic to the leaks, had the DNC not been doing shady stuff, there wouldn't have been anything to leak. That being said, I personally believe in our intelligence agencies, so I think it's reasonable to believe that Russians were involved in the U.S. elections. But I hold the DNC more accountable for their loss than the Russians.
For those interested:
[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
[1] Link to the actual report: apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/the-intelligence-community-report-on-russian-activities-in-the-2016-election/2153/
[2] From DHS: dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national
Yes. Multiple times over now. Same group involved with election hackery were also phishing my peers after they caused Moscow trouble regarding MH17 and Syria[1].
This is an on-going prolific attack against civilians in addition to the usual military/political targets. Much as Ru MoD regularly targets civilians in Syria such as medics and emergency responders.
No, no concrete evidence was ever presented. The entire premise of this huge ongoing media sensation has still not been proven and begs for quality, in-depth investigative journalism, but only fringe ultra-right or ultra-left media outlets seem to take any interest in this. The likes of New Yorker or NYT Magazine seem utterly uninterested in digging, or readily assume this as a proven fact, for no apparent reason. Except maybe "what's wrong with blindly trusting CIA and NSA to be truthful?"
> That is not really a critical look. It is "but Russians wouldn't possibly do that this way" rehashed several times over.
You posted this comment 7 minutes after I posted the link. 6 minutes prior to that, you posted another comment in this thread, so I know you haven't immediately started reading the article. Since the article is quite long, I highly doubt that you've read it.
And no, none of the presented arguments there are "but Russians wouldn't possibly do that this way".
>And no, none of the presented arguments there are "but Russians wouldn't possibly do that this way".
"“If the guys are really good,” says Chris Finan, CEO of Manifold Technology, “they’re not leaving much evidence or they’re leaving evidence to throw you off the scent entirely.” How plausible is it that Russian intelligence services would fail even to attempt such a fundamental step?"
"On the other hand, sloppiness on the part of developers is not entirely unknown. However, one would expect a nation-state to enforce strict software and document handling procedures and implement rigorous review processes."
"The strings in the code quite transparently indicate its intent, with no attempt at obfuscation. It seems an odd oversight for a nation-state operation, in which plausible deniability would be essential, to overlook that glaring point during software development."
Acting befuddled is not a reasonable means of helping to cast suspicions aside.
Nothing can change who these attacks, sharing the same infrastructure, targeted. Opponents of Russia's current ruling order. Very specific frame up jobs against Putin's political opposition and phishing against civilian analysts who just happened to be making news regarding MH17? Come on now.
Your account has been using primarily (actually exclusively) for political battle. That's an abuse of this site and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of their politics. Especially when they cross into incivility, which you've done repeatedly.
The purpose of HN is to gratify intellectual curiosity, not smite enemies. The lines aren't sharply drawable, of course, and it's understandable if discussion crosses into political topics sometimes—but that's quite different from using the forum as a political or ideological platform. We use the 'primarily' test: if an account is primarily using HN that way, it's abusing the site and we ban it.
One of the characteristics of a lot of Russia's attempts at exerting influence is that they don't particularly care if we know they did it. Part of Putin's goal is to bolster Russia's standing as a world power, so if people know he's pulling the strings it actually achieves that goal.
Insofar as a political party is benefiting from the bad actions of members, I'm not going to feel bad about it at this point.
If you look at individual actions only, it is easy to write things off. But I am not a prosecutor, and when we cross some critical mass of "isolated incidents", I start thinking the "bad apples" have spoiled the whole barrel, to actually use that cliche correctly for a change.
I'm sure there's a member or three of the Penn State frathouse recently in the news who weren't culpable in that kid's death, too.
There's a fairly key difference in the levels of opposition: you can easily find Muslims criticizing every extremist attack, rejecting the theology used to justify them, setting up education programs to reduce future recruitment, and working with law enforcement.
I think the strongest form of the bad apple argument comes not from the presence of a problem but rather the strength of counter-efforts.
I probably wasn't clear. I'm not either. What I was alluding to was how common we hear a corruption of the phrase as a defense. "Just a few bad apples." Somehow the cautionary part of the cliche is disappeared.
This stance MIGHT make sense if the hacked RNC documents were also leaked. Surprisingly (or not) those files were not leaked out.[1] Sure looks like "truth" was not the element that was in Russia's interests.
>Sure looks like "truth" was not the element that was in Russia's interests.
I never claimed the truth was in Russia's interests. As I clearly said, it's in Russia's interests for the GOP to win. That would mean NOT leaking RNC documents.
I was very glad to know just how corrupt the DNC and the Democratic party were before I voted in November.
> I was very glad to know just how corrupt the DNC and the Democratic party were before I voted in November.
Unfortunately, you weren't given the opportunity to find out how corrupt the RNC and the Republican party were before you voted in November. But that's okay, half the picture being blocked from view I'm sure is just like seeing the whole picture, right?
Your post quoted:
"So it's better to hide the truth from voters if that means voters knowing the truth is in Russia's interest?
How is being more informed a bad thing?"
Where did you 'clearly say' it was in Russia's interests for the GOP to win?
It sure sounds like you already had your mind made up and no leak of RNC corruption could ever be big enough to sway you anyway.
In a court of law, rules of evidentiary procudure apply such that one side is not unfairly disadvantaged, or advantaged, by unequal law or process.
No, not always perfectly, but that's the ideal.
An outside, increasingly hostile, power, apparently having the inner-sanctum secrets on two major political parties, but choosing, selectively, to leak the goods on only one, is not evenly informing "the public" (or anyone else) on the true scope of issues at play.
One element of which is in fact that foreign adversary's exceptionally un-equal thumb on the scale. Though there's considerably more than that.
Your responses strike me as ill considered, at best, deliberately so at worst.
A good test is to see how you'd apply the rules or criteria were the situation reversed: the DNC colluding with, say, Russia or China, to hack the GOP, and to disclose damaging information in the immediate run-up to the election.
>DCCC documents sent to Mr. Nevins analyzed specific Florida districts, showing how many people were dependable Democratic voters, how many were likely Democratic voters but needed a nudge, how many were frequent voters but not committed and how many were core Republican voters—the kind of data strategists use in planning ad buys and other tactics.
This was not about informing voters, it was about specifically giving Republicans an advantage.
It also says, "GOP campaign consultant." That's a third party contractor--not quite indicative of a high level conspiracy. I think that's a far, far cry from what you're claiming.