[mladenkovacevic]

If somebody leaked internal FSB analysis docs claiming but offering no raw intelligence that Ukrainian government is full of US spies and Euromaidan was financed by Soros, would any mainstream media outlet take this kind of source as "evidence"?

[grandalf]

It's embarrassing how much some people seem to forget about rationality and skepticism when thinking about this issue.

The leaked info contains a few more specifics about the hand waving from a few months ago, but no actual evidence. What's worse is how the wording of the leaked document and press coverage (including that of The Intercept) interleaves simple assertions of fact into the narrative which do not support claims made by the narrative but simply make the whole thing seem "fact-based" even if it's speculative.

Generally speaking, The Intercept publishes very high quality work, but the presence of Sam Biddle's name on the byline is generally a good indicator of low quality work.

[mladenkovacevic]

I don't know about Sam Biddle, but a former CIA agent and whistleblower who served 30 months in prison for leaking CIA's torture techniques, also names Matthew Cole as another reporter that worked on this article and has previously also burned him as a source: https://twitter.com/JohnKiriakou/status/872087259985694721

[hsod]

I'll re-pose the question I asked above: what would constitute evidence in this context?

[grandalf]

There is no supporting evidence for the assertion that it was "Russia" or about the nature of the "hacking groups".

There is also no consideration of the possibility of false attribution of the above.

Suppose I see that an enemy wears size 10.5 Adidas sneakers. If I buy an identical pair and leave muddy footprints with them near a crime scene, does the presence of the footprints implicate my adversary?

In the case of hacking, our assessment must include a notion of how easy it would be for a nation or group to be falsely implicated.

Separately, there must be a discussion of motive apart from specific evidence. But what we're seeing is a blurring together of various tiny pieces of data, analysis, guesswork, etc., into a narrative.

Within intelligence circles such narratives are meant to be used to allow higher order analysis to proceed in the absence of low level proof.

This is useful in the same way that imagining Travis Kalanick as a misogynist is useful in assessing the question of how such a trait might have impacted corporate culture, but it does not follow that it's true just because one lower-level incident occurred, etc.

[hsod]

> In the case of hacking, our assessment must include a notion of how easy it would be for a nation or group to be falsely implicated.

> Separately, there must be a discussion of motive apart from specific evidence. But what we're seeing is a blurring together of various tiny pieces of data, analysis, guesswork, etc., into a narrative.

Do you believe that the intelligence community has failed to consider these fairly obvious principles when producing their reports?

It seems you've constructed a belief system by which you can never be convinced of Russia's involvement. This is what I was getting at with my question above (which you didn't really answer).

[mladenkovacevic]

And you've constructed a belief system that we better believe anything that comes out of the NSA about adversaries of the US because well, I feel the NSA is really competent and what else are we supposed to believe anyways.

My belief system isn't convincing me that Russians didn't hack the election system, or that they aren't capable of it. Just that this particular document is not the smoking gun.

[hsod]

I never said it was a smoking gun. I said it was evidence.

[shard972]

What If i told you in that report in which "17 agencies all agreed that Russia did it", one agency only had moderate confidence (50%~ chance) and it was the NSA.

[grandalf]

> has failed to consider these fairly obvious principles

No, but I think that those spreading these kinds of reports are intentionally masking the way that they are meant to be used in intelligence circles. This happened during the buildup to the Iraq war also.

My point is that the reports make those leaps intentionally in order to support higher order analysis. They are not meant to be taken as a distillation of all of the available intel.

> you can never be convinced of Russia's involvement

Not at all. But your use of the word "involvement" is a great example of insinuation. What does "involvement" mean in this case? I'll take a stab at it:

- Russia is a geopolitical adversary to the US (check)

- Russia and the US are engaged in a proxy war on several fronts and have been for decades (check)

- Russia and the US both undertake various mischief campaigns against each other and have since the cold war (check)

- Russia and the US both have at least two distinct offensive and defensive capabilities... one being cyber "warfare" and another being cyber "mischief". (check and check)

I agree on all of the above. I think many of the people who are up in arms about the Russia story did not believe the above until quite recently, yet it has been the case for a long time.

The appropriate analysis is to consider whether Russia actually thought it would impact the outcome of the US election, or if it intended to merely create mischief and chaos/mistrust. Clearly the latter is true per the history between the two nations and is consistent with the ongoing mischief campaign.

A deliberate effort to hack election machines, trigger power failures in hospitals, or any variety of more severe attacks crosses the line from "cyber mischief" into "cyber warfare".

What we're seeing is the anti-Russia hawks seizing upon the mischief and trying to make it seem like a cause for war. Don't forget that many have been vehemently trying to get the US to use force against Russia for quite some time.

Thus, the key evidence that is needed to escalate Russia's "involvement" from routine mischief and turn it into something akin to "warfare" is the hard evidence of intent to harm infrastructure.

While spear phishing voting machine companies may signal intent to conduct a Stuxnet style attack on US electronic voting machines, is spear phishing really a nation-state level attack approach?

Clearly, unless "The Russians" had far better predictive models than American statisticians, it would have been utterly foolish to undertake an attack that would personally tick off the sure-thing presidential candidate.

So I think that proof entails both a clear delineation of what sort of behavior/mischief is actually abnormal or asymmetric, and the notion of what constitutes proof of intent to escalate.

[shard972]

One thing I find weird about people who are obsessed with the Russia scandal is that they seem to believe that if "involvement" is proven, it's over for the trump administration.

I really don't understand that at all because if we want to get real, the OPM china hack was bigger than most of the things being alleged at the moment by stealing the database of everyone with a security clearance and yet, not a peep from anybody.

It would seem if you were consistent about cyber threats, these people yelling for sanctions on Russia should be yelling for sanctions on China as well.

[matt4077]

The difference between these cases is that even considering everything that is wrong with US administration, it is just not comparable to the Russian. People (and institutions) have a track record, and there's no principle in logic that prevents me from using that record to evaluate their trustworthiness: What you call an ad hominem, I call bayesian reasoning.

For example: It was, until this administration, extremely rare for the US government (the executive, to be precise) to lie to US-based press. They'd deny to comment, or say something that was meaningless when examined closely, or tell you to ask X (who will deny to comment). But, contrary to common believe, it's extremely hard to find examples for them straight-up saying A when knowing that it's really B.

[throwaway-1209]

It was, until this administration, somewhat rare for the press to _knowingly_ publish nothing but lies, and yet here we are. CNN (!) got caught on camera the other day stage managing a "Muslim protest" for the news. That's something that would cause a massive scandal just a year ago. These days everyone is so used to it no one even noticed.

[dlp211]

No it didn't[1].

[1] http://www.snopes.com/cnn-muslim-protests-london/

[zaroth]

This is another trend we are seeing -- so-called "fact checkers" claiming something is false because the most ardent reading of a specific claim, or maybe just a comment left by a troll in the same page -- isn't completely true.

"But nothing suggested that CNN “staged” the demonstrations to any extent greater than engaging protesters, directing their positions, and asking them questions as part of a news segment."

So it was staged, but not "really staged"?

This is like the fact-check where Trump precisely and accurately quoted a decrease in the national debt, but Politifact still checked it as "mostly false".

[1] - http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/...

[shard972]

Snopes is a complete joke now.

That aside, I don't see how it's rated false. Just because they claim "well this is how we do things" doesn't make what they have been doing for years any less fake.

I understand they didn't go out, pay some actors to hold some signs up but the scene itself was created and crafted for the TV and in my opinion that's fake.

The media is supposed to be informing the public, when you start using tricks to an attempt to hoodwink your audience into your narrative that's the opposite of informing the public.

All they had to do was point out either that they brought a few protesters over from the main protest to show you them specifically, or maybe a better idea yet, just go to the protest and turn the camera on so we can see what is actually happening, not what they are staging for us.

[mladenkovacevic]

Can you describe how rare do you feel it was for US officials to straight up lie on or off the record? Also based on what data did you make this assessment?

I can recall of a number of occasions during the Bush and Obama era where high-level officials were caught lying, sometimes in public testimony. And I don't even have any data points for Russia because we don't get their official statements on our news so I don't even know how I'd compare. How did you get both sides of the story accurately enough where you feel so confident in your beliefs?