[bl4ckcontact]

Is it though? This information certainly doesn't surprise me, nor do I think at this point that it surprises many folks that are tuned in to international news. Even so, this type of behavior is not out of the ordinary for many technologically-advanced countries. Let me be clear -- I am _not_ condoning this type of behavior, and I certainly am not defending Russia or President Trump, but this article feels like a poor attempt at making a jab at Trump and suggesting being a criminal.

[DyslexicAtheist]

It's very poor tabloid style reporting. Whether Trump is or is not a criminal future will tell, but from what we know today he has risen to power thanks to an international network of criminal enterprise.

[prolikewh0a]

>what we know today he has risen to power thanks to an international network of criminal enterprise.

Are you excusing domestic criminal enterprise networks, or are you claiming the extremely narrow viewpoint that Russia was entirely responsible for Trump?

[DyslexicAtheist]

USA alone is responsible for Trump not Russia. Russia is background noise. Yes they set the stage, but in the current climate they are overrated. All they had to do is push the dominos already lined up. They did the same thing in Europe - yet none of the far-right camps made it yet (apart from Austria).

Amercia got exactly the president it deserves.

[prolikewh0a]

How did Russia set that stage in a manner that $6.5 billion [1] (publicly known at least!) along with thousands and thousands of hours of free & corporate biased advertising via mainstream media couldn't defeat? $100,000 in mixed republican/liberal ads surely had nothing on $6.5 billion.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/14/someb...

[prolikewh0a]

These are all red scare-like neomccarthyist Trump jabs (I am not defending Trump) that sound more like tabloid articles than anything. The whole world does this stuff day in, day out, and it's no secret that Russia does it too, but recently it's been entirely focused on Russia.

I don't even trust the upvotes and downvotes in these Russian hacking threads as it seems the most logical get downvoted into oblivion, while the most emotional arguments are upvoted.

[paganel]

> The whole world does this stuff day in

Afaik Russia is the only state actor in the world that has directly done stuff that affects other countries' civilian population directly and in a negative way, I'm talking about things like these (taken TFA):

> ….Across Ukraine that day, cash registers suddenly shut down. People trying to withdraw money saw ransom demands appear on ATM screens.

and

> In 2015, hackers went after the electrical grid and shut off power to 225,000 Ukrainians.

and

> Turnstiles in Kiev’s subway stopped working, and departure boards at the airport went down

What exactly do you mean by "whole world does this?". Has China done it? Has the US done it to other countries' civilian population (i.e. ignoring Stuxnet, which afaik didn't affect civilians directly)?

[prolikewh0a]

This is nonsense and willfully ignorant. Look at Libya, it's a failed state with an open slave trade [1]. USA did that. Iraq war is ~200,000 dead civilians [2]. USA and its allies are directly responsible for that. Every single time USA interfered in elections it effected hundreds of thousands to millions of civilians in their respective countries. There are even reports that USA meddled in Ukraine [3]. USA was instrumental in implementing Yeltsin [4]. You're ignoring literally every event in US history that effects foreign civilians, and frankly you're decieving others. Not to mention, you're ignoring all of the domestic issues that organically led to Trump that $100,000 in bipartisan Russian Facebook ads can't account for.

[1] http://time.com/5042560/libya-slave-trade/

[2] https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26068994

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/05/americ...

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...

[paganel]

I know about the many times the US has interfered in other countries’ internal matters, all I was saying is that I’m not aware (at least not yet) of them doing that by cyber means, i.e. what the article is all about.