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Hack of Democrats' Accounts Was Wider Than Believed, Officials Say (nymag.com)
A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups (could be paywalled; alternate source), reports The New York Times, citing officials with knowledge of the case. From the report: The widening scope of the attack has prompted the F.B.I. to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts. The main targets appear to have been the personal email accounts of Hillary Clinton's campaign officials and party operatives, along with a number of party organizations. Officials have acknowledged that the Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, and to the Democratic National Committee, including a D.N.C. voter analytics program used by Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.
This wouldn't happen to Republicans, because they're so old. They'd get competent sysadmins to run the servers, proficient clerks to print out their emails each morning, and they'd dictate their replies to a transcriptionist who can remember her fucking password.
There used to be a time when the press acted as investigative journalists, and worked with whistleblowers to expose political corruption and hold politicians accountable for their actions (think Watergate). This was lauded as necessary for the function of the country. Now, this function has been outsourced to the FSB, and the corruption they reveal is denigrated as "interfering with the sanctity of the electoral process". How about the press goes back to being watch dogs instead of lap dogs, shake off the "Democrats with bylines" label,expose the corruption themselves, and undermine the FSB?
Maybe I missed publication of some definitive proof, but this story kind of says the Russians did this, unqualified. We've seen some similarly confident attributions in the past that turned out to be wrong. Convenient, but wrong.
If I were Putin, and I had dirt on Clinton, I'd hang on to it until she were President. Much more leverage that way.
Huh? Because VPN IP address? Again, TrustConnect's analysis was good, it traced back to a Russian VPN service provider. The rest of their analysis was best wild guessing.
The NYT article (which IMHO has become a water carrier for the Clinton's) references it's own story, which again incorrectly assumes that Russia is involved because of the TrustConnect's best guess. But TrustConnect even acknowledges that the originating network is obfuscated behind the VPN provider.
I hate this tactic of the main stream media outlets. They take questionable information, then report on it as if it was fact, then pile onto that by continuing further reporting all based off of the original questionable information by citing earlier articles they've produced.
Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. I find it strangely ironic though that hackers have broken all of the major news stories this election cycle and it's the reports trying to cover them all up. Fucked up world we're in these days.
The story says unnamed American intelligence officials have "high confidence" it was the Russians.
However, I don't know how they've determined that. The only analysis I've seen was from the private security firm hired by the DNC to investigate after the attack. They found circumstantial evidence the hack originated from Russia (Cyrillic letters in metadata, timestamps that correspond with waking hours in Russia, etc). However, that doesn't mean it was state sponsored. There are lots of hackers in Russia and not all of them are getting rubles from Putin.
What we know: circumstantial evidence the hack originated in Russia.
What the media's running with: Trump is a secret agent taking orders from Putin who personally haxx0red the DNC and if you don't elect Hillary Clinton then Trump is going to take orders from Putin and invade Europe and/or nuke everyone.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The idea, that Russians are behind this is a red herring. Put out by anonymous sources it serves only to change the topic — from the contents of the e-mails and the negligence of the Democratic officials (including their Presidential nominee).
According to Assange, for example, Wikileaks got their data from DNC-sources including the misteriously murdered Seth Conrad Rich.
Maybe, Russians were involved too, maybe not. But the facts remain: DNC officials (including Hillary Clinton herself) are incompetent in computer security and dishonest.
Why is my real account disabled?
Well sure but I think that was case where Putin wanted just enough deniability to avoid legal consequences without it being entirely clear he is above the law at home, but at the same time sending an unmistakable message to other wood be dissidents.
He wanted it know who did it.
Its not nearly so clear to me why he would want it know He/KGB/Russia Gov is behind the DNC hack. Its not like US Democrats are likely to change policy positions because they fear Russians are going to put a hit on them or something. Having their finger prints on it allows the DNC to try and conflate, confuse, and distract from any issues revealed in the leaks by talking about and tieing them to some kinda bizarre Russian conspiracy. Do so degrades the impact of the leaks themselves so why bother in the first place.
The real possibilities are:
1) The Russian finger prints are plants to lead people away from the actual responsible party
2) The KGB was just sloppy
3) It was a non-state but possible Russia based group, that was sloppy
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
"Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same." -- Scott Adams, _The Dilbert Principle_
This election is surreal. On the one hand, we have Hitler. On the other hand, we have a murderer who takes orders from satan himself.
Neither of these things is remotely close to real. Donald Trump is a dork, and Hillary Clinton is an awkward idealist who's been jaded somewhat by bumping into life. Neither one will destroy the country. Neither one will be Hitler.
After muddling through another 4-8 years, the country will have another election where we hear that it's again Hitler against the antichrist, and somehow people will believe again that it might actually be true.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."