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US Investigating Potential Covert Russian Plan To Disrupt November Elections (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are probing what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said. The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia's ability to spread disinformation. The effort to better understand Russia's covert influence operations is being coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. The Kremlin's intent may not be to sway the election in one direction or another, officials said, but to cause chaos and provide propaganda fodder to attack U.S. democracy-building policies around the world, particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union. U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as "ambitious" and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs. One congressional official, who has been briefed recently on the matter, said "Russian 'active measures' or covert influence or manipulation efforts, whether it's in Eastern Europe or in the United States" are worrisome. It "seems to be a global campaign," the aide said. As a result, the issue has "moved up as a priority" for the intelligence agencies, which include the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as well as the CIA and the National Security Agency. Their comments came just before President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked privately about cyberspying and other matters on the sidelines of the Group of 20 talks in China.
They are just doing what Trump asked them to.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Unless somehow Russia manipulated who the final candidates wound up being "sowing public distrust in the upcoming election" is like bringing sand to the beach.
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The current 2 party duopoly is a corrupt manipulative mess as the US presidential candidate choices.
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Both Hillary and Trump are AWFUL candidates. So a huge number of voters are stuck voting against who they think is worse. There is NO positive choice.
Facebook is billions of individual "Skinner Boxes." And if you use it you are the pigeon!
Yeah, it's the Russians, not the post Iraq war and post financial crisis revelations that have sown mistrust in institutions.
Uh huh.
if Hillary looses, you can be sure the left will point the finger at Russia. Any election the left looses is automatically "Unfair!".
It's not about left or right; it's about the process. Both sides are happy to manipulate electoral math in any way which helps them--this is the ONLY reason states still use winner-take-all allocation in the electoral college, for example.
The process should be managed very carefully and respectfully, and should at the least allow paper recounts of any electronic votes.
Real lawyers write in C++
Paper ballots
Problem solved
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Russia and Putin are going to try to help whichever candidate they think would weaken the US the most.
You are welcome on my lawn.
NYT already pointed out how she made millions in bribes dealing with Russia while she was Secretary of State.
I'm a bit confused on why they keep saying Trump is working with them when they have already bribed Hillary. Her more important things is importing more potential terrorists for millions more in bribes to her. Don't worry, this time she will make sure no one finds out about the private email server.
"more important work to do." lols
both parties run bitches of big corporations, which money trail do we follow?
The fraud was related to evading campaign finance laws, not Bernie: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/dnc-leak-clinton-team-deflected-state-cash-concerns-226191
What they did to Bernie wasn't fraud, at least not in the legal sense, just a slap in the face to those in the dem voter base who thought their party's candidate would be determined by a fair and democratic process. Of course the DNC, as a private entity, is free to hand-pick their candidate and skip the entire primary process - as they used to long ago - but decades of at least the illusion of democracy has led people to expect something vastly different.
...a briefing is taking place. The director of the CIA is there, as is the head of the NSA, the National Security Counselor, and the Federal Elections Commission. The briefing, being given by an anonymous deputy
D: "Ladies and Gentleman, we have a problem. Vladimir Putin has developed a new weapon which he plans deploy to disrupt our electoral process."
NSA (interrupting): "He's resurrected the Tsar Bomba and he's going to set it off on election day, isn't he?
CIA: "No, no, no, nukes are too crude even for Putin. Clearly he has a new weapon to cut off all electrical power on election day."
NSC: "Come now, this is foolish. Certainly he has come up with a virus to cause all our voting machines to record all votes for Putin himself, as a thumb in our eye."
D: "No, it's not any of that"
NSA (interrupting again): "It's not that thing where he takes his shirt off again, is it?"
D: "No, it's more horrible than that. Putin intends to tell the American public... the TRUTH"
Smells like complete bullshit. don't get me wrong I would not put this past Russia (or the US) to engage in such practises but the US election is a world wide laughing stock at this point, If Russia had been manipulating it all along they could not have created a better 2 candidates themselves. I think more likely they are sitting back having a good old chuckle knowing that no matter who wins this election the US loses.
Anyone with half a brain knows HRC is corrupt as fuck, and Trump is 100% unsuited for the office. FFS, the mainstream media has done a fine job of showing 2/3 of the electorate is aware of this is a fact, they're voting against someone instead of for someone.. Most of us don't think either one should be top dawg.
Mainstream media needs to start focusing on the alternatives, like Johnston and Stein, and quit telling us we're stuck with the two fuckwits we see on 99% of the news coverage.
There was some famous person from the US that was making fun of Canada for having a law against people residing in another country trying to influence Canadian elections by telling people who live in Canada how they should vote, or not vote..
Now suddenly that it's happening to the USA as their election draws near, why the change of heart?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why bother investigating? The overt stuff is bad enough.
It's as if Trump is ticking every box to do whatever he had ever accused someone else of doing.
The "truther" thing of 2011 was to imply that Obama was a "Manchurian Candidate" (watch the movie of that name if you haven't - good even if the science is wildly wrong) under the control of another power. So what does Trump do in 2016 - puts himself deep in debt with Russian banks tied very closely to Putin to theoretically put himself under the control of another power.
Trump is probably going to default on those loans and tell the Russians to piss off just like the US banks he's done the same to, but in some ways that's even worse.
Also Trump himself is already going on about how the election will be rigged - he's deliberately sowing distrust in the election.
So, just to be clear, what Trump meant was her emails that Russia probably already have in their possession because Hillary Clinton doesn't know how to secure stuff. And apparently Colin Powell was a bad actor too. A bad actor being a person acting in bad faith while possibly managing to stay within the letter of the law.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No, because the US is a top trading partner of both of those countries.
You are welcome on my lawn.
LOL. It's not like the US needs help in gaming their own system. One only needs to look at all the rules which give preference to a 2 party system to see that to be true. The Rs and Ds are more alike than different - they have a shared focus on growing government power and only differ on what to do with that power.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Its relationship with Europe certainly is.
But Putin spent enough time in the KGB to still have strong feelings about bringing down the West. I mean, we're talking about a guy who imprisons three girls in a punk rock band. I'm sure he'd like to piss on America's grave while Donald Trump holds his dick.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Trump is being financed by Russian banks with very close ties to Putin, which is not the same thing but that's why people are saying Trump is working with them.
Trump is working for Trump and is not going to work for either the Russians or the American people.
The people tearing into electronic voting are going after the wrong target.
In a state where there is only one news agency (the government one), it's possible to steal an election by ballot stuffing, fake votes, etc. In a state where there are a fairly large number of independent and semi-independent news agencies, it's pretty much impossible. If all the pre-election polling and exit polling indicates candidate A is winning by 7%, and candidate B suddenly comes out with a 5% lead despite that, everyone starts taking a *really* close look at the election mechanisms, because statistically you just don't see that kind of inaccuracy across the board.
To steal an election in America, you have basically three options:
1. Have a deniable asset do an unanswerable last-minute negative campaign. Think "election day mailer claiming candidate B has ties to organized crime." It doesn't need to be true, it just needs to skew the "undecided" voter long enough to go to the polls, because we don't invalidate election results after that kind of event here.
2. Gerrymander the districts so your party has an overwhelming advantage. This is very well-described elsewhere, so I'm not going to go into the mechanics behind it, but needless to say it works and it's legal in a lot of the country.
3. Make it harder for members of the other party to vote. Want to make it harder for the elderly to vote? Put restrictions on voting by mail, because many of them have mobility issues. Want to make it harder for the poor and working class to vote? Put specific ID requirements (driver's license is a common one since there's not a whole lot of reason to have a driver's license if you have no car) in place, or restrict polling place hours so that they won't be able to vote during work. There's also the popular "play games with the voter rolls" stunt, but we're starting to wise up to that one, so it's getting less effective.
So there you go. Want to steal an election? Manipulate who is allowed to vote and how their vote is apportioned, not how their vote is cast.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
When a State can be basically decided by two cities (filithy-delphia and shits-burg) I completely agree with this effort. The urban dwellers have vastly different issues that rural/small towns that are still mainly based on farming.
The all or nothing approach disenfranchises a large % of the population. Seeing that most urban voters are poor and black they vote democratic... even though the democrats are in largely the reason they are poor.
And gerrymandering is done by BOTH sides.
That's not reasonable logic unless you think Russia is all-knowing and wise. Russia likes Trump because he speaks Putin's aggressive language and thwarts/embarrasses the USA internationally with erratic behavior. Those same factors could lead him into a war with Russia when his manly ego collides with Putin's over something.
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I'm not going to debate most of your opinions, but...
The info source does not matter.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The source absolutely matters, especially considering the recent fad of leaking classified documents under the guise of "whistleblowing". Due to the classified nature of the information, there usually can be no official explanation beyond what is leaked. This means that the leaker has absolute editorial control over what can be discussed, and by exercising that control can manupilate public perception. Since nobody else can offer a rebuttal, the deception can last for decades.
Consider the well-known ethics thought experiment of a runaway railroad trolley heading towards five people tied to the track. You stand at a switch with the ability to divert the trolley to a different track, but there is one person standing on that path.
Depending on the circumstances involved, a wide variety of ethical outcomes may be selected. Sometimes it's considered more ethical to do nothing, and remain innocent. Sometimes it's considered more ethical to kill one person rather than five, and save a net of four lives. Sometimes less-conventional solutions are proposed, like sacrificing yourself to try to stop the trolley.
The perception of ethics also changes when more circumstances are known. If the one person on the other track is the villain who tied up the other five, he is almost universally chosen to die instead. If he's an innocent child, he's usually chosen to live in preference to five elderly people.
The circumstances matter, and selecting which circumstances the audience does or does not know means the ethical perception of the issue can also be selected. This was seen directly in the "Collateral Murder" video, where WikiLeaks made extensive use of editing to minimize the evidence that the targets were hostile, and emphasizing the evidence that they were innocent. They also edited around the protocols used to confirm a target, and intentionally made no acknowledgement of the fog of war, letting the viewers know from the beginning that the victims were innocent.
Even if the original footage were unclassified ("honestly and transparently", as you put it), a full understanding of events requires an expert's knowledge. As we've seen from other cases where official full reports were released, they're usually ignored because they don't agree with the earlier biased reports released to the public.
Always consider the source for all information, and consider any bias they may have. The more outrageous the scandal, the more incentive there is to editorialize it, or even to outright fabricate the information. Even if the US government were fully transparent, it would always be possible to claim that there is some secret agency (or department, or program, or person) that isn't transparent, and exists to do all of the distasteful things the rest of the government can't do.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Yeah, that's it, I'm pretty sure.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If true (whic it is not), it's only fair. The US interferes with everyone else's elections (including Russian) all the time. Sometimes through CIA, sometimes by financing NGOs which serve its needs. This doesn't work in Russia, of course, because Putin is famous for his 146% voter turnout, but they still try.
The media try to paint Trump as some kind of warmonger, but he's not even sure about backing all NATO countries!
Wow. You Trump supporters are terrifyingly ignorant. It should be obvious (at least to anyone who's read even a bit of history) that Trump's wishy washy support of NATO is far more likely result in war in Europe than strong support for NATO would. If or when the US participates is another question but I would strongly suggest you read about a little period of recent history in the 1930's. Putin wants his Empire back and one requirement to accomplishing that is the weakening of NATO to the point they don't oppose Putin when he starts taking it back. You sound like you would be a Neville Chamberlain fan. You might ask him how well an appeasement policy against an aggressive state works out. You'll see how well a weak Western Europe and an isolationist US turned out last time. The most efficient and effective time to oppose an aggressive state is before their tanks start rolling through neighboring countries.
Who is John Galt?
... would be, uh, pretty difficult to hack into. A lot more difficult than some crappy Diebold voting machine running some Windows variant.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Snowden's revelations of how our government betrayed us, combined with the farcical attempt at representing the public that the current crop of candidates makes, is more than enough to ruin the world's faith in America's "democratic" process.
Any American that has been paying attention has known for years that our government is corrupt to its core.
We deserve to be doubted. Right now, "trustworthy" does not apply to anything any politician says or does.
That is inevitable at this point anyway because Russia has not been countered for eight years.
If that had even an inkling of truth to it the Ukraine and Baltic States would have been gone years ago. The Crimea was a difficult one to oppose. Historically it was never a part of the Ukraine and even after it was assigned to the Ukraine in 1954 (by the Soviet government) it retained a certain level of autonomy. Add to that the native population of the Crimea was relocated and/or killed after WWII for Nazi collaboration so the population was close to 50% pro-Russian. On top of all that Putin performed a fairly masterful job of brinkmanship maneuvering to split it off. Yes the West was badly out maneuvered but it was also a bit of a wake up call. And key, the Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
But regardless it wouldn't be AMERICA starting the war, as it would be under Hillary.
If you mean Hillary would actually oppose a Russian invasion of say Latvia rather than sit blindly on the side as Trump has hinted he might, I would back Hillary 100% in that. Trump's appeasement stance would result in a situation much like that which occurred in WWII. At some point you would have to oppose him. Do you do so when he invades Latvia? Or do you wait until he goes into Poland? Or even wait until he crosses the German border? The longer you wait the stronger his the position will be and the weaker the West's will be.
Who is John Galt?
if Hillary looses, you can be sure the left will point the finger at Russia. Any election the left looses is automatically "Unfair!".
It's not about left or right; it's about the process. Both sides are happy to manipulate electoral math in any way which helps them--this is the ONLY reason states still use winner-take-all allocation in the electoral college, for example.
The process should be managed very carefully and respectfully, and should at the least allow paper recounts of any electronic votes.
Okay, that much is true. We also need something better than first past the post, which in various ways is probably more important, since it would have helped third parties and maybe improved the candidate results from the primaries.
Speaking to the actual issue of things..
Clinton hasn't said if she loses the system must be rigged. That's Trump.
Clinton hasn't benefited from Russian hackers. That's Trump.
Clinton isn't particularly approved by people like Putin and David Duke. That's Trump.
Clinton didn't win the lie of the year last year from politifact. That's Trump. In fact if you add up each of their true, mostly true and half of their half true statements, Clinton is at 61% compared to Trump's 22.5%, so Trump tells the truth about a third as often as Clinton does.
Clinton didn't basically ask for foreign espionage to be done on Hillary Clinton to help his campaign. That's Trump.
Clinton didn't call most Mexicans rapists and criminals. That's Trump.
Clinton didn't make up medical problems about her opponent. That's Trump.
Clinton didn't change the core of her key policy proposals so many times that not even her surrogates can keep up. That's Trump.
Clinton didn't do his best to get the Central Park 5 killed, completely bypassing due process. That's Trump. (The turned out to be innocent.)
Clinton isn't the one that paid bribes That's Trump in Florida and texas.
Clinton isn't the one funnelling what money she can back into herself. That's Trump.
Trump hasn't spent her whole life as a public servant, with a long record to show for it. That's Hillary. Trump just has multiple bankruptcies, failed businesses and ruined lives.
Trump isn't the one with a charity that has saved millions that is rated very highly. That is Hillary and Bill.
Trump has focused on improving the Trump brand. Hillary has focused on improving the country.
The Washington Post has a bit of bias in this, so take it with a grain of salt. When will the Washington Post start investigating themselves for holding illicit fundraisers with the DNC? Or is it Russia's fault they did this? Those damned Russians, how dare they expose our corruption!
Source: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/2699
Bzzt - fail.
Get a grownup to tell you about the bombing raid on Libya after the terrorist attack on a Pan-Am flight.
I love how people hide stuff like this at -1 because they don't want to hear it...
Even though this election may be self-inflicted, Putin can take credit regardless, and use that to threaten other nations.
"If you don't do things our way, you'll end up with bozos in your election also."
That may be a more effective threat than nukes.
Table-ized A.I.
As a shill you are going to dislike this one, but fair is fair.
Clinton hasn't said if she loses the system must be rigged. That's Trump. Hillary has however been caught repeatedly lying to the public, Law enforcement, Congress, Senators, and has done so for decades.
Clinton hasn't benefited from Russian hackers. Hillary and the DNC did however blame the Russians and attempted to pin motive (unsuccessfully) on Trump.
Clinton isn't particularly approved by people like Putin and David Duke. That's Trump. Trump disavowed Duke long before the media made their claim, so it's a try hard line of shit. Hillary has demonstrated that she cares nothing for the US and it's allies, only her own. Being disliked and untrustworthy may be a good set of traits for politicians to you, but not to others. More failed propaganda brought about by media.
Clinton didn't win the lie of the year last year from politifact. That's Trump. In fact if you add up each of their true, mostly true and half of their half true statements, Clinton is at 61% compared to Trump's 22.5%, so Trump tells the truth about a third as often as Clinton does. Hahaha, too fucking funny. The corrupt media has repeatedly given Clinton max ratings for her lies and THEY GET PAID TO PANDER FOR HER!
Clinton didn't basically ask for foreign espionage to be done on Hillary Clinton to help his campaign. The DNC has however attempted to claim that a plain statement regarding Hillary's "lost" emails is the same thing as requesting the US be hacked. Yet another failed effort at propaganda.
Clinton didn't call most Mexicans rapists and criminals. People who can't read persist in believing a propaganda message making the claim that Trump did, but most people can read. More failed propaganda.
Clinton didn't make up medical problems about her opponent. That's Trump. This is different from Hillary and the Democratic party talking about McCain how exactly? Oh, it's the same thing but against your candidate so it's bad.
Clinton didn't change the core of her key policy proposals so many times that not even her surrogates can keep up. That is such a bold faced lie I don't know where to start. How about abortion, LGBT rights, the war on Drugs, and rape victims to start. You get the idea I'm sure.
Clinton didn't do his best to get the Central Park 5 killed, completely bypassing due process. That's Trump. (The turned out to be innocent.) Another WTF? Are you doing a poor job of attempting to divert people from investigating the Clinton's Body Count? Like the DNC staffer who was murdered right around the time of the DNC leaks, which was blamed on "robbery" within a day yet nothing was missing on him?
Clinton isn't the one that paid bribes That's Trump in Florida and texas. I'm sure you have criminal conviction to reference right? Oh no, you don't. Another propaganda claim.
Clinton isn't the one funnelling what money she can back into herself. Except for the currently being investigated Clinton Foundation right? Oh shit, another one you lie openly about.
Trump hasn't spent her whole life as a public servant, with a long record to show for it. That's Hillary. Trump just has multiple bankruptcies, failed businesses and ruined lives. Career politicians have done such a great job with our country over the last two hundred years they have proven that business people interested in preserving liberty can't do the job right? Except for the founding fathers, and Lincoln, and countless other people who were not career politicians but working people who took office trying to make the country better. That is probably your most useless piece of propaganda because Trump gains support because he is not a career politician. People are well beyond seeing through the guise.
Trump isn't the one with a charity that has saved million
Everyone who has the slightest idea about how electronic voting works is against it. And for good reason, as electronic voting is against many basic principles of a democratic voting process.
It is completely pointless to cry "Russia wants to manipulate the vote!", because a lot of interested parties want to do this, and pointing at Russia (or China, or the aliens) is just about distracting attention from the problem that electronic ballots make an election easy to manipulate. And it is not that US politics would need an outside force to manipulate votes, after all, Gerrymandering is an American invention.
Basically, both sides are upping the ante in case they lose, so the loser can say "Everybody knows that Russia (or whoever) wanted to manipulate the ballots to make the other side win", and start a court battle of recounts and repeat elections which would make the "battle" between Bush and Al Gore look like a friendly exchange of pats on the back.
The only way out of this shit is basically to stop any electronic voting, and return to the good old ballot papers. They are damn hard to manipulate, and easy to control for anybody. The initial results might not be there in time for the evening news, and some recounts might draw the time frame to get final results even further, but at least there won't be court battles and forensic analysis of thousands of voting machines to prove in endless court battles that this or that party tried to manipulate the votes.
He doesn't really care about America's grave. To him America is just a distant whining voice and occasional mosquito bite. If someday the US congress can have some sort of agreement about Syria or Ukraine he may pay more attention, but I can't see either of those things happening any day soon.
I'm not pro-Trump. But I'm so tired of the bullshit around Hillary.
Clinton didn't win the lie of the year last year from politifact. That's Trump. In fact if you add up each of their true, mostly true and half of their half true statements, Clinton is at 61% compared to Trump's 22.5%, so Trump tells the truth about a third as often as Clinton does.
And politifact is hopelessly biased. Clinton's lies around the email server scandal easily put her below Trump in this regard.
The whole idea that Trump has all these Russian connections? Sure. So does Hillary. Ever heard of, oh, I don't know, The Clinton Foundation? How much money did they take from Russian interests? Plenty.
Hillary isn't a public servant, any more than Ted Kennedy was a public servant. These people are leeches - big difference.
Again, not advocating for Trump, just tired of this stupid bullshit that makes Hillary out to be something she isn't.
Do you have ESP?
Colin's attributed remarks are Irrelevant, as Hillary had already set up her server. Convenient, expedient politically, and whitewash for the ignorant self-misinformed cheerleaders. The rest of us know the reason for the server to exist, and it wasn't because Colin told her to do it. When data was destroyed without any arms length oversight and the one who destroyed the data claims that attorney client privilege covers the criteria for the destroyed data, you can rest assured the original intent for setting up the server was accomplished.
Any other conclusion defies logic, reason, facts, reality, Occam, and actions.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.