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NSA Chief: Nation-State Made 'Conscious Effort' To Sway US Presidential Election (aol.com)

The head of the US National Security Agency has said that a "nation-state" consciously targeted presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, in order to affect the US election. From an AOL article:Adm. Michael Rogers, who leads both the NSA and US Cyber Command, made the comments in response to a question about Wikileaks' release of nearly 20,000 internal DNC emails during a conference presented by The Wall Street Journal. "There shouldn't be any doubt in anybody's minds," Rogers said. "This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect." Rogers did not specify the nation-state or the specific effect, though US intelligence officials suspect Russia provided the emails to Wikileaks, after hackers stole them from inside DNC servers and the personal email account of Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. At least two different hacker groups associated with the Russian government were found inside the networks of the DNC over the past year, reading emails, chats, and downloading private documents. Many of those files were later released by Wikileaks.Further reading: Quartz and MotherJones.

39 of 667 comments (clear)

  1. Blah blah blah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am tired of the military-industrial complex requiring a boogie man to support their funding.

    1. Re: Blah blah blah by orgelspieler · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, but when those get reported, it's just the elites in the mainstream media unfairly attacking a man of the people.

    2. Re:Blah blah blah by budgenator · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes Everybody is BooHooing the Russians interfering with the US election by having the audacity of telling the American Electorate the truth.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    3. Re: Blah blah blah by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Incorrect.

      If you are:

      Rich
      Famous
      Professional Athlete
      Celebrity
      Holy Man ( priest, Cardinal, etc )
      Politician

      You can grab and grope as much as you want and the most you'll ever get is a hand slap. Unless someone higher than you needs a scapegoat to sacrifice to the masses.

      Trump merely stated what we already know about the folks on the above list.

      It pissed a lot of people off, but the truth usually does.

    4. Re:Blah blah blah by speedplane · · Score: 4, Insightful

      if Hillary hadn't been such a weak candidate, and not had so many skeletons in her closet, and hadn't been involved with SO many shady things over her career, then none of her staff would have been talking about all this on those emails that were leaked, and there wouldn't have been so much dirt on her to be leaked.

      I'd believe Hillary lost because of the Comey email investigation leak. But she also lost for a thousand other reasons... not connecting with a large number of disgruntled underemployed workers being the primary reason. Saying this country is great, when no one feels it is a sure way to lose an election.

      --
      Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
    5. Re:Blah blah blah by JThundley · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not just Hillary, but democrats in general. I was a big Bernie fan and the DNC unfairly shutting him out left more than just a bad taste in my mouth. I mean not only did that show their corruption, but also idiocy. The morons could have won with Bernie had they just followed their own rules!

      They'll be lucky if I ever vote anyone with a D next to their name for the rest of my life.

  2. They didn't succeed though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hillary didn't lose due to Wikileaks. She lost because she promised absolutely nothing other than to be not Donald Trump.

    Donald Trump promised to bring back jobs lost to off-shoring. He promised to bring back the parts of America that are hurting.

    Hillary Clinton promised to say one thing and public and other things in private. She promised to continue the status quo of the elite ruling over us with little to no input from the public. She lost because her selling point was "first woman president!" and not policy.

    She lost for a thousand reasons.

    Wikileaks is not one of them.

    1. Re:They didn't succeed though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Good thing Trump isn't one of the "elite ruling over us". People are so fucking stupid.

    2. Re:They didn't succeed though by Lisandro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not a Clinton fan by any stretch, but honestly, if America voted for Trump to break the "the status quo of the elite ruling over us" then you deserve what's coming your way.

    3. Re: They didn't succeed though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I never said Trump was going to succeed. Trump promised a lot of things he almost certain can't deliver.

      But he promised SOMETHING and that sure beats promises of things staying the same, especially as things continue to get worse. And don't try and claim they're not getting worse - cities are improving and largely voted for Hillary, but rural America is in rapid decline and they came out in massive support for Trump. Because he promised to help them - even if there's almost no chance that he really can.

    4. Re:They didn't succeed though by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anybody who had ignored all the evidence up to then was in the tank for Hillary and no additional evidence would change their minds.

      What cost Clinton the election? Voter turnout. She was not Obama, so blacks stayed home. Trump's redneck voters were not expected to vote but did.

      What drove that? Black racism and angry trailer parks. None of which were served by Hillary's campaign strategy. Blacks were taken for granted, trailer trash were called 'despicables'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    5. Re:They didn't succeed though by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What drove that? Black racism and angry trailer parks.

      Or put in a less insulting way, poor rural white men were promised the jobs they felt were taken away from them by ... everyone else.

      None of which were served by Hillary's campaign strategy. Blacks were taken for granted, trailer trash were called 'despicables'.

      "Deplorables" is the word you are looking for. It's important, because only someone like Hillary Clinton would use that word. It conveys a strong sense of rich, out of touch elitist, describing ... all other people. It just happens that this time she meant rural whites.

      This is why she lost the election. Benghazi, email-gate, whatever... the republicans have been attacking her for so long, for so many reasons that most of us had tuned out.

    6. Re:They didn't succeed though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anybody who had ignored all the evidence up to then was in the tank for Hillary and no additional evidence would change their minds.

      What cost Clinton the election? Voter turnout. She was not Obama, so blacks stayed home. Trump's redneck voters were not expected to vote but did.

      What drove that? Black racism and angry trailer parks. None of which were served by Hillary's campaign strategy. Blacks were taken for granted, trailer trash were called 'despicables'.

      Nope.

      Conclusion first because it's a long read:

      Stop calling Trump voters racist. A metaphor: we have freedom of speech not because all speech is good, but because the temptation to ban speech is so great that, unless given a blanket prohibition, it would slide into universal censorship of any unpopular opinion. Likewise, I would recommend you stop calling Trump voters racist – not because none of them are, but because as soon as you give yourself that opportunity, it’s a slippery slope down to “anyone who disagrees with me on anything does so entirely out of raw seething hatred, and my entire outgroup is secret members of the KKK and so I am justified in considering them worthless human trash”. I’m not saying you’re teetering on the edge of that slope. I’m saying you’re way at the bottom, covered by dozens of feet of fallen rocks and snow. Also, I hear that accusing people of racism constantly for no reason is the best way to get them to vote for your candidate next time around. Assuming there is a next time.

      It's from Slate, hardly a bastion of alt-right support:
      You Are Still Crying Wolf

      It does one helluva job destroying the idea that Trump won because of racism. Read it - that conclusion is supported by various bits of data - including the fact that Trump got a higher percentage of votes than Romney in all racial categories but one - whites.

      I have a different perspective. Back in October 2015, I wrote that the picture of Trump as “the white power candidate” and “the first openly white supremacist candidate to have a shot at the Presidency in the modern era” was overblown. I said that “the media narrative that Trump is doing some kind of special appeal-to-white-voters voodoo is unsupported by any polling data”, and predicted that:

      If Trump were the Republican nominee, he could probably count on equal or greater support from minorities as Romney or McCain before him.

      ...

      Trump made gains among blacks. He made gains among Latinos. He made gains among Asians. The only major racial group where he didn’t get a gain of greater than 5% was white people. I want to repeat that: the group where Trump’s message resonated least over what we would predict from a generic Republican was the white population.

      Nor was there some surge in white turnout. I don’t think we have official numbers yet, but by eyeballing what data we have it looks very much like whites turned out in equal or lesser numbers this year than in 2012, 2008, and so on.

      I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up. It’s a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clint

    7. Re:They didn't succeed though by HornWumpus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not my point. Black racists didn't come out to vote for Hillary because of the color of her skin.

      That simple.

      Alternatively: Black racists did come out to vote for Obama because of the color of his skin.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    8. Re:They didn't succeed though by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      racist, misogynistic fascist

      If you keep calling everyone who disagrees with you those kinds of names you're going to lose again in 2020.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    9. Re:They didn't succeed though by Lisandro · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Oh, its quite likely most Trump voters aren't racist. But they did vote for one.

      I don't know what is worse. The fact that someone would willingly vote a racist president or that he/she simply doesn't give a shit.

    10. Re:They didn't succeed though by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You see, voting for a unidicted felon, willing to take money from nations both friendly and not so friendly to us, influenced by a husband who is an admitted sexual predator, is tolerable.

      Oh, and a former lawyer, having surrendered her license to avoid the further embarrassment of prosecution over unethical behavior in her home state of Arkansas. As her husband had to, the result of a civil suit decision.

      Or maybe not. Many Americans said it was not tolerable. Enough that one was elected, the other rejected. And that's how it works. Given a choice, you make it or abdicate your limited, minimal voting power.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    11. Re:They didn't succeed though by operagost · · Score: 4, Insightful

      *sigh* He's not. You never saw Rev. Sharpton hanging out with David Duke, but you saw him with Trump. You saw Jesse Jackson with Trump. You saw Latinos rallying for Trump

      This "Trump is a racist" meme was entirely fabricated by the left-wing media that took offense to his "Mexican rapist" speech-- when "Mexican" is a nationality and arguably an ethnicity, not a race-- and decided to pretend he was advocating for white supremacy. Trump also once made a contemptuous statement about women-- about the same time Hillary was calling young black men "superpredators" and lauding the continued disarmament of them through gun control laws. I am aghast at how much traction this completely fact-free narrative took-- but not surprised, because it's easier to vilify someone than refute his points and policies. And I'm a guy who voted for Gary Johnson.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    12. Re:They didn't succeed though by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not a Clinton fan by any stretch, but honestly, if America voted for Trump to break the "the status quo of the elite ruling over us" then you deserve what's coming your way.

      Finally the change that people are expecting after years of ruling class shitting on people?

      The fact you said "America" show's you're not paying attention. World wide elections are turning ugly, Australia at came out of a double dissolution (which normally solves divisive politics) with an almost hung parliament, the British wanted out of the EU, Austria they voted for the greens a party which historically has enjoyed a crappy 15% of the vote, governments around the world see political wildcards and nutcases skyrocketing in popularity.

      People the world over are finally showing how truly sick of the shit they are.

    13. Re:They didn't succeed though by steveha · · Score: 4, Insightful

      if America voted for Trump to break the "the status quo of the elite ruling over us" then you deserve what's coming your way.

      Of Trump and Hillary Clinton, which of the two has been in politics for three decades? Which of the two had their political party's highest leadership game the primaries to guarantee they won the candidacy? Which of the two engaged in a conspiracy to repeatedly violate the laws pertaining to handling of classified information, and then had the Director of the FBI personally whitewash the investigation? Which of the two had the news media helping to bury strong evidence of felony lawbreaking?

      It wasn't Trump.

      You can be sarcastic all you want, but the news media will be all over Trump, watching for him to do the slightest wrong thing and tell all the voters about it 24/7 for weeks. (He's already in hot water for the crime of telling reporters "I'm done for the night" and then going to dinner with his family. Doesn't he know that the reporters have a right to watch him eat dinner?)

      The Congress will actually push back on Trump if he tries to aggregate more power to the Presidency (contrast to President "I've Got a Pen, and I've Got a Phone" Obama, bypassing Congress to bind the USA to international agreements that sure looked like treaties but were not treaties because he said so).

      The IRS would refuse to follow Trumps orders if he were to try to sic them on his enemies, while the IRS actually volunteered to do this for President Obama. (I don't think the bad actors in the IRS did it because they personally liked President Obama, they did it because he was a "progressive" Democrat... so they absolutely would have continued to do this for Hillary Clinton.)

      The Republican establishment never wanted Trump. He's already shaking things up in Washington D.C.

      So I'll grant you that Trump is in the 1% and thus not very well connected to the daily struggles of the "little people" in America. But of the two candidates, which one just might "break 'the status quo of the elite ruling over us'"? Trump. By a landslide. It's not even remotely close.

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    14. Re:They didn't succeed though by Lisandro · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah. Let's see how broken the status quo gets once he announces his Republican cabinet. I can't believe people are so naive about this.

      Oh, and BTW: the really scary thing about Trump is not the potential clusterfuck his presidency might be, but the fact than on a single sweep the GOP gained control of the White House, congress and, as soon as vacancies are filled, the Supreme Court. Don't expect a lot of pushbacks on those ends.

    15. Re:They didn't succeed though by steveha · · Score: 3, Insightful

      on a single sweep the GOP gained control of the White House, congress and, as soon as vacancies are filled, the Supreme Court. Don't expect a lot of pushbacks on those ends.

      It depends:

      If Trump tries to lighten the amount of regulations on businesses, don't expect a lot of pushback. If he tries to lower taxes, don't expect a lot of pushback.

      But a relative of mine said that Trump will start rounding up minorities and putting them into concentration camps. If Trump tries to do anything like that? Pushback. Expect it.

      If Trump tries to strip LGBT of equal protection under the law? (I don't know why we are even talking about that, he hasn't historically been negative about LGBT, but my liberal friends are saying he will be a disaster to LGBT.) Again, expect pushback.

      In short, don't expect a lot of pushback on the typical center-right issues. But if Trump actually starts doing any of the deranged dictator stuff that my liberal friends are staying awake at night worrying about, do expect pushback. Lots.

      I even expect pushback if Trump goes crazy with Executive Orders. For some reason the Congress just took it when President Obama started overstepping the bounds of the Presidency, but I really don't think the Congress will take it from Trump. All the Democrats would be opposed and enough of the Republicans would be opposed.

      Also, I'm grimly looking forward to the spectacle once the Republicans start nominating Supreme Court Justices. I expect the Democrats to link arms and obstruct every single candidate, no matter how reasonable and qualified. If they actually do this I then expect to see the Republicans invoke the Harry Reid precedent and shut down the filibuster on Supreme Court Justice nominations. I don't actually want to see this happen, but the silver lining would be the entertainment of watching liberals explain how the Harry Reid precedent isn't really a precedent at all, it's totally different this time, etc.

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    16. Re:They didn't succeed though by NatasRevol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Do you know who came up with 'Drain the swamp'?

      Mussolini.

      Do you know what fascists do?

      Mute the press. Check
      Make it us vs them (jews/muslims/dems). Check
      Promise that everything will be great, without real plans. Check
      Put in their friends/elites. Check

      THEN they have the power to whatever they want, laws don't matter to them. Remember, this is the guy who promised the military would do war crimes for him. During the second national debate. On live TV.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    17. Re:They didn't succeed though by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hillary's congressional mentor was a KKK member. I'm sure you hold her to the same standards? No...what a surprise.

      I don't give a crap about Hillary's mentor, or her email server, or how many people she killed in Benghazi. I didn't vote for her because she opposes accountability in schools, flip-flopped on TPP, and is too interventionist on foreign policy. These things are ACTUAL ISSUES. Since there was no way I was voting for Trump either (again, because of ACTUAL ISSUES), I voted for Gary Johnson.

    18. Re: They didn't succeed though by Boronx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Christ, you guys sound like the naive Obama supporters in 2008.

      The president is not going to save you. He's not the messiah, he's not even a dictator. You're supposed to vote for the better person, the smart one, the one who knows what they're doing.

      I'm the first to admit that Hilary isn't really smart enough or good enough to be a good president, but Trump isn't even close.

    19. Re:They didn't succeed though by Boronx · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The American media has become far too good at making the average Joe hate anyone who might be trying to help him. This causes them to flail about blindly. They become easy prey to con men.

    20. Re:They didn't succeed though by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sorry, your attempt at patronizing humor failed. I am not a Trump supporter, I voted for Jill Stein. I just like seeing all the precious snowflakes getting their panties in a twist because their favorite sociopath was defeated by a more intelligent one.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    21. Re:They didn't succeed though by Lisandro · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Honestly? Even scarier. The guy made racist/xenophobic remarks through his campaign - on record.

  3. I'd like to thank the leader of said nation-state by HBI · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They inadvertently did the job that our own media should have been doing, if it hadn't been entirely co-opted by the ruling party.

    The lying media should be ashamed of itself, but isn't.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  4. man, our own medicine tastes terrible by Ionized · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The US has been mucking around influencing foreign governments for many, many decades. Kinda sucks when someone does it to us.

  5. Re:I'd like to thank the leader of said nation-sta by pr0t0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just so I'm clear about your statement, you are saying it was incumbent upon the "lying media" to hack into the computer systems of one or all candidates (fair and balanced), breaking untold number of laws set forth by the computer fraud and abuse act, and disseminate the findings of which to the viewing public?

    That's an interesting point of view.

    --
    I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
  6. Possibly by Lisandro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But i sincerely think it made little to no difference in the result. The Dems are certainly trying to pin what's probably their worse election in history to the CIA but the sad truth is that Clinton was never a good candidate. She certainly was qualified for the job though, but that has little to do with what ends up appealing to the voter.

    If she weren't running against Trump her number would've been way worse. And this is fucking Donald Trump we're talking about.

  7. Amazing Disconnect by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Insightful

    People are wanting to audit the presidential results, people are also claiming that Russia swayed the election...

    Almost without exception, all of these same people are against stronger voterID laws. Just how do you think elections really get rigged anyway? You can spend vast amounts of money to sway someone and fail (see: Hillary) which is why real election tampering creates the votes it needs.

    No other nation but the U.S. has such laughable weak authentication around voting. If you want to see results get more and more whack, by all means block voterID laws...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Amazing Disconnect by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm against voter ID laws because what evidence I've seen is that the problem they purport to solve is vanishingly small, and in practice the effect and intent is to decrease turnout in specifically targeted groups (namely, those that vote largely for one party rather than the other).

      On the other hand, I think that establishing full audit trails for elections are a good thing. We should not blindly trust that electronic systems do what we're told they do - we need ways to verify that (and that goes for so many things other than voting too). I'd be perfectly happy to have voter audit methods as well - and we can easily come up with ways to do that which don't prevent legitimate voters from casting a ballot. Have them sign an affidavit, and take their picture. If you insist on ID cards, make the voter ID itself come with a picture, and don't charge money for them. That way everyone who's registered to vote automatically has a valid ID.

    2. Re:Amazing Disconnect by DogDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And again, you're spewing lies that have been proven to be lies over and over again. Many studies have shown that there's very little to no election fraud that could be "fixed" by voter ID laws. There's real, actual election manipulation by people (Republicans) trying to prevent people from voting legally.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
  8. Re:That's all fine but by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Did they maybe not do the same to the other side? Who cares so what?

    I was and am very much against Donald Trump, but I'm not sure what hacking his organization would have accomplished - every kooky thing he seems to believe was already right out there in front of us. Unless he was secretly boiling and eating babies, I don't know what additional info about him could've swayed the election... and, even then, it might not have mattered.

    He famously said "I could shoot somebody and wouldn't lose voters", and apparently he was right.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  9. lol @ nsa by MrVictor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Snowden leaks showed us that the NSA uses lying, misinformation and subterfuge as its three main weapons. They have zero credibility and anything they publicly state are lies until proven otherwise.

  10. Quite the conundrum by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not sure how to take this statement. Apparently the NSA is good enough to detect a "hacker" and yet powerless to stop it. So if this was an example of "cyber-warfare" are we to expect that the US is completely open and vulnerable, since no counter-measures can be taken? It seems that "the enemy" is so good that they can get in, do damage, get out and get away with it.

    Or MAYBE... this guy is just making all this shit up and John Podesta, who uses a GMAIL account - was simply phished. "I was hacked" is the usual excuse to try and hide your own bumbling incompetence when something like this happens. Risking a diplomatic incident to try and distract from your own or your colleague's incompetence is monstrous.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  11. Re:That's all fine but by Software · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did they maybe not do the same to the other side? Who cares so what?

    I care. The Soviet^W Russian^W WikiLeaks dumps were giving only half the story. It's like a trial where only one side gets to present evidence. Sure, the opposition can cross-examine, but if the opposition can't call its own witnesses, the jury isn't going to get a complete picture.