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President Obama Threatens Retaliatory Actions Against Russia Over Hacks (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
[President Obama] said he was weighing a mix of public and covert actions against the Russians in his last 34 days in office, actions that would increase "the costs for them." Mr. Obama said he was committed to sending the Kremlin a message that "we can do stuff to you," but without setting off an escalating cyberconflict... "Some of it we will do in a way that they will know, but not everybody will," he said...
[T]he president was clearly wrestling with what he said the hacking affair and the reaction to it revealed about the state of American politics. Citing a recent poll that showed more than a third of Trump voters saying they approved of Mr. Putin...the president appealed to Americans not to allow partisan hatred and feuds to blind them to manipulation by foreign powers. "Unless that changes," Mr. Obama said, "we're going to continue to be vulnerable to foreign influence because we've lost track of what it is that we're about and what we stand for."
President Obama pulled Putin aside at a September meeting of the G20 to discuss Russian hacking, according to the article, telling Putin "to cut it out, there were going to be serious consequences if he did not."
[T]he president was clearly wrestling with what he said the hacking affair and the reaction to it revealed about the state of American politics. Citing a recent poll that showed more than a third of Trump voters saying they approved of Mr. Putin...the president appealed to Americans not to allow partisan hatred and feuds to blind them to manipulation by foreign powers. "Unless that changes," Mr. Obama said, "we're going to continue to be vulnerable to foreign influence because we've lost track of what it is that we're about and what we stand for."
President Obama pulled Putin aside at a September meeting of the G20 to discuss Russian hacking, according to the article, telling Putin "to cut it out, there were going to be serious consequences if he did not."
It hardly took that long over 9/11. And with evidence just as feeble..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Can someone explain what exactly was hacked (voting machines?) and what is the evidence that the Russians are responsible?
"Airing our party's dirty laundry crosses a red line, and there will be consequen -- nah, nevermind"
If they are not careful, Obama may be forced to do something drastic, like issue a strongly worded letter of condemnation!
You seem to be confusing two completely different email sets here. Are you confused, or are you just trying to be confusing?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There are not even the barest shreds of any proofs about russian influence or wrongdoing. However the allegations all come from proven professional liars and torturers who then steal and kill to hide their wrongdoings. All of the infamous 17 agencies lie pretty much everytime they go public with anything political.
How many russian speakers work at the CIA who can write russian comments? "Rasputin" is now considererd a proof? How many attack servers of the NSA and CIA are located in former soviet republics? Weren't stuxnet servers there too? The CIA/NSA has a lot more reason to do some hacking their own election than Russia: there simply is no reason for Russia to hack cause the conflicts they are in, they are actually winning, unlike the US no matter who wins the election. Also no mather who wins it, the war in the middle east will go on, maybe a little less bloody since the US won't send weapons to Al-Qaeda aka al-Nusra via Saudi Arabia. Russia has realistic goals, and goes rationally to achieve them. The US does not but finances and supports with weapons instead the people they are claiming to fight for the last 15 years.
So if any country wishes to meddle in any election by telling the truth about any sides corruption, I say: more power to them. Even if it is some CIA guy who publicized the campaign emails. I'd be happy if they did the same for the republicans and their campaings, but I guess that hacker there already did a lot for the american public so we can't demand more from him.
The US has meddled in other countries' elections especially their allies, since at least WW2 (Greece, Italy for example), toppled by now probably dozens of governments in clandestine operations and in bloody coups on in middle and southern america alone. So how are they to accuse anyone of doing it? And doing it with the truth instead of bullets like the US customarily does?
And how would that have been done, seeing as the presidential election is effectively 50 separate elections, with different voting technologies? As to Democrat email leaks, it is unclear to me that the Executive branch has ever had an overt role in securing political parties' data.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, you don't know that, and once again we see the Clinton Crime Family conspiracy theory put forward. Seth Rich was killed in a robbery, and it took him an hour to die. It wasn't a hit, it was just bad luck.
I do see what fake news really is. It's every fucked up maniac's conspiracy theory somehow rendered legitimate.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The only reason the emails were newsworthy at all was that the documents revealed information that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were trying to keep secret from the American voters. If the Russians were involved in the leak (and that seems like a pretty big "if" since there doesn't seem to be much evidence), they would only have been giving to the voters information that Clinton should have released on her own. In other words, these disclosures are clearly not “fake news”.
I'll say this one more time: information that the CIA has accused Russia of sharing with the American people is “real news” about newsworthy topics, and given how pathetic the "security" was on the servers it came from, it seems unbelievable that this wouldn't have made the news sooner or later.
Tell me again how they "hacked the election"?
There's no proof because Russia didn't hack the elections. Julian Assange said Russia wasn't the source of the DNC and Podesta leaks, and he's got way more credibility than a partisan politician, even if that politician is the POTUS. Russian hacking = the real #fakenews
It's not his fault, because the media is purposely confusing things. Notice how they always talk about Russia "hacking the election" even though that's not at all what happened. And then when they do talk about what Russia is actually accused of doing, they always just say "emails" to try and conflate Hillary's email server with the Wikileaks dump. It's classic disinformation and if you talk about politics with regular people, it's working: people have just kind of mentally merged Hillary's private email server with the Wikileaks email dump with Russians "hacking the vote" despite the fact that none of them are related and the third never happened.
It's a technique that the Democrats are using to distance themselves from Hillary's historic failure as a candidate, and that the Republicans are more than happy to let them get away with because refusing to acknowledge the truth is only going to lead to a GOP supermajority in 2018 and likely a GOP-controlled Constitutional Convention within the next decade.
But it's not surprising that people are confused about what "Russian hacking" is - the media and the lame duck administration are purposely trying to confuse people.
[...] she made it very clear during the debates that she wanted to start WWIII with Russia.
I didn't realized that we elected Trump to be the new Chamberlian to appease the Russians.
1) it doesn't matter who's the hacker, if our infrastructure is vulnerable, its vulnerable to anyone. lets worry about fixing that first.
2) fine, retaliate. why is this news? hacking happens every day. remember stuxnet? solution to hacking is better technology NOT better lawyering.
3) nice job wagging-the-dog your way out of actually dealing with the contents of hillary emails. real threat is what happened with Sanders (i'm not his supporter _at all_). it was a scandalous perversion of democracy. Putin (if it was him) did us a great service. i mean us the people, not necessarily certain people in power.
Convincing evidence that Russia intervened in the elections is a valid reason for the electoral college to vote the other way. No one thought of computer hacking when the electoral college was created of course but I would say it translates well. Come to think of it, the FBI director letter could in it self be considered an undue influence on the election.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
US agents were supplying arms to numerous rebel factions. Many of these weapons and rebel groups have joined ISIS. Syria, Libya, and the rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq represent the worst foreign policy strategy every implemented by the US.
What a load of horse shit you're shoveling. The election wasn't stolen. Releasing the dirty secrets of the DNC and Hillary's top guy is not stealing an election. So far the only questionable voting numbers are coming from Detroit, where the votes counted from the machines far exceed the number of ballots, and Detroit was heavily Clinton. Wisconsin's recount ended up adding a hundred votes to Trump. Stop reading #fakenews
So if he died in a robbery, why wasn't he robbed? And why did Wikileaks offer a reward for info about his death?
The only way they have been accused of "intervening" so far is by sharing information with the American people is that it was all “real news” about newsworthy topics. Information that we should have a right to know about. AFAIK, they have not been accused of hacking votes or anything along those lines.
the worst foreign policy strategy every implemented by the US.
Because lying about the need to invade and occupy Iraq, destroying the one bulwark which might have existed to stop the spread of ISIS, had nothing to do with any of this, right? That was a fantastic foreign policy issue, right?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The amazing thing is Thursday I listened to Julian Assange give a live interview stating categorically that Wikileaks did not receive the emails from any state actor including Russia. It was a DNC insider angry about Clinton Foundation corruption and what happened to Bernie. Not hearing a word of this in the "media".
Are you saying 'Anybody I don't like is Hitler' is a good strategy?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They won't because it's well documented that the US has interfered in elections all over the world. A quick search turns up dozens of them just since WW2.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Well, I'm not bloody confused, and I think it's a reasonable assumption that Russia wanted to do what it could to prevent Clinton from winning the election, and at least initially has got what it wants; a president who is Russia-friendly and a Secretary of State with pretty deep ties to Russia. We can debate how much influence the Russians really did have, but I'd say the Wikileaks emails did Clinton tangible harm.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Er - Afghanistan was attacked the very night the towers fell. Iraq was NEVER about 9/11.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Were you alive, then? Because it was a 14-month march to war.
Wow are you confused. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The Taliban in Afghanistan admitted to hosting and supporting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
I know we're living in a post factual world where empirical truth doesn't exist. But the fact is that the U.S. led a coaliton of forces against the Taliban in Afghanistan beginning on October 7, 2001. Less than one month after the September 11 attacks.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
oh fuck off. We all know what the poster was referring to, the conspiracy theory that Clinton had Rich assassinated in some sort of gangland-style take down. For fuck's sake, this is exactly what fake news is, where the diseased minds that invent these conspiracy theories suddenly become accepted as being holders of the "real story".
There's no evidence that Rich leaked anything, and there's no evidence that the Clinton's had him killed. These are pure fabrications that have been repeated by the Sanders and Alt-right lunatics so much that they just assume the truth of this particular fantasy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Besides, Putin is more photogenic than Hillary.
Don't assume that everyones taste in porn is the same as yours.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Who upvotes this stupid bullshit? Nobody knows that the server was 0wned "many, many". And that conspiracy shit about murders is just dumb. Infowars dumb.
I don't respond to AC's.
If Russia's neighbors aren't so friendly, it might have something to do with the 20th century.
He's crazy, but will be out of office in a month.
Russians aren't suicidal, nukes aren't really on the table. They are much more likely to engineer an 'oil price shock event' in the middle east. If I was in charge of security at Saudi oil processing facilities, I'd double down for the next few years, perhaps triple down.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Er - Afghanistan was attacked the very night the towers fell. Iraq was NEVER about 9/11.
Yeah, right. Tell that to Bush, Cheney, Rove, and millions of Americans. They were wrong, but they MADE Iraq about 9/11.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Iraq was about keeping the muslim world busy the traditional way. By restarting the war between its two largest factions. Let them kick the fight out of each other for a century or two. It worked for Christianity. (100 years war, between the catholics and protestants. Only those remote to the fight, Irish/British, missed the point, they got it themselves, eventually.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
He went off to vacation in Hawaii after saying that. Congress isn't even in session. So yeah, he might as well threaten them with a limp noodle.
And even if you somehow believe all of this, the only thing they did was reveal all the corruption: the primaries were rigged, they coordinate with their super PACs, they rigged the debates and then lied about it, Hillary took down every single other Democrat that ran this year via financial means and others, Hillary got funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar (you remember what they're like from the Olympic slavery scandals, right?) and other distasteful places, they used Clinton Foundation money for Chelsea's wedding and other things I've forgotten and CNN just lies and tells us it's illegal to look.
Even if we assume Putin himself was behind it, I'd have to thank him for exposing the corruption our press seems to be turning a blind eye to. And that's only when they weren't willingly complicit with it. No, I haven't forgotten the "WaPo party" the lawyers were complaining about, Washington Post. All those articles you write and not a damn one about your own involvement here.
You mean that was also Hillary?
They KNOW that tinfoil hats are just a conspiracy invented to make it easier to identify the wingnut conspiracy theorists.
That's why they wear INVISIBLE tinfoil hats, made out of transparent aluminum.
BTW did you know that tinfoil hats, invisible or otherwise, act as an echo chamber amplifying and scrambling thoughts (and trapped electromagnetic radiation)?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
How is this our infrastructure being vulnerable? Russia didn't hack US infrastructure, at least not that I've seen (please provide reliable sources if you know otherwise) they got in to the internal e-mails of campaigns. Also "hack" seems to be a bit of a strong word for what they did. Sounds like they got in to Podesta's e-mails by phishing his username/password. I'm not really sure what you think the federal government can do to fix/prevent that. I mean they already have information out there about "don't click on shit in e-mails" and there is training out there organizations can point people to from groups like SANS.
That aside, even if it was a hack (as in exploiting vulnerabilities) it wasn't a federal government controlled system. So again, what is the fed supposed to do? Take over private e-mail systems? Put up a national firewall on the Internet?
It was "nothing" that debate questions were leaked to Hillary in advance, and she said nothing?
It was "nothing" that the DNC rigged the primaries against Sanders?
It was "nothing" that Hillary sent many classified emails over her private email when she said she had said none?
It was "nothing" that Hillary claimed she had only deleted personal emails when in fact she had deleted a vast number of official emails?
Ask Martha Stewart how "nothing" it is to lie to the FBI. Even if you ignored the vast number of illegal and unethical things Hillary has done, even if you ignored all that Hillary should have still gone to jail for the same reason Martha Stewart did. That's why people rightfully called her "Crooked Hillary" and still claim she is a felon; because she is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What? Hilary was going to take your guns if she was elected?
How could you have any guns left after Obama took them all? Oh wait....
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Are you fucking retarded? Do you think if the Russians should hand over information to Wikileaks they will do it with a greeting card "From Russia with Love"? Don't you think that if they have the means to hack into highly confidential systems, they don't have groups and their ways to hide their involvement. Jesus, wake the fuck up already.
Off by 70 years, if you are referring to the Catholic-Protestant conflict of the 17th century, usually known as the 30 Years' War
What does the popular vote have to do with anything? The fact is she lost, and several states by fairly close margins. The DNC leaks certainly contributed to that loss. Easily 1% across the board. Doesnt make a difference in California or New York, but it made a difference in more than enough other states. But please, keep saying everything is A-OK because Hillary won the popular vote.
And the White house Email system, and the OPM. Don't forget those. That happened more than two years ago, and shut down those email systems for weeks. What was our response to that? Crickets. Thank God this President is on the way out.
"Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks"
Any support for that. I thought they were all from Saudi Arabia. And all I remember Osama saying was "wow, good for them" after the attack, and there wasn't flight simulators to train on in Afghanistan anyway.
Were you alive, then? Because it was a 14-month march to war.
Wow are you confused. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The Taliban in Afghanistan admitted to hosting and supporting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
I know we're living in a post factual world where empirical truth doesn't exist. But the fact is that the U.S. led a coaliton of forces against the Taliban in Afghanistan beginning on October 7, 2001. Less than one month after the September 11 attacks.
A lot of people were confused back then, 9/11 was the major motivation for the war in Iraq and the Bush administration was constantly trying to conflate the two. If they didn't try to suggest they were allied there was always the implication that the crazy Arab Muslim Saddam would commit an unprovoked first strike with his WMDs the way al-Qaeda did on 9/11.
In reality they were mostly enemies, Saddam was a Sunni dictator in a majority Shia country so ran a largely secular state. Not dissimilar to Assad a Shia dictator in a majority Sunni country.
Al Qaeda did not like Saddam because of his secularism, and al-Qaeda was rightly thrilled on multiple counts when the US invaded Iraq, but the motive for the US invading Iraq was 9/11.
I stole this Sig
Were you alive, then? Because it was a 14-month march to war.
Wow are you confused. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The Taliban in Afghanistan admitted to hosting and supporting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
I know we're living in a post factual world where empirical truth doesn't exist. But the fact is that the U.S. led a coaliton of forces against the Taliban in Afghanistan beginning on October 7, 2001. Less than one month after the September 11 attacks.
Close, but not quite. Iraq was not a direct result of or a response to 9/11. 9/11 laid the groundwork for Iraq, though, focusing more resources including political will, attention, and covert focus on Iraq. More importantly, it put the American People on a war footing psychologically, in a way they had not been for decades. Without that, the ground war in Iraq would probably have been a political non-starter.
Real lawyers write in C++
Had all the nations involved in the 1991 war with Iraq helped make sure Iraq abided by their surrender agreement the 2003 war would not have happened.Instead a significant amount of those countries ran the UN Oil for Food scam and turned a blind eye every time Iraq violated the terms of their surrender. The largest coalition of nations supporting military operations was gathered for the 1991 war. It was a positive action that gave the UN a rare opportunity to show how the world could be rallied together for the common good. And then the UN reverted back to a non-entity that couldn't organize an orgy in a whore house. That sounded the death toll for the UN. It's a worthless organization that should be disbanded or at least unfunded by the US. The 2003 war occurred because Iraq violated every item of the 1991 surrender agreement. Had Japan or Germany not abided by the terms of their surrender they would have been pummeled again without question because not honoring surrender agreements will eventually lead to warring armies not offering or accepting surrender agreements which takes war to a whole new level of barbarity.
Sadaam Hussien himself helped promote the belief that he possessed WMD because he was afraid some of the surrounding countries would take advantage of Iraq's weakened state after the first war. Had Japan or Germany not abided by the terms of their surrender they would have been pummeled again without question because not honoring surrender agreements will eventually lead to warring armies to not offer or accept surrender agreements which takes war to a whole new level of barbarity.
The US made the mistake of planning on lengthy deployments in both Afghanistan and Iraq when they should have went in and killed those needing killing and blowing up any thing of value from the air. They made the mistake of taking prisoners from the battlefield and storing them in Cuba. There were better ways of handing enemy combatants. The Vienna conventions allowed for their battlefield executions. They engaged in war with no insignia or affiliation with a nation states military forces. The US just needs to strap some parachutes (or not) on the remaining prisoners and air drop them where they were original captured.
Wars can be won by airpower alone. The 1991 Iraq war was won from the air and ground troops committed only after the Iraq's were stumbling around in the desert looking for someone to surrender to. Russia's recent carpet bombing of the city of Allepo is another fine example of winning a conflict by bombing everything into ruble and then bombing the ruble until it bounces. I believe everyone should support Russia in performing the same type of operations on every city in the region housing any more than 5 ISIS members. Russia is perfect for these type of action because nobody complains. If the US was to do this there would be so much complaining and hand wringing that the ones having hysterics would push to get Assad a permanent seat of the UN Security council and give ISIS next to the Palestinians in the UN General assembly.
Short of invalidating the election results and making us redo it, I don't know what Obama thinks he can do that will actually bother Putin.
US agents were supplying arms to numerous rebel factions. Many of these weapons and rebel groups have joined ISIS.
Many of these weapons were already in Iraq by the time Obama became president, and many were supplied to the Iraqi government. That the Iraqi government lost them later to ISIS is the fault of the Iraqi government, not anybody else.
He's not referring to Iraqi army weapons that were captured in Iraq. He's referring to weapons that our government has stated it has supplied to Syrian rebels. Rebels which then either sold the weapons to jihadis, or were absorbed into larger jihadi organizations.
www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/politics/syria-arming-rebels/ : "CIA-funded weapons have begun flowing to Syrian rebels, a U.S. official told CNN."
www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-syria-obama-order-idUSBRE8701OK20120802
He likes to draw lines in the sand. He drew a bunch of them in Syria but Assad kept wiping them out with his foot. Maybe he'll draw a line for Putin to scrub out too. No one has any fear of him, they know he's all talk. He can launch a few drones to blow up some goat pens in Pakistan but to actually take a shot at Russia? No way.
"Had all the nations involved in the 1991 war with Iraq helped make sure Iraq abided by their surrender agreement the 2003 war would not have happened"
This has got to be about the dumbest assertion written on Slashdot. Bush was going to invade Iraq and no facts were going to get in his way.
Play Command HQ online
"You simply cannot separate the two attacks from each other."
You perhaps can't, but you should speak for yourself.
Play Command HQ online
It's attitudes like yours that cost the entire left this past election cycle.
As a moderate conservative, I don't representative the left.
You seem to have it in your head that you get to have an say so in how everyone else gets to vote.
Yes, I'm an American.
And just because YOU think people didn't make the right choice doesn't make your OPINION have any more weight.
Again, I'm an American.
And more to the point how just how much absolute corruption can you pricks on the left tolerate?
Why don't you ask someone on the left? I'm just right of center.
How many well documented cases of high level criminal corruption will it take for you open your eyes to the mere possibility that maybe, just maybe, the media isn't being honest with you?
Assuming that the Electoral College doesn't correct this historical mistake, the Trump administration will rival the Reagan administration when it comes to controversy, corruption and prison sentences.
https://www.quora.com/Which-presidents-administration-was-the-most-corrupt-in-US-history
Or are you just going to just talk down to people about how you think you know better than them?
If you feel like I'm talking down to you, it's because you're groveling on the floor. That's your problem, not mine.