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US Announces Response To Russian Election Hacking [Update] (reuters.com)

Dustin Volz and Joel Schectman, reporting for Reuters: The Obama administration plans to announce on Thursday a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into U.S. political institutions and individuals and leaking information in an effort to help President-elect Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, two U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Both officials declined to specify what actions President Barack Obama has approved, but said targeted economic sanctions, indictments, leaking information to embarrass Russian officials or oligarchs, and restrictions on Russian diplomats in the United States are among steps that have been discussed. One decision that has been made, they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, is to avoid any moves that exceed the Russian election hacking and risk an escalating cyber conflict that could spiral out of control. One example of an excessive step might be interfering with Russian internet messaging. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and Office of Director of National Intelligence agree that Russia was behind hacks into Democratic Party organizations and operatives ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. There is also agreement, according to U.S. officials, that Russia sought to intervene in the election to help Trump, a Republican, defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.Update: Here's the statement by the President of the United States in response to Russian malicious cyber activity and harassment: All Americans should be alarmed by Russia's actions. In October, my Administration publicized our assessment that Russia took actions intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government. Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year. Such activities have consequences. Today, I have ordered a number of actions in response. I have issued an executive order that provides additional authority for responding to certain cyber activity that seeks to interfere with or undermine our election processes and institutions, or those of our allies or partners. Using this new authority, I have sanctioned nine entities and individuals: the GRU and the FSB, two Russian intelligence services; four individual officers of the GRU; and three companies that provided material support to the GRU's cyber operations. In addition, the Secretary of the Treasury is designating two Russian individuals for using cyber-enabled means to cause misappropriation of funds and personal identifying information. The State Department is also shutting down two Russian compounds, in Maryland and New York, used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes, and is declaring "persona non grata" 35 Russian intelligence operatives. Finally, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are releasing declassified technical information on Russian civilian and military intelligence service cyber activity, to help network defenders in the United States and abroad identify, detect, and disrupt Russia's global campaign of malicious cyber activities. Editor's note: the story has been updated to include the statement and has also been moved to the top of the front page.

17 of 821 comments (clear)

  1. Be nice to see the proof of hacking first by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Informative

    Especially seeing as the way this has been covered 50% of Democrats now think the Russians hacked voting machines

    https://today.yougov.com/news/...

    Gotta give the DNC credit on this one, they have managed to completely deflect from their security incompetence and breaking faith with their voters.

    1. Re:Be nice to see the proof of hacking first by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Informative

      We don't know how many times Clinton's server was hacked, it was configured not to log anything.

      We know her admin thought they had been hacked at least once. But he was blitheringly incompetent. So we know she was hacked a non-negative number of times, could be 0, could be 1000. No way to tell, by design.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  2. Re:Retaliatory measures based on no evidence. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    If Obama is so great, then why did the Democrats lose the White House?

    Hillary Clinton

  3. Re:Retaliatory measures based on no evidence. by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sorry, Forgot to ask for the source of where you go the names from.

    so I searched

    James Risch - Idaho (R) - should not be listed
    http://www.spokesman.com/blogs...

    Dan Coats - Indiana (R)
    U.S. Sen. Dan Coats, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is following this issue but has no comment at this time, according to spokesman Matt Lahr.
    http://howeypolitics.com/Conte...
    Marco Rubio - Florida (R)

    Susan Collins - Maine (R)
    Roy Blunt - Missouri (R)
    James Lankford - Oklahoma (R)
    Tom Cotton - Arkansas (R)

    After searching for mark rubio, I came across this

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

    I think you are taking the Senators who were calling for sanctions over Ukraine and lumping them into the "russia hacked" crowd, which smells a lot like actual "fake news" .

    --
    _ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
  4. FBI Answered This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Answer is it was hacked by at least 5 foreign governments, 2 of which were Germany and China. I hadn't heard the other 3 named.

    Oh yea, that is according to the FBI doing the investigation.

  5. Re:All crap by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes because every single US intelligence agency like the CIA is so liberal

    They are currently being run by Obama political appointees. You do understand that, right?

    You know who else is super liberal: Wikileaks. They confirmed that they got emails from Russian sources.

    No, they explicitly said they did NOT get them from the Russians. What's with the phony narrative? How does that help anyone?

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  6. Re:Over/under: Invasion of sovereign nation or tru by protest_boy · · Score: 4, Informative

    The USA and a bunch of other countries imposed strong sanctions on Russia as a result of their aggression in Ukraine. Is that not concrete action?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  7. Re:Retaliatory measures based on no evidence. by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Socialism (defined as no private ownership of 'means of production') at a national level requires a command economy. No price signals, no profit motive, so no way to make it 'self organizing' like capitalism.

    Command economies all have excessive concentration of power. It is just a fact.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  8. Re:Retaliatory measures based on no evidence. by x0ra · · Score: 2, Informative

    80 millions of dead bodies in the 20th century.

  9. Re:Retaliatory measures based on no evidence. by x0ra · · Score: 2, Informative

    Capitalism didn't slaughter 80 millions people who were "thinking the wrong way".

  10. Making Russia Great Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Russia did a lot more than hack DNC emails. Not that I care one bit about Clinton or DNC, but it is naive to ignore what Putin has been up to and dismiss it as partisan politics. Here's a good article in The Atlantic that provides an overview of Putin's actions. Personally, I had no idea how busy Putin has been in restoring Russia. This is an interesting read.

      https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/12/russia-liberal-democracy/510011/

    On the global chessboard, there has been no more deft and brilliant (and of late, lucky) player than Putin. From the early days of his presidency a decade and a half ago, he began to signal that he intended to make Russia great again, and that he saw this imperative as a zero-sum game: As the West gained friendships among post-communist states, Russia lost, and so everything possible had to be done to force Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Balkan states out of a Western liberal orientation and back into the greater Russian orbit.

    1. Re:Making Russia Great Again by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Informative

      Russia isn't doing a bad job prodding Poland and Hungary either, which will leave the Czechs, Slovaks, and the poor Baltic states (who have suffered mightily over the centuries at the hands of Russia) looking on in horror. Christ, even Lukashenko was spooked by the seizure of Crimea and the Russian-funded civil war in Ukraine, and Belorus has long been seen as the Kremlin's most reliable ally.

      But Obama couldn't simply just order US forces into Georgia or Ukraine, nor would any of its NATO partners countenanced anything that would have lead to direct hostilities, or even the remote possibility of direct hostilities with Russia. South Ossetia and Crimea, when you look at the long view, are part of a longstanding pattern of the Muscovy Princes viewing themselves as the rightful rulers and protectors of all things Russian. For a brief time after the October Revolution, Lenin and Trotsky tried to put forward a more internationalist and less Slavic model of Russian suzerainty, but after Lenin's death and Trotsky's exile, the weight of centuries of Russian history pushed it back into the Pan-Slavism.

      There's no doubt that Russia, rendered impotent by economic collapse, could do little to prevent the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Balkan conflict, nor could it prevent NATO from taking the Serbs to task, and I would suggest that economic impotence is the reason why, when Russia had regained enough strength, and began trying to impose its will on Ukraine (a country and a people that it has long viewed as being a core part of the Slavic homeland), and failing that, to seize Crimea and leave the rest of Ukraine in chaos. The same goes for the seizure of South Ossetia, which sent out the message to every Russian neighbor that if they had any ethnic Russian or Russian-speaking population, Russia regarded itself as their protector, and would use whatever force it felt necessary to ensure the Kremlin's power and influence.

      There was another European leader from the not so distant past who took the same position, and the results were most unpleasant.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  11. Re:Over/under: Invasion of sovereign nation or tru by dywolf · · Score: 3, Informative

    those words.
    you keep using them.
    I don't think they mean what you think they mean.

    for example, corruption is the stuff trump is doing RIGHT NOW to enrich himself and his businesses off his newfound position.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  12. Re:Retaliatory measures based on no evidence. by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sorry, but I call BS... unless you had a dramatic change of circumstances. $1,600/month is what you would pay today for a family of 5 (IIRC) in most places, and $450 is about what you pay for an individual.

    What a number of people (my employees included) are seeing is that the employer is reducing the amount they pay towards the premiums. We went from 90% down to 80% for employee/40% dependent over the past five or so years in order to keep our contributions essentially flat (2-3% growth). Our employee salaries went up (on average) about 10% per year.

    Obamacare is a clusterfuck in many ways, just as the previous system was a clusterfuck. It appears that 20-30% of healthcare costs are linked to the billing/payment process, which is money wasted. While single-payer isn't a panacea (and medicare is a big part of the billing challenges), I have tremendous difficulty in understanding how an improvement can be made without eliminating the insurance companies from the equation.

    We need to get costs down to a reasonable level; monthly cost should not be more than 10% of net pay for great coverage or 5% for preventative + catastrophic. It isn't going to happen overnight though, and it will have a negative impact on a lot of companies, people, and industries.

  13. Re:Over/under: Invasion of sovereign nation or tru by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Informative

    Silly me

    Yes.

    Let's pick a few. Clinton has been accused of being in favour of off shoring. Trump has actually engaged in offshoring.

    Clinton has been accused of being in bed with big business. Trump is a card carrying member of big business.

    Clinton has been accused of at best weakly substantiated claims of corruption with the foundation. Trump has been caught using his foundation to pay off personal fines.

     

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  14. Re:Two wrongs by dbIII · · Score: 4, Informative

    we mostly meddled in those countries to keep Socialism from taking root

    Yes that was the cover story.
    Reality was a lot more of a fuckup. One ridiculous example just before the Cuban revolution was part of the CIA running guns to Castro while another was trying to kill him. Another was dropping bombs on a pro-democracy, pro-USA group of US trained army officers in Indonesia that called themselves "the sons of Eisenhower". How socialist do you think they were? When things changed and covert actions halted against them they became part of a military government in Indonesia that was nothing like socialism.