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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.
Our Country was attacked. We cannot let that attack go without consequences.
And the proof they did anything is... where exactly?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Sure am glad they didn't lie about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Can you imagine if almost 60,000 Americans were killed and another 300k wounded plus hundreds of thousands of casualties for citizens and soldiers of other nations, a generation of people soured on their nation and a loss of American moral authority on the world stage over a made-up incident that didn't happen?!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Unfortunately, Wikileaks lost some credibility with their "We're not working with the Russians" stance when the Russian media frequently came out with their stories based upon the leaked emails several minutes before Wikileaks published them.
At this point, it does look as if Wikileaks is an essentially Russian operation, which is very sad from my point of view. We need someone to hold power to account and do the kind of work Wikileaks seemed to be doing. Wikileaks is not it.
That would be the Hillary Clinton who won almost 3 million more votes than her rival Donald Trump?
The stage that is being set is very frightening. Any information that does not conform to what the powers that be want the people to hear is being labeled interference. The final touches on wide scale internet censorship are being put into place.
The capability of the internet to provide an alternative source of information and discourse is being eviscerated. It is happening faster than I thought it would. For the longest time, the government had more or less complete control of the media and the public discourse. The internet threatened that, but the DNC leaks finally made the government show their hand.
It just will not do to have anybody, internal whistleblowers or foreign governments pointing out the hypocrisy of the United States government. If the people actually realized that they were being manipulated by the government and that the entire electoral process and American Dream are just a sham, they might....
Oh fuck it, who am I kidding? Nobody gives a shit as long as the television / internet works and there is some food in the fridge.
We don't need to start a war with China, trade or otherwise. Just grow a damned backbone when dealing with them and the companies that export so many jobs because of their handy slave labor wages. As near as I can tell, when they ask us to bend over, our current response tends to be some variant of "how far?"
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The Russians, if they did anything, didn't hack the election, they increased the elections truthyness!
All the leaked stuff, no one denies it was true.
So the USA wants to punish Russia for making US voters aware of inconvenient truths huh? Nice 'freedom' you have there!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
This is hilarious.
Two decades after the Democrats got caught taking money from the Chinese, and 32 years after Ted Kennedy BEGGED the Soviets to intervene in the 1984 election, NOW you're worried about a foreign country "trying to influence US Elections?"
Heh.
Obama's response today is funny, too. Just close a couple of known spy stations and kick a few people out of the country (when the hacking was supposed to have come from Europe), who will be replaced within the week. Yeah, that'll work.
Because what the party was up to wasn't nearly as nefarious as you seem to want to paint it. Yes, they had a preferred candidate going in - and a strategy for her to glide through to the nomination with as little damage as possible. They chose her because of her name recognition, her popularity at the time (believe it or not), and yes, her connections - in the sense that she and her husband had done a lot to promote other Democrats. But they played it mostly straight once a viable challenger emerged.
If you were privy to the internal private emails of almost any organization (not just political parties) you'd see plenty that would be embarrassing - maybe even compromising. But you only saw the DNC stuff - and yet you're prepared to think that the Russians did us all a service. Well they didn't. Sure the DNC preferred Clinton to Sanders - largely because they thought she'd be more likely to win (being wrong on that doesn't make them criminal). But they didn't do anything significant to stymie Sanders. Even if they did the things they were accused of (and there's no proof they did), they wouldn't have affected the outcome in any state. Sure, there were the superdelegates - but they were there in 2008 too, and they flipped to the winner of the primary delegates, and would've flipped in 2016 had Sanders won more primary delegates than Clinton did. And you know what - if Trump hadn't won the Republican nomination, Sanders probably would've lost to any other Republican - though I agree he might well have won against Trump. Though, you know, Clinton probably would've won against Trump too had Comey, the Russians, and yes, folks like you - who trashed her for being her party's preferred choice - not had their way.
Snowden was an actual whistle blower - providing information kept from the public about what their government was actually doing. The DNC hackers were just trying to stir up trouble - using information that didn't belong to the public in the same way that the government does.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
My premiums went down the year after ACA became law and the increases since have all been smaller than the average increases before.
But hey.. don't let that stop you from blaming the ACA for your shitty insurance company raping you instead of shopping for a different insurer.
I don't think the Podesta leaks had anything to do with money. Assange has little use for that nowadays. This was about revenge against Clinton, who had been the Secretary of State that Assange has blamed for some time for his current condition. Whether that blame is justified or not is hard to say, but for a man to allow himself to be an instrument to destabilize the global order out of a petty vendetta tells me that Wikileaks has ceased to be any kind of champion of openness and truth, and is, as you say, a political player, but one that has no sense of responsibility or duty. Assange has basically made it an arm of the Russian government, simply because he believes Clinton ordered Sweden to arrest him.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And how much do you want to pay for a smartphone? You act as if offshoring has no benefit for US consumers. And really, within a generation or so, all these stolen manufacturing jobs are all going to be done by machine, so even those slave wage Chinese are going to be banging on the doors of Beijing asking where their jobs went.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Secrecy. That is what I see. No proof. No inclusion of the US people. Just the same damn political positions that brought us innumerable lies and deceptions designed to manipulate and control the US electorate.
Put up or shut up. They need to come clean with the exact evidence they have. It's not their election, its ours. If our, the people mind you, if our election was compromised I want to know exactly how. What I don't want or need is my elected government officials telling me they know all the answers, I don't need to know them, and they will take care of everything. That was the same kind of thinking that led us to the Iraq war, the Vietnam war, and numerous other idiotic expenditures of American lives and uncounted billions of dollars.
That you point towards "politicians on both sides of the aisle" as "proof" is mystifying to me. Lets look at what "passes through both sides of the aisle", shall we? The aforementioned Iraq war. The DMCA. The Patriot Act. Is that sufficient, or should we go on?
Here's a hint. If both parties are in favor of it, they are probably putting you together. Show us the evidence and let the American people make the call. I'm quite tired of our elected officials telling us they know best while keeping us in the dark.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.