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US Releases Declassified Report On Russian Hacking, Concludes That Putin 'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its unclassified report on Russian hacking operations in the United States. "We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election," according to the report. "Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump." The report, titled "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," details the successful hack of the Democratic National Committee. "The Kremlin's campaign aimed at the U.S. election featured disclosures of data obtained through Russian cyber operations; intrusions into U.S. state and local electoral boards; and overt propaganda," according to the report. The report states that Russian intelligence services made cyber-attacks against "both major U.S. political parties" to influence the 2016 election. The report also publicly names Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.com, two sources of stolen information released to the public, as Russian operatives working on behalf of the country's military intelligence unit, the GRU. Officials from the organization were recently the target of U.S. sanctions. WikiLeaks is also cited as a recipient of stolen information. The report also notes that the U.S. has determined Russia "accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards," though no vote-tallying processes were tampered with. The FBI and CIA have "high confidence" the election tampering was ordered by Putin to help then-candidate Trump, according to the report. NSA has "moderate confidence" in the assessment.
bongey writes: The declassified DNI report offers no direct evidence of Russia hacking DNC or Podesta emails. Exactly half of the report (subtract blank and TOC) 9 of 18 is just devoted to going after RT.com by claiming they have close ties to Russia and therefore a propaganda arm, trying to imply that rt.com is related to the hacking. "Many of the key judgments in this assessment rely on a body of reporting from multiple sources that are consistent with our understanding of Russian behavior. Insights into Russian efforts -- including specific cyber operations -- and Russian views of key U.S. players derive from multiple corroborating sources. Some of our judgments about Kremlin preferences and intent are drawn from the behavior of Kremlin loyal political figures, state media, and pro-Kremlin social media actors, all of whom the Kremlin either directly uses to convey messages or who are answerable to the Kremlin."
UPDATE 1/6/17: President-elect Donald Trump met with U.S. intelligence officials Friday, calling the meeting "constructive" and offering praise for intel officials. "While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said in a statement after the meeting.
TL;DR:
- Russia wanted the candidate who didn't want to start WW3 to win
- The wikileaks emails were all real
- Russia didn't hack the election
- The Russian propaganda network dispensed Russian propaganda
Read the whole document (I wish that were a requirement before any reporter could write a news story on the topic, but whatever).
The most entertaining part to me is the part where it says, "it was revenge for the Panama papers." Heh. As if Russia had no other reason to hack US computers.
Another interesting part is where it mentions Assange's ties to the official Russian news channel (RT). I was unaware that he sometimes appeared on TV there.
Another interesting part is where it analyzes Russian television support for Trump as a candidate. For example, as soon as he won, they say that the Russian TV stopped criticizing the election process as "unfair." So their analysis that Russia wanted Trump to win seems reasonable.
Their analysis of the hacking is not good though. They say:
1) Guccifier 2.0 is the Russian government because: he is probably a Russian speaker, not Romanian speaker. That's it? Very not convincing.
2) The leaks to Wikileaks were from the Russian government because Assange appears on the Russian news channel (RT). Again, that's it? Not very convincing.
3) They claim "Russia accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards." Of this, they give no evidence. Absolutely nothing to support this claim. Seriously, tell us which electoral board, or arrest the members of the board, or something.
Some things we do know: John Podesta had an extremely insecure password, and that's how his email leaked. We know that Assange claims the email came from a disgruntled DNC operative. That is not unreasonable, if I saw what they were doing in the DNC, I would have been upset about it too.
Enough Americans are good people, that if you have some surveillance program, or are doing things to mess with our free election process, sooner or later someone is going to leak that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The US is a group of 50 states with completely separate governments, ideals, constitutions. My point is that the ideals and size of the state of California account for the entirety of the difference.
My state, Tennessee, is VASTLY different than California. Everybody is using a popular vote argument like the country is united against Trump, which is not accurate.
So a more fair assessment of the popular vote tally would be that the U.S. people preferred a conservative candidate.
1.) The popular vote may or may not be relevant to the current American political system, but it certainly seems like an appropriate and relevant response to determine what the U.S. population's preference is, which is exactly the subject of the comment he was replying to. 2.) Your presumption about someone's intent is just that. I presume you've never studied political systems and base your opinion on your own inherent biases. The electrical system is well-established, but that means nothing, except that it's difficult to get rid of. It is well-understood, and people who understand it the most (constitutional scholars and such) say it's no longer a good idea. 3.) You suggest that Putin didn't have an impact, and that's clearly a debatable point. We simply don't know. What are almost certain of is that Putin attempted to have an impact on the election, and if a nation-state dedicated resources towards that goal then I'd certainly say it's plausible.