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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.
Let's compare/contrast the historical veracity of information released by Assange/WikiLeaks with that of any US intelligence service, shall we?
One has an impeccable record of authenticity, while the other is run by documented liars. In fact, both Brennan and Clapper sat before Congress and bald-faced LIED when asked about the existence and activities of the NSA's domestic spying apparatus.
The better question would be: Why would anyone in their right mind not believe Assange over the Liar McPantsonFires in Washington DC?
Counted one way, the US people favored Trump. Counted another way, the US people favored Clinton. Almost without exception, political observers now profess a clear preference for the vote-counting method that would have worked best for their favored candidate: Clinton supporters have discovered a new passion for using the aggregate popular vote, while Trump supporters see great virtue in the Electoral College. Politics as usual.
You mean the US electoral college and Putin, because in popular vote terms, California preferred Clinton.
FTFY. And of course those who want citations: http://www.politico.com/2016-e....
California chose Hillary by 3.4 million cotes. Hillary won nationwide popular vote by 2.9 million votes. The entire difference and then some is the state of California.
Aaaaaaaand..... your point being that California is not..... a part of America?
Headline: most populous state in the country has an opinion on who should lead it.
Clinton also won New York by 1.5 million votes. You could try to make a story of "without New York, Clinton would have only won by 1.4 million votes!", but that would also be dumb and misleading. In fact, if you skip all states where Clinton won, then Trump would have lead by 8.4 million votes! Of course, the opposite would have Clinton winning by 11.2 million, so you might want to keep that inconvenient fact in your pocket.
America preferred Clinton. "America, except for..." doesn't matter for shit because it wasn't "America, except for..." who votes on these things.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
We want a decades long, bloody stalemate between Sunni/Shia. Keep them busy and out of trouble.
Wars don't reduce trouble. They create radicalized and desperate people. Syrian refugees are destabilizing the EU, and many of the recent terrorist attacks in France, Germany, and Turkey can be traced back to Syria.
The other consideration is Trump may have been able to win the popular vote if it mattered. The Republicans sensibly wrote off California early in the campaign, so it's hard to know things would have turned out if they'd had to compete here.