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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.
If we used the popular vote it would be called "United State" not "United States".
You agreeed to the rules when you played the game.
Putin dislikes Clinton for one reason (imo):
No one in the world has more influence in the Balkans and Ukraine than Bill Clinton. Not only did he win a war there, he has deep understanding of the region (even knowing who some of the crime lords are), and has personal relationships with many people there. Apart from Lewinsky, he was an excellent president and he managed to settle a complex region that could have ended up like Iraq is now, if someone less competent had been in charge.
However, Putin has a goal to increase his influence in the exact same region. The biggest impediment to reaching that goal would be Bill/Hillary in power again.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"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.
OMG! That seems like an actual, complete sentence with a coherent message from Trump!
On the one hand: Yes they should have secured their machines and not put morons who would fall for simple phishing tricks in charge.
On the other hand: Whoever released the DNC/Podesta emails did us all a huge favor. We shouldn't care all that much who did it. We particularly shouldn't care about the fact free allegations being made by the crooks who were exposed and lost.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are some that have a strong opinion in the other direction, though:
https://twitter.com/realdonald...
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
Or at least did...
How does what Russia is accused of differ from the Obama administration influencing the Israeli presidential election by giving over $300k to groups acting against Netanyahu?
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
The Ds were just caught keeping pet reporters on staff at the NYT, CNN etc. Even when caught, the NYTs/CNN didn't fire anybody, hence it still is newspaper/network policy to lie for the democrats.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Would be Obama/Clinton, given the number of "red lines" enacted and withdrawn.
Assad crossed the "red line" when Hillary was no longer SOS. So it was Obama/Kerry not Obama/Clinton. Hillary has said she would have been more aggressive in Syria.
Personal opinion: Obama made the right choice. Bombing would have accomplished nothing. So instead we demanded that Assad destroy his entire stockpile of chemical weapons, and then we verified that he did it. That was an accomplishment.
More personal opinion: We are backing the wrong side in Syria. Assad is preferable to the opposition in almost every way. We don't need to oppose him just because the Russians support him.
We will see. While Trump certainly sucks at Putin's tit, there's a considerable amount of bipartisan support in Congress for a general dim view of Russia. Trump is still in a position to see the US defer far too much to Russia, but Congress still holds a helluva lot of power. And honestly, at this point, I'm not even sure how much Trump will be president. I'm beginning to see a four year period of what amounts to a post-stroke Woodrow Wilson administration, a sort of real-life version of Star Trek's Patterns Of Force where there's a person sitting in the Oval Office who does a lot of "My fellow Americans" statements, but has little in the way of real involvement in the decisions. If you want to know where the power will lie, it will lie with Pence, Ivanka and Jared Kushner. You know, much how Trump's businesses work. He plays the entertaining and outrageous CEO type, while the actual businesspeople run the businesses.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The NSA said it has moderate confidence or about 50% that it was the Russians. So for nearly the same probability of flipping a coin, 35 diplomats were kicked out and 2 Russian sites that have been open since the 1970s were closed down.
The NSA opinion holds vastly more weight related to hacking because the NSA are the hacking experts, the FBI/CIA are doing political guessing.
The FBI changed there opinion on the CIAs information. Considering the former CIA head came out for Clinton and the current head John Brennan spoke out against Trump. Both the CIA/FBI ended with highly confident, sure not political at all, wink, wink.
I will trust the NSA over the CIA/FBI.
Fuck you! I'm from the Balkans and US involvement only made things worse. Facts were turned upside down, people were killed and their rapists and torturers were praised and supported by US. You are right about Bill knowing the crime lords there, he and CIA created most of them to benefit from smuggling and other illegal activities. Do die in a ditch you piece of shit, you don't know what you are talking about!
"Excellent president"
Sure, if you ignore the fact that:
1) He dismantled the protections that American consumers had from Wall Street when he signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
2) He destroyed the Democratic Party as a party of the people when he led the "Third Way" into control of the party and made it into the conservative, pro-corporate trash that it is today. (Which is ironically, led to the rise of people like DWS who destroyed Hillary's campaign for president.)
3) Waco and Ruby Ridge happened under Clinton's DOJ, which led to the further rise of insane right-wing militias. Those incidents also led directly to the Oklahoma City Bombing.
4) Clinton arguably committed war crimes in Serbia. (Part of his expertise on the Balkans that you cite so favourable?)
5) Osama Bin Laden attributed Clinton's bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory (which killed tens of thousands of Sudanese as a result of lack of medicine) as one of his motivations for revenge on 9/11.
6) Don't Ask; Don't Tell. DOMA.
7) The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
8) The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
Other than that, great president though.
Basically, the guy was lucky enough to be president at the time that the economy was booming because the Cold War was over and the Internet happened. And he at least had enough foresight not to fuck those things up. (And most of that foresight was probably attributable to Gore and Clinton's pro-corporate interests.)