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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.
'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump? Wow, I never thought the US people and Putin could have so much in common.
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
No, Assange has simply claimed it wasn't Russia (why anyone would believe Assange is beyond me, even if he was in a position to know that all the intermedaries weren't Russians). People like you keep trying to make Rich into some sort of victim of the Clinton Crime FAmily. It's a deep irony that you'll reject multiple US security services' claims that Russia was the source, but buy into a completely unevidenced and really quite idiotic conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton had a DNC staffer murdered. And for what? So that voting for Trump doesn't make you a fucking moron? Well, too bad, you're a fucking moron.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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?
"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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
That's fucking horrible. Perhaps thinking that makes you feel smart as if you were Sun Tzu or were playing a game of Sid Meier's Civilization, but there are actual people living there. This sounds like ramblings of a jerky hand lunatic Hitler waiting it out in the bunker.
What would you rather like (assuming in the US) : functioning education, health, Department of Transportation, EPA etc., DoJ, Police and so on, or three decades of protestant vs catholic war? While, far from leaving the rest out of trouble, the situation spills into Canada and Mexico with even a couple bombings in Brazil, and US Jews have to flee wherever they can.
If that was bitter sarcasm, let us know.
So far US government has utterly failed to provide any compelling evidence to support it's assertions. Yet another worthless mostly off-topic 13 page document crying about success of foreign propaganda rather than supporting any of it's positions with evidence.
Everyone knows what "RT" is. It's no secret to anyone who isn't living under a rock why they exist and what they do any more than it's no secret why VOA/CNN exist.
All I've seen on CNN the past few weeks is... Wikileaks is an agent of Russia, Wikileaks stole information, Assange is wanted for rape, Assange rapes little girls and persistently pathetic stories of low morale and despair among TLAs because Trump won't listen to them.... WAHHHHHHH.
Do I trust US intel to provide truthful and accurate "assessments" to the public? After curveball's mobile production facilities, aluminum tubes and Uranium (dramatic pause) from Africa do you really need to ask?
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.
Given that the Democrats are trying to start WWIII by doing everything from poking Russia with a pointy stick to rolling out tanks on their border, this is a damned good thing.
Every time I hear "trying to start WWIII" it becomes hard not to tune out. This is such a tired old talking point devoid of any coherent information or useful context to the extent of being virtually non-falsifiable in nature.
If a training exercise in Norway = WWWIII god can only guess what conducting the same in SK territory means with respect to DPRK, US warships "invading" Chinese territory in South China Sea, Russia annexing land in foreign countries, Russia invading Georgia, Russian invading a country they signed defense treaties with (e.g. Budapest Memorandum), planting flags in Artic and conducting joint training exercises in Cuba.
Anyone could make reverse argument being a pussy and standing down or otherwise perusing appeasement and capitulation can also lead to war by empowering those with expansionist aims to become blind to consequences.
None of these statements are worth anything in and of themselves. They are two sides of the same worthless coin.
If you don't agree with a particular course of action much better simply to support your position by providing falsifiable evidence explaining specifically why a course of action is reckless or dangerous.