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Russian Arrested in Spain 'Over US Election Hacking' (bbc.com)

Spanish police have arrested a Russian programmer for alleged involvement in "hacking" the US election, BBC reported Monday, citing local press reports. From the report: Pyotr Levashov, arrested on 7 April in Barcelona, has now been remanded in custody. A "legal source" also told the AFP news agency that Mr Levashov was the subject of an extradition request by the US. The request is due to be examined by Spain's national criminal court, the agency added. El Confidencial, a Spanish news website, has said that Mr Levashov's arrest warrant was issued by US authorities over suspected "hacking" that helped Donald Trump's campaign.

20 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Can someone explain what the Russians hacked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's assume they got all the DNC mail and released it. How was that hacking the election? Hacking the election would be changing votes in a database.

    If someone finds out that a candidate murders babies, I would prefer they release it...and not be arrested for "hacking the election".

  2. Reminder: "Hacking" was mere illumination by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The only way "Hacking" affected the election was that things Hillary and the DNC said in private became public. So I don't think it makes a lot of sense to claim the election was really "hacked", it's just the more you know about what Hilary really thinks the less likely you are to vote for her.

    In the same vein every major newspaper was trying for a year or so to "hack" the election with negative stories about Trump, most of which turned out to be false... so that was actually a lot worse than the Russians simply illuminating the truth.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Reminder: "Hacking" was mere illumination by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Informative

      By your metaphor, i can take your wallet and take your credit card, since you're just going to hand it over to a store anyway. I mean, it's the same thing right? Information wants to be free and all that.

      Hillary lost for a bunch of reasons, including Comey, including hacks, including the fact that she had the wrong message, including after having to listen to a black man for 8 years white males didn't want to listen to a woman. And ignore all the times where the US interferes in other elections. Anyone remember the "don't elect Lula or we'll make things hard for you" we said to Brazil?

      But ignore all that. They hacked the mail servers, current law is that is a crime, they should be punished.

    2. Re: Reminder: "Hacking" was mere illumination by roccomaglio · · Score: 4, Informative

      There was the list of Russian propaganda outfits who helped trump supplied by PropOrNot. There was the Russians Hacking the electrical grid. They linked that to Trump via the Trump Russia hacking angle. The was the WaPo Op-Ed claiming Trump’s OMB Pick was unqualified because he never served on Budget Committee, except he did. http://www.mediaite.com/online...

    3. Re: Reminder: "Hacking" was mere illumination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      THE 'FAKE NEWS' LIST

      1 — Politico reported that a company overseen by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman for due to a 27-cent payment error. The Competitive Enterprise Institute determined that there was no foreclosure and a different company was involved. .@tedfrank shreds @politico on Mnunchin story
      2 — CNN reported that Nancy Sinatra was "not happy" Trump's first inaugural dance to her dad's "My Way." She reacted, "Why do you lie, CNN?"

      3 — The New York Times and others reported that on Inauguration Day, Trump's team scrubbed climate change and references to LGBT from the White House website. Actually, there was a broadcasted plan to shift the Obama website to a different site and that the Trump team would use a skeleton site for the first few days.

      4 — The Washington Post hit Trump for giving a speech in front of the "sacrosanct" CIA Memorial Wall. It didn't mention that Obama had done the same thing.

      5 — CBS, reporting on the same event, said that the applause for Trump came from the first three rows of guests, stacked with Trump campaign and White House aides. In an embarrassing pushback, Spicer at a subsequent press briefing said there were no aides in the first four rows, that they were standing in the back.

      This list go on.

    4. Re: Reminder: "Hacking" was mere illumination by dszd0g · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are retracted news articles all the time, you should be able to do better.

      1) This appears to be referring to this article:

      http://www.politico.com/story/...

      Here is the Fox (Faux) News article you are probably basing your statement on:

      http://insider.foxnews.com/201...

      Politico seems to have gotten the basic facts correct in this case and Competitive Enterprise Institute seems to have gotten it wrong. The mistake Politico had made in the original article was stating that OneWest had done the foreclosure when it had been CIT who had merged with OneWest. The mistake was using the old company name instead of the new company name. Mnuchin was on the board of CIT when the second foreclosure took place.

      "CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that CIT Bank, successor to OneWest after a 2015 merger, was the entity that filed foreclosure proceedings against Ossie Lofton over a 27-cent payment error. The story has also been revised to clarify that there were two separate foreclosure proceedings against Lofton. At the time the second foreclosure was filed in 2016, Mnuchin had sold his stake in OneWest and was on the board of CIT."

      Other fact checkers have confirmed that Fox is wrong and the foreclosure did take place. You can even see the court case yourself:
      https://pro.polkcountyclerk.ne...
      Search for: "CIT BANK, N.A. vs. LOFTON OSSIE".

      Score: Politico: 1, Faux News: 0.

      That said, I'm not really a fan of Politico atm. They just posted a totally garbage anti-Semitic article claiming that Trump is linked to Putin because Putin met with a Chabad Rabbi who had once met a rabbi who did a bris that Ivanka Trump went to and thus there is some Jewish conspiracy linking the two men... The way the article is written is a total conspiracy theory. That would be a much better example of fake news. I'm not a fan of Trump, but you don't need to come up with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to link Trump and Putin.

      2) As others pointed out in this thread, it was actually Nancy Sinatra who seemed to change her tune and claim the negative Trump comment she had tweeted earlier was a "joke." Although to be fair, it might have been meant as a joke but there was no way for CNN to know that. I wouldn't call that fake news.

      3) If you read the article, there doesn't seem to be anything fake about it. They even mention that it was probably part of the plan to shift to a different site.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

      http://www.snopes.com/white-ho...

      What you are leaving out is that it has been several months and Trump still doesn't have anything up on whitehouse.gov about these issues from what I can tell. How is the New York times article "fake news"?

      4) As someone else pointed out, they reported on people who objected to the content of the speech not that he gave one there. Here is the article you are claiming is fake news. What exactly is fake? Did the people who Washington Post said objected to the speech not really object?

      https://www.washingtonpost.com...

      5) It sounds like Spicer is lying (nothing new), not CBS. Although CBS seems to be a little misleading as there were some CIA staff who seemed to support Trump, but the facts about Trump bringing people to cheer him on seem to be correct.

      http://www.snopes.com/2017/01/...

      Newsweek de

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  3. Bigger hack by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The biggest hack to support Trump was to put Hillary forward as a candidate.

    1. Re:Bigger hack by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hillary being the Democrat candidate was just party politics as usual. I think the hack was to get a completely non-viable candidate trumped (ha) up as the Republican candidate to pave the way for the coronation of Her Hillaryness. Note how NBC News sat on the "Grab the Cat" video all through the primaries, when it might have done some good, in order to ("Oh, *please* let it be Trump!") spring it as an October Surprise.

      Also, note the utterly absurd way the "debates" were handled. The immoderators (deliberately?) steered the "debates" in such a way as to dumb them down into ridiculousness, which plays to Trump's strengths, such as they are.

      I think the biggest factor in Trump's win is that the attitude of Hillary and most of the Democratic Party, which is basically "How dare those unwashed nobodies in flyover country fail to show proper gratitude that their betters are willing to take up the burden of running their lives for them?!?", doesn't really play well in those parts of the country they show such open and complete contempt for.

  4. Can't we all just get along?!?!? by mtmiller100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and find some common ground... like the fact that Hillary and The Donald are BOTH scumbags who don't deserve to be president?

  5. Re: over suspected "hacking" that helped Donald Tr by rholtzjr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Probably just as hard as BBC proposed it the way they did as a Trump conspiracy vs a Clinton scandal. Nothing new here.

  6. Re:Amazing the speed of the Russian/Trump shills by jwhyche · · Score: 3

    And you act like this surprises you? But to be fair if the news was the same about the DNC or Clinton, then their supporters would be spewing crap too. A different crap, but crap still.

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  7. MOD: Please Fix article title by exabrial · · Score: 5, Informative

    He's not being arrested for "hacking the election" he's being arrested because of other crimes:

    * https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...
    * https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

  8. So wrong by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Informative

    The DNC stuff was minor and esoteric. It didn't even register with voters.

    Are you nuts? It registered strongly with EVERY Bernie Sanders supporter. Search Twitter around that time and you'll find it was far from "esoteric" that Sanders had been ejected from the race by the DNC leadership.

    Then there's the mounting evidence that Russia hacked voter rolls

    Where is that exactly? The only effort ever put forth (by the Green party) showed no Russian involvement and resulted in a few more votes for Trump than were originally counted.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  9. Re:There's more than the DNC hack ya know by loonycyborg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I for one am a Russian, and I frankly don't care who wins on american elections. It's obvious to me that this whole story is made up to whitewash Hilary's fuckups in her campaign that alienated people so much that they voted for the designated "joke candidate". However the very idea that associating something with Russians can automatically vilify it seems very insulting and ridiculous to me.

  10. Re: over suspected "hacking" that helped Donald Tr by Pax681 · · Score: 3

    Predictable baying of the hounds from the Hillary camp.

    Too late to have any real relevance since there's been ample time to create fake evidence.

    the irony is strong in this one!

  11. Re: over suspected "hacking" that helped Donald Tr by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Putin overplayed his hand, and misjudged just how recalcitrant Congress really is over Russia. Maybe Putin misjudged the US political system (he certainly wouldn't be the first Russian ruler to do that), and just assumed that Trump's cooing sounds and his installment in the White House would just erase seven decades of deep distrust between the Washington and Moscow. Maybe he knew it, but Trump was his best shot. Whatever the case may be, Trump is in a political position now where he has no choice but to pick up the anti-Russia stick and pound it loudly. The fact is that outside of a few Congressmen like Nunes, Trump actually has few real devotees in Congress, and it's clear Congress has absolutely no intention of permitting the Administration to jump into bed with Putin.

    Enter Assad's gas attack, which gives Trump the cover he needs to basically switch teams. Whether it's a serious change of heart or not has to be seen, but I'm thinking that right now in the Kremlin Putin and his aides are actually generally worried that they may have aided an actual real-live warmonger to get into the Oval Office. And maybe that's not a bad thing. Russia has largely assumed since Putin's rise to power that the US is going to steer clear of any elevated tensions, and has seen itself able to do what it pleases from the effective seizure of South Ossetia to the out and out annexation of Crimea, and of course, going into Syria to make sure Assad stays in power regardless of any other circumstance. Now it actually has to wonder what the Command-in-chief of the most powerful military machine in history might do. For once, Putin is the one knocked off balance.

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  12. Re: over suspected "hacking" that helped Donald Tr by Dread_ed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He was asked to hand over the tapes. He should have wiped them first, you know...like with a cloth.

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    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  13. Re:There's more than the DNC hack ya know by loonycyborg · · Score: 3, Informative

    Donetsk isn't in Crimea. It's deep in the mainland. Ukraine basically splintered like Soviet Union did before, and Crimea and Donbass(Donetsk is a major city in the latter region) are among regions that have splintered off. Russia has incorporated Crimea but didn't incorporate Donbass for some reason.

  14. Re: over suspected "hacking" that helped Donald Tr by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    What "fake evidence"? According to the article:

    However, Agence France-Presse news agency quoted a source close to the matter in Washington as saying that Mr Levashov's detention was "not tied to anything involving allegations of Russian interference with the US election".

    The fact that Slashdot can't bother to read an article before writing its summary isn't the GP's fault.

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  15. Re:There's more than the DNC hack ya know by GNious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry, you are correct. Thanks for the correction. I am terrible at reading maps in Russian.

    That's OK - Even Russian military have repeatedly failed to read their own maps, and accidentally wandered into Ukraine.