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Former FBI Director Predicts Russian Hackers Will Interfere With More Elections (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
James B. Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., testified that the Russians had not only intervened in last year's election, but would try to do it again... Russian hackers did not just breach Democratic email accounts; according to Mr. Comey, they orchestrated a "massive effort" targeting hundreds of -- and possibly more than 1,000 -- American government and private organizations since 2015... As F.B.I. director, he supervised counterintelligence investigations into computer break-ins that harvested emails from the State Department and the White House, and that penetrated deep into the computer systems of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yet President Barack Obama's administration did not want to publicize those intrusions, choosing to handle them diplomatically -- perhaps because at the time they looked more like classic espionage than an effort to manipulate American politics...
Graham Allison, a longtime Russia scholar at Harvard, said, "Russia's cyberintrusion into the recent presidential election signals the beginning of what is almost sure to be an intensified cyberwar in which both they -- and we -- seek to participate in picking the leaders of an adversary." The difference, he added, is that American elections are generally fair, so "we are much more vulnerable to such manipulation than is Russia," where results are often preordained... Similar warnings have been issued by others in the intelligence community, led by James R. Clapper Jr., who has sounded the alarm since retiring in January as director of national intelligence. "I don't think people have their head around the scope of what the Russians are doing," he said recently.
Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who oversaw sanctions imposed on Russia before retiring this year, told the Times that Comey "was spot-on right that Russia is coming after us, but not just the U.S., but the free world in general. And we need to take this seriously."
Graham Allison, a longtime Russia scholar at Harvard, said, "Russia's cyberintrusion into the recent presidential election signals the beginning of what is almost sure to be an intensified cyberwar in which both they -- and we -- seek to participate in picking the leaders of an adversary." The difference, he added, is that American elections are generally fair, so "we are much more vulnerable to such manipulation than is Russia," where results are often preordained... Similar warnings have been issued by others in the intelligence community, led by James R. Clapper Jr., who has sounded the alarm since retiring in January as director of national intelligence. "I don't think people have their head around the scope of what the Russians are doing," he said recently.
Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who oversaw sanctions imposed on Russia before retiring this year, told the Times that Comey "was spot-on right that Russia is coming after us, but not just the U.S., but the free world in general. And we need to take this seriously."
Of course they will. Did anyone think otherwise?
I guess if you really bought into the "Trump works with Russia" DNC story, then you would expect it to end.
But any rational person would realize that Russia, like the USA, will attempt to interfere in any election where they think they can get away with it and get an advantage.
The Soviet Union used propaganda and dirty tricks to try to interfere with EVERY US election they existed, and Russia just continues the tradition. They didn't call it fake news back then, it was just journalism with an agenda. Walter Duranty wasn't an accident, ya' know.
The only difference is that instead of stealing letters and publishing them, they're hacking email accounts and publishing them. Still no hacking of voting machines, still no manipulation of vote counts. In other words, still no 'hacking the election'.
As usual the media noise machine has managed to deflect everyone from the real issue. Of course the Russians will interfere if they can. This last time around they probably didn't think when they started that it would work out so well but it did. It was a low cost, low risk enterprise probably intended to a) test the weapons and b) trim Hillary's wings rather than win Trump the White House.
Had Comey not done his political stunt with the Weiner's e-mails it wouldn't have flipped the election and I doubt they expected it to. Yet Nate Silver's numbers are pretty clear: Hillary had 6%+ lead until Comey did that and down 3%+ points after, close enough for the EC to do its thing. Had it not been for Comey the election would not have even been close.
As it turned out if Trump can manage it he will end the Russian sanctions which have been crippling to the Russian economy. Hillary would not have. She would have continued Obama policies. That is not a bad payoff for what this cyber op probably cost.
Back to the point at hand is Trump is most likely innocent in the part about the election. What has him worried is that he knows that if they keep digging on the investigation what will come to light is his deep financial dependents on Russian money interests, all of whom are either pals of Putin if not outright operatives of his office.
A month or so ago Trump had one of his lawyers write up a letter that declared that "nobody in Russia owes Trump money." While the Trump supporters view that (as intended) as some sort of vindication/valdiation the reality-based world realizes nobody ever thought he did. What the real problem is that Trump owes Russians (i.e. Putin money big time.)
For the last two decades no American based bank would loan Trump money due to his shady business practices and so the money he has been using comes from either Russia. Or China (a whole new issue.) So I would bet that a lot of Trump businesses are heavily leveraged in Russian debt and possibly in default. In other words Putin probably has the power to ruin Trump -- the U.S. President! -- and family financially with just a phone call.
That is what Trump doesn't want you to know and why he has been so eager to stop any investigation regarding Russia. It will come up eventually and the only real question is how far Trump will hang on and how far the Republicans in the house will go to protect him. Based on what has gone on so far is pretty damn far.
There's a reason why hard evidence will not be in the public domain - it's a matter of national intelligence. Voting systems/people are not the only thing they're trying to influence afterall. There's a reason why Comey's public hearing didn't tell much - because what really mattered was almost certainly found in the closed hearing afterwards.
Voter fraud is not really a problem - it's so small as to be meaningless. That is the only reason to have voter ID. The real problem is the lack of verifiability in the back office systems that the voting system is built upon and uses, rather than with the end voter - which is why voter suppression and purges are far too powerful, and is why countries such as Russia can have so much influence over an election without even having to hack it fully - it's about people controlling such systems, rather than the people who vote, and the voting machines and process itself.
Controlling who's votes get counted, is far more powerful than deciding who gets to vote in the first place - everyone can vote gives an election 'plausible deniability' if the results are slightly rigged afterwards. So who's responsible for suppression and purges, the two most common methods of deciding which votes count?
The GOP, of course.
So anyone talking about voter ID has an agenda that isn't consistent with democracy, until these problems are solved FIRST.
On the other hand -- Russia is immune here, as they don't even know the concept of a fair election. They did not have a single one during their whole history -- not by the tsars, not by the soviets, almost had one by Yeltsin, then back to the usual. They don't even bother with any semblance of propriety: Chechnya voted 99.5% for One Russia (Putin's party) with 99.4% turnout; just 11 years after a second war against them led by said Putin.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I like this site and I really liked it when the byline used to be "News for nerds Stuff that matter". Is there an extension or bookmarklet or something that I can use to filter out stories based on keywords? Keywords like Comey, Trump, Government, Clinton, Democrat, Republican, Brexit, and on and on? I sure would like that. I really would.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I'm not sure whether you're going for "funny" or "insightful"; perhaps you're going for "funny" but getting modded "insightful". So for the benefit of the irony impaired:
SO far they claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election but yet not 1 piece of proof has shown that to be true, only so called "hack" that happened on elections was by the DNC
Gee, how do we know about the so-called DNC "hacking" exactly [note 1]?
as well as in states like California letting people vote that don't even hold US citizenship.
California did no such thing. What California did was pass two separate laws, one of which enabled American citizens to register to vote when they obtain a driver's license, another of which provided a separate registration process that allows undocumented immigrants to obtain licenses. That process does not include voter registration, for obvious reasons.
note 1: the DNC did not "hack" the election. It just worked for HRC and against Sanders, which pissed of some Sanders voters, but in fact was legal both by US law and the party bylaws (you *have* read your party's bylaws, haven't you?)
The DNC, like the RNC, is not an impartial, non-partisan organization. Both national committees are power centers which, by design (those bylaws again) serve the party insiders. The way you deal with people using the national committees in ways you don't like is you put your own people on them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Jesus, who keeps modding this guy up?
/. that they noticed an increase in pro-Russia/Putin/Russian agenda type posts over the past couple of years. My first thought was, "That's a cute conspiracy theory." But now I'm seriously wondering if it's true.
The other day, someone posted on
And that's all they talk about, to distract from the heart of the matter. It's nothing but a 'shoot the messenger' campaign. The DNC and Clinton were behaving in an unethical manner, and the Russians leaked the evidence of it. The underlying unethical behavior should be the focus. And yes, the retort is that they only leaked information on one party, but a) that doesn't absolve the DNC and HRC of what they did, b) What they did pales in comparison to what Trump openly did anyway, and c) They almost certainly alienated even more voters who realized a) and b) and watched them try to scream about Russians stealing the election anyway.
And no, I'm not a Trump supporter, because Clinton was still the lesser evil by miles. Thinking that anyone who says anyone other than Russia was at fault is automatically a Trump supporter is another thing that's just alienating even more people so that they stay home and cost the Dems the midterms and next presidency too.
Bush had months of daily warnings of an impending attack but chose to do nothing.
The intelligence provided the president is shared with congressional leaders, and as I recall was not what the intelligence community refers to as 'actionable intelligence'
From what I recall McConnel threatened to basically rebuke obama. link That still seems odd and Obama should have spoken more forcefully.
The main problem is garbage in garbage out. CItizens are poorly informed at the best of times, let alone when they are fed raw sewage thanks to the alt right and all the fake crap. For the good of our country, it would be best that if politicians stood together and defended it. The other options are attacking back with cyber weapons to expose truth, or just blindly hoping a more active press and more informed citizenry will protect us. That seems a poor strategy.
Countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, much of the EU, and many others, have generally been strong supporters of freedom, democracy, and human rights. Together, they are powerful to defend those values.
Wait, what? When? In this century? That hasn't been true for a long time.
There is no reason to 'push back' against Russia. Whatever they did there is no evidence and even if they really did say buy some electoral votes or something you know what? It doesn't matter. Use that knowledge to improve the system so it isn't so vulnerable to corrupt electors. Although the electoral system does seem inherently vulnerable to bribery it has always been that way. Maybe it's time to dump it, but our insecure outdated election system is no reason to go to war with Russia, something that is always a bad idea. This isn't even worth saber rattling about. It's nothing. Not a big deal. Even if it's true and so far there is zero evidence that it is. At best some Russian hackers hacked some emails and set some information free. If certain people were not tech illiterate their emails would have been strongly encrypted and not stored for any length of time, especially not in an insecure location. But I'm happy with email leaks because it gets the information out there. I'd be just as happy to see Trump's emails. The more information the world has about our leaders the better.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Everything China is doing, Russia tried to do. Russia never managed to build the factories required to rule the information age. China got smart and got other countries to build the factories for them. Little surprise that technology was copied by the Chinese military.
You mean their war-mongering, political manipulation and economic terrorism will be worse than the USA's identical behaviour. Possibly, since the USA also worked to be a good example of governance and capitalism during the 20th century. This century, the dogs called China, USA, Russia and even India are unleashed. No-one wants to be a force for peace.
Why; because they're willing to disrupt the global hegemony benefiting Western nations? I can't imagine the effect that will have on the 'peace' enjoyed by Western nations, however the disruption has begun.
Have a look at Syria: It's not like Korea, Vietnam, Taliban Afghanistan, Russian Afghanistan, Iraq; where one country had to fight several armies, including the world's richest. In Syria, ISIS, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Russia, USA (and allies) are all fighting different sides of the one war. It took much less chaos to start two global conflicts.
What should be horrifying Western nations is the possibility of that war spreading. The refugee problem it created has seen a religious war expand in Africa and be adopted by the settled enclaves of immigrants in Europe. But we call the warring acts of 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants, terrorism. Western nations make the mistake of not identifying the religious solidarity causing that terrorism and not responding to the home-grown nature of terrorism. Well, they are responding with cyber-surveillance and push-button policing but it isn't working against low-tech terrorism. Something needs to change.
SO far they claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election ...
Really? The only ones I have seen make that claim are pundits on Fox News and Breitbart trying to defend their 'Dear Leader', the greatest negotiator of all time. Most of the rest of the media claims the Russians hacked the DNC and used carefully timed leaks of that information in an attempt to influence the voting behaviour of the US electorate.
How about Rolling Stone? Are they an alt-right media outlet, too?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
While all you are saying is true, China does not show any ambitions of building an empire. It especially lacks any capability to project its military power. Last I checked, they had two aircraft carriers. (for comparison, the USA operates 10, half of the world-wide fleet).
China does understand the power of economics. Their economic activities around the world, especially their long game in Africa and South America, should worry anyone who looks beyond two election periods much, much more. This country is used to thinking in terms of centuries. They plant seeds now (of economic cooperation) that will blossom in 50 or 100 years.
The same is true for hacking. I don't think they care much about elections. In chinese terms, a US president is a temporary event. There'll be another one soon. But military secrets, technological advances, scientific progress - those are things worth stealing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The thing is - China isn't going to invade America
Neither is Russia.
What, exactly, are you americans all so afraid about? Not being able to be the bully on the playground anymore, that's what?
Nobody is threatening you. Some countries are just tired of being threatened.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If you want more proof
before you can offer more proof, you need to offer some proof.
"His name was James Damore."
Your thinking is what is so bizarre about today's political climate. A variety of US intelligence services, in the course of monitoring Russian agents who often are part of recruiting US citizens, noticed a high level of contact between high level trump campaign people and these agents. It's become clear that there was an intense effort by the Russians to get trump elected, and that's part of an ongoing effort to influence and ultimately control US elections.
Let that sink in. A hostile foreign power wants to decide who is running the US government. However bad you think the USA is today, it would be a crap ton worse with Putin running it, and elections being utterly meaningless.
And with all that, with the fate of our democracy at stake, people are worried that some of trump's buddies who were busy talking to these Russian had their names revealed... again, NOT because THEY were being monitored, but because the RUSSIAN AGENTS they were talking to were monitored.
Congratulations, you've managed to focus on the mote, and ignore the tidal wave bearing down on you. People like you are why our democracy is in such trouble right now.
If they had such an option they would probably want to return to a point in time to prevent Bremer from disbanding the Iraqi army and delaying Iraqi's from taking control of the government. These two decisions by Bremer, a career diplomat who served numerous administrations, essentially started the insurgency and created an opportunity for al-Queda in Iraq.
Bremer says those weren't his decisions. He says he was ordered to do so, that order came from Rumsfield's office but Rumsfield also says he was ordered to do so but won't say by whom. It seem likely that the order originated from Cheney's office and was made on the recommendation of Chalabi, who wanted to install his own army and government in Iraq. If that's the case, then it wasn't a mistake, as much as it was a deliberate betrayal of America and Iraq's common interests to profit an ally of Dick Cheney.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I just said this here last week: The Russians post comments on Finnish news sites and forums in Finnish. If they have the time and the resources to do propaganda on sites with readerships that are a tiny tiny fraction of /.'s, there's absolutely no doubt that they're actively posting and moderating here as well.
There was absolutely no doubt of that during the election. The moderation of politicial stories took a sudden and drastic turn. What was even more obvious was that even more than pro-trump posts, what was getting +5 mods was ridicule of the meer idea that Putin or Russians might be involved. You tell me what group of people would be flooding a US political forum with their #1 priority being promoting Russia and Russian politicians and only their #2 priority being promoting their favorite US politician?
I had to quit posting on the stories, simply because it got to be such a drag reading page after page of upvoted Russian propaganda. They basically removed /. as a useful forum for the last 3 months of the election.