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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."
Once again we find out that Obama did nothing even though he had the information at hand. Then proceeded to lie about it to the American people. And finally cast the blame on the candidates who were victims. Very Barry.
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.
...and National Security advisors of every other nation predict that that the United States will continue to interfere in their elections.
Hell, Obama intervened in the French election and no one in the MSM batted an eye.
He's a bit salty about being fired, I see.
Russia is after its old glory and aims to destroy the rest of the world to get it. There is no ambiguity, there is no hesitance. Putin is evil and must be removed. Russia must be reformed again, and it may require that Putin is assassinated first. He is poised to invade the Baltic with paratroopers, and NATO can't defend anything at its current readiness. War is inevitable, and taking initiative is the primary concern.
It's time for democratic and free countries to put aside our differences and from a federation like Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future. Star Trek was usually a metaphor for things happening in the present day on Earth. We need to create a truly free federation that supports freedom and human rights. There are forces like the Russian leadership that oppose this, and they are powerful, which is why we need a federation of countries. I'm talking about something beyond the EU, encompassing countries around that support these principles.
after all, we are selecting between coca cola and pepsi cola. this needs to change or we are doomed.
If he still had a job he wouldn't be a leaky loser.
Water is Wet, the Sky is Blue, and Maxwell's Laws are Prettier than You.
This is a very serious matter--yet another reason electronic security matters and with major geopolitical implications. But it's also incredibly obvious to anyone who has been paying attention.
Real lawyers write in C++
But Trump says Russia is our friend....
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before you lecture us, why don't you explain.
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'.
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 rigging the primaries as well as in states like California letting people vote that don't even hold US citizenship.
These attacks rely on dis-information.
The best way to resist propaganda is to encourage "We the people" to become better informed and to think critically.
Y'know, I've watched as the left has argued the morality of Russia, in the Korean War (citing civilians killed by the US), in Iranian revolutions (never mentioning the KGB-supported power grab), in the VIetnam War (where they've taught forty years of history dividing the two sides into the good guys who the KGB supported, which conducted purges of the population after the war, and America), the various Central American communist parties, which are paragons of social justice until their economies collapse like Venezuela...
We even enacted a so-called peace deal with Iran where we released large amounts of money to them and the next _month_ suddenly Russia had the funds to bomb rebels in Syria at Iran's behest.
But suddenly, in the year 2016, after all that, it's important that we fight Russia, after giving them all those countries (never mind that they couldn't even hold onto the ones in Eastern Europe besides Belarus) and even giving (via Iran) the money to keep their Air Force afloat in bombs to drop on civilians.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Wait, so Russians made him send that memo?
So the free world will fall apart if everyone in it knows the truth about their government? I find it interesting how US government justifies spying on their own citizens with "if you're doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide" and yet calls anyone who informs the people they serve with what the government does an enemy of the state. It's not like they hacked the personal sex videos of the Clinton, or some embarrassing comments made off-the-record; what they allegedly exposed were facts that have to do with her profession and potential corruption. I get that exposing those possibly affected the outcome of the election, but shouldn't the voters be entitled to know what the politicians they vote for actually do?
I love how everyone reports this "russian hacking of the election" as if it is some sort of undisputed fact when there has not been one shred of evidence to support it, no motive has established, and there has not been any information on HOW the election was hacked. That last point is particularly disappointing for a site like slashdot where everyone here is supposed to be an expert in tech. Seeing as there are hundreds and hundreds of precincts that all use different systems for collecting and counting votes from 100% paper to 100% electronic in nearly unlimited combinations, how exactly does one "hack" that? Ridiculous.
Repeat the same shit over and over and over again and people will believe it.
Dear Globalist elite, I expect Russia, China, Israel, UK, etc to snoop just like we do. If "interference" is their exposing your crimes, so be it. If you can't do the time (or handle the slime), don't do the crime. I do think all the noise today is to ignore the Seth Rich murder case, to marginalize or overthrow a legitimately elected president, and to avoid accountability for many crimes including treason.
If you are alleging vote frauds, very simple. Liberals, Democrats and Rinos have pushed insecure voting and counting methods for years. I would welcome traceable, simple paper based systems with voter ID.
Given any honest efforts, the Russians don't worry me. But you do.
With the massive surveillance in place, if you can't immediately produce hard evidence, SHUT THE F*** UP and go away!
my cheese on this burger will melt
there will be weather tomorrow
i might do laundry
i will eat at least once
microsoft will continue to spy
the nsa cia and fbi will still have the same 3 letters and do all the same shit
george carlin will be risen from grave to distract more people
some idiot will give star citizen more money
a keyboard will be invented that the letters wont rub off
someone in the usa will blame russia for something so they can keep profiting form the military industrial complex....
and the new pinky and the brain will air every day at 5pm EST
got Trump elected.
I don't think generally fair means what I think it does. Although, thinking about it, generally fair can also be interpreted as generally shit.
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.
Even if so, then most likely other actors had a far bigger effect on the outcome, namely mass media and mass social networks.
All we hear is 'Russia' since this underbelly old-cold-war enemy is apparently a good distraction. No-one talks about the role of television, newspapers and facebook.
So, to me all this 'Russia hacks' is just a trick from this same mass-media to focus attention on something else than themselves. Which makes me actually more suspicious about their role as `independent` news source.
I don't think I've ever seen someone argue the morality of any particular country that they didn't live in. It seems like you may be conflating people's desire to avoid war and the involvement of foreign nations in wars.
I also don't think we should be fighting Russia but we should be defending ourselves from all forces that seek to mislead the public, both foreign and domestic.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Canadian Sage Predicts that America will overthrow move governments.
In other news, Nigeria will continue to pull 419 scams. The thing that people don't understand is that Russian and Chinese hackers, both state sponsored and independent, try to hack/phish everything on the internet.
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that Comey is saying what people already know well, a recent poll shows folks believe him over the predisent (sic) 5 to 1.
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You have no idea how accurate you are, and no one else is admitting it.
Story about the ONLY people that have evidence Russia hacked the 2016 election. Yes, these are the ONLY people that have examined the DNC servers that were hacked, Comey confirmed the FBI nor any other intelligence agency has been allowed to look at them.
The kicker... That company is REFUSING to testify to that evidence. I'm assuming since a special council has been appointed and perjury will be prosecuted now is when they changed their mind. So the government has not a SINGLE PERSON willing to testify with actual evidence of Russian hacking.
Can I repeat that? Not a SINGLE PERSON is willing to testify with evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Yes, they drug it out for 9 months and not only did they not have evidence of Trump working with Russia, they didn't have evidence of Russia interfering with the election.
What the hell is going on here? Why would anyone listen to Comey? He hasn't seen evidence of Russia hacking the 2016 election, why would he think they would start now?
See the email leak smear attempt just two days before the French presidential election for a more recent example.
Well, if we don't want the Russians to interfere with "elections", then maybe we should stop having them!
Let's drop this notion that the men who win pluralities of votes are somehow representative of the will of the residents within any given precinct (however fairly or unfairly the borders of the precinct were drawn). They mostly are not (Chances are quite good that even your representative does regularly do things and take positions which you'd fire him for if you were his only constituent). Presidents even less so.
Appoint or endorse a man which you substantially agree with on political matters. If that politician has a substantial level of support, then he gets to go to Washington to govern and argue and vote on behalf of those constituents which actually endorse him (rather than the minority groups and corporate interests which those under the prevailing system rely upon to swing elections - problems which, incidentally, are far more destructive than any kingmaking which can be accomplished by hacking the computers).
I have to say, I used to be all for civil liberties; but now that I'm told that these devious Russians are trying to influence our elections, well then obviously what we need is strict controls in place to shutdown all that FAKE NEWS and ensure that our news sources publish only Real News! Why isn't anybody talking about this!!!!!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Who interfered with the 2016 Presidential Election? Jimmy Comey!
Who lied to Congress about "Unmasking"? Jimmy Comey!
Who lied to Congress about the DNC "hacking"? Jimmy Comey!
The DNC hack was an Inside Job by the hired IT crew who were and still are illegal migrants, although now that safe back inside Pakistan.
Who lied to Congress regarding the "Leak"? Jimmy Comey! Likely Comey is the source who leaked and payed for the "Trump Dossier"!
Pound for pound Commie is the Biggest Liar! Certified Fresh!
But I like all the Russian shit posting propaganda, now when someone says something I disagree with I can just to myself 'oh you silly Russian, real Americans like myself don't think that way'... Hey don't knock it, without this crutch I would have lost all faith in humanity months ago!
I like the Russian method of regime change more than the American way. I think the population of most of the countries that the US bombed agrees with me.
In Soviet Russia, government chooses YOU!!!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't think I've ever seen someone argue the morality of any particular country that they didn't live in...
Ever heard of "Hanoi Jane?"
it's almost as if times can change, or that hindsight is 20/20. See, this is the trouble with the Right. Zero ability to adapt to change. If Russia was an Ally yesterday they're always gonna be an ally, right? Oh, and no shades of grey. Russia's either balls to the walls evil and needs to be exterminated or our ardent friend.
As for Iran, they were well on their way to modernizing before we put a bunch of religious nuts in power. There's pictures of girls in Iran wearing the sorts of skirts that wouldn't have been out of place in 1960s America before we screwed with 'em. And don't get me started on the shit we do and did in South America so Code can sell cheap sugar water.
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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.
Listen to all the blamers and excusers. This is cyberwar. This is the fight you were meant to fight. You would think all the patriotic AMERICAN geeks would be the voices of reason. But no. You all fight EACH OTHER! This is the next frontier of warfare. I don't think the German or French geek communities are going to let it go. In fact the French were warned by what happened in the US elections and fought back effectively. Don't be Putin's pawn. Smack him down and teach him not to fuck with sovereign countries.
Well. I lived to see it happen. Russia overthrew its communist masters and turned from an evil empire into a largely christian harmonious society mostly minding its own business and bothering no one. At the same time, yurrup and the eeew-ess have devolved into a deviant sewer of globalist filth, helpless, brainwashed, and controlled.
The western governments and the people who vote them in and put up with them turn my stomach. The way they scapegoat "the russians", making up stories out of whole cloth, is disgusting and revolting to any self-respecting rational free man (yeah, there are still a precious few of us left who you will NEVER NEVER NEVER succeed in brainwashing).
I feel much more kinship to my russian brothers than to the degenerate filth who surround me. There is nothing worth saving in these yahoos. I hope they all go to hell where they belong.
Russians were actively trying to get Hillary elected. The last thing they would want would be for America to be made great again.
There was no election hacking. There was no intervention. There was no tampering with voting machines. There was no direct influence. There is not a single shred of evidence that Russia had back-door access to change our vote tally.
Russia did what France and England and the rest of Europe have been doing since 1787, and that is to try to influence public opinion in the US so that we would elect governments that would enact policy favorable to them.
This is nothing new at all. It has been going on since the moment we formed our nation. It is only a big deal now because someone outside the establishment won, and the media and the elite are butt-hurt about it.
Instead of GNAA, we now must use HALF (Homosexual African Liberation Front), freeing African Wildlife once and for all.
Free to break free of the shackles with crowbars. Free to claim free reparations from cars with crowbars. Free to hit whitey with crowbars because race riots (e.g. burning stuff, shooting each other, and looting electronics stores) is cool with the Starbucks-sipping NPR LBGTBBQ SJW crowds!
I take everything that J Edgar Comey says with a grain of salt. Leaker!
Look at you here making up your own history.
The Left had a problem with US actions during the revolutions in Iran because we overthrew a democraticaly elected government and installed a dictator. When the Iranians found out they went apeshit which is how we got the modern day Iran and all of the problems that come with it.
The Left has had a problem with the vietnam war because of lives lossed and the fact that both the French and Americans knew that the communists would win any election that was put forward so not only were our actions antidemocratic they were doomed to failure.
Finally, the American Left has never been a fan of the South American nations you mention in any real mainstream way. ("Oh but Bernie said something nice about Venezuela once!" Shutup)
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... always face forward.
There's no news value here.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
My God, this is getting more tedious than the McCarthy hearings.
I'm still waiting for someone who has the guts to ask the Democrats "Have you no shame!!"
Unfortunately the answer to that question in this case is yes, the Democrats have no shame...
There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever, Mr. Comey said. The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. And it was an active-measures campaign driven from the top of that government. There is no fuzz on that.
I call bullshit. How? Give an example of how the Russians 'interfered' in any real demonstrable way with the last US election. They changed the votes? If so how? I guess they could try to buy votes or even more effectively perhaps bribe the electors whose votes actually matter. Of course if our electors are buyable we really only have ourselves to blame for being so easily corruptible and by having a system that is so easy to influence with money. But is there any evidence the Russians or anyone actually did this? I'd like to see the evidence rather than vague and essentially meaningless anti-Russian propaganda. If they want to hack insecure email systems I say good for them. It has no direct connection to US elections and I am totally cool with it. Improve the security of email rather than whining about it like little bitches. Also for those of you who want to go back to the Cold War just because you don't like the current president, fuck you. Stop picking fights with the Russkies. If you want to saber rattle at them it had better be for a damned good reason and email hacking does not qualify. How the fuck has the American Democratic party become war mongers?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Maybe if the US didn't have to make things so overly complicated on voting day by having electronic voting booths then you wouldn't have to worry about hacking. Hand the voter a couple of ballots, one for each thing they are voting for, and they put an X on each one. It's simple and it works. Secure and easy to (re)count.
But then there's this fascination of voting for so many positions. Like clerks. Why do you need to vote for clerks? They are part of the civil service. And some states elect judges. WTF? There's nothing to run on to be a judge. You apply the law without prejudice. At least you are supposed to. (Something else I don't understand about the US as you have judges that bring their own interpretation based on their beliefs.).
Cut down on the number of elected positions and you have a couple of ballots for people to mark which means they can use paper like many places in the world where it works quite well.
The Russians have been interfering for decades, hell in Europe the Green parties received huge amounts of funding from the Soviets back in the day. In the 90s the Chinese were working hard to funnel money secretly to the Clinton campaign.
And despite all the interference all the US intelligence agencies agree. There is no evidence that votes were tampered with; nor the outcomes of the election changed.
And even from Hillary, there is no dispute that the damaging emails were fake, merely that they were stolen.
The relentless pursuit to prove there was a connection with Russia is creating far more damage than the Russians (allegedly) managed to do. Hard to imagine Russians getting a better return for their efforts.
That, in fact, is "classic espionage".
Anybody who claims to be surprised that Russia is trying to spread propaganda or obtain secrets on US government officials obviously has been so out of touch with reality that they have no business being in government. Ditto for any US government official whose computer security is so weak that Russian espionage attempts are successful.
One of the problems I see is how local and state governments want to do elections on the cheap and save a few bucks with the election process. That is also why they buy machines from the lowest bidder, don't care about securing the voting machines (like the infamous Dibold crap), and don't bother verifying a voting trail to make sure the elections are secure. Heck, a chain of custody for the votes themselves is often hard to prove from the voter to the final voting total as well.
In other words, a whole lot of room is there ripe for fraud even without Russia getting into the act.
As much as at first I didn't like the idea, I'm really warming up to public funding of elections too. While not perfect, such public funding where candidates have the chance to present their platforms mostly free of financial campaign raising is also a good way to get rid of foreign influence too, as well as to debate ideas and not simply let the wealthiest candidate win. While a Russian diplomat can presumably bribe a member of Congress or a presidential candidate with a few million dollars, public funding would move that into a flagrant bribe and not merely something that can be whitewashed with being a campaign contribution through 3rd parties (since foreign governments aren't permitted legally to finance political campaigns... not that stops it from happening though).
Put another way, Russia should be one of the most least important countries in the world to the US and the EU
It's GDP is lower than both Australia and Italy, and is the smallest of all the BRIC nations
But Russia exerts its influence like it is a larger country and still a super-power - Western nations shouldn't bother with putting up with any BS from such a nation, just ramp up sanctions until they comply, and isolate the country completely if needed
Russia is not particularly valuable as either an ally or a trading partner, there are many more countries significantly more significant
The NY Times has gone downhill. Nowadays, whenever I see a link to them I think to myself, "What are they trying to get me to believe now?" This is not limited to the Donald Trump / Russia stuff though that's been their main beat since the inauguration.
For example:
Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax. Basically a drug ad for Xanax. The 90s were about Prozac! The 21st century is about Xanax!! Everybody go pop them pills!
I could find more, but it's pretty obvious that it's a PR rag for a very narrow agenda to anyone who's paying attention. Their modus operandi is to pick a narrative and publish lots of stories that reinforce their narrative by taking any little bit of information, anonymous sources, overheard gossip, basically whatever confirms it and repeat it over and over to a national audience.
...it was fun while it lasted.
I guess what this really means is the DNC will continue to take ethically bankrupt actions that they document by email which are then leaked by Russian hackers?
Maybe the DNC and Democrats in general should simply cease doing so many illegal and unethical things that are so damning when exposed?
Nah. Like Spice, the Graft must flow!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nice deflection. No need to invesitage because you're crap at history.
Y'know, I've watched as the left has argued the morality of Russia, in the Korean War (citing civilians killed by the US), in Iranian revolutions (never mentioning the KGB-supported power grab), in the VIetnam War (where they've taught forty years of history dividing the two sides into the good guys who the KGB supported, which conducted purges of the population after the war, and America), the various Central American communist parties, which are paragons of social justice until their economies collapse like Venezuela...
Y'know what I watched? The morality of the right, as they supported brutal dictators in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, South Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and even South Africa. Oh, and Argentina and Chile. Oh yes, I remember the economic collapse that happened there, even as the vaunted Friedman economic plan was enacted. I remember the spiraling debts of the 1980s. And then I remember the Gulf War. And the occupation of Iraq and Afghanist in the War on Terror.
Oh, and I watched the machinations of Joe McCarthy too. I remember the Hollywood black list as they hunted evil commies everywhere.
About the only good thing that came from the Cold War was that the US could no longer ignore its segregation problem so easily. And even that was minimalist, as the Conservative old-guard was quickly subsumed by the Republican party.
We even enacted a so-called peace deal with Iran where we released large amounts of money to them and the next _month_ suddenly Russia had the funds to bomb rebels in Syria at Iran's behest.
I'm pretty sure I've heard the right complain that the rebels in Syria were really ISIS, and that we should support Assad.
They were actually quite upset that Obama let a whole bunch of their pet dictators in the Mid-east get toppled.
But suddenly, in the year 2016, after all that, it's important that we fight Russia, after giving them all those countries (never mind that they couldn't even hold onto the ones in Eastern Europe besides Belarus) and even giving (via Iran) the money to keep their Air Force afloat in bombs to drop on civilians.
Oh please, the only people who want to fight Russia are the folks who remember the days of the Cold War as their personal money tree.
They're quite avaricious.
The actual opposition just wants us to stop letting a dictator influence things.
So if no banks will loan Trump money, why would Russia or China take those loans? Surely they know its bad business.
Money laundering. Russia is a kleptocracy, all of those oligarchs need a way to get their money out of the country so they can spend it on stuff you can't buy in Russia. But the west has a range of anti-money laundering mechanisms that, while imperfect, are still a major obstacle. Turns out real-estate is so loosey-goosey that its a pretty good way to launder money.
There has been a ton of reporting on his association with money laundering. But it gets lost in the metric fuckton of other scandal and corruption stories. Here are just a couple of reports, from before and after the election:
FinCEN Fines Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort $10 Million for Significant and Long Standing Anti-Money Laundering Violations
Dirty money: Trump and the Kazakh connection
— FT probe finds evidence a Trump venture has links to alleged laundering network
Donald Trump’s Worst Deal
— The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
US election: Trump’s Russian riddle
— The Republican nominee became the face of Bayrock, a developer with roots in the Soviet Union
It's a simple choice really.
Either open source the E-voting systems so exploits and generally bad things can be found, fixed and secured . . .
or
Go with the Russia* solution and revert back to old school methods by dropping E-Voting completely.
*Recall the story where they quit utilizing computers and switched back to typewriters for sensitive documents when spying revelations became apparent.
Paper methods are a PITA for sure, but also impossible to manipulate with a simple keystroke.
I don't think I've ever seen someone argue the morality of any particular country that they didn't live in.
Truly.
You can read dozens of posts on just that in this thread right now.
The way your posts have been steadily degrading, denying simple facts like "people judge countries they don't live in", my thoughts genuinely turn to early onset Alzheimer's and wonder what your age is.
Still no proof that Russa hacked the election, they only did what the STUPID media should be doing, letting the public know what politicians have done.
People support wikileaks, people support Winner who leak classified information, but concerned when Russa do the same thing? After all we have learned of Hillary, we should all be happy Trump won, who knows how much more damage Hillary would have caused after 8 years of Obama doing damage.
That's a mighty fine strawman you've built there stranger.
How about we saddle up and search for the Jackolope that looks like it.
Russian interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation? Really? Let's compare that to the king of manipulators- the USA. Ask any insider in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East or Germany or Russia ... The USA is there, with the carrot and the stick, arranging weapons contracts, CIA connections, generous bribes, commercial alliances, and assuring that the 'right' people win elections. Maybe the US has achieved a level of subtlety and control over the press that makes these activities seem less significant, but you can bet that they are well supported with our tax dollars.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I think your post has reached peak partisan stupidity.
This is all just fallout from Trump doing anything he could to win an election and Putin taking advantage of the chaos. Discussing the issue improves the situation and does not "damage" anything other than deservedly damage the election prospects of a few people in a few years time.
Did your earlier discussion of Hillary's email server create damage? No? Then why should this? Why one rule for your party and another for everyone outside it? Do you really want to push that Russian sort of approach?
then why do I have to believe that Comey himself is not a russian installation?
Should a minority figure step out of line by even so much as a toe, then lethal force is "unavoidable, legal and proper". Should a foreign adversary commit crimes that benefit the Right, then suddenly they are forces of Truth, Justice and The American Way!!
It's truly funny how those on the Right proclaim how interested, engaged and involved in the "crimes" committed by the DNC. Oh my, how you long for a world where the DNC is a straight-up, right flying and clean as a whistle organization! Left unsaid is the implication that the RNC is such an organization. You really just want a fair fight according to Robert's Rules of Order, or possibly the Queensberry Rules, right?
My, how courtly you are! You are so courtly your eyes are brown.
There is no corelation hacker with Russia. What is the benefit for Russia anyway?
In their own sick way, the Ruskies are doing us a favor. The clearer it becomes to everyone that elections are very high value cyber warfare targets, the more likely it is (hopefully) that people of all stripes will resoundingly reject electronic voting machines and internet voting schemes, which they might otherwise tend to favor for convenience and efficiency.
Computer scientists have been warning against e-voting for a decade or two. Voting happens every 2-4 years. It doesn't have to be efficient, or maximally convenient (though we should extend it over the weekend to broaden the franchise). As long as the internet is a cesspool of unaccountable ajurisdictional crime (that's going to have to be tackled pretty soon, but there's a whole other rant), voting should be airgapped, low tech, and paper-trailed. Won't stop idiots from getting their 'news' from facebook, and it won't stop the dead from voting in Chicago, but at least hackers won't be able to move millions of votes with a piece of malware.
And don't kid yourself. Russians are just the tip of the iceberg, once this gets going; the political parties will have hacking divisions when it becomes possible to swing elections this way, just like they PACs and redistricting committees. It'll become just another tool in the bag.
Comey has NO credibility left. He leaked information for his own benefit.
So while the FBI is setting up "them roooskies" as the boogie man of interfering with sovereign nation's democratic process, is that just to keep attention away from the american covert service's own programme for doing the same?
Many bodies seem to identify hacks as being "russian" due to the content of some of the code used - which contains fragments of other (known) "russian" hacks. But to recognise those code fragments, you have to have them. And if you have them, couldn't you be using them, yourself?
It is no different from selling weapons to "friendly" terrorists (aka insurgents, if they are on your side) that you sourced from enemies of the government you are targetting. So when they are found, there is no route that traces them back to the puppet-master.
America has a long tradition of influencing foreign governments, toppling dictators and installing their own leaders. Especially in central america. We should expect that they have not given up on this sort of activity. And what better way than online? Since nobody seems to be "finding" evidence of CIA hacks, is that because there are none, or because they are disguised as "russian", instead?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
the U.S. will itself continue to interfere in elections, political matters, matters of trade and finance, in countries all over the world, while simultaneously spout off propaganda and accuse others of their own wrongs.
There was a good article in a local satire magazine recently about how belief in almighty russian hackers is now a recognized religion.
Russians are tricky, that's for sure. My girlfriend is Russian and I occasionally admire her ingenuity. And Putin is not a man to pull any blows (find some videos on YouTube how he tells his ministers that they care idiots unable to do their jobs).
But how did we come to this new McCarthyism where everything is blamed on russian hackers, as if a) there were no chinese, indian, european or american hackers and b) hackers are the only possible answer, not intentional leaks, misdirection, scaremongering and media hype.
Frankly speaking: Why would the russian government even care about elections in the US or Europe? It's not like there's much difference in whoever gets election. Real politics hasn't been made by the figureheads of our states for decades now. If I were Putin, I would pay 2 people to spread some misinformation about russian hackers, and 2000 people to hack the hell out of the lobby groups, big consulting companies, financial institutions and especially the secret services. In other words: The backroom government and the deep state.
Who cares about the people flying in Air Force One when you can influence the real politics being made behind closed doors?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Mod up please
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What i expect is that the rulers of every country on this fucking planet will do whatever the fuck they want until we take them down.
Notice how the media continually says the Russians "interfered" with the election, but don't actually say what they actually DID, (or are supposed to have done). What SOMEBODY did was hack into Clinton's e-mails and expose them to the public, so we could see her numerous crimes and her corruption.
And apparently now Trump shouldn't be friendly with Russia, but instead should try to start a war with them - according to the controlled media.
The "interference" amounted to what? Running slanted news stories? He testified that New York Times story about contacts between Trump campaign and Russian spies was essentially a work of fiction. Was NYT stealing an election? How about Al Jazeera? If Al Jazeera has its own take on the news reporting in the US, is it Qatar (whose government own Al Jazeera) stealing our elections? How about BBC? BBC is actually financed by the British government. And spare me the "it's independent" nonsense. When it comes to foreign affairs, BBC has a fairly unique point of view: all colonies which rejected British rule continue to be ruled by barbarians or by fools. Is that Britain trying to steal our elections? Who the fuck is Comey kidding? Has he not seen a single movie about the military? When the POTUS tells you "I hope you can let this go", and you work for him, your answer is "is that an order, Sir?" Instead he chose to spend federal money to investigate someone when his told him to let it go because the guy was already punished enough. So now Comey is jumping on the, hey, but look at Russia bandwagon to save his own ass? He was too stupid to ask if he was given an order and paralyzed the government for 3 months because of it. And now we are supposed to believe that 3 agencies which looked at some log dumps at told the other 14 agencies "we definitely saw something" means that Russian government was trying to hack US electoral systems? With no actual evidence for it? Yeah, nahah. Oh, wait, I must be a Russian spy, too. So, here we go: "nyet, nyet, nyet."
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Why would they bother with hackers in order to influence elections? Couldn't they register some obscure corporation in the US and simply use 'Citizens United' in order to bribe their way to power?
This is what is happening in Australia. Although in their case, there is no need to hide behind an Australian registered corporation.
I can't imagine more damage than was done to the country by Comey not asking "is that an order" when Trump asked if he could drop Flynn's investigation. Comey himself testified that a President can legitimately give such an order. But instead of clarifying what Trump was saying, Comey just gave us 3 months of finger pointing and bull rhetoric about potential abstraction of justice. 3 months of stalling the government because he was too stupid to ask a simple question... Can you name a dumber decision by a person with this much power in recent history?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Seriously, those stupid corporate dems still try to blame Russia for their shameful defeat? Instead of publicly shaming Debbie W. Schulz and demanding an apology from Clinton on how she condoned and supported DNC' s role in the primaries against Bernie Sanders? Have they learned nothing?
Well then say hello to Trump for another 7,5 years!
China's key weapon is money and the reason they can wield it is our greed and desire for wealth.
It is buying them whatever they want. Look at the South China Sea, as an example.
yes thats why The American Left decried the ousting of the democratically elected government in the Ukraine, and are in full support of the Russians working to restore the Democracy taken from them.
oh... wait... our American Left is actually defending the overthrow of the Ukrainian government? They have actually vilified the people that had their democracy stolen from them by the CIA?
The American Left will say anything at any time, completely opposite positions dont even give them a single millisecond of pause.
Fuck The Democrats.
"His name was James Damore."
They'll never find one as moronic and stupid as this time.
Currently our elections don't lead to real politics. Just politicians doing nothing and eating money. If Russians (ah, those Russians!) interfere, they will subvert such results, leading Italy to either politicians doing something and eating money or even doing some and don't eating money.
We need your help, Putin. You are our only hope!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
always need a paper trail and quality control for voting machines, federally funded and standardized, transparent tabulation and results, something like , after voting you are issued a paper ticket with 2 unique numbers, you go to a website and enter one number, it gives you the vote cast, when and the second number,
all of the second numbers are published.
Comey was a corrupt democrat party operative. It was his responsibility to prevent foreign government interference in the US elections. He was a terrible and in competent FBI Director. In his own words, he was a weak and a coward. FBI Director! Now he is going to get $10 million to write a book. Go figure.
And now we are supposed to believe that 3 agencies which looked at some log dumps at told the other 14 agencies "we definitely saw something" means that Russian government was trying to hack US electoral systems?
You missed part of his testimony. Those 3 letter agencies NEVER looked at the servers, they were never allowed to. It is based on the comments of a private company hired by the DNC, who will not testify under oath that Russia hacked the servers. They changed their opinion when Muller was appointed as special council and lying to him would have landed them in jail.
So no, 3 letter agencies are not saying they looked at logs, and the people who did are not willing to testify under oath either. So you have literally NO ONE willing to say it was Russians, other than the media who is making it up.
How will that help?
Comey was the leader of the chief government agency in charge of domestic counterintelligence, the FBI. If this was happening, wasn't it their job to stop it?
Unbelievable.
The problem with the Left, is that they would take totalitarian assholes over totalitarian assholes, where the right wants totalitarian assholes over totalitarian assholes.
Some places don't know how to have real democracy and democratic principles, even after you show them. They are too damn tribal and corruption is part and parcel to "how business is done".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So far, the biggest interferer with any elections worldwide is the good old Washington DC, USA. And across the Potomac river, the good old Pentagon, VA.
Well, if they ever do that will be the first.
All I have ever seen is innuendo and guesses, and absolutely zero actual proof of them doing anything.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
'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."'
Russia always has, and always will interfere with our elections. Just like we do with other nations. It's nothing new and, the only reason it's getting so much attention now is because of all the people on the left looking for any reason to get rid of someone they don't like. Also, they don't like him NOT because he can't do the job. The don't like him because he is not a career politician and thereby, is not part of the elitist crowd on both sides.
I hate China though.
Probably they already have. I'm just saying. This is part of the game of chess powerful players in large governments play with each other to try and get more things going their way.
This just comes to show that neither country's version of "democracy" has managed to eliminate the Oligarchy, and how the "State" can still become detrimental to the people, as it begins to serve more and more the interests of the Nobility (The "Congressmen" and "Officials" who maintain a pretension of being chosen by the people ---- In reality, their composition is biased heavily towards their In-Group supported by whatever corporations and billionaires are in favor of what they will Truly wind up doing with their power).
It's just in the US our Nobility let us pretend to elect them to their office (But our choices are limited to Oligarch A or Oligarch B), most of the time, so "Influencing" our elections is more about who can do the most favors for which side to get the one of two options that best serves other states.
Propaganda isn't the same as interfering with an election. They're interfering with people's information, and maybe their way of thinking, but that's not interfering in the election itself. They're not preventing or altering the votes. Please stop using phrases to mean things other than what they should. 1984 called. It wants its newspeak back.
Why don't we just do the same and let Putin get some of the same medicine... things are getting rough in Russia... protestors are taking the streets.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , something the CIA invented. If you really think Russia isn't playing both sides, you are truly an idiot.
Oh no, someone will not let political parties get away with their lies and bullshit and expose the truth. How terrible! How dare they! I mean it was one sided and with the purpose of altering the results but still, the truth came out and that's what mattered.
At what point is it time to just block all systems in Russia and North Korea during critical events? I frequently have to do this for clients, when some script kiddie from Bulgaria or Croatia wants to send spam from their servers. Why not just have all ISPs block all traffic from Russia for a week before and after any election? Months? Permanently? I don't feel like my quality of life would suffer any if Russians couldn't reach my servers.
Call it the Freedom Bloc and all the mouth breathing hyper-patriotic tagalongs can hoop and holler that it's anti-communist or something while crushing beer cans on their forehead and screaming 'Murica!'
Don't worry, Trump will take credit for that, too.
We have no reason to think voting computers aren't getting hacked. We know they aren't secure so it's possible, and they clearly have motive.
Your right the systems aren't secure but that isn't the real problem. First so what if the Russians are trying to hack us and fix the elections. The US has done it for years all around the globe to a lot more countries than Russia. When we don't get "our man" we then stage a coup to oust the guy we don't like its SOP for the CIA. Kind of the pot calling the kettle black. Our government is telling us its OK for us to hack other countries and OUR OWN PEOPLE but other countries its not.
I am a security researcher the reason for the posting as AC. I have read every report read including the one leaked by Reality Winner and none of the reports contain any evidence what so ever the points to the Russians running the hack. Actually it points to either an inside job or a US related attack. I write reports all the time like these and every statement I make must be supported by evidence listed below the statement. I can't say "the Tester assessed" without evidence to support that assessement. I'd get fired for turning reports like these and rightly so. Even the classified document is so much BS.
Also on Reality Winner she gets thrown under the bus and immeditly arrested when Hillary leaks over 30,000 documents and thats OK. When you get down to the law they both broke the same law "Mis-handling of Classified Material". What Ms Winner leaked really had no damning classified data as I said earlier the report is bogus propaganda. What was found the the Hillary files was evidence of even more crimes of graft corruption and paying for favors and real sensitive data leaked yet she walks free.
Plus she ordered the removal of classified headers from classified documents that in itself is a seperate Federal crime. Ms Winner did leave these headers on the doc she leaked.
Let's talk about the REAL HACK against the election systems it seems all the reporting stopped on the DHS getting caught attempting to hack the State of Georgia which caught them in the act and then 9 other states reported the same attempts about that same time. I that report there is clear evidence the DHS did this. The attack lead back to an IP address leased by the DHS. Seems there hackers didn't learn the forst rule of hacking "never hack from home". Here there is hard and clear evidence that the US attacked one of it own state's networks which is a lot worse than an attempt by the Russians. Our own government did this.
Here is Georgia a remote attack wouldn't work. All machines related to voting data have no Internet access and are kept on a closed loop network. At the voting statons there is no network. All data is transfered with data cards. Yes the security on the voting machines is a epic fail but you wouldl have to have physical access to the machines to hack them. Yes a USB attack could bring them down easily but you would have to hit every system or the tabular machine to hack the votes. The Russians know this.
Even if the attacking code "looks" Russian we have seen in leaked data that the CIA has tools to change code to "look" Russian.
Something is going on behind all these smoke and mirrors this is what worries me.
This is text book USSR style propaganda from the 50's and 60's. This time it comes from our own government.
NOAA predicts Sun will rise in the east, set in the west. IRS predicts people will cheat on their taxes. Anyone predicts Slashdot will publish any old thing.
At least if the French had let the vietnamese vote they would have chosen their own government and who knows, under those conditions maybe things would have been different.
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Seriously? Have you heard what Putin has been saying since Bill Clinton was President? Have you heard of what he was saying about Hillary when she was Secretary of State? With autocrats (as you will start to learn with Trump) the personal is political, and Putin has been extremely pissed off with Bill and Hillary since Bill gave the order to bomb bits of the former Yugoslavia without telling Russia first. Putin built his political career on making a fuss about Bill Clinton trying to take over "Russia's backyard" based on those events.
What form did this "interference" take, anyway?
Did they intimidate voters at polling places? Systematically prevent some categories of people from registering to vote? Did they stuff ballot boxes? Did they fraudulently fill out large numbers of absentee ballots for people suffering from severe cases of dementia or death?
I've not been following this all that closely, so maybe I missed it.
What form did this "interference" take?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.