Putin Claims Russia Proposed a Cyber War Treaty In 2015 But the Obama Admin Ignored Them (qz.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Russian president Vladimir Putin (who denies any Russian part in the hacking) claims the Obama administration ignored a proposal in 2015 that might have avoided all of this. His administration suggested working out a cyber treaty with the US but was ignored by Obama officials, Putin told film director Oliver Stone in Showtime's four-part series broadcast this week. "A year and a half ago, in fall 2015, we made proposal to our American partners that we work through these issues and conclude a treaty on the rules of behavior in this sphere," he said in Stone's documentary The Putin Interviews. "The American side was silent, they didn't reply to us."

Comments

Really?

[Dru Nemeton]

Given the environment of this admission I can't be the only one who doubts this.

Re:Really?

[dunkindave]

Given the environment of this admission I can't be the only one who doubts this.

I don't doubt it, but I think he is spinning it. Think about the problem of attribution in the cyber realm, then think about what good such an agreement would be? All it would do is become something for groups to use to try and attack others in public while doing absolutely nothing to stop any of the cyber attacks. The administration probably "ignored it" (meaning told them to take a hike) because they saw it as a nothing-burger proposed solely for propaganda reasons.

Re:Really?

[phayes]

Treaties need to be verifiable and respected to be of any use. No possible good could have come of signing such a treaty with someone who claims that his military is just on vacation when they invade another country and that his hackers are just unemployed patriots.

Re:Really?

[alvinrod]

I think the more realistic explanation is that it was ignored because it means the U.S. would have to knock-off (or obfuscate behind a third party for purposes of deniability, because lets face it we're not going to stop doing it) a lot of the stuff it's doing. Everyone likes to think that they're the good guys, but the U.S. has a long history of interfering in foreign countries so it's laughable to suggest that not carrying out our own operations. But as you point out, there isn't much point in a meaningless treaty when both sides know that both they and the other side won't actually uphold it.

Re: Really?

[UnknowingFool]

I don't doubt that Putin may have proposed it and that the Obama administration turned it down. After all who here really believes that Putin would honor such a treaty?

A treaty only makes sense between equal players

[Anonymous Coward]

and the US arrogantly thought that they were better hackers.

Blaming Obama?

[HangingChad]

You know Putin didn't think that talking point up on his own. The guy who has changed his story three times about Russian hacking now tries out a new strategy.

We can't stay united with people who think it's okay for Russians, or any country, to meddle in our elections...as long as the meddling is working for them. If this was Hillary Clinton working with the Russians the hypocrite right would be burning the country down.

Re:Blaming Obama?

[nucrash]

At this point, if you want to point out all the flaws of Hillary Clinton and the radical Democrats who assaulted or shot at Trump Supporters or GOP members, feel free to also point out the racists who were incensed about the removal of Confederate statues or Samuel Houston's statue which is even more entertaining because he despised the Confederacy. Feel free to also point out the Trump supporters who shot and killed various people for "looking" Muslim. I own the fact that yes there was Bernie Supporter who shot up a GOP team. That's sad and I don't know where he managed to get the message that violently attacking GOP officials was okay. Violently attacking anyone is not okay. Yet the GOP needs to own their own extremist and that's something they don't care to do. Most of the time they don't acknowledge this happening. I think the most we managed to get out of Trump was a, "Stop It" and that was after he was questioned and begged. Bernie has apologized time and again over this single individual.

Re:Blaming Obama?

[butzwonker]

How do you say 'fake news' in Russian?

Prawda - now known as "Russia Today".

Re:Blaming Obama?

[Mashiki]

So you support the removal of historical statues and scrubbing of history? That's what you're talking about when you're saying that. Would you like me to point out all those fake hate crimes that Clinton and Bernie supporters claimed in order to get in the news and try making the "look at all this violence" that isn't actually happening and several of those people were criminally charged for false police reports. How about those muslims that were filing false police reports against Trump supporters. You want to talk about Loretta Lynch calling for people to violently attack people in the streets. How about when Tim Caine and Hillary did too.

Here I'll even help you for your next reply. Maybe you would like to toss in a claim that the kid in Quebec was a Trump supporter? Except he only like Trump because he holds a "US First" stance, much like LePen and several others. Want to know what's interesting on that one? He was a freverant leftist, who supported groups like the PQ(a leftist nationalist pro-separation Quebec group). You know there was another group like that in the past too, it was called the FLQ. They were marxist leftists with a pro-nationalist, pro-quebec separation stance. Just think if they were around today. How would you argue the marxist organization that just bombed downtown montreal, or kidnapped a politican and murdered him. Would that be a pro-Trump organization in your book?

How about groups like BAMN? That are far-leftist violent marxists, who believe that they're "fighting for free speech" by violently assaulting people.

So what?

[chispito]

Putin right now: We do not hack other nations, those are independent patriotic Russians.

Putin if he signed a treaty: We do not hack other nations, those are independent patriotic Russians.

Flagged as Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely it came from a .ru domain, got flagged as spam, and ended up in Obama's junk folder.

Even if he could find the email, the link will have been sanitized with a [Malware Domain] marker.

Contradiction?

[Edward Nardella]

So, Russia was not involved but if there was a treaty they would not have been involved and they would not have done the hacking they did not do.

Putin statement suggests contradiction

[evolutionary]

Putin denies any involvement in hacking (which the FBI says is nonsense) while publicly declaring he proposed in essence, a cyberwar treaty that "might have avoided all this". How could what is going with the question of Russian interference with our voting system be avoided if there wasn't any in the first place. This suggests what we all suspect: that we have actions (call it retaliation if you like) on both side. Who started it, well, that question probably goes back to the cold war.

Re:Thank goodness we have Trump now

[Mashiki]

So how are the republicans "putin-friendly" when they not only maintain sanctions, but are following Obama's same playbook. You do realize that Russia's main concern was Hillary would do something that would trigger WWIII because she was so incredibly hawkish that it made neocons blush. You can even see that in her emails, where she wanted to directly bomb russians in Syria, and start seizing assets from them. Pretty easy to figure out why the Kremlin was cheering when Trump was elected, it might just have something to do with that non-war. And if you don't think it wouldn't be nuclear? Look at it this way, the US has double the tonnage in the ocean of Russia and China combined. Plus better and closer force projection for troops. That means the only option would be a first strike using nuclear or limited nuclear exchange in the hopes of winning.

Re:That's a really nice Internet you have there...

[HornWumpus]

Do you realize how big the NSA is?

American three letter agencies spend more money 'cyber spying' on each other than the total Russian cyber budget. Which isn't to say the Russians don't have talent or that any amount of money will turn a paper pusher into a hacker.

The Americans didn't respond because they thought they were miles ahead. Recent releases show they _could_ just own anyone with any connected consumer device (e.g. router, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux based etc etc).

I'm thinking the OpenBSD guys are acting kind of smug, but where they owned too? I can't keep up.

Re: Thank goodness we have Trump now

[bestweasel]

The Senate are serious about it, voting 98-2 for more sanctions on Russia; the House will probably follow suit. Trump would like to be buddies with Putin. The investigations should eventually find out how much sympathy and influence Russia has in the various other factions in Trump's Administration.