Russia Says in Talks With US To Create Cyber Security Working Group (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader shares a brief report on Reuters: Moscow and Washington are in talks to create a joint cyber security working group, RIA news agency reported on Thursday, citing Russia's special envoy on cyber security Andrey Krutskikh. Further reading: CBS News.

Comments

At least they're honest

[nine-times]

Trump says:

Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..

To which I can only say, at least he's being honest. He wants to guard the election hacking and many other negative things. He's not saying that he wants to guard against election hacking, but he wants to guard the election hacking to prevent American law enforcement from interfering and allowing fair elections.

Seriously, though, we need to get this guy out of office. Just yesterday, he admitted that he wouldn't have appointed Sessions to Attorney General if he'd known that Sessions wasn't going to help cover up his campaign's collusion with the Russian government. Even if Putin weren't involved, Trump's involvement already means that this wouldn't should not be trusted with the security of our elections.

Re:At least they're honest

[Enigma2175]

In other news, the US has decided to outsource all henhouse guarding in the country to We Are Foxes, Inc. Proponents claim this will save the country eleventy kajillion dollars per year.

Re:At least they're honest

[nine-times]

Trump didn't collude with Russia. If he did, there would already be articles of impeachment and Pence would be the acting POTUS. Period.

First, the investigation isn't done. You don't really want to start a trial before you've gathered all the evidence you think you need. Second, impeachment is a political process, not a law enforcement process, and so it's entirely dependent on the majority of Congress deciding they want to bring charges. I think we've already seen that the Republicans want to cover this up.

As for the accusations, they're true. http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/12/... [cnn.com]

Umm... let's look at this article. First sentence:

Three members of the legal team known to have been hired so far by special counsel Robert Mueller to handle the Russia investigation have given political donations almost exclusively to Democrats

So *three* members. Three out of five. Three of them have given political donations "almost exclusively" to Democrats. From the use of the word "almost", we can conclude that they didn't give money exclusively to Democrats. It says later in the article that one of the three donated to Jason Chaffetz and George Allen, both Republicans.

And that's just political donations, not active campaigning. It's not terribly uncommon for people to donate some money to a political party. So what do you want? You want to disqualify anyone who ever donated money to a Democratic campaign from working on the investigation? That'd be absurd.

As for Robert Mueller himself has close ties to Comey. While is in of itself isn't a problem per se, it's highly biased.

You mean biased toward ethics and fair enforcement of the law? I'll take that bias. And if Mueller is so terrible, why was he being considered for the head of the FBI? Why was he appointed by the Deputy Attorney General. Why is it that of all the major Republican figures, only Trump has anything bad to say about Mueller?

I mean, exercise a little judgement. Think for yourself, at least a little bit.

Re:At least they're honest

[DigiShaman]

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -C. S. Lewis

Yeah, I'd rather have sleazeballs in office than someone ideological do-gooder whom thinks they know what's better for me, and proceeds to act on it to the detriment of my actual wellbeing.

Re:At least they're honest

[nine-times]

GOP is locked in a civil war of its own between Trump being the titular head (though they despise him for that being the POTUS and all), and blue blooded establishment types.

I think that's a misunderstanding of what's going on. There isn't one big unified "establishment" that doesn't like Trump. There are bunch of factions within the Republican party. Most of them don't like Trump. Like... loads and loads of people on all sides of things don't like Trump. It's not because he's disturbing their comfortable status quo, it's because he's a dangerous moron. He's a narcissist and a con man, but he doesn't even understand how things work well enough to fool anyone except people who are even bigger morons.

But he seems to have reached a deal with the Republican leadership that amounts to this: Republicans will support Trump publicly and try to protect him from his scandals, and Trump will do whatever they say. If Republicans can pass a healthcare bill, he'll sign it, even if it violates all of his campaign promises. Meanwhile, Republicans will try to defend his lining his own pockets and abusing power. It's been an uneasy detente, but Trump is specifically *not* upsetting the comfortable status quo for "the Establishment". He's hurting poor people and minorities, and not the rich and powerful.

However, even that's starting to break down. Republicans haven't been able to get much done, so while Trump will sign anything that gets put on his desk, that's not very valuable if they can't get a bill to his desk. Meanwhile, his scandals have gone from, "Trump is profiting off of the presidency in ways that are unethical and probably illegal," to "Trump conspired with the Russians to fix the election," so he's becoming harder and harder to defend.

Of course he tries to make it sound like people are out to get him. It's just like the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that was out to get Bill Clinton. You know the saying, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you"? Well, just because people are out to get you doesn't mean you aren't guilty. Trump may have plenty of political enemies, but even the facts that he's willing to concede show a pretty clear pattern of coordinating with Russia, and undermining our national security in order to serve Putin's interests.

What? Why?

[EndlessNameless]

The US and Russia have adversarial interests quite frequently. You can list every country in eastern Europe and the Middle East, and most of them have been a source of contention between the US and Russia in the last 20 years.

Given that frequency of conflict, why on earth would the US share sensitive technical information? What is Russia offering that Israel, Germany, and the UK aren't?

The US has a few arrangements already, and those include nations which are both technologically astute and far more friendly than Russia.

I don't care what Trump says; he knows jack about cyber security. What do the real experts think the US will gain? I.e., private sector and NSA/CIA security analysts.

Re: What? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump doesn't want to listen to the experts because then he would essentially be 'admitting' that they are correct about what Russia did to our election (I'm not talking about collusion, just the Russian meddling/attack).
That admission would hurt his fragile ego and in his mind would put the legitimacy of his presidency in question.
He is literally making decisions that make him look 'good', at least in his mind.

I'm still completely lost on how he is hanging on to the support of his 'base'. I mean I get the whole "Its us against the establishment/deep state/fake news" garbage that he plays on, but how the hell can 35%-40% of this country NOT see his actions and words as selfish, childish, and completely idiotic?!

Re:What? Why?

[fafalone]

What does anything you said have to do with Trump or Trump's objectives? Trump doesn't care about historical conflicts, doesn't care about those other countries, wants to work with Russia specifically, doesn't care about their technological astuteness, and absolutely 100% does not care what people like experts and scientists think in cybersecurity or any other subject. He's flooded the swamp with sycophants, and the Republicans won't oppose anything he does no matter how horrible because it would compromise The Party, and it's Party First, their own interests second, and the best interests of America or the people exist only as a soundbite they talk about to advance #1 and 2.

Re:What? Why?

[Ol Olsoc]

What is Russia offering that Israel, Germany, and the UK aren't?

The dirt and espionage on Americans. Which as has already been admitted and is proven in an email trail, is what this administration believes is something anyone would want to participate in.