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Dutch Intelligence Agents Watched Russia Hack the DNC (volkskrant.nl)
Long-time Slashdot readers Agilulf, Sara Chan, and wiredmikey -- plus an anonymous reader -- all submitted the same story. Agilulf writes:
Dutch hackers from AIVD (their intelligence agency) infiltrated Russian hackers, had access to their CCTV system, and followed them for more than a year, watched their attack on the DNC, provided the proof to the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind those hacks and the stolen emails, and were disappointed with the response from the U.S.
The Dutch agents also watched Russian agents breach a non-classified network at the U.S. State Department in 2014, where the Russians then sent a phishing email to the White House, successfully stole login credentials, and then accessed email from embassies and diplomats.
"Three American intelligence services state with 'high confidence' that the Kremlin was behind the attack on the Democratic Party," according to the article, which adds that that certainty "is derived from the AIVD hackers having had access to the office-like space in the center of Moscow for years."
The Dutch agents also watched Russian agents breach a non-classified network at the U.S. State Department in 2014, where the Russians then sent a phishing email to the White House, successfully stole login credentials, and then accessed email from embassies and diplomats.
"Three American intelligence services state with 'high confidence' that the Kremlin was behind the attack on the Democratic Party," according to the article, which adds that that certainty "is derived from the AIVD hackers having had access to the office-like space in the center of Moscow for years."
So the emails were real. Not fake.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Does this change anything about the undisputed authenticity of the emails we saw? No.
I want to say "I hope the DNC has learned a valuable lesson about email and network security," but that would imply I think the DNC is capable of learning from their mistakes.
There is a referendum upcoming in the Netherlands about massively expanding what the intelligence agencies are allowed to do. Any information about Dutch intelligence in the coming months should be viewed in that light. The government is trying to paint them in as positive light as possible. Given that nothing they say can be verified, be careful what you believe.
How does anyone know whether to believe any of this stuff any longer?
It seems to be that all these "cyber espionage" stories consist of impossible to verify leaks (intentional or otherwise) about other impossible to verify leaks. I guess it probably is true that some emails were leaked by someone, but after that everything could be no more true than the contents of a John le Carré novel and the latter would be a better read!
If I am not mistaken, this is the arm that used to be the Militaire Inlichtingendienst (Military Intelligence). They were pretty good, but also kept secret out of sight of Parliament. When they came to light they were merged with the existing counterintelligence agency BVD (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst, Internal Security), which did have a Keystone Kops reputation.
So, take it with a grain of salt, indeed, but don't dismiss it outright.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
My favourite part of this story - which I heard retailed with a perfectly straight face by some BBC presenter - is the webcams with the nice view of Red Square. Because all highly secret Russian hackers must, by law, occupy rooms with a view of Red Square. Indeed, they are probably lodged in the Kremlin - just as the NSA has its offices in the White House.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
If Trump gets impeached, we will not be getting Hillary... We will get Mike Pence, who is probably 100x worse than Trump.... So be careful what you wish for.... You should look up presidential line of succession. It would be Mike Pence -> Paul Ryan -> Orrin Hatch. All nice gems in themselves. Also it's highly unlikely there was any collaboration. What probably happened was some hackers obviously did hack the DNC, then gave that info to someone, then that someone who possibly was Russian, approached Trump team and said hey I have juicy emails showing DNC corruption, would you like it? And Trump said, hell yeah, let me see. Collaboration would have to show that they were working together on the plan and execution. Which clearly was not the case.
This propaganda is published NOW because there is an upcomming referendum (which the government already said it would ignore) about more dragnet powers for the Dutch intelligence. This sounds like a stunt to get a referendum result in favor of the dragnet powers. The government seems to have learnt about the previous 2 lost (and also ignored) referenda about the Ukraine and the EU "constitution".
All you can know is that some email were stolen. NOTHING tells you that the email which were found later correspond to those stolen. And since most of that stuff is not encrypted, it is *trivial* to add fake stuff in it. There is no chain of custody. Any leaker stuff which is not covered by an encryption key in a separate place is *suspect*.
I also note that from all what is said,m all the hacking, all you retained "the email were [possibly] not fake" I can only say , i am betting you are one of those ultra partisan type which do not care as long as either their party wins, or more dirt is thrown at the other party.
This is truly why a two party system is toxic.
I have a very simple, and very pointed question.
What, exactly, are the hot, Top Secret contents of those emails?
Remember what the state department does - It has diplomats. They talk. They talk a lot. They have no need of Operationally Secure Information. And while a lot of spying goes on from diplomatic missions, the spy's chain of command does not run through the Department of State, nor do they use email. Think about what the State Department does. Then ask yourself, what kinds of secrets they will be a party to. EG: Who is who's mistress. Which children of what diplomats are doing drugs or other things that can be used against that diplomat. They don't get the nuclear launch codes - they have no need of them. They do not get troop movements, order of battle, or deployment orders. Again, they have no need to know.
Now, let us turn to the facts of the matter.
HRC used a private email sever under their control.
President Trump's daughter and son in law used Yahoo accounts, whose servers are not under their direct control. If you know anything about email systems, then you'll know that any Yahoo engineer could view the contents of those accounts by simply logging in with their credentials.
Was it wrong for HRC to use a private email server? Yes. Absolutely.
Was it wrong for others to use Yahoo accounts? Arguably even more stupid than what HRC did.
Let not your political desires affect your judgement. To put it like my grandmother used to say, if a shirt is dirty, then it's dirty. Don't try to convince yourself a mustard stain is any worse or better than a lobster bisque stain.
It's still dirty.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
For all that long rant, you missed the point. Impeach Trump and you don't get a do-over, you get the line of succession.
How many times does it need to be said? Crying about the popular vote is just moving the goalposts from the election rules that have been in place since Thomas Jefferson.
I fucking hate Trump, but he got the ELECTORAL VOTES necessary to win the Presidency. If you don't like that, then work to not nominate the only person from the Democratic Party that had enough negatives to actually lose to that asshole. Or, convince the DNC to actually campaign somewhere between the mountain ranges not named Chicago. Or get them to stop trying to sell out the middle class to Wall Street yet again. Or using the middle class's children to protect "American" (read: corporate) interests abroad in the guise of national military service.
Those last two sentences apply equally to the Republican Party, if not more so. Just to be somewhat Neutral, here's an incomplete list of things the Republicans should stop doing:
- bloviating about balanced budgets and government spend while treating massive military spending as a sacred cow that must be increased while cutting everything else
- ridiculously craven jingoistic politics and the treating of hard working immigrants that just want a better life for themselves and their families as a punching bag in order to toss metaphorical "red meat" to the fraction of ignorant racists and bigots in their "base"
- pretending that religion has any place in the federal government whatsoever
Also, impeachment has a definition, with procedures defined behind it. "We don't like him" is not included in "treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors" and you should be glad for that, or every single President would constantly be having fringe cranks from the opposition party drumming up real impeachment resolutions in Congress rather than the joke speeches and stunts we get today.
If he's actually committed any of those crimes, and you have proof, call your representative and hand over the evidence. Otherwise, wait for the Office of the Independent Counsel to complete their investigation and issue their report. Please. I'd love to see that guy being perp lwaked from the White House by the FBI.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Collusion and collaboration isn't necessary - all that is necessary is INTENT to solicit foreign aid/items of value for an election campaign - that itself is illegal and crime, and has already been demonstrated by the emails between them.
The electoral college is a check and balance against gerrymandering. Of course, gerrymandering still won him the presidency. But don't blame the electoral college.
There is no gerrymandering in presidential elections except the electoral college. It is an obsolete 18th century election result manipulation instrument meant to guard against precisely the kind of demagogue that Trump is. However, the electoral college hasn’t worked as intended for over a century because for it to work the college members would have to think for thrmselves and vote against the demagogue rather than vote like sheep for him. Presidential elections should be a one-man-one-vote, popular vote wins affair, end of story!
The reason Hillary lost the election was because her supporters were too concentrated in too few states.
When her husband ran for President in 1992 and 1996 he and his campaign understood what every 10th grade civics student knows, that we elect Presidents via the Electoral College, not popular vote.
Ken
Correction, it was not the MID which caused a scandal, it was the Inlichtingendienst Buitenland (Foreign Intelligence Service). As officially we were not supposed to have a spy agency doing Foreign Intelligence, having it turn out that, well, actually, we did, that was a bit of a scandal.
The IDB, MID and BVD were merged into a single intelligence service, the AIVD (Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, aka General Intelligence and Security Service).
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
It's amazing how so many apparently smart people do not understand the "electoral college." It lessens the chance that the President is selected only by the voters of a few metropolises. Anyhow, if you didn't learn about the "electoral college" in school you can learn about it at Wikipedia (assuming there's a good article for it there that hasn't been vandalized by anti-American ideologues).
Are you referring to the good old argument that the electoral college is gerrymandered '...to protect the little states...'? If the electoral college was meant to protect the little states it is failing spectacularly. If you take a look at where candidates campaign the most it is in a few key swing states. The small states get next to no attention.
> In the Hillary case they paid a strategic intelligence company who offered a former British MI6 agent with good ties to Russian intelligence to get dirt on Trump from the Russians.
Again - lying by omission. Isn't it also known that the RNC started giving money to this strategic intelligence company to get dirt on Trump, which was then taken up by DNC and others?
The Republican never Trumper's paid for it during the primaries. Hillary and the DNC paid for it during the general election.
Where is the lie by omission. There is no refutation of solicitation by Trump nor Hillary. You merely identify a third group. The third group adds to the first two, it does not exonerate either of the first two.
Ok so if the US intelligence agencies knew the DNC had been hacked why didn't they do anything about it?
The coverage has said the FBI and NSA stopped the intrusions once they were notified. The coverage also said the Obama administration was concerned about going public on their own, because it would appear they were only attempting to affect the election.
The administration attempted to get a bipartisan statement signed by Obama, Ryan and McConnell so as to make it appear less like "we're affecting the election" and more like "there's been a security breach", but McConnell refused.
The other thing that hasn't been answered is why this happened. Why were the Russians interested in the DNC? Did Russia stand to gain something by influencing the election in a way that caused Hillary and the Democrats to lose?
1) Trump has declared bankruptcy so many times that US banks will not loan him any money. It has long been rumored that Trump's primary funding source is "questionable" investments by Russian nationals. AKA money laundering. If this rumor is true, having Trump as president benefits Russia. (That "if" is important)
2) Russia (and China) benefit greatly from an anti-trade US administration such as Trump's. Someone's gonna invest the money, and if it's not US companies then that leaves an opening for Russian and Chinese companies.
3) Chaos in US domestic politics helps Russia in that it gives Russia more geopolitical power - the US is busy infighting at home and can't be attempting to influence abroad.
4) Clinton is a big fan of the neoconservatives that brought around the Iraq war. She was also the leading voice in the Obama administration for intervention in Syria (Russian ally) and strong sanctions against Russia over Crimea. Having Clinton as president would lead to more foreign policy that directly opposes Russia.
5) Trump is an international relations neophyte, and an excellent example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. That makes Trump easily manipulated, which is what Russia would like leading the US.