Slashdot Mirror
US Charges Russian Social Media Trolls Over Election Tampering (cnet.com)
The US Justice Department has filed charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 presidential election. From a report: In an indictment [PDF] released on Friday, the Justice Department called out the Internet Research Agency, a notorious group behind the Russian propaganda effort across social media. Employees for the agency created troll accounts and used bots to prop up arguments and sow political chaos during the 2016 presidential campaign. Facebook, Twitter and Google have struggled to deal with fake news, trolling campaigns and bots on their platforms, facing the scorn of Capitol Hill over their mishandlings. The indictment lists 13 Russian nationals tied to the effort.
> They didn't care one wit about which candidate won
Sure they didn't. That's why they were talking with the Trump campaign and trying to get him to drop the Maginitsky act after being elected, and why Trump isn't enforcing the sanctions. I'm suuuure that Clinton would have acted exactly the same.
Both sides are equally bad, amirite?
I haven't been paying much attention to this whole story since it seems like general boondoggle and that nothing substantial will come out of this, but doesn't the above quote make it harder for the people who want to accuse Trump of collusion? The " unwitting individuals" part makes it seem like Trump is just stupid (well we already knew this) instead of guilty of collusion.
I'm glad you got your digs in on Trump and all that, but do you really think Trump was involved directly with the trolls?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The Washington Post has a better article on this.
One bit of info missing from CNET is that these indictments are the direct result of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
At this point, I just figure that anyone who posts idiocy about the Russians not hacking the US is either a Russian shill or one of their dupes. Either that, or they're so soaked in conspiracy theories that their brains are addled. It's really no use listening to them. Once you decide that false information is as good as real facts, your mind might as well be gone.
And for the idiots referenced above who say that all this Russsia stuff is "fake", I'll take the CIA, FBI, and NSA's word about spying before any of you conspiracy-spouting morons in the peanut gallery - I do value professionalism, if nothing else.
That is all.
News is still breaking today. This came out like ten minutes ago:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
This is an American who just plead guilty to helping the Russians with the identity fraud part of the conspiracy. He is now cooperating with the Mueller investigation.
When you say "no American involved", you should have said, "yet". Now we learn of the Americans involved.
Don't try to flatter me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
um, yeah, i think you are talking out of your ass and trying to cope defending your shithole president. here's the complete list
What does the indictment say?
It says a group of Russians:
Posed as Americans, and opened financial accounts in their name
Spent thousands of dollars a month buying political advertising
Purchased US server space in an effort to hide their Russian affiliation
Organised and promoted political rallies within the United States
Posted political messages on social media accounts that impersonated real US citizens
Promoted information that disparaged Hillary Clinton
Received money from clients to post on US social media sites
Created themed groups on social media on hot-button issues, particularly on Facebook and Instagram
Operated with a monthly budget of as much as $1.25m (£890,000)
The indictment says those involved systematically measured how well their internet posts were doing and adjusted their strategies to maximise effectiveness.
You're missing the point, and veering rather far from reality, as well.
The original concern (I won't even say it was a "claim") was that Russians may have influenced the election process. That doesn't invalidate the result, and nobody credible has claimed that it would.
The Trump campaign has since then countered that there's nothing to see, never any outside influence, and the whole investigation should be shut down.
With these indictments, there is now an official accusation, backed by a nice pile of evidence, that there was in fact Russian interference. That's it. No, it doesn't indicate on its own that Trump knew, or his campaign officials knew. Those questions are still open. What has been resolved at this point is the question of whether something illegal happened (yes, it did), and whether there was foreign involvement (yes, there was).
This could be the end of the indictments. If Trump's campaign was as honest as he claims, it will be. However, those open questions still need to be answered, which means the investigation needs to keep going. By making statements opposing the investigative process, Trump has made it worse for himself and his administration, because now the investigation needs to answer the question of whether anyone is trying to obstruct justice.
This has nothing to do with whether Americans are unfit to vote. That's always been a risk, echoed in Benjamin Franklin's famous response when asked what kind of government we would have: "A republic, if you can keep it." It has always been known that people are subject to manipulation, and that's why interfering in the election carries severe consequences. If the indicted Russians ever find themselves on American soil, they'll have a chance to find out exactly how harsh those punishments can be.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I suppose reading even the introductory paragraph of the indictment is too much for you? It is, in fact, illegal for non-Americans to directly participate in US Politics, such as:
- Paying for political advertisements
- Paying others to troll social media for you
- Making campaign contributions
And this is all on top of general fraud and identity theft charges.
This is a proper and textbook example of a conspiracy, with a group of people in coordinated effort to conduct an illegal activity... not just some assholes "posting memes."
=Smidge=
Are you people actually serious when you say things like this? I mean, I assume these are troll accounts, but I just don't know anymore.
I'd find it funny if it wasn't such a serious issue. But sure, let's say that Steele, working for a third party who was being paid by the GOP is totally working for Hilary Clinton's benefit. Because the GOP love Hilary and definitely started their relationship with GPS Fusion for her benefit. (Yes I know the democrats took over payment, but we should be clear on where this whole thing started)
And the two charges are totally identical, because where the charges levied here are for explicitly directed campaigns intended to spread misinformation, Steele was a paid employee of a company hired privately to produce information for another private entity. A full fledged and funded campaign by a foreign government is surely the same thing as the domestic government hiring a foreigner to act as, more or less, a Private Investigator.
These are totally the same.
These two things are totally equatable and not at all two completely distinct and different things so different it would be like comparing apples to horses.
You can be butthurt all you want that your so-called 'law and order' and 'conservative family values' candidate never really existed, but at least have enough honesty with yourself that he never was those things, and that you got fooled into voting for him -- because that's the fact of the matter, investigation or no investigation. He keeps trying desperately to distract FBI attention away from himself, just like a guilty person would, and he's now confirmed for cheating on his wife at least twice, one of those times with a skeezy porn actress, and just after his wife gave birth to his son. He's an awful human being who is not in the least qualified for the job, was elected under false pretenses, and should be removed. IDGAF if you're going to continue to publicly defend the son of a bitch or not, at least be honest with yourself: You fucked up, you got conned, and you backed the wrong horse, all the way down to the finish. TRY to do better next time, or at least don't bother voting. Once we get his ass out of the whitehouse we need someone in there who can fix all the damage he's done, not another clueless narcissistic 5-year-old.
In this indictment, yes. The events detailed here did not include willing participation by Trump's campaign. Unfortunately for Trump, there are some crimes that don't require knowledge to be committed... For example, being negligent in one's duty to investigate a financial source can be a crime.
As has been the case for a while, the bigger concern is Trump's behavior after the investigation started. If he's shown to have been actively working to obstruct the investigation, that could be what gets him.
Cynic that I am, that's really what I expect is the case... Trump tried to run an honest campaign, but he's so easily manipulated and so quick to overreact that he ends up causing his own downfall, without any direct foreign involvement.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Democrats commissioned the dossier.
A conservative website (The Washington Free Beacon) initially hired Fusion GPS to do the research, largely backed by Rubio supporters. Then Hillary & the DNC took over. Then Fusion GPS hired Steele. So, yes Republicans kicked off the Fusion GPS investigation. No, the GOP did not fund the Steele dossier.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Name a piece of information, known by Christopher Steele to be false, spread as if it were true.
But first off, let's back up. Who is Christopher Steele? From Wikipedia:
Not exactly some fly-by-night amateur. And rather amusing that you'd accuse someone whose job had been spying on Russia and later investigated the Litvinenko poisoning, determining it to be a Russian hit, of "spreading Russian propaganda"
Steele - again, the former head of MI6's Russia desk - had been an FBI source for years prior, where he had proved useful in a number of investigations unrelated investigations.
During the last election, Steele was hired - first by Republicans, then Democrats - to research Trump. And that he did. It's not even clear that he knew who was the source of his funding; he worked for Fusion GPS. The so-called "Steele Dossier" is not a curated/filtered "report", but rather a series of independent memos from varying sources - and was never presented as anything else. He was paid to collect information, not to analyze and curate it. Some of the information from the dosier that wasn't public at the time has since been independently confirmed. The vast majority has been neither confirmed or denied.
Concerning the Carter Page "memo" from Trump transition team member Devin Nunes (yes, he was part of Trump's own transition team... "Hey, let's investigate ourselves!") suggests that A) the Steele dossier was the foundation of getting a warrant on Page, B) it did not inform them that the dossier had been paid for by a political entity, and C) the fact that it had been noted that Steele made a statement about being worried about Trump becoming president disqualifies him as a biased source.
Except:
A) Page had been on the radar long beforehand, having previously been caught up in a Russian spy scheme and having not only made numerous statements condemning the US and supporting Russia (on Russian TV), but even claimed to be a Kremlin representative. (Seriously, if the FBI hadn't been spying on this guy they should all have been fired for incompetence)
B) The warrant application did state that the dossier had been paid for by a political entity; Nunes's complaint has now amusingly morphed into "the font size was too small".
C) Intelligence courts generally presume by default that sources have some sort of motive, because as a general rule, people who aren't motivated don't act as sources. Furth
Could you cite the actual statutes, please?
The actual indictment is linked in the Slashdot summary. They explain exactly what they believe happened and why it's illegal, including citing applicable statues.
Unless the donation is to a "charity", owned and run by a candidate, right?
You better be careful trying to play that card, considering Trump continues to operate his "charities" despite having been forbidden to operate in New York due to investigations.
Oh right, soon after Trump was elected he fired the Attorney General who was investigating him, so I guess that makes it okay since he's not under investigation anymore!
=Smidge=
Nobody ever said the American people were unfit to vote. What we _did_ say is that they, like everybody, are capable of being lied to about the sources of information. Kinda like when a Cigarette company backs a study on the health benefits of tobacco. Or when Coke did the same thing. You'd want to know who backed that study. Lying by omission is a thing. A democracy lives and breaths by the quality of information available.
And no, there's still plenty of talk about the Russians hacking the election. They got caught funneling money through the NRA to Trump's campagin, and the only question is are we doing to do anything about it. Then there were all those meetings between high level Trump campaign officials and shady Russians that are still being investigated. Oh, and there's tons of evidence that the Russians have hacked into (literally) our electronic voting systems and that they continue to do so. There's good solid evidence they shared priceless voting record data with the Trump campaign. Again, hard to say if anything will come of this since the Republicans control so much of the government even before Trump won.
Remember, Trump was and is always a patsy. Nobody cares if he knew any of this because his only job was to show up to rallies and say bad things about Hillary and Mexicans. The question is how much did the folks who _really_ run the show know and do. What's clear is that what tattered remains of American democracy are left are being eroded.
But whatever, just keep ignoring the mounting evidence because the word 'hacked' sometimes gets used slightly inappropriately.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The history of the dossier is now quite well documented and it had nothing to do with the GOP or Republican leaning groups.
Fusion was hired by The Washington Free Beacon to do some background research on Trump. This did not involve Russia but was more just general opposition research during the primaries. In 2016 they terminated the contract and that was the end of their involvement.
After that contract was over Fusion was then hired by the DNC and Hillary campaign (through their lawyers) to research Trump with specific interest in Russia. Fusion then hired Steele as part of the DNC contract.
This all came out during congressional testimony and as far as I know is not in dispute by any of the named parties.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
she will be dead before being president. We might have a madame president but it wont be her. That 'cold' she has had for the last 2 years..... its still there. Besides why would you WANT her? She ACTUALLY IS guilty of collusion and conspiracy to meddle in an election. They didnt even deny they colluded with the media to rig the primary elections. Thats what started the whole screaming about russian hacking to begin with. Podesta fell for a fake email that tricked him into signing into a fake website with his real password. Hell even the then-chairman of the DNC released a book outing the illegal stuff the HRC campaign did. If you try to put her back into the election cycle you're going to end up with someone else you dont like. Pick someone without so much damn baggage for fucks sake
...we could simply say "OK thanks Russia. You want to play 'media domination game"?"
The US is already the most staggeringly dominant culture ever seen on earth, without really deliberately trying (not unlikely that's partly why).
If we were a country with any sense of itself, any sense of unity of purpose, and not a fractious bunch of self-hating bitches, with Hollywood's expertise we could without batting an eye SWAMP Russian media, internet, and airwaves with a chaos of propaganda, infowar, fake news, with production values so sophisticated there would be NO WAY any Russian national could tell if that video was real or not, or that email was real or not, or that video of Vladimir Putin having a quiet, gay moment with a young Russian male model followed by an overwhelming wave of irrefutable evidence of that young male model being found murdered brutally and only the faintest traces of official security service involvement.
They spent what, a few $hundred thousand influencing social media? We could drop a few $hundred MILLION and drive their society into outright civil war.
There is no media culture as dominant or efficacious as the American culture in 2018. None.
But we are our own worst enemy, and Russia can do this sort of thing knowing that Americans will cheerfully attack EACH OTHER over it long before they have the cojones to set aside their partisan bitching in favor of their own country's well being.
-Styopa