8 ms·

I am so frustrated with how muted the current administration's response has been to the recent hacks. This is an attack on the most fundamental part of US democ

• brian-armstrong 10y ago
  The US has been guilty of electronic espionage and tampering in other countries. The world would call us out for aggressive retaliation here, and rightly so.
  • whyenot 10y ago
    That's true, but it's a price worth paying IMO.
    • brian-armstrong 10y ago
      Regardless of whether it was justified, it does weaken our position to complain when others do it to us
      • peller 10y ago
        Not only that, but if we start dumping dirt, who knows what secrets our adversaries might choose to drag out of the closet and parade down main street. It's a loosing proposition.
        • BuuQu9hu 10y ago
          I say it is time for the governments of the world to publicly display those secrets. Maybe then we can move forward into a world where humanity isn't constantly stabbing everyone else in the back.
          • peller 10y ago
            In the long run, perhaps, you may (I hope) be right. There's an interesting analogy that Nate Silver lays out in the beginning of The Signal and the Noise where basically, after the printing press, the availability of information to masses that didn't before have it exponentially increased way faster than "humanity" could adjust. (Obviously, this is massively simplified and leaves out all sorts of important things etc) Early on, much of what was (popularly) printed was religious. Then, the world was at war for a couple centuries before the enlightenment happened and some semblance of stability arose from the changed complex system humans had found themselves in. Now, with the internet, we're at the beginning of another such monumental shift in information access. The cynic in me finds it likely that shit gets worse before we, as a species, find a new balance point. I mean, either we learn to live with all varieties of each other in peace (which is what I think you're saying), or we end up blasting ourselves into extinction. No?
          • AndrewKemendo 10y ago
            Maybe then we can move forward into a world where humanity isn't constantly stabbing everyone else in the back. I don't think it's really possible without a major change to cognitive capabilities. The human biological system and the resultant communities aren't built to handle truth.
            • peller 10y ago
              This is kind of nit-picky, but I think it might be closer to the collective we can't ever really know The Truth (about any big meta issues), but just about everybody is convinced they know and have that truth right (and by extension, most other peoples have that truth wrong). Which is to say, the brain equates beliefs to truths, which is an extremely difficult-to-overcome fallacy. (And, I suspect, therein lies the solution, if there is one.) Paradoxically, of course, life also wouldn't really be all that practical to live out if our brains didn't make such an overly simplistic jump. So, yea, not really disagreeing with you on the cognitive capabilities part. But I'm also not convinced there's no such belief structure out there that isn't capable of solving this pickle. Implementing and spreading said system of beliefs - if it exists and without starting a bunch of wars in the process, of course - is the harder part.
        • hulahoof 10y ago
          I can't even begin to comprehend a country whose citizens don't want the dirt on their government. There is exponentially less incentive to lie to citizens of other countries than your own.
          • solarengineer 10y ago
            Wow, how well put. It is appalling that citizens are scared of the dirty laundry that might come out, and are instead prepared to look the other way :(
            • peller 10y ago
              Just to be clear, I was speaking from (what I imagine is) the perspective of America's leaders. Regardless, there is a non-zero chance that the result of unknown secrets being exposed could be anarchy instead of a better-functioning democracy.
              • deleted 10y ago
                [deleted]
            • Spooky23 10y ago
              Deniability is a powerful thing. How many disputes have been settled in the shadows? Remember this is 2016, not 1916. Revelation and escalation don't lead to a mere slaughter of soldiers, but potentially destruction of civilization as we know it.
            • pbz 10y ago
              That happens when you link your identity with your tribe's identity. A lot of people in the US bought into the propaganda that we're the best or better than others. All that dirt surfacing would be an attack against that identity. It would force us to reconsider and reevaluate, which is a painful process if it requires changing one's identity.
          • anigbrowl 10y ago
            Not wanting your elections to be hacked doesn't mean not wanting dirt on the government. It's not like we got to read all the juicy dirt on both parties, in which case I'd be more OK with it, though not completely. But when you're only selectively provided with dirt as some external actor sees fit to reveal then you're being played to some extent. I feel I've been pretty consistent about this as opposed to being partisan; I had a minor spat with Assange over his choices about his approach to editorial framing back when WL was first revealing helicopter footage from Iraq. Wl is a new kind of publishing outlet, but no more neutral or disinterested than the more traditional kind.
  • aithoughts 10y ago
    I think there is an implicit assumption that your last sentence is justification for condoning this type of hacking behavior, when it happens to us. I challenge this. Just because the US has meddled in elections in the past, it doesn't make it right, and it shouldn't render us mute when we are victims of it.
    • brian-armstrong 10y ago
      No, it doesn't justify it. The most powerful nations are being very cavalier and the consequences could be dire. But to imply that we should immediately go to war seems disproportionate.
    • stale2002 10y ago
      Sounds great! We declare war on Russia, and every other country that WE have hacked can declare war on us. What's fair is fair.
    • digler999 10y ago
      > and it shouldn't render us mute when we are victims of it. so we should do it [hack other countries' elections] and then be pissed when it happens to us ?
      • ohyes 10y ago
        No, we should be pissed when our government does it, we should be pissed when other governments do it, we should be pissed if anyone does it. It devalues democracy in a fundamental and dangerous way. We have been wronged in a multitude of ways, and we shouldn't forgive any of the wrongs. I'm incredibly tired of hearing false dichotomies here. It is imperative to maintaining a democracy that it not be hindered. We've done a disservice to democracy by tampering in elections, as have the hackers here.
    • speeder 10y ago
      I think you don't understand the implications here. US has a LOOOOONG history of meddling with other countries with some heavy-handed manner (like sending a carrier group to Brazil in 1964 to ensure a coup, bombing Chile to install Pinochet, attempt to assassinate Castro 60+ times or so, and so on...) If US even HINTS in considering a minor hack of sorts as an act of war and attacks Russia over it, it could very well spark the entire world to attack US back. US can be the most powerful country of earth, but I am very sure US vs all other countries US meddled with would mean US destruction (and maybe the other countries wouldn't survive it either...) People shouldn't even joke about going to war over the "election hack", what should be done is fix your own security and redo the elections if the hack was proven.
  • FrancoDiaz 10y ago
    The world would call us out for aggressive retaliation here, and rightly so. "The World" would not. I don't know what people think they gain by using the term "the world".
    • Spooky23 10y ago
      China would. Russia would. Notice how you don't hear too much about "Chinese hackers" anymore? There's all sorts of brinksmanship and politics involved here. The US have even publicly acknowledged this stuff. In 1982 pirated software (I think IBM mainframe stuff iirc) was modified, stuxnet-style to cause one of the largest non-nuclear explosions of some sort of gas refinery ever. God knows what's been done since then.
      • brownbat 10y ago
        You're probably thinking of the story Reed included in "At the Abyss," about a pipeline explosion from a trojan horse slipped in the Canadian control software. That was supposed to be in 1982. It's become an infamous legend about ICS attack. Probably didn't happen though. There was definitely a big pipeline explosion at the time, though Reed's fact checking misses the location, and somewhat more importantly, the fact that Russian control systems weren't software-based at the time. Although it was a fun legend, it probably started as a game of telephone (a/o paranoia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)
      • sixothree 10y ago
        I'm not a fan of these "Notice how you don't hear too much about X" arguments. Just because you aren't interested does not mean it's not being reported.
        • Spooky23 10y ago
          It's more the opposite. If you follow the government beat, China was this unlimited threat until it wasn't.
• Mikeb85 10y ago
  The hacker in question was trying to sell the data, doesn't appear to be a state actor. Hackers try to breach everyone and everything. Every state does it, criminals do it, researchers do it. Suggesting Obama start shit without solid evidence that it was the Russian state is reckless.
  • marshray 10y ago
    > The hacker in question was trying to sell the data, doesn't appear to be a state actor. As if no state actor could possibly be crafty enough to act like they're trying to sell the data to misdirect from their true intentions. > Suggesting Obama start shit without solid evidence that it was the Russian state is reckless. You don't have any idea what evidence Obama is privy to.
    • solarengineer 10y ago
      > You don't have any idea what evidence Obama is privy to. While I agree with you, I'm also reminded of how all the war triggered by "discoveries of weapons of mass destruction" started. That war only resulted in lots of casualties across the Middle East and of a lot of American soldiers, while Bush and others have got away having to answer to nobody about their lies.
• Shivetya 10y ago
  Well the state of Georgia has been asking why they had attempts from DHS addresses. The states own systems detected the attempt and even where it came from. These were early in the year. it took awhile but DHS claimed a hack occurred via the Borders and Custom's systems. Trying to get to the bottom of that one where we know who was affected and the IP addresses trace back to another government agency is even more maddening, why won't the Feds cooperate?
  • Dylan16807 10y ago
    The initial information on that sounded like they were whining about a port scan. Did I miss something about it being a real attack? To me it's maddening that basic nonintrusive port scans would be considered hostile or needing investigation/apology.
• avenoir 10y ago
  There's been virtually no evidence posted about the hack outside of "Russia did it" and as far as i can tell there was no attacks on actual voting machines. Most of these hacks revealed dirty laundry on the democratic party and its nominee. No votes were altered if i understand the situation correctly. I don't think Russia or anybody else would be brave enough to perform such a hack.
  • KirinDave 10y ago
    That shouldn't be too surprising. It's difficult to hack voting machines. There are many of them with disparate standards and they're air gapped in many cases until they're done collecting and reporting. As has been shown, it's a lot easier to hack voters themselves with targeted information, misinformation and outright fantasy. We've also learned something amazing this cycle: a key tactic anyone will replicate in the future: When you run negative political ads, don't let anyone outside of the laser focused target demo you want to reach see it until it's too late. The "super predator" ads were crazy damaging to HRC in swing states, but even to this day most people haven't seen them. There's no way to respond to political attacks you aren't even aware of.
    • Spooky23 10y ago
      That's ridiculous. A campaign that well funded has folks positioned to see that sort of thing. Politics is nasty business... opposition research and spies are all over the place. In Hillary's case it's even more absurd to claim that they could have known nothing -- many of the voters targeted and flip flopping were union guys and easy to get intel out of. End of the day, the campaign fucked up. I come from New York, where we had easily manipulatable, gear-driven mechanical machines for decades. (It was pretty trivial to jam them up, and the historical over representation of the number 9 in results validated that) The major parties understood the margin of error and used absentee balloting to cover that risk.
      • KirinDave 10y ago
        > In Hillary's case it's even more absurd to claim that they could have known nothing I don't think there is any indiciation in my post that HRC didn't screw up a campaign in several key ways. It's just worth noting that there is a new and unique series of technology-enabled techniques that DJT's team used to influence key states at the end. Hopefully Facebook will be forced to release all the relevant data and we can see more about it.
• tjfl 10y ago
  > Obama telling Putin to "cut it out" isn't enough. No matter what is happening behind the scenes. Our next president might not even go that far. The article states, "Eventually they discovered that the Russian-speaking hacker..." I'd like to see more than a Russian-speaking hacker before attributing this to the Russian government.
  • akhilcacharya 10y ago
    I'm sure there's a reason why the US intelligence agencies are saying the latter instead of the former for other breaches.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • pbz 10y ago
      That may be the case, but should we really just take their word without evidence?
      • akhilcacharya 10y ago
        Because there's no real counter evidence, and these are agencies that are tasked with finding this out as their job? I'll trust the CIA over the FSB/GRU any day of the week.
        • Gargoyle 10y ago
          >I'll trust the CIA over the FSB/GRU any day of the week. Perhaps, but that's irrelevant to the issue of attribution at this point.
        • tanderson92 10y ago
          "There is no real public counter evidence that there aren't WMDs in Iraq, and these are agencies that are tasked with finding this out as their job"
        • 10y ago
• krapp 10y ago
  I think the most likely response on the part of the US is both the Democrats and Republicans having Wikileaks, hackers and trolls as an integral part of their campaign strategy.
• Jach 10y ago
  Well then let's fire up the nukes.
  • thrillgore 10y ago
    No kill like overkill!
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• scythe 10y ago
  The hacks comprised exposing confidential information, not tampering on the level of, say, Stuxnet. Given that we not only have leaked information about nefarious goings-on in other countries but in all probability are still doing so today, it isn't an event of sufficient novelty to activate the national adrenal glands. What's most likely is that we'll try to do the same thing to United Russia that they did to the Democrats -- but, hopefully, better.
• PKop 10y ago
  The "hacks" (so far all we know is Podesta clicked on a phishing email and gave away his password) revealed shady behavior on the part of: 1. The DNC coordinating with the Clinton campaign to ensure victory over Bernie in the primary. 2. Collusion between the media and the Clinton campaign (giving questions ahead of debates) to favor Clinton over Bernie 3. Signs of pay for play or general corruption of the Clinton foundation through foreign government donations. To the hackers, I say: Thank you very much! Thank you for releasing information on the Democratic party that we would never have been told otherwise (certainly not by the mainstream media). And you want to fight a nuclear war over this? Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
  • pdabbadabba 10y ago
    I'd say each of your three points are seriously exaggerated, but that's really neither here nor there. Why can't we be worried by the content of the emails and the fact that a foreign government hacked them and leaked them strategically to influence our election? It strikes me as profoundly foolish to not react here just because you happen to be happy that this particular set of information was released. (As well as, by the way, reams of email with no value to the public whatsoever.) And of course nobody is suggesting we fight a nuclear war. There's clearly plenty of space between GP's suggestion that we do more than tell them to 'cut it out' and nuclear warfare.
    • exstudent2 10y ago
      Whoever released the emails did the American public a huge service. They pulled back the curtain and we got to see how the sausage is made. It doesn't matter who they are or why they did it. The end result was important whistle blowing. We should hope that information like this is leaked out as it helps balance the power between the public and corrupt politicians/media in a way nothing else can.
      • simonw 10y ago
        How do you feel about the fact that they appear to have hacked the RNC too but deliberately chose not to release those emails, in order to favor one candidate over the other. Still think that's a huge public service? Not to mention that the emails they kept might be used for blackmail in the future.
• hackuser 10y ago
  > Obama telling Putin to "cut it out" isn't enough As far as I know, that isn't the plan, and retaliation is planned. Do you know otherwise? People instinctively want a strong, immediate response in kind. From what I understand, that's actually the wrong way to respond. Here are a couple of points to consider, based on reading a lot of experts (I'm not one myself): * 'The task of international relations is to prevent C level problems from becoming A level problems.' (I forget where I read that.) Escalation rarely is desirable. That doesn't mean that you don't respond, but that you need to respond in a way that doesn't escalate and put your adversary in a political position where they must re-escalate (e.g., because their populations are angry and demand it). That's how wars begin, often despite the intentions of leaders. Threading that needle is difficult, but that's what the situation demands. For example, after some bad behavior by North Korea, the U.S. responded by flying one or two nuclear capable bombers in an exercise over S. Korea; the point was made but not in a way that required re-escalation by the North. * "the threat of asymmetric punishment - striking wherever, whenever, and with flexible means rather than retaliation-in-kind in a theater of operations chosen by an adversary - can be an effective instrument of deterrence". [0] If you respond immediately and in the same way your opponent attacked you, you are letting them manipulate you and the situation: They decide when, where, and how you act and the battle takes place (assuredly they will chose situations to their advantage). Based on the above, a good response has to be smartly chosen to effectively send a message but not invite escalation, and should be at a time, place, and manner of your choosing. ---- [0] Toward a New Offset Strategy: Exploiting U.S. Long-term Advantages To Restore U.S. Global Power Projection Capability by Robert Martinage, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments [a leading defense think tank] http://csbaonline.org/research/publications/toward-a-new-offset-strategy-exploiting-u-s-long-term-advantages-to-restore http://csbaonline.org/research/publications/toward-a-new-off...
  • dandelany 10y ago
    > retaliation is planned. Source?
    • fet 10y ago
      Obama said the US would retaliate "at a time and place of our choosing." https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/16/obama-retaliation-russia-hacking-us-election https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/201...
• dlo 10y ago
  Quote from the article: “We don’t think he actually works for any government or is super sophisticated,” Barysevich said.
• gozur88 10y ago
  We are never going to be able to bully other countries into not spying on us. It just won't happen. We're not going to go to war with the Russians or anyone else over these kinds of breaches and they know it. The only solution we have is to depend on systems that are more secure. As far as voting is concerned that means paper ballots. If in the end we can't secure vital computer systems, well, I remember reading an article about the FSB buying a bunch of electric typewriters to create sensitive documents. It's not because they don't have sendmail figured out.
• kristopolous 10y ago
  So to stop crime, war should exist with a criminal's county of origin? Should we honestly hold the head of state responsible for the actions of its private citizens?
• anigbrowl 10y ago
  If you disliked that then you'll hate this. Sadly I can vouch for its general accuracy. https://4thgenwar.wordpress.com/2016/07/03/trump-meets-man-who-inspired-2011-terror-attack-deadlier-than-orlando-shooting/ https://4thgenwar.wordpress.com/2016/07/03/trump-meets-man-w...
• akhilcacharya 10y ago
  I agree, but I see why Obama did what he did. He thought this would be counteracted by Hillary's win and that any further action could be taken by the next administration. We know now that nothing will come of it unless Trump does an about-face come January 21st.