7 ms·

Obama close to announcing measures to punish Russia for election interference

19 points by SonicSoul 10y ago

vonklaus 10y ago
I have been saying this since pre-election-- the way this has been portrayed in the media as well as other coverage of politics, ect leads me to believe that they will throw out the election results. I dont know what will happen after, but this election has been framed as "tampered" and the language and posturing in all media does seem indicative of creating a narrative that will over turn the results
- mcbutterbunz 10y ago
  I'm not sure how that is legally possible at this point. After the electoral college cast their vote, does the outgoing president have any sort of authority on this?
  - grzm 10y ago
    Until Trump takes the oath of office at the inauguration on January 20, 2017, Obama is the US President.
  - slededit 10y ago
    This would be a matter for each state who controls their own electors. They don't have to be elected by popular vote except by the laws of the specific states. However the aftermath of openly question the authenticity would be devastating to the country - and therefore unlikely to be attempted. The best strategy - given where we are is to build enough doubt to weaken Trump's mandate, yet not enough to throw the entire system into chaos. Though even that is an extremely risky game.
andrei_says_ 10y ago
Punish Russia?? How is this achievable? Russia is not a tiny third world country. It's a huge nth world one. Its oligarchy/government couldn't care less about any additional inconvenience applied to the general population. People are cynical beyond the touch point of any such measures. Also, how about attempt to identify and correct the results of the interference? This punishment business sounds like wagging the dog -- not doing anything that matters, just populistic noise. Apologies if this sounds harsh, had to get it off my chest.
- SonicSoul 10y ago
  Also, how about attempt to identify and correct the results of the interference? not sure if you read the article but they (allegedly) hacked into pentagon and released information to wikileaks that painted the democratic nominee in a bad light which was then cycled over and over in the news. don't think this can be corrected
  - belorn 10y ago
    To break down that statement, is it the illegal aspect (which would be a case about international law) thats relevant, or is the impact of the news and their role in picking representing leaders for a nation. For international law, we have had in the last year quite many hacking scandals involving the NSA and a common comment here on HN is that such activity is legal. If the country from where the hack originate has laws that permits it, then many view that as making every computer a fair target. That leaves the interference aspect, and we saw quite a few examples during the election. There were a 7 years old non-published camera recordings which was used, without the consent of the recorded person. Is that form of interference permissible during an election? Then we had news articles about allegations of crimes for which no court or judge have seen. Is publishing anonymous statement of such allegations a form of interference, and if so should it be legal? Or should it only be legal if the entity that do the interference is located in the nation that holds an election? If so, what about international news agencies, many which originated in the US but is now, often for tax reason, located elsewhere. Should a news agency located in Ireland be permitted to interfere with the US election?
- 10y ago
lucker 10y ago
The only retaliation I can think of that would be both proportionate and ethical would be to hack secret data of the Russian leadership and release at least part of it to the world public. The Russian government is accused of two things: hacking and creating fake news. Assuming that the allegations are correct, a perfectly mirrored response would include hacking and fake news. However, it would be unethical for America to create anti-Russian government fake news of its own. So the only part of a mirrored response that would be appropriate is hacking followed by an at least partial public release of the hacked data.
- walrus1066 10y ago
  No need to create fake news, the corruption in Russia is insane, it goes straight to the top, involving vast amounts of public money. Putin's net worth may even be in the 100's of billions (http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/15/putins-net-worth-is-200-billion-says-russias-once-largest-foreigner-investor/ http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/15/putins-net-wort...). Life is tough for the man on the street in Russia, they wouldn't be happy knowing the entire government is profiteering at their expense. All the US would need to do is flood vkontakte, news comment boards etc, with repeated facts of corruption, as Russia has been doing many years now in the West.
  - conanbatt 10y ago
    The poorman does not need someone to teach him he is getting screwed
    - walrus1066 10y ago
      Russians are aware of corruption at the local level, but not that of the highest level, nor its scale. They might tolerate it if they themselves were getting better off, a social contract of sorts. But if people are worse off, and they know it's at least partly due to oligarchs and Putin enriching themselves, at their expense, Putin may find his grip over the people isn't as ironclad as he may think.
  - tr1ck5t3r 10y ago
bamurphymac1 10y ago
I hear it's going to be a very stern lecture.
tr1ck5t3r 10y ago
Thinks about this for a moment. The US cant be obvious about where their hacks originate from, which means the US will be hacking other peoples computers, non-Russian if you like, in order to attack Russian targets whilst covering their trail. So in a way, if you support this game of rhetoric even though the tech companies like Google & Facebook actually help fuel your bias which in turn manipulates your actions, then go ahead and put your hand up to be hacked by the US. I'm sure they will oblige.
rahrahrah 10y ago
> A year later, Xi reached an agreement with Obama that his country would stop commercial cyberspying. (Feng Li/Getty Images) But the NSA continued commercial cyberspying against Petrobras. These people are not to be trusted.
rokosbasilisk 10y ago
what is the evidence for russian government hacking ? edit: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidence-russia-hacked-the-dnc-its-not-enough/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidenc... The fbi and even lynch said there was no evidence. Everything is so vague and speculative, its too similar to the iraq has wmds fake news.
- 13years 10y ago
  Exactly. I also wonder what public opinion would be if MSM headlines read "US planning to retaliate against Russia for exposing the truth in US politics". There are so many ironies here. The US has been involved in interfering and over throwing governments for decades. The public should not be upset that the truth was exposed, but rather should be calling for more truth to be exposed. Let's expose the Republican corruption as well.
  - krapp 10y ago
    >The public should not be upset that the truth was exposed, but rather should be calling for more truth to be exposed. Perhaps - but having the "truth" be "exposed" by a foreign government undermining your electoral process and waging a propaganda campaign on behalf of one party exclusively is not something the public should be calling for. The interests being served by that exposure will always be those of their government, and not your own, and certainly not "the truth" in any objective sense. Otherwise, one could just as well say that the governments the US has interfered with ought to be grateful that we "exposed the truth" in their case as well. >Let's expose the Republican corruption as well. You mean, let's hope it's in the national interests of foreign governments to expose Republican corruption, and that they choose to be honest about doing so. There are two separate issues here, which often seem to be conflated for political purposes, or implied to be in conflict - the value of the integrity of the electoral process and the value of an informed electorate. If we presume that the only way to achieve the former is to destroy the latter, then we're implicitly conceding the legitimacy of our own state.
    - crdoconnor 10y ago
crdoconnor 10y ago
The first thing they could to do to punish Russia is to release actual evidence of their election tampering instead of just talking about it.

19 points by SonicSoul 10y ago

I have been saying this since pre-election-- the way this has been portrayed in the media as well as other coverage of politics, ect leads me to believe that they will throw out the election results. I dont know what will happen after, but this election has been framed as "tampered" and the language and posturing in all media does seem indicative of creating a narrative that will over turn the results

mcbutterbunz 10y ago
I'm not sure how that is legally possible at this point. After the electoral college cast their vote, does the outgoing president have any sort of authority on this?
- grzm 10y ago
  Until Trump takes the oath of office at the inauguration on January 20, 2017, Obama is the US President.
- slededit 10y ago
  This would be a matter for each state who controls their own electors. They don't have to be elected by popular vote except by the laws of the specific states. However the aftermath of openly question the authenticity would be devastating to the country - and therefore unlikely to be attempted. The best strategy - given where we are is to build enough doubt to weaken Trump's mandate, yet not enough to throw the entire system into chaos. Though even that is an extremely risky game.

andrei_says_ 10y ago

Punish Russia?? How is this achievable? Russia is not a tiny third world country. It's a huge nth world one. Its oligarchy/government couldn't care less about any additional inconvenience applied to the general population. People are cynical beyond the touch point of any such measures. Also, how about attempt to identify and correct the results of the interference? This punishment business sounds like wagging the dog -- not doing anything that matters, just populistic noise. Apologies if this sounds harsh, had to get it off my chest.

SonicSoul 10y ago
Also, how about attempt to identify and correct the results of the interference? not sure if you read the article but they (allegedly) hacked into pentagon and released information to wikileaks that painted the democratic nominee in a bad light which was then cycled over and over in the news. don't think this can be corrected
- belorn 10y ago
  To break down that statement, is it the illegal aspect (which would be a case about international law) thats relevant, or is the impact of the news and their role in picking representing leaders for a nation. For international law, we have had in the last year quite many hacking scandals involving the NSA and a common comment here on HN is that such activity is legal. If the country from where the hack originate has laws that permits it, then many view that as making every computer a fair target. That leaves the interference aspect, and we saw quite a few examples during the election. There were a 7 years old non-published camera recordings which was used, without the consent of the recorded person. Is that form of interference permissible during an election? Then we had news articles about allegations of crimes for which no court or judge have seen. Is publishing anonymous statement of such allegations a form of interference, and if so should it be legal? Or should it only be legal if the entity that do the interference is located in the nation that holds an election? If so, what about international news agencies, many which originated in the US but is now, often for tax reason, located elsewhere. Should a news agency located in Ireland be permitted to interfere with the US election?
10y ago

lucker 10y ago

The only retaliation I can think of that would be both proportionate and ethical would be to hack secret data of the Russian leadership and release at least part of it to the world public. The Russian government is accused of two things: hacking and creating fake news. Assuming that the allegations are correct, a perfectly mirrored response would include hacking and fake news. However, it would be unethical for America to create anti-Russian government fake news of its own. So the only part of a mirrored response that would be appropriate is hacking followed by an at least partial public release of the hacked data.

walrus1066 10y ago
No need to create fake news, the corruption in Russia is insane, it goes straight to the top, involving vast amounts of public money. Putin's net worth may even be in the 100's of billions (http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/15/putins-net-worth-is-200-billion-says-russias-once-largest-foreigner-investor/ http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/15/putins-net-wort...). Life is tough for the man on the street in Russia, they wouldn't be happy knowing the entire government is profiteering at their expense. All the US would need to do is flood vkontakte, news comment boards etc, with repeated facts of corruption, as Russia has been doing many years now in the West.
- conanbatt 10y ago
  The poorman does not need someone to teach him he is getting screwed
  - walrus1066 10y ago
    Russians are aware of corruption at the local level, but not that of the highest level, nor its scale. They might tolerate it if they themselves were getting better off, a social contract of sorts. But if people are worse off, and they know it's at least partly due to oligarchs and Putin enriching themselves, at their expense, Putin may find his grip over the people isn't as ironclad as he may think.
- tr1ck5t3r 10y ago

bamurphymac1 10y ago

I hear it's going to be a very stern lecture.

tr1ck5t3r 10y ago

Thinks about this for a moment. The US cant be obvious about where their hacks originate from, which means the US will be hacking other peoples computers, non-Russian if you like, in order to attack Russian targets whilst covering their trail. So in a way, if you support this game of rhetoric even though the tech companies like Google & Facebook actually help fuel your bias which in turn manipulates your actions, then go ahead and put your hand up to be hacked by the US. I'm sure they will oblige.

rahrahrah 10y ago

> A year later, Xi reached an agreement with Obama that his country would stop commercial cyberspying. (Feng Li/Getty Images) But the NSA continued commercial cyberspying against Petrobras. These people are not to be trusted.

rokosbasilisk 10y ago

what is the evidence for russian government hacking ? edit: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidence-russia-hacked-the-dnc-its-not-enough/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidenc... The fbi and even lynch said there was no evidence. Everything is so vague and speculative, its too similar to the iraq has wmds fake news.

13years 10y ago
Exactly. I also wonder what public opinion would be if MSM headlines read "US planning to retaliate against Russia for exposing the truth in US politics". There are so many ironies here. The US has been involved in interfering and over throwing governments for decades. The public should not be upset that the truth was exposed, but rather should be calling for more truth to be exposed. Let's expose the Republican corruption as well.
- krapp 10y ago
  >The public should not be upset that the truth was exposed, but rather should be calling for more truth to be exposed. Perhaps - but having the "truth" be "exposed" by a foreign government undermining your electoral process and waging a propaganda campaign on behalf of one party exclusively is not something the public should be calling for. The interests being served by that exposure will always be those of their government, and not your own, and certainly not "the truth" in any objective sense. Otherwise, one could just as well say that the governments the US has interfered with ought to be grateful that we "exposed the truth" in their case as well. >Let's expose the Republican corruption as well. You mean, let's hope it's in the national interests of foreign governments to expose Republican corruption, and that they choose to be honest about doing so. There are two separate issues here, which often seem to be conflated for political purposes, or implied to be in conflict - the value of the integrity of the electoral process and the value of an informed electorate. If we presume that the only way to achieve the former is to destroy the latter, then we're implicitly conceding the legitimacy of our own state.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago

crdoconnor 10y ago

The first thing they could to do to punish Russia is to release actual evidence of their election tampering instead of just talking about it.