5 ms·

Unfortunately there isn't any new evidence here. First, there's no doubt that RT is Russian propaganda. That's not news, and I'm unsure why it's in this kind

by tps5 10y ago

Unfortunately there isn't any new evidence here. First, there's no doubt that RT is Russian propaganda. That's not news, and I'm unsure why it's in this kind of report. Paid russian internet trolls is an old accusation too. I think it's probably true but I don't see any concrete evidence in this report. The real question here centers on the emails: did some Russian intelligence agency leak the DNC emails to wikileaks? The report asserts that this occurred, but again offers no concrete evidence. Instead it focuses on establishing motive. We do have concrete evidence (published by crowdstrike) that Russian intel hacked the DNC. But we don't have concrete evidence linking the leaked emails to that hack. I'm trying to remain objective here. I don't think it's unlikely that Russian intelligence was the source of the emails. I just don't see anything new here to conclusively prove that assertion. Maybe I'm being too picky about what constitutes concrete evidence.

cloudwalking 10y ago
At some point you need to trust the government to make the right decisions. Or to at least not lie about these things. If Facebook was hacked and lost data, would we expect Facebook to release a detailed report showing the evidence of hacking? I understand the desire to see evidence, but we have to trust our elected officials to make the right decisions and our intelligence agencies be honest about what they've discovered. If we demand consensus by the American anytime an issue like this comes up, nothing will ever happen.
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  Why do I "need" to trust the government to make the right decisions? What I "need" to do is keep a very close eye on government and demand that they be able to justify their decisions.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    And yet what you're "doing" is letting your anti-establishment tendencies do Putin's work for him. This is starting to look a lot like some relationship drama, where the mother-in-law constantly sabotages the marriage with tiny annoyances and seeding doubt. "Did you leave the milk carton outside the fridge?". "No, but didn't your husband have coffee earlier?".
    - Gargoyle 10y ago
      >...do Putin's work for him. I am unmoved by attempts to cast acting in my own interests as feeding into the plans of the boogieman of the month.
  - ENOTTY 10y ago
    > Why do I "need" to trust the government to make the right decisions? This might be the fundamental question. What form of voluntary governance (i.e., not authoritarianism) does not require trust by the governed in the government?
neaden 10y ago
Given how much evidence could be classified the problem here is a lot of it is going to rely on how much you trust the National Security Complex, and given that the political party affected is the one whose base is more suspicious of the Nat Sec that isn't necessarily an easy case. I'm inclined to trust them in this case since it goes along with other evidence that we've seen, it makes sense with how Putin does things, and I don't see why they would have a reason to pick a fight with Trump right now by making something up.
noobermin 10y ago
As the first couple of pages claim, the "real evidence" might not be shared here due to risking exposing methods, as is the usual claim. At this point, given Trump's recent statements against the intelligence community, I think they should say "fuck it" and just publish it already. Trump doesn't seem like he'll be a friend of the intelligence community unless they publish things he likes. To quote Trump, "what do you have to lose?" Of course, they could not have it and thus just be lying.
dv_dt 10y ago
Even if the "hack" were the Russians, it seems the hack broke through pathetic email security measures. The security seems basically so bad that it's likely that just about anybody could have been monitoring the emails at well below the level of sophisticated state-sponsored hackers. We should be having a discussion about how the desires of the intelligence community to spy have undercut the improvement of general security for personal data in the US. The email infrastructure of the Democratic campaign, seems more or less like a slightly below average standard email infrastructure used by most of the US (that's another shocking issue, but a side discussion at this point too). The main issues IMHO are a) the intelligence community spying capability did not prevent this hack - why not, and b) we should consider that spying infrastructure requests and the legal implications of them holds back development of better security. Better general security for most private email & communications for citizens and businesses in the US would have been more effective in preventing the issue than spying capability.
- matt4077 10y ago
  It's well established that they got into Podesta's email when he fell for their spear-fishing and submitted his password on a fake site. But blaming the victim is just doing the aggressor's work. If russian agents broke into a power plant and blew it up, would you be writing about the need to fix the nation's fences. I also disagree with your assessment that the DNC's security was "slightly below standards". They could have easily enabled two-factor authentication which would have foiled these hacking attempts – and the US agencies' agenda doesn't play into this story at all.
  - jwtadvice2 10y ago
    Interestingly this report does not establish or claim that Russia had accessed Podesta's email.
  - dv_dt 10y ago
    > They could have easily enabled two-factor authentication which would have foiled these hacking attempts But it wasn't enabled, and that's one specific reason for calling it below standard... of what was even available in commercial technologies..
idm 10y ago
This report provides conclusions, not raw data. If you are being honest with your comment, then you are unwittingly committing several logical fallacies: - burden of proof: demanding confidential information that will never be provided ensures you will never receive "proof" - moving the goalposts: this report includes several new analyses, but by moving the goalposts it will never be "enough" - straw man: the issue is not restricted to DNC emails; at a minimum it includes manipulation of US social media platforms.
- tps5 10y ago
  Respectfully, I don't think I'm committing any of those fallacies. -The idea that some information is classified and some isn't is silly. There's just information that you're willing to divulge and information you're unwilling to divulge. I see no reason to assume evidence that would implicate Russia must be so sensitive that the government would never divulge it. -I'm not moving any goalposts. There's only one piece of this puzzle I'm interested in: evidence linking Russia to the leaked emails. I accept that Russia has a broad propaganda network that often attempts to undermine US interests. I don't see that as an extraordinary thing. -See above. I accept the astonishing amount of propaganda. But the emails are the key piece here, and there's no concrete information in this report. I don't dismiss the DNI's claims, I just don't see the extraordinary evidence generally required for extraordinary claims.
  - idm 10y ago
    Thanks for your reply - I'm not accusing you of malice. I would love to see more of their raw data. I research social media and I have specifically investigated 2016 US election memes, so those data are extremely interesting to me. However, the DNI PDF states: > This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign. So, irrespective of yours or my assessment of what the raw evidence might be like, DNI already stated that they think it's too sensitive. This probably isn't going to change for 10-20 years (which is a common lifespan for classified information) so you've just got to figure out a way to analyze this situation without the specific evidence used to create this report. It doesn't mean there isn't other evidence out there. Like I said: I research social media and I have my own evidence stack. Some of it is here: https://iandennismiller.github.io/election-memes/ https://iandennismiller.github.io/election-memes/ I am considering the events of the past 2 months as "moving the goalposts" - and this isn't a personal thing against you or any individual. Originally, we had statements from certain officials, but that wasn't enough. Then we had consensus among intelligence agencies, but again that's not enough. Then we had a statement from the president, but that's not enough. Now we have this report and it's still not enough. On the straw man, the emails are not the entirety of the DNI argument, so reducing it to that creates the straw man, and dismissing the whole report on the basis of the emails is just how the straw man fallacy works, in practice. I am focused on social media, but you're focused on emails. It's okay to care more about one thing than another, but it is a logical fallacy to dismiss the rest of the report because you're not satisfied with the part you care about. Lastly, I don't think it's extraordinary at all to claim that Russian intelligence managed hundreds of sock puppet accounts across Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Imgur, Twitter, and other platforms. In fact, I would be shocked to learn that the opposite was true. In fact, none of the claims in the report are extraordinary; it's all extremely plausible. My (sortof expert) opinion is that I think the DNI social media conclusions are plausible.
heartbreak 10y ago
If CIA came out and said, "We know this happened because our agent embedded in GRU told us so." would you consider that concrete evidence?
anigbrowl 10y ago
I would say that you are - I'm interested in more than just the hack, but in how that information was drip-fed back to the public. I have no problem with RT putting out propaganda as such(it's not like we don't do so) but if there's a pattern of coordination between RT, WL and other actors then examining the control linkages is legitimate. Of course I can only speculate on the juiciness (or not) of the details in the redacted half. The US government reflexively overclassifies things (perhaps to provide the enemy with an excess of possible targets) but I imagine some of it must be hyper-sensitive.

by tps5 10y ago

cloudwalking 10y ago

At some point you need to trust the government to make the right decisions. Or to at least not lie about these things. If Facebook was hacked and lost data, would we expect Facebook to release a detailed report showing the evidence of hacking? I understand the desire to see evidence, but we have to trust our elected officials to make the right decisions and our intelligence agencies be honest about what they've discovered. If we demand consensus by the American anytime an issue like this comes up, nothing will ever happen.

Gargoyle 10y ago
Why do I "need" to trust the government to make the right decisions? What I "need" to do is keep a very close eye on government and demand that they be able to justify their decisions.
- matt4077 10y ago
  And yet what you're "doing" is letting your anti-establishment tendencies do Putin's work for him. This is starting to look a lot like some relationship drama, where the mother-in-law constantly sabotages the marriage with tiny annoyances and seeding doubt. "Did you leave the milk carton outside the fridge?". "No, but didn't your husband have coffee earlier?".
  - Gargoyle 10y ago
    >...do Putin's work for him. I am unmoved by attempts to cast acting in my own interests as feeding into the plans of the boogieman of the month.
- ENOTTY 10y ago
  > Why do I "need" to trust the government to make the right decisions? This might be the fundamental question. What form of voluntary governance (i.e., not authoritarianism) does not require trust by the governed in the government?

neaden 10y ago

Given how much evidence could be classified the problem here is a lot of it is going to rely on how much you trust the National Security Complex, and given that the political party affected is the one whose base is more suspicious of the Nat Sec that isn't necessarily an easy case. I'm inclined to trust them in this case since it goes along with other evidence that we've seen, it makes sense with how Putin does things, and I don't see why they would have a reason to pick a fight with Trump right now by making something up.

noobermin 10y ago

As the first couple of pages claim, the "real evidence" might not be shared here due to risking exposing methods, as is the usual claim. At this point, given Trump's recent statements against the intelligence community, I think they should say "fuck it" and just publish it already. Trump doesn't seem like he'll be a friend of the intelligence community unless they publish things he likes. To quote Trump, "what do you have to lose?" Of course, they could not have it and thus just be lying.

dv_dt 10y ago

Even if the "hack" were the Russians, it seems the hack broke through pathetic email security measures. The security seems basically so bad that it's likely that just about anybody could have been monitoring the emails at well below the level of sophisticated state-sponsored hackers. We should be having a discussion about how the desires of the intelligence community to spy have undercut the improvement of general security for personal data in the US. The email infrastructure of the Democratic campaign, seems more or less like a slightly below average standard email infrastructure used by most of the US (that's another shocking issue, but a side discussion at this point too). The main issues IMHO are a) the intelligence community spying capability did not prevent this hack - why not, and b) we should consider that spying infrastructure requests and the legal implications of them holds back development of better security. Better general security for most private email & communications for citizens and businesses in the US would have been more effective in preventing the issue than spying capability.

matt4077 10y ago
It's well established that they got into Podesta's email when he fell for their spear-fishing and submitted his password on a fake site. But blaming the victim is just doing the aggressor's work. If russian agents broke into a power plant and blew it up, would you be writing about the need to fix the nation's fences. I also disagree with your assessment that the DNC's security was "slightly below standards". They could have easily enabled two-factor authentication which would have foiled these hacking attempts – and the US agencies' agenda doesn't play into this story at all.
- jwtadvice2 10y ago
  Interestingly this report does not establish or claim that Russia had accessed Podesta's email.
- dv_dt 10y ago
  > They could have easily enabled two-factor authentication which would have foiled these hacking attempts But it wasn't enabled, and that's one specific reason for calling it below standard... of what was even available in commercial technologies..

idm 10y ago

This report provides conclusions, not raw data. If you are being honest with your comment, then you are unwittingly committing several logical fallacies: - burden of proof: demanding confidential information that will never be provided ensures you will never receive "proof" - moving the goalposts: this report includes several new analyses, but by moving the goalposts it will never be "enough" - straw man: the issue is not restricted to DNC emails; at a minimum it includes manipulation of US social media platforms.

tps5 10y ago
Respectfully, I don't think I'm committing any of those fallacies. -The idea that some information is classified and some isn't is silly. There's just information that you're willing to divulge and information you're unwilling to divulge. I see no reason to assume evidence that would implicate Russia must be so sensitive that the government would never divulge it. -I'm not moving any goalposts. There's only one piece of this puzzle I'm interested in: evidence linking Russia to the leaked emails. I accept that Russia has a broad propaganda network that often attempts to undermine US interests. I don't see that as an extraordinary thing. -See above. I accept the astonishing amount of propaganda. But the emails are the key piece here, and there's no concrete information in this report. I don't dismiss the DNI's claims, I just don't see the extraordinary evidence generally required for extraordinary claims.
- idm 10y ago
  Thanks for your reply - I'm not accusing you of malice. I would love to see more of their raw data. I research social media and I have specifically investigated 2016 US election memes, so those data are extremely interesting to me. However, the DNI PDF states: > This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign. So, irrespective of yours or my assessment of what the raw evidence might be like, DNI already stated that they think it's too sensitive. This probably isn't going to change for 10-20 years (which is a common lifespan for classified information) so you've just got to figure out a way to analyze this situation without the specific evidence used to create this report. It doesn't mean there isn't other evidence out there. Like I said: I research social media and I have my own evidence stack. Some of it is here: https://iandennismiller.github.io/election-memes/ https://iandennismiller.github.io/election-memes/ I am considering the events of the past 2 months as "moving the goalposts" - and this isn't a personal thing against you or any individual. Originally, we had statements from certain officials, but that wasn't enough. Then we had consensus among intelligence agencies, but again that's not enough. Then we had a statement from the president, but that's not enough. Now we have this report and it's still not enough. On the straw man, the emails are not the entirety of the DNI argument, so reducing it to that creates the straw man, and dismissing the whole report on the basis of the emails is just how the straw man fallacy works, in practice. I am focused on social media, but you're focused on emails. It's okay to care more about one thing than another, but it is a logical fallacy to dismiss the rest of the report because you're not satisfied with the part you care about. Lastly, I don't think it's extraordinary at all to claim that Russian intelligence managed hundreds of sock puppet accounts across Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Imgur, Twitter, and other platforms. In fact, I would be shocked to learn that the opposite was true. In fact, none of the claims in the report are extraordinary; it's all extremely plausible. My (sortof expert) opinion is that I think the DNI social media conclusions are plausible.

heartbreak 10y ago

If CIA came out and said, "We know this happened because our agent embedded in GRU told us so." would you consider that concrete evidence?

anigbrowl 10y ago

I would say that you are - I'm interested in more than just the hack, but in how that information was drip-fed back to the public. I have no problem with RT putting out propaganda as such(it's not like we don't do so) but if there's a pattern of coordination between RT, WL and other actors then examining the control linkages is legitimate. Of course I can only speculate on the juiciness (or not) of the details in the redacted half. The US government reflexively overclassifies things (perhaps to provide the enemy with an excess of possible targets) but I imagine some of it must be hyper-sensitive.