14 ms·

Consider all the officials who have effectively been attacked by American intelligence agencies: Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Haight, Gen. Flynn, Hillary Clinton, and Tr

Consider all the officials who have effectively been attacked by American intelligence agencies: Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Haight, Gen. Flynn, Hillary Clinton, and Trump! All this is quite recent, and in each case there have been explanations about how discoveries about the person were made coincidentally as part of other investigations, etc. Establishing a false causal trail is one of the most basic strategies of using deep surveillance. The recent leaks about Flynn and the Trump dossier seemed more nakedly political than the others, but leaks like this have always occurred, it's just unusual for them to be aimed at the current president and his cabinet. The funny thing is that if you wanted to sabotage the US system of global mass surveillance, this is probably how you'd do it. Every story about monitored email accounts or phone calls illustrates how deep it goes, and the intrigue created by the allegations about Russia make the stories incredibly viral.

gkoberger 10y ago
Is this how you'd sabotage it, or embolden it? "Thanks to this surveillance, we stoped Russia from infiltrating the highest ranks of our government. See how necessary it is?" After all, it was the Cold War and the threat of Russia that started this whole surveillance stuff in the first place.
- grandalf 10y ago
  Good point. That could certainly be the desired goal, which is why it's frustrating that the media is running with the rumor stories without making the lack of substantiating detail more of an issue. There should be a lot of pressure for the leaker to back up the rumor, since the stakes are fairly high.
- ghostDancer 10y ago
  Instigate fear and people will surrender their rights. Add a pinch of patriotism and a flag and no one will dare to open his mouth. Exactly the same as they are doing in Turkey and they way they play in every dictatorship.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    With the slight difference that in America, the wannabe dictator is the one being targeted by the deep state. I think the lesson here is that an effective authoritarian deep-state requires cooperation between the authoritarian civil service and the authoritarian political leadership. Frankly, if they mutually self-destruct, I'll be happy. I want neither an authoritarian political leadership nor an authoritarian surveillance state hidden in the civil service.
    - ghostDancer 10y ago
      I don't like conspiracies but i always thought that he is just the puppet put there by part of the party, and then get rid of him and look like the saviors of USA and in the way clean the deep state of his enemies or at least from the ones that they don't like or submit .
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      > the wannabe dictator is the one being targeted by the deep state Who is targeting the attack, and why it's finely targeted? It seems naive to postulate a single wannabe dictator when you can't know the details. On that kind of fight there's always the risk that a shadier player wins.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      >>With the slight difference that in America, the wannabe dictator is the one being targeted by the deep state. That's not a difference. It started out that way in Turkey as well when Erdogan came to power. He eventually crushed the deep state in a series of maneuvers that purged the "dissidents" inside the intelligence agencies, the judiciary and the military. The exact same thing will happen in America as well unless the practices of the current administration are nipped in the bud quickly.
foxhedgehog 10y ago
The funnier thing is that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the stories about Russia may - gasp - be true! No need to reach for your tinfoil hat here, friend!
- grandalf 10y ago
  > preponderance of evidence What evidence are you referring to. As far as I know none has been made public. There have been a lot of accusations and a few rumors but (gasp) zero evidence of hacking or any other troubling links w/ Russia.
  - travmatt 10y ago
    Well other than the fact that we have both the phishing email used to compromise podesta, the link shortener account it was sent from, samples of malware and ioc's - other than the evidence we have, sure, we don't have any evidence.
    - grandalf 10y ago
      So the location of the server used to generate phishing emails counts as evidence of its origin? Were there IOCs that link non-circumstantially to a state sponsored effort?
    - hackuser 10y ago
      Don't forget the evidence that isn't public.
      - grandalf 10y ago
        > Don't forget the evidence that isn't public. This is what George W. Bush said about Iraqi WMDs. The narrative was that there was a lot of evidence provided by intelligence agencies supporting the idea that Saddam had WMDs, but it was top secret and could not be shared with the public. The truth was that in spite of claims of evidence, there was ZERO evidence of WMDs, and all of the claims turned out to be lies or significant embellishments. Most fundamentally, they were major failures of SIGINT and showed us how clueless and crude our so-called intelligence operations were. This wouldn't really matter, except that it cost us Trillions of dollars and close to a million people have died as a result. It's an atrocity on par with some of the greatest human atrocities in history, and it was possible largely because people adopted the view that you articulate in the parent post... that "they have evidence, but they are wisely keeping it secret". If there were any actual evidence we certainly would have heard about it, either via a leak or via the publication of some kind of smoking gun.

gkoberger 10y ago

Is this how you'd sabotage it, or embolden it? "Thanks to this surveillance, we stoped Russia from infiltrating the highest ranks of our government. See how necessary it is?" After all, it was the Cold War and the threat of Russia that started this whole surveillance stuff in the first place.

grandalf 10y ago
Good point. That could certainly be the desired goal, which is why it's frustrating that the media is running with the rumor stories without making the lack of substantiating detail more of an issue. There should be a lot of pressure for the leaker to back up the rumor, since the stakes are fairly high.
ghostDancer 10y ago
Instigate fear and people will surrender their rights. Add a pinch of patriotism and a flag and no one will dare to open his mouth. Exactly the same as they are doing in Turkey and they way they play in every dictatorship.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  With the slight difference that in America, the wannabe dictator is the one being targeted by the deep state. I think the lesson here is that an effective authoritarian deep-state requires cooperation between the authoritarian civil service and the authoritarian political leadership. Frankly, if they mutually self-destruct, I'll be happy. I want neither an authoritarian political leadership nor an authoritarian surveillance state hidden in the civil service.
  - ghostDancer 10y ago
    I don't like conspiracies but i always thought that he is just the puppet put there by part of the party, and then get rid of him and look like the saviors of USA and in the way clean the deep state of his enemies or at least from the ones that they don't like or submit .
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    > the wannabe dictator is the one being targeted by the deep state Who is targeting the attack, and why it's finely targeted? It seems naive to postulate a single wannabe dictator when you can't know the details. On that kind of fight there's always the risk that a shadier player wins.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>With the slight difference that in America, the wannabe dictator is the one being targeted by the deep state. That's not a difference. It started out that way in Turkey as well when Erdogan came to power. He eventually crushed the deep state in a series of maneuvers that purged the "dissidents" inside the intelligence agencies, the judiciary and the military. The exact same thing will happen in America as well unless the practices of the current administration are nipped in the bud quickly.

foxhedgehog 10y ago

The funnier thing is that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the stories about Russia may - gasp - be true! No need to reach for your tinfoil hat here, friend!

grandalf 10y ago
> preponderance of evidence What evidence are you referring to. As far as I know none has been made public. There have been a lot of accusations and a few rumors but (gasp) zero evidence of hacking or any other troubling links w/ Russia.
- travmatt 10y ago
  Well other than the fact that we have both the phishing email used to compromise podesta, the link shortener account it was sent from, samples of malware and ioc's - other than the evidence we have, sure, we don't have any evidence.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    So the location of the server used to generate phishing emails counts as evidence of its origin? Were there IOCs that link non-circumstantially to a state sponsored effort?
  - hackuser 10y ago
    Don't forget the evidence that isn't public.
    - grandalf 10y ago
      > Don't forget the evidence that isn't public. This is what George W. Bush said about Iraqi WMDs. The narrative was that there was a lot of evidence provided by intelligence agencies supporting the idea that Saddam had WMDs, but it was top secret and could not be shared with the public. The truth was that in spite of claims of evidence, there was ZERO evidence of WMDs, and all of the claims turned out to be lies or significant embellishments. Most fundamentally, they were major failures of SIGINT and showed us how clueless and crude our so-called intelligence operations were. This wouldn't really matter, except that it cost us Trillions of dollars and close to a million people have died as a result. It's an atrocity on par with some of the greatest human atrocities in history, and it was possible largely because people adopted the view that you articulate in the parent post... that "they have evidence, but they are wisely keeping it secret". If there were any actual evidence we certainly would have heard about it, either via a leak or via the publication of some kind of smoking gun.