18 ms·

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,

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.
      - hackuser 10y ago
        Ah, more false equivalencies; more noise and FUD. All information that isn't public is the same! All situations involving it are the same! Truth and lies are the same and there is no way to tell the difference ... except that they are not and there is.
        grandalf 10y ago
        > except that they are not and there is And you are in a privileged position to discern these? As citizens, our role is not to trust our leaders, it is to be harshly skeptical of them and demand that they present evidence for endeavors that are costly (in terms of lives or dollars). I dispute your claim that I make equivalences, and I would say that in this case there is far more likely to actually be evidence of wrongdoing (if any occurred). In the case of Saddam, we had very little HUMINT or SIGINT presence in Iraq with which to scrutinize Bush's claims, so intel analysts arguably erred on the side of caution. In this case, we have unprecedented intel leaks (and surveillance capabilities), yet mysteriously no actual evidence, which, if it exists, would seemingly implicate Trump and members of his team in very clear treason. What patriot would withhold these critical details? Our mental model of the leaker's motivations cannot both maintain that there is smoking gun evidence of significant wrongdoing AND that the leaker was concerned, but content to just stoke a rumor rather than reveal the biggest treason in the history of the modern world. At this point, the story has so many tentacles that providing evidence about even one thing would do wonders to root it in reality. Yet we're seeing the opposite. More vague, evidence-free, sensational leaks, more promotion of rumor to truth by propagandists, etc.
        hackuser 10y ago
        > And you are in a privileged position to discern these? Yes, as privileged as everyone else. We can and must make judgments - open-mindedness is important, but to withhold judgment indefinitely is foolishness and reckless endangerment of our responsibilities. That includes judging against absurd and evil ideas and not allowing them unlimited leeway to delay or distract us (again, that would be aiding in their propaganda strategy) from acting against them. And while my judgment isn't perfect, I'm pretty confident in this one.
- int_19h 10y ago
  There is ample evidence of Russian hacking directed at the DNC to produce material to leak. True, there was no hacking of the vote counting process itself, but the leaks did significantly affect the results. And then the whole story with Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions. Which, it can be reasonably assumed, is why Russia did the whole hacking thing in the first place.
  - thehardsphere 10y ago
    No, Russia did the whole hacking thing so that Americans would question the legitimacy of their election. It's kind of something Russia does to nearly every European country also. What makes it special in the American case is the way in which Hillary Clinton lost the election. She lost big enough to unambiguously have lost (unlike Gore in Bush v. Gore), but did not lose with a large enough margin to produce an easily identifiable single reason for losing. Thus, every single explanation for the loss seems somewhat valid. So, like anybody who is faced with choosing between "this my own fault" and "someone else screwed me", Democrats are choosing option B. What makes it hilariously ironic is that being angry the election was "stolen by Russia" is exactly what Russia wants. So if they care about not playing into Russia's hands, they would have to stop complaining about "Russia hacking the election." But they can't do that because they're not ready or able to say "we lost this election because what we're offering isn't sufficiently appealing to more than half the country for reasons X,Y,Z" (whatever those are).
    - nl 10y ago
      I think both readings of the motivation of the Russian hacks are reasonable and both may well be true. I think it is terrible that the Democratic party isn't facing up to the problems in their own party that led to that outcome. They have list the House, the Senate and the Presidency. Something is wrong and it isn't just Russian hacking.
      - hackuser 10y ago
        > the Democratic party isn't facing up to the problems in their own party that led to that outcome They aren't? I read plenty about it.
- altcognito 10y ago
  There are plenty of troubling links with Russia There are at least 5 individuals (Manafort, Cohen, Sater, Page, Flynn, Tillerson, Stone) whom were directly working with the Russian government and have received effusive praise from them. Combined with a very narrow focus on removing sanctions (without any talk about the violations of sovereignty of Crimea/Ukraine) and a nearly tireless praising of Putin and the Russian government, there are plenty of troubling links.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    Tillerson worked with them as part of his business, so not sure how this is troubling. Flynn was asked to attend a banquet or something along those lines by RT. Some of the others did some consulting work of some sort. When you are a retired high level military/government person, consulting opportunities such as those abound. The same is true of those who chose to consult for the Ukrainian side, the Georgian side, etc. It seems like a pretty big leap to say that just because someone did some consulting work for a government that they are somehow ethically compromised. Many US firms do business with Russia, the Saudi government, etc. etc. Where do we draw the line and deem these people somehow unfit to serve in government? There has not been a principled approach to this, seemingly only finger pointing and other name calling that is reminiscent of the cold war era. If there were any actual evidence of wrongdoing, it would be a completely different story. Surely with the mass surveillance system many phone calls, emails and other associations/links have been monitored, yet we are not seeing leaks of any troubling details, only vague finger pointing. It would be a very serious thing if there were some sort of plot, but so far there does not seem to be one.
    - mistermann 10y ago
      I read these news articles with a critical eye, and "only vague finger pointing" is a good description of the content of every single one I've read, letting the reader's mind fill in the blanks to match their partisan agenda. Worked for Trump to get elected, turnabout is fair play?
  - shard972 10y ago
    How is any of this evidence that the trump administration is working with Russia? The connections alone don't mean a whole lot and the rest you have is just words. If trump was truly in the can for Russia, why wouldn't he just say bad things about putin to score more political points and distract people from his true motives? Are we to believe that Putin would not allow trump to trash him in order to further his tangible goals?
- nl 10y ago
  I've posted this previously, but it was well received then, so... Those who (reasonably!) question the lack of actual evidence presented by the US intelligence community over the US hacks would do well to read the 2014 FireEye paper on APT28 (the group involved). It's pretty compelling, even if it doesn't address the specific allegations around the election(s). The TL;DR is that there is significant circumstantial evidence that this group is government backed, and also evidence against it being a false flag operation. Note that the date of the report should provide some protection against allegations it is politically motivated. See https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a-window-into-russias-cyber-espionage-operations.html https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a...
  - grandalf 10y ago
    That looks interesting. However I think evidence would be something actually linking the hacks with that group. The group was accused, but no evidence was presented linking it, just speculation.
    - nl 10y ago
      I don't think there is any serious doubt that ATP28 was the group that did the hack (Bad assumption on my part in this case - most of the time people have accepted that but have doubts about it being a state actor). I think CrowdStrike was the first firm to attribute it to them[1]. Note that APT28 is also known as "Fancy Bear", so you may see some reports attributing it with that name. Nothing forcing you to believe it of course, but in the world of cyber attribution this is pretty decent evidence. [1] https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        That crowdstrike article reads like an advertisement I'd prefer something more authoritative before flirting with war with a nuclear power. I think the real question is, why is a Russian military unit so hapless they can be caught by a firm like this? Doesn't that sort of undermine the claim that they are a major threat and instead make the DNC look like helpless idiots tricked by Russian teenagers?
- nyolfen 10y ago
  there's extremely strong circumstantial publicly available evidence here: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/816622915860963328 https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/81662291586096332...
- hackuser 10y ago
  In today's NY Times: A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia. Mr. Flynn is gone, having been caught lying about his own discussion of sanctions with the Russian ambassador. But the proposal, a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, remains, along with those pushing it: Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document; Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia; and a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to rise in a political opposition movement shaped in part by Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. At a time when Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, and the people connected to him, are under heightened scrutiny — with investigations by American intelligence agencies, the F.B.I. and Congress — some of his associates remain willing and eager to wade into Russia-related efforts behind the scenes. Mr. Trump has confounded Democrats and Republicans alike with his repeated praise for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and his desire to forge an American-Russian alliance. While there is nothing illegal about such unofficial efforts, a proposal that seems to tip toward Russian interests may set off alarms. ... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-...
  - grandalf 10y ago
    I think we should view a strategy like the one Flynn advocated only as an alternative to the current approach of proxy wars. It may or may not make sense. My understanding of the US/Russia dynamic is described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13689076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13689076
    - hackuser 10y ago
      A hallmark of propaganda campaigns is to create endless noise to obscuring the signal, including with false equivalencies and endless questions ('how do we really know vaccines are safe'?) > It may or may not make sense. The same could be said about jumping off a tall building.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rrggrr 10y ago
To date the public only knows with certainty that the Podesta and DNC documents that leaked are authentic. We know the contents of those documents are deeply disturbing. We know that instead of talking about that disturbing content, the media only wishes to report on how this authentic content came to light. The deflection and bias is staggering.

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.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      Ah, more false equivalencies; more noise and FUD. All information that isn't public is the same! All situations involving it are the same! Truth and lies are the same and there is no way to tell the difference ... except that they are not and there is.
      - grandalf 10y ago
        > except that they are not and there is And you are in a privileged position to discern these? As citizens, our role is not to trust our leaders, it is to be harshly skeptical of them and demand that they present evidence for endeavors that are costly (in terms of lives or dollars). I dispute your claim that I make equivalences, and I would say that in this case there is far more likely to actually be evidence of wrongdoing (if any occurred). In the case of Saddam, we had very little HUMINT or SIGINT presence in Iraq with which to scrutinize Bush's claims, so intel analysts arguably erred on the side of caution. In this case, we have unprecedented intel leaks (and surveillance capabilities), yet mysteriously no actual evidence, which, if it exists, would seemingly implicate Trump and members of his team in very clear treason. What patriot would withhold these critical details? Our mental model of the leaker's motivations cannot both maintain that there is smoking gun evidence of significant wrongdoing AND that the leaker was concerned, but content to just stoke a rumor rather than reveal the biggest treason in the history of the modern world. At this point, the story has so many tentacles that providing evidence about even one thing would do wonders to root it in reality. Yet we're seeing the opposite. More vague, evidence-free, sensational leaks, more promotion of rumor to truth by propagandists, etc.
        hackuser 10y ago
        > And you are in a privileged position to discern these? Yes, as privileged as everyone else. We can and must make judgments - open-mindedness is important, but to withhold judgment indefinitely is foolishness and reckless endangerment of our responsibilities. That includes judging against absurd and evil ideas and not allowing them unlimited leeway to delay or distract us (again, that would be aiding in their propaganda strategy) from acting against them. And while my judgment isn't perfect, I'm pretty confident in this one.
int_19h 10y ago
There is ample evidence of Russian hacking directed at the DNC to produce material to leak. True, there was no hacking of the vote counting process itself, but the leaks did significantly affect the results. And then the whole story with Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions. Which, it can be reasonably assumed, is why Russia did the whole hacking thing in the first place.
- thehardsphere 10y ago
  No, Russia did the whole hacking thing so that Americans would question the legitimacy of their election. It's kind of something Russia does to nearly every European country also. What makes it special in the American case is the way in which Hillary Clinton lost the election. She lost big enough to unambiguously have lost (unlike Gore in Bush v. Gore), but did not lose with a large enough margin to produce an easily identifiable single reason for losing. Thus, every single explanation for the loss seems somewhat valid. So, like anybody who is faced with choosing between "this my own fault" and "someone else screwed me", Democrats are choosing option B. What makes it hilariously ironic is that being angry the election was "stolen by Russia" is exactly what Russia wants. So if they care about not playing into Russia's hands, they would have to stop complaining about "Russia hacking the election." But they can't do that because they're not ready or able to say "we lost this election because what we're offering isn't sufficiently appealing to more than half the country for reasons X,Y,Z" (whatever those are).
  - nl 10y ago
    I think both readings of the motivation of the Russian hacks are reasonable and both may well be true. I think it is terrible that the Democratic party isn't facing up to the problems in their own party that led to that outcome. They have list the House, the Senate and the Presidency. Something is wrong and it isn't just Russian hacking.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > the Democratic party isn't facing up to the problems in their own party that led to that outcome They aren't? I read plenty about it.
altcognito 10y ago
There are plenty of troubling links with Russia There are at least 5 individuals (Manafort, Cohen, Sater, Page, Flynn, Tillerson, Stone) whom were directly working with the Russian government and have received effusive praise from them. Combined with a very narrow focus on removing sanctions (without any talk about the violations of sovereignty of Crimea/Ukraine) and a nearly tireless praising of Putin and the Russian government, there are plenty of troubling links.
- grandalf 10y ago
  Tillerson worked with them as part of his business, so not sure how this is troubling. Flynn was asked to attend a banquet or something along those lines by RT. Some of the others did some consulting work of some sort. When you are a retired high level military/government person, consulting opportunities such as those abound. The same is true of those who chose to consult for the Ukrainian side, the Georgian side, etc. It seems like a pretty big leap to say that just because someone did some consulting work for a government that they are somehow ethically compromised. Many US firms do business with Russia, the Saudi government, etc. etc. Where do we draw the line and deem these people somehow unfit to serve in government? There has not been a principled approach to this, seemingly only finger pointing and other name calling that is reminiscent of the cold war era. If there were any actual evidence of wrongdoing, it would be a completely different story. Surely with the mass surveillance system many phone calls, emails and other associations/links have been monitored, yet we are not seeing leaks of any troubling details, only vague finger pointing. It would be a very serious thing if there were some sort of plot, but so far there does not seem to be one.
  - mistermann 10y ago
    I read these news articles with a critical eye, and "only vague finger pointing" is a good description of the content of every single one I've read, letting the reader's mind fill in the blanks to match their partisan agenda. Worked for Trump to get elected, turnabout is fair play?
- shard972 10y ago
  How is any of this evidence that the trump administration is working with Russia? The connections alone don't mean a whole lot and the rest you have is just words. If trump was truly in the can for Russia, why wouldn't he just say bad things about putin to score more political points and distract people from his true motives? Are we to believe that Putin would not allow trump to trash him in order to further his tangible goals?
nl 10y ago
I've posted this previously, but it was well received then, so... Those who (reasonably!) question the lack of actual evidence presented by the US intelligence community over the US hacks would do well to read the 2014 FireEye paper on APT28 (the group involved). It's pretty compelling, even if it doesn't address the specific allegations around the election(s). The TL;DR is that there is significant circumstantial evidence that this group is government backed, and also evidence against it being a false flag operation. Note that the date of the report should provide some protection against allegations it is politically motivated. See https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a-window-into-russias-cyber-espionage-operations.html https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a...
- grandalf 10y ago
  That looks interesting. However I think evidence would be something actually linking the hacks with that group. The group was accused, but no evidence was presented linking it, just speculation.
  - nl 10y ago
    I don't think there is any serious doubt that ATP28 was the group that did the hack (Bad assumption on my part in this case - most of the time people have accepted that but have doubts about it being a state actor). I think CrowdStrike was the first firm to attribute it to them[1]. Note that APT28 is also known as "Fancy Bear", so you may see some reports attributing it with that name. Nothing forcing you to believe it of course, but in the world of cyber attribution this is pretty decent evidence. [1] https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      That crowdstrike article reads like an advertisement I'd prefer something more authoritative before flirting with war with a nuclear power. I think the real question is, why is a Russian military unit so hapless they can be caught by a firm like this? Doesn't that sort of undermine the claim that they are a major threat and instead make the DNC look like helpless idiots tricked by Russian teenagers?
nyolfen 10y ago
there's extremely strong circumstantial publicly available evidence here: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/816622915860963328 https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/81662291586096332...
hackuser 10y ago
In today's NY Times: A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia. Mr. Flynn is gone, having been caught lying about his own discussion of sanctions with the Russian ambassador. But the proposal, a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, remains, along with those pushing it: Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document; Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia; and a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to rise in a political opposition movement shaped in part by Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. At a time when Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, and the people connected to him, are under heightened scrutiny — with investigations by American intelligence agencies, the F.B.I. and Congress — some of his associates remain willing and eager to wade into Russia-related efforts behind the scenes. Mr. Trump has confounded Democrats and Republicans alike with his repeated praise for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and his desire to forge an American-Russian alliance. While there is nothing illegal about such unofficial efforts, a proposal that seems to tip toward Russian interests may set off alarms. ... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-...
- grandalf 10y ago
  I think we should view a strategy like the one Flynn advocated only as an alternative to the current approach of proxy wars. It may or may not make sense. My understanding of the US/Russia dynamic is described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13689076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13689076
  - hackuser 10y ago
    A hallmark of propaganda campaigns is to create endless noise to obscuring the signal, including with false equivalencies and endless questions ('how do we really know vaccines are safe'?) > It may or may not make sense. The same could be said about jumping off a tall building.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

rrggrr 10y ago

To date the public only knows with certainty that the Podesta and DNC documents that leaked are authentic. We know the contents of those documents are deeply disturbing. We know that instead of talking about that disturbing content, the media only wishes to report on how this authentic content came to light. The deflection and bias is staggering.