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> There is ample evidence of Russian hacking directed at the DNC to produce material to leak. Considering the Media started with 15 intel agencies all saying t

> There is ample evidence of Russian hacking directed at the DNC to produce material to leak. Considering the Media started with 15 intel agencies all saying this was the case and ended only being 3 agencies in the final report with 1 in particular (The NSA) only claiming "moderate confidence" (60%). The NSA would seem like they would be the best placed to know who did it, yet they gave it just above a coin toss in probability? I believe the intel agencies were more confident about WMD's in Iraq than this "ample evidence".

linkregister 10y ago
All three agencies assessed with high confidence the attribution of the campaign to Russia. The medium confidence assertion was about whether Russia intended to actually get President Trump elected, of which evidence is not clear or strong. Please read the actual report rather than the distilled version you got from your choice of media. We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear reference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. - We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
- grandalf 10y ago
  > three agencies assessed with high confidence the attribution of the campaign to Russia. The medium confidence assertion was about whether Russia intended to actually get President Trump elected, of which evidence is not clear or strong That document was intended to be persuasive, not comprehensive. It blurred together a lot of different things, attributed them all to the same plot by Putin, and used paragraph after paragraph of filler material to "support" the various claims. Of all the claims making up the "argument" in the document, none of the ones that could possibly be verified by data were verified by data. We were told such data exists, but not shown any evidence of it. I was deeply embarrassed that our government would release such an amateurish document, and even more embarrassed that the document would be cited as evidence by people who should know better.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    You're changing the goalposts. My response was correcting a factual error in the parent poster's statement. This report isn't meant to provide evidence. It's a summary of a report submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee (chaired by a Republican) that has been scrubbed of secret information, release of which would cut off or kill sources. The fact you think it's amateurish reflects your unfamiliarity with what these documents mean (Which is just fine! We can't all be experts on these things). If you do not trust the Senate Intelligence Committee or the Intelligence Community chiefs, that is just fine also. This document is a report: nothing more, nothing less. Critical thinking and questioning authority is good.
    - grandalf 10y ago
      > The fact you think it's amateurish The report contained a lot of information in it that suggested it was thrown together by a person unfamiliar with ITSec who was copying and pasting filler material until the report was long enough (had enough pages) to seem substantial, much like the folders full of blank sheets of paper Trump used as a prop for one of his speeches. > reflects your unfamiliarity with what these documents mean That's exactly the point. They mean nothing because they assert nothing factual, simply an opinion whose reasoning is left up to the imagination of the reader under the pretense of secrecy. > Senate Intelligence Committee (chaired by a Republican) Fearmongering about Russia has crossed party lines, and is concentrated in some of the more powerful members of congress who are on that committee... Watch a few minutes of Marco Rubio's questioning of Tillerson about Russia, it's as if he's asking a religious litmus test question, not asking about a rational thought process. I found it deeply embarrassing to watch. > If you do not trust the Senate Intelligence Committee or the Intelligence Community chiefs Trust should not be part of the equation when we are talking about going to war. It should be abundantly obvious that war is necessary, and we should not have to take anyone's word for anything. If the report had been upfront about its lack of evidence-based analysis, then it would have been less than a page long. The fact is, intelligence agencies do not worry about all of their analysis being evidence-based, they use heuristics and other models of understanding behavior to formulate their assessment. I'm not arguing that this method is not appropriate to that specific domain. However, the report was presented as containing the actual evidence that convinced members of the committee that there was Russian involvement. Most of us are old enough to remember how not long ago an administration presented flawed evidence about Iraq and how that cost the US trillions of dollars and left nearly a million people dead. It was one of the biggest human atrocities in the modern world, and it happened because too many of us trusted the heuristic and hand-waving approach that intelligence agencies use. That approach is fine when there is a need to make a last-minute decision and no better methods exist, but they should not be used for promoting/propagandizing wars that have not yet started. If it were not for the rabid partisanship (not just democrat/republican, there are a lot of vehement anti-Russia partisans in both parties) the report would have been laughed at by the press and no president or intelligence committee would dare release such garbage. Unfortunately, like during the buildup to the Iraq war, such discretion and scrutiny is missing from the equation.
- digler999 10y ago
  It astonishes me how riled some people are by this supposed "influence campaign" by Russia, but nobody cares about the "influence campaign" by corporations for Hillary Clinton to win the election ?
  - alphabettsy 10y ago
    American corporations are allowed to influence elections...where have you been?
  - linkregister 10y ago
    American corporations also contributed to the Trump campaign, the RNC, and various PACs.
    - grzm 10y ago
      It's increasingly common for corporations and other interests to contribute to multiple parties.
nl 10y ago
The joint statement is at [1]. It starts: The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The USIC[2] is The United States Intelligence Community (IC)[1] is a federation of 16 separate United States government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and national security of the United States...The IC is headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who reports to the President of the United States. The full report is [3]. That is also from the DNI (see above), which represents those 16 agencies. The key judgements from that are: We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. and We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. So it is 16, not 15. But the media reports I saw said 16 anyway. It's true that the NSA had moderate confidence in one of the judgements, but all agencies had high confidence in the "Russia interfered" judgement. It is also inaccurate to say "moderate" means 60%. That would correspond to a likelihood of a forecast of "Probable", but confidence is a different scale. Moderate Confidence actually means: "credibly sourced and plausible information, but not of sufficient quality or corroboration to warrant a higher level of confidence." [1] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-departme... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com... [3] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3254241-ICA-2017-01.html#document/p1 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3254241-ICA-2017-01....
- grandalf 10y ago
  There is apparently a protocol for actual intelligence service findings, and this document did not follow that protocol. It was thus simply created to serve a political/PR purpose. The sloppiness of its construction, its reliance upon boilerplate content lifted from other places, and its confident conclusion unsupported by data are all big differences from the professional style that is typically used in intelligence document

linkregister 10y ago

All three agencies assessed with high confidence the attribution of the campaign to Russia. The medium confidence assertion was about whether Russia intended to actually get President Trump elected, of which evidence is not clear or strong. Please read the actual report rather than the distilled version you got from your choice of media. We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear reference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. - We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

grandalf 10y ago
> three agencies assessed with high confidence the attribution of the campaign to Russia. The medium confidence assertion was about whether Russia intended to actually get President Trump elected, of which evidence is not clear or strong That document was intended to be persuasive, not comprehensive. It blurred together a lot of different things, attributed them all to the same plot by Putin, and used paragraph after paragraph of filler material to "support" the various claims. Of all the claims making up the "argument" in the document, none of the ones that could possibly be verified by data were verified by data. We were told such data exists, but not shown any evidence of it. I was deeply embarrassed that our government would release such an amateurish document, and even more embarrassed that the document would be cited as evidence by people who should know better.
- linkregister 10y ago
  You're changing the goalposts. My response was correcting a factual error in the parent poster's statement. This report isn't meant to provide evidence. It's a summary of a report submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee (chaired by a Republican) that has been scrubbed of secret information, release of which would cut off or kill sources. The fact you think it's amateurish reflects your unfamiliarity with what these documents mean (Which is just fine! We can't all be experts on these things). If you do not trust the Senate Intelligence Committee or the Intelligence Community chiefs, that is just fine also. This document is a report: nothing more, nothing less. Critical thinking and questioning authority is good.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > The fact you think it's amateurish The report contained a lot of information in it that suggested it was thrown together by a person unfamiliar with ITSec who was copying and pasting filler material until the report was long enough (had enough pages) to seem substantial, much like the folders full of blank sheets of paper Trump used as a prop for one of his speeches. > reflects your unfamiliarity with what these documents mean That's exactly the point. They mean nothing because they assert nothing factual, simply an opinion whose reasoning is left up to the imagination of the reader under the pretense of secrecy. > Senate Intelligence Committee (chaired by a Republican) Fearmongering about Russia has crossed party lines, and is concentrated in some of the more powerful members of congress who are on that committee... Watch a few minutes of Marco Rubio's questioning of Tillerson about Russia, it's as if he's asking a religious litmus test question, not asking about a rational thought process. I found it deeply embarrassing to watch. > If you do not trust the Senate Intelligence Committee or the Intelligence Community chiefs Trust should not be part of the equation when we are talking about going to war. It should be abundantly obvious that war is necessary, and we should not have to take anyone's word for anything. If the report had been upfront about its lack of evidence-based analysis, then it would have been less than a page long. The fact is, intelligence agencies do not worry about all of their analysis being evidence-based, they use heuristics and other models of understanding behavior to formulate their assessment. I'm not arguing that this method is not appropriate to that specific domain. However, the report was presented as containing the actual evidence that convinced members of the committee that there was Russian involvement. Most of us are old enough to remember how not long ago an administration presented flawed evidence about Iraq and how that cost the US trillions of dollars and left nearly a million people dead. It was one of the biggest human atrocities in the modern world, and it happened because too many of us trusted the heuristic and hand-waving approach that intelligence agencies use. That approach is fine when there is a need to make a last-minute decision and no better methods exist, but they should not be used for promoting/propagandizing wars that have not yet started. If it were not for the rabid partisanship (not just democrat/republican, there are a lot of vehement anti-Russia partisans in both parties) the report would have been laughed at by the press and no president or intelligence committee would dare release such garbage. Unfortunately, like during the buildup to the Iraq war, such discretion and scrutiny is missing from the equation.
digler999 10y ago
It astonishes me how riled some people are by this supposed "influence campaign" by Russia, but nobody cares about the "influence campaign" by corporations for Hillary Clinton to win the election ?
- alphabettsy 10y ago
  American corporations are allowed to influence elections...where have you been?
- linkregister 10y ago
  American corporations also contributed to the Trump campaign, the RNC, and various PACs.
  - grzm 10y ago
    It's increasingly common for corporations and other interests to contribute to multiple parties.

nl 10y ago

The joint statement is at [1]. It starts: The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The USIC[2] is The United States Intelligence Community (IC)[1] is a federation of 16 separate United States government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and national security of the United States...The IC is headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who reports to the President of the United States. The full report is [3]. That is also from the DNI (see above), which represents those 16 agencies. The key judgements from that are: We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. and We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. So it is 16, not 15. But the media reports I saw said 16 anyway. It's true that the NSA had moderate confidence in one of the judgements, but all agencies had high confidence in the "Russia interfered" judgement. It is also inaccurate to say "moderate" means 60%. That would correspond to a likelihood of a forecast of "Probable", but confidence is a different scale. Moderate Confidence actually means: "credibly sourced and plausible information, but not of sufficient quality or corroboration to warrant a higher level of confidence." [1] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-departme... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com... [3] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3254241-ICA-2017-01.html#document/p1 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3254241-ICA-2017-01....

grandalf 10y ago
There is apparently a protocol for actual intelligence service findings, and this document did not follow that protocol. It was thus simply created to serve a political/PR purpose. The sloppiness of its construction, its reliance upon boilerplate content lifted from other places, and its confident conclusion unsupported by data are all big differences from the professional style that is typically used in intelligence document