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I mean, the Department of Homeland Security under Trump has publicly stated that Russia attempted to hack voter rolls in at least 21 states, no?[1] Trump did fi

• rdtsc 9y ago
  > Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems. Right, that's exactly the type of news I meant. It is worded to sound like there was kind of a major breach or votes were almost altered. Only further down in the article we see: "Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems." Anyone running or maintaining production systems connected to the public internet is scanned and pinged all the time by everyone from Russia, China, Europe, etc. I was running a relatively unknown service for a few clients and ended up blacklisting whole countries' IP ranges and moving ssh to non-default ports just to avoid all the log noise, from constant pinging attempted logins. If that scanning + the Russians buying Facebook ads, and then got pitched by Twitter to advertise there as well is all there is, it's just not enough compared to the amount of money and time spent talking about for months on end. > Trump did fire the head of the FBI who was leading the investigation into his campaigns ties with Russia, and then admitted that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he did it.[2] Indeed. So I was on /r/politics and we were discussing how finally Comey was testifying on Thursday and we should all watch. It was finally the end of Trump. Comey will lay the cards on the table and tell us all about the Russian interference. I never bought into the "Russians" story as is, I always thought it was clever PR trick and all, but I was excited about Comey's testimony. Except nothing happened. He said that Trump was mean to him basically. > There is even a special counsel investigating Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. Mueller has been investigating the dossier so we will see if any parts of it were accurate. I don't believe they have anything substantial to justify the hysteria so far. At this point with the amount of talk and time spent on this, it would have to be something like a blackmail file or literally Russian hackers in the bushes in Wisconsin twiddling vote counts on the machines. If any of those things had happened, I have no doubt it would have leaked to the press by now and media and everyone would be talking about. People involved are invested enough in getting rid of Trump that they wouldn't be waiting for a year if there was anything juicy there. One dangerous thing that I see happening is that there is an opportunity cost. Every minute or time spend on this Russia thing, is a minute not spent on seeing how to organize better politically, maybe clean up the DNC, form a new party. Just yelling "Trump is stupid" and "Russia" and having protests over and over will ensure another re-election for him.
  • steve_musk 9y ago
    > It is worded to sound like there was kind of a major breach or votes were almost altered. I agree with you here, the headline is over the top. I do think there is too much hype about anything Russian-related. However, I think you are misrepresenting what the article actually says. This preparatory activity seems like more than just scanning port 22. A few sentences later: "Officials said there were some attempts to compromise networks, but most were unsuccessful. Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems." And "The Wisconsin Election Commission, for example, said the state’s systems were targeted by “Russian government cyber actors.” So the Russian government was trying to break into US election infrastructure. Does this justify the breathless coverage of the "Russia Scandal" on the news? Maybe not (but 24/7 news is always outraged about something). But does this mean the Russia thing is on the level of crop-dusting conspiracies? No, and it's wrong to suggest that. > He said that Trump was mean to him basically. This sentence seems a bit dishonest. Sure, Trump may have been mean to Comey. But we are talking about the President of the United States firing the head of the investigative body of the Department of Justice, not some playground bully. Comey detailed several instances where he felt Trump was pressuring him to end an investigation into members of his campaign. Trump then fired Comey when he didn't stop the investigations, and said that he was thinking about the Russian investigation when he fired him. Maybe this is mean, but there is clearly something here that should be investigated. > Every minute or time spend on this Russia thing, is a minute not spent on seeing how to organize better politically, maybe clean up the DNC, form a new party. These would all be good things. The biggest impact of the Russia coverage, IMO, is that it insures the Mueller investigation is carried out to its completion and Trump can't silently make it go away. We already know Trump would try to fire the leader of the investigation, he's done it once. I'm not convinced that the investigation will find anything, but there is enough evidence to justify a full investigation into the Trump campaign's Russian connections.
    • rdtsc 9y ago
      Good news! Mueller did get Manafort. So that's good progress. There is very little about Russia in it though. It was mostly when he represented Ukraine and all the corruption and payments he received from that. > Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems. [...] So the Russian government was trying to break into US election infrastructure. They stole 200k registration records. Was it the Russian government though? Russia and whole Eastern Europe is the origin of a lot of such attacks. Did they alter any votes? I imagine if the system was not secured, the Chinese, and anyone else out the would have eventually found and got the records. If they contain SSNs it would be useful for identify theft. If that's the only evidence of "collusion", it's pretty flimsy and certainly doesn't warrant all the time and effort put into it. The OPM hack which lead a lot of intimate details about the lives of millions of US govt workers which hold clearances, was many orders of magnitude worse. Yet, the media and everyone else seems to have largely forgotten about. Nobody talks about Chinese running our government or blackmail dossiers. Even though it would be a lot more plausible given the successful attack there. > Comey detailed several instances where he felt Trump was pressuring him to end an investigation into members of his campaign. Trump then fired Comey when he didn't stop the investigations What if Trump didn't collude with Russia. We have to consider that possibility. Yes he was constantly being accused of it. It would get got annoying after a while. Imagine you're the CEO and one of your subordinates is investigating you for something you didn't do. You might let them do it for a while, so they convince themselves there is nothing there. But after some time enough and enough and if they just seem to waste their time, they'd be let go. They why wouldn't Comey come clean and say exactly what the collusion was and lay everyone on the table so speak. He had nothing to lose, here he was fired for it it was his chance to prove to the world where the collusion was. > Mueller investigation is carried out to its completion and Trump can't silently make it go away. It does go on. So that's good news, and there are nice results already. Another corrupt lobbyist and Republican campaign manager behind bars is a good thing in book.