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U.S. Charges 13 Russians, 3 Companies for Interfering with Election

246 points by uptown 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
neo4sure 9y ago
Well done finally we are doing something about this. We can't allow other countries to meddle in our elections and to get away with it. Much stronger actions may need to be taken once this administration is voted out.
sremani 9y ago
Is this tactically any different from Obama administration indicting Chinese Military Intelligence unit for hacking? No one is in custody!
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  If anyone in the Trump campaign is wittingly linked to the entities in the indictment, that would be trouble.
  - notatoad 9y ago
    it's probably worth noting that this indictment goes out of its way to specify that the campaign officials these entities communicated with were "unwitting" participants, and the indicted parties were posing as americans.
    - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
      Correct, though I'm not sure if that means this represents all connections the Trump campaign may have had with Russians that the SC has found (that we didn't know about previously, e.g. Manafort in Ukraine).
    - 52-6F-62 9y ago
      The Deputy AG was questioned about this at his brief presser. He was very careful in his response saying "...this indictment makes no accusations..." He refused to comment outside of this particular indictment which is rather narrow in scope relative to the investigation, and had no comment from the special counsel.
- notatoad 9y ago
  i'm not quite sure what you mean by "tactically", but this is significantly different because it's not the administration. Trump has been insisting that any suggestion of russian election interference is a hoax, and now the justice department is indicting russians for interfering in the election.
  - whatok 9y ago
    Trump has been insisting that they had no collaboration with Russians; not that Russians did not interfere with the election.
    - rhcom2 9y ago
      He continually undercuts and minimizes any interference. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/13/politics/trump-unconvinced-russia-meddled-election/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/13/politics/trump-unconvince...
    - NearAP 9y ago
      1) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/trump-is-back-to-calling-russian-election-interference-a-hoax https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/trump-is-back-to-cal... 2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald-trump-pursues-vladimir-putin-russian-election-hacking/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-...
    - okaram 9y ago
      Actually, he has claimed they didn't interfere many times ... for example: "President Trump said on Saturday that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin was sincere in his denials of interference in the 2016 presidential elections" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/world/asia/trump-putin-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/world/asia/trump-putin-el...
    - bomb199 9y ago
      Incorrect. See the only place Trump speaks: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/843865267008655360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fpolitics%2Fwashington%2Fla-na-essential-washington-updates-comey-rejects-tweet-by-president-trump-1490037267-htmlstory.html https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/843865267008655360?ref_src=...
- tootie 9y ago
  Its to send a message and to make the case publicly. We're probably never going to get any of these guys either. We can ask Putin to hand them over and he'll say "no" and then we'll just be out in the open about where everyone stands.
- kevinburke 9y ago
  A lot of people in the US still don't believe Russians interfered in the election, and/or that they interfered to support Trump's candidacy. I believe this is mostly designed to show them (1) yes, they were doing a lot, and (2) it was aimed at disparaging Clinton and supporting Trump. Similarly, the US government hasn't really taken any steps to prevent future meddling in US elections. The goal may have also been to serve as a wake up call to our elected officials to take this issue seriously.
  - GVIrish 9y ago
    The indictment is not about PR, it is about punishing Russian nationals who participated in this op. The long arm of US law enforcement may not be able to get these folks in Russia, but it can prevent them from traveling in many countries around the world, and can result in their assets being frozen. The other thing is that if any of the individuals involved come to fear for their safety from Putin's government, these indictments will be a strong motivator for them to rat other parts of the Russian intelligence apparatus.
dbatten 9y ago
Can someone change hacking in title to interfering with?
- dang 9y ago
  Sure. Thanks for the suggestion.
  - heurist 9y ago
    Social hacking is still hacking.
allthenews 9y ago
Misleading headline, this was social engineering, not hacking.
- acdha 9y ago
  Hacking has long included social engineering, as with any other lateral approach. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick
wtf_is_up 9y ago
"""Hacking"""
Tech-Noir 9y ago
Mueller Accuses Russians of Aiding Trump, Assailing Clinton U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced an indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities, accusing them of interfering in the 2016 presidential election and operating fake social media accounts. They used false personas and social media while also staging political rallies and communicating with “unwitting individuals” associated with the Trump campaign, it said. Which seems to be the entire story.
- uptown 9y ago
  "with a deliberately inflammatory and made up title." The Bloomberg.com story title has changed at least three times since the story's initial publication. If you're going to accuse people of things, please make sure your facts are correct.
  - Tech-Noir 9y ago
    How do I check Bloomberg's title change history? Are you saying within the 5 minutes you posted they changed it? > please make sure your facts are correct. Likewise. Edit: removed the word "own" from "please make sure your own facts are correct."
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - nthompson 9y ago
      A-B testing of article titles should be regarded as a breach of journalist ethics.
      - codezero 9y ago
        Why? I’m not an expert on ethical standards so I’m curious what a variable title would mean.
    - uptown 9y ago
reaperducer 9y ago
Man, I wish those pesky Russians would stop interfering with U.S. elections. Last time, Boris and Natasha were outside the polling place and wouldn't let me in. Oh, wait. No, I was perfectly able to vote for the candidates of my choice based on the research I'd done as an informed voter. I wasn't prevented from exercising my right to vote at all. I've never understood this whole Russian voting paranoia. It's not like the U.S. doesn't try to influence politics in other countries via the media. Radio Marti, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, etc... And it's not just the governments. Look at the millions both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and allied organizations received from overseas donors and politicians (especially UK). I'm sure American millionaires back foreign candidates, too. The whole system is a mess.
- artmageddon 9y ago
  > Last time, Boris and Natasha were outside the polling place and wouldn't let me in. Tell that to Moose and Squirrel.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  This is really just a hilariously (and overly politically charged) small distraction from the real problem. > I wasn't prevented from exercising my right to vote at all. Where things get interesting is the way votes are collected/counted in many locations. Electronic voting machines are a mess of proprietary software, and more than a few that have gotten their hands on them were apalled at how inherently easy it is to compromise them[1]. Tapering with an election this way, by virtually denying you your right to vote by not counting your vote, or changing it, is a real concern that we are doing practically nothing about. 1. https://www.wired.com/story/voting-machine-hacks-defcon/ https://www.wired.com/story/voting-machine-hacks-defcon/
- outsidetheparty 9y ago
  > based on the research I'd done as an informed voter. The problem is that plenty of voters thought they were equally "informed" by "research," which turns out to have been fraudulent. > I've never understood this whole Russian voting paranoia. "The indictment charges that the foreigners falsely posed as American citizens, stole identities and otherwise engaged in fraud and deceit in an effort to influence the U.S. political process." Not comparable to Radio Liberty et al. > Look at the millions both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and allied organizations received from overseas donors and politicians Where are you getting your well-informed research, exactly? "Foreign nationals, other than lawful permanent residents, are completely banned from donating to candidates or parties, or making independent expenditures in federal, state or local elections." https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/supreme-court-retains-ban-on-foreign-campaign-donations/ https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/supreme-court... (One of the many Trump scandals is that they broke that law, by allegedly soliciting overseas donations (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/29/trump-campaign-donations-foreign-politicians https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/29/trump-campai...). If there's evidence that the Clinton campaign did the same, I'd be very interested to see a source or citation.)
yursadgh 9y ago
Magically this makes the front page but nothing on the unmasking, 702 scandal.
- seizethecheese 9y ago
  Go on...
  - mkhalil 9y ago
    I think he meant section 702. https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-continuing-fallout-from-trump-and-nuness-fake-scandal https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-continuing-fal...
    - jidjidbjf 9y ago
      Go read the 100 page fisa court memo. Go read the numerous text messages, go reread how unmasking send incidental collection works. Our intelligence services were weaponized to spy on the opposition party illegally during an election year. Senior FBI, DOJ, and Obama white house officials have engaged in a coordinated attempt to prevent Trump from gaining office and once in office to mire his presidency in scandal and possibly even impeachment. All the facts are coming to light, But most commenters here are letting the media completely filter their information. Ill be surprised if my comment sees the light of day.
      - lawnchair_larry 9y ago
        So I did read the original sources and the text messages, and they contain nothing like what you describe. Did you read them?
      - mkhalil 9y ago
        If you really feel strongly about it, why don't you publish a write up and stick behind what you believe is something we should all hear about, rather than post uncited garble and tell us to read a 100 page court memo with a throwaway account.
Glyptodon 9y ago
I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election." I also think the notion that there's a way to prevent external actors from influencing internal affairs in an ostensibly free and open republic in a networked world is somewhat... ill conceived: a democracy so fragile it needs a great firewall of some kind to protect its citizens from "fake" and "unhealthy" views is probably already on the road to failure. If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective. And of course that's not to mention all the inconsistent double standards. Where's the outrage over things like Confucius Institutes and other similar influence operations? And that's not even getting in to the whole "do as I say, not as I do" aspect, where we try to pretend that dictatorships and totalitarian states should see our pro-democracy pro-human rights initiatives and NGOs and VOA and such as perfectly fine and friendly and obviously different than RT, etc. The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well.
- antidaily 9y ago
  We don't need a great firewall, just Facebook and Twitter to get their fucking shit together. Also, there's more to charges this than just social engineering. They actually did hack voting commission data.
  - dbatten 9y ago
    What do you mean by that? Filtering billions of posts, trying to figure out which ones are "real news" vs. "fake news," and which ones come from well-meaning vs. nefarious actors, AND doing so in a way that is not only politically neutral but also perceived as politically neutral is a MASSIVELY non-trivial problem. Even if you think the social networks should be trying to solve this problem (and some would argue that it's a hornets nest they would do well to avoid), acting as if they're being negligent or incompetent because they haven't figured it out already is a bit unfair.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jonwachob91 9y ago
Lots of news reports about this, but none provide a link to the actual indictment... Does it usually take awhile to get posted on the DOJ website?
- sandslash 9y ago
  Here you go: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rwUFGxaf6nlA/v0 https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rwUFGxaf... And link to DOJ page: https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/ https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/
- asveikau 9y ago
  > Lots of news reports about this, but none provide a link to the actual indictment... NYT's report had it near the top of the article, although the topic was below the recent Florida news on the front page.
kyleblarson 9y ago
'They spent thousands of dollars a month to buy advertisements on social media groups, while carefully tracking the size of U.S. audiences they reached, according to the indictment.' This sounds like an incredibly well funded, sophisticated operation. They bought some ads and used google analytics.
- herbst 9y ago
  > THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS Agreed
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    That always struck me as weird too. A few thousand a month is barely a drop in the bucket as far as ad campaigns go. Either the CPM was so low that practically nobody was seeing the ads or the CPC was so high that the budget would be exhausted rapidly (and practically nobody would see the ads).
    - rflrob 9y ago
      I'm in no way an expert in social media advertising, but the claims that I've heard are that the ad buys were hyper-targeted to swing districts. Incidentally, it's been suggested that this implies that the Russians were in secret coordination with Cambridge Analytica (the data firm that worked with the Trump Campaign). On the other hand, I think it's consistent with the following model: Assume that Putin has a longstanding grudge against Clinton and wants to undermine what he assumes will be her presidency [1]. Let's further assume that the budget for this operation will be low—on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands (plus salary for operatives), compared to the hundreds of millions spent by the campaigns [2]. Any reasonably savvy head of this operation would lean towards a start-up model—i.e. very aggressively targeting swing districts. Thinking up ways to target the most swing-able people for the fewest number of dollars is very much worth your time if your time is relatively inexpensive and you don't have tons and tons of money to spend. Is it possible that they received targeting data from people associated with the campaign? Sure, but I don't think that hypertargeting implies that they did. [1] http://observer.com/2016/06/she-isnt-president-yet-but-russia-already-hates-hillary-clinton/ http://observer.com/2016/06/she-isnt-president-yet-but-russi... [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16 https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16
dmitrygr 9y ago
I am curious, how can you charge someone for what amounts to speech - something that the 1st amendment clearly guarantees freedom of?
- azernik 9y ago
  From WaPo's write-up: "The suspects are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft."
- gethoht 9y ago
  There are clear laws regarding how foreign nationals can or cannot interact with elections in the US. https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/
  - dmitrygr 9y ago
    However, SCOTUS has ruled time and time again that US constitution applies not only to citizens, but to everyone in the country (and US laws would not apply to anyone entirely out of the country), so said laws might not hold up to SCOTUS scrutiny (this might end up changing elections forever, much like the Citizens United ruling)
    - davesque 9y ago
      That doesn't mean anything until SCOTUS sets an actual precedent showing that such concerns can supersede election laws involving foreign agents.
herbst 9y ago
The thing is. If one side is allowed to do propaganda why should the other side be not allowed to. Obviously hacking into systems and releasing internal data is a step to far. But I don't see the general problem of propaganda as long all sides are doing it. Well sure I do see the issue but this is just how a open society works.
- tootie 9y ago
  The FEC says who is allowed to run propaganda. You have to be registered as a PAC to run political ads. And you're not allowed to use foreign money. Even groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Citizen's United were registered with the IRS and all their communications were clearly attributed.
  - herbst 9y ago
    Wait there are central entities that control who is allowed to do propaganda within their border? This sounds wrong on all ends
    - tootie 9y ago
      Only who is allowed to do it professionally. And it's incredibly easy to obtain permission. There's very few barriers. It just has to be disclosed.
- soundwave106 9y ago
  Is your argument also that a government is not allowed to get upset about disinformation propaganda efforts conducted by foreign states in their territory?
squozzer 9y ago
It bothers me a little about the Russians "supporting" Trump AND Bernie. It sounds a little too "on the nose." As if the Russians expected to be caught one day and wanted to make sure a certain political viewpoint would be tainted.
- jbattle 9y ago
  You got downvoted, but yeah - I do think that's part of the plan. To sow confusion and distrust. An article on NPR talked about how russian bots were playing both sides of the gun control question in the last few days. If the goal is just to destabilize US politics, then consistency is no virtue.
HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
I eagerly await the investigation into Israeli interference of the last 10 US presidential elections.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > I eagerly await the investigation into Israeli interference of the last 10 US presidential elections From ¶ 1 of the indictment [1]: "U.S. law...bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General." It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government. It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90). [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Research-Agency-Indictment.html#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a] [a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-for-conspiracy-2498f173-ad1a-4609-b233-c40ea0c041dc.html https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...
  - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
    I suspect more than lobbying is going on. There's certainly more evidence for that than there was for Russian interference - and look what that investigation has brought up. It will never happen though.
    - ivraatiems 9y ago
      Please provide some of this evidence.
      - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
        AIPAC, who have a well documented history of interference, and have controversially managed to avoid registering themselves under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
smsm42 9y ago
> Mueller describes a sweeping, years-long, multimillion-dollar conspiracy by hundreds of Russians aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump Since when criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump is a crime one can be indicted for? I know millions of Americans engaged in multibillion-dollar conspiracy aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump (the last two probably not at the same time :). I can get why hacking into private email is something worth indictment. I don't see how "criticizing Hillary Clinton" can even appear in indictment as something that is worth being prosecuted for.
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  The illegal part is related to the fact that foreign Russian nationals were funding it.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    It sounds extremely bizarre to me that it's OK to criticize Hillary Clinton, it's OK to do it when getting salary from, say, CNN (though not that it would ever happen... ok, from Fox News, right?) but not OK to do the same if you get the same salary from, say, RT. It's like freedom of speech suddenly depends on where your money come from and whether any of it were in hands of Russians before. That's one weird interpretation of the First Amendment.
    - davesque 9y ago
      Doesn't the first amendment apply to citizens of the United States and not to hostile foreign agents? The problem is that the Russians do not have the country's best interests in mind when they try to influence an election. On the other hand, the anchors on CNN, even though one might disagree with them, do have the country's best interests in mind because they're invested in the situation as citizens.
      - pcvarmint 9y ago
Cknight70 9y ago
A bit off topic, but generally (not specifically Russian election influence) I get the impression people in the US are anti Russia. They don't want to strengthen relationships with Russia. Why is this? Edit: I didn't mean this to seem like a loaded question, I really am just curious.
- kevinburke 9y ago
  Gay rights, Olympic doping, Magnitsky, poisoning journalists, invading the Ukraine, illiberal government and kompromat come to mind...
  - squozzer 9y ago
    It goes back a little farther than that. Cold War. I know, I was there, man!
  - sjsbsh 9y ago
    Ok so go through all of that and ask yourself: “are these reasons serious in light of our own behavior” I mean of course our good friend and ally, Saudi Arabia. Where would you rather be gay? Jeddah or Moscow? I mean of course our 60 year alliance w/ Turkey. Who has occupied half of Cyprus for 40 years. Olympics? Talk about hypocrisy! I remember when there some cancer boy beating all the dopped up Europeans on the Tour. But he wasn’t on drugs, the Europeans were jealous. Magnistky. What about him? However, in the land of the free, can I please be allowed to see the “The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes,“? Or give me a good argument why I should consider Nekrasov a Putin agent. Illiberal government? Thats a joke. Do you know the friends we keep? Poisoning journalists? Do you know what J. Assange’s original sin was? Ukraine? How many countries are we illegally in right now? (Obama boasted bombing 11) komprobat? Isn’t that what J. Edgar Hoover collected? Look, you don’t have to like the Ruskies. Lord knows they’re annoying. But don’t be a hypocrite. It’s unbecoming.
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    If you're American, aren't you supposed to be for democracy? I understand your point about kompromat... But shoudn't the Russian people be the ones dealing with gay rights, poisoning journalists, illiberal government, and shouldn't the Europeans be the ones dealing with Ukraine? Why do you go around giving your opinion about other people's countries? Mind your business!
Zigurd 9y ago
It is appalling that some here consider this a pot-meet-kettle kind of thing. The US has influenced, to the point of running them as puppets, many governments. That's bad, and mostly needless and to the US's long term disadvantage. But there is a reason we have a law named after Sergei Magnitsky, and there is no mirror image of that in Putin's rump empire. There is no equivalence here, and no viable claim that "everybody does it."
jstewartmobile 9y ago
Question for fellow Americans getting worked-up about this: Considering that we A) have meddled in elections throughout the world--especially in the middle east and latin america--for the enitre post-war period, B) have done it using substantially more resources, and C) have militarily "intervened" in countries that posed no real threat to us--resulting in substantial losses of innocent life and property, how do you manage to still feel indignation instead of some mixture of guilt and karma? This is not a rhetorical question. I am actually curious about the thought process here.
- specializeded 9y ago
  States couldn’t give less of a fuck about karma or guilt so neither do I. There are teams, people play.
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    With the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, things seem to work out better when you straighten-up and take your licks. If that's sci-fi, then fair enough.
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      The United States of America is not a religious organization
      - jstewartmobile 9y ago
        Never said it was.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- GVIrish 9y ago
  Being an American doesn't mean one agrees with everything the United States has ever done. The US Gov't has absolutely done mean and nasty things around the world that has caused suffering for millions of people. Still doesn't mean Americans should be happy with one our biggest adversaries subverting our government. Even with all of America's sins, things certainly would be worse if Putin were free to damage and pervert our democracy to suit his whims.
quantumofmalice 9y ago
Will AIPAC similarly be charged?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
vthallam 9y ago
Forget about whether russia had used the bots to influence elections. I was really surprised that Hillary with all the Silicon Valley support couldn't built a team to counter these. On the election day, the Trump tweet in the morning got a million favs and Hillary hardly got 200K. When I looked at it, I was shocked about how dismal Hillary's tech team is.
- codezero 9y ago
  It’s hard to tell what you think Hillary should have done better, can you elaborate?
  - vthallam 9y ago
    Yes. For a start, realizing the impact of the bots on FB and Twitter and countering them with more bots. There's some really dark stuff on FB groups and twitter bots which reply with images to popular accounts. You could counter by bots which could favorite better tweets and stop the propaganda.
    - codezero 9y ago
      You think she wouldn’t have been derided for the use of bots, but the already effective and operational botnet working against her?
crb002 9y ago
The US Supreme Court ruled that fake news is not illegal under the 1st Amendment, United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012). Muller is attempting to turn the US into a totalitarian state where you can be prosecuted for saying something that is not truthful in the public sphere. When Thomas Jefferson ran against Adams they threw all kind of fake news like calling the other a hermaphrodite. When the government gets to decide what is true/false, that is the definition of totalitarianism.
- abvdasker 9y ago
  That Mueller's team would somehow want to erode the First Amendment is a pretty extreme belief bordering on conspiracy theory. I think this is less about material truth or lies and more about the fact that these ads were meant to influence US elections and paid for by foreign interests. Many US-based organizations can and do produce baseless "fake news" but it isn't seen as much of a problem because they represent the views of some kind of voting constituency.
  - davesque 9y ago
    Bordering on conspiracy theory? He just said Mueller want to turn the US into a totalitarian state. That qualifies as an honest to God conspiracy theory in my book.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > The US Supreme Court ruled that fake news is not illegal under the 1st Amendment It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government (or the American people). It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3 of the indictment [1]) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90). Also, from ¶ 1 of the indictment [1]: "U.S. law...bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General." [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Research-Agency-Indictment.html#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a] [a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-for-conspiracy-2498f173-ad1a-4609-b233-c40ea0c041dc.html https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Chuckled at this part of the indictment [1]: "Defendants and their co-conspirtors thereafter destroyed evidence for the purpose of impeding the investigation. On or about September 13, 2017, KAVERZINA wrote in an email to a family member: 'We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke). So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with colleagues.' KAVERZINA further wrote, "I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people." Guess they skimped on opsec training? [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Research-Agency-Indictment.html#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a], page 24 [a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-for-conspiracy-2498f173-ad1a-4609-b233-c40ea0c041dc.html https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...
anigbrowl 9y ago
This guilty plea of a California man who engaged in helping circumvent payment security features from 2014-17 in relation to the information warfare effort just came out as well. https://www.justice.gov/file/1035547/download https://www.justice.gov/file/1035547/download
puppetmaster40 9y ago
Is there anyone with a Science or Engineering background or training who can put forth data that Russians influenced election for Trump? I ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/vic-c/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/vic-c/ ) would love to see something like that. Anyone with a Science or Engineering, please give me some data - that they believe to be credible. Please show me.
- puppetmaster40 9y ago
  Downvoted for asking what is the evidence?
  - codezero 9y ago
    What data do you propose as a convincing argument and how do you expect someone on hacker news to have a silver bullet? If this data were easily available and accessible in a transparent way, there wouldn’t need to be a long ongoing national agency level investigation.
    - puppetmaster40 9y ago
      What is the best we have?
      - codezero 9y ago
        That didn’t answer my question at all. Let me be more concrete. It appears you have the very background you are requesting. What approach or approaches would you take to convince others?
        puppetmaster40 9y ago
        My answer would be: there is no credible or valid evidence. Hence I asked. Muller cited these specific posts as examples: http://archive.is/5sEEo http://archive.is/5sEEo
fwdpropaganda 9y ago
As a European, here's a question to our American friends in general, and American Republicans in particular: Does it disturb you at all that apparently the Russians plan to mess up with you is to impersonate accounts to post stuff which is indistinguishable from what actual Republicans post?
bb88 9y ago
Can HN stop promoting sites with autoplay videos? What if I ask pretty please with sugar on top?
throwaway5752 9y ago
This is without a doubt the most important story for the software industry in the world today. This is going to change regulation and policy in the US for the rest of the lives of everyone old enough to be posting here. How it's not on the frontpage is unfathomable. Just because it creates conflict is not a good reason for this not to be front and center. They detailed the process the Russian agents used to procure computing resources, how they stole identities, and their methodology. They somehow have personal communications. Facebook is in a very, very precarious place. So will be Google and Twitter. Anyone involved in selling ads or marketing should have read the whole indictment. Tens of billions of revenue per quarter have exposure to this scandal. There is also enormous opportunity for startups that will inevitably be needed. Honestly, as a hacker, the methodologies just on their own are of interest. edit: lest anyone say it's political, it's not. If this was APT 12 acting on behalf of the Democratic party (purely hypothetical) then what would the Republican party reaction be? The tools are out there, and they will be used again, regardless of party.
kadenshep 9y ago
How come this is no longer present on the main index, pages 1 - 5?

246 points by uptown 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Well done finally we are doing something about this. We can't allow other countries to meddle in our elections and to get away with it. Much stronger actions may need to be taken once this administration is voted out.

sremani 9y ago

Is this tactically any different from Obama administration indicting Chinese Military Intelligence unit for hacking? No one is in custody!

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
If anyone in the Trump campaign is wittingly linked to the entities in the indictment, that would be trouble.
- notatoad 9y ago
  it's probably worth noting that this indictment goes out of its way to specify that the campaign officials these entities communicated with were "unwitting" participants, and the indicted parties were posing as americans.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    Correct, though I'm not sure if that means this represents all connections the Trump campaign may have had with Russians that the SC has found (that we didn't know about previously, e.g. Manafort in Ukraine).
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    The Deputy AG was questioned about this at his brief presser. He was very careful in his response saying "...this indictment makes no accusations..." He refused to comment outside of this particular indictment which is rather narrow in scope relative to the investigation, and had no comment from the special counsel.
notatoad 9y ago
i'm not quite sure what you mean by "tactically", but this is significantly different because it's not the administration. Trump has been insisting that any suggestion of russian election interference is a hoax, and now the justice department is indicting russians for interfering in the election.
- whatok 9y ago
  Trump has been insisting that they had no collaboration with Russians; not that Russians did not interfere with the election.
  - rhcom2 9y ago
    He continually undercuts and minimizes any interference. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/13/politics/trump-unconvinced-russia-meddled-election/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/13/politics/trump-unconvince...
  - NearAP 9y ago
    1) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/trump-is-back-to-calling-russian-election-interference-a-hoax https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/trump-is-back-to-cal... 2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald-trump-pursues-vladimir-putin-russian-election-hacking/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-...
  - okaram 9y ago
    Actually, he has claimed they didn't interfere many times ... for example: "President Trump said on Saturday that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin was sincere in his denials of interference in the 2016 presidential elections" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/world/asia/trump-putin-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/world/asia/trump-putin-el...
  - bomb199 9y ago
    Incorrect. See the only place Trump speaks: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/843865267008655360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fpolitics%2Fwashington%2Fla-na-essential-washington-updates-comey-rejects-tweet-by-president-trump-1490037267-htmlstory.html https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/843865267008655360?ref_src=...
tootie 9y ago
Its to send a message and to make the case publicly. We're probably never going to get any of these guys either. We can ask Putin to hand them over and he'll say "no" and then we'll just be out in the open about where everyone stands.
kevinburke 9y ago
A lot of people in the US still don't believe Russians interfered in the election, and/or that they interfered to support Trump's candidacy. I believe this is mostly designed to show them (1) yes, they were doing a lot, and (2) it was aimed at disparaging Clinton and supporting Trump. Similarly, the US government hasn't really taken any steps to prevent future meddling in US elections. The goal may have also been to serve as a wake up call to our elected officials to take this issue seriously.
- GVIrish 9y ago
  The indictment is not about PR, it is about punishing Russian nationals who participated in this op. The long arm of US law enforcement may not be able to get these folks in Russia, but it can prevent them from traveling in many countries around the world, and can result in their assets being frozen. The other thing is that if any of the individuals involved come to fear for their safety from Putin's government, these indictments will be a strong motivator for them to rat other parts of the Russian intelligence apparatus.

dbatten 9y ago

Can someone change hacking in title to interfering with?

dang 9y ago
Sure. Thanks for the suggestion.
- heurist 9y ago
  Social hacking is still hacking.

allthenews 9y ago

Misleading headline, this was social engineering, not hacking.

acdha 9y ago
Hacking has long included social engineering, as with any other lateral approach. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

wtf_is_up 9y ago

"""Hacking"""

Tech-Noir 9y ago

Mueller Accuses Russians of Aiding Trump, Assailing Clinton U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced an indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities, accusing them of interfering in the 2016 presidential election and operating fake social media accounts. They used false personas and social media while also staging political rallies and communicating with “unwitting individuals” associated with the Trump campaign, it said. Which seems to be the entire story.

uptown 9y ago
"with a deliberately inflammatory and made up title." The Bloomberg.com story title has changed at least three times since the story's initial publication. If you're going to accuse people of things, please make sure your facts are correct.
- Tech-Noir 9y ago
  How do I check Bloomberg's title change history? Are you saying within the 5 minutes you posted they changed it? > please make sure your facts are correct. Likewise. Edit: removed the word "own" from "please make sure your own facts are correct."
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nthompson 9y ago
    A-B testing of article titles should be regarded as a breach of journalist ethics.
    - codezero 9y ago
      Why? I’m not an expert on ethical standards so I’m curious what a variable title would mean.
  - uptown 9y ago

reaperducer 9y ago

Man, I wish those pesky Russians would stop interfering with U.S. elections. Last time, Boris and Natasha were outside the polling place and wouldn't let me in. Oh, wait. No, I was perfectly able to vote for the candidates of my choice based on the research I'd done as an informed voter. I wasn't prevented from exercising my right to vote at all. I've never understood this whole Russian voting paranoia. It's not like the U.S. doesn't try to influence politics in other countries via the media. Radio Marti, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, etc... And it's not just the governments. Look at the millions both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and allied organizations received from overseas donors and politicians (especially UK). I'm sure American millionaires back foreign candidates, too. The whole system is a mess.

artmageddon 9y ago
> Last time, Boris and Natasha were outside the polling place and wouldn't let me in. Tell that to Moose and Squirrel.
craftyguy 9y ago
This is really just a hilariously (and overly politically charged) small distraction from the real problem. > I wasn't prevented from exercising my right to vote at all. Where things get interesting is the way votes are collected/counted in many locations. Electronic voting machines are a mess of proprietary software, and more than a few that have gotten their hands on them were apalled at how inherently easy it is to compromise them[1]. Tapering with an election this way, by virtually denying you your right to vote by not counting your vote, or changing it, is a real concern that we are doing practically nothing about. 1. https://www.wired.com/story/voting-machine-hacks-defcon/ https://www.wired.com/story/voting-machine-hacks-defcon/
outsidetheparty 9y ago
> based on the research I'd done as an informed voter. The problem is that plenty of voters thought they were equally "informed" by "research," which turns out to have been fraudulent. > I've never understood this whole Russian voting paranoia. "The indictment charges that the foreigners falsely posed as American citizens, stole identities and otherwise engaged in fraud and deceit in an effort to influence the U.S. political process." Not comparable to Radio Liberty et al. > Look at the millions both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and allied organizations received from overseas donors and politicians Where are you getting your well-informed research, exactly? "Foreign nationals, other than lawful permanent residents, are completely banned from donating to candidates or parties, or making independent expenditures in federal, state or local elections." https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/supreme-court-retains-ban-on-foreign-campaign-donations/ https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/supreme-court... (One of the many Trump scandals is that they broke that law, by allegedly soliciting overseas donations (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/29/trump-campaign-donations-foreign-politicians https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/29/trump-campai...). If there's evidence that the Clinton campaign did the same, I'd be very interested to see a source or citation.)

yursadgh 9y ago

Magically this makes the front page but nothing on the unmasking, 702 scandal.

seizethecheese 9y ago
Go on...
- mkhalil 9y ago
  I think he meant section 702. https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-continuing-fallout-from-trump-and-nuness-fake-scandal https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-continuing-fal...
  - jidjidbjf 9y ago
    Go read the 100 page fisa court memo. Go read the numerous text messages, go reread how unmasking send incidental collection works. Our intelligence services were weaponized to spy on the opposition party illegally during an election year. Senior FBI, DOJ, and Obama white house officials have engaged in a coordinated attempt to prevent Trump from gaining office and once in office to mire his presidency in scandal and possibly even impeachment. All the facts are coming to light, But most commenters here are letting the media completely filter their information. Ill be surprised if my comment sees the light of day.
    - lawnchair_larry 9y ago
      So I did read the original sources and the text messages, and they contain nothing like what you describe. Did you read them?
    - mkhalil 9y ago
      If you really feel strongly about it, why don't you publish a write up and stick behind what you believe is something we should all hear about, rather than post uncited garble and tell us to read a 100 page court memo with a throwaway account.

Glyptodon 9y ago

I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election." I also think the notion that there's a way to prevent external actors from influencing internal affairs in an ostensibly free and open republic in a networked world is somewhat... ill conceived: a democracy so fragile it needs a great firewall of some kind to protect its citizens from "fake" and "unhealthy" views is probably already on the road to failure. If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective. And of course that's not to mention all the inconsistent double standards. Where's the outrage over things like Confucius Institutes and other similar influence operations? And that's not even getting in to the whole "do as I say, not as I do" aspect, where we try to pretend that dictatorships and totalitarian states should see our pro-democracy pro-human rights initiatives and NGOs and VOA and such as perfectly fine and friendly and obviously different than RT, etc. The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well.

antidaily 9y ago
We don't need a great firewall, just Facebook and Twitter to get their fucking shit together. Also, there's more to charges this than just social engineering. They actually did hack voting commission data.
- dbatten 9y ago
  What do you mean by that? Filtering billions of posts, trying to figure out which ones are "real news" vs. "fake news," and which ones come from well-meaning vs. nefarious actors, AND doing so in a way that is not only politically neutral but also perceived as politically neutral is a MASSIVELY non-trivial problem. Even if you think the social networks should be trying to solve this problem (and some would argue that it's a hornets nest they would do well to avoid), acting as if they're being negligent or incompetent because they haven't figured it out already is a bit unfair.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jonwachob91 9y ago

Lots of news reports about this, but none provide a link to the actual indictment... Does it usually take awhile to get posted on the DOJ website?

sandslash 9y ago
Here you go: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rwUFGxaf6nlA/v0 https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rwUFGxaf... And link to DOJ page: https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/ https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/
asveikau 9y ago
> Lots of news reports about this, but none provide a link to the actual indictment... NYT's report had it near the top of the article, although the topic was below the recent Florida news on the front page.

kyleblarson 9y ago

'They spent thousands of dollars a month to buy advertisements on social media groups, while carefully tracking the size of U.S. audiences they reached, according to the indictment.' This sounds like an incredibly well funded, sophisticated operation. They bought some ads and used google analytics.

herbst 9y ago
> THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS Agreed
- Karunamon 9y ago
  That always struck me as weird too. A few thousand a month is barely a drop in the bucket as far as ad campaigns go. Either the CPM was so low that practically nobody was seeing the ads or the CPC was so high that the budget would be exhausted rapidly (and practically nobody would see the ads).
  - rflrob 9y ago
    I'm in no way an expert in social media advertising, but the claims that I've heard are that the ad buys were hyper-targeted to swing districts. Incidentally, it's been suggested that this implies that the Russians were in secret coordination with Cambridge Analytica (the data firm that worked with the Trump Campaign). On the other hand, I think it's consistent with the following model: Assume that Putin has a longstanding grudge against Clinton and wants to undermine what he assumes will be her presidency [1]. Let's further assume that the budget for this operation will be low—on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands (plus salary for operatives), compared to the hundreds of millions spent by the campaigns [2]. Any reasonably savvy head of this operation would lean towards a start-up model—i.e. very aggressively targeting swing districts. Thinking up ways to target the most swing-able people for the fewest number of dollars is very much worth your time if your time is relatively inexpensive and you don't have tons and tons of money to spend. Is it possible that they received targeting data from people associated with the campaign? Sure, but I don't think that hypertargeting implies that they did. [1] http://observer.com/2016/06/she-isnt-president-yet-but-russia-already-hates-hillary-clinton/ http://observer.com/2016/06/she-isnt-president-yet-but-russi... [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16 https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16

dmitrygr 9y ago

I am curious, how can you charge someone for what amounts to speech - something that the 1st amendment clearly guarantees freedom of?

azernik 9y ago
From WaPo's write-up: "The suspects are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft."
gethoht 9y ago
There are clear laws regarding how foreign nationals can or cannot interact with elections in the US. https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/
- dmitrygr 9y ago
  However, SCOTUS has ruled time and time again that US constitution applies not only to citizens, but to everyone in the country (and US laws would not apply to anyone entirely out of the country), so said laws might not hold up to SCOTUS scrutiny (this might end up changing elections forever, much like the Citizens United ruling)
  - davesque 9y ago
    That doesn't mean anything until SCOTUS sets an actual precedent showing that such concerns can supersede election laws involving foreign agents.

herbst 9y ago

The thing is. If one side is allowed to do propaganda why should the other side be not allowed to. Obviously hacking into systems and releasing internal data is a step to far. But I don't see the general problem of propaganda as long all sides are doing it. Well sure I do see the issue but this is just how a open society works.

tootie 9y ago
The FEC says who is allowed to run propaganda. You have to be registered as a PAC to run political ads. And you're not allowed to use foreign money. Even groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Citizen's United were registered with the IRS and all their communications were clearly attributed.
- herbst 9y ago
  Wait there are central entities that control who is allowed to do propaganda within their border? This sounds wrong on all ends
  - tootie 9y ago
    Only who is allowed to do it professionally. And it's incredibly easy to obtain permission. There's very few barriers. It just has to be disclosed.
soundwave106 9y ago
Is your argument also that a government is not allowed to get upset about disinformation propaganda efforts conducted by foreign states in their territory?

squozzer 9y ago

It bothers me a little about the Russians "supporting" Trump AND Bernie. It sounds a little too "on the nose." As if the Russians expected to be caught one day and wanted to make sure a certain political viewpoint would be tainted.

jbattle 9y ago
You got downvoted, but yeah - I do think that's part of the plan. To sow confusion and distrust. An article on NPR talked about how russian bots were playing both sides of the gun control question in the last few days. If the goal is just to destabilize US politics, then consistency is no virtue.

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago

I eagerly await the investigation into Israeli interference of the last 10 US presidential elections.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> I eagerly await the investigation into Israeli interference of the last 10 US presidential elections From ¶ 1 of the indictment [1]: "U.S. law...bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General." It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government. It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90). [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Research-Agency-Indictment.html#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a] [a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-for-conspiracy-2498f173-ad1a-4609-b233-c40ea0c041dc.html https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  I suspect more than lobbying is going on. There's certainly more evidence for that than there was for Russian interference - and look what that investigation has brought up. It will never happen though.
  - ivraatiems 9y ago
    Please provide some of this evidence.
    - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
      AIPAC, who have a well documented history of interference, and have controversially managed to avoid registering themselves under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

smsm42 9y ago

> Mueller describes a sweeping, years-long, multimillion-dollar conspiracy by hundreds of Russians aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump Since when criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump is a crime one can be indicted for? I know millions of Americans engaged in multibillion-dollar conspiracy aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump (the last two probably not at the same time :). I can get why hacking into private email is something worth indictment. I don't see how "criticizing Hillary Clinton" can even appear in indictment as something that is worth being prosecuted for.

TAForObvReasons 9y ago
The illegal part is related to the fact that foreign Russian nationals were funding it.
- smsm42 9y ago
  It sounds extremely bizarre to me that it's OK to criticize Hillary Clinton, it's OK to do it when getting salary from, say, CNN (though not that it would ever happen... ok, from Fox News, right?) but not OK to do the same if you get the same salary from, say, RT. It's like freedom of speech suddenly depends on where your money come from and whether any of it were in hands of Russians before. That's one weird interpretation of the First Amendment.
  - davesque 9y ago
    Doesn't the first amendment apply to citizens of the United States and not to hostile foreign agents? The problem is that the Russians do not have the country's best interests in mind when they try to influence an election. On the other hand, the anchors on CNN, even though one might disagree with them, do have the country's best interests in mind because they're invested in the situation as citizens.
    - pcvarmint 9y ago

Cknight70 9y ago

A bit off topic, but generally (not specifically Russian election influence) I get the impression people in the US are anti Russia. They don't want to strengthen relationships with Russia. Why is this? Edit: I didn't mean this to seem like a loaded question, I really am just curious.

kevinburke 9y ago
Gay rights, Olympic doping, Magnitsky, poisoning journalists, invading the Ukraine, illiberal government and kompromat come to mind...
- squozzer 9y ago
  It goes back a little farther than that. Cold War. I know, I was there, man!
- sjsbsh 9y ago
  Ok so go through all of that and ask yourself: “are these reasons serious in light of our own behavior” I mean of course our good friend and ally, Saudi Arabia. Where would you rather be gay? Jeddah or Moscow? I mean of course our 60 year alliance w/ Turkey. Who has occupied half of Cyprus for 40 years. Olympics? Talk about hypocrisy! I remember when there some cancer boy beating all the dopped up Europeans on the Tour. But he wasn’t on drugs, the Europeans were jealous. Magnistky. What about him? However, in the land of the free, can I please be allowed to see the “The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes,“? Or give me a good argument why I should consider Nekrasov a Putin agent. Illiberal government? Thats a joke. Do you know the friends we keep? Poisoning journalists? Do you know what J. Assange’s original sin was? Ukraine? How many countries are we illegally in right now? (Obama boasted bombing 11) komprobat? Isn’t that what J. Edgar Hoover collected? Look, you don’t have to like the Ruskies. Lord knows they’re annoying. But don’t be a hypocrite. It’s unbecoming.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  If you're American, aren't you supposed to be for democracy? I understand your point about kompromat... But shoudn't the Russian people be the ones dealing with gay rights, poisoning journalists, illiberal government, and shouldn't the Europeans be the ones dealing with Ukraine? Why do you go around giving your opinion about other people's countries? Mind your business!

Zigurd 9y ago

It is appalling that some here consider this a pot-meet-kettle kind of thing. The US has influenced, to the point of running them as puppets, many governments. That's bad, and mostly needless and to the US's long term disadvantage. But there is a reason we have a law named after Sergei Magnitsky, and there is no mirror image of that in Putin's rump empire. There is no equivalence here, and no viable claim that "everybody does it."

jstewartmobile 9y ago

Question for fellow Americans getting worked-up about this: Considering that we A) have meddled in elections throughout the world--especially in the middle east and latin america--for the enitre post-war period, B) have done it using substantially more resources, and C) have militarily "intervened" in countries that posed no real threat to us--resulting in substantial losses of innocent life and property, how do you manage to still feel indignation instead of some mixture of guilt and karma? This is not a rhetorical question. I am actually curious about the thought process here.

specializeded 9y ago
States couldn’t give less of a fuck about karma or guilt so neither do I. There are teams, people play.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  With the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, things seem to work out better when you straighten-up and take your licks. If that's sci-fi, then fair enough.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    The United States of America is not a religious organization
    - jstewartmobile 9y ago
      Never said it was.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
GVIrish 9y ago
Being an American doesn't mean one agrees with everything the United States has ever done. The US Gov't has absolutely done mean and nasty things around the world that has caused suffering for millions of people. Still doesn't mean Americans should be happy with one our biggest adversaries subverting our government. Even with all of America's sins, things certainly would be worse if Putin were free to damage and pervert our democracy to suit his whims.

quantumofmalice 9y ago

Will AIPAC similarly be charged?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

vthallam 9y ago

Forget about whether russia had used the bots to influence elections. I was really surprised that Hillary with all the Silicon Valley support couldn't built a team to counter these. On the election day, the Trump tweet in the morning got a million favs and Hillary hardly got 200K. When I looked at it, I was shocked about how dismal Hillary's tech team is.

codezero 9y ago
It’s hard to tell what you think Hillary should have done better, can you elaborate?
- vthallam 9y ago
  Yes. For a start, realizing the impact of the bots on FB and Twitter and countering them with more bots. There's some really dark stuff on FB groups and twitter bots which reply with images to popular accounts. You could counter by bots which could favorite better tweets and stop the propaganda.
  - codezero 9y ago
    You think she wouldn’t have been derided for the use of bots, but the already effective and operational botnet working against her?

crb002 9y ago

The US Supreme Court ruled that fake news is not illegal under the 1st Amendment, United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012). Muller is attempting to turn the US into a totalitarian state where you can be prosecuted for saying something that is not truthful in the public sphere. When Thomas Jefferson ran against Adams they threw all kind of fake news like calling the other a hermaphrodite. When the government gets to decide what is true/false, that is the definition of totalitarianism.

abvdasker 9y ago
That Mueller's team would somehow want to erode the First Amendment is a pretty extreme belief bordering on conspiracy theory. I think this is less about material truth or lies and more about the fact that these ads were meant to influence US elections and paid for by foreign interests. Many US-based organizations can and do produce baseless "fake news" but it isn't seen as much of a problem because they represent the views of some kind of voting constituency.
- davesque 9y ago
  Bordering on conspiracy theory? He just said Mueller want to turn the US into a totalitarian state. That qualifies as an honest to God conspiracy theory in my book.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The US Supreme Court ruled that fake news is not illegal under the 1st Amendment It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government (or the American people). It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3 of the indictment [1]) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90). Also, from ¶ 1 of the indictment [1]: "U.S. law...bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General." [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Research-Agency-Indictment.html#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a] [a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-for-conspiracy-2498f173-ad1a-4609-b233-c40ea0c041dc.html https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

Chuckled at this part of the indictment [1]: "Defendants and their co-conspirtors thereafter destroyed evidence for the purpose of impeding the investigation. On or about September 13, 2017, KAVERZINA wrote in an email to a family member: 'We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke). So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with colleagues.' KAVERZINA further wrote, "I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people." Guess they skimped on opsec training? [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Research-Agency-Indictment.html#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a], page 24 [a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-for-conspiracy-2498f173-ad1a-4609-b233-c40ea0c041dc.html https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...

anigbrowl 9y ago

This guilty plea of a California man who engaged in helping circumvent payment security features from 2014-17 in relation to the information warfare effort just came out as well. https://www.justice.gov/file/1035547/download https://www.justice.gov/file/1035547/download

puppetmaster40 9y ago

Is there anyone with a Science or Engineering background or training who can put forth data that Russians influenced election for Trump? I ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/vic-c/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/vic-c/ ) would love to see something like that. Anyone with a Science or Engineering, please give me some data - that they believe to be credible. Please show me.

puppetmaster40 9y ago
Downvoted for asking what is the evidence?
- codezero 9y ago
  What data do you propose as a convincing argument and how do you expect someone on hacker news to have a silver bullet? If this data were easily available and accessible in a transparent way, there wouldn’t need to be a long ongoing national agency level investigation.
  - puppetmaster40 9y ago
    What is the best we have?
    - codezero 9y ago
      That didn’t answer my question at all. Let me be more concrete. It appears you have the very background you are requesting. What approach or approaches would you take to convince others?
      - puppetmaster40 9y ago
        My answer would be: there is no credible or valid evidence. Hence I asked. Muller cited these specific posts as examples: http://archive.is/5sEEo http://archive.is/5sEEo

fwdpropaganda 9y ago

As a European, here's a question to our American friends in general, and American Republicans in particular: Does it disturb you at all that apparently the Russians plan to mess up with you is to impersonate accounts to post stuff which is indistinguishable from what actual Republicans post?

bb88 9y ago

Can HN stop promoting sites with autoplay videos? What if I ask pretty please with sugar on top?

throwaway5752 9y ago

This is without a doubt the most important story for the software industry in the world today. This is going to change regulation and policy in the US for the rest of the lives of everyone old enough to be posting here. How it's not on the frontpage is unfathomable. Just because it creates conflict is not a good reason for this not to be front and center. They detailed the process the Russian agents used to procure computing resources, how they stole identities, and their methodology. They somehow have personal communications. Facebook is in a very, very precarious place. So will be Google and Twitter. Anyone involved in selling ads or marketing should have read the whole indictment. Tens of billions of revenue per quarter have exposure to this scandal. There is also enormous opportunity for startups that will inevitably be needed. Honestly, as a hacker, the methodologies just on their own are of interest. edit: lest anyone say it's political, it's not. If this was APT 12 acting on behalf of the Democratic party (purely hypothetical) then what would the Republican party reaction be? The tools are out there, and they will be used again, regardless of party.

kadenshep 9y ago

How come this is no longer present on the main index, pages 1 - 5?