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Wikileaks has leaked plenty of Russian material. It hasn't stopped the McCarthyism, obviously. The red scare must go on. He was critical of some news stories a

Wikileaks has leaked plenty of Russian material. It hasn't stopped the McCarthyism, obviously. The red scare must go on. He was critical of some news stories about the Panama papers pushed by USAID. He did not criticize the leaks directly.

wybiral 7y ago
> McCarthyism You say that like there isn't overwhelming evidence of Russian influence operations in western democracies and widespread cyber warfare going on as we speak. It's one thing to make the counter argument that the US conducts influence ops and engages in cyber warfare too and you don't care one way or another about either nation, but it's not "McCarthyism" to call out aggression when Russia is clearly acting aggressive in multiple theaters. I can't speak for all of the people involved in WikiLeaks but Assange clearly has a bias against the west, particularly the Democrat party and western intelligence agencies. He also seems happy doing intel business with Russia and auctioning off classified data to the highest bidder in addition to the leaks.
- crdoconnor 7y ago
  It's McCarthyism (not to mention fantastical) to declare that Russia buying a couple of Facebook ads and operating some online trolls was the reason why the election was swung. As for the leaks: the evidence for the attribution of pretty much every hack in the last 5 years is farcically weak (e.g. IP addresses in logs). As for the supposed hack of US power plants - that was classic McCarthyism. The evidence was made up and the target was Russia.
  - wybiral 7y ago
    > It's McCarthyism (not to mention fantastical) to declare that Russia buying a couple of Facebook ads and operating some online trolls was the reason why the election was swung. That's just people looking for an easy answer to a complex question. It happens everywhere. Trump may or may not have won without the assistance of Russia. But that doesn't mean Russia didn't assist. It's not McCarthyism to say that the IRA was attempting to fuel public divisions given the types of ads they were placing and events they were scheduling. And it's not McCarthyism to say that a Russian APT hacked the DNC server and leaked those emails selectively in an attempt to sway the election towards one candidate. The evidence of this is much greater than "IP addresses in logs". > As for the supposed hack of US power plants - that was classic McCarthyism. The evidence was made up and the target was Russia. Frankly I don't know enough about that, you could be right there. Bad attribution happens everywhere though, it happens with China and Iran too, so "McCarthyism" doesn't seem like a useful label here. How about Stuxnet? As far as I've seen there wasn't a ton of evidence to confirm the US was involved in that but Russia and Iran seemed happy with that explanation. The world of cyber warfare is new and we're all paranoid right now but that also doesn't mean it's all the same and it's all wrong. For the DNC hack, the US was monitoring that activity the whole time. They warned the DNC before it even happened that those servers were being probed (the fact that the DNC failed to act is unfortunate but beside the point here) and there are multiple points of evidence linking it back to Russian-based hackers. They were pretty sloppy about registering for VPN accounts and renting servers for exfiltration. One thing that amazes me about all of this is that people condemn US intelligence for intercepting data and mass collection but then they seem unable to believe that the agencies possessing those tools and access to internet companies would have evidence of events like this.
    - crdoconnor 7y ago
      >That's just people looking for an easy answer to a complex question. It was the DNC looking for a reason why losing to Trump wasn't their fault allying with neocons (e.g. Kristol) looking for reasons to kick off cold war part 2 after what happened in ukraine. >And it's not McCarthyism to say that a Russian APT hacked the DNC server Evidence was and still is sparse. The fact that it's "generally accepted" among the media and intelligentsia is no reason to assume it's actually true. They're the same suckers who bought the WMD lie. >Frankly I don't know enough about that, you could be right there. Bad attribution happens everywhere The interesting thing about that story is that it demonstrated what they wanted to be true. They obviously wanted the Russians to be behind it and quickly discovered that this time it awkwardly was easy to disprove their hypothesis. >They were pretty sloppy about registering for VPN accounts and renting servers for exfiltration. Bear in mind that being sloppy and deliberately leaving a misleading trail look the same and deliberately leading a misleading trail is standard opsec. >but then they seem unable to believe that the agencies possessing those tools and access to internet companies would have evidence of events like this. That's not the slightest bit amazing. The intelligence agencies are geared towards dragnet surveillance, not hack attribution. Just because they have access to all Snapchat nudes doesn't mean that they can attribute hack attacks. What's amazing is that the agencies that lied consistently in the past and who always release secret evidence when it's supports their agenda can just say "yeah, so this happened trust us we have logs of a couple IPs" and technical people who know full well how easy it is to spoof an IP believe them. Suckers.
      - wybiral 7y ago
        > The fact that it's "generally accepted" among the media and intelligentsia is no reason to assume it's actually true. They're the same suckers who bought the WMD lie. For what it's worth, the intel community wasn't behind the false claims of WMD in Iraq and the news basically was just being given false information from the Bush admin. The CIA was investigating it and writing reports showing that they didn't believe there was evidence of WMD. It was a small circle of Bush admin conservatives who were lying to the media about those reports. That's actually the core of the whole Valerie Plame affair [1]. That's not what's happening here. Multiple independently-managed intelligence agencies are agreeing that there's evidence Russian-based hackers infiltrated the DNC servers. A few foreign intelligence agencies have added evidence to these claims as well (Dutch intelligence, for instance [2]). > Bear in mind that being sloppy and deliberately leaving a misleading trail look the same and deliberately leading a misleading trail is standard opsec. Couldn't this same logic be applied to everything attributed to US intelligence? Maybe someone else fabricated the CIA Vault7 leaks, because surely the CIA is too smart to get caught. Must be opsec. And maybe Iran's nuclear program failed on its own and they blamed Stuxnet on the US and Israel? At some point this takes a turn towards conspiracy-based thinking though... You're willing to go out of your way to believe in mass delusion or conspiracy within the media and intel communities to avoid believing that maybe Russia did hack the DNC. If the evidence is a lie then multiple independent groups are conspiring to perpetuate that lie. How big is this network of conspirators? Or maybe Russia did hack the DNC and Assange is the only one lying about their source? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch-intelligence-hacked-video-cameras-in-office-of-russians-who-hacked-dnc/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch...
- deleted 7y ago
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wybiral 7y ago

> McCarthyism You say that like there isn't overwhelming evidence of Russian influence operations in western democracies and widespread cyber warfare going on as we speak. It's one thing to make the counter argument that the US conducts influence ops and engages in cyber warfare too and you don't care one way or another about either nation, but it's not "McCarthyism" to call out aggression when Russia is clearly acting aggressive in multiple theaters. I can't speak for all of the people involved in WikiLeaks but Assange clearly has a bias against the west, particularly the Democrat party and western intelligence agencies. He also seems happy doing intel business with Russia and auctioning off classified data to the highest bidder in addition to the leaks.

crdoconnor 7y ago
It's McCarthyism (not to mention fantastical) to declare that Russia buying a couple of Facebook ads and operating some online trolls was the reason why the election was swung. As for the leaks: the evidence for the attribution of pretty much every hack in the last 5 years is farcically weak (e.g. IP addresses in logs). As for the supposed hack of US power plants - that was classic McCarthyism. The evidence was made up and the target was Russia.
- wybiral 7y ago
  > It's McCarthyism (not to mention fantastical) to declare that Russia buying a couple of Facebook ads and operating some online trolls was the reason why the election was swung. That's just people looking for an easy answer to a complex question. It happens everywhere. Trump may or may not have won without the assistance of Russia. But that doesn't mean Russia didn't assist. It's not McCarthyism to say that the IRA was attempting to fuel public divisions given the types of ads they were placing and events they were scheduling. And it's not McCarthyism to say that a Russian APT hacked the DNC server and leaked those emails selectively in an attempt to sway the election towards one candidate. The evidence of this is much greater than "IP addresses in logs". > As for the supposed hack of US power plants - that was classic McCarthyism. The evidence was made up and the target was Russia. Frankly I don't know enough about that, you could be right there. Bad attribution happens everywhere though, it happens with China and Iran too, so "McCarthyism" doesn't seem like a useful label here. How about Stuxnet? As far as I've seen there wasn't a ton of evidence to confirm the US was involved in that but Russia and Iran seemed happy with that explanation. The world of cyber warfare is new and we're all paranoid right now but that also doesn't mean it's all the same and it's all wrong. For the DNC hack, the US was monitoring that activity the whole time. They warned the DNC before it even happened that those servers were being probed (the fact that the DNC failed to act is unfortunate but beside the point here) and there are multiple points of evidence linking it back to Russian-based hackers. They were pretty sloppy about registering for VPN accounts and renting servers for exfiltration. One thing that amazes me about all of this is that people condemn US intelligence for intercepting data and mass collection but then they seem unable to believe that the agencies possessing those tools and access to internet companies would have evidence of events like this.
  - crdoconnor 7y ago
    >That's just people looking for an easy answer to a complex question. It was the DNC looking for a reason why losing to Trump wasn't their fault allying with neocons (e.g. Kristol) looking for reasons to kick off cold war part 2 after what happened in ukraine. >And it's not McCarthyism to say that a Russian APT hacked the DNC server Evidence was and still is sparse. The fact that it's "generally accepted" among the media and intelligentsia is no reason to assume it's actually true. They're the same suckers who bought the WMD lie. >Frankly I don't know enough about that, you could be right there. Bad attribution happens everywhere The interesting thing about that story is that it demonstrated what they wanted to be true. They obviously wanted the Russians to be behind it and quickly discovered that this time it awkwardly was easy to disprove their hypothesis. >They were pretty sloppy about registering for VPN accounts and renting servers for exfiltration. Bear in mind that being sloppy and deliberately leaving a misleading trail look the same and deliberately leading a misleading trail is standard opsec. >but then they seem unable to believe that the agencies possessing those tools and access to internet companies would have evidence of events like this. That's not the slightest bit amazing. The intelligence agencies are geared towards dragnet surveillance, not hack attribution. Just because they have access to all Snapchat nudes doesn't mean that they can attribute hack attacks. What's amazing is that the agencies that lied consistently in the past and who always release secret evidence when it's supports their agenda can just say "yeah, so this happened trust us we have logs of a couple IPs" and technical people who know full well how easy it is to spoof an IP believe them. Suckers.
    - wybiral 7y ago
      > The fact that it's "generally accepted" among the media and intelligentsia is no reason to assume it's actually true. They're the same suckers who bought the WMD lie. For what it's worth, the intel community wasn't behind the false claims of WMD in Iraq and the news basically was just being given false information from the Bush admin. The CIA was investigating it and writing reports showing that they didn't believe there was evidence of WMD. It was a small circle of Bush admin conservatives who were lying to the media about those reports. That's actually the core of the whole Valerie Plame affair [1]. That's not what's happening here. Multiple independently-managed intelligence agencies are agreeing that there's evidence Russian-based hackers infiltrated the DNC servers. A few foreign intelligence agencies have added evidence to these claims as well (Dutch intelligence, for instance [2]). > Bear in mind that being sloppy and deliberately leaving a misleading trail look the same and deliberately leading a misleading trail is standard opsec. Couldn't this same logic be applied to everything attributed to US intelligence? Maybe someone else fabricated the CIA Vault7 leaks, because surely the CIA is too smart to get caught. Must be opsec. And maybe Iran's nuclear program failed on its own and they blamed Stuxnet on the US and Israel? At some point this takes a turn towards conspiracy-based thinking though... You're willing to go out of your way to believe in mass delusion or conspiracy within the media and intel communities to avoid believing that maybe Russia did hack the DNC. If the evidence is a lie then multiple independent groups are conspiring to perpetuate that lie. How big is this network of conspirators? Or maybe Russia did hack the DNC and Assange is the only one lying about their source? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch-intelligence-hacked-video-cameras-in-office-of-russians-who-hacked-dnc/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]