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Robert Graham [1] pointed out that if the emails are authentic, they can be trivially verified via DKIM. That the email metadata was not released implies the e
by rmrfstar 6y ago
Robert Graham [1] pointed out that if the emails are authentic, they can be trivially verified via DKIM.
That the email metadata was not released implies the emails are either inauthentic, or that the post did not contact someone with basic competence in computer forensics.
Either possibility seriously undercuts the article's credibility.
[1] https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1316407424648179717 https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1316407424648179717
- throwawa3495 6y agoit's honestly irrelevant about the credibility of the emails and other data at this point, its the blanket censorship of this article that's now the real story.
- Hamuko 6y agoIs it? Because the factuality of the story seems like a pretty big deal here. If it's completely bogus, how is it different from any of those Russian trollfarm posts that the US government was worried about?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt's different because it was written by a major American newspaper. Twitter should not be exercising editorial control over the news.
- Hamuko 6y agoIsn't it distribution control rather than editorial control?
- koolba 6y agoLimiting distribution to filter out what you don't want to rise to the top has the same effect as explicitly picking winners. Think of it like shooting the tires of all the cars you want to lose in a race. Sure you didn't push the winner across the finish line, but you made it damn near impossible for anyone else to even get there.
- Hamuko 6y agoYeah, but that's still not editorial control. And maybe we do actually want Twitter to pick some winners. I don't think the platform needs any more death threats, Russian-backed misinformation campaigns or other bullshit.
- rightbyte 6y agoWhat if Russian missinormation is a Russian misinformation campaigne to induce paranoia and there are no actual misinformation ... How about a straight forward algorithm for the feed instead of some hugely adbiased mess.
- hef19898 6y agoAnd this is exactly what social media does all the time, or rather their recommendation algorithms. Which, for some reason, is no problem at all. Now that the bias of these algorithms is changing, also by directly intervening, it is a big problem.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI don't think so. You could perhaps make an argument that banning all NY Post articles would be distribution control, although even then I'm skeptical. But if I picked up a physical copy of the New York Post, and found that the newsstand had snipped just this one article out with a pair of scissors, I'd call that an unambiguous act of editorial control and censorship.
- kofejnik 6y agoif a news network with a 1B viewers only gave free airtime to one side, it would clearly be in violation of campaign finance laws, among others
- davismwfl 6y agoIt could be easily argued while they are not rewriting the story they selectively choose the facts they present as "fact checked" information. In the recent past both FB and Twitter have linked to "fact checked" articles/sources that represented only the narrative they wanted you to read. If they wanted to show neutral behavior they could have linked to articles that represented both sides of an argument which would keep their independence and educate their audience better since rarely is one side 100% correct.
- iaw 6y agoThe "both sides" of an argument thing does not work when one side is intellectually dishonest and bases arguments on misinterpretations and mistruths.
- aksss 6y agoProblem is that both sides see the other as exactly this. I’m sure I can argue the point on behalf of either side selected by a coin toss. In today’s example though we have the side that dominates academia, media, big labor, healthcare, public sector workers, and big tech using that dominance to censor a story harmful to their candidate with very disingenuous reasoning.
- iaw 6y agoOnly one side has come up with 'alternative facts' and argued that conclusive science is 'still out'. I've seen hypocrisy on both sides for sure but the intellectual dishonesty is only coming from one.
- aksss 6y agoI know a dozen people who would agree with you and thirteen who would argue the opposite and cite sources. You might not be as objective as you think here.
- 6y ago
- drcongo 6y agoIs the NY Post considered a serious newspaper over there?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt's one of those papers in the strange intersection of "mainstream tabloid". It's clearly not serious, as you can see from a quick glance at their typical cover pages, but it's also not one of the papers everyone knows is untrustworthy schlock.
- microtherion 6y agoAnd it's a paper whose headlines are more widely cited than the articles, because it's known for the catchy headlines.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoYes, it's a serious newspaper. But it is known to use sans serif fonts and hire people that went to public schools.
- throwawa3495 6y ago>hire people that went to public schools. You say this like it's an insult.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoParent was being sarcastic, insinuating that people who don't like Rupert Murdoch's decades-old propaganda empire are elitist.
- rabuse 6y agoIs information being gated by private universities, that only the elite have access to? This may have had validity in the pre-internet era, but information is everywhere now. There's nothing wrong with "public education".
- frob 6y agoThe New York Post is not a serious newspaper; it is a sensationalist tabloid. Sometimes the NYPost will report on real news, but I believe absolutely nothing they report until it is verified by the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, or other major broadcast outlet with actual journalistic standards.
- gotoeleven 6y agoIm genuinely curious what journalistic standards you think these mainstream outlets possess after all the Russia nonsense. Can you point to an example of any recent story where these outlets have displayed "actual journalistic standards"?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoAgreed, and I don't mean to imply any sort of endorsement of the NY Post.
- trident1000 6y agoNone of them are serious. NY Times made a big deal out of trumps taxes when everyone knows depreciation offsets revenue in real estate, its 101 stuff. You get taxed when you sell the asset which happens infrequently but in large magnitude. Most people in the industry were laughing at the gaslighting they did on that story but they fooled their little pawn readers. Just one example out of many. Every news source is full of shit even the ones that are supposed to be reputable.
- whateveracct 6y agoYou realize the real story re: Trump's asset depreciation is that he reported one valuation to the govt and one to his banks when seeking loans, right?
- trident1000 6y agoThe story headline that was coordinated and gaslight was "trump didnt pay any tax". Everything else was anecdotal, I didnt look into this specific matter because I was rolling my eyes from the start. If they cant be honest about the main story I'm not following them for the rest of the allegations.
- takeda 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post The fist sentence has a word "tabloid" in it. It's not reputable source of news by any stretch.
- s9w 6y agothey didn't censor the completely made up hysterectomy story. also: c-f "russia"
- paganel 6y ago> Because the factuality of the story seems like a pretty big deal here. WMD were non-factual, but even so nobody got censored back then (worse, nobody went to prison for going to war on non-factual information).
- evan_ 6y agoI’m not sure what you’re arguing for. If we had ignored everyone claiming there were WMDs then a million people would still be alive, not to mention the trillions of dollars saved.
- paganel 6y agoI'm saying that the press was more than happy to publish non-factual information back in March-April 2003 and that no-one thought of censoring it.
- sylens 6y agoSo they should never learn from their mistakes?
- jimmydorry 6y agoDid they learn from their mistakes? Or are we just in election season operating with "special rules"?
- odessacubbage 6y agothey did learn from their mistakes. they learned that there's zero consequence in trafficking the right lies for the right people and were professionally rewarded for doing so. it should be no surprise that the exact same people latched so heavily onto the steele dossier and the cult of mueller-ism
- takeda 6y agoWMD information was provided by government officials and it was official government position on it, the news were reporting what officials said and provided. This is not even remotely close.
- jtbayly 6y agoOf course the factuality is a big deal. But Twitter didn’t discover the story was false and then remove it. Rather they decided that because the information came from a hack that it couldn’t be posted on their site. If anything they confirmed it was true by doing this. Magine if they had applied this to WikiLeaks.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoThere are two possibilities: Either it's really a hack or it's a felonious attempt to manipulate an election. Or it's both -- a hack of personal private photos and also fake emails feloniously manipulating an election. Either way, a ban is appropriate. Saying "if it's true, it's ban able for X" without out bothering to say that obviously it's bannable if it's false, isn't saying it's true. How could Twitter even know?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jtbayly 6y agoSo Wikileaks should have been suppressed?
- chmod600 6y agoBoth are important. Censoring something important without knowing whether it's true or not is pretty worrisome. If it does turn out to be true then it's much worse. If it turns out to be false, the censor got lucky or knows something we don't. One thing I'm wondering is how can they censor it without getting either some evidence that it's fake or at least a clear denial? (Biden's campaign released a statement refuting it, but that's not the same as Biden himself publicly denying the claims.) Thin evidence (someone found some damaging-looking emails) can be dismissed with thin counter-evidence (a denial). But it can't be dismissed with nothing.
- aksss 6y agoThe factuality is what we should be debating. When Twitter bans its dissemination that becomes as big a story and - like it or not - makes folks believe there’s more truth to the story than they perhaps would have in absence of such blatant, double-standard censorship.
- odessacubbage 6y agotwitter and the journo sphere launder misinformation every single day with no consequence. the russian bounty story had little relation to factuality but it was still widespread with no objections or even much if any in the way of post facto correction. it's entirely permissible to write complete fiction just as long as you preface it with 'intelligence sources indicate...'
- Barrin92 6y agoTwitter is perfectly within their rights to remove content they consider to be spam or not fit quality guidelines as is the case here. Not really sure since when Twitter is required to host and aid in the spread of garbage
- throwawa3495 6y agoOh, i definitely agree that as a private company Twitter is well within its rights to censor what it believes is "misinformation" but an important line has been crossed today by Twitter and Facebook. A story about potential corruption of a candidate for the US president has been censored by two of the largest information brokers in the world. Also interestingly, no denial from Joe Biden about the authenticity of these emails. Wouldnt that be the first thing you'd do if this wasnt true? lol
- the_only_law 6y ago> Also interestingly, no denial from Joe Biden about the authenticity of these emails. Wouldnt that be the first thing you'd do if this wasnt true? I assume most politicians at the presidential candidate level have some sort of PR team that works to come up with some official response to these sorts of controversies
- throwawa3495 6y ago"JOE BIDEN SPOKESMAN ANDREW BATES hits back at the N.Y. POST STORY, via NATASHA BERTRAND and KYLE CHENEY: “Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath. “The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani - whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported - claimed to have such materials. Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” idk, read for yourself https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-pm/2020/10/14/biden-blasts-back-at-nyp-490603 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-pm/2020/10/14/...
- rmrfstar 6y agoBoth are relevant, and both are concerning.
- alkonaut 6y agoIn a normal situation, publication would be followed by scrutiny, possibly correction, more information. Incorrect information isn’t such a big problem then. One major problem right now is that it’s 3 weeks from an election. Scrutiny and fact checks would risking being only after the election. I’m happy to see the requirements for credibility tightened right now, for issues related to the election.
- gscott 6y agoConsidering many people have already voted and probably do not care about this issue it would be unlikely to affect the outcome of the election anyway.
- jimbob45 6y agoHow could that be true when the general consensus is that Comey’s reopening of Hillary’s case greatly swung the 2016 election?
- ceejayoz 6y agoThat trick is probably less likely to work this second time around. Not that it has stopped Pompeo from teasing more Hillary emails in recent weeks, of course.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoHillary not going to Wisconsin was shown to have a bigger effect. But it was closer than it should have been, so people blame Comey.
- quest88 6y agoBut what should be done about tech enabling the spread of false information?
- russellendicott 6y agoCan't people do their own research and choose whether or not they believe the contents of a story before they retweet it and lose their own credibility?
- takeda 6y agoThe problem here that this "bombshell" article did not provide enough information to do any kind of verification. The main evidence is a PDF file of a print of an e-mail (without even providing a header information). - we don't know if it's Hunter's laptop as claimed (kind of odd that somebody bothers with laptop repair (let's be honest, a lot people here probably buy a new one) and then leaves it there? - we don't know if this is a real e-mail (headers could be used to prove that) - we don't know that the sender e-mail is an e-mail connected to the person Hunter is accused talking to (the ".ukraine" in e-mail is very odd, who would put their country in an e-mail address, it's long and is not like he has a super common name) - we don't know Hunter responded to it (since they have his laptop, you would think they would have his e-mails as well) - we don't know the meeting actually happened - this story is obviously an October surprise (the time is picked exactly to impact voting, there's also not enough time to prove it is false)
- russellendicott 6y agoI agree with all of your points but why is it Twitter or Facebook's responsibility to check all of those things for every article posted to their platform? Why is the onus not on you as the reader to do your own fact checking?
- takeda 6y agoBecause the timing of this piece (if you look at the PDF was created a year ago, but published just in middle of October). It is clear that it is timed to affect election results. They are not responsible, to check all things. But it's mostly ethics and self preservation. I don't think anyone will deny that they actually have real impact now (even greater than MSM now) and I believe if Democrats win, there will be some laws passed adding some checks. I also believe trump with executive order about section 230 also probably contributed.
- benmmurphy 6y agoIt wouldn’t prove they were authentic. It would just prove they were sent through gmail’s servers. If you trusted gmail then it would prove the username, time and content was legitimate. All it looks like to me is some Russian username. I don’t see how it ties to a real person. I haven’t read the article so maybe the post explains that bit.
- donmcronald 6y agoIt would be immediately obvious if they were a poor quality fake though. Like if someone typed it up in Word and exported it to PDF they wouldn’t be able to produce the DKIM signature.
- onionisafruit 6y agoIt could prove it was sent through gmails servers on April 17, 2015. There aren’t many people who would know the importance of the meeting five years ago. It would narrow the list of possible senders.
- takeda 6y agoThat information would still be meaningless unless we could prove that this e-mail is authentic. `v.pozharskyi.ukraine@gmail.com` - why would an Ukrainian citizen have "ukraine" in their e-mail address? There are so many other red flags (in addition whether this e-mail was really send, and the account belongs to that person) for example if Hunter responded to it (if they had his laptop surely they could get that from outbox? Why somebody who cares enough about their laptop to get it to repair (if you have plenty of money, more likely you'll get a new one) not care about getting it back? This would prove that gmail indeed sent the e-mail, but it wouldn't prove that the e-mail wasn't created few minutes earlier.
- cm2187 6y agoI think DKIM also signs the sender of the email. Does gmail enforces that only the owner of the mailbox can be the sender?
- jimbob45 6y agoI wrote the story off this morning. The Ukraine stuff didn’t stick to Trump and there’s no reason to think it would be any stickier on Biden. If Twitter is censoring DMs of it though, then there must be something to it.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago> then there must be something to it. That "something" is almost certainly "the NY Post story has profound credibility problems, to the point that it may very well be a hoax, and Jack Dorsey is still reeling from his personal moral complicity in the flawed 2016 election."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mcintyre1994 6y agoWhy would Twitter allow sharing something in DMs that they block in tweets? I’m sure this is just their normal policy - block things platform wide.
- rightbyte 6y agoWhy would Twitter enforce a Tiananmen Square-ish policy? Do they want to lose all credibility as a platform?
- evan_ 6y agoDid Twitter kill hundreds of people with tanks?
- ojnabieoot 6y ago"First the neo-Nazis had to text their friends about a new Stormfront post instead of sending it in a Twitter DM, and I said nothing..."
- 6y ago
- beervirus 6y agoHave you ever read an article in the mainstream press that spent space publishing metadata?
- rightbyte 6y agoNY Post claim to have a copy of the HD (including a sex tape with Biden Jr) so they will surely spin on if it is real.
- sj3k 6y agoJournalists know about metadata. You can be sure that editors of more reputable institutions absolutely require it before publishing anything. Source I went to journalism school and worked in PR for years before I became a software developer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- daveevad 6y agodon't forget this is politics and the campaign is asking the other campaign to make a statement that the emails are inauthentic. revealing the dkim signatures at a later point would be twice as effective from a political and public opinion standpoint.
- dsaavy 6y agoAbsolutely this can be trivially verified and needs to be. Release the emails if they're real so they can be verified. But also, isn't it the same thing with Trump's tax returns? All I've found so far is that the New York Times obtained copies, but they haven't actually released them to the public to be verified. If anyone can find the actual copies I'd like to see. We need to take all of the press releases about "leaks" with a grain of salt, because I keep seeing "leaks" without actual content or verification. It's bullshit and why places that provide the actual contents of leaks are so important. Yes, certain publications are more trustworthy than others historically, but that doesn't mean they get an indefinite pass on providing verified information.
- dsaavy 6y agoOne thing that can be verified (as at least a unique release) after looking into the NY Post article more are the pictures they released. When I reverse image search them on Google and tineye, there are no other matches. This doesn't mean that they are necessarily real (they'd have to be verified as not being fakes), but they are certainly newly released. A couple searches: https://tineye.com/search/85ed99ec3e5397597a1100ce7d54c0bf9924e61d?sort=score&order=desc&page=1 https://tineye.com/search/85ed99ec3e5397597a1100ce7d54c0bf99... https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZiu3ByKtFe0xCIg4gzZo4VdZR_1l7MtW6UzawGw3zXr15z7beZ9Towpz8tJqAqAZtMEbX9tWmG8pIQi7zzkdfHO4NkxXK9Nlq30hb0ycJTAnSuaEB8_1g0xnschwkGoRbUVW3FFPiCr2Nf3JftC_1UuNSnFxKhsiMtK58l_1zkIAN4l_162Q96nGYv983C77yR3I5k1ShWqFeEW_1xuDV3KDwly4o6ll042Xrns6v_1K_1D1P35U6Xbz90wPP19GhG9xD_1NFjHGQk3WMtPdMZdQwOkHl2u1NG6bjY2I-ZmYs08gaW5mYWxvloN_1LpetN11b4tOFSCEGfnOzOOzs6z3rg2FmE-IIYr8MAIg&hl=en https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZiu3ByKtFe0xCIg4gz... (The Google one weirdly searches for fun when entering this URL)
- icameron 6y agoThe political machine is more sophisticated than using a public image. If anything it looks like an iCloud hack. Last week was a top HN article about finding an XSS vulnerability in iCloud. Not unreasonable to assume Biden’s crackhead sons iCloud was owned by operatives. Especially since the subject is a main topic of Trumps impeachment.
- Felz 6y agoWouldn't DKIM verification require having the public key of Gmail from 2014 on hand? I looked up some old 2014 era emails I got from gmail and it looks like they were using the "20120113" selector at the time, which is no longer available through DNS query.
- rmrfstar 6y agoThere are historical DNS data vendors, as there are historical WHOIS data vendors. Also, Google would almost certainly respond to a journalistic inquiry about a cryptographic signature. Follow-up of this kind is what we should expect from journalists.
- chjj 6y agoAfter some googling, I managed to find the public key corresponding to that selector in a github repo: https://github.com/PaloAltoNetworks/aws-elb-autoscaling/blob/master/Version-2.0/lambda-docs/cft_code/dnslib/test/20120113._domainkey.gmail.com.-TXT https://github.com/PaloAltoNetworks/aws-elb-autoscaling/blob... edit: Seems to be an old test vector for dnslib: https://github.com/paulc/dnslib/blob/d806cfc828d6bbae45c9b4cb7d5e32818aa1f547/dnslib/test/20120113._domainkey.gmail.com.-TXT https://github.com/paulc/dnslib/blob/d806cfc828d6bbae45c9b4c...
- sk2020 6y agoI would think the financial risk for libel would be serious if it were true that the emails are fabrications and so made with intent to harm. Similarly, I would expect attorneys or all involved would be aware of this and were not sufficiently concerned.
- kthxbye123 6y agoIt is nearly impossible for a public figure to win a libel suit in the US.