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>How does this constitute hacking? IIUC, the idea is that the whole thing was a setup from start to finish: 1. Burisma emails were hacked; 2. Hunter Biden'

>How does this constitute hacking? IIUC, the idea is that the whole thing was a setup from start to finish: 1. Burisma emails were hacked; 2. Hunter Biden's iCloud account was hacked; 3. They bought a Mac, dumped a bunch of the hacked photos, along with some real hacked emails and some forged ones; 4. Sent someone over to the computer shop with the frame up on the laptop already in place; 5. Either the store owner was complicit from the beginning, or they just used him as a dupe. The above may or may not be true. But again, IIUC that's the line that Twitter is taking. If that's what Twitter believe (or can credibly claim to believe), then they're executing the policies in their TOS. I'm not saying it's true, and I'm not saying it ain't. That's just my understanding of Twitter's stand on this.

SaintGhurka 6y ago
That seems like an extraordinarily risky undertaking. You would certainly be found out and face real consequences. Remember the guy got the FBI involved, which would make the whole operation a federal crime.
- javagram 6y ago
  Look up the Skripal poisoning. Russian agents have operated in NATO countries before to do stuff like this. That said, the “hack” theory is pretty weak, I believe it mainly relies on a coincidence that Burisma was hacked last year https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hackers-burisma-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hacke... However, the computer shop guy claims the laptop was dropped off in early 2019 and this article says the Russians hacked Burisma in November 2019. The email PDFs themselves provided by the NY Post are dated September 2019, so stuff doesn’t add up here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- qqqwerty 6y ago
  There is no shortage of Republican operatives that will risk jail time to further their cause. See [1] for example. And regarding the FBI, they were hoping that the FBI would open some sort of investigation, which would give the issue much more credibility. But that failed, so plan b was to just hand it over to NY Post. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-burkman-michigan-robocall-voter-intimidation-felony-charges https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-...
0xC0ncord 6y ago
Even if that scenario is true, there is zero evidence to corroborate it, nor has there been any concluded official investigation into the matter. I don't think it's fair for Twitter to execute that portion of their policy based on assumption alone.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  > Even if that scenario is true, there is zero evidence to corroborate it, I'm not saying that there is. That's just my understanding of Twitter's reasoning, not a defense of them or anyone else. Don't shoot the messenger, eh?
- Natsu 6y ago
  Meanwhile Steve Scully was suspended, reportedly because his twitter account was not hacked, as previously claimed, so sometimes the "hack" claims are spurious and need time to be sorted out.
- scarmig 6y ago
  There's zero evidence to corroborate anything, though, including plausible scenarios where publishing this information is either illegal or foreign electoral interference or both. And, as far as it goes, not even the Post's story has any evidence to verify it. Even the emails' authenticity is still in question, which would be trivial to verify if Giuliani and the Post simply released the raw emails instead of image files.
whimsicalism 6y ago
If that were true, we would already be hearing denials about those emails. The fact that we haven't, indicates to me that they are instead going to tack on the "official Biden schedule shows he didn't meet with this guy" line because the emails are legit.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  They already said precisely that.
- scarmig 6y ago
  It's perfectly plausible that the Biden campaign has no idea if they're authentic or not, because neither he nor anyone on his campaign were on them. The only people who actually know if they're authentic or not are Hunter Biden, the sender, and anyone who has the emails. Which, incidentally, includes the NYP, who could mathematically prove their authenticity instantly by simply publishing them in the raw. In fact, if the NYP did any due diligence at all, they already verified the emails themselves. Which raises the question: why are they publishing just the images? My bet is that the NYP didn't bother to verify the emails, because they don't even know how to do basic due diligence on these types of things. (I would guess they're authentic though, FWIW.)
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    Could be a "drip drip" play - wait for the people in question to explicitly deny the authenticity of the messages, then drop the raws for maximum impact. The longer they sit on this, though, the less likely that is, and I'm not sure if I trust the Post to be savvy enough for that kind of thing.
    - 6nf 6y ago
      That's exactly what this is. 'Expect more bombshells in the coming days' -- Rudy Guilliani
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > Hunter Biden You're right - my comment was written under the assumption that the Biden camp has enough access to Hunter that they could verify the authenticity of the emails. I'll add: I would be shocked if that were not the case. Regardless of my personal feelings about the NYP, my guess is they probably did verify to some extent and I agree that they are probably authentic. I can understand the temptation of doing this sort of "slow the spread" if you're a social media platform faced with Trump, my worry is when that gets turned around and deployed against the Left, or against anti-trust, etc. I'm already getting near daily push notifications from Uber telling me which way to vote in California elections, I'm terrified of what the future holds where Twitter et al. can ban certain messages from even being sent to friends.
ALittleLight 6y ago
"I sure hope this computer repairmen scans the data of our abandoned computer, realizes what it contains, and turns the data over to Rudy Giuliani or equivalent." If the store owner was in on it, then he's taking a heckuva gamble on this working out right, with relatively little (known) reward. The claimed story seems simpler.

SaintGhurka 6y ago

That seems like an extraordinarily risky undertaking. You would certainly be found out and face real consequences. Remember the guy got the FBI involved, which would make the whole operation a federal crime.

javagram 6y ago
Look up the Skripal poisoning. Russian agents have operated in NATO countries before to do stuff like this. That said, the “hack” theory is pretty weak, I believe it mainly relies on a coincidence that Burisma was hacked last year https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hackers-burisma-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hacke... However, the computer shop guy claims the laptop was dropped off in early 2019 and this article says the Russians hacked Burisma in November 2019. The email PDFs themselves provided by the NY Post are dated September 2019, so stuff doesn’t add up here.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
qqqwerty 6y ago
There is no shortage of Republican operatives that will risk jail time to further their cause. See [1] for example. And regarding the FBI, they were hoping that the FBI would open some sort of investigation, which would give the issue much more credibility. But that failed, so plan b was to just hand it over to NY Post. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-burkman-michigan-robocall-voter-intimidation-felony-charges https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-...

0xC0ncord 6y ago

Even if that scenario is true, there is zero evidence to corroborate it, nor has there been any concluded official investigation into the matter. I don't think it's fair for Twitter to execute that portion of their policy based on assumption alone.

nobody9999 6y ago
> Even if that scenario is true, there is zero evidence to corroborate it, I'm not saying that there is. That's just my understanding of Twitter's reasoning, not a defense of them or anyone else. Don't shoot the messenger, eh?
Natsu 6y ago
Meanwhile Steve Scully was suspended, reportedly because his twitter account was not hacked, as previously claimed, so sometimes the "hack" claims are spurious and need time to be sorted out.
scarmig 6y ago
There's zero evidence to corroborate anything, though, including plausible scenarios where publishing this information is either illegal or foreign electoral interference or both. And, as far as it goes, not even the Post's story has any evidence to verify it. Even the emails' authenticity is still in question, which would be trivial to verify if Giuliani and the Post simply released the raw emails instead of image files.

whimsicalism 6y ago

If that were true, we would already be hearing denials about those emails. The fact that we haven't, indicates to me that they are instead going to tack on the "official Biden schedule shows he didn't meet with this guy" line because the emails are legit.

Karunamon 6y ago
They already said precisely that.
scarmig 6y ago
It's perfectly plausible that the Biden campaign has no idea if they're authentic or not, because neither he nor anyone on his campaign were on them. The only people who actually know if they're authentic or not are Hunter Biden, the sender, and anyone who has the emails. Which, incidentally, includes the NYP, who could mathematically prove their authenticity instantly by simply publishing them in the raw. In fact, if the NYP did any due diligence at all, they already verified the emails themselves. Which raises the question: why are they publishing just the images? My bet is that the NYP didn't bother to verify the emails, because they don't even know how to do basic due diligence on these types of things. (I would guess they're authentic though, FWIW.)
- Karunamon 6y ago
  Could be a "drip drip" play - wait for the people in question to explicitly deny the authenticity of the messages, then drop the raws for maximum impact. The longer they sit on this, though, the less likely that is, and I'm not sure if I trust the Post to be savvy enough for that kind of thing.
  - 6nf 6y ago
    That's exactly what this is. 'Expect more bombshells in the coming days' -- Rudy Guilliani
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > Hunter Biden You're right - my comment was written under the assumption that the Biden camp has enough access to Hunter that they could verify the authenticity of the emails. I'll add: I would be shocked if that were not the case. Regardless of my personal feelings about the NYP, my guess is they probably did verify to some extent and I agree that they are probably authentic. I can understand the temptation of doing this sort of "slow the spread" if you're a social media platform faced with Trump, my worry is when that gets turned around and deployed against the Left, or against anti-trust, etc. I'm already getting near daily push notifications from Uber telling me which way to vote in California elections, I'm terrified of what the future holds where Twitter et al. can ban certain messages from even being sent to friends.

ALittleLight 6y ago

"I sure hope this computer repairmen scans the data of our abandoned computer, realizes what it contains, and turns the data over to Rudy Giuliani or equivalent." If the store owner was in on it, then he's taking a heckuva gamble on this working out right, with relatively little (known) reward. The claimed story seems simpler.