Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but it does bother anyone that the NYT title calls it "election hacking"? To me that sort of slyly suggests that the actual election / voting process was hacked, which as far as I know did not happen. Perhaps "election-related hacking" would be more accurate. I don't mean to say the DNC and other such hacks weren't a big deal, but I worry that people who just read titles are getting the wrong impression.
Ever since the election, the media has been trying to confuse people about Russia's "hacking", and keep using the phrase "hacked the election", so frequently and rigorously that it's obviously deliberate.
And it worked: 50% of Democrats believe Russia hacked the election results (that's right, the results themselves, not just the DNC) according to the latest YouGov poll.
The media is no longer proving itself worthy of the respect it has.
That is a scary example of what we can look forward to. Now that people don't believe in "mainstream" journalism, they'll latch on to wild speculations with no actual research or journalistic ethics. That is net loss for the truth, no matter how much one dislikes the New York Times and other old media.
"On the other hand, nearly half of Trump supporters give at least some credence to the Pizzagate rumors. In contrast, 57% of Clinton voters say that is definitely not true (some, however, answered that it could be true),"
Putting aside the fact that this is shortly after "Pizzagate" was first widely reported and therefore a topic of broad discussion (of whatever quality) at the time...
... the contrast is that "nearly half" of Trump supporters give "at least some credence", as opposed to 43% of Clinton supporters. At most, that a whopping 6 percentage point difference. This is news?
Look at the chart again. The 43% of Clinton voters includes those answering "probably not true". That category is not included in the 46% of Trump supporters, only "definitely/probably true".
> ... the contrast is that "nearly half" of Trump supporters give "at least some credence", as opposed to 43% of Clinton supporters. At most, that a whopping 6 percentage point difference. This is news?
It's a 30 percentage point difference.
Here are the numbers from the poll.
Definitely True: 4% Clinton Voters, 11% Trump voters, 5% other voters
Here you go[0]... That's not "50% believe." 35% thinking "Probably true" sounds to me like they believe it's possible. A nearly equal percent think it's "Probably not true" (32%)
So around 52% of Democrats bought into the mischaracterization at some level, lovely. Not to mention a big chunk of Republicans.
I'm annoyed the administration again has decided on wait at least 3 more weeks before releasing a new proof before announcing punishment. Not to mention what will amount to about two months of public evidence free speculation happening in the press (aka strictly citing anonymous Intel officers). And I highly doubt they will ever be able to prove Wikileaks source was Russia which was the only primary direct influence on the elections. Even then it
It's just as likely multiple people had access to the servers. Proving Russia hacked it does not disprove others did. Digital forensics on the boxes can reveal a lot but not everything if they were good.
There has been word the RNC was hacked by Russia but the data was older and of less value. Trump famously doesn't use email nor did they hack any of Trumps 3 campaign managers (as fair as we know from anonymous IC leaks). So it may not even have been a comparable leak even if they (or wikileaks activists) chose to release it. Especially considering how Trump was very hostile to RNC, he would have easily dismissed it as Washington elites doing what he said they do. It might have even helped his 'drain the swamp' marketing angle.
Within this greater context the story of run of the mill nation state hacking of government officials is a relatively minor concern, given NSA does the same, but still a real concern. But the idea that this was a partisan hack of 'elections' and that Russians held back damning data on Trump is on very weak ground.
And let's be honest the Podesta Wikileaks dump was totally underwhelming given the clever hype by Assange.
First, we should all probably ignore YouGov, as it has fairly low credibility.
Second, it's alarming to watch people on YCombinator not acknowledge that almost always, the best way to hack a system is social engineering.
And if you combine actual hacking of people at the top of a political party, with social engineering, it's really not a stretch to call that "election hacking."
Sure, it's a little bit sensationalist, but when the DHS and FBI themselves refer to "malicious cyber activity" "by the Russian civilian and military intelligence services to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election", it's really not a bad short summary.
> 31% of Trump voters think vaccines cause autism?
> That's a radical shift from the 6% of Americans who thought so according to a Gallup survey
The Gallup poll was filing people into three categories on that question (yes/no/uncertain). The YouGov survey filed them into four categories (definitely yes/probably yes/probably no/definitely no). If we assume that the two "probably" categories in the latter correspond to the "uncertain" category in the former, the results of the two surveys are fairly close.
Russia's hacking and the fake news narrative are both ways for national pundits / news corps that continuously campaigned for Hillary while giving airtime to Trump to escape blame from people who are shocked to discover that Hillary did lose and they're stuck with Trump now.
Misuse of the word "hacking" has been a plague for a while now. Setting your alarm clock is now a "life hack". Not stuffing your face is a "health/wellness hack". Balancing your checkbook is a "personal finance hack".
In this case I don't blame the media entirely because the word has been used like this for years. Is it really any surprise that altering the outcomes of an election is now "election hacking"?
True, but there is currently no strong competitor to fill the NYT's market. "Alternative and social media" are good for populists on both sides of the aisle, but they do not compete with the NYT. A set of strong, trustworthy centrist media outlets is desperately needed, as it's important to the political stability of a country. Without that, you end up with people joining the fringes, on both sides, and a big fat problem on your hands 10-15 years down the line at the polling booth.
I'm not American or old enough to really remember what it was like when the US started the Iraq war but from what I've read, the way the media spreads propaganda now sounds a lot like the way it spread propaganda then.
I'm sure the US isn't heading into a war with Russia or anything but it's still concerning.
If these clowns are trying to make me (usually a Democrat) _glad_ that _Trump_ is coming in, it's working. The war-mongering against Russia has got to stop. It's ridiculous. It's from the 80s. (Like Trump.)
You don't need to read Chomsky to have seen the numerous and obvious slanted articles and puff pieces that the NY Times has published over the years. The fact that all these media outlets even explicitly endorse candidates is crazy and the antithesis of ethical journalism.
That use is problematic, but it's worth pointing out why. Just like this, I fear many people will understand your comment as an insinuation that the LAT et. al. just made up these quotes. I haven't read all of Fisk's criticism, but I believe his case is mostly that it allows those government sources to spread misinformation behind the cover of anonymity.
Oh yea it's definitely not the case that they've made up the quotes. Fisk is quite clear about that (if you can dig up the article, it's from like 2006-ish). It's just assuming what any government official says is true and printing it without doing any digging or checking for bias (or outright misinformation as you say).
Right. Decrying the NYT for peddling government lies is the definition of shooting the messenger. We have to think critically about all our sources of information, whether it's the NYT, Fox, RT, Breitbart, or our facebook friends.
> Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but it does bother anyone that the NYT title calls it "election hacking"?
No, it's hacking with the purpose and manifest effect of causing the end result of the election to be more in the direction that the actor favors than it would otherwise be, so "election hacking" is concise and entirely accurate.
> I worry that people who just read titles are getting the wrong impression
People who just read titles will always get incomplete information that they will fill in with assumptions that will often be incorrect. Were that not the case, there'd be no point to having an actual article behind the title.
I appreciate your self-awareness that you may be "splitting hairs". That sort of nuance is unfortunately absent in the thread you kicked off.
I'm really lost as to how this all-out hatred of "mainstream" media started. But even more so I'm left wondering what kind of media these critics would appreciate? Infowars and Breitbart? <somename>.blogspot.com? Does anybody honestly believe they'd be better informed in a world without professional journalism? I'm not just talking about Trump vs. Clinton, but also "the town council's plans for xxx".
I mean, you see these comments glorifying "the press used to be", or saying the NYT "lost all credibility when they endorsed HC" which just leaves me wondering if they're just repeating their side's talking points or if public education has completely failed, possibly beyond the point of no return.
I think terms like "growth hacking" and "financial engineering" led the way on these things.
Also don't get me wrong, I am sure people are deliberately framing events according to their own biases, but it is hardly a surprise in post-truth world, isn't it?
This is why even NYT lost is reputation and credibility. It can't help itself not take the Democrats' side.
Calling it "election hacking" could very well fit into some definitions of "fake news". Will Facebook ban this article now?
This is a good example of why "banning fake news" is a terrible idea, because we don't know whose definition of "fake news" will be implemented. It's also very difficult to pinpoint exactly what fake news is or what is the "optimum percentage" of falseness in an article before it deserves a ban...and so on and so forth.
This is an interesting internal play for US politicians as well -- it strikes me it's probably harder to remove sanctions and reinstate booted intelligence personnel than it is to choose not to act. I'm curious how the Trump presidency will approach this.
Also in the news today is more strident messaging from Kerry about Israeli settlers -- I wonder if we'll have other moves from the Obama administration before end of term.
So 35 Russian diplomats have been given 72 hours to leave the country, and 2 of their properties will be closed - one in DC and the other in San Francisco.
Well, if history is any guide, expect Russia to return the favor.
Question is, how long will they wait before announcing that 35 American diplomats have 72 hours to leave Russia?
They are the 2nd most powerful military in the world by some accounts and have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet, I think that justifies 35 full time employees. Do you have something better for them to do?
Oh please. So far Russian military have proved to be marginally better than Georgia and on par with Ukraine.
Speaking as someone with a lot of friends and acquaintances working in Russian military industry, it's much more talented in building potemkin villages and giving an impression of power than doing anything real. Everything, from tech to mentality of the military is rotten and just painted over.
Oh please. So far Russian military have proved to be marginally better than Georgia and on par with Ukraine.
"Marginally better than Georgia"?
Is that why the recent Russian skirmish with that country was over in a flash?
And Ukraine! Ukraine!!
Obama once called Russia a regional power. After a few weeks of Russia blasting the daylights out of the terrorists we're using in Syria, he changed his mind.
It's the side who stands to lose from the conflict which usually tries to solve it. US is losing almost nothing from it strained relationship with Russia — why should it bother with it?
It's naive to think that a strained relationship means that the US has nothing to gain from continued diplomatic contact. A country has many dimensions, and there are always multiple dimensions of cooperation to pursue.
And even if there are no grounds on cooperation, such a situation does not obviate the benefit of good communication. Be it businesses in competition or states with rivalries, such relationships can be modeled by a game of competitive strategy. You still want the diplomatic contact to make things clear to your rival when you have committed to something, and also know when your rival has committed to something. And on many issues, a less noisy channel (good diplomatic communication) actually benefits the more powerful entity.
The US can't be the police of the world for all eternity and act on its own in any conflict that arises. Acting unilaterally is only going to bring more and more problems; I hope you're not suggesting that the US should just oust Russian troops from wherever they are if it doesn't please the US.
True or not, the idea that Russia could have hacked the US elections is pretty wild, and the way this is nonchalantly discussed, and met with the mild diplomatic gesture of dismissing some diplomats is a little surprising to me.
Is it because I have grown up during the end of the cold war? But what would Nixon or Reagan have done in this situation?
Messing with a country's political system like that sounds extremely hostile to me and warrants massive investigations, reorganizations and review of the entire voting process to restore trust.
1) The Obama administration has said that retaliation will be in some part covert, so there's strong reasons to believe the publicized reaction is only the tip of the iceberg
2) If Russia hacked US elections in a material way (i.e. stuffing electronic ballots), we probably wouldn't know anyway. President Trump is much better for the United States than acknowledging that Russia can elect whoever they want.
Let's say Obama has airtight proof that Putin single-handedly elected Trump. What would be more damaging to the US: publicly admitting that foreign states have control of our elections (which could very reasonably start a large-scale revolt), or allowing it to happen while secrectly taking actions to prevent that from happening again?
But now that everyone talks about it, work should be done on the internal aspect on this: Investigation on voting mechanisms, coming up with a way to make this integral part of democracy safe. You could say "No, Russia didn't do anything, but while we're at it we have noticed some potential weaknesses in our infrastructure".
It's because there's no proof that Russia did any of this and what was done wasn't "hacking the election". It was a leak of factual information. I think a lot of people (myself included) were happy to have the information made public. I'd also be happy if such details about the RNC were made public, but they weren't. I see this more as whistleblowing than anything else and I definitely wouldn't qualify it as "hacking" especially not of "the election".
American intelligence agencies were definitely involved in Russian election in 1996.
Also the link you posted shows the campaign manager connection to Yanukovich - since when is ex-president of Ukraine considered as "Russian officials"? Do you call ex-president of Canada or France - US Officials too?
I am disappointed that as a nation our intelligence and security agencies keep trying to undercut good security practices by asking for backdoor spying exceptions on it's own citizens, and when 'security' is breached for people in the ruling class - only then is action taken, but only then as a big flag-waving saber-rattling distraction instead of any sort of fundamental addressing of the flaws in national security strategy.
So keep the accusations private until you can present the evidence together with the accusations. Otherwise, it is you massaging the public opinion and the report won't matter anyway.
The OPM hacks did far more damage to the country, but Obama's reaction was - nothing. It was only when some elites of his own party got some egg on their face that he reacted.
Nothing publicly. There was a public reaction to this issue because when "some elites of his own party got egg on their face" it was front page news for months that potentially effected the integrity of our election process. The OPM hacks were a disaster in terms of information security, but disappeared in a few news cycles because it didn't effect everyday citizens and had nothing to do with the fundamentals of our democracy.
Are you kidding? Getting the inside scoop on a very large chunk of the federal workforce has "nothing to do with the fundamentals of our democracy"? This is nothing short of an act of war. What do you think will happen to the US if suddenly a large number of people in the federal workforce wake up to no money in the bank? Do you think the government will be able to respond effectively to whatever crisis (likely involving China) is going on?
If you have some evidence that Obama did something then present it. If not, just wishful thinking.
> Getting the inside scoop on a very large chunk of the federal workforce has "nothing to do with the fundamentals of our democracy"?
Yes. It has nothing to do with the fundamentals of our democracy. It absolutely has to do with the fundamentals of our government, but how we elect that government is not directly effected.
>If you have some evidence that Obama did something then present it. If not, just wishful thinking.
I obviously have no evidence, but I think it's more educated guess than wishful thinking considering that high level government officials have publicly said that's the M.O.
Regardless of political views, it has been disheartening to see so many organizations and leaders throw tantrums on the public stage - it deligitimizes authority and erodes trust.
I hope that some day in the future we learn the truth about this year. Some people believe that the leaks were a few rogue CIA members, others blame a dude in eastern Europe, and of course Russia. I have no idea what the truth is, but I think under the covers there's some interesting drama.
So is this how US politics will be from now on? Every president spends their lame duck period doing everything possible to sabotage the next guy (if they're the other party)? I seem to recall GWB having a bit more decorum than Obama here but maybe I'm wrong. Is the political climate really more poisonous than ever or does it just seem that way?
"The GAO concluded that ''damage, theft, vandalism, and pranks did occur in the White House during the 2001 presidential transition.'' The report stated that some incidents, such as removing keyboard keys, placing glue on desk drawers and leaving obscene voicemail messages ''clearly were intentional,'' and intentional damage would constitute a criminal act under federal law. No prosecutions are planned, though."
Unless I'm mistaken GWB didn't have to deal with a foreign government interfering with our elections.
Besides, this sort of thing will only be relevant a few times in the President's career and the odds are pretty good that if it were to happen it would happen in their "lame duck" phase. So what?
Well there's this and the UN Israel resolution, both of which are things Trump would have been unlikely to do. Then there's the raft of executive orders..
It's almost like Trump's win was entirely unexpected and the outgoing administration is playing catch-up on things they thought Clinton would take care of...
Whether or not Trump would do those things is immaterial; he's not yet president, so what he would have done if he was already doesn't matter. Executive orders, that's pretty common.
He's starting something he won't be able to finish. Not very wise. At this point, the focus should be on an orderly transition of power instead of making waves and creating problems for the next guy to handle. Whether he likes it or not, Trump is the next guy, and Trump's going to have to handle it one way or the other. Trying to cast the die like this is just counterproductive.
> He's starting something he won't be able to finish.
Pretty much every Presidency has some things started late that are known to carry over into the next administration; quite often (especially when there is a change of parties) this something the incoming President would have handled differently.
That's sort of inherent in the nature of having a crisp point-in-time transfer of power.
It's the point-in-time transfer of power that makes this unwise. He has less than a month to go and his top priority is what exactly? It should be on the smooth transition of power. Starting a tit-for-tat with Russia should be left to the next guy.
> Taking action in response to foreign aggression is "sabotaging the next guy" now?
Abstractly speaking, and not suggesting any particular tie to the current situation (in this comment, at least): when the next guy is an agent of the foriegn aggressor, yes, it quite naturally would be.
"Barack Obama announces more sanctions against Russia, citing alleged Russian hacking during US election. However though the sanctions will annoy the Russians, they will not seriously affect them. Their true purpose is to create further embarrassment for Donald Trump by insinuating that he owes the Russians the Presidency."
Dershowitz has argued that Obama's Israel decision from just a few days ago constitutes just that. He went on a round of TV interviews to explain his view.
He asserted that, yes. He didn't really do much to explain his view, other than just repeating that it was "revenge" and "pique". Do you agree with his assessment, and can you provide reasoning for it?
It may have been the origin of all of this. They setup a private email server that was insecure and poorly managed so that they would not be subject to FOIA, etc. It contained top-secret emails. No one disputes that.
Why could that not have been the catalyst to hacking the DNC? You've got all these important DNC folks sending her emails that reside on that server... right?
Russia, a state-actor, coordinated an cyber-attack on an American political party. The results of that attack (which weren't particular interesting) are secondary to the attack itself.
The Russians are "to blame" because they're the ones who committed the action.
I don't like Russia as much as the next guy, but the US doesn't really have moral high ground here.
The repeating argument in NSA revelations was that intelligence agencies are here to gather intelligence outside the country and on their own citizens. Well then it follows, outside the country it would be pretty weird if Russia spied on US citizens, but not political parties. This goes both ways of course.
Once you see that having an intelligence agency necessarily means you're going to snoop on internals of another government, it would be even more weird if you don't meddle with it when you have the chance. I mean why not? Nation states are out for themselves. In particular if the stakes are high such as when the nation happens to have a good portion of the world's nuclear arsenal, why not take a shot?
The US does not have a "moral high ground" here, but that's also beside the point. Yes, we interfere in the elections of other countries. We also bomb other countries. And yet, if another country bombed us, we'd be pretty pissed about it.
I think it's also worth noting that this was not a particularly sophisticated attack. Podesta fell for a simple phishing attack. A lot of media attention around this has made it sound like something out of an action movie, but the attack itself was actually quite simple. People who have access to so much important information need more training about this sort of thing so they don't just give their password away. It might've been the Russians this time, but it could've been just about anyone, and unless the underlying problem is resolved, it'll continue to happen.
Exactly, it could have been a Russian national, or it could have been someone from the USA, Nigeria or Spain, with enough VPN tunnels and botnets at an attacker's disposal it might take years, if ever, that they could attribute the event back to the true source.
>The results of that attack (which weren't particular interesting) are secondary to the attack itself
One could argue that the documented effort to override public opinion in the primary election is quite interesting by itself. I suppose you could also claim that it's uninteresting, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened.
Well, it was apparently convincing enough for the former DNC chair to lose her job, and for the subsequent DNC chair to be fired from her position at CNN. If you choose to ignore what happened, then that's your own perogative.
First, the former DNC chairwoman was going to lose her job anyway. The DNC chair position alternates every four years. She was "fired" early to make peace with Sanders, who believed (correctly) that DWS favored Clinton. It was a move to give unity to the party, and possibly to get Sanders endorsement. It's hard to say for certain what would have happened if they hadn't.
Donna Brazile forwarded a single question to Podesto. The optics looked bad, but, as the email chain showed, it was a question they already had an answer to.
Believing this "proves!" anything is ignoring the facts.
That is a post-hoc rationalization and you know it. DWS was forced to step down amid a firestorm, not voluntarily "to give unity to the party." The same goes for Brazile. The claim that "they could have figured out the answer anyway" doesn't make up for the dishonesty in cheating during the debates.
It's hardly post-hoc. There was no evidence revealed in the emails that revealed anything more damning than that DWS, and the DNC, preferred Clinton (the Democrat) to Sanders (not a Democrat).
She stepped down early, and was replaced with DB, an even bigger Clinton fan.
By July 22nd, the entire party was in unity mode, and Sanders was actively being courted for his endorsement. DWS resigned as a sacrifice play.
As for the email question, it wasn't making an excuse for it, so much as it was pointing out it had no effect on the proceedings.
Either way, I believe this thread shows how little the DNC hack revealed.
No, I believe they did not specifically help him. I have not seen evidence they went out of their way to hurt him. The most "damning" thing you could point to would be the debate schedule, which was scheduled before anyone knew Sanders would be a nominee.
The link below showed something which was talked about, but never executed. It can be chalked up to proof that the DNC preferred Clinton (they absolutely did) but not that they actively did something to harm them. As I noted above, you can argue the emails "hinted at" the potential they did, but you cannot prove they actually did.
If your "evidence" is that people in public positions are removed from public positions because of public backlash, then that is no evidence at all. Public opinion often rules out over actual facts in such cases.
>"Russia, a state-actor, coordinated an cyber-attack on an American political party."
Is there any evidence that the hacks came from Russia?
From what I've seen, the Russians have just been the scapegoats. Just because something is repeated a lot on the news, doesn't make it true. If there's evidence the hacks were orchestrated by the Russian government (or even involved Russia at all), let's see the evidence. Without the evidence, the claims are baseless.
Both the FBI and CIA have publicly stated they believe the hacks came from Russia. Whether they'll release their evidence publicly remains to be seen, however, even GOP senators acknowledge it was likely Russia. We can assume they were briefed.
>"Both the FBI and CIA have publicly stated they believe the hacks came from Russia."
Let's imagine you're the President and you discover the leaks came from US citizens with ties to the DNC (e.g. DNC employees with access to emails). Would you have anything to gain from pointing the finger at foreign political actors interfering in US politics?
It's literally the complete wrong way. You're inventing potential motivations, convincing yourself those are the motivations of the people involved, and then likely searching for evidence that proves your speculation correct.
It's not completely baseless, a former British ambassador that supposedly has close ties to WikiLeaks has suggested the information they leaked came from a DNC insider:
With that out of the way, let's return to the earlier question, in the situation I described previously, what would be gained by blaming a foreign group for the leaks?
TBH, I'd just assume see more stuff come to light... however, in this case, the Russians didn't want Clinton in office (for whatever reasosn) and allowed, encouraged or outright paid for as much negative information as possible to come to light... the timing was a bit odd though, as it's likely this could have happened during the primaries and brought in a Sanders win.
The Obama (big D) administration doesn't like the outcome, or interference, so are stepping in now that they have some evidence of the origins of said attacks.
Of course they didn't step in when it was one of several large corporations which have heavy economic ties with the US... Boeing, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc... but hey, they messed with their political party and the elections this time.
I'm a bit cynical about the whole thing to be honest. If the news media had done their job instead of pumping Trump's visibility we wouldn't have had to worry about Hillary or Trump being their respective party's nominees in the first place.
