US imposes sanctions on Russia

[Ziggy Stardust]

So why is it better for the Obama administration to be acting off of baseless accusations than if they had real evidence to support those accusations? I don't really understand what your point is.

[Tribble]

So why is it better for the Obama administration to be acting off of baseless accusations than if they had real evidence to support those accusations? I don't really understand what your point is.

I suppose one could argue that it's still better for Democrats to run with the accusations even if there isn't much to support them because it puts Trump in a bind: either he supports the accusations (in which case that will damage his relationship with Russia) or he denies the accusations (in which case he comes across as an even bigger idiot than he already is and as a Russian puppet). Whether or not the accusations are true it's a win-win for Democrats.

[Wild Zontargs]

So why is it better for the Obama administration to be acting off of baseless accusations than if they had real evidence to support those accusations? I don't really understand what your point is.

My guess would be "the US spouting bullshit for internal consumption while farting in Russia's general direction" is a bad situation, but "Russia actually rigging the election and the US responding by farting in Russia's general direction (and presumably preparing more substantial retaliation)" is worse.

[jwl]

So why is it better for the Obama administration to be acting off of baseless accusations than if they had real evidence to support those accusations? I don't really understand what your point is.

Well for one thing, it lets the Russians know that they are busted. It might be a better strategy, if the accusations are true, to let them think that you are unaware of the spying so you could send them on wild goose chases.

[Grumman]

So why is it better for the Obama administration to be acting off of baseless accusations than if they had real evidence to support those accusations? I don't really understand what your point is.

My guess would be "the US spouting bullshit for internal consumption while farting in Russia's general direction" is a bad situation, but "Russia actually rigging the election and the US responding by farting in Russia's general direction (and presumably preparing more substantial retaliation)" is worse.

Yes, which is what I said. It is better if Russia doesn't do anything that can reasonably be called "election hacking" than if they are; that should not be in dispute. And it is still better if Russia doesn't do anything that can reasonably be called "election hacking" even if Obama's making stupid claims to the contrary in an attempt to save face for his underling losing the election because she and her own underlings are grossly incompetent.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yes, which is what I said.

If you HAD stated things that clearly, then you wouldn't need to have been asked twice, and by different people, to clarify your position.

It is better if Russia doesn't do anything that can reasonably be called "election hacking" than if they are; that should not be in dispute. And it is still better if Russia doesn't do anything that can reasonably be called "election hacking" even if Obama's making stupid claims to the contrary in an attempt to save face for his underling losing the election because she and her own underlings are grossly incompetent.

Not sure why you are providing that link. It really doesn't have anything to do with the subject in general, and I certainly haven't made any statements, in this thread or otherwise, that imply that the results of the election are solely the product of Russian manipulation (or whatever argument you are trying to address). In fact, that is the opposite of my beliefs on the subject.

But saying that it would be better if the Russians didn't commit "election hacking" than if they hadn't is sort of missing the point. I think everybody can agree that we hope the Russians didn't commit election hacking, in a vacuum. The question is whether or not false accusations are better than real accusations, when the geopolitical ramifications may end up being very similar. I think this is a very different type of question. It's not all that different from the argument that it is better to let a guilty person go free then to let an innocent person be punished (though clearly this situation is far more complicated and unpredictable in its consequences). Would you say it is better that a person executed for murder be innocent because that means no murder was committed, and one less murder is still a net positive outcome?

[Simon_Jester]

Arguably the geopolitical ramifications are worse for false accusations than true ones. If the Russian government actually interfered in the election, then on some level Putin knows that and knows that he can't deny the allegations too hard without risking being humiliated. He has to wonder "shit, what do they know?" He may be counting on Trump to make the (true) accusations go away in about two or three weeks, but he can't be indignant about it.

If the Russians didn't interfere in the election, then from their point of view Obama is blowing a gasket in their direction for no reason at all. Russia would be being used falsely as a proxy by one American political faction to slander another one. That is probably worse for the long-term US/Russia relationship than the Russians actually doing something wrong.

[FaxModem1]

Saw this on Imgur. Does anyone have a more official source?

[FaxModem1]

Here's an official one from PBS:

Russian President Putin ‘ordered’ campaign to influence U.S. election, report finds
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS January 6, 2017 at 3:58 PM EST
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a video link, dedicated to the start of natural gas supplying from mainland Russia to Crimea, in Moscow, Russia. Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a video link, dedicated to the start of natural gas supplying from mainland Russia to Crimea, in Moscow, Russia. Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via Reuters

WASHINGTON — A new declassified report says Russian President Vladimir Putin “ordered” an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.

U.S. intelligence officials released the 25-page public version of the report Friday, after they briefed President-elect Donald Trump and top lawmakers on Capitol Hill from a longer, classified version.

The report says Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s long-standing desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order. It says the scope of Russia’s activities was significantly larger compared with previous operations.

After his briefing, Trump stopped short of embracing the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the presidential campaign, saying only that any hacking attempts had “absolutely no effect” on the outcome of the election.

Read the full report below:

Unclassified version of intelligence report on Russian hacking during the 2016 election by PBS NewsHour on Scribd

Link to report on site.

[aerius]

Excuse me as I roll my eyes some more

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/th ... .ynByvJ83q

The FBI Never Asked For Access To Hacked Computer Servers

The Democratic National Committee tells BuzzFeed News that the bureau “never requested access” to the servers the White House and intelligence community say were hacked by Russia.

Ali Watkins
BuzzFeed News Reporter

WASHINGTON — The FBI did not examine the servers of the Democratic National Committee before issuing a report attributing the sweeping cyberintrusion to Russia-backed hackers, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,” Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email.

The FBI has instead relied on computer forensics from a third-party tech security company, CrowdStrike, which first determined in May of last year that the DNC’s servers had been infiltrated by Russia-linked hackers, the U.S. intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

“CrowdStrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate,” the intelligence official said, adding they were confident Russia was behind the widespread hacks.

The FBI declined to comment.

“Beginning at the time the intrusion was discovered by the DNC, the DNC cooperated fully with the FBI and its investigation, providing access to all of the information uncovered by CrowdStrike — without any limits,” said Walker, whose emails were stolen and subsequently distributed throughout the cyberattack.

It’s unclear why the FBI didn’t request access to the DNC servers, and whether it’s common practice when the bureau investigates the cyberattacks against private entities by state actors, like when the Sony Corporation was hacked by North Korea in 2014.

BuzzFeed News spoke to three cybersecurity companies who have worked on major breaches in the last 15 months, who said that it was “par for the course” for the FBI to do their own forensic research into the hacks. None wanted to comment on the record on another cybersecurity company’s work, or the work being done by a national security agency.

The hack of the DNC servers and the subsequent release of purloined emails by WikiLeaks has become a Washington scandal of proportions perhaps not seen since the Watergate era. The hacks — part of what intelligence officials, the White House, and private sector analysts say was a broader Moscow-directed effort to influence the US election — were specifically designed to undercut democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s path to the presidency and bolster Donald Trump, according to CIA and FBI analysis.

Trump has denied that analysis and mocked the US intelligence agencies that produced it. The president-elect is due to receive an in-depth briefing on the subject on Friday.

In a 13-page report made public the last week of December, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed in a joint analysis that Russia was behind the widespread hacks, which targeted Democrats with the intention to manipulate the US election. But the analysis was attributed to broad intelligence across both public and private sectors. Nowhere in the report does it say that the government conducted its own computer forensics on the DNC servers.

“Public attribution of these activities to [Russian Intelligence Services] is supported by technical indicators from the U.S. Intelligence Community, DHS, FBI, the private sector, and other entities,” the report says.

On the heels of the report’s release, the White House expelled 35 Russian diplomats, sanctioned, among other things, two of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies, and shut down access to two Russian diplomatic facilities in the US.

Sheera Frenkel contributed reporting to this story.

CORRECTION

The article has been updated to reflect that CrowdStrike first discovered Russia-backed hackers had infiltrated the DNC in May 2016. A previous version of the article incorrectly said the group first discovered it in March.

So let me get this straight. NO GOVERNMENT AGENCY has carried out a forensic analysis of the DNC servers which were allegedly hacked by the Russians. But they somehow have "high confidence" that it actually happened. Are you fucking shitting me? This is your standard of proof? Relying on the word of some random cybersecurity company? Get the fuck out.

[mr friendly guy]

If the government accused person X of being guilty of crime Y, I would be willing to wait for the evidence to be presented in court and reserve judgment. However I would accept legally that person is innocent until proven guilty.

If the government accused person X of being guilty of crime Y, and insisted we punish and sentence person X right now before the evidence has even been presented, I would go WTF?

Guess which one the Obama administration is doing in regards to Russia?

[Grumman]

Influence =/= hacking. I was trying to influence the election by telling people not to vote for Hillary because she voted for the Patriot Act and the Iraq War; that doesn't make me a threat to democracy.

[TimothyC]

Influence =/= hacking. I was trying to influence the election by telling people not to vote for Hillary because she voted for the Patriot Act and the Iraq War; that doesn't make me a threat to democracy.

Exactly. Saying the Soviets Russians 'Hacked' the election is really flawed because they didn't hack the election. Even if you give them credit for the Podesta email leaks (I don't - it really does look like a successful phishing attack), at most they 'Hacked' the electorate by airing the DNC's dirty laundry (remember, at no point did anyone say that the Podesta emails were fake).

[aerius]

If the government accused person X of being guilty of crime Y, I would be willing to wait for the evidence to be presented in court and reserve judgment. However I would accept legally that person is innocent until proven guilty.

If the government accused person X of being guilty of crime Y, and insisted we punish and sentence person X right now before the evidence has even been presented, I would go WTF?

Guess which one the Obama administration is doing in regards to Russia?

Worse than that actually, they didn't just insist on a punishment & sentence without evidence, they went right ahead and carried out the sentence with no evidence.
The correct comparison would be the government accusing a person of being a terrorist and shipping him off to Gitmo, then holding a show trial after the fact.

This is McCarthyism, and that is not an exaggeration.

[cosmicalstorm]

What a retarded episode to watch in public. I'm old enough to remember D as a true anti war party. Guess only when it suits them.

What is the best case scenario for anti Trump now?
1. He falls down dead this moment
2. He is impeached in due time with conclusive evidence on some charge, treason perhaps?
3. He becomes president but some people say: muh russian haxx!!

[Tribble]

What a retarded episode to watch in public. I'm old enough to remember D as a true anti war party. Guess only when it suits them.

What is the best case scenario for anti Trump now?
1. He falls down dead this moment
2. He is impeached in due time with conclusive evidence on some charge, treason perhaps?
3. He becomes president but some people say: muh russian haxx!!

4. Someone assassinates Trump, VP takes over.
Obviously I don't think that's a good idea, but there might be a few idiots who seriously believe that's the best way to go. There's already an #assassinatetrump hashtag on twitter...

[Vendetta]

What a retarded episode to watch in public. I'm old enough to remember D as a true anti war party. Guess only when it suits them.

What is the best case scenario for anti Trump now?
1. He falls down dead this moment
2. He is impeached in due time with conclusive evidence on some charge, treason perhaps?
3. He becomes president but some people say: muh russian haxx!!

4. Someone assassinates Trump, VP takes over.
Obviously I don't think that's a good idea, but there might be a few idiots who seriously believe that's the best way to go. There's already an #assassinatetrump hashtag on twitter...

Put Pence in the oval office?

I mean he's going to be basically running the place for the next four years, but let's not make it official, eh? Trump is a blowhard who will make a lot of noise and do nothing of substance because he has no real policies.

Pence is an evil shit with plans.

[Simon_Jester]

If the government accused person X of being guilty of crime Y, I would be willing to wait for the evidence to be presented in court and reserve judgment. However I would accept legally that person is innocent until proven guilty.

If the government accused person X of being guilty of crime Y, and insisted we punish and sentence person X right now before the evidence has even been presented, I would go WTF?

Guess which one the Obama administration is doing in regards to Russia?

Worse than that actually, they didn't just insist on a punishment & sentence without evidence, they went right ahead and carried out the sentence with no evidence.
The correct comparison would be the government accusing a person of being a terrorist and shipping him off to Gitmo, then holding a show trial after the fact.

This is McCarthyism, and that is not an exaggeration.

The reason governments are required to hold trials for individuals is because there's a huge mismatch of power between a government and a single person. Individuals have no resources and no way to defend themselves against government accusations without the formalities of a trial.

There has never been an established tradition that it is somehow a violation of Nation A's "rights" for the government of Nation B to conclude that Nation A has somehow attacked it, and retaliate, without fully briefing all the citizens of Nation B. It might be a problem from the point of view of the citizens of Nation B, but Nation A has no specific rights that have been violated here.

Russia is, collectively, about as big a "big boy" as can be imagined. It will suffer no serious harm from the 'punishments' Obama has described. So no, this is not McCarthyism.

McCarthyism would be if Obama were trying to identify specific individuals within America, accuse them of spying for the Russians and punish them directly, bringing the full, disproportionate powers of the government against them. That's in fact literally what McCarthyism was. McCarthyism was not about criticisms directed against the nation of Russia, or even negative diplomatic actions taken against Russia. It was about the persecution of private citizens.

Influence =/= hacking. I was trying to influence the election by telling people not to vote for Hillary because she voted for the Patriot Act and the Iraq War; that doesn't make me a threat to democracy.

Exactly. Saying the Soviets Russians 'Hacked' the election is really flawed because they didn't hack the election. Even if you give them credit for the Podesta email leaks (I don't - it really does look like a successful phishing attack), at most they 'Hacked' the electorate by airing the DNC's dirty laundry (remember, at no point did anyone say that the Podesta emails were fake).

I freely agree that saying "Russia hacked the electorate" would be more accurate.

I will note something. And this is not specifically about Clinton, it's about massive email leak scandals in general.

I would argue that deliberately stealing someone's dirty laundry and selectively releasing it in such a way as to cause maximum trouble for them, and maximum harm to their reputation, is not the same as an honest and unprejudiced process of bringing someone's bad actions to light.

If you have ten thousand emails, pick the worst five, release them and say "we have ten thousand more," you will tend to create a very biased depiction.

This has been an ongoing issue at least since the Bradley leaks, if not earlier. Unfortunately, dealing with large amounts of evidence, some of which is bad and some of which is less bad or innocuous, presents challenges. It's one of the things that journalism is supposed to be for, but is a purpose that journalists no longer serve as a matter of fact.

[The Romulan Republic]

What a retarded episode to watch in public. I'm old enough to remember D as a true anti war party. Guess only when it suits them.

What is the best case scenario for anti Trump now?
1. He falls down dead this moment
2. He is impeached in due time with conclusive evidence on some charge, treason perhaps?
3. He becomes president but some people say: muh russian haxx!!

4. Someone assassinates Trump, VP takes over.
Obviously I don't think that's a good idea, but there might be a few idiots who seriously believe that's the best way to go. There's already an #assassinatetrump hashtag on twitter...

Put Pence in the oval office?

I mean he's going to be basically running the place for the next four years, but let's not make it official, eh? Trump is a blowhard who will make a lot of noise and do nothing of substance because he has no real policies.

Pence is an evil shit with plans.

Assassination would be an act of reprehensible terrorism that would accomplish nothing, except give the far Right a pretext for further despotic actions in the name of security and-ugg-make Trump a martyr.

That said, I find it deeply disturbing that so many people still seem to buy into this idea that Trump won't be so bad, or that we should support him because he's the "lesser evil".

Trump is not an ideologue, no. He's not a far Right extremist in his personal beliefs, but only because actually being committed to a cause would require him to put something else ahead of himself.

What he is is a pathological narcissist, a habitual liar, a sexual predator, and likely a sociopath. He would sell this country and everyone in it for money or ego, do not doubt that, and his administration is a cabal of corrupt businessmen, bigots, anti-regulation nuts, and crooks. And he will listen to them, because he doesn't actually care how the country is governed as long as his ego is stroked and he is enriched. And he is playing all the gullible fools who do not understand this fact.

Trump should be impeached immediately. Ditto Pence.

[Lord Revan]

Trump should be impeached immediately. Ditto Pence.

on what grounds? being an sociopathic asshole isn't a crime in USA (or at least wasn't last I checked). Unless there's an actual crime that Trump has commited impeaching him would be the equivelent of voting so many times that the "correct" candidate won.

Personal distaste for a candidate cannot determine if a person should be removed from office, as doing so would do more harm to democracy is US then anything Trump will be realistically able to accomplish is 4 years.

[Simon_Jester]

Suffice to say that if karma is a thing, or if character counts at all, Trump richly deserves to be impeached. Perhaps more so than anyone who has ever held the Oval Office.

And for people who know the man's character, it is almost impossible to imagine that he will fail to commit impeachable offenses while in office.

If he is held to the same standards as, say, Bill Clinton, I find it very likely that he would be impeached and quite likely that he will wind up convicted- because if he had the ability to resist acting like a mass of corrupt foulness, for the sake of governing his country, or even for the sake of preserving his own image, he would be a completely different man.

[Grumman]

I will note something. And this is not specifically about Clinton, it's about massive email leak scandals in general.

I would argue that deliberately stealing someone's dirty laundry and selectively releasing it in such a way as to cause maximum trouble for them, and maximum harm to their reputation, is not the same as an honest and unprejudiced process of bringing someone's bad actions to light.

If you have ten thousand emails, pick the worst five, release them and say "we have ten thousand more," you will tend to create a very biased depiction.

This has been an ongoing issue at least since the Bradley leaks, if not earlier. Unfortunately, dealing with large amounts of evidence, some of which is bad and some of which is less bad or innocuous, presents challenges. It's one of the things that journalism is supposed to be for, but is a purpose that journalists no longer serve as a matter of fact.

You cannot reasonably say this is an ongoing issue, because proving the opposite is true is as simple as going to the Wikileaks website and reading emails at random until you are satisfied that they are not selectively releasing emails to create a misleading sample.

Either they're culling innocuous emails prior to release, or they're releasing Podesta's risotto recipe. Pick one.

[Vendetta]

Trump should be impeached immediately. Ditto Pence.

on what grounds?

Trump is almost certainly going to come up with some kind of major conflict of interest whilst in office, but even if Congress feels like throwing him under the bus for Pence they'll wait until the honeymoon period is over and midterm discontent is starting to worry their Congresscritters.

[Tribble]

Trump should be impeached immediately. Ditto Pence.

on what grounds?

Trump is almost certainly going to come up with some kind of major conflict of interest whilst in office, but even if Congress feels like throwing him under the bus for Pence they'll wait until the honeymoon period is over and midterm discontent is starting to worry their Congresscritters.

When was the last time Republicans tried to impeach a Republican President?

[Vendetta]

on what grounds?

Trump is almost certainly going to come up with some kind of major conflict of interest whilst in office, but even if Congress feels like throwing him under the bus for Pence they'll wait until the honeymoon period is over and midterm discontent is starting to worry their Congresscritters.

When was the last time Republicans tried to impeach a Republican President?

When was the last time the Republicans had as loose a cannon as Trump as President?

Their problem is going to come when whatever he manages to do looks like it's going to splatter onto them, especially coming up to the midterms when incumbent parties usually get a kicking anyway.