Obama Details Actions in Response to Russian Malicious Cyber Activity
U.S. President Obama writes:
I have issued an executive order that provides additional authority for responding to certain cyber activity that seeks to interfere with or undermine our election processes and institutions, or those of our allies or partners. Using this new authority, I have sanctioned nine entities and individuals: the GRU and the FSB, two Russian intelligence services; four individual officers of the GRU; and three companies that provided material support to the GRU's cyber operations. In addition, the Secretary of the Treasury is designating two Russian individuals for using cyber-enabled means to cause misappropriation of funds and personal identifying information. The State Department is also shutting down two Russian compounds, in Maryland and New York, used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes, and is declaring "persona non grata" 35 Russian intelligence operatives. Finally, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are releasing declassified technical information on Russian civilian and military intelligence service cyber activity, to help network defenders in the United States and abroad identify, detect, and disrupt Russia's global campaign of malicious cyber activities. [...] [The Obama] Administration will be providing a report to Congress in the coming days about Russia's efforts to interfere in our election, as well as malicious cyber activity related to our election cycle in previous elections.
Press release. Text of Executive Order. Annex to Executive Order.
Russia Calls for Expulsion of U.S. Diplomats
Although Russia's foreign minister has asked President Vladimir Putin to expel 35 U.S. diplomats from the country in response to President Obama's actions, President Putin has so far declined to do so.
Dispute on Russia's Involvement with DNC Hacking
A WikiLeaks associate has disputed the Russian hacking narrative, saying that he was handed the documents in Washington, D.C.:
On 15 December 2016, the British tabloid Daily Mail quoted Craig Murray, a former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan and "close associate" of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as saying that the Democratic National Committee's e-mails were not obtained by WikiLeaks due to the efforts of Russian hackers but were instead leaked by a disgruntled DNC operative who had legal access to them [...]
Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information, but an intermediary.
Of course, it could be completely untrue. At the moment we have only his account to work with.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3 Original Submission #4
Related Stories
A new declassified report released by US intelligence officials says Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered" a campaign to influence the 2016 US presidential election.
The 25-page public version of the report was released on Friday after the officials briefed President-elect Donald Trump and top lawmakers on Capitol Hill on a longer, classified version.
The report said Russian efforts to meddle in vote represent the most recent expression of Moscow's long-standing desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.
[...] 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.
Having hours earlier dismissed the hacking controversy as a "political witch hunt," Trump later issued a statement whose main aim appeared to be to deflect questions about the legitimacy of his November 8 victory over Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.
Full text of report available in many places, including at scribd.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @05:58PM
they do it all the time and spy 24/7 on everyone
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:16PM
It's national narcissism. It's not bad when we do it. What exactly did the commies do again?
Obama is trying to tie Trump's hands, and so far Putin hasn't taken the bait.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:22PM
> It's national narcissism. It's not bad when we do it. What exactly did the commies do again?
That is some bullshit tu quoque defense.
Putin absolutely went berzerk [nytimes.com] when he thought clinton meddled with his election. And all he had to bitch about were protests. Something we consider unremarkable in a free democracy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:01PM
Funny the story is the same. Instead of accepting the results of an election the loser* still blamed an outside party instead of their own poor campaign.
* Yes, Putin won. But not by as much as he wanted.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @12:02AM
You are right, but not the way you think.
Clinton is not saying russia's meddling cost her the election. If anything, she's blaming Comey's last minute bullshit. [google.com]
But you know who is blaming russia? Trump!
That idiot can not shut the fuck up about it. Sure he's denying it. But damn is he protesting too much.
Why doesn't he simply say, "I won fair and square, but despite that Russia's actions need to be taken seriously."
His fellow republicans have said that - even his best bud, speaker of the house, Paul Ryan, thinks the sanctions are "overdue." [reuters.com]
So why is Trump so intent on making it all about him? Why is he so intent on denying something that nobody is seriously accusing him of?
It is starting to look hinky as shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @12:57PM
Making it all about him means that he creates the controversy and only he can end the controversy. All the way through the elections we saw this play out - he says something about himself or in relation to himself, then trolls the media for a few weeks crowding out any real news. I hope people catch on because congress will be dismantling the federal govt. for 4 years while y'all get enraged over whether Trump is more like Berlisconi or Putin, and what celebrity A said to celebrity B.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:58PM
This was -NOT- a "hack".
This stuff was clearly the result of A LEAK. [google.com]
This storyline is USA's "intelligence" community doing what it does: spewing lies and engaging in misdirection.
They are also trying to increase their budget for next year.
...and the Lamestream Media "journalists" who have gobbled up the spooks' lies and repeated them are the usual lazy, fake news bunch we've seen over and over.
.
...and, as Fristy alluded to, USA's cyberwarfare efforts dwarf all other nations' efforts combined.
O'Bummer just keeps heaping more feces onto his already-heinous legacy.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:23PM
This storyline is USA's "intelligence" community doing what it does: spewing lies and engaging in misdirection. They are also trying to increase their budget for next year.
There would be no point to fake, last minute grandstanding from the intelligence community's point of view. Because come January 20, they'll have to deal with the fallout from this mess with a hostile incoming president and congress. The less of it that is true, the less protection they'll have in three weeks when Trump cleans house.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:13PM
In future if Russia want to undermine democracy and gain political influence, they should donate to the candidates charity foundation like George Soros, Saudi Arabia and Qatar?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:17PM
Let's be real here: Podesta had complete jokes for passwords, and they weren't even hacked - he fell victim to spear phishing. Actual software was Ukranian and out of date. Furthermore, postmortem analysis on Hillary's insane basement private email server indicated it was 0wned by multiple parties; at least five foreign actors had access to it. The DNC emails, per the source with the highest credibility on the fucking planet right now - yes, Wikileaks - were an inside job.
Those are the facts as we know them. Thanks to VPNs, I personally put no credibility whatsoever in claims these actions could possibly be traced to any particular actor. Particularly so for Podesta. Yet we're being force-fed a narrative pointing straight at the Russians by the media. The same media that force-fed us a narrative that Hillary was so far ahead, Trump should just drop out facts be damned. For a further analysis of the actual USGov release supposedly providing evidence for this, see ArsTechnica who conclude they utterly failed to make the case: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/did-russia-tamper-with-the-2016-election-bitter-debate-likely-to-rage-on/ [arstechnica.com]
So, who are you going to believe here? The media which has abdicated all pretense of independence, or the source with a 100% credibility record and zero claims of inaccuracy?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:31PM
> Furthermore, postmortem analysis on Hillary's insane basement private email server indicated it was 0wned by multiple parties; at least five foreign actors had access to it.
That's a new one. Where did you hear that?
'Cause its sounds like echoes from your butt.
> Thanks to VPNs, I personally put no credibility whatsoever in claims these actions could possibly be traced to any particular actor.
Well, the fact that they used the same encryption keys [vice.com] for their command-and-control system that had been used in attacks that were previously connected back to russia kinda makes the actual IP addresses irrelevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:48PM
I read that one somewhere too.
Podesta fell victim to a phishing email -- the @ssh0les gmail password was p@ssw0rd. No C&C required.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:48PM
That's a new one. Where did you hear that?
I read that one somewhere too.
I think I heard somewhere that someone had read that somewhere, too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:07PM
There was no sophisticated malware or anything of the sort necessary. In at least one of the emails that are now public we know Podesta got sent an email "Your email has been hacked. Click on this link shortener address to a dodgy looking URL and enter your old username and password." which he proceeded to do. Given that sort of complete technical illiteracy I don't doubt the entirety of the DNC was probably loaded with malware from just about every interested party in the world. One email also showed them using username/password combinations including p@ssword. Wikileaks took the unprecedented step of even stating that they received the leaks from a party insider and there's really 0 reason to doubt that. The Project Veritas videos [youtube.com] (hyperbolic titles, but those are genuine videos which have cost numerous DNC insiders their jobs) show various DNC insiders happily discussing unethical if not illegal acts, on hidden camera, with one such leaker. Mostly, it just looks like the DNC was full of technically illiterate dolts and has minimal or incompetent vetting for people they give access to. This whole "Russian is the cause of everything" is just fake news.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:51PM
Citing project veritas is an immediate disqualifier.
They were the guys who edited those planned parenthood videos to be outright lies.
Their lies were so bad that when Texas launched an investigation into planned parenthood they not only cleared PP (as did the other 11 state AGs and 4 congressional committees that investigated them) but ended up bringing felony charges against the people behind project veritas. [cjr.org]
Everything you've ever heard on AM radio or infowars about despicable, lying liberals - that's the blueprint for the way project veritas operates.
Basically if Project Veritas says the sky is blue, that's only because something has happened to turn it red.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Monday January 02 2017, @01:45AM
You guys maintain that Narrative in the hope of making it truthy in the minds of low info voters but it ain't so. And you are such an expert you can't even hate on the right guy for the right thing. Okeefe and his Project Veritas didn't do the Planned Parenthood spare baby parts videos, that was Center for Medical Progress and David Daleiden. And there were no "deceptive" edits, you can in fact confirm this assertion by viewing the entire unedited source material if you have the cast iron stomach to watch hours of Evil.
And it isn't exactly a surprise that Democrats would attempt to file charges against someone who called into question one of the cornerstones of their religion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:27AM
The gay vegan mooooooooooooooslims are gonna getcha, and they'll make you wear assless chaps!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:42AM
> Okeefe and his Project Veritas didn't do the Planned Parenthood spare baby parts videos, that was Center for Medical Progress and David Daleiden.
Half true. O'keefe and Daleiden are best buds that have worked together on similar lies. As fellow reactionary loony toon, Chuck Johnson, documented in 2009. [claremontconservative.com]
> And it isn't exactly a surprise that Democrats would attempt to file charges against someone who called into question one of the cornerstones of their religion.
Because Texas is run by democrats. What were you saying about low-info voters? Or do you not vote?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @02:13AM
Being a motherfucking dipshit SHOULD be an immediately disqualifier, yet for some reason you're still allowed on the internet.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:31PM
That's my take as well.
As much as I hate Hillary's abuse of transparency-in-gov't laws, her illegal personal server remained secure while the State Dept's systems were breeched.
Now, her -correspondents- and their lame security practices are another matter entirely.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by nethead on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:42PM
Hey! I have a private email server in my basement!
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday January 02 2017, @02:05AM
Ya, you go on believing that. A Microsoft Exchange Server with no professional administration, no professional hardening, and apparently no secure firewall isolating it from the Internet. Spam and malware filtering was outsourced to the Cloud, at a service provider with no clearance. Zero breaches! Yea, sure. Whatever get you through the night pal, don't stop believing, you are With Her to the bitter dead end.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:36PM
The fact that Russian or other agencies has access to servers does not mean they were ones who released the information. It just means they had access to it as well. personally, I trust Wikileaks representatives far more than any US government agencies.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:54PM
Wikileaks lost a lot of credibility when they pulled that stunt of offering a reward for information on the death of Seth Rich [washingtonpost.com] as a way to co-opt his death to fuel conspiracy theories against Clinton. They wanted people to think Mr Rich was the "insider" but they wouldn't actually name him as their source. That's so much bullshit on so many levels.
(1) The DNC email leaks weren't worth killing over. They were really banal. The only reason they are a big deal is because they were trumped up.
(2) If he was the actual source then name him, he's dead, you can't hurt him any more.
(3) If wikileaks is concerned about protecting friends of Mr Rich then this wink-wink nod-nod way of not-naming him puts them in as much as danger as actually naming him.
(4) If he's not the source, then wikileaks is smearing him, making it sound like he didn't believe in the work he was doing. Who the fuck are they to do that? His parents are not happy with wikileaks either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @08:31PM
A psychopath would disagree... and then make exactly that argument in their defence.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:07PM
(1) The DNC email leaks weren't worth killing over.
Obviously, you presume that people in Washington share your values. You are incapable of understanding people who have no values. People in the DNC were embarrased and lost their jobs over these leaks. People who don't value life would be happy to snuff any number of lives for less reason than that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:35PM
Yeah, yeah, yeah. IIRC you also believe in the spirit cooking fantasy and pizzagate.
Anyone you disagree with isn't just wrong, they are the devil.
You are quite lame.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:55PM
Haha, didn't know about spirit cooking [snopes.com].
omg satanic ritual! omg omg omg! It gets so fucking old. It's depressing that people are unable to separate fantasy from reality.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 02 2017, @12:39AM
" IIRC you also believe in the spirit cooking fantasy and pizzagate."
You don't recall correctly. Spirit cooking? WTF? The bitch published a cook book which uses bodily fluids in the recipes? That's gross, disgusting, and could be occult too. A lot of occult shit attributes special powers to bodily fluids, especially blood and semen.
Spirit cooking. Some sick shit, no matter how you look at it. Just how far is this from cannabalism?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @12:44AM
Looks like I recalled just fine.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 02 2017, @02:26AM
Obviously, you'll overlook and forgive the most perverse acts, if they are performed by left/progressive/democrats, but condemn anyone who even questions those acts? Got it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:45AM
If you play Beyonce backwards its says "Hillary is the devil! Hillary is the devil!"
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday January 02 2017, @06:45AM
If you play Beyonce backwards its says "Hillary is the devil! Hillary is the devil!"
Wow! That's amazing, 'cuz if you play Runaway forwards, it says the exact same thing!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @07:09AM
Runaway, Runaway! Did you watch "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" again? You know it always scares you, what with all the Muslins taking your heart out and shit. So just calm down. Here, have some Ladyfingers and ******toes.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:39PM
There were two separate hacks of DNC emails. The phishing attach on Podesta [wikipedia.org] is unrelated to the main DNC email leak [wikipedia.org], which does not appear to be a phishing attack.
(Score: 4, Informative) by butthurt on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:45PM
[...] postmortem analysis on Hillary's insane basement private email server indicated it was 0wned by multiple parties; at least five foreign actors had access to it.
The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server found no evidence that her communications were hacked while she was secretary of state, but it made clear that “hostile actors” here and abroad could have done so.
-- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-no-evidence-clintons-email-was-hacked-by-foreign-powers-but-it-could-have-been/2016/07/05/93334ba0-42dc-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BK on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:28PM
Governments spy including US.
Governments try to influence other governments. USA has directly influenced more governments than I can name quickly.
Russia is accused of reading the email of a political party in the USA.
Russia is accused of reading about risotto.
Russia is accused of letting other people read the email of a political party in the USA, including about rissoto.
Russia says they didn't do this and the folks that distributed the email (wikileaks) say they didn't get it from Russia.
Let's assume that they're lying and Russia did it.
So what?
Governments spy including Russia.
Governments try to influence other governments.
It's unclear if the activity by Russia made any difference. Repeat.
So what would change my mind?
Did Russia hack actual voting totals to change the results? Just that.
Maybe I'm missing the big picture here but I think not. The Russia story seems like fake news.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:42PM
It's definitely "fake news." There were some early attempts to try to argue that Russians might have somehow affected the polls which is what, in part, led to the recounts in numerous states. There was 0 evidence found of any sort of "hacking" but the recounts did reveal a disparity. Trump's margin of victory was actually wider than initially reported in every single state where recounts were carried out. So now the media is running with the intentionally misleading headline of "hacking the election" when they are referring to the leaked campaign emails.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:34PM
> Trump's margin of victory was actually wider than initially reported in every single state where recounts were carried out.
Where "every single state" is actually just "one single state" - Wisconsin. All the other recounts were halted in the courts before they could be completed.
And that increase was only 131 votes [hotair.com] easily just statistical noise.
The actual reason for the recounts was that there is zero verification. [medium.com] No random sampling of precincts to compare handcounts of paper ballots with electronic tallies. All the stuff about there being "no credible evidence" of irregularities was because nobody even bothers to look for irregularities. Kind of like all the claims about their being no medical value to marijuana - nobody was even been allowed to look for medical uses of marijuana, so of course there is no evidence.
Recounts were the shittiest way to do verification, but they were the only way that the courts might even possibly allow. As long as there are electronic voting machines, there must be some form of manual verification that is a standard part of the process. Ideally a federal law spelling out minimum levels of verification so that we can have provable confidence in the system.
Michigan even has a bullshit rule [theguardian.com] that if the number of paper ballots didn't match the number of votes in the computer, then a recount was forbidden for that county. WTF? The counties with the biggest red flags are the ones blocked from checking from doing a handcount. That's beyond ridiculous.
Anybody who thinks that the evidence of the DNC being hacked is lacking should, if they were logically consistent, want similarly strong evidence that our votes aren't being electronically tampered with. Its a litmus test that separates the partisans from the principled.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday January 02 2017, @12:13AM
From the link:
That sounds more like if you suddenly have more or less ballots than were issued, then you can't have a recount. It seems to be an attempt to prevent post-election ballot stuffing or "losing ballots" then demanding a recount.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @12:39AM
That might be the original inetnt of the law.
In which case this practical effect is an unexpected result.
It was still used to deny recounts in the precincts that had the most reason to be recounted.
Which was fucked up.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:36PM
This "state level hacking" was a phishing email sent to a campaign manager with a Google password reset button on a site with some absurd domain name made further shady by using a link shortener in an email. And the "hacking" exposed little more than campaign emails which ought be covered by freedom of information requests anyhow.
I don't really even understand what Obama is trying to do. I mean it seems like he's intentionally trying to provoke international hostilities, which would be detrimental to our national interests and national security, just because he didn't like the election result. Of course it won't work and the whole world is left just kind of looking at him stupefied as he makes a mockery of himself. I'm not usually a fan of political cartoons, but this [imgur.com] seems quite appropriate. Scary to think this sort of personality has been running our country for 8 years and we're probably just now starting to see his private face in public since he apparently just doesn't care anymore.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:57PM
You understand, but most Americans do not. That is the key here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:36PM
There were two separate hacks of DNC emails. The phishing attach on Podesta [wikipedia.org] is unrelated to the main DNC email leak [wikipedia.org], which does not appear to be a phishing attack.
(Score: 5, Funny) by JNCF on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:46PM
I'm not usually a fan of political cartoons, but this [imgur.com] seems quite appropriate.
That cartoon is absurd -- it very rarely makes sense to promote a pawn to a bishop.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:30PM
Vade retro, traditionalist!
In the Novus Ordo 7x6 chessboard, both bishops rest on the same color. It helps promoting ecumenism since they cannot attack the opponent's bishops. The fact that God likes so much ecumenism that it demolished the "let's all pray together" church in Assisi (while a TV crew was filming, no less) with an earthquake, seems not to have affected Novus Ordo games.
Yet.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @02:28AM
...since they cannot attack the opponent's bishops
A small flaw in that explanation:
A bishop must always remain on the same color as his starting square, so, to have bishops never clash, yes, both of one side's bishops would have to be on the same color, BUT those would have to be the -opposite- color of the opponent's. [archive.li]
...which breaks the "sameness" analogy a bit.
It helps promoting ecumenism
Yeah. The us-against-the-world thing sounds liked the clerics/church/any organization with a dogma that I know.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 02 2017, @02:44PM
look at the 6x7 board, white bishops are on white squares. Dogmatism is never the problem (look at science, axioms are dogmas and ecumenism would be for example embracing ID). Problem is interfering with one's freedom about which ones to pick and to be taken responsible for.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @12:29AM
It's pretty rare, but it's possible. You can be in a situation where promoting to queen or rook results in a stalemate. Usually by that time your opponent is down to few pieces - typically a blocked pawn or two - and if the new queen blocked the king without actually checking it then you have given your opponent a draw.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday January 02 2017, @12:48AM
I never said never! :) Another situation where it could come up is if you were confident that you could move your newly promoted bishop into a position where it would set up a discovered attack using a queen or rook. I actually had that situation come up in a game with a buddy of mine once, and I was super excited that it made logical sense to not promote to a queen (or at least seemed to at the time).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:56PM
I don't really even understand what Obama is trying to do.
What if I told you, Obama knows exactly what he's doing? http://images.dailykos.com/images/209351/large/matrix.png?1455426482 [dailykos.com]
Brought to you by: Marco (Polo!) Rubio for something.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 02 2017, @04:00AM
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday January 02 2017, @02:36AM
I don't agree that the Freedom of Information Act should govern campaign emails. During the campaign the candidate is acting as a private party.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @08:37AM
> I don't really even understand what Obama is trying to do.
> I mean it seems like he's intentionally trying to provoke international hostilities,
> which would be detrimental to our national interests and national security,
> just because he didn't like the election result.
That's a bit rich after 8 years of record-breaking Republican opposition. I think this should be the new normal in politics. If you don't win, foul it up as recklessly as you can.
Exhibit A: hey Obama, here's a crashing economy, 2 unpopular wars, insta-filibuster tactics and 24/7 right-wing propaganda. Have fun!
Trump is getting off easy if all the Dems leave him is a symbolic act against Russia.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:53PM
So now we live in bizarro world where the peace and safety of the world is depending on Vladimir "KGB" Putin being the adult in the room.
We are still stuck on the Media Narrative of "hacked elections" when there is zero evidence, and no matter how many times they are called out on this lack of evidence they ignore it and stick to their script. And wonder why their level of public trust is now in single digits, barely distinguishable from the disdain Americans feel for Congress.
We continue to be assailed daily with "The Russians are Coming!" nonsense when the person in a position to know said this:
-- Begin Transcript ---
Hannity: I know you follow the news closely, I know you see the narrative, now, there is a big brouhaha in the United States, the same media by the way, that Wikileaks exposed as colluding with Hillary Clinton's campaign. With near hysteria getting up to the president and John Podesta with Hillary's campaign, claiming over and over and over again, that it's clear, the CIA says so, even though there's no new evidence whatsoever that we didn't have prior to the election, and that the FBI contradicts, and James Clapper, the National Director of Intelligence contradicts. That in fact the Russian's tried to influence the elections and this hacked information came from them. And you're saying that is outright false. That's a falsehood.
Assange: Our source is not the Russian government.
Hannity: So in other words, let me be clear, Russia did not give you the Podesta documents or anything from the DNC?
Assange: That's correct.
Hannity: Can you confirm whether or not you have information involving hacked info from the RNC?
Assange: We received about 3 pages of information to do with the RNC and Trump, but it was already public somewhere else.
Hannity: Okay so in other words it was nothing significant, there was nothing comparable to what happened, so what Reince Priebus said on NBC to Chuck Todd this weekend was true and NBC had it wrong.
Assange: Well as far as we're aware of.
Hannity: As far as you're aware of.
Assange: Yea.
..... [snippage]
Hannity: So, you can't confirm or deny if this information came from within the United States?
Assange: We're unhappy that we felt we needed to even say that it wasn't a state party, normally we say nothing at all, but we have a conflict of interest. We have an excellent reputation and strong interest in protecting our sources, and so never saying anything about them, never ruling anyone in or anyone out, we sometimes do it, we don't like to do it, we have another interest which is maximizing the impact of our publications. Uh, and...
(interrupted) Hannity: Could you. Let me ask you this then.
Assange: And so here, here in order to prevent a distraction attack against our publications, we've had to come out and say 'No, it's not a State party, stop trying to distract in that way, pay attention to the content of the publication'.
Hannity: So in other words, when you say State party, it wasn't another State like Russia or some other country.
Assange: Correct.
--- End Transcript ---
Now combine with what Craig Murray says above in the summary, the cold dead body of Seth Rich that Wikileaks keeps point out and offering rewards for information related to the murder and if you can't figure out what happened here and what attention is being deflected away from then you are not smart enough for this ride.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:03PM
It's hard to believe the US is not "meddling" in every country in the world given the NSA and all the major internet companies are under US control (either directly or by National Security Letter). If I were running a govt or even large business outside the US, I would be looking for any and all ways to get off US software and hardware. Although it is probably impossible. Even if Russia can read emails and leak them to their advantage, then the USA is reading them and taking advantage times 10. It's hard to take self-righteous Americans seriously when they talk about hacking *their* precious elections. This is not a rant in favor of Trump, just the hypocrisy of the USA. All it takes is 1 "national security event" and we know you will lose your shit, abandon 1k years of legal precedent, lock up 10% of your population and probably start a war against some international punching bag.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @08:27PM
At a minimum it is US, Israeli, British, German, Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean tech, with the possible smaller european countries thrown in, and figuring anything with signing keys there is a possibility of Russia having as well. Furthermore Malaysia/Costa Rica for Intel did/do chip packaging so that is another potential pair of national actors involved.
Out of these the immediate concern ones would be US, Israel, China and Russia all of whom are known to meddle in international affairs, all of whom have the intelligence assets, technology, and research capabilities, and three of which are directly involved in the chip design and fabrication for the majority of processors used in the world.
Furthermore, given that China has fabbing tech within a generation or two of current (and has for a number of years.) One might ask why they or Russia are not currently producing all their domestic processor/x86 needs. For which the simple answer is: Because they already have access to the keys needed to secure their hardware, or exploit their adversaries.
As hackaday recently featured: Sandy Bridge+ Intel ME implementations can be effectively disabled by removing all but one block from the management engine firmware, the core kernel initialization for the ME is required to boot up, but the other modules are used for initiializing the PCI interface and the secondary ethernet inteface from the internal bridging subsystem. With those two components disabled, all the known attack vectors of the Intel ME are closed (and getting into more esoteric attacks, most of them could just as easily be used against the cpu core via javascript and hardware assisted hypervisor escalation attacks.)
The only serious way for hardware to become trustworthy again is open hardware designs with dozens of second source implementations (and a comprehensive test/regression suite to catch as many cornercases as possible so errata lists don't continue looking like intel or amd's every processor generation.) with standardized sockets and similiarly documented 'generic' bus interface guidelines, simiar to how PC clone devices were back in the 80s and 90s (late 90s for interoperable hardware and early 00s when there was still 'mostly' legacy hardware compatibility, even if full performance required specialized drivers.)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:32PM
The lame duck is saber rattling - WHY? What is happening that he doesn't want us to see?
All through this election cycle, it's been "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!"
Hillary's server? RUSSIANS!
Hillary's money? RUSSIA HACKING!
Hillary's Benghazi? RUSSIA HACKED US!
Bernie shut down by DNC? RUSSIA DID IT!
Violent protestors at Trump rally? RUSSIA CAUSED IT WITH THEIR HACKING!
Why is is so important to the Democrats that we fear Russia? What are they distracting us from?
I read an article - can't find it now. One of those hacks blamed on the Russians? The server's owners openly states, yes, the hack came through his servers. But, the hack didn't originate within Russia. The server was used as a proxy, with attacks coming in from several different countries. I really want to find that article . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/world/europe/russia-hacker-vladimir-fomenko-king-servers.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
https://www.rt.com/news/361382-russia-servers-dnc-hack/ [rt.com]
Still not the article I was looking for, but basically the story is there.
Except, we don't know what the story really is. Did Russia do some hacking, but other people were hacking away as well? Is Russia innocent, this time around? Was it the US and/or actors within the US doing the hacking? Or, was there just a series of leaks from within the DNC?
There's a lot more bullshit than facts out there, that much is certain.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:44PM
This popped up at the bottom of my page when I submitted:
According to all the latest reports, there was no truth in any of the earlier reports.
There seems to be no attribution - maybe it's a Hillary quote?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:51AM
After all, it is only the mediocre who are always at their best. -- Jean Giraudoux
Are we seeing what we want to see, or slash & rehash have some kind of rules about quote selection?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @05:04PM
I think you are missing the point.
Russia is to be punished for their behavior. Any other entity found doing the same against the interests of the USA are likely to be treated the same way.
The republican party is mostly not worried about this because they benefitted from it. You can ask the same questions of the republicans -- what do they have to fear so much about the russians that they wish to not upset them, and obstruct the research into the issue and try to dissuade everyone that this isn't a problem?
THIS is a problem -- Hillary's email server wasn't the problem, the problem is that her server was not secured well against things like this! It doesn't matter who -- it's the fear of what. Don't even consider why -- it is clear that russia would prefer the republicans to be in charge of the USA. I won't get into why. Previous policy and future policy likely have something to do with it, more so than the charisma of either political party.
The republicans have far more to lose than the democrats stand to win, should substanstial hacking proof come about or new revelations that demonstrate this to be a serious issue.
What I hear coming from the republican party now is "dont' worry about hacking or security, it doesnt matter! why bother!" what? this is national security! They should be giving a shit about securing their country -- even if they benefitted from the news that resulted, and the election results, that may or may not have influenced everything the voting public thought this election cycle.
Secure our god damn country, and not with a wall to keep out mexicans.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 02 2017, @08:37PM
"this is national security!"
It's the DNC which was supposedly hacked. Not government offices. Just one of the several political parties in the US, not the US itself.
Or, are you telling me that the DNC steals government secrets and sequesters those secrets on their publicly facing servers? Just like Hillary, huh?
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:37PM
Still waiting for the official reactions to little green men from Mars. After all, there is the same amount of evidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:57PM
Russia [consortiumnews.com] and fake news. [consortiumnews.com]
Thank you consortiumnews.