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Putin Hints At US Election Meddling By 'Patriotically Minded' Russians (nytimes.com) 195

Two anonymous readers share a report: Shifting from his previous blanket denials, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Thursday that "patriotically minded" private Russian hackers could have been involved in cyberattacks last year to help the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). While Mr. Putin continued to deny any state role, his comments to reporters in St. Petersburg were a departure from the Kremlin's previous position: that Russia had played no role whatsoever in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and that, after Mr. Trump's victory, the country had become the victim of anti-Russia hysteria among crestfallen Democrats. Raising the possibility of attacks by what he portrayed as free-spirited Russian patriots, Mr. Putin said that hackers "are like artists" who choose their targets depending how they feel "when they wake up in the morning."
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Putin Hints At US Election Meddling By 'Patriotically Minded' Russians

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  • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Thursday June 01, 2017 @11:05AM (#54526037) Journal
    Oh, come on. Nobody is fooled by this, are you? Of course when Putin gave his cyberwarfare people their marching orders, they all knew that if caught they'd be disavowed by the State. Standard operating procedure. Every nation on the planet that has covert intelligence organizations does the same exact thing. Nothing to see here..
    • Your mission Dan/Jim, should you choose/decide to accept it, ...

      As always, should you or any of your I.M. Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape/disc will self-destruct in five/ten seconds. Good luck, Dan/Jim.
    • by ZipK ( 1051658 )

      Of course when Putin gave his cyberwarfare people their marching orders, they all knew that if caught they'd be disavowed by the State.

      And we could prove it if the tape hadn't self destructed [youtube.com] five seconds after concluding.

    • Every nation on the planet that has covert intelligence organizations does the same exact thing.

      Tuvalu strongly denies your accusations and demands an apology from the other 194 nations.

  • Here it comes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday June 01, 2017 @11:12AM (#54526097) Journal
    The unraveling of the denials begins. This is the exact same process Putin used when Russia stole Crimea from Ukraine. For months Putin denied Russian troops had been sent in to steal the land. Denial after denial was given.

    Then, miraculously, Putin admitted he ordered Russian troops [businessinsider.com] to seize the land. The excuse he used was those Russian troops were "helping" the Crimean sefl-defense forces. And by helping he means the Russian troops were doing the dirty work.

    So now the excuse of "patriotic" Russians doing the hacking is being tossed out. What patriotism? Is he now admitting they were helping Trump win the election? That would be an interesting admission since he's denied any Russian meddling in the election despite the overwhelming evidence.
    • The unraveling of the denials begins. This is the exact same process Putin used when Russia stole Crimea from Ukraine.

      Stole? They reclaimed what was rightfully their territory. Most people in the region support it. I get that you're swimming in western propaganda, but it's pretty easy to look up the history of the situation.

    • The unraveling of the denials begins. This is the exact same process Putin used when Russia stole Crimea from Ukraine

      And it's still the official line concerning the pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
      According to Putin, the fighters there are "private Russian citizens on vacation". He can't tell them how to spend their free time, and if they choose to spend it by waging a guerilla war in the Ukraine that just so happens to prevent the country from ever joining NATO (because NATO won't accept countries that are already at war), well, neato.

  • ... Mr. Putin said that hackers "are like artists" who choose their targets depending how they feel "when they wake up in the morning."

    So basically he's saying that they are the Russian version of Anonymous? No wonder why the Democrats are so pissed off.

    • From the information released by Hillary, Wikileaks is run by the russian government so I guess they could have done that.
  • by plague911 ( 1292006 ) on Thursday June 01, 2017 @11:15AM (#54526133)

    That invaded Ukraine and Georgia. Nothing to do with their government at all. Nothing.

    Seriously Putin's word as a man is a joke

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      The fact that Putin is a demonstrable liar doesn't preclude him choosing his words carefully. Quite the contrary.

      So it's worth studying what he's done here. He's cast meddling in the US election as an act of Russian patriotism. Once he's got people used to thinking that way, there's no negative consequences, at least domestically, if he's forced to concede that it was a Russian government operation.

      It's important to neither exaggerate nor minimize an enemy's competence. Putin, like all successful autho

      • I agree whole heartedly that he is an intelligent and manipulative individual. But he also deserves the disrespect of being laughed at and mocked because his words ring of childlike lies.
      • Mr. Trump's recent European trip was nothing less than a triumph for Russian policy. They've been trying to split NATO for half a century.

        Splitting NATO...by the member states increasing their defense spending? Isn't that the opposite...?

        • Increasing their defense spending, because they feel NATO is not committed to their self defense. That in turn makes them significantly more likely to fully break from the alliance, or refuse to step in if called upon. Additionally Turkey is stepping ever so close to dropping out fully.
          • Ah, I see now, so Putin's doing a spin on the ol' Trudeau maneuver, where "if you kill your enemy, they win." Perhaps if you make your enemy stronger and better armed, you win! Very, very clever that Putin.

            Maybe that's how we should beat ISIS. Instead of bombing them, just give them so many guns they can't carry all the guns, and they get too tired from carrying the guns so they stay home.

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          Splitting NATO...by the member states increasing their defense spending? Isn't that the opposite...?

          Of course not. The way to split NATO is by having a US president hint that we might not live up to its Article V obligations, even though the sole time the mutual defense clause was invoked in NATO's 70 year history it was by us. The SVR must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven.

          In any case the 2% guideline has never been an actual rule, it's always been a guideline. That's because it's never made sense for many countries (e.g. Iceland) to spend that much. And today with the dissolution of the Wa

          • The way to split NATO is by having a US president hint that we might not live up to its Article V obligations

            I don't think that's going to split up NATO. Especially when the context is, "we might not follow through on Article V because you guys aren't paying up." Especially when then they start paying up. So, you think the end goal there was not for the NATO nations to pay more, but to give the US an excuse to leave?

            Seems like a pretty risky plan for Putin. If the Europeans just do what they're supposed to do then he winds up with a strengthened, better funded NATO, not a split NATO. And that seems like what's goi

            • by hey! ( 33014 )

              But they are fully paid up. The 2% thing has nothing to do with NATO dues, it's about total defense spending. If the other NATO countries did meet the 2% guideline, NATO operations wouldn't see a single additional euro-cent.

              So what is Trump's goal here? Well in part it's to play to his base back home who don't understand this. But it's not clear that Trump knows enough about NATO funding and operations to understand this either, and perhaps he thinks he's haggling to reduce US contributions to NATO, whi

              • Explain the 2% thing to me. I was always under the impression that NATO members pledge to spend 2% of their GDP on their military (which is the hardware and personnel used in NATO operations). There are no penalties for not doing it, so it's more of a "suggestion," but still the freeloading europeans weren't doing it. And Americans (particularly the ones whose support Trump wanted) would much prefer they meet these pledges.

                You're saying it's actually some bait and switch about NATO dues? How does this bait

                • by hey! ( 33014 )

                  Alright, the 2% thing explained. It's not about NATO dues or contributions, it's about a country's spending on defense above and beyond NATO expenses. Why does NATO care about money a country spends on defense other than NATO? Because NATO is a mutual defense treaty. You don't want to have to come to the defense of another country because it doesn't spend enough money to defend itself.

                  How much should a country spend on its own defense not to be a burden? It depends. Back in the Cold War the figure they c

    • Hey now, lets not be nasty. Putin could be nominated for the 2017 Kellyanne Conway award for credibility.
    • Russia did not invade Georgia in 2008. Contrary, on 08.08.08 Georgians invaded the South Ossetia in a surprise attack, indiscriminately shelled civilian population and killed Russian peacekeeping troops in their sleep.

      Russian peacekeepers were in charge of pacifying and separating both of the fighting sides from each other after the violent separatist conflict of 1991-1992 [wikipedia.org], when the separatists, Georgians, and the Russian Federation agreed to cease fire and designated Russian troops as the peacekeepers [wikipedia.org]agree

  • by Tjp($)pjT ( 266360 ) on Thursday June 01, 2017 @11:15AM (#54526137)
    The attacks you say were brought on by "patriotic russians" crestfallen by the disappointed democrats who lost the election, disregards the actual timeline. The hacking occurred prior to the election. Unless more is ongoing of course. And the Democrats though Hillary was going to win by a landslide.

    Even though I am a strong fiscal conservative and voted against Hillary, Russian interference in the US election process is the same as any other hacking efforts aimed with malicious intent, and is clearly illegal. You assassinate your political rivals. Neither that nor the hacking are acceptable. Open bad mouthing in the press, sure, but that's political discourse. Informed voters can evaluate the source as well as the content. The current sourceless allegations against Trump, they could just as easily be attributed to "patriotic russians" who might be disappointed about the Presidents support of Ukrainian interests. The acceptance you show for the hackers within the russia just shows that, along with your other actions, in Ukraine for example, that under Putin the russia is a rogue state that needs to be marginalized.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    The only people who still believe that Putin did not try to interfere in any way with the U.S. election are the same people who believed that Clinton ran a pedophile ring from the basement of a pizza restaurant.

    `Nuff said.

    • > The only people who still believe that Putin did not try to interfere in any way with
      > the U.S. election are the same people who believed that Clinton ran a pedophile ring
      > from the basement of a pizza restaurant.

      You should mention that the pizza restaurant doesn't, in fact, have a basement.
      • wasn't it that a fund raiser for hillary who owned and operated the sex ring, not her directly, she just profited from it?
        But yea it does have a much proof as the gossip about trump working for the russian government.
        • Pizzagate is easy to debunk. If crazy even needs debunking.

          As for Trump and any connections to the Russian government, I think the smoke hasn't cleared on that yet. And I think there is more than a fire causing the smoke. But we'll see. It just takes time. I imagine a lot of people couldn't believe Nixon hired some 2nd rate burglars, but I do remember being a teen at summer camp when it was announced that he resigned.
    • by poity ( 465672 )

      1: DNC staffer falls for a phishing scam
      ???
      ???
      ???
      ???
      n: Voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin choose Trump over Clinton -- who decided to campaign elsewhere believing those states to be shoo-ins

      What goes in the blanks? Surely, the people of those states didn't go "Oh Russia hacked a server, I'd better switch my vote!" What happened, what changed their votes?

    • Please. They tell us that "17 agencies" agreed that Russians meddled in the US election, yet the DNC did not allow FBI to do forensics on their hacked server. Instead, the DNC hired a private company (see a bit of conflict of interest here?) called Crowdstrike whoe conclusions that Russians hacked the DNC lingered on assumptions that were already debunked by a whole lot of experts.

  • by Americans.

    So, billionaires paid Russian hackers (at a discounted rate from American hackers, and not in danger of the FBI getting them) to get the data....

  • Putin takes a page from Trump's book and trolls .... name your own favorite set of blathering idiots ....

  • by skaag ( 206358 ) on Thursday June 01, 2017 @11:47AM (#54526409) Homepage Journal

    Having visited Russia and exposed to Russian culture and so on, I actually totally believe him for once!

    But what is more amusing to me is how this statement is basically telling us that even Putin is scared with how horrible Trump is for the planet... ;-)

  • I mean, let's suppose that somehow, actual evidence that was somehow incontrovertible showed that there was meddling... and let's even further say that they managed to identify the people responsible, and were able to bring them to court, where they were appropriately and justly tried and sentenced for the crime.

    Would that really change anything, though? I'm betting it wouldn't.

    • I mean, let's suppose that somehow, actual evidence that was somehow incontrovertible showed that there was meddling...

      There is.

      ...and let's even further say that they managed to identify the people responsible, and were able to bring them to court, where they were appropriately and justly tried and sentenced for the crime.

      The people involved have been identified as belonging to Russian intelligence, not holding my breath for a list of names though.

      Would that really change anything, though? I'm betting it wouldn't.

      No, it would not change anything. A thin skinned egomaniacal moron with a twitter account and a bad temper is still president of the United States and will be for as long as Mitch McConnell can find a use for him after which you will probably be saying hello to president Pence.

    • The objective of being is power is not so you can punish the poor, its there to ensure the wealthy dont get punished.

      And thats exactly what will happen if anyone gets caught.
  • Go a week without social media and those "news letters" that email used to call spam and realize the world will keep spinning without those influencing social Darwinism to do it for you. The world is perfectly fine because you are an accident, a byproduct of chance improving upon a series entropic moments. Without a perception for those influence, you are only left with your own reality. Just be you and do you for once and not what those that thrive off of uncertainty want you to be. I can assure you 99% of
  • Trump acts a lot like him, except he's a bit more amplified and a lot less polished.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by backwardsposter ( 2034404 ) on Thursday June 01, 2017 @12:01PM (#54526553)

    The phrase election hacking (meddling/w.e) is agenda driven, as it implies there was tampering with the election process or results. If this is election hacking, then so is recording a private conversation and releasing it to affect results. Just because it may have affected voters minds (because it informed them) doesn't mean we need to add negative connotations to them. Let's reserve that for tampering with the actual election process.

    Like stacking the deck against popular candidates so that your candidate can win.

    • Are you saying DNC hacked the election? Just because the shoe fits? You must be too influenced by the Russian epic of Cinderella. </star-trek-allusion>
  • Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of East Europe have been a kind of internet's wild west since the beginning of the web popularity. When credit card numbers or email account passwords are stolen by thousands or millions, chances are good that they will be traded in the murky chatrooms among those east Europeans. Russia still has the best torrent and tor sites. "Hactivism" is still a common phenomenon in Russia, just recently somebody broke into a bunch of Kremlin official email accounts and leaked their commun

  • This is like claiming that anything that New York Times prints about China is the official position of the US State Department position. Can we stop pretending that the USSR (dissolved 25 years ago) is the same thing as RF? There is plenty of commercial interests in RF which are independent of the state. There aren't many which oppose the state (they do quash political opposition ruthlessly), but they have plenty of non-state commercial actors. If actors who are not affiliated with the Russian Federatio
  • So, we're supposed to ignore Obama's and Clinton's helping the Russians?

    We have Obama on record:
    "Gov. Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida. You said Russia ... the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years,"

    Also:
    In March 2012, at a summit in South Korea, Obama was caught in a

  • Russia interferes in the internal politics of other countries as much as the USA does.

    End of story, and no one is surprised, they all thought it was common knowledge.

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