The Atlantic Warns About 2020 Election Security Holes and Possible Russian Interference (theatlantic.com) 250
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: A staff writer at The Atlantic published a 7,800-word warning about election security considering the possibility of everything from ransomware to meddling with voter-registration databases — and of course, online disinformation. But it starts with Jack Cable, a Stanford student who discovered security holes in Chicago's Board of Elections website — then spent months trying to find an official who'd fix them. The Atlantic describes the holes as "the most basic lapses in cybersecurity — preventable with code learned in an introductory computer-science class — and they remained even though similar gaps had been identified by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, not to mention widely reported in the media." And then this "teenager in a dorm room" discovered "many other" states had similar security holes...
Fortunately, the former head of security at Facebook (who now teaches at Stanford) had gotten approval from the Department of Homeland Security to assemble a team of undergraduates to search for election-security holes. "Less than six months before Election Day, the government will attempt to identify democracy's most glaring weakness by deploying college kids on their summer break." But there's other equally disturbing anecdotes in the article. On election night in 2016, Russians had queued up a Twitter campaign alleging voting irregularities, and "Russian diplomats were ready to publicly denounce the results as illegitimate..."
And yet there's also this anecdote about the Internet Research Agency, "a troll farm serving the interests of the Kremlin."
Starting in 2017, it launched a sustained effort to exaggerate the specter of its interference, a tactic that social-media companies call "perception hacking." Its trolls were instructed to post about the Mueller report and fan the flames of public anger over the blatant interference it revealed... If enough Americans come to believe that Russia can do whatever it wants to our democratic processes without consequence, that, too, increases cynicism about American democracy, and thereby serves Russian ends.
The article notes that some techniques are apparently borrowed from mainstream cybercriminals, and "In the cybercrime world, you're starting to see audio phishes," warns Microsoft's Corporate VP of Security and Trust. "[S]omebody gets a voicemail message from their boss, for example, saying, 'Hey, I need you to transfer this money to the following account right away.' It sounds just like your boss and so you do it."
What's really remarkable is the reach of the activities. The Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks illicit campaign financing, "has identified at least 60 instances of Russia financing political campaigns beyond its borders," according to the article. And sometimes the efforts actually go offline... What the Russians can't obtain from afar, they will attempt to pilfer with agents on the ground. The same GRU unit that hacked John Podesta has allegedly sent operatives to Rio de Janeiro, Kuala Lumpur, and The Hague to practice what is known as "close-access hacking." Once on the ground, they use off-the-shelf electronic equipment to pry open the Wi-Fi network of whomever they're spying on. The Russians, in other words, take risks few other nations would dare. They are willing to go to such lengths because they've reaped such rich rewards from hacking.
Fortunately, the former head of security at Facebook (who now teaches at Stanford) had gotten approval from the Department of Homeland Security to assemble a team of undergraduates to search for election-security holes. "Less than six months before Election Day, the government will attempt to identify democracy's most glaring weakness by deploying college kids on their summer break." But there's other equally disturbing anecdotes in the article. On election night in 2016, Russians had queued up a Twitter campaign alleging voting irregularities, and "Russian diplomats were ready to publicly denounce the results as illegitimate..."
And yet there's also this anecdote about the Internet Research Agency, "a troll farm serving the interests of the Kremlin."
Starting in 2017, it launched a sustained effort to exaggerate the specter of its interference, a tactic that social-media companies call "perception hacking." Its trolls were instructed to post about the Mueller report and fan the flames of public anger over the blatant interference it revealed... If enough Americans come to believe that Russia can do whatever it wants to our democratic processes without consequence, that, too, increases cynicism about American democracy, and thereby serves Russian ends.
The article notes that some techniques are apparently borrowed from mainstream cybercriminals, and "In the cybercrime world, you're starting to see audio phishes," warns Microsoft's Corporate VP of Security and Trust. "[S]omebody gets a voicemail message from their boss, for example, saying, 'Hey, I need you to transfer this money to the following account right away.' It sounds just like your boss and so you do it."
What's really remarkable is the reach of the activities. The Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks illicit campaign financing, "has identified at least 60 instances of Russia financing political campaigns beyond its borders," according to the article. And sometimes the efforts actually go offline... What the Russians can't obtain from afar, they will attempt to pilfer with agents on the ground. The same GRU unit that hacked John Podesta has allegedly sent operatives to Rio de Janeiro, Kuala Lumpur, and The Hague to practice what is known as "close-access hacking." Once on the ground, they use off-the-shelf electronic equipment to pry open the Wi-Fi network of whomever they're spying on. The Russians, in other words, take risks few other nations would dare. They are willing to go to such lengths because they've reaped such rich rewards from hacking.
Trump wins by a landslide. (Score:2, Informative)
The toilet paper of record "The Atlantic" can't come up with ANYTHING better than "THE RUSSIANZ!!1111"? Mueller had, what? TWO YEARS? Clinton knew best from her mentor Saul Alinsky: blame your opponents for your faults before you are called out for your faults. Indeed,
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It's always surprising to me how much people are attracted to authoritarianism, regardless of the political background.
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Pretty much everything in your post is wrong. It is certainly possible that Trump will win; a landslide looks unlikely. Frankly, I'm disturbed that such a highly partisan comment as yours which attempts to deliberately use insulting nicknames and scatological insults is raised up as informative without any attempt at sourcing. The fact is that as of right now, polls suggest a slight lean for Biden https://www.270towin.com/maps/consensus-2020-electoral-map-forecast [270towin.com] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls [fivethirtyeight.com]
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There's no evidence that Biden's son's involvement in the natural gas company had any corrupt aspects
The qpq with Biden, Sr., perhaps. But guys with connections aren't hired at 80k/month just coincidentally.
Our government is lousy with relatives who mysteriously get rich.
There doesn't even need to be a single word passed. Just doing the hiring buys unspoken goodwill. It's not dissimilar to hiring ex-officials at outrageous rates, not just for their connections, but as an advertisement to future ex-officials, "we like to hire people like you, wink wink , I hope things go easy for is so we can afford to h
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Minor nit: Mitt Romney did not vote to impeach Donald Trump. Mitt Romney voted Trump is Guilty of charges brought to the senate trial as the result of impeachment.
Also: You can emphasize that Muller accepted as fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. This was proved not by Muller but every single intelligence agency both in and outside the United States that investigated it and was not aligned with Russia itself.
Famous testimony in congress: "It is almost as if they wanted us to know the
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Mitt Romney is widely hated among the republican base. Only a highly partisan liberal would announce him to be as some kind of a moral compass.
It is absolutely amazing how Donald Trump has taken over the Republican Party to the point where someone could make this sort of claim. Let me tell you a little about myself. One of my first major involvements in politics was when I volunteered for Rick Elser's campaign for congress. Elser was the first openly gay Republican to win a congressional primary. My politics haven't changed much from then. What has apparently happened is that people like me, and people like Rick, who care about serious American va
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The evidence of Biden corruption is very much there.
Funny that you don't mention what said evidence is. Your reply is a more wordy equivalent of "Not-uh, cause I say so".
Re:Trump wins by a landslide. (Score:4, Insightful)
The hatred for Romney demonstrates how much Republicans have changed since 2012 when Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee.
Why is Romney so hated now? The only thing I can really think of is that he has not gotten fully on board the Trump train. Similarly the 2008 Republican nominee is reviled even in death. Trump said he likes people who weren't captured.
In the '90s, Republicans liked candidates who didn't "dodge the draft". Of course, arguably Clinton didn't dodge the draft. He just got education deferments like Trump. What Clinton did NOT do was have to claim a questionable physical condition when those deferments ran out.
Even Barbara Bush has not been spared Trump's loathing including after her death. She's an admired and respected First Lady by most Americans from both sides of the aisle - or at least she was until Trump poisoned the GOP.
What happened?
And don't give be any "But Hillary", bullshit. There were quite a few other Republicans running for President in 2016. They all had their faults, but they also had some redeeming qualities.
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Absolutely correct, but not exactly an important detail. It we still used as documentation to support FISA warrants. I'm more concerned about the possibility that the FBI knew that the original target was a CIA operative and left out that detail in order to make his contact with Russia look suspect.
Since I don't know, what statements in the Seele Dossier were a) not available through oth
Re: Trump wins by a landslide. (Score:4, Insightful)
And he was already headed to a super landslide victory based on the economy. What's with the bizarre "Trump made the virus!" conspiracy theory? It doesn't even make sense as a conspiracy theory. Ancient aliens are more likely.
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Why doesn't it make sense? What reason did he have not to do it? He has the motive and the resources.
Can't tell the trolls without a scorecard (Score:3)
What doesn't make sense to me is why that comment is moderated as "Funny". Care to explain the joke, if such was the intention? Or even if you can imagine the basis of the moderation, the reasons other people could or should have seen something funny there? Or just another troll with mod points?
Maybe I'm just missing the references of the pronouns, but I think it's symptomatic of a typical attack of the trolls and their armies of sock puppets. Certain buzzwords are sure to set them off. It might be interest
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Point taken. Need to nominate a virologist to lead the country next time, such as Bill Gates, Al Gore, or N Pelosi. They sure know what they're doing.
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It's one of those fake conspiracy theories that was created for the sole purpose of cashing in on "look at these idiots believing in conspiracy theories" articles and videos. Very similar to fake outrage.
This time there may be a political angle though, i.e. make the opposition look as dumb as the conspiracy theorists who turn up to Trump rallies with Qanon banners, or the POTUS himself with is "Obamagate" nonsense.
Re: Trump wins by a landslide. (Score:5, Insightful)
Calm down. Nobody said "Trump made the virus". They are saying Trump did a lot of things which made the outbreak much worse in the US.
Lying, politicizing, downplaying, blaming others, sending out shoddy equipment. Yes, China did all of those, but so did Trump and his administration. And the GOP strategy for Trump's reelection is "Don't defend Trump, attack China." It's because Trump's performance is completely indefensible.
If Trump were running against Xi Jinping, I might consider voting for him, but I would also encourage anyone - even the corpse of Michael Jackson - to run as a 3rd party candidate.
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behind in the polls
Would those be the same pollsters who were telling us that Hillary would take 90+% of the electoral college?
Re: Trump wins by a landslide. (Score:4, Insightful)
What fucking polls you talk about. Is there a single poll that's estimate the electoral college votes? NO. All those nationwide polls are actually useless.
Re: Trump wins by a landslide. (Score:2, Interesting)
Are those the same "polls" that show 89% of Americans support the iron boot of the Covid tyranny stomping on the face of humanity?
It's almost like oligarch-owned polling firms always return the poll results their oligarch owners want to see...
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Trump's been tried in the court of public opinion, and most people have moved on; Joe's just starting down that path (and the evidence against him is quite a bit stronger).
And Joe's up to his neck in spying and lying by the previous Administration. Provably so. Unless you can competently argue that he was so out-of-the-loop and "Chauncy Gardener"-ish that he was clueless about what was happening - but then, that's arguing he's a low-grade moron, and not fit to run the country.
Joe's the sacrificial lamb
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You think people will ignore all the shit about Trump just because Biden has some issues, at a time when Trump is fucking up the COVID-19 response and the economy?
The economy is Trump's biggest weakness because he can't fix it. It needs a bit stimulus package but the Democrats are suggesting it and Obama did the same thing in 2010 so he has to do the opposite.
The Simpsons nailed it. https://youtu.be/VXcYMvzZ7jk [youtu.be]
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Biden isn't suffering from severe mental disorders. He doesn't sarcastically tell people to drink bleach.
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" You got him to run in the first place to sow discord in the Republican ranks"
Wow, that tinfoil at a bit tight; try loosening it, I heard it helps.
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I don't want to hear Trump's cult whine about Obama or Hillary or Biden anymore.
You had a whole bunch of candidates you could have nominated in 2016, but you picked the TV celebrity with ZERO experience in politics aside from trying to influence politicians and running half-heartedly on the Reform Party ticket (at the same time David Duke was a Reform Party member, but Trump never heard of that guy, right?).
Why do I get the impression many of the people who voted for Trump only knew of him from his roles on
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Yes? I mean yes, definitely. He was impeached over lying about his attempt to get Biden investigated. Trump is a liar, it's what he does, the very core of his being. He lies so much there is a Wikipedia article about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes? I mean yes, definitely. He was impeached over lying about his attempt to get Biden investigated.
Strange, the Articles of Impeachment [documentcloud.org] don't mention anything about lying, and neither does the voluminous report [house.gov] that the House Judiciary Committee released accompanying the articles.
The Articles of Impeachment listed two charges, abuse of power and obstruction. The House Judiciary Committee report mentions bribery and wire fraud. Neither says anything about lying.
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Isn't lying to a Federal court a crime? Sounds like perjury. Yet he's not in jail...
Who? You mean Comey? McCabe? Weissman? Lying to Congress is also perjury, and we have Brennan. Clapper, Yovanovitch, and lots of others too - now that we have their secret, sworn testimony published.
But who did you mean? Who lied to a Federal court?
On the other hand there was a solid case against Trump but the Republican Senate acquitted him without properly hearing it,
What evidence did the prosecution (the House) not get to present? The Senate is like the jury, their responsibility is to evaluate the evidence as presented - not go digging for more evidence.
So what evidence wasn't presented that should have been conside
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Ok, moron. It's shocking how much the political discourse degenerated among the Dems and other self-identified liberals. This sure won't win them the WH in 2020.
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You start off your post complaining about how political discourse on one side of the aisle has degenerated by calling someone a "moron".
Whether you mean discourse among the politicians or the unwashed masses I don't see how you can pin this entirely on "the Dems and other self-identified liberals". I'm pretty sure (some of) the masses have always been very crass in their discourse. I can remember a lot of the horrible things that were said about Obama, Bush (both of them), Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon a
Biggest voting security hole (Score:2, Insightful)
Followed by absentee / mail-in ballots / ballot harvesting.
Then dirty voter registration lists.
And precincts that report more votes than registered voters yet no investigations or arrests for blatant ballot box stuffing.
Oh and about 1 million spots down the list at the very bottom, "RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!"
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Care to provide any link for that?
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Ah, so that commission led by the alleged president's Kansas nutjob, Kris Kobach, not even being able to conjure of up false reports of voter fraud means nothing to you? And this from an alleged administration who's alleged leader has written or uttered over 16,000 falsehoods since claiming office.
Re:Biggest voting security hole (Score:4, Informative)
Lack of voter ID allows any cunt to waltz in and vote multiple times on behalf of other people, who may not realise this is happening, may be dead or may just never have existed.
It continues to be bewildering just how many registered voters in the US are not only already dead but somehow manage to keep voting. That's electoral fraud and preventing it is a perfectly reasonable response; voter ID is deemed the simplest approach.
I haven't seen any rules around voter ID that would exclude any actual live voter.
Meanwhile mail-in/absentee ballots are a primary form of electoral fraud in other countries, e.g. the UK. People have gone to prison for it and it's happened in Birmingham, in Bradford, in Tower Hamlets..
As for cleaning voter registration lists, you appear to keep all the dead people. I guess they vote the way you want.
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Is there any evidence of widespread voter fraud? According to Wikipeida there were only 31 documented cases over 14 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Seems like a difficult and largely pointless crime. You have to figure out how is dead or note going to vote but registered, then go around polling stations pretending to be them, hoping not to get recognized by staff, caught on CCTV or by media or people with camera phones, and in the end you cast a few extra votes that will probably have zero effect on
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Is there any evidence of widespread voter fraud?
Only 1200 cases. Is that widespread?
https://www.heritage.org/voter... [heritage.org]
I'm not sure how much you really want.
As for choosing who to impersonate, there's no shortage of options:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne... [telegraph.co.uk]
Re:Biggest voting security hole (Score:5, Informative)
> Only 1200 cases. Is that widespread?
Even if we had 1200 cases in just the past election, that's 1200 cases out of over 138 million ballots, or less than 0.00087% of votes. The threat that poses to a nation-wide election is hardly worth the thought.
But since the Heritage foundation had to go back 38 years to scrape together those 1200 cases, the actual number is closer to 1200 in 1.7 BILLION cumulative ballots cast; 0.00007%
So no, in-person voter fraud is not a problem at all, much less widespread. It is a high risk, low reward activity that requires a large number of coordinated individuals to have any impact, and the chances of getting caught scale exponentially with the number of people involved.
If you want to mess with an election, you're more likely to consider ballot tampering [npr.org] where one or two people can effect thousands of votes.
=Smidge=
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Yes, and my tests with 100% test coverage prove that everything works, never mind that I had to comment out all the assert statements to get the tests to pass.
It shouldn't be surprising that we don't find a lot of instances of people using other people's IDs to vote, because we have absolutely no way of detecting when that happens. The fact that we found any at all when we're not even looking for it suggests that the problem is far more widespread than you're saying it is.
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Is there any evidence of widespread voter fraud?
Yes, there is. Only about 50% of the US voting population voted for the greatest leader the world has ever seen, when it's obvious to anyone, or at least to said leader, that 100% of people would have voted for him if it wasn't for all the fraud that gave votes to his opponent. Therefore there is massive voter fraud in the US. QED.
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Oh yeah, what happened to his investigation into those millions of illegal voters?
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Oh yeah, what happened to his investigation into those millions of illegal voters?
You mean VOTERGATE? That was several weeks ago, then it was WHOGATE, this week it's OBAMAGATE. Next week is FAUCIGATE unless there's a late change in the schedule. Do try and keep up at the back there.
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Democrats taking over Virginia would be a good example. Of course it is not proven, no one wants it to be proven.
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Detecting voter fraud would require you cross-check random people dropping a ballot in the box to confirm that (1) they are who they say they are, and (2) they are eligible to vote. There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud, because just about any methodology you could use to detect it has been made illegal on the basis of it potentially scaring legit voters from participating.
I honestly don't know if there's widespread voter fraud going on. But lik
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I'd like there to be zero murders but I'm not willing to give up my freedom to achieve that. Voting is an important right not worth throwing away out of fear of what is by all accounts a very small problem.
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I live in the UK. To register to vote you just sign a bit of paper and mail it in. When you go to vote they ask your name and cross it off a list, no ID required.
The government wants to change it to prevent Labour voters from voting.
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I haven't seen any rules around voter ID that would exclude any actual live voter.
John Oliver analysed the issues with the voter ID laws pretty well, including how they are indeed used to exclude normally eligible voters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The fraud in the UK was detected. What's the problem? People went to prison, the results were sorted out in the end. Do we need to do more if we can detect the small amount of fraud that does take place, a few areas out of around 650?
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Given that one of the guilty people was subsequently employed in a political campaign in the 2019 General Elections, fuck yes we need to do more.
That fraud in the UK was detected. Other fraud was suspected but not proven. Lets put the resources and effort into detecting and preventing it, because if democracy fails, other means become the only remaining option.
I don't want civil war. I'll accept it ahead of an authoritarian state imposed through electoral fraud.
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Hmm, so if I suspect something that is good enough reason to act on... I am suddenly feeling very suspicious.
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If you suspect something and have evidence that your suspicions are grounded and the implications of failing to take action are drastic, yes, that absolutely is good enough reason to
put the resources and effort into detecting and preventing it
I'm happy I was able to clarify this for you, as you appear to be struggling with some of the basic concepts.
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Well in this case few places are that marginal so the consequences aren't very big, and we actually seem to be pretty good at detecting it so let's not shit our pants over this.
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As long as the troll wastes all their mod points it's fine.
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Wikipedia is right, there were only 31 cases of someone *impersonating someone else* which is what ID is supposed to fix. Your link is covering all kinds of electoral fraud, most of which would be unaffected by requiring ID at the voting booth.
Also your link is really just proof that nothing more needs to be done because we are already more than capable of detecting voter fraud.
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I clicked on a random state, Pennsylvania, and it lists "Impersonation Fraud At The Polls" in 2016 as the very first entry. Cheryl Ali took a plea bargain.
Meanwhile, there was never any proof demonsrated (Score:3, Informative)
Meanwhile, there was never any proof demonstrated that Russians "hacked" anything at all, besides spending $100K on FB to organize anti-Trump events.
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That $100K was spent to run a bunch of ads, some pro-Trump and some pro-Hillary.
It seems like Russia just wanted to watch the world burn. Well, watch the US burn.
Re: Meanwhile, there was never any proof demonsrat (Score:2)
If Putin wanted the world to burn he'd spend a lot more than the price of a ride for a Hollywood starlet. It's clear he simply wanted to troll the US elections, but the Dems never got the punchline.
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Re:Meanwhile, there was never any proof demonsrate (Score:4, Informative)
John Podesta, Chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, received a phishing email on March 19, 2016, sent by Russian operatives purporting to alert him of a "compromise in the system", and urging him to change his password "immediately" by clicking on a link. This allowed Russian hackers to access around 60,000 emails from Podesta's private account.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Meanwhile, there was never any proof demonsrate (Score:4, Informative)
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None of those are really that disturbing. It's not like Maria Abramovic was on the ballot and I don't think you're supposed to take that bit of performance art as encouragement - and it's from 2017 anyway, after all this. It's also not like I thought Hillary Clinton was some perfect politician who we could completely trust. In 2016 I was wondering which GOP candidate I would have to hold my nose and vote for...until they chose Trump.
After the whole Comet Pizza nonsense I never even bothered to try to fig
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So a phishing attack that's about as sophisticated as something performed by a fat smelly teenager operating out of his mom's basement is an attack on USA on the scale of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor? For fucks sake, 9/11 had the fingerprints of Saudi citizens, diplomats, and their govt officials, and we didn't bomb them, we didn't start a cold war with Saudi Arabia, and we did even ask them for a financial compensation for the world trade center. But a stupid phishing email to Podesta. Oh no. We won't stand for th
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Recent ACTUAL congressional transcripts from Crowdstrike said they have no direct proof that it was Russia, but they were guessing it was Russia. Which is none-sense. wikipedia is shit anyways. So NO one has ANY evidence or testified in congressional investigations of having direct evidence it was Russia.
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Errr...go read the Senate report on Russian hacking. You don't see it because you do not want to.
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Where is the FBI report of their examination of DNC computers? Oh wait, this is none...
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> No, not that one, that's the FAUX news fantasy one. The real world one.
No, we now have unsealed testimony from two years ago from the director of Crowdstrike saying there was no evidence of Russian hacking, and that they assumed it.
They also have admitted that the Steele Dossier was mostly Russian disinformation. From that perspective, the FBI attacked the US Government and the American Democracy by being fooled by the Russians, via the CIA, so one could stretch and say that the Russians actually did
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Which is a statement that is not supported by fact, the evidence below is the case they drop recently. So you are out of date.
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Strange that given it was all lies the people close to Trump who are now doing jail time have not appealed their convictions based on this new evidence.
It's interesting how once Mueller started looking he found so much more crime, not just the Russia stuff. Like Trump's fixer paying off porn stars he cheated on his wife with.
Only Russia? (Score:4, Interesting)
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The US knows how much effort it takes. They've done it to other countries enough to have learned from experience.
What I find far more interesting is the disproportionate impact Russian interference is alleged to have on the elections. If their $100k of advertising and a room full of trolls managed to lose the 2016 election for Clinton with her hordes of volunteers and a $1.4bn budget that's a sad indictment of her campaign management.
Who in 2020 is going to blame Russia? Well, who in 2016 was working with R
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When you've got cubic acres of horseshit, it makes sense to try to find some practical use for it.
Classified (Score:2)
You only know what was declassified. All the agencies with access agreed there was stuff going on and they only let out some of the info; even the GOP Senate controlled investigation agreed but didn't release everything. It upset trump that they dared agree with reality because longer term you don't want to hand over any power to Putin (unless you are Trump that is.)
Russia hacked email servers and there is even video of them doing that which was completely secret to us until the FOREIGN government that gav
What about XChinese interference? (Score:2)
Everyone knows.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The DNC and the RNC interfere with the elections far more than any other actor. In fact, if you want to point fingers at foreign countries that meddle in US elections, Israel would be at the top of the list, not Russia. Wealthy people and large corporations also meddle in US elections to the tune of billions of dollars per election cycle. It is meddling, but here in the US we call that "free speech".
The Russians are Comming! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Russians are coming, The Russians are coming!
I got news for you, they've always been here, well at least as long as I could vote they've been active in our elections in various ways. Why are we so enamored with their efforts to be disruptive to our country all of a sudden? It's not new.
I'm beginning to think that somebody wants/needs and excuse for why things went the way they did and saying "we ran a bad campaign" or "we ran a horrible candidate" just isn't going to do. Oh no, it cannot be that our ideas didn't sell well enough, or that voters actually picked another tribe over ours.. That's simply not possible because we hold the corner of market on virtue, morality and anything else that matters. We should have won, we should ALWAYS win.
This whole narrative is ridiculous if you ask me. The Russians are literally powerless. They are barely making it financially, their military is barely operating and struggling to survive on a shoestring budget, and they have little power or influence in the world anymore. Their economy is in shambles and although they are not communist anymore, they are effectively run by a dictatorship that rules by fear and violence. They are not some opponent to be feared on the geopolitical stage because they are barely surviving on their own.
I say let them try. Catch them and slap their hands along with anybody who helps them, but don't worry about them. They are like an old man with no teeth who needs a walker, threatening to chase you down, chew you up and spit you out. It's funny that they've turned into the boogeyman who upsets elections, that the monster under the bed in 2020 might just be as scary as a dust bunny in reality. And ask yourself, what does it say about the folks who are *already* looking for a scapegoat, setting up to blame the Russians... Wow...
The Russians are here and they are winning (Score:3)
If you learn more about the known history of Russian interference, you'd know they only had a slight pause before Putin took over. Putin was in charge of "interference" efforts with the west and he didn't gut his former profession. They have more going on today than the Cold War with more money funding it. It's far more powerful and extremely CHEAP to pay agents than build expensive weapons plus those agents get jobs here in the USA which more than cover their costs. Even computer related work by highly s
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we'd have 100% human counted paper ballots
Humans are worse at counting than computers are. That was the entire motivation behind computers in the first place.
Rich rewards? (Score:2)
What rewards does Russia get out of this? Russia is embargo'd to shit and has had massive economic troubles for its aggressiveness. Even under Trump new sanctions were introduced which hit them hard after the Skripal assassination.
Putin is paranoid about getting Arab Spring'd or Maidan'd. If he got a reward from his interference it's the fact he's still in power ... which pre-assumes his paranoia is justified.
If his paranoia is not justified he's just making life more difficult for Russia with all this shit
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What rewards does Russia get out of this? Russia is embargo'd to shit and has had massive economic troubles for its aggressiveness.
The answer is in your own question.
Putin wants the embargoes lifted. With Trump he sees (or did in the past) a way to do that.
With Hillary or Joe there is no way those embargoes would be lifted unless they accede to the demands of the embargo.
Even if Trump isn't able to perform that, every second he is president the U.S. gets weaker. They payoffs to Russia (and Putin, not necessarily the same thing) are immense, particularly given the tiny investment it has taken.
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Trump is a simple man, he might feel kinship with authoritarians ... but they do need to know their place. A blatant assassination in the UK and hypersonic cruise missile posturing were a really fucking bad idea to get on his good side.
Russia got sanctioned even more and Trump pushed the EU to build more infrastructure for shale gas imports ... it didn't work out for Russia's economy at all.
The US has gotten less diplomatic influence under Trump, but the strength of the US never derived from diplomacy. Dipl
got it (Score:2)
If enough Americans come to believe that Russia can do whatever it wants to our democratic processes without consequence, that, too, increases cynicism about American democracy, and thereby serves Russian ends.
So MSNBC works for Russia. All this time everyone thought that MSNBC was crazy. In fact, while they pushing the story that Fox was crazy, they were crazy like a fox.
Democrats, not Russians, are interfering (Score:3)
It wasn't the Russians that put boxes of ballots in the trunk of a rental car in Tampa.
Look at Nancy Pelosi's so-called "Heroes Act" that is clearly designed to keep democrats in power forever.
Democrats are pushing for no ID, mail-in ballots, and ballot harvesting. Dems, including illegals, will vote 400 times each, while all repub ballots end up in the trunk of a rental car somewhere.
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It's amusing that the Russians are called out for funding US campaigns, but the two biggest offenders in that category are our two most dangeous enemies, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
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It's amusing that the Russians are called out for funding US campaigns, but the two biggest offenders in that category are our two most dangeous enemies, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Normally Antisemitists are saying that Israel is getting money from the US government, now we are apparently also funding the US party campaigns. I wonder how these two work together.
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Obviously
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That comment only makes sense if you're an antisemite of the global conspiracy type.
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I certainly wouldn't say that Israel is one of the US's "most dangeous enemies", but they certainly are one of the "biggest offenders" when it comes to lobbying and other forms of political pressure.
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Followed by absentee / mail-in ballots / ballot harvesting.
Then dirty voter registration lists.
And precincts that report more votes than registered voters yet no investigations or arrests for blatant ballot box stuffing.
Oh and about 1 million spots down the list at the very bottom, "RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!"
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How about US voting machines spitting out negative votes?
How could a supposedly developed country never get its shit together when it comes to such basic things is beyond me. Why don't you just roll a dice, it's way cheaper and the results will be similar.
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It's deliberate. They've know about many if not most of these issues since the 1990s, and nothing has been done because they're used by the elites of both parties. In any other country 5% variation between exit polls and ballots counted is seen as evidence of fraud, 10% is considered confirmation. Only in the US does a 20% deviation not even make the local news.
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BS: Russian is suffering because Putin is inept. He knows how to run a dictatorship, he doesn't know how to run a government. Hence he and his business buddies have hollowed Russia out and all that's left in ineptitude.
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Transparently a Russian troll farm post.
I am fine with meddling in former-Soviet states. They do not belong to the dictatorship of Russia, and all want to be free from its control.
Seeing this as a bogeyman is something only Putin says, to scare his population into not caring as he increases his dictatorial powers.
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I didn't know troll farm was created 22 years ago. Another idiot suffering from TDS.
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Another moron suffering from TDS and/or the belief in "American exceptionalism".
FYI, I don't care about last election cycle. I'm not even American, nor do I reside in the US. As far as I'm concerned, anyone bringing "But.. last time!" to a discussion about "Upcoming Election" stability and security, is an enemy of the US state.
Thanks for good laughs. Please log-in next time. cheers.