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United States Politics

Iran Behind Supposed 'Proud Boys' Voter-Intimidation Emails, Feds Allege (arstechnica.com) 95

Posted by BeauHD from the please-don't-be-gullible dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray joined forces at a hastily announced press conference Wednesday night to issue a warning that foreign actors "have taken specific actions to influence public opinion relating to our elections." Specifically, Ratcliffe said, actors from Iran and Russia had separately obtained "some voter registration information" and were using it "to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos, and undermine your confidence in American democracy."

Ratcliffe was referring to an email campaign that started earlier this week, when some voters in Florida, Arizona, and Alaska started receiving threatening messages. "Vote for Trump... or we will come after you," the emails read. "Change your party affiliation to Republican to let us know you received our message and will comply. We will know which candidate you voted for. I would take this seriously if I were you. Good luck."

The emails purported to come from the Proud Boys, a known US-based right-wing extremist group that has become increasingly active since its founding in 2016 and which President Donald Trump has tacitly supported. The Proud Boys reportedly denied involvement, however, and Vice Motherboard reported on Tuesday that the messages originated from a server in Estonia and were likely using a spoofed email address. [...] Ratcliffe on Wednesday said that Iran was behind the spoofed emails and videos, which he claimed were "designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump." Iran denied any involvement. "Unlike the US, Iran does not interfere in other country's elections," Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, told NBC News late Wednesday. "The world has been witnessing US' own desperate public attempts to question the outcome of its own elections at the highest level. These accusations are nothing more than another scenario to undermine voter confidence in the security of the US election and are absurd." "You should be confident that your vote counts," Wray added. "Early, unverified claims to the contrary should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. We encourage everyone to seek election and voting information from reliable sources -- namely, your state election officials. And to be thoughtful, careful, and discerning consumers of information online."
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Iran Behind Supposed 'Proud Boys' Voter-Intimidation Emails, Feds Allege More

Iran Behind Supposed 'Proud Boys' Voter-Intimidation Emails, Feds Allege

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  • Something doesn't add up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday October 22, 2020 @05:50PM (#60637666)
    Voters receiving this are much more likely to be intimidated into not voting than to, say, get upset they're being threatened and vote. On the other hand this is the FBI and they're usually non partisan and spot on...

    Basically, this helps Trump, which is the last thing anyone in Iran would want to do. Even the hardliners know Trump wants to go to war with them, and they saw what happened to Iraq; we rolled in, burned the cities, took the oil and spent 20 years conducting drone strikes and pretending to build infrastructure while lining military contractor pockets. Nobody no matter how crazy wants that for their country.

    Nothing about this makes any sense. There is no reason for Iran to do this. And they're intelligence community isn't anywhere near incompetent enough for me to chalk it up to that. Something stinks to high heaven.

    • Basically, this helps Trump

      ..because they were caught, otherwise who did it help?

      • Not really, the ploy is too complicated for a Presidential twitter rant. It is way easier to push half-baked conspiracy theories.
      • it was more likely to depress Democratic voting than it was to make make Trump look bad.

        I don't know, maybe Iran's intelligence community really is this dumb. Again, it's the FBI reporting it. Or maybe somebody in Iran thinks they're clever and can seize power after a US Coop. Don't know.

        • I think you are looking too deep into it. Causing strife and distrust in the US benefits them without requiring anything as complex as manipulating the outcome of the election or hoping for a coup.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Exactly this. Divided we fall (Score:5, Insightful)

            by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Thursday October 22, 2020 @07:34PM (#60637982) Journal

            United we stand, divided we fall.

            Iran knows this. Russia knows this. In the last election, Russia ran ads on both sides of contentious issues, as extreme as possible. Not to convince American voters of one side or the other, but to sow division, to turn us against one another.

          • I think you are looking too deep into it. By the time some people in Iran, Russia or China have devised a single harebrained plan for misschief the US has generated 500 new stories about how the foreign enemies are hiding in your cupboard and hacking your fridge.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rewind ( 138843 )

              My fridge was manufactured in 1982 you insensitive clod!

              • But you'll admit that the ham tends to go off much faster than it used to and you'd have sworn there still were 5 beers in there. Also are you sure the light is really off when you close the door?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          It is lame, pointless and clearly serves no real political purpose. Threaten someone if they do not vote for whom you want them to vote without any method of checking whom they voted for. Clearly trolling. They want a reaction from the US government, they want the carry on, the press releases, all the accusations. Quite clearly the US government is simply being punked, trolled into big display of bombasity.

          The US governments arrogance and exceptionlism always left them wide open for trolling, usually it ha

        • it was more likely to depress Democratic voting than it was to make make Trump look bad.

          No, because it was almost certain to get picked up by the media and to make the Proud Boys look bad, which transitively makes Trump look bad for his public endorsement of them in the first debate.

          I think the goal was just to encourage chaos, though, not to help or hurt Trump's reelection chances.

      • using it "to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos, and undermine your confidence in American democracy."

        Who do these foreign Johnny-come-lately's think they are anyway? Causing confusion, sowing chaos, and undermining confidence in American democracy is Trump's job, not some outsourced job for a guy in Tabriz.

    • Well, a theory I heard wsa that this was a clumsy and obvious attempt, meaning that they wanted to be caught and wanted people to know it was a state sponsored actor. The goal here doesn't seem to be to influence the election, but to encourage confusion, chaos, bickering. Their best outcome is a disorganized US that fights with itself.

      Or maybe the people doing this spam were just incompetent - just like the US government, they don't always put their best people on every job.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Follow the money. Do any of Trump's businesses have significant ties to Iran [independent.co.uk]? Oh, money laundering for their military, you say? I wonder why Iran would want to help Trump....

      It's always about money. And when someone has as many borderline crooked business dealings as our current president does, you shouldn't be surprised when corrupt regimes bend over backwards to help that person out. Just saying.

      • Follow the money ... to Obama / Biden (Score:4, Insightful)

        by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Thursday October 22, 2020 @06:51PM (#60637866)

        Follow the money.

        Don't go there. The money might trace back to a palette of cash delivered by the Obama/Biden administration. :-)

        I wonder why Iran would want to help Trump

        Perhaps they want more of their national heroes and top generals assassinated?

        • Definitely take advice from the clown espousing implausible conspiracy theories, and who doesn't know the difference between pallet and palette. He seems like a smart guy.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drnb ( 2434720 )
            LOL. When you can't counter the argument attack the author, especially on spelling errors. Yeah, that makes you credible.

            Regarding your brain ... you do realize I am responding to a conspiracy theory "Iran helps Trump" with two facts. (1) The previous administration, of which Biden was VP, deliver pallets of cash ($1.7 billion worth). (2) The Trump administration assassinated Qasem Soleimani, one of the most powerful people in Iran. Arguably #2.

            In light of these two facts, you argument for Iran prefer
      • I KINDA DOUBT IT

        (Oops...had caps lock on from previous story).

        But I kinda doubt it on this one.

        Iran is still a bit pissy about Trump blowing away one of their most popular Generals that had caused some many Middle Eastern problems for so long on their behalf.

        Trump ordering him *smoked* still sticks in their craw from what I understand.

    • Re:Something doesn't add up (Score:4, Informative)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday October 22, 2020 @06:02PM (#60637716) Journal

      this is the FBI and they're usually non partisan and spot on...

      Well that's nonsense, the FBI has been partisan and a bunch of liars since the Hoover era (ie, when they started). Remember when they illegally investigated politically unfavored groups, like feminists or black-rights activists? [wikipedia.org] You should never trust anything the FBI says without evidence, and even when they provide evidence look at it twice.

      I thought we'd finally have a chance to get rid of (or seriously reform) the FBI when Trump started hating on them, but what happened? The D party turned into a bunch of FBI lovers.

      • it's entirely possible we're being lied to by the FBI.

        • I doubt this original came from Iran, but the FBI won't reveal their hand on deep actors so they just reveal the originating IPs of the attacks.

          All factual, no lies, but probably not the entire truth whether known or not.

      • The FBI claims (or any of the other security agencies) about foreign interference are never questioned. This quickly encourages them to come up with bolder and bolder statements and after a while they realize they can claim literally anything about foreign enemies and get away with it. In this case Wapo said: Metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts..
        Clearly Iranian client state

      • COINTELPRO happened in the 70s.

        Don't equate the FBI of old with current.

        The agency as a whole prides itself in remaining partisan-less.
        Individuals excluded.

    • Voters receiving this are much more likely to be intimidated into not voting than to, say, get upset they're being threatened and vote. Basically, this helps Trump, ...

      Your logic does not add up.

      One, the Iranians want Biden. He was after all part of the team that gave them palette's of cash and a date where they can resume their nuclear activities. Trump is after all the guy who killed one of their national heroes and top generals.

      Two, with the story of Proud Boys intimidation being circulated by the DNC far far beyond those "threatened" there will be many more who heard about it and are pissed off and that much more likely to show up on Election Day but were never

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • How many wars did Trump start again?

        • How many wars did Trump start again?

          He has, like, an R next to his name, so, like, all of them Like, I mean, duh!. /s

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • I tried to watch your video to find out which wars you imagine Obama started, but it's some blowhard ranting for 15 minutes about how Obama is a Muslim and such.

            He didn't start Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen or any other war that comes to mind. Am I neglecting something?

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

              • I was just skipping around, but I could have sworn he said that. Did I mishear?

                Okay, I listened to the whole thing and you're right. He said "More people think Obama is a Muslim...". Unfortunately, I skipped to just the wrong point. He never did mention any countries Obama started a war with.

                It would have been nice if you would have simply answer my question instead of of accusing me of something for which there is no evidence.

                I don't know this guy is, but I don't know how you can listen to so many hate

    • Even the hardliners know Trump wants to go to war with them

      I think you're confused. [reason.com]

    • Nothing about this makes any sense.

      And that's weirds, because US politics of recent years has been so logical compared to this.

    • A few countries on the US "we dont like these people" list appear to be supporting trump, despite the clear threat he poses.

      I think theres a couple of reasons for this.

      1) The democrats are every bit as hawkish as the right. Obama commited his first war crime within weeks of entering the white house (a drone assasination in a country the US was not at war with) and Biden has been happy to rattle sabres as heavily as trump has been

      2) Frankly the longer Trump stays in power, the further americas reputation wit

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Iran hasn't actually done too bad out of the Trump administration. When he walked away from the deal they had it made other countries step up, particularly in the EU which is determined to keep the deal alive.

      In general having chaos and strife in the US helps other countries. Russia is another example, yes Trump put a few sanctions on them but overall the weakening of America has benefitted them greatly. If anything the sanctions just give them a bit of (im)plausible deniability.

    • Basically, this helps Trump, which is the last thing anyone in Iran would want to do. Even the hardliners know Trump wants to go to war with them, and they saw what happened to Iraq; we rolled in, burned the cities, took the oil and spent 20 years conducting drone strikes and pretending to build infrastructure while lining military contractor pockets. Nobody no matter how crazy wants that for their country.

      Maybe Iran has a different goal in their mind. Many people believe that having Trump as President is damaging to the USA. It's quite likely that Iran might believe that as well. Maybe they play the long game. With Trump as President, maybe in twenty years time the USA will be incapable of attacking any other country. It definitely would help maximising the number of Covid deaths in the USA.

    • Nothing about this makes any sense. There is no reason for Iran to do this.

      A) Trump never attacks his supporters, whether they are white supremacists, or countries engaging in election interference for his benefit. He publicly took the word of Putin over the CIA, in a copycat of this scenario 4 years ago.

      B) As a fallback, they know Russia controls Trump and would halt any new sanctions or invasion plans

      C) Getting Trump re-elected would really tear the country apart if it can be done with obvious

    • Wait, huh?
      A lot of times, people respond negatively to threats and flip a big middle finger by doing the opposite.
      I know at least one person who is voting Trump ONLY because their family told him he'd be "disowned" if he did, and he feels he can vote however he wants.
      I agree that's a silly thing to do, but anecdotally I have seen it. .

    • Nothing about this makes any sense. There is no reason for Iran to do this. And they're intelligence community isn't anywhere near incompetent enough for me to chalk it up to that. Something stinks to high heaven.

      You seriously believe that it's more likely that some organized group is openly threatening violence in favor of Trump?* More likely than it being some stupid foreign false flag?

      Well, just goes to show that some propaganda is effective.

      * as opposed to the ongoing real street violence in favor of Democrats, but that's a different story for another time.

    • why are you people be so stupid. When you vote its in SECRET and no one knows who you voted for and so how can you be intimidated??? Anyone asks you just say i voted for you. SIMPLE.

  • What (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday October 22, 2020 @05:57PM (#60637694) Journal
    The FBI is warning (without presenting evidence) that emails from Estonia are actually from Iran, and Proud Boys are not actually involved (but Trump supports them), and Russia is also stealing voter records? That's what I understood from the summary. Here is the original source [youtube.com], but it doesn't come across as particularly more coherent.

    Does anyone understand what is going on here?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Estonia connection supports my suspicion that the e-mails are from Russian agents posing as Iranian, to sow more confusion. There are multiple ways they could have obtained voter registration lists.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skids ( 119237 )

      Does anyone understand what is going on here?

      It's pretty banal IMO. As stupid as they were (using publicly available information and purportedly spoofing an email address), the emails did indeed make a splash in the news due to a lot of concern among citizens. The government wanted to appear to be on top of things. The DNI couldn't resist trying to use it to score political points. Result: weird ass press conference where the DNI took the lead and a reluctant couple of actual agency heads said basically nothing but "we got this" because they knew

    • Trump is a jackass; I just wish people would be honest about why he's a jackass. For example, people trying to take Chris Wallace's words about the Proud Boys and blame Trump for what the moderator, Wallace, said. That's silly.

      Chris Wallace: (41:33)
      You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left wing extremist groups. But are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia group and to ****say that they need to stand down*** and not ad

      • I saw the debate. I don't understand what your post has to do with the FBI's announcement, though.

      • I remember the debate, I read your summary of it top to bottom, I don't see how what Trump said is anyone's fault but Trump's. He knows what stand by means, and he knew then, and he knew the context he used it in. Reading it again makes Trump sound worse, like he was trying to avoid the question. Denouncing white supremacy is hard to do, really? Denouncing armed groups at protests (from any "side") is hard to do?

        • That's not a summary, it's a word-for-word transcript.
          A summary is:

          Chris Wallace: (41:33)
          say that they need to stand down

          [60 seconds of other stuff, Biden interrupting, etc]

          President Trump: (42:18)
          Proud Boys, stand back .. err.. stand by

          The moderator plus Biden asked him to say something, and he said it.

    • this might have been a very clumsy attempt to attack the Biden campaign in a way similar to what James Comey did to Hilary in 2016; and that it was so poorly done that it's nonsensical.

    • Does anyone understand what is going on here?

      Yes. Honestly I don't understand your confusion, the article is pretty clear. The Director of the FBI, along with the Director of National Intelligence, held a press conference to warn that Iran and Russia are engaging in election tampering aimed at undermining confidence in the legitimacy of the election. The chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee then issued a statement confirming this and encouraging people to be skeptical about these sorts of sensationalist claims.

      That's the

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If Russia was able to get voter records then it's likely others were too. Or maybe the stole them from Russia.

      Anyway it's the same old story, foreign actors are trying to screw with your democracy, Trump supporters yawn and pretend it's nothing, everyone else sees national security doing down the pan...

      • If Russia was able to get voter records then it's likely others were too

        The FBI's message is not clear, but it's certainly not that lol

  • Aka to the right of Marx.

    • "... and which President Donald Trump has tacitly supported."

      Hello fellow NPC and friend, don't you know that the president is practically a member of the Aryan nation?

      The Anti-Defamation League says Proud Boys are "alt lite", but are also "right wing extremists". So that's doubleplusbad!

      We absolutely can trust this self appointed authority to be one hundred percent accurate and free of any conflict of interest when they define groups we should despise. After all, "anti defamation" is part of their

  • are known as the Sham(e) Boys - they sell blockchains to children! Distressing.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • the Proud Boys don't go into deep blue enclaves and start picking fights with the other side. The show up where left-wing "protesters" show up and start "mostly peacefully" protesting

      That sounds a lot like "picking fights with the other side."

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
        don't defend yourself when the cops and government refuse to. Just lay down and let ANTIFA kick you into a bloody pulp and have the media ignore or spin you as the aggressor anyway. As your political rival leftists care about you so you should take their advice. If you can't trust them who can you trust?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        When

        left-wing "protesters" show up and start "mostly peacefully"

        then yes, it is

        "picking fights with the other side."

        Do you support people defending themselves and others against those attacks, or do you think that the "mostly peaceful" arsonists should be allowed to loot before they burn the city block down?

    • It is quite fumy watching Trump denounce Fox as "left-wing" whenever anyone on the networks utters as much as a sentence he doesn't like.
  • a reasonable and cogent set of arguments in the slashdot comments section. Well done, everybody!
  • One political side says "yes", the other side says "no". What do you expect?

  • Proud boys: white supremacy / black chairman (Score:3)

    by Zo0ok ( 209803 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @12:29AM (#60638644) Homepage

    I don't know much about Proud Boys, but something does not make sense.

    Is it really a white supremacy organisation when it has a black cuban-decendent chairman?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Tarrio

    Or is it just that any organisation supporting Trump will be labeled as such?

    • Or is it just that any organisation supporting Trump will be labeled as such?

      Grasshopper achieves wisdom.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      I don't know much about Proud Boys, but something does not make sense.

      Is it really a white supremacy organisation when it has a black cuban-decendent chairman?
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Or is it just that any organisation supporting Trump will be labeled as such?

      That's what the left does. They can't possibly debate or even discuss their BS. All they're left is is baseless emotional crap that stupid people believe without thinking.
      Trump is racist - Really? Why do you think that. Name something he's said or done. They can't.
      Trump is fascist - Really? Why do you think that? Do you know what a fascist is, what they do? Isn't that what the left is doing? Did you know that fascism is on the left, not the right?

      Accuse the conservatives of doing exactly what they are doing

  • Anyone who knows anything about email knows how easy it is to spoof an email address.
    What they should be looking at is the sender IP address.
    I'm willing to bet these emails are being sent from a hacked web server or a botnet.
    Also, voter information has been available since 2016 - see haveIbeenpwned.com
    Data Enrichment Records
    Breach date: 23 December 2016
    Date added to HIBP: 8 June 2017
    Compromised accounts: 8,176,132
    Compromised data: Buying preferences, Charitable donations, Credit status informati

  • ... in addition to being a sign of recipients' stupidity, is a sign of just how effective left wing propaganda has been. People want to believe such things, the media tell them that such things are possible, that their political opponents are monsters, etc., so they do believe it when a false flag comes their way.

    There is a group that is using street violence and intimidation to try to influence your vote. It isn't a group in favor of Trump though ...

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