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Comment by red_blobs | Hacker News Reader

We have no proof any of these hacks were orchestrated by the Russian government. The 'security experts' have traced it back to a Russian VPN service, of which someone could have hacked and make themselves look like they were coming out of Russia.

It disturbs me that so many intelligent people in the IT community know this and stay silent because it makes Trump look bad.

Not to mention the fact that the content of the emails shows major collusion between the DNC and the mainstream media.

I feel like the facts have gone out the window when it comes to destroying someone you dislike.

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Below are a couple of articles on the subject. It sounds like there were more bits of evidence than just the VPN. But of course, none of this is definitive proof.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/need-official-attribution-russia...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/is-dnc-email-h...

Not to mention that the hackers "accidentally" left metadata in the emails that refers to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, the precursor to the KGB. That's either the sloppiest intelligence operation ever, or an easter egg meant to distract.

And here's the other thing. The DNCs servers being hacked and the wikileaks release of DNC emails are not necessarily even related.

Assange is on record as saying as much (and lambasting journalists who can't count to two).

Granted, he has an incentive to spread misinformation about the identity of his sources, but it's not impossible that's there's a pro-bernie (or even just an anti-corruption) sys-admin working for the DNC who wanted this stuff to come to light.

For me, allegations of Russia 'interfering' in a US election pale in comparison to actual evidence of the DNC interfering to undermine the democratic process.

Well it's hard for anyone to comment since the only people who might actually know where the data came from are notorious for not giving out any information about their sources, that is Wikileaks and the FBI. Maybe many are staying silent because they don't give 2-cents about this round of political nonsense.

The contents of the leaks are much less disturbing than the fact that they were hacked and released at all. It made some Bernie diehards unhappy, and got one political chairwomen fired, but it's mostly just small embarrassing stuff that's probably not too different from any leaks you'd see from a C Suite email server.

People stay silent on correcting things like this because they're afraid of being labeled as Trump supporters and don't want to deal with the social penalties of that association.

I don't think this is the reason. We let it slide over the last 10 years when every hack involving a Chinese IP address in any way was attributed to the Chinese government.

Media reporting around cybersecurity doesn't tend to acknowledge that people other than the security services have computers in Russia and China.

It became a meme among hacking victims to blame intelligence agencies, probably because it looks substantially less bad than getting owned by 15-year-olds. We let it pass without comment in dozens of cases before this one.

So what you're saying is, we should dismiss evidence that makes Trump look bad out of hand, because it distracts from the evidence that makes Clinton look bad?

Gotcha. Seems perfectly reasonable.

As far as I know, the emails have not been disputed. They aren't doctored and are what actually was sent. This is factual information that does make the DNC look bad, because frankly, it was really bad.

"Dismiss evidence that makes Trump look bad out of hand"

What evidence? This is what I'm talking about. There are claims that it's the Russian government with no actual facts besides a trail that ends at a sordid VPN service.

There are plenty of other things that Trump says to make him look bad, I don't need even more evidence based on hearsay and opinion.

If we let things like this go on, a Sanders candidate will never have a future. If someone is bad, let the facts speak for themselves.

> This is factual information that does make the DNC look bad, because frankly, it was really bad.

Yes, a lot of people have been very insistent that a lot of things in those emails make the DNC look really really bad. I've even seen them referred to as treasonous.

Strangely, not a lot of people actually bother to mention specifics about what, in those emails, we're supposed to be outraged over, only that we're supposed to be outraged.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no Hillary fan by any means, but the obvious attempt at propaganda is obvious, when every attempt to discuss the possible Russian connection to the DNC hacks, and Trump's links to Putin and Russia (whatever the smoke to fire ratio might be, there) is met with immediate attempts to change the subject to Clinton and the DNC emails.

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