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Comment by evgen | Hacker News Reader

Given current trends with Wikileaks-distributed Russian intel dumps, the upcoming 'surprise' will be another big fat nothing-burger. Most likely case is that Assange went a step too far in using the Ecuadorian's hospitality just to become a Russian cut-out and at some point his ongoing attempts to influence the election (and failing miserably at that) reminded the Ecuadorians that they were gaining nothing by hosting him and now were looking at another four years of fallout. TBH I don't think anyone really cared too much about Assange, but his desperate need for attention ended up leading him to play with fire.

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> Russian intel dumps

Has there been any evidence of this yet? I trust the government and main stream media to accurately report the geographic source of technical transactions about as much as I trust Facebook with privacy.

Haven't the Russians just recently quietly changed gears? i.e. stopped denying it and changed the rhetoric to "why does it matter who leaked it?"

I doubt there is concrete, independently verified evidence, but I'm not sure how much more fishy the Kremlin could possibly be about the whole thing.

I usually don't mind giving the benefit of the doubt to people, but I don't tend to feel the same way about governments.

> changed the rhetoric to "why does it matter who leaked it?"

No. That's been consistent with their response since the DNCLeaks.

Originally it was a flat out denial IIRC. The sudden recent mention of who cares is what raised a red flag for me, it didn't seem consistent with the original statement at all.

I could be wrong, but honestly, "who cares who did it" is a fishy enough govenrment response that it's hardly any wonder the Russians are being looked at funny.

What is recent?

The top results for a Google search for Putin on DNC Leaks is an article from a month and a half ago (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/putin-interview-dnc-ha...) with Putin denying it was the Russians and also saying does it matter who did it.

I recall similar news from when the DNC leaks broke and people were blaming Russia then too.

Fair enough.

No there is no evidence released so he wont be able to point to anything.

He just believes that whatever the government puts out is 100% the truth. The type of citizen that Goebbels would have loved.

There is no hard evidence that Russia is involved. Representatives of well-known internet security firms have stated that they believe the attack comes from the Russian government, but have nothing to provide other than their professional opinion (which is not based on specific data afaik).

The Russia myth comes from everyone repeating each other and pretending like it's fact. I don't really think Americans think of Russia as the big boogeyman anymore so that whole propaganda spiel is of dubious advisability.

It's not just company reps, the US government issued a statement to the effect:

https://www.dhs.gov/node/23199

Yeah, the unifying theory here is that they're all taking orders from the administration and pushing the baseless narrative that Russia is the source of everything anti-Clinton to try to discredit all of the dirt that's out there on her. It's no surprise that the government is following its own orders.

I think they also do this because they don't want people to know how simple it is to conduct this kind of cyberattack. If they tell everyone you have to have your own KGB to do it, there will be less people looking into it. I believe this same strategy is why North Korea was blamed for the Sony Pictures leak.

We very quickly went from Representatives of well-known internet security firms have stated that they believe the attack comes from the Russian government, but have nothing to provide other than their professional opinion to a giant, airtight conspiracy.

Read the statement very carefully. At no point do they actually say, or directly suggest that Russia is behind the Podesta and DNC leaks.

The media and some politicians are full force memeing this, saying USG blames Russia for the hack and leaks. The statement does not say this in the slightest.

We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

Those aren't really weasel words.

>Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

There are weasel words if you are led to believe they are referring to the DNC/Podesta hacks. Again read carefully. To which activity are they referring to in that sentence?

Just promise to issue a mea culpa if they ever indict specific individuals like they have in the past.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-five-chinese-milit...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-a...

Democratic administration covers for crimes of democratic candidate by accusing Russia. News at 11.

[citation needed]

Please provide evidence that the leaks are from Russia.

Also, many people care a lot about Assange. Millions of people care about Assange and WikiLeaks. It is absolutely absurd (and almost un-humanitarian) to try to downplay the work that he has done.

U.S. intelligence services and the Obama administration have explicitly accused Russia of the leaks and assessed that this must have been orchestrated from high in the Russian government. That's a pretty bold statement in politics. Of course we can point to cases where U.S. administrations have lied, but it still should count as evidence, at least on a probabilistic level.

Also, regarding Assange, I believe evgen meant to say that the administration was happy with where he was holed up until he started stirring up the pot.

Also note that the U.S. government did not implicate any foreign governments in cases of cablegate or NSA leaks, and these were as big as they get. Obama administration does not seem to throw such accusations lightly.

I do agree that the Obama administration doesn't seem to throw such accusations lightly. But Obama and the entire Democratic party didn't necessarily have their ass on the line when the NSA leaks happened.

There's certainly first time for everything. However, I assume when Snowden backed out from his path to martyrdom and landed in Russian asylum, the temptation to label him as a foreign agent must have been great. Being penetrated by a spy is perceived differently than suffering from gross incompetence, and quite a few high ranking asses in NSA and elsewhere could be saved.

I don't think any of the smears against Snowden being a Russian agent or whatever were ever said “officially”.

Exactly my point.

>U.S. intelligence services and the Obama administration have explicitly accused Russia of the leaks

No they have not. Read the statement [0] very, very carefully.

[0] https://www.dhs.gov/node/23199

> "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations."

> "We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

I am saving this comment for tomorrow.

Normally, I agree with some of the stuff you said.

Wikileaks tends to talk big talk without actually delivering.

This time though seems a bit different. If they have anything, anything at all left, I think they are going to be leaking it tomorrow, with how much they are hyping this up.

If tomorrow the leaks are just a bunch of nothing, well that means they probably don't have anything at all of significance. We will surely see.

I've heard Nov 1st is a special day.

If it really was the Russians then it would be pointless to attack Assange in the embassy or cut off Internet access as the leaks would come regardlessly.

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