Protip: the entire US intelligence community was on the lookout for Russian interference in the election. If they messed with enough voting machines to make a difference, NSA etc would know about it. Which means Obama and Congress would know about it. So either they're all conspiring to keep it secret from the American people, or it didn't happen.
> If they messed with enough voting machines to make a difference, NSA etc would know about it
That's completely theoretical and U.S. intelligence's real track record isn't nearly that good. There was Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, being unaware of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs before the first Gulf War, a false positive on Hussein's WMD programs for the second one, stolen nuclear warhead and stealth fighter plans (among many others); major hacks of many major government facilities including Dept of State, OPM (which include files on undercover spies), and many more; and finally, during the election, the successful attack on the DNC. - Those are just the highlights. I don't feel as confident as you do.
Finally, sometimes government doesn't tell the public everything. President Johnson knew that Nixon was privately negotiating with the North Vietnamese, undermining U.S. foreign policy, but chose to say nothing because (AFIAK) he thought it would be too disruptive.
None of that is evidence that something happened, of course; only that we can't rely on the NSA to detect everything and notify the public about it.
By all means, the IC should be double-checking to ensure the vote was legitimate. But the left needs to accept that it was and move past the insane conspiracy theory stage of the grieving process.
It's not evidence of hacking, but it's evidence that the vote tallies are wrong. At a minimum a recount and analysis should be done to determine root cause of why the numbers are wrong.
This is simply not true.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking...
And all you've managed to come up with a dismissal based on partisan politics that aren't even relevant to the blog post, which does not say the election was hacked (in fact: it says almost the opposite), but makes a nonpartisan point about the integrity of the ballot process.
Injecting volatile political arguments unrelated to stories is a form of trolling. Could you please stop doing that?
I'm commenting on the claims of Russian hacking being the latest refuge for election denialists. The reason people are talking about Russian hacking is not due to academic curiosity about the security of voting machines. Pretending that it is, in an attempt to give the discussion an unearned air of impartial dispassion, is dishonest.
>And all you've managed to come up with a dismissal based on partisan politics
My dismissal is based on two things: 1) partisan politics, in that this theory is being pushed by the same people and for the same reason as previous explanations for why the election was illegitimate, and 2) the complete and utter absence of evidence.
>Injecting volatile political arguments unrelated to stories is a form of trolling. Could you please stop doing that?
It strains credulity to assert this discussion was apolitical prior to my interjection.
You are welcome to disagree with Halderman! But before you try, you should acquaint yourself with his point, which is not that the election was stolen from Clinton, or even hacked at all.
A tech worker or contractor with "alt-right" leanings could easily manipulate the vote without being detected. And there are plenty of them...
Play up the "Russia couldn't do this, you're insane" line and everyone assumes we're looking for outside intrusion by a foreign power, when in fact it is far more likely an intrusion would come from inside.
Remember 9/11? Iraq WMD?
I'm not an American, but I remember reading that there were (competent) people in the US intelligence services who had warned the powers-that-were that there were no conclusive proofs of WMD in Iraq. The issue was that the people in power didn't want to hear that from the intelligence services, so some other guys (they're mostly guys) from the intelligence services caught that hint and provided the desired "intelligence".
Here's an article about it, concerning the CIA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06.... Here's another article about it, this time concerning MI6, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/18/panorama-iraq-... , where is mentioned that the French secret services had told the British that the WMD claim was bogus. I'm pretty sure that there were people inside the MI6 who also believed what the French were saying, but the higher-ups of course took the political decision of telling Blair what he wanted to hear.
Also, bear in mind that a determined cheater will take any edge they can get, regardless of how small.
Oh wait, the right was the benefactor. Must all be a legit line of questioning.
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