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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

Greenwald's "excellent" piece is itself fake news. It deliberately misrepresents the reporting done by Kurt Eichenwald about the leaked emails. We know it's deliberate because he's distorted the story the same way in the past and it's been pointed out to him. Eichenwald did not claim that the leaked information was false, but showed, to a high degree of certainty, that Trump campaign staffers were working with Russian disinformation operatives. It was an amazing story.

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Eichenwald did not claim that the leaked information was false

When I follow a link from Greenwald's piece I see this tweet that was sent by Eichenwald: "Russian gov manipulates email to @johnpodesta. Publishes disinformation. Takes it down. Trump recites false info." https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/785676641880027136

I interpret "manipulates" as claiming that the emails to Podesta were changed by the Russian government before they were passed to Wikileaks. Referring to them as "disinformation" also claims that the contents of the emails have been modified. And I take "recites false info" to be reiterating once again that the emails are not genuine.

From the outside, it certainly seems that Greenwald is justified in saying that Eichenwald claimed that the emails were fake. But apart from reading this quote, I'm not familiar with the details here. Could you be more specific, and specify a exact quote from Greenwald that you feel is deliberately distorted, and a corresponding quote from Eichenwald that shows the undistorted truth?

I had the same question as you and skimmed Eichenwald's article. He claims that his own words were attributed to someone else (Blumenthal) in these manipulated leaks, and subsequently parroted by trump. He had written a long article about Benghazi, and the email leak takes Blumenthal's quotation of that out of context, misattributing it.

It checks out, and at least on that point Eichenwald seems to be closer to the truth than Greenwald is (Greenwald hardly has anything to say in his own article about the details of the Eichenwald situation, only name-drops and sneers). It looks like this is Greenwald raising his hackles because he perceives his work with wikileaks to be under attack from Eichenwaldl.

Eichenwald's article is significantly rewritten from when it first came out, and you're probably not reading the version Greenwald was responding to:

First publication: Oct 10, 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20161010235349/http://www.newswe...

Today: http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hil...

Differences start around paragraph 6.

It's not "significantly rewritten". Some details were added and clarified. Most relevant is the fact that the most recent version, and all other versions (I read them all) make it completely clear that Eichenwald has no reason to think, and does not say, that the emails as leaked by Wikileaks are fake. So Greenwald is still lying, no matter which version you are looking at.

How Orwellian.

Greenwald is claiming that Eichenwald is reporting that the emails leaked by Wikileaks are fake. In repititions of this claim he either refers to Eichenwald's article directly[0] or indirectly by linking to a tweet that mentions it. Greenwald's claim is a lie. Eichenwald never says that the emails are fake. Read the article. Greenwald certainly did. If you actually read the article in Newsweek you will learn that "manipulates" means that the Russians distorted the meaning and content of the documents in their propaganda, and Trump repeated the identical distortions nearly simultaneously. In fact, Eichenwald's story only makes sense if the Wikileaks version is unaltered, and this is implicit in his reporting.

[0]http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hil...

Thanks for the very reasonable and persuasive response. Based on Eichenwald's original version of the article (as linked by 'nostrademons' https://web.archive.org/web/20161010235349/http://www.newswe...), it does look like Greenwald was wrong, and that Eichenwald was instead claiming that the leaked documents were unaltered but intentionally being used in a misleading manner by taking quotes out of context.

This isn't in itself proof that Greenwald was lying, since this requires additional knowledge of his internal mental processes, but it leaves open the possibility. I still think the phrasing in Eichenwald's tweet implies alteration, but with knowledge of the specifics of the article I agree that it can be interpreted differently.

But as 'nostrademons' points out, the current version of the article reads differently. I'll switch to a Dec 1 archive.org link in case it changes again: http://web.archive.org/web/20161201141729/http://www.newswee....

This version starts with a photo caption that includes the words "faked document". It's been changed to include the words "altered documents" multiple times. While couched in a hypothetical, it explicitly says "the Russian effort to quote an altered email". I feel certain that that the new version has been written in a manner that encourages the reader to conclude that leaked emails may have been altered and should not be considered authentic.

I don't know if these changes were made by Eichenwald or by someone else at Newsweek, but I think the post-publication changes strengthen rather than weaken Greenwald's overall claim that there as a strong media narrative to discredit the authenticity of the leaked Podesta emails. While the original article seems accurate, I find the changes that were made to it to be substantial, disingenuous, and worrisome. I'd be very interested to know how these changes came about.

"showed, to a high degree of certainty, that Trump campaign staffers were working with Russian disinformation operatives."

Can you show me what warrants a high degree of certainty for that claim? Because as far as I know there is no evidence for this beyond the tenuous circumstantial nature of Clinton's dirty laundry helping Trump, and a Trump presidency is less likely to start a war with Russia.

I was talking about Eichenwald's reporting that is pointed to by Greenwald. You're quoting my reference and commenting on it without having read it.

Not the piece above, but here it is. This article has a lot of links/sources on how Trump's campaign statements and Russian propaganda are almost word-for-word identical, and in general complementary. This is from back in August. http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/underst...

Eichenwald claims on live TV the email in question was "manipulated" by Russia. Just watch the video that Eichenwald himself embedded in his article (at 01:49).

> There are two possibilities: One is that both the Russians and Donald Trump were tricked into believing of a manipulated email or the Russians manipulated it and Donald Trump fell for it

Greenwald counters emails were not doctored/manipulated and that saying they are is "Fake News" itself.

Greenwald is actually right: The emails were not manipulated as far as we know, and there is strong circumstantial evidence that there was no manipulation (e.g. thanks to gmail DKIM signatures).

The quote taken from the email that Trump and RT/Sputnik attributed to Blumenthal was indeed misattributed and actually a quote from an Eichenwald piece that Blumenthal merely copied in full into his email. That criticism is very valid, but that misrepresentation by Trump and/or RT/Sputnik does not make the email itself "manipulated".

The gmail DKIM signatures are not a reliable verification that the contents of an email have not been modified. The algorithm and key length of the signatures used by gmail (sufficient for anti-spam) are cracked with an honestly trivial amount of hardware according to RSA in 2003 [1]. Since the premise here is that a state-backed adversary is involved, we can reasonably expect that the keys are compromised.

[1] https://www.emc.com/emc-plus/rsa-labs/historical/twirl-and-r...

Gmail DKIM uses rsa-2048 keys (their key has a selector named "20120113" suggesting this key was in use since 2012, but I didn't do DNS historical digging to confirm). 2048 bit is still believed to be secure enough, even against a state actor, and even the article you linked says it. Either way 2048 bit does not just require a "trivial amount of hardware" (even from a state actors perspective)

The keys in at least several of the Wikileaks emails are 1024-bit. Those are specifically what I was referring to.

Others are signed by hillaryclinton.com, which was likely compromised as well.

The leaked Podesta content goes back quite some time, so yes, there are old emails in there that still had DKIM signatures from a 1024 key.

The email in question is not one of those, and uses the 2048 bit key (emailid/2038).

Also, your assertion that hillaryclinton.com was compromised ... where did you get that? Those emails were released by the govt because of FOIA requests. The DNC was hacked and therefore "compromised" by persons unknown (but some people did a lousy job of attributing it to Russia). The DNC is not hillaryclinton.com, tho.

Yeah, you're correct a lot of the emails use 2048-bit RSA for the DKIM signature. I trust those more than the 1024-bit signatures. I have a pretty heavy distrust of all of this, because from the sidelines I can't tell who is manipulating what. I don't blindly trust the cryptography because I don't know the capabilities of the adversary or what side channel attacks were present. That probably sounds stupid, but I'm feeling a whole lot of distrust of everyone involved.

Following that, my assertion that hillaryclinton.com was compromised was completely evidence-free. That's a personal assumption due to the significant lack of security expertise by the maintainer of the server. There are plenty of emails sent between clintonemail.com and the DNC gmail accounts that CC Podesta and were included in the Wikileaks dumps.

The DNC was hacked by two Russian actors according to CrowdStrike. I trust CrowdStrike in this assessment.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...

When you have a "nuh uh, YOU'RE the one that's fake" situation between two apparently reputable news sources, on a topic with which you have no personal experience or expertise, how are you supposed to figure out which ones are fake?

The instances of so-called "fake news" that I have seen are quite easy for me to "verify" as fake with relative confidence: it's generally an explicitly partisan source with a shady-looking website making an outlandish claim that is not corroborated by any traditional news outlet. The situation you've just described sounds much more difficult for me to verify.

Greenwald's fake news is his false description of Eichenwald's reporting. If you read Eichenwald's article, then you have all the "personal experience" you need to see that Greenwald is misrepresenting what he reported. And when you look up Greenwald's past, identical lies, you see that this misinformation campaign is deliberate. It's not a matter of opinion or of trying to judge competing claims. It's laid out right there in front of you if you want to look.

Did you actually read the two articles in question, or did you just look to see whether the sources were "reputable"? In this case, there is a clear discrepancy of facts between the two, and it's not hard to come to an informed opinion. Just read.

All news is fake news, we get it..

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