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Comment by etchalon | Hacker News Reader

I think that's missing the point.

Russia, a state-actor, coordinated an cyber-attack on an American political party. The results of that attack (which weren't particular interesting) are secondary to the attack itself.

The Russians are "to blame" because they're the ones who committed the action.

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I don't like Russia as much as the next guy, but the US doesn't really have moral high ground here.

The repeating argument in NSA revelations was that intelligence agencies are here to gather intelligence outside the country and on their own citizens. Well then it follows, outside the country it would be pretty weird if Russia spied on US citizens, but not political parties. This goes both ways of course.

Once you see that having an intelligence agency necessarily means you're going to snoop on internals of another government, it would be even more weird if you don't meddle with it when you have the chance. I mean why not? Nation states are out for themselves. In particular if the stakes are high such as when the nation happens to have a good portion of the world's nuclear arsenal, why not take a shot?

The US does not have a "moral high ground" here, but that's also beside the point. Yes, we interfere in the elections of other countries. We also bomb other countries. And yet, if another country bombed us, we'd be pretty pissed about it.

Categorical imperative is nasty.

I think it's also worth noting that this was not a particularly sophisticated attack. Podesta fell for a simple phishing attack. A lot of media attention around this has made it sound like something out of an action movie, but the attack itself was actually quite simple. People who have access to so much important information need more training about this sort of thing so they don't just give their password away. It might've been the Russians this time, but it could've been just about anyone, and unless the underlying problem is resolved, it'll continue to happen.

It wasn't even a sophisticated phishing attack. If you believe the reporting, the whole thing would have been avoided were it not for a typo.

Exactly, it could have been a Russian national, or it could have been someone from the USA, Nigeria or Spain, with enough VPN tunnels and botnets at an attacker's disposal it might take years, if ever, that they could attribute the event back to the true source.

>The results of that attack (which weren't particular interesting) are secondary to the attack itself

One could argue that the documented effort to override public opinion in the primary election is quite interesting by itself. I suppose you could also claim that it's uninteresting, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened.

That documentation does not exist. You could argue it is "hinted at" in the emails made public, but cannot argue it is documented or proven.

Well, it was apparently convincing enough for the former DNC chair to lose her job, and for the subsequent DNC chair to be fired from her position at CNN. If you choose to ignore what happened, then that's your own perogative.

First, the former DNC chairwoman was going to lose her job anyway. The DNC chair position alternates every four years. She was "fired" early to make peace with Sanders, who believed (correctly) that DWS favored Clinton. It was a move to give unity to the party, and possibly to get Sanders endorsement. It's hard to say for certain what would have happened if they hadn't.

Donna Brazile forwarded a single question to Podesto. The optics looked bad, but, as the email chain showed, it was a question they already had an answer to.

Believing this "proves!" anything is ignoring the facts.

That is a post-hoc rationalization and you know it. DWS was forced to step down amid a firestorm, not voluntarily "to give unity to the party." The same goes for Brazile. The claim that "they could have figured out the answer anyway" doesn't make up for the dishonesty in cheating during the debates.

It's hardly post-hoc. There was no evidence revealed in the emails that revealed anything more damning than that DWS, and the DNC, preferred Clinton (the Democrat) to Sanders (not a Democrat).

She stepped down early, and was replaced with DB, an even bigger Clinton fan.

By July 22nd, the entire party was in unity mode, and Sanders was actively being courted for his endorsement. DWS resigned as a sacrifice play.

As for the email question, it wasn't making an excuse for it, so much as it was pointing out it had no effect on the proceedings.

Either way, I believe this thread shows how little the DNC hack revealed.

Do you believe the DNC tried to slow down the momentum of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries?

No, I believe they did not specifically help him. I have not seen evidence they went out of their way to hurt him. The most "damning" thing you could point to would be the debate schedule, which was scheduled before anyone knew Sanders would be a nominee.

>"I have not seen evidence they went out of their way to hurt him."

Here's one example to start...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/wikileaks-emails-de...

The link below showed something which was talked about, but never executed. It can be chalked up to proof that the DNC preferred Clinton (they absolutely did) but not that they actively did something to harm them. As I noted above, you can argue the emails "hinted at" the potential they did, but you cannot prove they actually did.

Here's another...

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8351

>"Yes, Super PAC paying young voters to push back online on Sanders supporters"

I'm not sure what the context of that is, and I hadn't seen that before. I'll do some reading.

Still, a Super PAC is not the DNC. I'm sure pro-Hillary Super PACs were doing (or at least considered doing) quite a few worst things than that.

If your "evidence" is that people in public positions are removed from public positions because of public backlash, then that is no evidence at all. Public opinion often rules out over actual facts in such cases.

>"Russia, a state-actor, coordinated an cyber-attack on an American political party."

Is there any evidence that the hacks came from Russia?

From what I've seen, the Russians have just been the scapegoats. Just because something is repeated a lot on the news, doesn't make it true. If there's evidence the hacks were orchestrated by the Russian government (or even involved Russia at all), let's see the evidence. Without the evidence, the claims are baseless.

Both the FBI and CIA have publicly stated they believe the hacks came from Russia. Whether they'll release their evidence publicly remains to be seen, however, even GOP senators acknowledge it was likely Russia. We can assume they were briefed.

>"Both the FBI and CIA have publicly stated they believe the hacks came from Russia."

Let's imagine you're the President and you discover the leaks came from US citizens with ties to the DNC (e.g. DNC employees with access to emails). Would you have anything to gain from pointing the finger at foreign political actors interfering in US politics?

Imagining motives and then working backwards is, in general, a terrible way to parse the world.

How do you think journalism or police investigations would work without such approaches?

Terrible or not, it's the correct way.

It's literally the complete wrong way. You're inventing potential motivations, convincing yourself those are the motivations of the people involved, and then likely searching for evidence that proves your speculation correct.

It's not completely baseless, a former British ambassador that supposedly has close ties to WikiLeaks has suggested the information they leaked came from a DNC insider:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/10/really-reall...

With that out of the way, let's return to the earlier question, in the situation I described previously, what would be gained by blaming a foreign group for the leaks?

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