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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Nobody said Russia rigged the election. The issue was the attempts to influence the election which Russia has a long, documented history of doing so. And the US had an obligation to respond which they did with minimal effect. So claiming all of this was about propaganda really makes no sense given the facts on the ground.

And please remember why Russia's relations with almost all of the world deteriorated in the first place. It's because they annexed Crimea (unprecedented for our generation) and allowed soldiers and weapons to flood into Ukraine which then resulted in Flight 117 being shot down.

Nobody is looking for a fight with Russia but capitulating and doing nothing is not an answer either. Diplomatic sanctions have been the correct response and I don't see anyone asking for an escalation of that.

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> Nobody said Russia rigged the election.

Obama and Josh Earnest have not gone as far as using the word "rigged" but they have essentially implied as much. Other large media outlets have done the same and yes, some have used the word "rigged" directly [1] (and if I dug through CNN / MSNBC / ABC reels I am positive I could find many more examples). Lesser known media outlets and internet commentators have been using the word "rigged" profusely, so it's not "nobody".

> Diplomatic sanctions have been the correct response and I don't see anyone asking for an escalation of that.

Hillary Clinton herself is on video calling for an escalation of that in the form of a military response, shortly after some saber-rattling about the US nuclear arsenal [2].

> And please remember why Russia's relations with almost all of the world deteriorated in the first place. It's because they annexed Crimea (unprecedented for our generation)

And you should remember the unprecedented actions that have caused the United States' relations with almost all the world to deteriorate. Claims of influencing foreign elections (c.f. the entire history of the CIA) and widespread hacking (c.f. the NSA essentially pwning the world) are particularly hypocritical.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/opinion/how-to-rig-an-elec...

The election was rigged by Russian intelligence, which was almost surely behind the hacking of Democratic emails, which WikiLeaks then released with great fanfare.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ahr0-KpvLM

As a non-American, the long history of the US meddling in elections may make the claims hypocritical, but it makes me very open to suggestions that Russia would do it too.

Are you European by chance? If so, don't worry, your country also likely has a long history of meddling on local affairs either through colonialism or parts of the cold war, especially if you are British!

Yes, the US has meddled in international affairs but let's not pretend that US is unique in doing so or that Russia is some benign country that has no history of actively working against the interests of Europe/US/NATO or that Russia doesn't have its own agenda.

For all of the faults of the US/Europe I'm glad I grew up in the "west" rather than behind the Iron curtain. I also don't see millions of people who fled western nations to Russian states - the single direction of political and economic migrants over the last 70 years speaks for itself.

"But they did it, it's ok"

please, are you going to use that argument to bring back slavery? trite and baseless.

Who said anything about slavery? We are talking about meddling in the political affairs of other countries and espionage. That's been going on ever since lines were drawn on a map.

Correct, your defence of the US Govt's meddling was "but Europeans did it"

Which is an absolutely incorrigible position.

I didn't say anything about it being justified. I said "let's not pretend that US is unique in doing so" to someone who implied the US deserves it...

First there are many countries in Western Europe with no significant colonial history. Greece for example. Italy's colonial history is insignificant.

As to being glad that we grew up in Western Europe during the cold war, I have an Albanian friend who is now a professor of economics in the USA. He said that, although living in communism as an adult (Albania had the worst communist, btw) would have sucked, he wouldn't trade his childhood for anything.

I've never met tougher mofos than my Albanian friends or my wife. They know how to have fun, how to behave in groups and nothing scares them. By comparison how many of my peers (or myself) suffer from anxiety, are anti-social (being on your phone in public is very anti-social) or just weird?

Most do have a colonial history though, a history often partly responsible for much of the strife we see today - was Italy not involved in Ethiopia/Eritrea/Somalia? And Greece certainly had political strife during the Cold war and world wars.

Libya and Ethiopia would like a word with you.

The most ironic part of the Clinton camp using the term "rigged" is that the original use of the term was by Bernie Sanders against Clinton during the primaries. His claims were proved by the emails that were released by Wikileaks. But somehow this has become a discussion of whether the Russians were behind it, rather than the uncontested content of the emails showing the Clinton campaign's malfeasance.

It has also morphed into a large percentage of the population believing that Russia hacked voting machines and vote tallies, for which there is absolutely no evidence. This furthers the agenda of deligitimizing the election results.

Classic distraction strategy. It's sad watching people on facebook/twitter even believe one word from the White House and the MSM about Russian hacking. Putin isn't a nice person, but even so the facts simply don't support the government's claims. If you ask me, they went with the Russian angle because of how ruthless Putin seems to be, and they thought it would be easy to sell. It was with a lot of people, it seems, that or they were all too eager to believe a lie.

And now we look petty and they look magnanimous for not opting for an in-kind response. I don't know how long it will take us to rebuild our humint network but I'm assuming it won't be easy to identify all of the new spies coming in with new and improved methods.

How were Sanders's claims of Clinton rigging the elections proved by the emails released on WikiLeaks?

I didn't follow the Sanders campaign closely enough to be able to identify the more relevant items, but looking at the Wikileaks data gave me the impression that he was a token candidate who they controlled with various bits of leverage (e.g. when they cut him out of the DNC voter systems). There was also that time when they staged violence at the Trump rallies and blamed it on Bernie supporters. Refer to the controversy regarding Zulema Rodriguez & co.; she was also later tied to the 'Trump Ducks' thing via a photo credit, which was said to come straight from Hillary.

Here's a list of some of the findings from the leaks, though not all are relevant to this -

http://www.mostdamagingwikileaks.com/

How was Sanders a token candidate controlled by the DNC? My memory of the primaries is far different, with Sanders suing the DNC over access to NGP VAN (which the DNC had cut off until the Sanders campaign showed they had deleted their copies of Clinton's data), loudly complaining about the DNC following the existing rules at the Nevada Convention (http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...), and generally loudly making unfounded allegations of rigging. If Sanders was a token candidate, whom would you consider a big name Democrat worthy of challenging Clinton not as a token opponent?

> There was also that time when they staged violence at the Trump rallies and blamed it on Bernie supporters.

The DNC did not stage violence at Trump rallies and blame it on Bernie supporters. You're probably thinking about http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/project-veritas-actio..., who incited Trump supporters to violence, which is different from pretending to be a violent Sanders supporter. Zulema Rodriguez also had nothing to do with "rigging the primaries."

Elizabeth Warren is probably the top of the list. I also remember various questionable vote counting during the caucuses, but I'm basing this on what Bernie supporters were saying at the time, so you might be right about it being inaccurate. I wasn't personally paying much attention yet, as I'd already assumed Clinton had the nomination in the bag.

I am thinking of that incident and there's a lot going on in that one. You can see Bernie supporters getting blamed here, though:

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/sanders-supporters-divided-trump-...

> I also remember various questionable vote counting during the caucuses.

The caucuses were heavily skewed in Sanders's favor. Caucusing requires a large time commitment, which favored Sanders supporters over the poor minority Clinton voters. You're probably thinking about the Nevada Convention, which I explained in my previous comment.

> I wasn't personally paying much attention yet, as I'd already assumed Clinton had the nomination in the bag.

She certainly had it in the bag, which makes the claim that she would resort to rigging the primaries even more ludicrous. She got almost 30% more of the popular vote than Sanders. Despite the media wanting to make the race seem close and interesting, it was obvious to even a casual observer like you that it was a landslide.

> You can see Bernie supporters getting blamed here, though:

The people quoted in that article are actual Bernie supporters.

> Nobody said Russia rigged the election.

Nobody sensible said that, but I've seen more than a few comments along those lines on various sites, enough to believe that general sentiment is commonplace.

As for Comey, I'd say he let her off easy. Take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC1Mc6-RDyQ

Then look at the PDF attached here of an email between Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton and ask whether this looks intentional or not:

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/30324

How did Comey let her off easy if she didn't break any laws?

Comey claimed not to have charged Clinton because there was a lack of intent. Gowdy is calling him on that, saying that this makes zero sense and going over all the ways they have to prove intent. His point at the end about "negligence" underscores the fact that the entire line of reasoning is nonsensical: intentional negligence is a contradiction in terms. That which is intentional cannot be negligent and vice versa. The law in question is against negligence (which does not require any intent whatsoever).

Just to underscore that, I just linked to a document where Colin Powell describes in detail how they're subverting the law: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/30324

"However, there is a real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it [is] government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and be subject to the law. Reading about the President's BB rules this morning, it sounds like it won't be as useful as it used to be. Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data."

I don't think it's reasonable to let our politicians get away with this. Inasmuch as people are worried about Russian influence, it seems strange to me that there's no worry about the very leaders to jeopardize our OPSEC with their hubris. Here is Colin Powell, again, saying things that should make HN readers cringe:

"Now, the real issue had to do with PDAs, as we called them a few years ago before BlackBerry became a noun. And the issue was DS would not allow them into the secure spaces, especially up your way. When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals that could be read by spies, etc. Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite. I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn't back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking. I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it. In general, the suite was so sealed that it is hard to get signals in or out wirelessly."

If the law is so toothless that high ranking people of either party (Powell is a Republican) can deliberately subvert them, then we're always going to be at the mercy of every country with half-decent spies. This is a problem in its own right, independent from whatever partisan considerations we have here.

===

Note: The square brackets in the quote are me fixing typos in the original.

You don't understand what intent means as it relates to the law. The particular law you are referring to is the Espionage Act. The case law (in particular, Gorin v. United States) establishes a bright line of scienter for application of this law, highlighting the text that says the defendant must have "intent or reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation" in order to be in violation of the law. Intending to use a private email server with a Blackberry is not enough. She must intend to circumvent the security of the email system in order to harm the United States or help a foreign nation.

Intent to harm the United States (or another nation) was not the intent Comey was looking for. It was intent to share national security information with people not authorized to receive it.

And what law would that be a violation of? The only law requiring intent that was under investigation was the Espionage Act, and I have given you the text that describes what intent is required.

The statute - 18 U.S.C. Section 793(f) - says nothing about intent. Comey read it in as a requirement for launching a prosecution. The intent he thought was required was as I described, not intent to harm the United States.

> The intent he thought was required was as I described

Again, cite the law. It doesn't exist.

> The statute - 18 U.S.C. Section 793(f) - says nothing about intent.

Again, that section was anulled by case law, in particular Gorin v. United States, which establishes the bright line of scienter for applying this law. That is why Comey said that no prosecutor would bring this charge.

That's part (a), though and the talk I remember centered around 18 USC 793(f), which does not appear to depend on (a) as some of the other sections do, like (b) and (c).

The email between her & Powell would also make it interesting to see whether (g) applies.

For reference, here's 18 USC 793 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793

You don't understand the difference between case law and statutory law. You are citing statutory law. The law as it stands is statutory law (how the law is written) amended by case law (how the courts have interpreted it). As I stated, case law as of Gorin v. United States invalidates the sections you cited and requires scienter.

Then look at this case which cites it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jin-Woo_Kim

The indictment is here: https://fas.org/sgp/jud/kim/082411-order.pdf

"Kim had a reason to believe that this information could be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation"

There was a TS picture of NK on there. Huma Abadeen had access to her device (someone who was born in the USA, but raised in Saudi Arabia) as evidenced by signatures on some emails "from" Hillary. And even if there wasn't that, they should have the ability to prosecute her for all of the false statements made during the investigation (which would be under a completely different statute).

For all the worry about foreign powers influencing the USA, it's undeniable that she and Colin Powell schemed in such a way that jeopardized OPSEC. That will remain an issue as long as people can get away with it.

> They should have the ability to prosecute her for all of the false statements made during the investigation (which would be under a completely different statute).

What false statements did she make under oath during the investigation? Comey specifically said that they have no evidence that she lied to the FBI. http://www.politico.com/blogs/james-comey-testimony/2016/07/...

> There was a TS picture of NK on there. Huma Abadeen [sic] had access to her device (someone who was born in the USA, but raised in Saudi Arabia) as evidenced by signatures on some emails "from" Hillary.

Why mention that she was raised in Saudi Arabia? She is a US citizen who obtained security clearance in 2009, during which the FBI would have thoroughly checked her background. Before you go even further off the reservation, she doesn't have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood either. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/...

Let's look at the Kim case because the indictment so clearly draws out the difference with the Clinton case. From the indictment:

"The indictment charges that Kim had a reason to believe that this information could be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation and that Kim knowingly and willfully communicated, delivered or transmitted that information to a reporter for a national news organization, who was not entitled to receive that information."

It continues:

"Count Two of the indictment charges that on or about September 24, 2009, Kim denied to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he had had any contact with a named reporter for a national news organization since meeting the reporter in or about March 2009. The indictment alleges that Kim actually had repeated contact with the reporter in the months following the March 2009 meeting. The indictment charges that Kim knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation to the FBI in violation of I8 U.S.C. § IOOI(a)(2)."

Kim knew that giving the national security information to a reporter would get that information seen by a foreign nation to its benefit (violation of the Espionage Act). Then he lied about it to the FBI (violation of I8 U.S.C. § IOOI(a)(2)). Clinton did neither.

Gowdy discusses quite a few such statements with Comey here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC1Mc6-RDyQ

> Why mention that she was raised in Saudi Arabia?

Because it shows how easily the information could escape the US to other countries, even inadvertently. I haven't claimed anything regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, nor was I aware it had been claimed regarding her.

> Kim knew that giving the national security information to a reporter would get that information seen by a foreign nation to its benefit (violation of the Espionage Act). Then he lied about it to the FBI (violation of I8 U.S.C. § IOOI(a)(2)). Clinton did neither.

That North Korean photo we're talking about was discussed with one of her press guys and none of these people who accessed this were cleared for TS information other than Hillary herself. Huma was found emailing Wiener from Hillary's device in at least one case (probably how his laptop got roped into that).

Incidentally, here's the warrant for Wiener's laptop (which mentions all the TS info on this uncleared server, among other things): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NKixAl7kHoVmp5MkFfTEgwc2s...

And here's the email where they discuss the NK photo they were worried about: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10587

> Gowdy discusses quite a few such statements with Comey here:

Again, none of those statements were made to the investigators or under oath.

> Because it shows how easily the information could escape the US to other countries, even inadvertently.

Again, that is the FBI's job to determine when doing the security clearance background check.

> That North Korean photo we're talking about was discussed with one of her press guys and none of these people who accessed this were cleared for TS information other than Hillary herself.

What North Korean photo are we talking about? This is the first time you've mentioned it. I suspect you are talking about http://www.wptv.com/news/political/clinton-email-on-north-ko..., which was neither Top Secret nor sent to a news reporter. If it wasn't sent to a news reporter, why do you think this email is anything at all like Kim's case?

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10587

"The rumor was not that ODNI had completed the review and determined only one was not TS and the other was, but rather that they had only reached a definitive conclusion on the one (we think the North Korea email that supposedly relied on satellite imagery) and were still deciding on the other."

That's the one I suspected. Did you read the rest of my post about why that email does not make Clinton's case anything like Kim's?

> So claiming all of this was about propaganda really makes no sense given the facts on the ground.

Where are those facts? please show hard evidence. So far I haven't seen any hard evidence that proves it was the state of Russia who orchestrated the hacks.

> And please remember why Russia's relations with almost all of the world deteriorated in the first place. It's because they annexed Crimea (unprecedented for our generation) and allowed soldiers and weapons to flood into Ukraine which then resulted in Flight 117 being shot down.

If you believe that Russia is absolutely bad and the US and Ukraine are infinitely good and righteous, then you might want to look at what the other side says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KHCNk9BYy4

The fact that the majority of the Crimean population is Russian, should give you a hint that maybe there is more to this story than what the Western media says.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Demographics

I have yet to see Putin making an aggressive announcement, however US officials continuously keep making threats and sanctions.

> Nobody is looking for a fight with Russia but capitulating and doing nothing is not an answer either. Diplomatic sanctions have been the correct response and I don't see anyone asking for an escalation of that.

Destroying diplomatic relations and throwing sanctions sound like looking for a fight to me. I fail to see anything good coming out of this.

"You don't understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territories is Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from us." Said by Putin in 2008, Boekarest -> 2014, Crimea annexation and Ukraine in war.

Polish president in 2008 was saying "Today Gorgia, tomorrow Ukraine, the day after Baltic States and then maybe even Poland". He died in Russia in airplane accident in 2010 when going for anniversary of the Katyn massacre, a mass murder of Polish intellectuals, politicians, and military officers by the Soviets during World War II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

I'm from Poland and I can tell you that having USA military bases in Poland is a big win for every political force in my country. Left, right, liberal, socialists agree - we want to keep Russians as far as possible. Last Russian tanks left Poland in 1993 and I don't want to see them back. Not in my life time nor after I'm gone. I'm happy to go with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush or whoever will be elected by the American nation, just to stay as far as possible from Russians. And it's not that we are that big fans of Americans, we just know the history way too well - we are affected by it till this day.

If you want to see what happens when a person like Putin starts to say that the last peace agreements are bad and borders need to be changed then look at the second world war and the Polish history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement

> If you want to see what happens when a person like Putin starts to say that the last peace agreements are bad and borders need to be changed then look at the second world war and the Polish history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement

So is that a fear in Poland? That peace with russia would involve handing over parts of your country to Russia?

More likely that a war with or annexation by Russia would begin by handing over parts of your country to Russia.

Which is largely how World War II started in Europe: Stalin and Hitler agreed on a partition of the lands in between, and together started a war to implement that agreement, so that their armies could shake hands in the middle of Poland.

Your understanding of WW2 is lacking. It wasn't 2 bad guys who wanted to split Europe. Britain and France were totally on board with Hitler at first:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement

"The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 (but dated 29 September) after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union."

The German-Soviet Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed in August 1939, almost a year later.

I'm very well aware of that history, thank you. But the two guys with mustache were the ones actually going ahead with big time conquest in Europe.

Sure, Chamberlain was wrong with that peace in our time and handing Bohemia to Hitler. But obviously he had difficulty in going to war over it, as well.

And Arthur Harris would have hung as a war criminal if Britain had been on the losing side against Germany. But that's a different story. The two dictators and systems in their countries were the ones most responsible for bloodshed.

> Boekarest

That would be "Bucharest" and the whole quote is actually a rumour published by Kommersant who cited a NATO delegation source. Not exactly reliable.

> I'm from Poland and I can tell you that having USA military bases in Poland is a big win for every political force in my country. Left, right, liberal, socialists agree - we want to keep Russians as far as possible.

Don't you realize that the US is looking for a conflict and a future proxy war may be waged in your country exactly because of those bases?

I suspect you are Russian. Can I ask a dumb question?

Russian language started to be used by civilians in 16 century. Before that, it used in churches only. (See Wikipedia for details).

What language your grand....grand parents are used before 16 century?

I'm not a time traveler or the poster you are asking but I suggest you watch this, history of the evolvement of Russian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4cXIyyc-L0

Video is incorrect. Russian is South Slavic language. It's much closer to language used in Montenegro (which is South Slavic) than to Ukrainian or Belorusian languages. Russians have troubles with understanding of something written or spoken in East or West Slavic languages, while they have much less trouble with South Slavic languages. It's because Russian language is based on Church Slavonic language[1][2], which was develop by Saints Cyril and Methodius[3] using South Slavonic dialect spoken in (now) North Greece.

Also, samples of history are incorrect, causing multiple LOL's.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_Cyril_and_Methodius

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Slavonic_language

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Church_Slavonic

You obviously know a lot more about this than I do. I don't think we are arguing about anything. The Langfocus video mentions the 2 saints and Church Slavonic.

There are many debates on youtube about how much of 1 slavic language a speaker of a different slavic language can understand.

I was recently listening to an episode of Sean's Russia blog that briefly discussed how much Russian is spoken in Ukraine. http://seansrussiablog.org/2015/04/09/post-maidan-ukraine-an...

I was listening to an episode of This American Life recently, the interview subject, who sounded Greek to me, was repeating the Old Slavonic liturgies he sang in his youth during Byzantine Orthodox services.

I'll have to read and find out if Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic are different or the same thing.

Please note, that video supports my point: between 500BC and 1600BC, Russian language was non-existing. It's why video jumps from 500BC (proto-Slavic language) to 1400BC straight, skipping 1K years, 2/3 of history of Slavs.

> If you believe that Russia is absolutely bad and the US and Ukraine are infinitely good and righteous, then you might want to look at what the other side says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KHCNk9BYy4

No one is absolutely bad or good but Putin and the Russian government is responsible for the situation in Ukraine.

Ukraine was doing badly enough on its own, it didn't need Russia fucking it over. And its such a stupid panic it's not like Ukraine would have been admitted into EU or Nato, next election or 2 (with a mildly less corrupt/nasty candidate) things would have swung back to Russia friendly candidates.

Google the term Russia "hacked the election".

It's all over the place. There's no subtlety or nuance in how this issue is reported in the media.

DNC and Podesta email hacks have been turned into Russian hacking of the entire election, and (not accidentally) many are inferring that Russia likely hacked actual voting machines.

Many people seem to be looking for a fight with Russia. Look around on twitter. See the desire for escalation in Syria. Remember the desire for a no fly zone in Syria supported by Hillary Clinton. As General Dunford testified, this would have required war with Russia.

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