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Comment by _mqhx | Hacker News Reader

The report seems to present lots of conclusions to controversial issues (like the hacking) but it provides zero evidence for these conclusions.

The little that's backed up by evidence in there is Russia's public propaganda efforts, like Russia Today, which aren't really anything new (though certainly interesting).

What's controversial is the hacking and I haven't seen anything that attributes the hacks to Russia beyond reasonable doubt. If the evidence was taken to a US court and put before a judge and jury, I don't believe a prosecutor could get a conviction.

I understand that the US wouldn't want to give up its intelligence sources but I also don't think that the people of the US should let the government make foreign policy decisions based on hidden evidence. That's how Iraq happened.

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> This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.

The authors addressed your complaint on the final page of the report. Stop confusing this matter by introducing a "burden of proof" fallacy.

> The authors addressed your complaint on the final page of the report.

They responded to it yes but they haven't resolved the issue I raised, which is that I'm not going to trust their conclusions without seeing verifiable evidence that would be accepted by a court and that I don't think anyone else should accept their claims either.

> Stop confusing this matter by introducing a "burden of proof" fallacy.

According to [0]: "You said that the burden of proof lies not with the person making the claim, but with someone else to disprove."

I'm saying that the burden of proof lies with the party making the claim. How is that fallacious?

[0]: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

I agree with your sentiment but is it not possible for the authors to reveal this evidence because that would undermine their intelligence capabilities?

It does seem likely that that's the case however a good reason to withhold the evidence doesn't increase the likelihood that I will/should trust the report.

There's no good solution to this, it's unfortunate that they proved themselves untrustworthy in the past.

There's no good solution to this

Yes there is, and it is already in place. There has been bipartisan oversight of intelligence from Congress for decades. A subset of the people's representatives with the necessary security clearances make sure that there are no Deep State shenanigans. Yes, it failed in the run up to the Iraq invasion, but it worked for decades before, during the Cold War.

I disagree.

- Partisanship in Congress has resulted in a government so dysfunctional that it's been shut down. We can't trust people who can't even keep the government running to watch over services so accustomed to keeping everyone in the dark.

- The committee may have been effective during the cold war but in recent times, the NSA was engaged in mass surveillance for while this committee was in place and it took an internal whistleblower for it to come to light.

- The head of the NSA lied to Congress. The oversight committee can't oversee if they can't get the truth.

You might be able to argue that this is a solution but you most definitely cannot argue that it's a good solution when it's recently been proven to be ineffective.

The intelligence oversight committees have subpoena powers. They can get at anyone in any of the executive agencies who might be willing to testify and contradict their leadership. The committees also have the power to extract documents from the executive branch. The CIA torture investigation, as fraught as that was, was done by an intelligence oversight committee. CIA even created an airgapped network just for the oversight committee staffers to read CIA documents.

and i think that's the point. they had trust, and they totally abused that to the point where anything they say that's unverifiable is questionable. this is why these organisations shouldn't lie to their own countries' people; because it will be close to impossible to regain that trust without verifiable sources and transparency that they just can't give

OK, you don't trust it but they're not going to burn their sources and methods in a public report. Do you seriously expect them to voluntarily expose their assets when it could be a death sentence for their human sources? A future executive might make that decision and live with the consequences, but members of the intelligence community aren't going to voluntarily wreck their networks.

Isn't that how most foreign policy works? The WoMD fiasco was a problem for sure, but the solution to that is to elect officials we can trust. When the White House says the CIA has come to them with evidence that must be acted on, the White House can't turn to the populous and ask if there is enough evidence to act. They need to have the autonomy to act as they see fit.

> Isn't that how most foreign policy works?

It's how foreign policy has worked in the past but I think it's demonstrated that it's not how foreign policy should work in the future.

> the solution to that is to elect officials we can trust.

That seems incredibly unlikely to happen. US elections seem to be mostly decided by who has the most political capital and media support rather than trustworthiness or merit.

> When the White House says the CIA has come to them with evidence that must be acted on, the White House can't turn to the populous and ask if there is enough evidence to act. They need to have the autonomy to act as they see fit.

I'd agree that this is the case but I don't think that the agencies themselves can be trusted anymore. The head of the NSA told a blatant lie in front of Congress and worse, got away with it. There's no accountability anymore so I don't think trust is wise.

I think the US as a country can only function when the people trust the government, the government respects the people and the people within the government trust and respect each other. None of these things are currently the case and I suspect things are only going to get worse. What that will cause I have no idea.

Trust people who used IRS as a weapon against Tea Party affiliated groups?

The irony of Hillary losing because of some kind of interference by Putin is that he's only in a position to do so because her husband and other Americans interfered in the Russian presidential election 20 years earlier in support of Putin's mentor, against a Communist Party that was virtually certain to win (and by some accounts did). Nobody seems to be losing any sleep over that one though.

Where does the report mention hacking? I did a ctfl F but was not able to find anything.

Page 2 (or p. 12 of the PDF):

> In July 2015, Russian intelligence gained access to Democratic National Committee (DNC) networks and maintained that access until at least June 2016.

Thanks! I see it now. Wouldn't be surprised if they just had a mole in the DNC anyway. It only takes one secretary or manager with email access.

If the evidence was taken to a US court and put before a judge and jury they would probably have to show them the classified bits too.

Usually in situations like that it either goes to a special court or the judge reviews it alone and then instructs the jury to take certain facts for granted. This might sound odd but it's actually very common - if both sides in a case agree about certain facts then they are 'stipulated' and become binding matters of fact that are not subject to challenge or review later.

Iraq war happened because US wanted oil and this so called bad evidence was nothing more than a trick to still looks good. As In "I wouldnt have done this if I knew". No-no - they would still have done it no matter what.

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