U.S. Charges 13 Russians, 3 Companies for Interfering with Election | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Charges 13 Russians, 3 Companies for Interfering with Election

bloomberg.com

246 pointsuptown324 comments

I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election."

I also think the notion that there's a way to prevent external actors from influencing internal affairs in an ostensibly free and open republic in a networked world is somewhat... ill conceived: a democracy so fragile it needs a great firewall of some kind to protect its citizens from "fake" and "unhealthy" views is probably already on the road to failure.

If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.

And of course that's not to mention all the inconsistent double standards. Where's the outrage over things like Confucius Institutes and other similar influence operations?

And that's not even getting in to the whole "do as I say, not as I do" aspect, where we try to pretend that dictatorships and totalitarian states should see our pro-democracy pro-human rights initiatives and NGOs and VOA and such as perfectly fine and friendly and obviously different than RT, etc.

The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well.

We don't need a great firewall, just Facebook and Twitter to get their fucking shit together. Also, there's more to charges this than just social engineering. They actually did hack voting commission data.

What do you mean by that? Filtering billions of posts, trying to figure out which ones are "real news" vs. "fake news," and which ones come from well-meaning vs. nefarious actors, AND doing so in a way that is not only politically neutral but also perceived as politically neutral is a MASSIVELY non-trivial problem.

Even if you think the social networks should be trying to solve this problem (and some would argue that it's a hornets nest they would do well to avoid), acting as if they're being negligent or incompetent because they haven't figured it out already is a bit unfair.

How about simple transparency in who's buying ads like tv and print have to go through?

Again, what do you mean by that? Most (all?) Facebook ads already state which business page they're associated with. (I'm admittedly not on Facebook, but I have trafficked some ads for work.)

If you're asserting that Facebook should say who's REALLY behind by the ads, you're basically asking for Facebook to hire a crack team of private investigators. Should they be responsible for figuring out that Nice Ad Buyers LLC is really a wholly-owned subsidiary of some other corporation, which some neo-nazi millionaire owns the controlling stake of?

https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964952978657509376 they’re smarter than you give them credit for. they just don’t do anything about it. got it?

If you consider this national discussion about foreign interference in elections as part of a national grieving process about the surprising outcome of a specific election, it makes a lot more sense and implies it is likely to pass once people have moved on.

Except for the fact that people interested in strategic matters have been discussing this and warning of the downsides since long before the electoral campaign in question.

I’ve never heard of people being indicted as part of a grieving process. Isn’t it also possible that a bunch of people broke the law? If yes, then we should make sure to investigate that.

Certainly, but there are plenty of crimes that go uninvestigated due to lack of resources driven by lack of public interest. In fact even within the very narrow realm of election interference you can see that we are only directly pursuing specific forms by specific countries. It's hard to imagine this situation emerging in a scenario where the events of Nov 2016 did not unfold the way that they did. In particular, if there was no potential hope that the winning candidate could potentially be found guilty of crimes that would result in impeachment, I doubt you'd see anywhere nearly as much public interest in this subject.

Thought exercise: if Mueller cleared Trump of any wrongdoing today, do you think people would be waking up tomorrow with as much fervor to go after these Russians? Do you think people would not suddenly be searching for reasons to call into question the integrity of this investigation at that point, despite holding it up as of utmost importance to our democracy up to now? It seems obvious that public interest in these Russian hijinx would plummet if they were no longer potentially useful vectors towards achieving political goals.

What point are you trying to make here? That the public only cares because the interference was successful and may have influenced the outcome? Seems to me like something the public should care about.

The OP is right that ultimately in a free society, interference on the part of coordinated speech by external actors is not something that fundamentally can be avoided. It can be made illegal, and it can be prosecuted, but ultimately to try to change the paradigm in a way that prevents it would result in creating a closed society. This is a completely valid concern.

My point is we shouldn't worry about this, because once the potential political implications of this investigation have been resolved, people will stop pressing our institutions to make radical changes to the way we live and work in order to prevent such interference. The reason Facebook is doing an overhaul, the reason big tech companies are speaking to Congress about this, etc, are because people are freaking out about it, and I think it's fair to say "this is a dangerous path we are going down" as the OP does. But if you consider the root cause for the sudden wave of public interest about this and the demand from the public to take action, and realize it's ephemeral and not a systemic crisis that will not go away until the issue being pressed is resolved, it's easier to sleep at night.

There have been countless issues in American public discourse that suddenly become important due to a major emotional trauma felt by the populace, reactions to which, if played out indefinitely, could be damaging. This is not one of the instances, in my view, where urgency and fervor will remain for a long period.

For example, the most likely outcome I believe is that it will turn out that we will get lots of indictments and new information about nefarious acts on the part of Russians, but people who are hoping that there will be a wave of indictments against the current administration are going to be severely disappointed. Once that becomes clear, I expect the focus to shift somewhere else that could bear fruit towards ending the current administration via legal proceedings, or peter out. We have already seen this happen in bursts when it became reasonable to discuss that there were obstructions of justice -- suddenly Russian interference was no longer the focus of headlines.

==people who are hoping that there will be a wave of indictments against the current administration are going to be severely disappointed.==

We have already seen someone within his administration get indicted (Flynn). Then we saw that person agree to a plea deal. Not sure what defines a "wave", but it's reasonable to think that Flynn was offered a plea deal in exchange for providing evidence on someone higher up than himself. Now, we have reports that Gates is locking in a plea deal (https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/politics/rick-gates-plea-deal...), we don't know what/who he is trading for the deal.

==suddenly Russian interference was no longer the focus of headlines.==

Here you are focusing on what the media reports instead of what the investigation has shown us. The investigation has now yielded 3 plea deals (one more being negotiated) and almost 20 indictments. These investigations aren't public (until indictments) and don't move at the media's preferred speed. Instead, they focus on things we can see and hear like Trump (and Nunes) actively obstructing justice.

I should have phrased what I was saying better. The hope of many is that there's going to be some smoking gun that results in the prosecution of a sitting president for conspiring with the Russians to secure his election win.

What we have had instead are indictments against campaign members for either process crimes (like lying to the FBI) or crimes committed well before the Trump campaign even existed (Manafort's money laundering.) And now we have indictments for Russians doing the things we already knew they were doing -- trying to cause chaos in the election. You can speculate all day long about the implications of plea deals and what they mean but it's all speculative and in general, if it's assuming some more nefarious scheme that suits a particular political agenda, in my view wishful thinking.

It's a nice rhetorical trick by the media to say "former Trump campaign members have been indicted" to try to instill the narrative that actual crimes were committed by the Trump campaign towards influencing the election through coordination with Russians, but this rhetorical trick is in the same category as the "hacking the election" one cited by the OP -- deliberate framing to re-enforce a narrative that up to this point is still unproven.

Flynn, a very high ranking administration member, plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his communication with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislak. This crime happened while Trump was in office (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/01/flyn...).

Why would Flynn lie to the FBI about this if it was innocuous? Certainly, he knows the consequences. You would like us to assume a 4-star General lied to the FBI about communicating with a high-ranking Russian official, because reasons. The rest of us are combining this with information on Kushner trying to set up a Russian back-channel, Sessions lying about contacts with Kislyak, Manafort offering Deripaska campaign briefings, Trump literally asking the Russians to hack for him, Don Jr. meeting in Trump Tower, etc.

People are speculating because the Mueller investigation is not leaking any information. The flip side is people acting like he has "nothing", meanwhile surprise indictments are flying and people are cutting deals.

==And now we have indictments for Russians doing the things we already knew they were doing==

So, yesterday this "assumption" was valid, but any other assumptions based on the information we have are just wishful thinking. Logical pretzel.

I think by this point since you consider yourself a member of "the rest of us" it's plainly obvious you have a horse in this race and/or have a warped view of the ideaspace around what is going on with various investigations and inquiries happening across branches of the US government and agencies. I, personally, do not, and am not willing to speculate beyond about what has been revealed so far and the general prior that a sitting president will be impeached due to a conspiracy with the Russian government seems highly unlikely. So you've kind of validated my point. There are countless counter-narratives based upon similar speculation that are equally well grounded (ie, not much) than the ones that you've laid out here that counter your speculative point of view. Once you've digested the actual matters of fact that have been disclosed to the public in full (especially primary sources) then personally I think the most wise takeaway is to abandon most assumptions about information you are not privy to and generally just ground expectations in rough probabilities based on history and expect there to be large amounts of unexpected events to occur that you will be not able to predict. The narrative you've outlined here tells me you may be consuming information from within a filter bubble so I'd encourage you to try to break out of it.

In short: people who are fantasizing about their political enemies going to jail should expect to be disappointed, and as I said, I expect this chapter in American history orbiting paranoia about Russian bots posting spam on Facebook to generally be lost and forgotten within an election cycle.

This is remarkably disingenuous. The Russians hacked into both political parties and leaked their information selectively to support their agenda. They even got access to voting rolls. There is no evidence AFAIK that they changed anything, but they should rightfully be charged for penetrating the US at all.

EDIT: voter roll != voter systems... edited so I don't spread FUD. Don't want to distract from the main point. The success of Russia's efforts may be only a symptom of the problems in the US - you still have to treat the symptoms.

You'll need to fix the corruption first, and then fixing the bad actor outside.

Like an old Chinese proverb: Mosquito only sting the eggs already with cracks.

That's unreasonable. There are a lot of people working on this… we can work against corruption and against undue foreign influence in parallel.

Those are not separate issues.

The corruption is to a degree that anyone can influence US political system with comparably very insignificant cost.

At this juncture, how can you fix the external influence while the internal is so eager to cooperate? Like a stick without support on ground, are you going to put a sign that no one should touch it, but how can you keep it stand? And what's the point of disallow people touching it, which I can blow it off using my mouth...

When someone points out two problems, you don't try to "order" which problems to be fixed first.

Fix both of them. In any order. US has both a corruption problem (although less so than other countries IMO), AND an outside influence problem.

There are 300+ million people in the country and a budget of over $3 Trillion / year. We can afford the resources to simultaneously fix both problems. There's absolutely no reason to fix things one at a time.

The US has a corruption problem, an outside influence problem, and a domestic extremism problem. The first can be attributed to both major parties (albeit in different ways and to different ends), the second to resurgent great powers that reasonably wish to undermine US hegemony (again, to quite different ends), and the third is deeply rooted in the US' difficult history and has surged due to a hollowing out of institutions.

I don't want to paint these issues in purely moral terms. In many ways they're attributable to the increasing complexity of a technological society and the momentum of economic relations. We don't have a good paradigm for self-governance in an increasingly networked society.

US has a ton of problems. We have an opioid problem. We have a corruption problem. We have foreign terrorism problem. We have domestic terrorism problems. We have outside influence problem. We have a schooling problem. We have mental health treatment problem. We have hospital problems. We have a budget problem. We have an aging population problem. We have an immigration policy problem (Too much? Too little? Depends on who you ask). We have election problems, we have voter problems. We have consensus problems. We have polarization problems.

The list goes on and on and on for virtually forever. My point is: we work on ALL the problems, simultaneously, as much as possible. There should be no one suggesting that we only try to solve one or two of these at a time.

We will fail to fix some problems, but we will succeed in fixing other problems. And it will only happen because people will throw their hardest try at fixing all of the problems.

We are ahead in many respects: the population in general knows the wide variety of problems that this country has. So we're able to talk about it. So we're at least at step 1. It'd be nice if we could come to consensus faster, but politics has always been a painfully slow game (Civil Rights took over a decade of demonstrations for example to fix a single issue). This country has always been a bit slow on the uptake, but at least public awareness is generally good.

The other problems you mention are structural, not strategic.

1) If the parties acted principled, open, and upfront as befits the democratic process rather than turning themselves into utterly skeezy Potemkin villages there would be nothing to selectively leak/embarrass them with. Every leak is self inflicted damage caused by the notion that they can do, and get away with, anything as long as they keep the public far enough away.

2) Charging people with crimes for walking through open doors does not actually keep the doors closed. (And the utter disinterest in actually securing and auditing our voting systems relative to hunting heads only goes to show that we don't even care about locking the door, we just want a scapegoat to appease our rage.)

1) So? 2) Would you prefer it wasn't illegal to walk through the doors at all?

At the very least it would make people more serious about locking them.

Sounds like paradise for lock pickers without moral fiber (actual pickers tend to have good rules they abide by) and desire to monetize their hobby.

“Oh yeah, door was wide open, I swear!”

Can we extend this a bit so that if you’re walking through a park at night, mugging you is kosher?

Can we extend this a bit so that if you design and build a house without a roof and you're wet when it rains it's the building company and construction code's fault?

No, but it’s good to know that if you’re careless, tired, sick, etc... I have free reign to rob you blind.

In United States law, trespassing is often still trespassing, even when the door is open

>1) If the parties principled and upfront as befits the democratic process rather than utterly skeezy there would be nothing to selectively leak/embarrass them with.

This is incorrect both on a practically every level.

First, the Russians, in other instances where they have 'leaked' emails have both changed contents and in fact inserted emails. See David Satter[0] Because the emails were private to begin with, you are taking an enormous leap of faith to trust them as fully accurate simply because they were 'leaked.' The absolutely easiest thing to do would be to leverage any potential misinterpretations or suggestions of impropriety by inserting things to make that worse.

Second, we see a group of people intentionally, aggressively, and dangerously taking things out of context and mislead others to drive a narrative. See Pizza gate.

Third, you entire argument relies on no one ever misunderstanding another person's communication. Has anyone ever misinterpreted your actions? your words?

Yes, political parties are sometimes skeezy, so are people. But the broader point here is that one group is leveraging and digging and amplifying some bad behavior into not just a believe that it is universal and unfixable (which you seem to already accept) but an actual undermining of the whole system.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/26/russi...

> First, the Russians, in other instances

Those are different "Russians" - judging from the name (Cyber Berkut) they most likely not even Russians but Ukrainians, as "Berkut" is the name of the security force that has been, among others, protecting Yanukovich in Maidan events in Ukraine in 2014. Russian group would not likely take the name of Ukrainian security force - there are a lot of nice Russian names available. But pro-Russian Ukrainians (which there are a bunch of) would. In any case, the only relation of those to APT*s is that they also leaked emails. So far I don't think there was a credible claim of any Wikileaks-published DNC mails as being fake, were there?

> But the broader point here is that one group is leveraging and digging and amplifying some bad behavior

Wasn't that like what 90% of past electoral campaigns were doing - digging dirt on each other (going back to high school and beyond) and blowing it up into a huge deal? I don't think Russians exactly invented the whole "dig up some dirt on the opposition and talk about it incessantly" trick.

Re: 1)

As far as the Clinton/DNC leaks go, there was actually nothing damaging in them. Yet somehow it got spun up into a giant conspiracy that they had evidence didn't exist, thanks to the leak!

They used phishing attacks to steal people's login credentials. That's not an open door.

Was referencing voting systems/records, sorry I wasn't more clear.

I actually agree that the true underlying problem is how uninformed and easily manipulated our populace is. I agree that this wouldn't be an issue if our society was better off and more knowledgeable. Regardless, I disagree that we shouldn't care about Russian meddling.

>The Russians hacked into both political parties and leaked their information selectively to support their agenda. They even got access to voting systems. There is no evidence AFAIK that they changed anything, but the most logical conclusion is that they did.

Actually there's no evidence that they hacked into anything -- it's all BS hearsay and "trust us" from secret agencies and no evidence pudding.

Here's The Evidence Russia Hacked The Democratic National Committee

http://time.com/4600177/election-hack-russia-hillary-clinton...

Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee

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

Those were 2016. There has been many questions since.

https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-qu...

Well... it happened in 2016, so yes, many of the articles about it are going to be from around then.

You may want to take a closer read of the editor's note prepended to the Nation article you linked to, which is a lengthy apology for the article's inaccuracy:

>we should have made certain that several of the article’s conclusions were presented as possibilities, not as certainties. And given the technical complexity of the material, we would have benefited from bringing on an independent expert to conduct a rigorous review of the VIPS technical claims[...] We have obtained such a review in the last week [...which] lays out several scenarios in which the DNC could have been hacked from the outside, although he does not rule out a leak.

Here are some better pointers:

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagate-explained-721c...

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagaters-are-the-very...

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagate-is-making-ever...

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/10-trump-administration-a...

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-problem-with-the-clin...

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/clintonists-suddenly-clai...

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-to-criticize-trump-wi...

Those are obviously-partisan opinion articles by a self-described "rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper."

Call me crazy but I'm going to side with the intelligence community (and Obama and John McCain and the Dutch government and even Mitch McConnell) on this one.

[edit: added adjectives, and the Dutch because they deserve it]

> Call me crazy but I'm going to side with the intelligence community on this one

Because they have proven such integrity? I still remember the pictures being shown on TV from our intelligence community of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Granted. (You're conflating the "intelligence community" with the "Bush administration," which is a little iffy, but I take your point.)

And if this were just one source, or just one agency, or even just one political party, I might be more skeptical. (My usual routine when a story seems questionable is to check a source with the opposite political bias. If Fox and the WaPo both say something happened, I'm much more likely to believe that it did.)

Not for nothing, but:

"The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation... is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-swede...

Seems like it's working.

It wasn't just one source during the Bush administration either. It was both parties. Also, we supposedly shared our 'intelligence' with other Nations which all were convinced it was legit.

We are quite good at propaganda also

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-b...

We already have one can of worms open, I have no interest in opening another can by relitigating the entirety of the Bush/Iraq years; they were exhausting enough to live through the first time around. I'll happily concede that the US engages in propaganda, and leave it at that. (Well, not "happily", but you know what I mean.)

It's definitely working - US political system is whipping itself into frenzy over "collusion" conspiracy theories while Putin comfortably arranges yet another rigged "election" for himself with no real opposition, suppresses dissent and imprisons anybody who dares to challenge him - and US can not even squeak a word about it since we're in the midst of declaring anybody from foreign country speaking about anything happening in another country to be a crime! If Putin indeed have foreseen it, and executed on this plan from a start, he's kinda genius. Or he's just lucky US politics happened to be insane in a way that benefits him.

Oh dear; now you've made me regret calling you "thoughtful" earlier.

In one short paragraph you've changed the subject from Russian election interference to the separate issue of Trump's collusion; you've characterized that collusion as a "conspiracy theory" for no apparent reason; somehow you've decided it's to blame for the rigged voting process within the Russian not-a-democracy; and I have no idea what the bizarre "declaring anybody from foreign country speaking about anything happening in another country to be a crime" is in reference to, if anything at all. Impressive!

But I'll give you this one:

> [Putin]'s just lucky US politics happened to be insane in a way that benefits him.

That's right on the nose.

> In one short paragraph you've changed the subject from Russian election interference to the separate issue of Trump's collusion

I am glad you are able to see it as two issues. 99% of the press isn't.

> you've characterized that collusion as a "conspiracy theory"

Which it most definitely is, by definition - it's a theory (with no factual basis after two years of investigation) and it's about a conspiracy. What is it if not conspiracy theory?

> somehow you've decided it's to blame for the rigged voting process within the Russian not-a-democracy

I decided nothing of the sort. Of course US craziness is not to blame for Russian fake elections. But US craziness makes it harder for US to point to Russians that they just had fake elections, because Russians would say "didn't you just said telling other people about their elections is criminal? So please do shut up". US just shot itself in the foot on this one, and for no good reason whatsoever.

> I have no idea what the bizarre "declaring anybody from foreign country speaking about anything happening in another country to be a crime" is in reference to

Oh, you do have an idea, drop the pretense. You are perfectly aware what I am referring to, you just like to pretend it's not what it is saying. But, unfortunately, it is.

> it’s a theory (with no factual basis after two years of investigation)

Oh horsepucky. There’s a sliiiight difference between “no factual basis” and “ongoing investigation whose results have of course not yet been made public.” There’s also no shortage of publicly available information supporting it; I could reel off the long list of meetings and shady-looking emails and trump tweets and etc but I’m sure you’re quite as well familiar with it as I am.

> You are perfectly aware what I am referring to

I really, genuinely, honestly have no idea what that lunatic raving is. Feel free to explain it, if you like.

> There’s a sliiiight difference between “no factual basis” and “ongoing investigation whose results have of course not yet been made public.”

Yes there is. But given the way it has been conducted so far - where any information against Trump has been leaked very promptly - and yet in the whole time absolutely nothing confirming the "collusion" theory has been found, and everything that came out - e.g. Flynn, Manafort, Papadopulos & now Russian trolls' indictments - show nothing of the sort, it's pretty safe to conclude it won't be ever found, because there's nothing to find. Of course, one is free to believe otherwise, as one is free to believe we are yet to discover the lost city of Atlantis, the Yeti and the UFOs hidden in Area 51, we just didn't look well enough. Hope dies last.

> There’s also no shortage of publicly available information supporting it;

Yep, there is. If fact, there's none.

> I could reel off the long list of meetings and shady-looking emails and trump tweets

Yes, there were meetings and emails and tweets, none of them has any evidence of Trump colluding with anybody to do anything, let alone anything criminal or even out of the course of routine politics. They may be evidence of thousands of things, but not that particular one.

> I really, genuinely, honestly have no idea what that lunatic raving is

> you’ve chosen to fall back to playground-level argumentation.

It is a fascinating level of lack of self-awareness - telling me I'm on "playground-level" in the same sentence as as subjecting me to a playground-level insults!

OK, I will indulge your pretense. I was referring to the prosecution of Russian individuals under the theory that participating in US politics, by publicly expressing your opinion on social media, or other venues, while not being US citizen, can be criminal. Of course, there are also some instances of actual fraud in the indictment, like identity theft, which are different matter, but conduct like "tweeting about US politics", or even "tweeting about US politics while having a profile on Twitter falsely claiming you are an American" should not be part of any criminal prosecution or criminal indictment.

First off: You're right about the "playground" swipe. That was a cheap shot. FWIW I edited it out almost immediately -- presumably while you were typing your response -- but I shouldn't have said it in the first place. Apologies.

It may not come as a surprise that I think you're wrong about basically everything else in that comment, though.

> where any information against Trump has been leaked very promptly

This is a baseless claim. We have no knowledge of what information hasn't been leaked. Kind of by definition.

> yet in the whole time absolutely nothing confirming the "collusion" theory has been found

Strike "found", replace with "made public". Because, again, the investigation is still happening, and its contents are still secret. Don't declare victory before the game's over.

> none of them has any evidence of Trump colluding with anybody to do anything

Yet again, we have no way of knowing what evidence has been found by the FBI but not yet made public because, yet again, the investigation is still happening. We do have a lot of instances of Trump and associates trying to cover up various meetings, which isn't typical behavior for innocent people. Kushner's little backchannel hotline to the Kremlin isn't exactly routine politics either. (It's not a proof-positive slam dunk -- Kushner might be able to explain it as sheer incompetence on his part, that he literally had no idea how criminal it would appear to attempt to hide your communication with Russia from your own country's security apparatus -- but it merits investigation. Which, as we know, is ongoing.) That's just a couple examples from what you and I both know is a long list of actions that sure smell incriminating from here.

But there's little point in us arguing about all the many details, because, say it with me everybody you know the words: the investigation is still ongoing. We don't know what we don't know. We'll find out one way or the other when more indictments drop, or when they close up shop.

> I was referring to the prosecution of Russian individuals under the theory that participating in US politics, by publicly expressing your opinion on social media, or other venues, while not being US citizen, can be criminal.

Aaaah, I see. Well, in the spirit of avoiding playground-level discourse, I will withdraw my description of it as "lunatic raving", and in place say "such a wildly absurd mischaracterization of the contents of this indictment that I literally did not realize this indictment was what you were talking about."

It does not consist of "declaring anybody from foreign country speaking about anything happening in another country to be a crime". That's an absurd claim. "Tweeting about US politics while having a profile on Twitter falsely claiming you are an American" is not criminal behavior. Creating a multi-million dollar operation to generate thousands of propaganda-dispensing social media accounts, posing as everything from BLM activists to the Tennessee Republican Party (really!), buying political ads, and staging political rallies within the US, all with the explicit intent of manipulating the election, however... that's a different story.

> We have no knowledge of what information hasn't been leaked.

Ah yes, the famous Russell's teapot. I am sure it is full of evidence against Trump. But so far it hasn't been found in any other place. And there were enough leaks from all levels to demonstrate the capability and the willingness to leak. So one must ask, why this capability hasn't yet been deployed to reveal any real evidence of collusion? Obviously the theory that nobody is willing to leak stuff about this is false. What other theory is there?

> Strike "found", replace with "made public".

Russell's teapot again. You are of course free to believe in hidden evidence of anything you like. I prefer to believe in open one, and that one does not contain a smidgen of collusion.

> Creating a multi-million dollar operation to generate thousands of propaganda-dispensing social media accounts, posing as everything from BLM activists to the Tennessee Republican Party (really!), buying political ads, and staging political rallies within the US, all with the explicit intent of manipulating the election, however... that's a different story.

No it is not. It's exactly the same story - people saying words on the Internet (or in public on the streets, as it were). If it's a crime for 100 people to do it, then it's a crime for one person to do it. If it's a crime to do it for a million dollars, then it's a crime to do it for 10 cents and a lollipop. If it's a crime for a Russian to buy political ads and stage political actions - then it's a crime for any foreign national to do that. And that's exactly the theory major part of Muller indictment is based off - and that you just agreed you believe in too, in complete disregard for Constitutional freedoms and natural freedoms of every person, such as freedom of speech, association, etc. No amount of putting "the same, but with scary Russians" on it will change the basic premises of it.

Oh, wow, we're still doing this? Ok.

Declaring your support for the constitutional rights of non-citizens is an interesting rhetorical choice. As is describing a large-scale propaganda mill as just the same thing as a rando spouting off on twitter. (Especially followed by the rhetorical flourish "then it's a crime for any foreign national to do that". Which, well, yes: it is. I even did that thing people do on the Internet where I looked it up for you, here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/11/110.20) And obviously I think your reading of who's leaked what, and what public evidence, both solid and suggestive, currently exists is quite selective. (I'm sure that feeling is mutual!) And most obviously of all, neither one of us is going to convince the other of... well, anything.

So: have a nice day. We can reconvene after the next round of indictments, if you like.

>Those are opinion articles by a self-described "rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper."

I was pointing to the arguments -- could not care less if Humpty Dumpty wrote them.

>Call me crazy but I'm going to side with the intelligence community (and Obama and John McCain and even Mitch McConnell) on this one.

I'd just call you gullible. If one actually wants to get out of the establishment bubble, that's the last source they'd want to slide with.

But of course they have such a great track record for people to be trusting them, from Operation Mockingbird to the Contras, WMDs, lying about surveillance, and so on...

OK. So if I'm following, we're supposed to disbelieve the intelligence community, the security researchers, leaders from both political parties, the Dutch government, and basically every reputable news outlet in the world. But the rogue prepper lady, she's got the goods, because she's outside the "establishment bubble".

Look, I'm no fan of the CIA, I share the frustration with not being able to see the classified evidence first-hand, and I'm all for skepticism when it comes to source bias and motivation. But when your argument boils down to literally everyone of significance is lying except for Donald Trump, that's no longer something that can be described as "skepticism".

Yes, because it has happened before.

We even had other countries confirm our conclusions before and it was still wrong.

I don't mean to say, it is definitely wrong, but I can't agree that is is almost certainly right either due to these same parties have all lied before.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/spy-agencies...

7 links to a single blogger borders on spam. Please reconsider your argumentative strategy.

> although he does not rule out a leak

It seems this should still be important, right? Before we take actions that lead to hostility between nations, possibly even wars, shouldn't we be absolutely sure?

Yes, we should! Which is presumably why it took more than a year of investigation before Mueller filed these charges.

The hack was recently publicly confirmed by a Dutch intelligence agency where they confirmed the DNC was indeed hacked, and that they were witness with recorded video and possibly logs of Cozy Bear committing the very hack that was proposed to be a leak.

https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-...

It is 'claimed' to be confirmed by anonymous source. Still many statements raise questions...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-26/release-t...

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/dutch-official-admits-ly...

Both of the opinion columns you posted seem to allege nefarious intent because classified information wasn't broadcast to the public during an attack and subsequent investigation. I'm not sure what your assertion is.

>because classified information wasn't broadcast to the public

Seems to be quite a disingenuous summary of content

Wait, so if what the article says is true, for several months both FBI and DNC knew what they think is Russian intelligence are reading all their (DNC) mails, and then when Russians, after many months of having unfettered access with the full knowledge of FBI and DNC, finally publish their loot, they're all act surprised "ah, we were hacked!"? That sounds like astounding level of negligence from both FBI and DNC - effectively, DNC could be just CCing Kremlin on all their correspondence with the same result. And FBI knowing about a hack for months and doing nothing to stop it?

Who said they did nothing to stop it? If you would like there are plenty of reports about tactics used. Primarily, any initial entry into one government system they would use to snowball access to others, largely by spear-phishing attacks using government emails to gain higher level and wider access through legitimate accounts. By that time, it's a cat and mouse game.

I'm not sure about your anecdote regarding alleged surprise. The only surprise I really caught were the public reactions to the news.

> Who said they did nothing to stop it?

OK, I admit, I took the optimistic route. The pessimistic one would be they knew for months, they tried for months to stop it, and they failed, and they didn't tell anyone about it. That sounds even worse to me.

> Primarily, any initial entry into one government system

DNC is not government. At least not yet :)

Freudian slip or what.

I trust you understood what I meant, regardless.

I’m willing to believe it’s possible they failed. I recall talks by a former NSA director about the dire need for improved cybersecurity programs and it wasn’t well received at the time— in light of all the patriot act business

Maybe it’s a wake up call?

The evidence being some "because private security companies" said so? Those have even less credibility that state agencies, and will report anything you like for enough dinero.

There is no evidence in the post, only claims.

You might want to actually click on the article's links. It isn't just private security companies.

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-departme...

Additionally, if you look at the private security company posts, they ALSO cross reference material of note.

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

Yes, the private security companies who performed the investigation said so (and provided plenty of evidence, if you take the time to look at the links). So did the intelligence community. So did Obama. So did John McCain and Mitch McConnell, who you'd think have a pretty good vested interest in not saying so.

What is your basis for disbelieving all of those people and groups?

They all have high motivation to arrive to exactly the conclusion they have arrived (and even higher motivation to arrive to some conclusion - it's a huge egg on your face to say "Russia hacked us", but it's much bigger egg on your face to say "Somebody hacked us and we don't even know who and have no way to really find out"), and they have means to select their subcontractors (e.g. choose specific security company that will agree to say what you want to be said - it's not the proof that's what happened but certainly the possibility of choice is there) to confirm what they want to conclude. These are pretty solid grounds for some measure of disbelief.

I personally looked through all technical evidence that was in public and that I could find (of course I could miss some, I am not perfect and I have a day job), and 90% of it is conjecture and references to some private data that I could not see. Maybe that private data shows what they say, maybe not - there's no way to see. The only semi-public info that I could see is that bit.ly fishing thing that shows that the fishing operation (which is only one of the multiple hacks that happen) is most likely performed by the same organization that performed a number of other fishing operations, which could be useful to Russians, and thus most likely is performed by Russians (either the government or private contractor working by the government order). There were also some scripts and sources of Ukrainian and Russian origin, seemingly, but those are traded on darknet so anybody could get their hands on them.

That is the only data I've seen in public that pinpoints the whole deal to Russia - all other things are "trust us, it's Russia". Which may very well be true - but "trust us" is not exactly a proof. It doesn't mean it's not Russia - very well may be - but the conclusive proof is still not there.

>They all have high motivation to arrive to exactly the conclusion they have arrived

That isn't the case for many of the involved parties (for example the Dutch government, or Mitch McConnell.) And I'm not sure I agree with your argument that "pin it on Russia" would be the most face-saving lie (compared to "just call it a leak" for example.)

Look, I share your desire to see the actual evidence first-hand; "just trust us" rarely sits well with me either.

But if this is a lie, it's a remarkably well-coordinated lie, apparently agreed upon by many sources with competing or even conflicting motivations and biases. Even in your description of your own research you appear to concede that there is evidence connecting the hacking to, if not necessarily the Russian government, then at least Russians; and that it was certainly in the Russian government's interest; and that what information is currently public tends to fall in line with the information we're told is still secret. (I hope I'm not mischaracterizing your statements here, I do appreciate the amount of detail and thought apparent in your comment)

It's true that the public doesn't have, as you say, "conclusive proof" at this time. But many people seem to be taking that lack of conclusive proof as evidence that it's all just fake news, a huge cross-party conspiracy to mislead the public.

(And the conspiracy theorists oddly always gloss right over the question of who did do the hacking if not the Russians, they're just certain that it wasn't the Russians, because the government and the media says it was the Russians, and everybody knows you can't trust the government or the media.) (And that mistrust, of course, is the precise goal of the Russian disinformation campaigns we do have conclusive proof exist. So that's an interesting detail.)

That's the part I can't get past. On the one hand you have a plausible, coherent explanation which fits all the available evidence; on the other hand you have... well... what? Unsupported free-form skepticism, as far as I can tell.

> That isn't the case for many of the involved parties (for example the Dutch government

True, the Dutch confirmation is much more valuable, as they have no apparent reason to be partisan on either side. So if it is confirmed with some evidence, it would be very heavy indication towards APT's indeed being Russian and being responsible for the hacks they are claimed to be responsible. It's one thing McCain - which has been at war with Russia since forever and grasping at anything anti-Russian he could reach - saying it and it's another thing Dutch with no partisan motivations saying that. When I rote the above I didn't know about Dutch confirmation, which makes me attribute more likelihood to the Russian attribution if I after some research I am convinced Dutch aren't mistaken and not motivated by something that I wasn't aware of (I know next to nothing about Dutch politics so no idea there).

> And the conspiracy theorists oddly always gloss right over the question of who did do the hacking if not the Russians

Oh, here might be lots of options. E.g.:

1. Russians, but not those Russians - I mean, independent Russian group which is not controlled by Kremlin. Who leaked the emails for lulz.

2. Independent group outside of Russia that has its interests aligned with Russia at the moment - say, Belorussians or Iranians or Kazahks or whatever, I'm not going to list all countries connected to the internet here.

3. Independent group outside of Russia having a beef with Clinton, but having no connection with Russia whatsoever and Russians just got lucky that they also hated Clinton.

4. Independent group outside of Russia not giving a tweet about politics but doing it for lulz and darknet bragging credits.

5. The emails were not published as a result of the hack, the hacks happened independently and the emails were leaked by the insider, unaware of simultaneously happening hack by any of the above.

6. No idea. I don't know a lot of things, and it's completely possible I wouldn't also know who leaked DNC emails. That's always a valid option.

I do not say any of those are true (except for the last one which very well might be true :) but they are certainly options for the answer of "who hacked it and leaked emails".

> And that mistrust, of course, is the precise goal of the Russian disinformation campaigns we do have conclusive proof exist. So that's an interesting detail.

Giving that mistrust of the government is pretty much written into US Constitution and, if one reads what the Framers wrote, was deeply on their minds when they wrote it, the Russians are about 230 years late to the table here.

> The evidence being some "because private security companies" said so? Those have even less credibility that state agencies, and will report anything you like for enough dinero. There is no evidence in the post, only claims.

So is the only source you’ll accept is your eyes watching the hacking in person?

Probably good source data with explanation of chain of custody that reasonably ensures those aren't fake. I.e. if they produce code and logs and other artifacts that definitely link something to Russia, I'd probably believe they didn't fake the logs, binaries, screenshots, etc. if reputable enough people vouch for it. Also, faking real data is very hard, so if after reasonable time of public inspection nobody calls it fake, I'd believe they are genuine. Then explanation how these source data demonstrate what is being proved (e.g. "this IP has accessed the remote backdoor on this server, and it's routing points to the IP being in Russia and registered to the provider known from this and this to be a company engaging in cybercrime on behalf of Russian government") that would be pretty convincing for me.

Pretty much the same process evidence undergoes on criminal trial. You present it, you get it through adversarial process, if it survives, we have some reasonable (though not 100%, as well known) chance it's true.

Of course, a prosecutor saying "well, we've seen the evidence and we conclude the defendant is guilty" would not fly very well in court. But that's mostly what we have here.

I suppose that's fair; I thought about noting that. Technically there is no evidence since the public can't see it. But, re: voting systems, this was a recent headline: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians-penetrat...

Depends on your degree of trust in the US and Russian governments.

Re: the DNC/RNC, even if they didn't hack anything, they did leak the information that they acquired - clearly to shape the political situation. Still reprehensible.

Note how the article says "voter registration rolls" but the headline says "voter systems", creating implication that these are systems that are used for actual vote, while maintaining plausible deniability in case they'd be called on it ("we didn't say voting systems, but voter systems!"). This is a pure journalistic malpractice, and it happens often enough to think it is done on purpose.

> they did leak the information that they acquired - clearly to shape the political situation. Still reprehensible.

This is not only legal, but has been done many times by all MSM outlets. Some got well-respected prizes for it. Some got movies made in their honor for it. May be still reprehensible, but certainly not something one usually gets indicted for.

Registration is an essential component of voting systems.

Hack that and people get turned away at the polls.

I mean, aside from the DNC's emails [2] [3] and gaining access to Arizona and Illinois voting records [1]. I'd personally put 1 to 4 odds against direct modification of voting numbers, given that voting machines are woefully insecure [4].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-i...

[2] https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-11-03/inside...

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/26/us/2016-presidential-campaign...

[4] https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-25/DEF%20CON%2025%20vot...

Voting machines are indeed woefully insecure - and has been for years - but accessing voter rolls doesn't do anything to it (but does a lot if you want to open a fake bank account or credit card, which is likely the motivation). Curiously, virtually nobody so seemingly concerned about voting security is advocating doing something about securing the actual machines or replacing them with more secure ones. Let alone taking more stringent measures on verifying the voter rolls, validating the voter's identity, etc. The argument immediately switches to "electoral fraud is insignificant and does not present enough threat to take measures that can lead to vote suppression". Which is fine, maybe the fraud is insignificant - but then probably the fraud done by hacking the machines - which is part of overall fraud, and probably one of the harder ways to pull it off - must be yet more insignificant? So is it a significant occurrence or not?

"Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution

NIC ICA Report:

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

At least they didn’t come in and overthrow our government like we’ve done to so many others.

We have a politically motivated lens focused on only the Russians. Does anyone remember before the Russia hysteria it was always the Chinese hacking into our systems?

Did they actually do what is claimed? Maybe, but are they really doing anymore than anyone else? Less anyone doubt we might charge them with something they didn't do, remember we have fought wars over what countries were later proven not to do.

In the end, what was revealed by whoever is that our own democracy's greatest threat lies from within and most likely always will

> Russia hysteria

Even beyond the domestic political implications of Russian involvement in our election, Russia is actively supporting groups that are likely shooting at Americans and our allies today (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/17/evidence-russian-mil... or https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/04/24...).

Is it hysterical to care about these issues?

Yes, the media is only reporting through the lens that promotes only a single view point of our relationship with Russia.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia...

Context is important, because the US and co. did the exact same thing when Soviet troops were in Afghanistan.

Context is indeed important, one could argue that the Soviets did the same in Korea, Vietnam, or any of the other major Cold War conflicts.

Indeed -- and all of these examples were driven by hysteria on both sides.

So you agree the US is in another Cold War with Russia then? Otherwise how is that relevant?

The Russians have a long track record of influencing elections on Brexit and elected office throughout Europe. This is a defacement attack on elected governments, purely meant to weaken them to Russia's relative advantage. They may have gotten so far as to work with candidates by passing them information and coordinating attacks with campaign messaging and goals.

I don't know why you're being downvoted. This is accurate. You may fare better by adding sources— but it's been in the news for some time, and specifically confirmed by France's IC IIRC.

France: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/05/french-electio...

Germany: https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/the-impact-of-russian-...

Netherlands: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2017/06/06/rus...

The root comment seems to deal with the subject matter of the linked article which contains no mention of accessing political party information systems or voting systems.

Is the claim here that context is irrelevant as long as it was omitted from the featured article?

I've read that the Russians didn't hack the vote tallies, instead they hacked and selectively purged certain voter registries, thereby controlling who was "allowed" to vote in the first place. A different strategy to achieve the same goal of modifying eventual vote tallies.

You may have read it, but the states that were touted as that happening in, quickly debunked it, and it was then retracted.

It's not clear whether voter data was altered. But the possibility of that happening remains a grave threat to the integrity of our elections that to my knowledge hasn't been adequately addressed.

> They even got access to voting systems

No they did not. They did get access to voter rolls in one (or maybe two? it's unclear) case, but that's it. Voter rolls and voting systems are not the same thing.

> but the most logical conclusion is that they did

No it is not. Most logical conclusion is that reading the data is much easier than changing it, and thus it is more likely that they gained just read access than that they gained both read and write access. Even if they did, changing voter rolls would not give them much, unless they somehow managed to also convince hundreds of people, otherwise ineligible to vote, to actually show up in person and vote using fake voter records (which would be an excellent case for voter ID if anybody in US politics could be bothered to have a logically consistent opinion). But most likely scenario is using these data for identity theft - as it includes driver license numbers, partial or full SSNs etc. - in short, everything you need to open an account online. By far the most likely scenario is stealing this data for commercial purposes.

> Even if they didn't, they should rightfully be charged for penetrating the voting systems at all.

They did not penetrate voter systems, they accessed voter rolls (list of voters). For which the culprits, of course, should be charged, even though it's mostly useless as there's no chance US can punish them in any way unless they are so stupid as to visit the US or a country which extradites to the US. Which astonishingly is what some people are stupid enough to do. Thus only "mostly".

Inventing people and getting someone to show up and vote as them isn't what you'd do with write access to voter rolls. Instead you'd want to remove or corrupt existing voter information. This would cause huge delays at polling places as people protest their inability to vote and go through the provisional ballot process. If every voter went through with that we'd be fine as enough provisional ballots to tip an election means they have to get validated. The likely outcome however would be people giving up on voting because they're out of time and/or patience and leaving before they ever get a ballot, provisional or not.

Target voters in enough locations likely to have large turnout for your opponent and you'd be able to tip the election in your favor, so long as you had any chance at all to win. This wouldn't be enough to help someone who is going to lose 83/17 but a 60/40 loss could be tipped your way and that's what most outcomes in the US are.

> Instead you'd want to remove or corrupt existing voter information. This would cause huge delays at polling places as people protest their inability to vote and go through the provisional ballot process.

Do you think if it really happened we'd notice it? So far I am not aware of any case of vote being disrupted to any noticeable measure along the scenario you describe, anywhere. So this appears to be pure speculation.

> This wouldn't be enough to help someone who is going to lose 83/17 but a 60/40 loss could be tipped your way and that's what most outcomes in the US are.

Yet there is, as far as I know, not a single case of election ever being tipped this way. By other forms of fraud - surely, though even then it's very hard to connect specific instances of fraud to specific outcomes - but this kind of fraud, never happened.

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the Citizens United ruling and you pair that with the implications of the 17th amendment you see there is a huge possibility to influence elections.

I agree with you generally...the uproar over twitter bots and fake news stories has struck me as a little silly.

At the same time, some Russian activities seem to have risen to the level of espionage. According to the article, Russian agents traveled around the US, posing as Americans, gathering information. The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies.

Making a big deal over that stuff is hypocritical given US actions abroad over the past hundred years, but that's a separate issue. Maybe the US shouldn't be interfering in the elections of other countries, but every country probably has rules like these: https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ and every country seeks to minimize foreign influence on internal politics.

> The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies.

I remember the one after the election in NYC that was supposedly set up by BLM against Trump, but turned out to be organized by Russians on Facebook

Which only goes to show that nobody is "safe". Their goal is to sow chaos and there's no better way to do that than to play both sides at every opportunity.

> At the same time, some Russian activities seem to have risen to the level of espionage

There has always been Russian espionage. Not only that - there has been Russian (or Soviet, same difference) agents in Manhattan project, high positions in State Department (see Alger Hiss) and so on. Recent kerfuffle has nothing on that. Russia sees itself as a geopolitical foe of the US, of course they are spying on the US. In fact, US spied on Germany, Britain and Israel (and Israel spied back on US as we know, others probably too but were not caught) - and those are close allies! Of course Russians would do the same. It's not something new that "have risen" recently.

> The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies.

So? US and US-related organizations funded and organized political and quasi-political activities in many countries. So do many other countries - EU finances a wide variety of NGOs that do all kinds of political campaigns, so does the US. All this fainting about "oh, Russians dare to have opinion about US politics and tell us about it using Facebook! Oh horrors! Our democracy is dead!" just sounds bizarre. Yeah, we live in a global world, Russians can have opinion about US politics, and Americans can have opinion about Russian politics, and both can publish real opinions or any crap they like on Facebook. Making a conspiracy of the century out of it is insane.

> There has always been Russian espionage. Not only that - there has been Russian (or Soviet, same difference) agents in Manhattan project, high positions in State Department (see Albert Hiss) and so on. Recent kerfuffle has nothing on that. Russia sees itself as a geopolitical foe of the US, of course they are spying on the US. In fact, US spied on Germany, Britain and Israel (and Israel spied back on US as we know, others probably too but were not caught) - and those are close allies! Of course Russians would do the same. It's not something new that "have risen" recently.

Right, so I’m not sure why you’re suggesting we should just sit here and do nothing about it.

No, I am suggesting to do something about "it" - provided the "it" isn't a bunch of Facebook ads but a real espionage. So far it seems like real hacks and stolen data leads to nothing but people that post on Facebook get indicted. Which is also largely posturing because there's no way to prosecute them.

There has always been Russian espionage, and Russian spies have always been investigated and, when caught, prosecuted. (See: Alger Hiss, Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs).

What's concerning is when the President of the United States himself seems to be speaking and acting out against his own government's counterintelligence investigations and in favor of his own country's geopolitical adversaries.

When government counterintelligence investigations, instead of catching real spies and protecting real sensitive systems (which, judging by recent hacks of government data, are in extremely sorry state of affairs) waste time, money and effort to pursue idiotic "collusion" story, buy insane "dossiers" most likely assembled by geopolitical adversaries to try and troll the opposite side into doing self harm, and play political partisan games - I think it's time to speak up about it. And if it takes Trump to speak up about it - well, so be it. It'd be nicer if more people spoke up more strongly about this sad state of affairs - because the Russian espionage and Russian threat exists, but the political games now make mockery of it and try to turn Russia into partisan issue that excludes any rational discussion and any counteraction that is not rooted into tactical partisan gamesmanship - but if Trump is what we've got than it'd be Trump.

> idiotic "collusion" story

Reality: Don Trump Jr. met with Russian agents in Trump Tower to negotiate receiving hacking assistance.

A few days later, Trump Sr. delivered his famous "Russia if you're listening ... [deliver what was discussed in that meeting] ... you'll be rewarded" line.

Not to mention that Trump had to fire one of his campaign managers for receiving illegal payments while working for the campaign of Russian-aligned Ukrainian president Yanukovych.

> Bullshit: Don Trump Jr. met with Russian agents in Trump Tower to negotiate receiving hacking assistance.

Reality: Don Trump Jr. met with Russian agent, who inexplicably got entry visa she shouldn't be getting by direct involvement of Obama State Department, and who falsely promised to provide him some dirt on Clinton, in Trump Tower, and the agent in fact attempted to lobby him to remove Magnitsky Act sanctions. As soon as the ruse became apparent, Trump Jr. left.

FTFY.

The information that Veselnitskaya pretended to have is the same information Mueller is talking about now - about foreign financing of US electoral campaign, which everybody agrees now would be a crime, and certainly something one would want to hear about. But there was no information, it was a lie.

Note that by all reports DNC hacking happened as early as 2015. Podesta emails were hacked in March 2016. Trump Jr. met Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016, when all the hacking was already done. Unless Russians also mastered time travel, they couldn't really negotiate anything, as everything has already happened.

> Russia if you're listening ... [deliver what was discussed in that meeting] ... you'll be rewarded" line.

Fascinating. The full line is:

'Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,' Trump said. 'I think you'll be rewarded mightily by our press!'

You dropped the "by our press" part, because it didn't fit your narrative, and hoped I wouldn't notice? Or you genuinely didn't know what the full quote was?

And of course 30000 emails are the ones Clinton unlawfully concealed and then deleted from her records, which were supposed to be preserved, not the ones that were stolen from DNC or Podesta - which by then weren't published yet and Trump had no idea about.

Not to mention this was obviously a sarcastic joke.

But if that is what your "collusion" is, this is what mightiest security apparatus on a planet is busying itself for two years now - I think Trump is criticizing them way, way to mildly to reveal all the depth of the idiocy of this.

> and who falsely promised to provide him some dirt

I am curious if you believe this is OK

Depends on what you mean by "OK". Is it the conduct I would recommend for everybody as highest example of human virtue? Not sure. Is it conduct commonly happening in the midst of political campaign? Most certainly yes, and much worse. In this case, Veselnitskaya told them "Hillary campaign just committed a federal crime, and I have proof. Want to see it?" Of course they did. The mistake was to believe anything Russians say about anything and sending a figure as big as Trump Jr. without several layers of further verification. That definitely was a screw-up, a rookie mistake. For which they paid dearly.

> Is it conduct commonly happening in the midst of political campaign? Most certainly yes, and much worse.

Please list some examples of other US politicians accepting election assistance from foreign governments.

Walter Mondale: Democrats actually contacted the KGB and sought help to defeat Reagan in 1984. The organizer of it was Ted Kennedy.

Barack Obama: famously promised to Medvedev to be more flexible after the election, in exchange for Russian not pressing on the missile defense issue when it could hurt Obama's position.

Hillary Clinton: accepted money donations from foreign politicians with US interests many times. The fact that Clinton Foundation and Clinton Campaign were big buddies is an open secret by now. Though of course that happened not only connected to elections, so attributing it specifically to elections would probably be very limiting to the scope.

I would also bring Steele dossier here, but the involvement of specifically foreign government here is unproven - while I'd give more than even chance that many of the allegations there were created by Russian intelligence sources, it may also be a regular "our man in Havana" type affair, so it's not entirely sure.

But I don't see why it specifically must be the government. If it's OK to accept dirt on your opponent (let's limit ourselves to dirt that is true and exclude fraud for now), then why is it not OK to accept it from a foreigner? It doesn't become less true because foreigner touched it. And if it's ok to accept it from a random foreigner, why it's not OK to accept it from a foreigner which is paid by foreign government?

What seems to be less OK is to solicit it in an explicit quid-pro-quo arrangement, either monetary or otherwise. Of which, in Trump's case, there's no indication (though the first example is a classic specimen).

That would make more sense if it was some random individual offering political dirt.

> “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump”

Sounds like something one should report to law enforcement.

Just in case any bystanders were wondering about the reality here:

On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Rob Goldstone wrote:

> Good morning

> Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.

> The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

> This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.

> What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?

> I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.

> Best

> Rob Goldstone

On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:53, Donald Trump Jr. wrote:

> Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?

> Best,

> Don

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/11/us/politics/d...

Which confirms the first half of what I said - Trump Jr. was promised some dirt on Clinton, and not just dirt like "she said a bad word in private conversation", but dirt like "she committed actual federal crime and we have proof". The second part - that it all was a lie and trick to get Trump in the room to lobby against Magnitsky Act - has been confirmed by multiple sources present in the meeting and by otherwise knowledge of Veselnitskaya's activities. Of course, no mention of any hacking whatsoever or any actual information that ever existed.

Every* US intelligence agency has agreed with the attribution of the DNC hack to known teams within Russian intelligence.

There are no "sources present in the meeting" who are not themselves the subject of the investigation. Their claims as to what transpired are simply not trustworthy.

*With the exception the NSA, which declined to say anything.

> Every* US intelligence agency has agreed with the attribution of the DNC hack to known teams within Russian intelligence.

This topic is extensively discussed in other threads, but what it has to do with the meeting in question?

> There are no "sources present in the meeting" who are not themselves the subject of the investigation.

Depends on what you call "subject". If you mean that they spoke to that person, that probably is not true for all Russian participants and Goldstone. If you mean those who Muller team would like to talk to, that's probably all of them, which is not surprising - it's the best way to catch somebody on a lie or omission (which is a federal crime, for which they already indicted two people - instant win). If you mean those Muller would especially love to indict in something, that's probably true for Kushner, Manafort and Trump Jr. If you mean somebody Muller can actually get something on - that's only Manafort, and for things having nothing to do with Trump and that happened when Trump didn't even know Manafort existed.

But basically you are implying nothing people present at the meeting say about what happened there is to be believed. But we're still talking about it, so presumably we should believe people that actually hasn't been there to tell us what happened there, and disbelieve people that actually been there when they say that's not what happened. All this without any actual evidence. Doesn't seem like a good idea.

> idiotic "collusion" story

While the investigation is not complete, already one Trump campaign member has plead guilty with his specific statement of the offense attached to the plea being all about collusion with the Russians.

Collusion is no longer in dispute, only the details and extent.

The "so?" is in the indictment.

To quote the opening paragraph: US law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. US law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General. And US law requires certain foreign nationals seeking entry to the United States to obtain a visa by providing truthful and accurate information to the government.

Legally, Russians can have an opinion about American politics. But they can't pay for ads and rallies and other political oriented activity.

Obviously there's realpolitik regarding these type of laws, and obviously the US has been the most perfect actor in the past either. In the real world, everyone does a little propaganda, as you say. But in the real world as well, sometimes the propaganda is "pushed too far" for a government's liking. It is pretty clear that Russia's propaganda "pushed too far" for the US government's liking. So, the US government has responded.

All in a day of geopolitics, I suppose. But calling it "oh, Russians dare to have an opinion!" is glossing it over. Most countries don't like it when foreign nationals mess a bit with their political internals. It seems like some of the comments here are bordering on "how dare the US intelligence agencies have an opinion on the Russian interference!", which seems naive to me.

>Making a big deal over that stuff is hypocritical given US actions abroad over the past hundred years, but that's a separate issue.

How is it a "separate issue"? It seems to me the entirety of the issue. If you park in front of my house every day for a hundred years and block my driveway, you have forfeited the right to cry foul when I park in front of your house and block your driveway. By your actions (which are far, far more important than hollow rhetoric) you have declared that this behavior is completely legitimate. Your habitual and repeated engagement in the proscribed behavior has precluded you from credibly complaining about said behavior. Those who can't wrap their minds around the concept of moral authority and reciprocation simply cry, "whataboutism". Spreading foreign propaganda and influencing foreign elections (both kinetically via invasions and subversively via NGOs, funding and other methods) is not only "something we do" - its been the main thrust of our foreign policy for over a century. This is especially important in this case, because not only is this true as a general principle, but specifically as regards Russia. Our interference with Russian elections (actual interference, not a few twitter posts) is substantial and has been well-documented.

>Last winter Yeltsin's approval ratings were in the single digits. There are many reasons for his change in fortune, but a crucial one has remained a secret. For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's campaign.

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,136204,...

Dude, let me tell you about US pretty much openly running Russian elections in the 90s.

Please do

do read on https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/05/americ...

I grew up in Russia in the 90s, and I witnessed the effects of US interference first hand. People literally starved to death in Russia after US gutted it.

Meanwhile, US continues to fuck over countries all over the world and having a good laugh about it on TV https://twitter.com/dcentralized/status/964900521793466374

> People literally starved to death in Russia after US gutted it.

No, they starved after the Soviet Union destroyed the economy by choosing to engage in a geopolitical competition—in large extent, a military spending competition—with the far more developed West, with predictable effects on the economy (and eventually the regime, but getting rid of that doesn't magically undo the damage.)

Any US election interference afterward is pretty much irrelevant to the outcome you describe, though it's a convenient way for, say, people who had been neck deep in the old regime to point the blame elsewhere (which itself is a good reason not to have done it, but no one ever adequately considers blowback when they do stuff like this.)

I am inclined to agree with you. If this is limited to Russia waging a propaganda campaign, even if it involved selectively hacking a political organization and data dumping, then it speaks volumes as to how poorly educated and insulated from reality our citizens are. That is a deep structural problem which is our fault, and it can't be fixed simply by firewalling off the country from propaganda or demanding that Facebook filter content for validity.

That being said, if Russia is able to interfere with voter registration, voting equipment, or state election boards, that is a very different problem which needs to be addressed aggressively.

100% agree with you.

The other, more immediate, problem with this type of thinking is that it's unlikely to change anyone's mind. I doubt that very many Trump voters will read this news and think: "I was influenced by Russia when I voted for Trump." They, like anyone casting a vote, felt they were voting for someone for their own reasons based on their own research. The most common reason I've heard for people voting for Trump is that they felt it was the only way to make their voices heard. Saying that no, actually the only voices that's being heard here is Russia's and thus it's illegitimate seems likely to make people feel the same way in 2020.

While Russians had a part, Trump was not completely propped up by Russian propaganda support. It's not unreasonable that many Trump voters had no or little contact with fake profiles run by Russians, and were not significantly influenced by it.

But we can't really know that without tracking down all of their activity.

I abhor Trump, but he had plenty of organic and authentic support here in America. I don't think we'll ever find a smoking gun that says "Trump wouldn't have been president or won the primary if it weren't for this one Russian effort" (but stranger things have happened).

It seems that the goal was to promote discontent in general. There were anti-Trump activities as well, such as the post-election NYC protest set up on Facebook.

They switched to that after they won, but before the election, they only supported Trump and discredited Hillary it seems.

It would be weird if they had supported Hillary in any significant way before the election.

As close as modern elections have been in the US, you don’t need to prop, just nudge.

The number of voters needed to flip this election would fit into a stadium.

Even stipulating all that, which I would not do, the purpose of this indictment is not to bring these Russians to justice, nor to criminalize "fake news." The purpose is to keep them out of the US, out of US and allies' banks accounts, and, quite possibly, to set up other parties to be "unindicted co-conspirators."

The litmus test for whether someone is controlled by Russian trolls is whether they supported Hillary for president last election. She spent more on her election and got more endorsements from the mainstream patriotic media. She should have won and Russian trolls successfully remote controlled almost half the country to defeat her!

You see the American people don't control their own minds. They only believe what they see and hear. Thus they should only see snd hear patriotic messages from the patriotic Hillary backing media or they will become confused. They are all little children and cannot tell what's fake and what's real. They must learn about the outside world from approved sources to prevent... confusion...

Geez... Why do we even have elections? We should just have a panel of anonymous leakers to the Washington Post choose who gets into office.

People lost on traditional media outlets since sometime and they now only rely on social media to get their news.

So it is easy to attempt to influence the public with fake news and a question mark at the end. Buzzfeed ran a profile of a news website which used to write border line fake news and made a ton of money.

What about all the Washington Post and New York times articles with anonymous sources? How do you know that isn't all fake? Are we now only to blindly trust specifically whitelisted authorities that relies on unknown sources? Why keep playing around? Just put these unknown sources in charge of everything. Maybe the public should directly elect the people behind "anonymous sources say" since they largely determine the news these days and thus what people believe and who they vote for anyway.

I don't disagree with you in principle and I don't think it's at all clear that the Russian boogeyman had the significant influence on election results in the west that many media outlets pretend, but at the same time the idea that a hypothetical "true" democracy should be able to take all misinformation campaigns thrown at it seems to be heavily idealistic.

I don't think we really have any historical basis to make that claim since there was never such a tool for spreading global misinformation as the internet before. Maybe democracies won't be able to take it? Maybe they can, who knows. (I am somewhat optimistic though since the radical election results in the west can plausibly be explained even without foreign meddling.)

Radical election results are not a recent problem suddenly brought about by the internet. Hitler didn't rely on foreign meddling on the internet to get elected. This is not a new problem, and we (the US) would be wise to look at historical breakdowns of the democratic process to understand how they happened and take active actions to prevent it from happening again. (I'm somewhat pessimistic that we won't, and it'll happen again. I just hope it's not within my lifetime)

The part that was wholly unexpected was that the leadership of a political party would embrace rather than reject illegal foreign intervention when they had the chance. And for those that think GOP leadership didn't know about it, there was leaked audio that certainly suggests Paul Ryan was aware:

> “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

> Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

> Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house...

The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well.

Then you need to have some sort of standards for how that is conducted or how truth is established. If people are fed a constant barrage of lies of lise then some portion of them will believe in those, and history furnishes us with numerous examples of foolish collective behavior when a sufficient portion of the population becomes enamoured of a bad idea.

A friend of mine observed last year that it's easier to weaponize fiction than to monetize truth in a market economy, because the truth includes things that many people don't want to hear.

>If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.

A well-educated population capable of critical thinking is a threat to a ruling class that aims to take as much as they can from the world while pawning off all of society's problems on whatever boogeyman they see fit.

It should be dealt with quietly, but we can't have foreign governments paying agents to undermine our interests on our soil regardless of whether it is working or not.

Russia is a meme, the only legit threat to the US is China. The fact nobody talks about them shows how deeply they have infiltrated our media and government.

Also interesting that Steele wasn't indicted, the guy is a foreign actor who took money to create a dossier with intent to influence our election. Why not Soros as well? He's a foreigner who donated 10s of millions not only for ads but for astroturfing online communities via Shareblue and Correct the Record and stoking violence and destruction by busing in agitators to protests.

Isn't their economy like 70% of Italy's? Just wait until the Italians want to influence our elections!

Meanwhile, all of the studios are tripping over themselves to keep the Chinese market happy and unoffended.

Your post shows a very idealistic position. It assumes that all ideas come from a legitimate point and are worth discussing.

But guess what, the person that came up with the anti-vaxxer BS just wanted more money, and fuck whoever dies because of it. It's not an issue with lack of education.

BS is easier to produce than it is to refute. That's the fundamental problem

All democracies are subject to propaganda (be either external OR internal)

> were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population

Both parties are responsible for that, (though I'd say R makes it worse usually) but even then, populations love to shoot themselves in the foot

> I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election"

You realize you're on a site named "Hacker News", using the term to refer to influence operations, right?

> If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.

And this is exactly what classic Soviet/Russian propaganda wants you to conclude: "So in practice I guess the 'Democracy' system is no better than the Soviet Communist/Putinist system after all."

thats a big leap you're making from "we need better a better engaged and more knowledgeable populace with a higher standard of living" to "we should scrap democracy and become Soviets"

Almost as big of a leap as putting something that was never said in quotes.

In a free society you can’t stop influence and propaganda. But, the allegations in the indictment include things like stealing real people’s identities and using them to fay for political advertisements. These are things we should be able to stop.

> The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed

Unfortunately this is as obsolete as medieval ideas of chivalry and trial by combat in the age of nuclear weapons and poison gas.

In a two-party democracy, there might be some stable equilibrium where the parties agree not to wreck civic trust and institutions because they have to live there. This won't survive a third party coming in and releasing the informational equivalent of toxic gas, because they don't care if it makes peaceful democratic government impossible.

> The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well

It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government (or the American people). It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3 of the indictment [1]) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90).

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a]

[a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...

> I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election."

The campaign was not limited to propaganda, it included (that has been identified so far) hacking voter records in a majority of states and at least attempting to alter them in some.

It was absolutely both hacking and attempting to interfere with the election.

Chuckled at this part of the indictment [1]:

"Defendants and their co-conspirtors thereafter destroyed evidence for the purpose of impeding the investigation. On or about September 13, 2017, KAVERZINA wrote in an email to a family member: 'We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke). So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with colleagues.' KAVERZINA further wrote, "I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people."

Guess they skimped on opsec training?

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a], page 24

[a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...

'They spent thousands of dollars a month to buy advertisements on social media groups, while carefully tracking the size of U.S. audiences they reached, according to the indictment.'

This sounds like an incredibly well funded, sophisticated operation. They bought some ads and used google analytics.

> THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS

Agreed

That always struck me as weird too. A few thousand a month is barely a drop in the bucket as far as ad campaigns go.

Either the CPM was so low that practically nobody was seeing the ads or the CPC was so high that the budget would be exhausted rapidly (and practically nobody would see the ads).

I'm in no way an expert in social media advertising, but the claims that I've heard are that the ad buys were hyper-targeted to swing districts. Incidentally, it's been suggested that this implies that the Russians were in secret coordination with Cambridge Analytica (the data firm that worked with the Trump Campaign). On the other hand, I think it's consistent with the following model:

Assume that Putin has a longstanding grudge against Clinton and wants to undermine what he assumes will be her presidency [1]. Let's further assume that the budget for this operation will be low—on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands (plus salary for operatives), compared to the hundreds of millions spent by the campaigns [2]. Any reasonably savvy head of this operation would lean towards a start-up model—i.e. very aggressively targeting swing districts. Thinking up ways to target the most swing-able people for the fewest number of dollars is very much worth your time if your time is relatively inexpensive and you don't have tons and tons of money to spend. Is it possible that they received targeting data from people associated with the campaign? Sure, but I don't think that hypertargeting implies that they did.

[1] http://observer.com/2016/06/she-isnt-president-yet-but-russi... [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16

Ah! Duh on me then, I'd not even considered the targeting possibilities. That makes a lot more sense and would make even a limited budget go a lot further. Adwords at least will let you go as granular city-by-city, and I'd guess Facebook will do the same.

>A few thousand a month

Where does it say "a few thousand"? Just says "thousands" and notes that the total operating budget was more than 1M per month

"Thousands" is less than "tens of thousands" or any larger number, which to me says <=$9,999. And the millions applies to the whole operation, not the ads.

I was commenting on the perceived strangeness of a sub-10K monthly advertising budget given the much larger amounts of money in play from legitimate interests, nothing further.

The indictment lists a budget of 78 million rubles per month for Internet Research's project. That's north of 1 million USD per month.

They spent thousands just on ads. They also had a dedicated team running all their sock puppet accounts. That probably cost a lot too, it's just known how much.

This is without a doubt the most important story for the software industry in the world today. This is going to change regulation and policy in the US for the rest of the lives of everyone old enough to be posting here.

How it's not on the frontpage is unfathomable. Just because it creates conflict is not a good reason for this not to be front and center. They detailed the process the Russian agents used to procure computing resources, how they stole identities, and their methodology. They somehow have personal communications.

Facebook is in a very, very precarious place. So will be Google and Twitter. Anyone involved in selling ads or marketing should have read the whole indictment. Tens of billions of revenue per quarter have exposure to this scandal.

There is also enormous opportunity for startups that will inevitably be needed.

Honestly, as a hacker, the methodologies just on their own are of interest.

edit: lest anyone say it's political, it's not. If this was APT 12 acting on behalf of the Democratic party (purely hypothetical) then what would the Republican party reaction be? The tools are out there, and they will be used again, regardless of party.

This guilty plea of a California man who engaged in helping circumvent payment security features from 2014-17 in relation to the information warfare effort just came out as well.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1035547/download

Can someone change hacking in title to interfering with?

Sure. Thanks for the suggestion.

Social hacking is still hacking.

Lots of news reports about this, but none provide a link to the actual indictment...

Does it usually take awhile to get posted on the DOJ website?

Here you go: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rwUFGxaf...

And link to DOJ page: https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/

> Lots of news reports about this, but none provide a link to the actual indictment...

NYT's report had it near the top of the article, although the topic was below the recent Florida news on the front page.

As a European, here's a question to our American friends in general, and American Republicans in particular:

Does it disturb you at all that apparently the Russians plan to mess up with you is to impersonate accounts to post stuff which is indistinguishable from what actual Republicans post?

I eagerly await the investigation into Israeli interference of the last 10 US presidential elections.

> I eagerly await the investigation into Israeli interference of the last 10 US presidential elections

From ¶ 1 of the indictment [1]: "U.S. law...bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General."

It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government. It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90).

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a]

[a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...

I suspect more than lobbying is going on. There's certainly more evidence for that than there was for Russian interference - and look what that investigation has brought up.

It will never happen though.

Please provide some of this evidence.

AIPAC, who have a well documented history of interference, and have controversially managed to avoid registering themselves under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

They have a well documented history of lobbying, which is what they exist to do. I don't know of any evidence that they interfere in our elections like this Russian government-sponsored org did. Do you have any?

Whether AIPAC should be allowed to lobby without registering as a foreign agent is a different subject; one worth discussing, but not what I asked about. Lobbying is not the same thing as the covert behavior undertaken here.

Here in the UK we have the same problem.

Question for fellow Americans getting worked-up about this:

Considering that we A) have meddled in elections throughout the world--especially in the middle east and latin america--for the enitre post-war period, B) have done it using substantially more resources, and C) have militarily "intervened" in countries that posed no real threat to us--resulting in substantial losses of innocent life and property, how do you manage to still feel indignation instead of some mixture of guilt and karma?

This is not a rhetorical question. I am actually curious about the thought process here.

States couldn’t give less of a fuck about karma or guilt so neither do I.

There are teams, people play.

With the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, things seem to work out better when you straighten-up and take your licks.

If that's sci-fi, then fair enough.

The United States of America is not a religious organization

Never said it was.

Being an American doesn't mean one agrees with everything the United States has ever done. The US Gov't has absolutely done mean and nasty things around the world that has caused suffering for millions of people.

Still doesn't mean Americans should be happy with one our biggest adversaries subverting our government. Even with all of America's sins, things certainly would be worse if Putin were free to damage and pervert our democracy to suit his whims.

Russia is not a particularly wealthy country. If they can pervert our democracy with a few million dollars, we have much bigger problems that need to be dealt with structurally and defensively rather than piecemeal and after-the-fact.

It's like we shoot ourselves in the foot with citizens united, but instead of tending the wound, we blame Russia for startling us.

edit: and in response to JumpCrisscross, "pervert our democracy" is not my thesis. It was a conditional in response to parent comment.

My only point on this line is that it is kind of fucked up that money has as much power in the process as it does.

> if they can pervert our democracy with a few million dollars

They didn't "pervert our democracy." They illegally interfered with it, stealing Americans' identities and fraudulently opening bank and PayPal and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the process. Law enforcement is enforcing the law against willful lawbreakers. This isn't that complicated.

> Russia is not a particularly wealthy country. If they can pervert our democracy with a few million dollars, we have much bigger problems...

That is the essence of asymmetrical warfare. The 9/11 hijackers didn't even spend a million dollars in their plan to crash planes into buildings, yet they killed thousands, destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of property, and provoked billions of dollars of spending by the United States.

Cyber warfare is an emerging battlefield where someone can cause enormous damage with a very modest investment. I do think it requires some changes to our democracy to protect against it in the future, but in the mean time we absolutely should push back, hard against Russia's efforts.

Citizens United certainly created more opportunity for foreign actors to influence our political system, that much is certain. Doesn't mean we should allow Putin to use Russia intelligence services against our political system.

I feel no sense of guilt or karma because I was not individually responsible for those actions nor would I have supported them. We have a representative government and don't have direct control over what happens all the time. I wouldn't wish this on any other country. Two wrongs don't make a right.

It is appalling that some here consider this a pot-meet-kettle kind of thing. The US has influenced, to the point of running them as puppets, many governments. That's bad, and mostly needless and to the US's long term disadvantage. But there is a reason we have a law named after Sergei Magnitsky, and there is no mirror image of that in Putin's rump empire. There is no equivalence here, and no viable claim that "everybody does it."

Is this tactically any different from Obama administration indicting Chinese Military Intelligence unit for hacking? No one is in custody!

If anyone in the Trump campaign is wittingly linked to the entities in the indictment, that would be trouble.

it's probably worth noting that this indictment goes out of its way to specify that the campaign officials these entities communicated with were "unwitting" participants, and the indicted parties were posing as americans.

Correct, though I'm not sure if that means this represents all connections the Trump campaign may have had with Russians that the SC has found (that we didn't know about previously, e.g. Manafort in Ukraine).

The Deputy AG was questioned about this at his brief presser. He was very careful in his response saying "...this indictment makes no accusations..."

He refused to comment outside of this particular indictment which is rather narrow in scope relative to the investigation, and had no comment from the special counsel.

i'm not quite sure what you mean by "tactically", but this is significantly different because it's not the administration. Trump has been insisting that any suggestion of russian election interference is a hoax, and now the justice department is indicting russians for interfering in the election.

Trump has been insisting that they had no collaboration with Russians; not that Russians did not interfere with the election.

He continually undercuts and minimizes any interference. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/13/politics/trump-unconvince...

1) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/trump-is-back-to-cal...

2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-...

Actually, he has claimed they didn't interfere many times ... for example: "President Trump said on Saturday that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin was sincere in his denials of interference in the 2016 presidential elections" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/world/asia/trump-putin-el...

Incorrect. See the only place Trump speaks:

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/843865267008655360?ref_src=...

As he traveled to Hanoi, the second-to-last stop of his Asia trip, Mr. Trump told reporters that Putin "said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did."

"Every time he sees me, he said: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe -- I really believe -- that when he tells me that, he means it," Mr. Trump said, calling the accusation an "artificial barrier" erected by Democrats.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-reiterates-he-believes-ru...

Trump has claimed many times that we "don't know" whether it was Russia, and that he believes Putin, who says it wasn't Russia. More recently the message has been that if Russia did interfere then the campaign was not involved/aware.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/13/politics/trump-unconvinced-ru...

Direct dispute that there was any at all:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/81645280702484070...

  The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/11/11/trum...

  "I think that he [Putin] is very, very strong in the fact that he didn't do it," Trump said hours before his news conference, going on to trash Brennan, former National Intelligence director James Clapper and ex-FBI director James Comey, all of whom served during the Barack Obama administration.

Indirect disparaging whereby it's implied as a wink wink nudge nudge to his base but he gave himself wiggle room to say the media reporting was inaccurate and not what he meant after all:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/83591651194452377...

  Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!

Could be that he just means collusion but phrased broadly enough that it implies all talk including Russian meddling.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/us/politics/trump-russia-...

  Mr. Trump repeated his familiar refrain that “it could” have been Russia or other countries that interfered in the election, and then appeared to suggest that there was hardly an intelligence community consensus on the matter.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/06/politics/trump-russia-intelli...

  "While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations, including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said in a statement after the meeting.

Casting doubt on intelligence agencies that concluded collectively that it was indeed the Russians & not anyone else & that Putin ordered it. Of course he can spin that however he wants since the statement itself is intentionally ambiguous.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/11/he...

Too many quotes from this direct transcript whereby Trump is directly & indirectly implying there was no Russia hacking & if there way it was without Putin's knowledge. You know, like how the Russian army collectively decided to take a vacation in Crimea.

11 Times Trump Called the Russia Probe a "Hoax":

http://abcnews.go.com/US/11-times-president-trump-called-rus...

Its to send a message and to make the case publicly. We're probably never going to get any of these guys either. We can ask Putin to hand them over and he'll say "no" and then we'll just be out in the open about where everyone stands.

A lot of people in the US still don't believe Russians interfered in the election, and/or that they interfered to support Trump's candidacy. I believe this is mostly designed to show them (1) yes, they were doing a lot, and (2) it was aimed at disparaging Clinton and supporting Trump.

Similarly, the US government hasn't really taken any steps to prevent future meddling in US elections. The goal may have also been to serve as a wake up call to our elected officials to take this issue seriously.

The indictment is not about PR, it is about punishing Russian nationals who participated in this op.

The long arm of US law enforcement may not be able to get these folks in Russia, but it can prevent them from traveling in many countries around the world, and can result in their assets being frozen.

The other thing is that if any of the individuals involved come to fear for their safety from Putin's government, these indictments will be a strong motivator for them to rat other parts of the Russian intelligence apparatus.

Can HN stop promoting sites with autoplay videos? What if I ask pretty please with sugar on top?

How come this is no longer present on the main index, pages 1 - 5?

Is there anyone with a Science or Engineering background or training who can put forth data that Russians influenced election for Trump?

I ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/vic-c/ ) would love to see something like that. Anyone with a Science or Engineering, please give me some data - that they believe to be credible. Please show me.

Downvoted for asking what is the evidence?

What data do you propose as a convincing argument and how do you expect someone on hacker news to have a silver bullet? If this data were easily available and accessible in a transparent way, there wouldn’t need to be a long ongoing national agency level investigation.

What is the best we have?

That didn’t answer my question at all.

Let me be more concrete. It appears you have the very background you are requesting. What approach or approaches would you take to convince others?

My answer would be: there is no credible or valid evidence. Hence I asked. Muller cited these specific posts as examples: http://archive.is/5sEEo

Ok. So you asked what can be argued (from your own point of view) to be a rhetorical question. I’m glad we could get to the bottom of why you got downvoted.

"""Hacking"""

Misleading headline, this was social engineering, not hacking.

Hacking has long included social engineering, as with any other lateral approach.

For example:

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

    Mueller Accuses Russians of Aiding Trump, Assailing Clinton

    U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced an
    indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian 
    entities, accusing them of interfering in the 2016
    presidential election and operating fake social media
    accounts.

    They used false personas and social media while also 
    staging political rallies and communicating with
    “unwitting individuals” associated with the Trump 
    campaign, it said.

Which seems to be the entire story.

"with a deliberately inflammatory and made up title."

The Bloomberg.com story title has changed at least three times since the story's initial publication. If you're going to accuse people of things, please make sure your facts are correct.

How do I check Bloomberg's title change history? Are you saying within the 5 minutes you posted they changed it?

> please make sure your facts are correct.

Likewise.

Edit: removed the word "own" from "please make sure your own facts are correct."

A-B testing of article titles should be regarded as a breach of journalist ethics.

Why? I’m not an expert on ethical standards so I’m curious what a variable title would mean.

"> please make sure your own facts are correct"

You misquoted me.

My mistake. The "quote" was originally a reponse from me, based on what you said. Corrected.

I think the most interesting phrase is "unwitting individuals"- this implies that there was no conspiracy on the Trump side of the equation.

The indictment isn't the final wrapping of the investigation, just another stage.

The Deputy AG when questioned about the clause you're referring to would only state that this indictment makes no accusations of the sort and refused to answer questions outside of the scope of this particular indictment.

As you know, other indictments have preceded this one. Others may be to follow.

I wouldn't be quick to sum it all up based on two such words. Muller's previous work on large cases has gone on in stages, increasing in severity of charges and prominence of subject.

> this implies that there was no conspiracy on the Trump side of the equation.

No it doesn't. Saying that on a certain day there weren't any clouds in the sky does not mean that for a whole month it didn't rain.

There is absolutely no implication or suggestion of any kind in that statement that indicates no conspiracy on the Trump side.

By implication it is positive for the Trump campaign and means there was no conspiracy with these actors- if there was a broad conspiracy there would have been no need for these Russians to hide their identities from their Trump counterparts.

This means that any conspiracy must be limited in scope rather than broad (i.e. Mantifort)- it doesn't completely clear Trump (and proving a negative like that is of course impossible anyway) but it is unambiguously more positive for him.

Magically this makes the front page but nothing on the unmasking, 702 scandal.

Go on...

I think he meant section 702.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-continuing-fal...

Go read the 100 page fisa court memo. Go read the numerous text messages, go reread how unmasking send incidental collection works.

Our intelligence services were weaponized to spy on the opposition party illegally during an election year.

Senior FBI, DOJ, and Obama white house officials have engaged in a coordinated attempt to prevent Trump from gaining office and once in office to mire his presidency in scandal and possibly even impeachment.

All the facts are coming to light, But most commenters here are letting the media completely filter their information.

Ill be surprised if my comment sees the light of day.

So I did read the original sources and the text messages, and they contain nothing like what you describe. Did you read them?

If you really feel strongly about it, why don't you publish a write up and stick behind what you believe is something we should all hear about, rather than post uncited garble and tell us to read a 100 page court memo with a throwaway account.

What?

So far everything that has come out has disproved all of the claims in the memo, including the memo itself!

And of course your comment won't get anywhere, you just made up a bunch of nonsense. For example, I read the text messages. I didn't know that a calendar of Putin is now Obama's conspiracy to destroy Trump. Those scoundrels!

>the opposition party

The fact you believe intelligence services have or should have opposition parties is terrifying. I can understand why this sentiment translates into believing intelligence services should or do fall under the President's direct control.

Intelligence services don't, but people working there certainly do. I.e. Strzok messages showed pretty clearly where his loyalties lie. Of course, everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but when one works in a position with vast coercive powers that can be deployed to tip the scales, having strong opinions towards one of the sides usually raises the question of conflict of interest.

==Strzok messages showed pretty clearly where his loyalties lie.==

They showed that he supported John Kasich. Your comment, however, shows pretty clearly where your loyalties lie.

My loyalties lie in FBI top brass not playing politics.

> They showed that he supported John Kasich.

Strzok – He asked me who I’d vote for, guessed Kasich. Page – Seriously?! Would you not D? Strzok – I don’t know. I suppose Hillary. Page – I would D.

Not exactly ringing endorsement of Kasich. Later:

Strzok - Exacty re Kasich. And he has ZERO appeal

Also:

Page - God Trump is loathsome human. Strzok – Yet he many win. Strzok – Good for Hillary. Page – It is. Strzok – Would he be a worse president than Cruz? Page –Trump?, yes I think so Strzok – I’m not sure. Strzok – Omg he’s an idiot. Page – He’s awful Strzok – America will get what the voting public deserves. Page – That’s what I’m afraid of.

Strzok – God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0. Page – I know

Strzok – That Texas article is depressing as hell. But answers how we could end up with President trump Page – Wasn’t it? Seriously, how are people so incredible ignorant? Strzok – I have no idea, but it depresses me. Same people who drive more when they get extra daylight from daylight savings, I’m guessing.

Strzok – They fully deserve to go, and demonstrate the absolute bigoted nonsense of Trump

Strzok – God that’s a great article. Thanks for sharing. And F TRUMP.

And so on and so forth. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a person thinking "F TRUMP". Except when the person is also in charge of investigations that may actually "f Trump" and benefit his opponents. In this case, it might be better to actually have somebody with more balanced approach.

==In this case, it might be better to actually have somebody with more balanced approach.==

Do you have evidence that these texts ever had an impact on this agent's approach? Or are you just speculating to fog the entire discussion?

Did you have this same concern when Republicans were investigating Benghazi and later admitted it was explicitly meant to hurt Hillary politically? That doesn't seem like a "balanced approach" at investigation (https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/14/politics/hillary-clinton-beng...).

How about Guiliani talking about a "very big surprise" a few days before the Comey memo? Did he get that information from FBI agents? Again, doesn't seem like a "balanced approach" to me (http://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-hinted-fbi-new-inves...).

I sure hope your outrage crosses the aisle.

What a massively ineffective conspiracy you've proposed. Can the deep state at the same time be all powerful but still let Trump get elected? The Nunes memo is nothing but hot air. There is no evidence of most of it's claims and it contradicts itself. It's little more than a political campaign ad.

I honestly haven't been following this very closely, but a lot of this feels like the kind of thing you'd see straight out of House of Cards, both what the contents themselves talk about and the decisions to release them. I wasn't able to find exactly what you're talking about, 100 page memo and all, but here's what I could find:

1) a 4-page memo[1] with a note from the white house on why they're releaseing this.

2) some text messages[2]

Some of it seems pretty damning, but I haven't personally done enough research to make a really informed opinion. I just wanted to put these links here to save anyone looking some trouble digging around for a starting point.

1: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/memo_and_white_...

2: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-senator-releases-handful-of...

Why would DOJ and FBI leaders appointed directly by Trump try to get him impeached?

And don't forget about Pizzagate too!

Will AIPAC similarly be charged?

Forget about whether russia had used the bots to influence elections. I was really surprised that Hillary with all the Silicon Valley support couldn't built a team to counter these.

On the election day, the Trump tweet in the morning got a million favs and Hillary hardly got 200K. When I looked at it, I was shocked about how dismal Hillary's tech team is.

It’s hard to tell what you think Hillary should have done better, can you elaborate?

Yes. For a start, realizing the impact of the bots on FB and Twitter and countering them with more bots.

There's some really dark stuff on FB groups and twitter bots which reply with images to popular accounts. You could counter by bots which could favorite better tweets and stop the propaganda.

You think she wouldn’t have been derided for the use of bots, but the already effective and operational botnet working against her?

Well done finally we are doing something about this. We can't allow other countries to meddle in our elections and to get away with it. Much stronger actions may need to be taken once this administration is voted out.

I am curious, how can you charge someone for what amounts to speech - something that the 1st amendment clearly guarantees freedom of?

From WaPo's write-up:

"The suspects are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft."

There are clear laws regarding how foreign nationals can or cannot interact with elections in the US. https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/

However, SCOTUS has ruled time and time again that US constitution applies not only to citizens, but to everyone in the country (and US laws would not apply to anyone entirely out of the country), so said laws might not hold up to SCOTUS scrutiny (this might end up changing elections forever, much like the Citizens United ruling)

That doesn't mean anything until SCOTUS sets an actual precedent showing that such concerns can supersede election laws involving foreign agents.

It bothers me a little about the Russians "supporting" Trump AND Bernie. It sounds a little too "on the nose." As if the Russians expected to be caught one day and wanted to make sure a certain political viewpoint would be tainted.

You got downvoted, but yeah - I do think that's part of the plan. To sow confusion and distrust. An article on NPR talked about how russian bots were playing both sides of the gun control question in the last few days. If the goal is just to destabilize US politics, then consistency is no virtue.

A bit off topic, but generally (not specifically Russian election influence) I get the impression people in the US are anti Russia. They don't want to strengthen relationships with Russia. Why is this?

Edit: I didn't mean this to seem like a loaded question, I really am just curious.

Gay rights, Olympic doping, Magnitsky, poisoning journalists, invading the Ukraine, illiberal government and kompromat come to mind...

It goes back a little farther than that. Cold War. I know, I was there, man!

If you're American, aren't you supposed to be for democracy? I understand your point about kompromat... But shoudn't the Russian people be the ones dealing with gay rights, poisoning journalists, illiberal government, and shouldn't the Europeans be the ones dealing with Ukraine? Why do you go around giving your opinion about other people's countries? Mind your business!

Hard to have a democracy when journalists are poisoned, their companies leaned on/threated/had their licenses revoked by the state, and the main election opponent to the Prime Minister thrown in jail.

Still none of your business. You get upset when someone interferes with you, but think it's ok interefering? Such hypocrisy.

I don't get it. The original question asked "why don't Americans like Russia" and I replied with reasons why I / other Americans don't like Russia. I didn't say anything about interfering.

If you asked me why I didn't like, say, the movie "Dunkirk", and then I told you why I didn't like it, it would be really odd to reply that it's not my business.

I mean how can anyone not like a gentleman like Putin, right?

I see nothing wrong with the people of Russia. However, the Russian state and Putin himself work very hard to undermine the USA and occasionally harm its people, and at other times, the people of other sovereign nations.

Truthfully I would hope Russians feel the same way about the USA. While United States citizens might seem amicable to Russians, the US government is not meant to be their friend.

Essentially, I don't get a vote in Russia's government, so I don't want it affecting my life

Okay I think this is the answer I was looking for, thank you. It also helped me understand why my question was a little off the mark/why I got downvoted so much.

The thing is. If one side is allowed to do propaganda why should the other side be not allowed to.

Obviously hacking into systems and releasing internal data is a step to far.

But I don't see the general problem of propaganda as long all sides are doing it. Well sure I do see the issue but this is just how a open society works.

The FEC says who is allowed to run propaganda. You have to be registered as a PAC to run political ads. And you're not allowed to use foreign money. Even groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Citizen's United were registered with the IRS and all their communications were clearly attributed.

Wait there are central entities that control who is allowed to do propaganda within their border?

This sounds wrong on all ends

Only who is allowed to do it professionally. And it's incredibly easy to obtain permission. There's very few barriers. It just has to be disclosed.

Is your argument also that a government is not allowed to get upset about disinformation propaganda efforts conducted by foreign states in their territory?

> Mueller describes a sweeping, years-long, multimillion-dollar conspiracy by hundreds of Russians aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump

Since when criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump is a crime one can be indicted for? I know millions of Americans engaged in multibillion-dollar conspiracy aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump (the last two probably not at the same time :).

I can get why hacking into private email is something worth indictment. I don't see how "criticizing Hillary Clinton" can even appear in indictment as something that is worth being prosecuted for.

The illegal part is related to the fact that foreign Russian nationals were funding it.

It sounds extremely bizarre to me that it's OK to criticize Hillary Clinton, it's OK to do it when getting salary from, say, CNN (though not that it would ever happen... ok, from Fox News, right?) but not OK to do the same if you get the same salary from, say, RT. It's like freedom of speech suddenly depends on where your money come from and whether any of it were in hands of Russians before. That's one weird interpretation of the First Amendment.

Doesn't the first amendment apply to citizens of the United States and not to hostile foreign agents?

The problem is that the Russians do not have the country's best interests in mind when they try to influence an election. On the other hand, the anchors on CNN, even though one might disagree with them, do have the country's best interests in mind because they're invested in the situation as citizens.

No, the First Amendment applies to Congress, and by the 14th Amendment, to the States. It does not apply to persons, regardless of their citizenship or friendship status with the US.

"Congress shall make no law..."

> Doesn't the first amendment apply to citizens of the United States and not to hostile foreign agents?

It was supposed to apply to every US person, regardless of citizenship. For non-US persons it's a bit theoretical since there's no real way to prosecute anybody outside the US, but activities protected by 1st amendment for a citizen still shouldn't be a base for prosecution by the US government, even against non-citizen. But it turns out that if you declare someone "hostile foreign agent" - on basis as strong as "criticizing Hillary Clinton" - it no longer applies. I am, frankly, extremely scared of the power of the state security to prosecute any non-citizen for as little as publishing an opinion about US political matters.

And if you remember what happened to surveillance - which was sold as applying only to non-citizens with extraordinary safeguards applied if a citizen happens to be involved, and turned out being routinely applied to citizens as a course of matters, with very little resistance or oversight - I don't see how this could not be extended to citizens too.

But even if it's not - does it mean any non-citizen immigrant which speaks for immigrant rights, or supports DREAM Act, or opposes Trump on immigration policy, or does any other political activity, can be declared a criminal now? Have you thought through which exactly powers you are supporting giving the state and how these powers can be abused?

The indictment says:

- Russians lied on visa applications to get into the US.

- They should have registered with the US State Department as foreign agents before trying to influence the election

- They didn't report spending to the Federal Election Commission

Also to add onto this,

- they stole US citizens identities

- incited protests and staged rallies intended to sow discord

The indictments are for pretending to be Americans, not properly disclosing their Russian ties as required by law, visa fraud, and other acts of deceit.

It's not for criticizing Hillary Clinton, but for lying about things they were legally obligated to disclose honestly.

Pretending to be an American on Facebook is not a crime as far as I know. In fact, it's not a crime almost anywhere except maybe on US border while talking to US border agent.

Then it's a good thing that's not what these 13 or so people are being indicted for!

The comment I answered to specifically said "The indictments are for pretending to be Americans".

The indictments spell out clearly the circumstances of breaking the law for all the actions you asked about.

I’m not sure when the original law was passed, but it was reaffirmed by SCOTUS in 2012. Prohibited by the FEC:

>Making any contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or making any expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement in connection with any federal, state or local election in the United States;

There’s more, but the above covers a good chunk of it.

[0] https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/supreme-court...

[1] https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/

And that shows why it is a bad law as written - now criticizing Hillary Clinton on Facebook while being Russian turns out to be a crime. By using extremely broad definitions of "thing of value": saying "Hillary is bad, Sanders is good" is helpful to Sanders, so if you're Russian or Israeli or Moroccan or Indonesian citizen now it's a crime for you to say it. And using extremely wide definition of "in connection to ... election" - we hold elections every two years, so everything is close to the election and thus can be said to be in connection - any political expression can be prosecuted this way.

What would you say if in Putin's Russia somebody would indict an American for criticizing Putin on Facebook? Probably that Putin is a dictator and hates freedom of speech and of course he would do things like that. Now US justice system is doing that. For shame.

SCOTUS also decided Alvarez [0] in 2012. False statements are protected by the 1st Amendment unless they rise to the level of an enumerated exemption.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alvarez

This is exactly the kind of straw man argument that you will see on things like Fox News. No, criticizing Hillary Clinton is not a crime. However, a state actor engaging in a massive propaganda effort to influence a foreign election seems like one to me. And if people come back at me with "but the United States does it too!", that's not an excuse and I don't think that should happen either.

This isn't about an APT hacking a server. This is about speech which does not rise to the level of a crime under the 1st Amendment. If we are to take your argument for what it is saying, the 1st Amendment does not apply to say Mexicans living in the U.S.

I really don't see what's so hard to understand about this. The elections in the United States should be carried out by people who have the country's best interests in mind. Is it a stretch to imagine that Russian trolls don't have the country's best interests in mind? There are laws all over the world (not just in the US) that govern the ways that communications and advertisements involving an election must take place. Just because that technically goes against a naive definition of free speech doesn't mean anything.

And, despite your best efforts to frame me as a racist, I didn't say anything about Mexicans and wouldn't have any problem with the 1st amendment applying to them assuming other legal questions don't come into play.

Man, I wish those pesky Russians would stop interfering with U.S. elections. Last time, Boris and Natasha were outside the polling place and wouldn't let me in.

Oh, wait. No, I was perfectly able to vote for the candidates of my choice based on the research I'd done as an informed voter. I wasn't prevented from exercising my right to vote at all.

I've never understood this whole Russian voting paranoia. It's not like the U.S. doesn't try to influence politics in other countries via the media. Radio Marti, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, etc...

And it's not just the governments. Look at the millions both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and allied organizations received from overseas donors and politicians (especially UK). I'm sure American millionaires back foreign candidates, too.

The whole system is a mess.

> Last time, Boris and Natasha were outside the polling place and wouldn't let me in.

Tell that to Moose and Squirrel.

This is really just a hilariously (and overly politically charged) small distraction from the real problem.

> I wasn't prevented from exercising my right to vote at all.

Where things get interesting is the way votes are collected/counted in many locations. Electronic voting machines are a mess of proprietary software, and more than a few that have gotten their hands on them were apalled at how inherently easy it is to compromise them[1]. Tapering with an election this way, by virtually denying you your right to vote by not counting your vote, or changing it, is a real concern that we are doing practically nothing about.

1. https://www.wired.com/story/voting-machine-hacks-defcon/

> based on the research I'd done as an informed voter.

The problem is that plenty of voters thought they were equally "informed" by "research," which turns out to have been fraudulent.

> I've never understood this whole Russian voting paranoia.

"The indictment charges that the foreigners falsely posed as American citizens, stole identities and otherwise engaged in fraud and deceit in an effort to influence the U.S. political process." Not comparable to Radio Liberty et al.

> Look at the millions both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and allied organizations received from overseas donors and politicians

Where are you getting your well-informed research, exactly?

"Foreign nationals, other than lawful permanent residents, are completely banned from donating to candidates or parties, or making independent expenditures in federal, state or local elections." https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/supreme-court...

(One of the many Trump scandals is that they broke that law, by allegedly soliciting overseas donations (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/29/trump-campai...). If there's evidence that the Clinton campaign did the same, I'd be very interested to see a source or citation.)

The US has a long history of actively overthrowing governments, and backing or installing candidates that they like. It’s a little hard to take complaints of “meddling” based on people lying about their identity seriously.

Regarding improper foreign donations, there were plenty of reports of foreign donors to the Clinton foundation while she was SoS.

You're absolutely correct! The Clinton foundation received plenty of foreign donations. These may be cause for potential concern.

It may also be worth recalling that charitable foundations and political campaigns are legally distinct structures that operate under different legal requirements. As a result, a comparison between the two might be slightly less than fully straightforward in certain cases.

"there were plenty of reports of foreign donors to the Clinton foundation while she was SoS"

I see what you did there. Pure innuendo. The Clinton Foundation is not a campaign. The Clinton Foundation is a charity. Only in the minds of the paranoid is the Clinton Foundation some nefarious money laundering influence peddling deep state org. Keep in mind that Hillary is the most investigated politician in the history of the US and has never been found guilty of any crimes.

Given what you say, one wonders why foreign governments who had pledged tens-of-millions of dollars have now pulled their donations. Why would Clinton's failure to become President affect the requirement for charitable distribution?

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/05/politics/clinton-foundati...

"The FBI and federal prosecutors are looking into whether donors to the foundation were improperly promised policy favors or special access to Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state in exchange for donations to the charity's coffers, as well as whether tax-exempt funds were misused".

Nobody said it was a campaign. That changes nothing, really.

Regarding your last point about foreign money being used in the U.S. election, you should familiarize yourself with the concept of "soft money" and political action committees.

And the outside entities can bypass the US organizations entirely. There's no law against someone from another country buying political TV ads in the United States.

PACs still cannot accept foreign money, though obviously it is easy to launder. NY real estate companies are a popular money laundering method for this kind of stuff.

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/foreign.php

(I'm straining to keep this comment as apolitical as possible and keep it more in a philosophical or strategic space, so I'm not trying to make a Trump vs Clinton argument)

> I was perfectly able to vote for the candidates of my choice based on the research I'd done as an informed voter. I wasn't prevented from exercising my right to vote at all.

The problem is that it appears there's a significant propaganda war going on. I mean, there's probably always been a propaganda war, but the extent of its reach has been more shrouded till recently, and it seems to have been elevated and more aggressive recently. Furthermore, it seems more and more people are taking advice from more-or-less anonymous folks on social media websites (such as us, perhaps), and political punditry seems to be a place where people obtain their opinions rather than develop their own.

If this is the case, claiming to be an "informed voter" isn't really meaningful if the information you and I are receiving is tainted. Now perhaps you and I are somewhat more capable of sifting through the nonsense than others, but it's also possible that we're not as smart as we think we are and we need to become more vigilant in assessing the value and truthfulness of the information we receive, and suppress urges to overreact.

> I've never understood this whole Russian voting paranoia. It's not like the U.S. doesn't try to influence politics in other countries via the media. Radio Marti, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, etc...

The difference (and this is speculation here) is that, it appears that "traditional U.S. interests" (whether you like them or not) seem to be losing the battle.

> Man, I wish those pesky Russians would stop interfering with U.S. elections. Last time, Boris and Natasha were outside the polling place and wouldn't let me in.

Russian hackers were found to have penetrated voter registration rolls. It has not been revealed whether or not they changed anything in the last election, but if voter rolls were compromised they could change voter registration data and cause people to be turned away from the booth on election day.

> Oh, wait. No, I was perfectly able to vote for the candidates of my choice based on the research I'd done as an informed voter. I wasn't prevented from exercising my right to vote at all.

Even if Russia election interference efforts didn't personally affect you, it doesn't mean they didn't affect others. And bottom line is that if you want to preserve your sovereignty as a nation, you don't want your adversaries hacking your voting infrastructure, hacking political campaigns, channeling money illegally to political entities, and disseminating targeted falsehoods in social media. Those are all efforts designed to subvert your democracy.

> And it's not just the governments. Look at the millions both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and allied organizations received from overseas donors and politicians (especially UK).

It is explicitly illegal for a presidential campaign to receive donations from a foreign national. It is also illegal for advertisers to accept money for political ads from foreign nationals.

>Russian hackers were found to have penetrated voter registration rolls. It has not been revealed whether or not they changed anything in the last election, but if voter rolls were compromised they could change voter registration data and cause people to be turned away from the booth on election day.

Actually "Jeanette Manfra, head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, told NBC the Russians only successfully infiltrated a few of those states. It's not believed that the Russians were able to alter the voter rolls"

And that's if one believes that they did in the first place, on the claims of such state agencies -- the same ones that target some country or another when its the enemy du jour (WMD anyone?) and need BS stories to justify their budgets.

Ms. Manfra also stated that she could't answer that question because the information was classified.

There are also competing accounts.

http://time.com/4828306/russian-hacking-election-widespread-...

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/26/voting_server_georg...

It's not like we never engage in propaganda or media influence in Russia or anything.

The US Supreme Court ruled that fake news is not illegal under the 1st Amendment, United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012).

Muller is attempting to turn the US into a totalitarian state where you can be prosecuted for saying something that is not truthful in the public sphere. When Thomas Jefferson ran against Adams they threw all kind of fake news like calling the other a hermaphrodite.

When the government gets to decide what is true/false, that is the definition of totalitarianism.

That Mueller's team would somehow want to erode the First Amendment is a pretty extreme belief bordering on conspiracy theory.

I think this is less about material truth or lies and more about the fact that these ads were meant to influence US elections and paid for by foreign interests. Many US-based organizations can and do produce baseless "fake news" but it isn't seen as much of a problem because they represent the views of some kind of voting constituency.

Bordering on conspiracy theory?

He just said Mueller want to turn the US into a totalitarian state. That qualifies as an honest to God conspiracy theory in my book.

> The US Supreme Court ruled that fake news is not illegal under the 1st Amendment

Also, from ¶ 1 of the indictment [1]: "U.S. law...bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General."

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a]

[a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...

Wow that is a gross misunderstanding of United States v. Alvarez you've got there. All that did was invalidate the "Stolen Valor Act" which made lying about earned military medals a crime. Obama signed a similar law the following year which made it illegal to lie about military medals for personal gain. So far that hasn't been challenged as unconstitutional, despite both bills being about lying about military medals. It's almost like the context and intent of the lie matters more than the lie itself.... If you want to construe this as a get out of jail free card for lying in every situation (to the FBI, etc.), I'm going to need to see that held up in court, citing that case as precedent.

If you're going to drag a man through the mud with wild conspiracy theories, at least learn how to spell his name--It's Mueller, with an "e". I'm really not sure how you think this constitutes the government deciding what is true/false. They're charged with attempting to manipulate the election, committing lots of fraud, etc., but oddly enough not for daring to speak untruths.

The counts in the indictment include:

- Conspiracy to Defraud the United States

- Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Bank Fraud

- Aggravated Identity Theft

This is more about misrepresentation than what was said.

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