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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

Just curious why you say this is disinformation given the lack of proof. Is this your opinion or are you attacking the article based on the source?

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I don't believe the source because they're known liars. I definitely don't believe the story that a laptop with Ukrainian emails was left in a DC repair shop and then given to Trump's personal propagandist lawyer Rudy Guliani. Also they're not publishing the emails headers as explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780927

Even if Guliani got the source from Russian intelligence, that does not mean the emails are automatically not authentic. Does it mean the Russians are interfering? Probably. Does it mean their evidence of corruption is void? Not really.

If this is the Russians (unproven speculation on your part), it does not mean the emails are not authentic.

Two organizations have these supposed emails, Fox and NYPost. They could mathematically prove their legitimacy by simply posting the entire raw messages, with headers. DKIM was active at the time these messages were supposedly sent, so if the signatures match up, authenticity is confirmed.

The fact that this hasn't been done is concerning, unless it's being sat on for future impact.. the "drip drip drip" method of political bombshell news isn't a new tactic. If we're still here in a week with nothing other than screenshots, we can probably write the messages off as frauds. I'm withholding my judgement for a few days.

You're assuming they have the emails in the raw form. It's possible they just have PDFs and not the full content. You're also assuming Fox and NY Post have journalists on staff who know what DKIM is, let alone how to verify it's genuine. They're journalists, not CompSci majors.

The "drip drip" is an intentional strategy, of course. This smells like a setup to me. They leak the lukewarm email, get a denial from Biden, then leak a smoking gun that cannot be denied (speculation).

I think you might be overestimating the level of technical sophistication at play here—if you asked me “how can we verify that these emails are real,” I might’ve been able to come up with this idea, but it certainly wasn’t the first thing that jumped into my head reading the article, and I doubt NYPost has anyone on staff who thought to do this either (unless perhaps verifying leaked emails is something they do regularly?).

I wouldn't trust NYPost to have that knowledge, fair. Fox, though..

Really though, even if DKIM wasn't a thing, there's little-to-no reason to only post screenshots if the actual raw files are available.

There is no indication of ANY attempt (technical or not) to verify that the emails were real. They did not even perform the basic due diligence of asking the Biden campaign to comment prior to publication.

There is one source of information, Rudy Giuliani. Someone with known ties to Russian intelligence claiming that his lawyer received a surprise hard drive from a computer repairman who has an utterly implausible explanation for his acquisition of said drive. Someone who has been known to spread false allegations and conspiracy theories including the claim that Joe Biden is suffering from dementia.

The Biden campaign has records to that time indicating no such meeting took place.

So far, without further corroboration, it's an allegation with no basis. Especially given justice department investigations into the purported impropriety that the supposed emails revolve around did not reveal any evidence of involvement of Joe Biden in his son's dealings.

Most news articles based on leaks are uncorroborated allegations.

Even if the source was Putin himself, shouldn't the question be "are the emails authentic" rather than "who leaked the emails"?

Wikileaks has had questionable sources in the past, but they've generally been authentic leaks (for example the DNC email leaks had authentic and signed email headers).

I'm not saying the emails are authentic, I'm saying the question of whether they are authentic is unanswered and that should be your primary concern over who the source is.

Theoretically, if Russia had proof of corruption would you not want to see it on the basis that it's Russia and it's close to an election?

My primary concern is about whether the information I'm looking at is factual or not.

If Russia had proof of corruption on the candidate they did not excessively favor then I would be interested. When historic propagandists have "proof" I need corroboration otherwise I'm being controlled by the propaganda as it was intended.

Remember Benghazi? How confident everyone was, for years? Nothing came from it because nothing was there. The people that were talking about Benghazi were only people that benefited from it politically. Remember Al Franken? Remember when people that didn't benefit from it politically agreed he should step down after his behavior?

"Nothing came from it"

Uh, what? A U.S. embassy was actively under attack and our "leaders" said "No thanks!" to sending help.

How is that not a scandal?

There were ten investigations and your version of events are not accurate according to all of them. Including the ones led by Republicans. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack#Investiga...

Not finding anyone they can indict is not the same as “no scandal”. You and I knew when they were trying to blame the fiasco on a YouTube video and trotted the poor director out in a hooded perp walk on tv that it was complete. utter. BS., and then we watched Rice run around talking about it on talk shows trying to shamelessly prop up this narrative. That itself is a scandal. When you start asking more critical questions about why a government does crap like that you’ll find it’s scandals all the way down. The best you can say from the Benghazi debacle is that we had/have a bunch of nincompoops running the show. _That’s_ a scandal. It only gets worse when you attempt to defend their qualifications. Don’t get me started on Libya as a whole - it’s executors only years earlier still criticizing the lack of an exit plan for Iraq.

For christ's sake yes.

Russia, a known bad actor, who has been openly trying to destabilize America for years does not get the benefit of the doubt on literally anything. Everything that Russia "has" should be outright considered purposeful disinformation until it is clearly and widely proven otherwise. They have lost all credibility to provide proof of anything. Particularly in an election year.

I am completely ignorant of why Russia is a known bad actor (aside from, you know, the whole run-by-a-dictator thing). Could you help me out?

Google the following terms:

- Litvinenko

- Novichok

- Crimean Annexation

- Russia Wikileaks (the Atlantic article is a good intro)

- Sergei Magnitsky, the Magnitsky Act, Russian Meeting at Trump Tower (in that order tells the story)

- Russian Disinformation Campaign (there are stories dating to shortly after the 2016 election)

There's probably more but this is all the top of my mind. Litvinenko was my wake-up to the realities of global politics and the potential dangers Russia poses.

We can be clear eyed about this. "Are the emails authentic" is exactly the question they (NYPost) should have asked and were best positioned to answer, but they did not even try.

They presented screenshots (!) uncritically, with no suggestion of doubt regarding the emails' provenance. They did not even bother asking the Biden campaign about the story prior to publication.

It's a transparent attempt to get to "just asking questions" which is where we are today.

>The Biden campaign has records to that time indicating no such meeting took place.

This isn't true. They made the specific denial that according to his official schedules from the time, the meeting never happened. And then later quietly also said they "would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule". [0]

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lash...

In my defense, that article was published around the time I was writing the comment.

If I see the DKIM I'll start buying that there's smoke but until then I don't trust the messengers.

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