FBI: “Discovered Emails Inadvertantly Backed Up From Top Clinton Aide, Re-Opening Investigation”
Clinton Apologists: Y YOU SAY THAT WHEN YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE
FBI: “No Evidence Russia is Conspiring To Elect Trump”.
Clinton apologists: DONT NEED NO EVIDENCE WE KNOW ASSANGE/TRUMP/PUTIN SCHEMING
German here. I will be very, VERY happy when your election is over, my dear american friends. I don´t even care who wins anymore, I just want this shtshow to be over. Well, thats not quite true, the perspective of president Trump fills me with existential dread. Not in the sense of "Oh sht, I´m gonna lose my job and home!", more in a sense of "Oh sh*t, we´re all gonna be vaporized in a nuclear fireball!"
Please, Americans, do the right thing next week.
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government.
Governments should be afraid of their people.”
Time to queue up V for Vendetta this weekend.
“Paper of record” means that The NY Times is the most trusted non-partisan print publication in the US as well as being one of the longest-running. There is a reason that they are the first to be referred to as such.
Citing “anonymous” sources means that they have deep and reliable ties to all levels of American civic life and are therefore able to procure the most relevant and, otherwise unobtainable insight that others aren’t. Maintaining their sources’ anonymity ensures that currency of trust perpetuates and allows more sources to come forward with pertinent information.
In their very long history it would be easy to cherry pick mistakes and partisanship from their pages, but absolutely no publication comes close to the NYT in terms of editorial and journalistic integrity and diligent fact checking. The content of their articles may rub you the wrong way, but we desperately need organizations like them; perhaps now more than ever.
I wasn’t even aware that they’ve figured out who did all the hacks and already FBI can tell us exactly what the Russians wanted. Apparently it’s to “undermine America’s standing in the world more broadly.”
I… I don’t think you guys need help on that score. We all get news about your election. No further undermining is necessary.
Unknown Hinson. Love him.
It’s fine if the Russians aren’t working toward a Trump victory, but this notion that they’re trying to “destabilize our democracy” doesn’t feel very plausible to me. It’s like saying terrorists attack us because they hate Freedom. What does the FBI think the Russians’ desired outcome looks like? “Oh man, we keep getting hacked. Let’s give up on democracy and be fascists, I guess.”
A fascist USA is probably a bigger threat to Russia than the current political morass.
The bigger the election trainwreck, the weaker the next president will be.
I think they want the US to be a bigger thread. Untill now the US still had a somewhat moral high ground to Putins Russia. Maybe the Russians hope that a destabilized, fascist, dangerous, more “evil” US will scare their former sattelites and current allies of the US back into their arms, maybe they just need this to point the finger at the US and say “See world? They are just as horrid as we are, probably even more horrid!”
Three goals I can see:
Undermine the American electorate’s confidence in Western democratic institutions (e.g. a free press, separation of church and state, security agencies that don’t interfere in fair elections, peaceful and orderly and legitimised transfers of power, etc.) to the point where a significant number of them would consider joining Peter Thiel and other members of the alt-right in rejecting them. Making his kleptocratic style of right-wing nationalist authoritarianism more palatable is also Putin’s programme in Western Europe.
Use the divisiveness sown by goal 1 to make future U.S. leaders more reticent about honouring its NATO commitments and following through on its support for liberal democratic movements in countries Putin considers to be in the “Russkii Mir’s” sphere of influence (Ukraine, the Baltics, Georgia, Syria, the Arctic, etc.). He’d also love to see a protectionist (not just anti-globalist) trade regime in the U.S., but that’s a bonus prize.
Signal growing Russian supremacy in the spheres of digital and economic warfare (e.g. the various hacks, showing how easy it is to gain sway over a heavily indebted and un-selfaware American candidate).
While it would be nice for him if his orange-haired boy becomes POTUS, it doesn’t really matter to Putin who wins this election. At this point, he’s already accomplished what he set out to do and helped the U.S. make itself an international laughingstock in the bargain.
There’s a large amount of evidence pointing to Russia. The tools used and a private key recovered from a box were used against Germany in a previous attack identified as perpetrated by GRU. The C&C IPs were used in other attacks. The Russians were initially fairly sloppy, so along with the software on the servers, the documents themselves include a sea of other details from the use of Cyrillic, time zones in file metadata, original metadata containing the Felix Dzerzhinsky username, the immediate cleanup of metadata once analysis pointed out the Russian source, to the attackers taking a break on a Russian holiday, along with a long string of other damning details. Every single sign points to two attackers the Russian military cyber-warfare division of the GRU and the FSB (formerly known as the KGB), and some have no other technically possible explanation.
Much of the forensic analysis that was done was by InfoSec analysts with good reputations in the field and nothing to gain (and much to lose) by fabricating - CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant, SecureWorks, ThreatConnect. I’d suggest you read Crowdstrike’s analysis:
Wikileaks’ releases are likely accurate, but they have been caught releasing documents that were purged to hide information embarrassing to Russia in the past and have the appearance of having been duped by Russian intelligence for years:
At this point they’re not trying to shine a light on powers that be, but are a tool being manipulated by the powers that be, and aren’t even bothering to hide it anymore.
So if I’m clear on this, Russia isn’t trying to get Trump elected.
They are just trying to undermine US democracy.
By attacking the Democratic party.
And getting Trump elected.
Is that what the FBI are arguing?
You know, I hear you, but this is kind of disingenuous and facile.
Who’s saying the FBI doesn’t have evidence of backed up emails? There is a lot of sentiment here that the public announcement from the FBI about this investigation is unusual and incredibly ill timed. Maybe address that directly without the snark.
@nemomen presents a pretty good case that you are mistaken about that.
This is weird
Comey is “acting like he’s trying to throw the election,” says Steve Ryan, a prosecutor in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department who worked on organized crime, referring to the FBI director’s “trifecta”—comments about the Hillary Clinton email probe over the summer; his shocking letter last week announcing new evidence related to that case; and now this out-of-the-blue FBI document dump.
“It looks worse and worse each day. He’s out of his swim lane.… There’s no precedent for this. I think it’s the most troubling thing I’ve seen out of law enforcement,” he adds. Ryan notes that he is a Hillary Clinton donor, but a number of Republicans have criticized Comey as well, including Larry Thompson, the deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush.
As for the documents, they contain almost no previously unreleased information, with the exception of several pages that refer to seized property—apparently as evidence—including, intriguingly, “one cellophane containing” and “one red rope containing.”
The documents are so heavily redacted it is impossible to tell what the cellophane or red rope “contained” or what, if anything, they have to do with Rich’s pardon.
That… That hurt my brain just to read…
I dunno. When I hit a paywall, I just go to another site.
Non-partisan? Seriously? They’ve been carrying water for the government in all things since 9/11, at the very least.
I use Safari’s private browsing so that I don’t have to subscribe to the Post.
I’m not sure i it works with the Times.
You know what? I don’t care if Russia had anything to do with these leaks. If it’s proven, I’ll send a nice handwritten thank you note. It is mind-boggling that people would rather talk about that than what’s in the fucking Podesta leaks. They are unbelievably damning. But one needs to wade through metric tons of bullshit horse-race meaninglessness to find journalists willing to talk about what could be the most singular political revelation of a lifetime. It’s so obviously textbook deflection, and has become S.O.P. during this election to deflect from content of leaks with nafarious and nebulous plots.
