I think in many countries there is a right wing party that knows what it wants - power, money and control - and will pretend to be united till it gets it; and parties of the centre and the left who want different things - like social democracy, or a mixed economy - but are unable to provide a united front long enough to become the party of power. That was true in Russia in the Yeltsin era. In the US (and the UK until recently) the coalition you describe existed long enough to get power from time to time.
Orwell was quite wrong; it doesn’t look like Ingsoc that’s going to be stamping on a human face forever, but Gigeconomysoc. Even Orwell’s proles were better off than the new underclass is going to be.
And this is perhaps where your expertise in InfoSec gives you an advantage. To a layperson, they are simply government agencies or corporations or scientists or researchers like any other, some of which have rather spectacularly gone to the “dark side”, like those in the pay of tobacco corporations or climate scientists in the pay of the Koch brothers, or agencies that claimed the existence of WMDs in Iraq (I personally think Colin Powell didn’t believe it, but was strong-armed to make his infamous speech at the UN (which he has since called a “blot” on his record)) and true or not, that can raise a reasonable doubt. (Reasonable for a layperson, remember…)
In other fields you may think a company is ripping people off but I might say, “no, I’ver worked with these people, they’re good, their research is sound and their product delivers” and then shown you how good it really is…
I would hope at the very least in this discussion that you understand that people might question the story not because they don’t believe in the (soft) science, or because they (shudder) support Trump or any other nefarious reason. They simply may have a legitimate reasonable doubt.
I think in part it’s a topic that’s really, really hard to do good reporting on and just hard to explain. It’s a 20-30 paragraph essay to start to do justice to the very complicated topic of presenting not only the evidence, but the past research, the context for why it should be understood as significant, and the various strengths of each piece to add to the account. There’s so much going on and so many bits and pieces coming from various sources that need to be connected to come up with anything like a compete account that a writer/investigative reporter’s in a really tough spot to be able to explain it in a way that’s readable to a normal audience but also technical enough to explain much in a way that explains evidence. It’s esp. hard when part of an explanation hinges on understanding something as opaque as PKI, crypto key conventions, probabilities of clashes, decompiling/analyzing malware, malicious droppers, RATs, the meaning of hashes of bits of forensic evidence, explaining the significance of the C&C servers, etc. I have a hard enough time talking about some aspects of PKI principles with other developers. Then you have the problem that there are a huge number of InfoSec researchers who invent their own terms and tools and forensic approaches and it’s really not just a normally approachable realm when you have notable figures with ridiculous hax0r handles and a bunch of 20ish year olds posting things that are actually quite important research on twitter or their ridiculous looking blogs and you’re just kind of expected to know who ‘Dark Tangent’ is, and subscribe to firehose feeds to pick out a few interesting bits. ‘Pwn All The Things’ was posting analyses of Guccifer 2.0’s metadata to Twitter that was actually really significant, and ‘hacks4pancakes’, ‘the grugq’ and a few others’ Twitter stream’s been very insightful on covering things, but this is not a normal thing for a person looking for information on a topic. “Oh, check this tweet from June by ‘Pwn All The Things’” might be actually be a justifiable account for something, but it’s understandable off-putting if you don’t know the weird way researchers do things. It’s worse when it’s ‘check this IRC log’ or other ridiculous seeming things. It’s a weird field and a young field.
When you look at gov. reports it’s kind of worse. Even if you trust them to not be spinning a politically useful angle (which you shouldn’t), it’s all inter-agency stuff, and any gov. interagency report is going to be a product of a bureaucratic process that ensures it can’t be very informative or clear.
Consider the case where these actions were perpetrated by a non-state US actor. What crime would they be charged with and what punishment would be expected?
not ascertain, but have a pointed opinion on (and not a closed ended one, but surely a leading one).
Your extreme reading of the open-ended supposition as harsh accusation, and your limiting of your response to outrage over being so badly mishandled, yes, it does rather help others ascertain your motives.
I can’t imagine how an electoral college map is being used to discuss the findings of an intelligence agency, in December. It’s either disingenuous or someone is delusionally stuck in last month.
Hmm, apparently not debunked by dailyKos, National Public Radio…
And you don’t want to see the comparisons between Clinton rallies and Trump’s. They didn’t need any help at all, certainly not from Russia…
