Sen. Mark Warner: Russia attacks on U.S. elections were way worse than NSA leaks and Intercept article suggest

Sorry, but “doing their job” is bullshit cover for anyone. Democratic processes should not be subverted by anyone, Russia or the US included. We can hold ourselves accountable for wrongs we commit, but the fact that we have done wrong doesn’t mean we should give a pass to those who commit them against us.

The “well, they left the door unlocked,” excuse is similarly weak and childish, especially when the contents of the DNC leak were pathetic in substance and should not have been a surprise to any cognizant voter. The “narrative spin” went entirely the opposite way that you suggest; bullshit was gleefully peddled to sink a superiorly qualified candidate.

There is very little in this to compare with the red scare. That was about targeting lefties for belonging to certain groups or just attending meetings. It was the policing of thought-crimes, not you know, investigating potential high-level collusion by people who are in positions to do serious harm to our institutions and livelihoods.

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Can we agree that the correct response to this would be to make it harder for Russian spies to their job, and anybody in the US who aided Russian spies in doing their job is guilty of treason?

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Which they haven’t been and don’t.

I’m saying that I don’t care if they did, especially since this phrase “intervening in the election” seems to mean “leaking information that revealed the truth to the American People”.

Because if an organization has foolishly created secret data that they think will lose an election for them - which is what everyone seems to be claiming - then such organizations are obliged to keep their dirty laundry well hidden, or they will lose the election because they are fools.

Exactly!

If you believe that political parties should be able to punish any actor who reveals truths about them that would effect the outcome of elections, then you are in fact advocating for subversion of Democratic processes.

I am advocating for open fair elections. The scary Russians are just window dressing on DNC blame-shifting. They ran the wrong candidate and that is why Trump got elected.

Oh Hell yes!   That would be the best policy for dealing with all foreign spies, including all our putative allies’ spies.

No. Treason is a very specifically defined thing; we are not at war with the Russians. If someone aids Jihadi spies, or spies of a nation we are currently invading, then that’s treason sho 'nuff.

Washington has a long tradition of aiding foreign spies in doing things harmful to the US, and we can agree that is a very very bad thing, even though not technically treason.

and anybody in the US who aided Russian spies in doing their job should go to jail for a long time?

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We don’t need to thank Putin for that. DNC shenanigans were quite visible.

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Yep. Someone would have had to be completely blind and not paying attention to not know that Wasserman-Schultz and most of the Dems hierarchy were in the tank for Clinton long before the Russians hacked the DNC (around the same time that a certain GOP nominee was publically inviting the Russians to do more hacking to disrupt the U.S. electoral system – it’s almost as if he wasn’t bothered by it).

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Works for me! But I feel that way about all foreign spies, from all countries, including so-called allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel.

To me and you, perhaps. But the narrative that paints the Evil Russians as the people we should be punishing says it was Russian revelations of DNC shenanigans that lost the election for the Democratic party. Or something equally indirect and infantile. I don’t agree, but that’s the justification for this dog and pony show… to put the blame on someone other than the DNC.,

To summarize, then:

It’s perfectly acceptable for the Russian government to hack into the network of one of the major American political parties, steal documents, and publish them with the express intent to favor one candidate. It therefore must also be acceptable that they “leak[ed] information” that revealed “the truth” about only one party’s asserted corruption and not the other’s. Unless the claim is that the Democratic Party is more corrupt than the Republican Party, and therefore it’s acceptable to hack one, but not the other.

Furthermore, the DNC deserved it because their network “essentially had no security” (which is a mischaracterization of what happened, and also it’s begging the question to say the DNC network’s security was inadequate simply because it was compromised).

If you believe that political parties should be able to punish any actor who reveals truths about them that would effect the outcome of elections, then you are in fact advocating for subversion of Democratic processes.

This is not the argument being made.

It would be one thing if an American actor revealed truths about the parties because that actor was interested in the well being of the American people. Here, however, we have a foreign government that doesn’t like the United States revealing those truths in an effort to get elected the candidate they believe would best advance their agenda, whether or not that agenda is in the best interests of the American people. Evidence suggests not only does Russia not care what’s in America’s best interests, but their own interests are contrary to ours, as well as the interests of Western liberal democracy itself.

I am advocating for open fair elections.

So it’s “fair” when a foreign government becomes involved to advance their proprietary interests? When did a foreign government develop a stake in the electoral process of the American government? What’s the statutory or constitutional underpinning giving the foreign government this right? Where, then, is Vladimir Putin’s polling place, where he can vote in the U.S. election which he apparently has a stake in? (And where does he report for jury duty?) Were Cold War elections in which we intervened to further our own interests in other countries similarly “fair”?

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You’re doing it in a strange way. Stealing and disseminating damaging information for one candidate is hardly a support for open and fair elections. It’s not as simple as “when all information is free, everything is fair,” nor does this situation have much to do with that notion.

You should care why, how, and by who information is disseminated. Everything has a context. Don’t let your brain fall out when doing contortions to make this somehow anyone but the perpetrators’ fault.

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I guess some people just really really dislike Hillary.
(Whereas I simply dislike her with out the added “really really.”)

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So, just to be clear, you’re completely ignoring the subject of the current leaks which imply that Russia got into individual states election systems, i.e. government computers? Because the way you’re focusing on this one action, to the exclusion of the current revelations, the likely hacking of Republican systems and subsequent silence about them, the possibility that, in leaking the Democrat’s documents, the Russians may have included some false documents in the caches and nobody seems to know yet if that happened, or the fact that, as @tgarretteaton says, what we know of the DNC leaks is boring, seems disingenuous.

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Relevant.

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I’m ready to declare the presidential election invalid - wipe the slate clean and have a new election.

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I second the motion.

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I think that is probably what is going on. Though I could be wrong. (depends to what level the vote hacking reached, so far it isn’t clear what impact they actually had.)

Though honestly, I don’t think Hillary lost because of the Russian shenanigans. Like I said before, she didn’t have the same appeal of Obama, so millions who sorta liked her over Trump just stayed home. Perhaps it made some people stay home or vote Trump, but I am pretty sure the only people who saw it as a big deal were already going to vote against her no matter who she ran against.

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What is all that imaginary stuff next to Hillary?

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The accumulated memes of 30 years of over-the-top rumor-mongering and hit pieces.

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It’s been so for a long time, actually. I recently remembered there was a joke about it in Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sail, a game that came out in 1996.

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It’s an important story, all right, but didn’t the Washington Post report essentially the same thing already, in April of last year? Not sure the document she leaked adds anything, other than a potentially renewed focus on the issue; but I worry that, as you point out (and happened with Snowden), the media is going to focus on the who that did the leaking rather than the what that was the subject of the leaked info.

The fact that key members of the DNC thought you could make a good risotto by simply boiling the rice in all the broth at once, is enough to disqualify them completely in my opinion :joy:

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And this was my biggest why are they running Hillary problem. Not that she was incompetent, a bad choice, etc, just you have 20 years of hate machine FUD to overcome and that shit is hard to clean up.

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