It's disturbing that there is no source cited in those articles -- that's garbage journalism, but none of your are bothered by such garbage?

I'm sure lots of people are bothered by it, but it's hardly unusual. News outlets print things attributed to unnamed/unauthorized/anonymous sources every day, on topics as mundane as celebrity relationships and who Trump is going to pick for cabinet positions (in order to get the "scoop" slightly before he makes the official announcement). It'd be great if people payed closer attention to what sources are being cited, and this sort of thing does result in misinformation being treated as fact, but in general I'd rather read things without attribution than to not know about them at all.

In this particular case, it looks like someone gave news media advance information about what was going to be written in the report we discussed earlier. Given that the information accurately reflected what was written in the report (with the validity of the report itself being a separate, if very important, issue), the "fake leaked memo" idea just doesn't make a lot of sense. There'd be no reason to pretend to leak the contents of the report when the report itself was released shortly afterwards.

If RT publishes something that's true but goes against US interests, it's absolutely wrong to call that "fake news".

(...)

This whole "foreign propaganda" hysteria that's going on in the US right now (aka "fake news") is an extremely scary development. It's not actually targeting fake news at all, but alternative narratives. What's scarier is that this is largely being carried out by big companies like Google, without the need for the government to force companies to do it.

I never said that any of what RT is publishing is "fake news," and I definitely think this is an important issue. That said, thus far, I haven't seen much evidence that private "fact-checkers" or the government have actively characterized alternative narratives/opinions as "fake news." And actual fake news is a problem that needs to be addressed as well -- it doesn't take much effort to become aware of just how much completely inaccurate information peppered with a few truths can become extremely relevant on all sides (Obama's birth certificate, Hillary's brain damage, Trump's plan to start a "Muslim registry" of Muslim citizens, etc.).

Or the fact that the US routinely interferes in the sovereignty of other nations! This is insanity!

I think most people are aware that governments do this to each other constantly. That's exactly why it doesn't seem that far-fetched that Russia was trying to influence the election through cyberattacks.

(...)her campaign emails and the DNC email were gained both by anonymous hackers (and not very sophisticated ones at that) and inside whistleblowers.

(...)

Occam's razor says there's a simpler explanation. And the "Russia did it" conspiracy is tainted from the start as being a CIA propaganda campaign, so why choose their convoluted plot over the simple explanation

I'd say it's hard to say one way or another. I'm not really sure it's that much simpler to believe that Russia wasn't involved, either. It'd be weird for Russia not to try to influence the election, and it'd be extremely weird for Russia not to try to breach these e-mail accounts; there's absolutely no question that Russia does dedicate resources to trying to breach security in the US, including through similar "unsophisticated" attacks. That's just how government intelligence works.

On a tangent - "state-sponsored media" as a denigrative term is a funny Americanism, as in many parts of the world state-owned media is actually legislated to be fair and balanced, unlike privatized media (such as all US media)

I don't really see what's funny about it? This sort of legislation is the exact thing you're worried about being turned into a tool for propaganda, right? And I do think that, while "private" media certainly has flaws, and certainly is influenced by the government as is, it's still safer for the government not to be directly paying the media outlets.

As a European socialist, US liberals continue to (unsuprisingly) disappoint me in every turn.

After their heavy loss, instead of enganging in self-criticism of why they failed to connect/inspire/mobilise the masses(something Obama did, twice, regardless of how much his administration was also disappointing) and defeat a proto-fascist clown, they...blame the Russkies that "hacked the election".

Anything other than to admit you've lost touch with the common people, eh? Great plan. Amazing that recruiting Lena Dunham didn't work. I predict 2020 will be awesome for you.

Yea I don't think anyone's saying that the voting machines were hacked, not even the CIA. Most intel folks say that Russia got at private emails and released those to sway election to Trump.

I've seen quite well-known liberal pundits on twitter claiming exactly this(that Russia "hacked"(!) voting machines in "swing states"). I'm telling you, liberals are utterly lost. Hillary is nowhere to be seen since the election(unlike Sanders). But she'll go to Trump's inauguration. They'll pose no threat or offer any resistance of any substance to Trump whatsoever. Go join DSA or something. :P

You are entitled to your opinion on this, but I believe that you really are discounting how active foreign states have been in cyber warfare.

Why? Just because I don't choose to believe a CIA allegation without questioning it, that means that I'm discounting how much state-sponsored hacking occurs in the world? Those two things aren't really connected. If you know who did it, and have evidence that they did it, then try them in a court and prove it. That's American Justice. That's what the leader of the free world would do.
Sure, it's possible for Russia to direct agents to gain access to emails in the hopes of keeping an existing email scandal going. It's also possible that this happened without them. IMHO, it's a much simpler story that it happened without them. That doesn't discount their capabilities and other plots.

I believe that you really are discounting how active the US is in propagandizing and lying to achieve it's strategic objectives. When every single war is based on a lie, how do you just keep on believing them?

Yea I think you're buying into a much larger conspiracy theory than the one being "pushed" by the CIA, where way too many people are in on the truth and are instead pushing an alternative narrative. Just my .02 tho.

You don't need many people to be in on it at all. The CIA leaks a memo to a reporter who has a long standing "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" relationship, and he publishes it. This is a common arrangement for reporters -- you don't develop and keep great insider sources like this by hanging them out to dry. You can end up being a tool of the administration just by wanting to "be a good reporter" and get stories before anyone else. Even if you think something is up, you might feel that you're doing the right thing out of some sense of patriotism. You can see how much he trusts them in the leaked emails that I linked to, where he's asking his CIA handler "You wouldn't put out disinformation on this, right?". He has faith that they're only leaking him the truth. He sleeps soundly at night because he's one of the good guys™. He's not actually in on it.

Everyone else doesn't want to miss the story, so they report on his report and start asking every government agency for comment. Initially lots of agencies actually disagree with the claims, but by this point it's already become fact. People are calling for Russian blood. The CIA secretly briefs the senate and the executive on their proof in order to get anti-Russian laws passed, and laws are passed. Job done.
The only people "in on it" have to be within the CIA, or the people directing them. And any CIA insiders who dare to speak out against such a plot would be kept in line by the threat of life in prison, the death sentence, or even extrajudicial killing.

This is not unprecedented - you're ignorant of history if you think that this sounds at all far-fetched. Look up "operation mockingbird" -- during the cold war, the CIA recruited the publisher of the Washington Post to run their propaganda network. I'm sure he felt that it was his patriotic duty to do so. Many other "respected" publications such as the New York Times became part of this CIA propaganda network. It's not crazy. It's history. It's a fact that they had hundreds of reporters across the country on their payroll.
Meanwhile the Snowden leaks have shown that companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo are secretly cooperating with the NSA to illegally spy on the entire population. That's not crazy. It's now history. It's history repeating.
But you act like America couldn't possibly do such naughty things, and that because these companies aren't "state owned", they're somehow not a part of the state and don't act in the state's interest. This is the new cold war, to pretend they won't play by the old rules is to stick your head in the sand.

To pretend that these media outlets couldn't possibly be accidentally or knowingly involved in spreading propaganda requires far more ignorance than suggesting than an unproven allegation is still unproven.
Collectively, this propaganda is undermining our public discourse by providing a warped view of the world, where America can do no wrong. It is vital that this effort be exposed for what it is: A coordinated attempt to deceive U.S. citizens into acting in the CIA's interests.

Russian propaganda and hacking is real.
American propaganda and hacking is real.

There's no proof that this is a case of Russian hacking, except what the CIA says they have but can't show us. If they show me evidence or have a trial in a courtroom, I may change my mind.
There however, is proof that this is a case of American propaganda, with the story originally coming from a CIA-linked reporter.

Despite that (lack of) evidence, you can continue to believe that you're not being fed propaganda and simply accept all of the establishment's claims if you want. Regardless of how many times they've lied to you before.

some straw man arguments and cherry picking happening here.

Sure, westerners have biased media but its still pretty common place for governments to engage in cyber warfare. It would be very strange indeed if Russia did not try to sway the elections. Maybe that is all the evidence they need.

What other conspiracies can we discuss based on your logic of "they have lied to us before / how many people would they really need"? 9/11?

wikileaks is doing a press conference here

https://www.periscope.tv/w/1YpKkqmkDkmJj

but its still pretty common place for governments to engage in cyber warfare. It would be very strange indeed if Russia did not try to sway the elections

It would be strange indeed for them to attempt such a dangerous thing, and risk being caught by doing it in such an un-subtle way.

I'd expect international espionage to be undetected by the layman.

I find this whole "Russia hacked the election..." nonsense a bit irritating. Even if they did hack the DNC's servers, all they did was to release emails showing unethical and potentially illegal behavior on the part of key members of the Democratic party.

This.

People are so diligent trying to point out Trump's wrongdoings and possible future wrongdoings and alleged wrongdoings, that they gratiously "forget" the very real wrongdoings of the Democrats. It's first and foremost the Democrats who did something wrong and unethical. Sure, someone (nobody knows who) hacked the server (or didn't, if the password was "password" you can't really call it hacking) and published those mails. That's not precisely good etiquette or even lawful, but it's not Trump's fault, and it's not the detail that is noteworthy. The detail that is noteworthy is what's in these mails, but this is considered entirely irrelevant.

You know, if the contents of these mails weren't exactly true, the Democrats only needed to say: "Those are fake mails, we're not even going to discuss this nonsense". End of story. But of course they couldn't say that. So instead, it's all Trump's fault. International conspiracy on the highest level. Communists directing US elections. Trump a communist?

There's a word for this kind of left ideology in German ("Täterschutz"), not sure if there is a good translation in English. Protecting the offender, maybe. As an example from last July: If the police shoots someone who has killed a couple of people with an axe and is running towards the police shouting and swining the axe, the bad cop shooting him needs to see an interrogation. Probably a Nazi cop, who else would shoot a poor misguided axe swinger. It doesn't matter that this guy murdered people and was just about to do it again, it matters that he has rights, too. It's fucked up things like these that make more and more average, normal people feel uneasy with a state that punishes the righteous and protects the guilty, a state that steals everything you own, a state that does nothing to protect your rights -- and it causes more and more people to turn towards far right (I've always been pretty far right, but meanwhile there's a movement going on which is rather a bit too much for me, I'm waiting for LePen to govern France in May... fun times ahead...).

I've read "Unprecedented for a president-elect" above. What's also unprecedented for a president is actively trying to influence the elections as Obama did (publicly telling people not to vote one particular candidate, and publicly mocking one particular candidate) and retrospectively coming up with such a Russian Spies Haxors US, Trump a Communist? story worthy of being published in The Sun. But of course that's alright.

There's a word for this kind of left ideology in German ("Täterschutz"), not sure if there is a good translation in English. Protecting the offender, maybe. As an example from last July: If the police shoots someone who has killed a couple of people with an axe and is running towards the police shouting and swining the axe, the bad cop shooting him needs to see an interrogation. Probably a Nazi cop, who else would shoot a poor misguided axe swinger. It doesn't matter that this guy murdered people and was just about to do it again, it matters that he has rights, too. It's fucked up things like these that make more and more average, normal people feel uneasy with a state that punishes the righteous and protects the guilty, a state that steals everything you own, a state that does nothing to protect your rights -- and it causes more and more people to turn towards far right (I've always been pretty far right, but meanwhile there's a movement going on which is rather a bit too much for me, I'm waiting for LePen to govern France in May... fun times ahead...).

Guess what? That hypothetical example accounts for 99.99% of the reported police shootings in this country. The police must be bad and racist because they killed someone, never mind the actions of the person that was shot. We're seeing this kind of nonsense throughout our society, and it is directly the fault of the liberal left and their media.

As a European socialist, US liberals continue to (unsuprisingly) disappoint me in every turn.
After their heavy loss, instead of enganging in self-criticism of why they failed to connect/inspire/mobilise the masses(something Obama did, twice, regardless of how much his administration was also disappointing) and defeat a proto-fascist clown, they...blame the Russkies that "hacked the election".
Anything other than to admit you've lost touch with the common people, eh? Great plan. Amazing that recruiting Lena Dunham didn't work. I predict 2020 will be awesome for you.

Yea I don't think anyone's saying that the voting machines were hacked, not even the CIA. Most intel folks say that Russia got at private emails and released those to sway election to Trump.

I've seen quite well-known liberal pundits on twitter claiming exactly this(that Russia "hacked"(!) voting machines in "swing states"). I'm telling you, liberals are utterly lost. Hillary is nowhere to be seen since the election(unlike Sanders). But she'll go to Trump's inauguration. They'll pose no threat or offer any resistance of any substance to Trump whatsoever. Go join DSA or something. :P[/quote]

Only goes to show how divided the US is. There are plenty of idiots in both sides of the aisle. The assholes who are diehard Trump supporters are incapable of admitting to what they actually support while the liberal leaders are still scratching their heads wondering what went wrong when it's clear that the issue was the three states that swung red that weren't expected to. That and that Hillary was just not a great choice (tho I'd argue that Sanders being the only other guy wouldn't have been great either, but we can disucss that somewhere else).

That being said, I still believe that there is some truth to this, for reasons that some posters above have mentioned. It isn't that far fetched. It's not like the CIA were the only set of people claiming that Russian hackers were behind this.

The other question about this CIA-Liberal conspiracy theory to cover up the DNC's ass is why do it? Why risk further destabilization of the country by doing so? If the country has become so partisan that the CIA is willing to start covering up one party, then we aren't particularly far from another civil war here, especially after the FBI's entire thing earlier.

but its still pretty common place for governments to engage in cyber warfare. It would be very strange indeed if Russia did not try to sway the elections

It would be strange indeed for them to attempt such a dangerous thing, and risk being caught by doing it in such an un-subtle way.

I'd expect international espionage to be undetected by the layman.

There's plenty of examples of unsubtle espionage. Any number of Mossad operations come to mind. There's even some CIA operations I can think of.

[quote name="samoth" post="5326880" timestamp="1483978855"]
We're seeing this kind of nonsense throughout our society, and it is directly the fault of the liberal left and their media.

See, statements like that make it pretty clear that you believe that liberals are a bunch of lunatics and that everything that's wrong is their fault. There's nut jobs on both sides, but there are also legitimate issues on both sides.

Reading through posts... it seems Hodgman has been bought! Sold out!!! How much did the Russians pay you to join comrade Julian Assange?

Guess what? That hypothetical example accounts for 99.99% of the reported police shootings in this country. The police must be bad and racist because they killed someone, never mind the actions of the person that was shot. We're seeing this kind of nonsense throughout our society, and it is directly the fault of the liberal left and their media.

It just so happens that 99.99% of these shootings are not caught on camera and the police are immediately believed when they blat-out "I feared for my life". And one of such shootings a police officer was already blatting-out "I feared for my life" when a video recording of the actually shooting emerged revealing he shot the black man at the back of of his head while he was running away from him. If more of such shootings had been caught on camera, who knows the 99.99% could quickly drop down to say 50%

Joking, Hodgman, just joking

I actually agree that historically the US has a very bad record. But in recent years bad intelligence and imperfection of technology has resulted in grave mistakes (unwarranted wars, drone attacks killing civilians - could also be due to terrorists using civilians as human shields). These events then required damage limitation releases which then gave the illusion of propaganda. By definition this is still propaganda but defensive propaganda is not in the same class as offensive propaganda. In recent years much of US propaganda, including on cyber warfare, has been defensive.

This is not a compliment because it also means in the context of protecting its data, most US institutions are behind the curve

The problem with hacking is you really can never know a source for sure.

If you wanted to hack the US and blame it on the Russian government all you'd do is hack into a low level government pc in Russia, say a school or library, work your way up a few levels (this isn't beyond the realms of possibility and happens all the time) then perform your hack using your hacked Russian server as a proxy. This sort of thing happens all the time, and hackers have become so good at covering their tracks with compromised networks, tor, and botnets that not even the cia can know where they're really coming from.

In the end they rely on someone boasting and taking credit for the hack, or just take a stab in the dark based on the languages of rootkits etc.

If there's one thing I know a lot about its security, more so than gamedev, and something is definitely more than fishy here...