Everywhere a Hack-Hack-Hack
The Guardian — Clinton campaign says data program accessed in cyber-attack on Democrats
This follows on the report yesterday that the DCCC had been hacked – an act Reuters said US intelligence officials had attributed to Russians as well.
Unknown is what was being searched for and what, if anything, was taken. Unknown entity got in and got something maybe for unknown reasons and use — aha, must be Russia!
Half the big brains in Silicon Valley are “with her.” Her campaign coffers (and the affiliated coffers at the HVF) are stuffed with cash. Yet, somehow, the woman that is the most experienced candidate for President ever can’t manage a campaign that’s not highly vulnerable to computer hackers.
Someone’s being set up. The narrative is getting too pat. The DNC hack and release of emails was real. That’s known. By whom? Guess they’re going to keep running with “the Russians” for a while. But let’s back up a bit.
By mid-December, Bernie Sanders was gaining traction with the Democratic primary electorate. About the point in an election cycle when more people begin to pay attention. He had a solid lead in NH that hadn’t waned after months of the HRC campaign spending money there to beef up her operation and running ads. The next (fourth) debate was to take place on the awesome debate viewing time of Saturday, December 19. (Six days before Christmas.) Then POW!
On Friday, December 18, Bernie Sanders’s campaign was locked out of the DNC voter files system amid allegations that his IT operation had gained unauthorized access to HRC voter information. Sanders had no choice but to fire the alleged malefactor because a full assessment could be made. The DNC vendor claimed that a faulty patch had opened a window that allowed opposing campaigns to peek into the records of others campaigns. It was discovered and corrected within a few hours and assurances were given that no unauthorized user could download and/or print stuff that they could all of a sudden pull up on their screens. Team Clinto screamed FOUL! Bad, bad Bernie.
Note: unknown what was could have been seen, nothing could have been taken, but there were some logs that indicated something, something. (The faulty patch was to the entire voter files system and therefore, team Clinton had the same ability to peek at team Sander info, but by omission, we’re assured that that didn’t happen.)
Was it true? The Sander’s lead IT employee had several weeks earlier reported security issues to the DNC. We might someday get more information on this. Given the relatively short period of time from then to the end of the primary season, Sanders team couldn’t afford to expend sufficent time or money on this. And it all went completely away months later when Sanders withdrew his lawsuit.
However, from a public relations perspective, it did put a crimp in Sanders campaign. It gave Bernie his first shiner. One that healed, but momentum lost is rarely fully regained.
Wonder what was being said in the DNC and HRC campaign emails during those thirty-six hours in December. Of course, even if there’s some juicy bits in there, to release them now would raise too many new questions.
The DNC emails that were released put both the DNC and Clinton in a bad enough light, that they needed the deflection of an identifiable nefarious enemy to pin it on. With Sanders no longer in a position to be their effective punching bag, they went big and long. Allegations that it’s Putin are good enough because the MSM loves them some Putin bashing and can responsibly note in the small print that they are allegations and not proof. And Russia can’t prove the null hypothesis. Fantastic.
The only alternative was to blame Trump and the RNC directly. Except that might give the impression that they were competent at something. And anyway, Clinton is going to win in a landslide and no reason to risk decreasing that yuuge winning margin by even half a percentage point.
(Note: Not saying that Putin didn’t do it. But if every time the USG made an allegation that the Russian done did it over the past forty odd years and I had gone short on that, I would have lost a lot of money. Seriously, once HRC’s private server became public, should it be surprising that hackers here, there, everywhere would think that it might be cool to try to break into the servers of various political organizations? Maybe the Chinese took the RNC, RCCC, and oh forget it, Trump is operating his campaign with a Pachinko machine.)
The Paper of Record weighs in — Clinton Campaign Computers Are Said to Be Hacked, Apparently by Russians
Said to Be Hacked
Apparently by Russians
Times is really hedging on this one. In the headline instead of buried in paragraph three. Is this a tell?
bmaz
Answers not to be proffered unless or until the same damn questions are asked over and over again by VIPs in the media and they won’t drop it.
And every couple of weeks or so, we found them. Followed a week or so later by, maybe not. Drag it out long enough, the questions ceased to be asked. Until finally there’s nothing but the implied “never mind” and nobody any longer cares about it.
HRC — “I did it for convenience. I only wanted to carry one device.”
Over a year later when the FBI reveals that to be a flat out lie, HillFans don’t care. And the retort to anyone that dares to point out that she’s a liar is “you’re repeating rightwing smears, you sexist meanie.” Or, “it’s NBD” by those that have yet to lose their marbles completely.
Or the DNC hurting Sanders.
“You’re a conspiracy monger! The DNC wouldn’t be partial to a candidate. Rules are rules.”
indeniable proof shows up
“It didn’t show that. I mean, it didn’t hurt him and they didn’t act on it. Everyone knows political parties protect themselves. This is common knowledge.”
you don’t know they didn’t act on it; it did affect the election events, and Iowa was won it could have changed trajectory. Likely different outcome? No. But we’ll never know
“PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN USA USA USA!”
God I want to puke. The only thing we know for sure is that Assange is an asshole who wants to help Trump win. I suppose because of that fact alone no other questions need to be asked.
Bigger asshole than General John (sexy time emails) Allen?
Assange is probably way past the point of being tired of being holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The only thing he knows for sure is that with HRC he’ll remain there. (Would Cox/Roosevelt have commuted Debs’ sentence?)
Could HRC have made an effective comeback if she’d come up short in IA and without changing the actual NH results? Would that have increased or decreased her NV turnout? Would the media have been more tuned into Reid and his buddies shenanigans in the casino caucuses? I’ll probably never shake the sense the votes in Boston were — cough cough — not completely on the up and up. (And Chicago — pfft.)
If she had lost both Iowa and NH … Well, better candidates’ campaigns died on those two rocks.
It’s only in recent times that NH has become relevant and IA more recently (in part because its caucus is a much more recent construction than the NH primary), excluding the ’76 anomaly. In ’92 “uncommitted” received over four times as many of the proportional delegates than WJC did. He carried on from third at 2.8% and second from 24.9% in NH as the IA caucus winner, Harkin, dropped to 4th. Since then and until this year, IA and NH were defining.
Military dot com — Arms Stolen from Weapons Room on US Military Base in Stuttgart
Honestly thought that in non-combat zone the US military had perfected securing the bases. Perhaps they’ve been outsourcing some of those duties.
Likely an inside job.
Is “inside” as easy to determine as it once was?
This isn’t a good argument for Democrats to be making or discussion.
We don’t really want to be talking about e-mail security.
It is not an issue of strength for Hillary.
Wow!!!
There’s the understatement of the week, to say the very least.
Good luck, fladem…you’re working on a flawed campaign for a flawed candidate. Every time you manage to put out a fire there’s gonna be another one right around the news cycle corner.
Bet on it.
Three month’s worth.
Bet on that as well.
Meanwhile, Trump established early in the game…late January…that he is bulletproof as far as his supporters are concerned.
Yup.
Meanwhile, HRC loses people every time they hear her voice.
Every time they see the shell of Bill Clinton.
Every time they take a look at the inner workings of the DNC.
Every time she coughs, really.
You’ve got your work cut out for you.
The labors of Sisyphus, actually.
Have fun…
AG
Suspect that fladem’s comment was tongue-in-cheek. But I could be wrong as flipping to “I’m with her” is an odd phenomenon.
Coulda been…didn’t read that way, though. “Anybody but Trump” is epidemic now. Perhaps for good reason. We shall see.
AG
Not sufficiently hyperbolic to be clear to those unfamiliar with fladem. And too “flat” for those who are to conclude one way or the other in this specific election cycle.
I read it that way too.
Thought so too, but I’m not sure. The herd is starting to stampede.
Irony is dead.
Died of overuse, overexertion, and exhaustion.
Computerphobia is a major block to computer security. See the Quinn Norton article I posted.
Someone is playing geopolitics within electoral politics. Finding out who would be very clarifying.
You write:
Electoral politics is geopolitics in a multinational, globalist system, Tarheel. it’s just about which “nations” comprise which geopolitical subdivisions in which party.
HRC + the Dems? Pretty much NATO w/a heaping serving of Israel.
The mainstream, anti-Trump RatPubs?
Same same.
Trump?
I think he’s trying to keep his options more open.
The art of the deal and all that…he’d make a deal w/the devil if he thought it suited his purposes.
He may have already done so.
Bet on it.
Watch.
AG
Ay Marie!!!
You write:
and
Thank you!!! You made my morning. The seriousness with which the media are treating this whole hackashack routine is overwhelmingly funny. Probably nobody really knows nuthin’, and even if anybody does we’ll be the last to know.
End of story, on with the charade.
AG
Funny, no. Frightening, yes. We are back in WMD territory and who is setting up who and for what reason? HRC needs no pretext to pivot to Russia but if she can find one, so much the better. Of course the Russians can always pacify her by hacking the voting machines in her favor.
There is a level of absurdity that the US press has been beating this dead horse for almost a week now (4-5 days) and no one in the US MSM has noticed what is going on in Incirlik. Not a word in the mainstream.
Simple question: Which is more of an interference to a foreign government, reading the DNC’s emails about slagging Sanders for not being religious enough or staging a military coup against a sitting government?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-30/turkey-surrounds-blocks-access-natos-incirlik-airbase-amid-
speculation-second-coup
Oh Bob, in real time the USG never plays any role in any coup or counter-coup. By the time authentic evidence of US complicity gets out, it’s so long after the fact that few care. And among those few, half of them are propagandists shooting down the authenticity of the evidence and/or the messengers.
If I were in a position of authority and had real concerns about a foreign government, you sure wouldn’t see me approving the sale of a US domiciled asset of any national strategic interest to the government of the foreign country. Nor would my spouse be giving a $500,000 speech in that country to members of the business and government community of that country. This has echoes of the Bush gang being buddy-buddy with Saddam and Noriega until it was in the interests of the Bush gang to turn those buddies into the reincarnation of Hitler.
In the world of propaganda it is always important to demonize someone, generally the leader of the country you plan to plunder.
Saying that Russian intelligence is reading everybody’s emails isn’t as effective as saying PUTIN did it.
Khadafy existed for decades, mostly as a source of petroleum energy for European markets. The evidence for him being the ultimate author of Pan Am 103 seemed like a last minute substitution for the PLFP-GC cell in Frankfort. Why? The PLFP-GC cell was linked to Monzer al Kassar, who at the time was the biggest heroin trafficker to Europe and the US. And in fact had a heroin courier on the plane. Al Kassar also dealt in weapons and had been a major player in Iran-contra. And five of the people who died on Pan Am 103 were a team of CIA and DIA agents coming back from Beruit without permission from their superiors in Langley. But when Khadafy announced an all-African currency to be backed by what was claimed to have been huge supply of gold western countries were alarmed enough to unleash hell on him. “We came, we saw, he died.”
It’s one thing to be a monster. It’s quite another thing to be a monster working against your interests.
As we know, the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq were created with the help of fascist/European/US intelligence. The Assad family was just fine for western interests as long as a cut of the heroin trade was going to them. There was an interesting report from a then young Representative Schumer about the Syrian-al Kassar which was then completely ignored. When the US carried on the Extraordinary Rendition program they used the Assad family’s practiced skills for one of their secret locations, or so said The New Yorker.
And we all know how Saddam Hussein provided a cordon sanitaire against Iran, to include the use of poison gas (paid for by the US and supplied by a West German firm). Everything was ducky until something changed in Washington. April Glaspie said the US was disinterested in Kuwait. And then his long slow slide. The demonization. Mano a mano.
People sit around and hear the propaganda about the head of state of state whose country we want to remove. They aren’t told that think tanks have had designs on a greater control of the natural resources. They are told about how awful that leader is.
The former president of Ukraine, who was ousted by the fascist coup that the US orchestrated in 2014, became a terrible man precisely because that’s what the propaganda dictated. The same propagandists in the NY Times who had described Saddam’s WMD industry (minus Judith Miller) are now studiously ignoring soldiers wearing swastikas on their helmets and marching under the Wolf’s Hook. They ignore the petty leaders in Kiev who give speeches about the Russian-Jewish world conspiracy to Ukrainians.
So what does it mean when NPR talks in hushed tones about Putin’s designs on Europe? It means that we are being prepared for the next war. The only problem is that Saddam didn’t have WMDs. Russia does. And NATO has marched up to Russia’s border now. What’s next? Another color revolution in Armenia? An overthrow in one of those oil-rich former Soviet republics?
Trump’s mostly live and let live philosophy towards Russia is precisely the thing that irritates the permanent government. They’re ready to make the big move.
Strap in, folks. The ride is about to get bumpy.
Not sure who is ignoring what. It has been no secret that there are far-right, anti-Semitic elements among Ukrainian nationalists. They’re disgusting. Percentage of all ethnic Ukrainians? Dunno, probably not too big.
It’s pretty bizarre, at a minimum, that you refer to these far-right forces as “Nazis”. Let us pause and remember what actual Nazis, the German kind, did to Ukrainians: the latter were deemed Untermenschen and were systematically starved. The actual, German Nazis had of course made no secret of their plan to do that. Starvation, disease, and dispossession were the tools to make the Slavic breadbasket into German Lebensraum.
Hell, historically Ukraine had more pogroms than Russia, probably. It sure would be close.
Modern times: 38%? A new global poll by the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League has shed a little more light on attitudes to Jews in both countries. And, according to the survey, Ukraine is a more anti-Semitic place than Russia.
The poll surveyed 53,100 adults in 102 countries and territories worldwide, with a higher score indicating higher levels of anti-Semitism.
The overall ADL Global 100 Index score represents the percentage of respondents who answered “probably true” to six or more of 11 negative stereotypes about Jews. An 11-question index has been used by ADL as a key metric in measuring anti-Semitic attitudes in the United States for the last 50 years.
http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-more-anti-semitic-than-russia/25384493.html
Nazi is what they call themselves, no? Ukrainian nationalist were pro-Axis in WWII, no? (Actually, Ukrainians worked with both sides, but a big contingent was pro-Nazi.)
Thank you. It’s exhausting trying to correct simplified interpretations based on selective historical information.
Read this: https:/www.thenation.com/article/seven-decades-nazi-collaboration-americas-dirty-little-ukraine-sec
ret
I’ve always found it curious the distinction between Nazis and neo-Nazis. Nazism is not only a corporatist economic philosophy, it’s also a religious cult which believes that there is a purity of race as interpreted wherever Nazism gets a toehold.
Granted, almost all Nazis who fought and plotted with Hitler in WWII are dead. But many Nazis were brought to the US after the war by the CIA, and many of their children are Nazi-like.
For example, Hans von Spakovsky, who was in charge of voting rights in Dubya’s Justice Department, has an interesting family history. His parents, German and White Russian, came to the US in 1950 “to escape the Nazis”. If you’re familiar with history, you know that WWII ended in 1945, so that would make for pretty slow reaction time, leaving your country five years after the people you “feared” were out of power. Where did the US government settle him? In Huntsville, Alabama, where the US relocated 118 Nazi rocket scientists after the war. You would think someone trying to escape the Nazis wouldn’t want to move to a town filled with Nazi rocket scientists. Just a guess.
So Hans grew up to fight against the rights of minorities to vote. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Stieg Larsson spent much of his career on identifying and exposing the neo-nazis that are in Sweden’s institutions, government and private sector. I don’t think he was a paranoid fantasist on this.
Yet we are assured that the Russians did not get into her private e-mail server with all that classified data.
BTW, there are many very good software engineers in China. Pakistan (ISI, Al-Queda) produces many software engineers that are located right here in the USA. I won;t vouch for how good there are since I never met one who was more than mediocre, but there must be someone very talented among those tens (hundreds?) of thousands. Who did read those e-mails about Libya, ISIS, et al?
Move along. Nothing to see here. Must have been Russians but they only got into the DNC, not the private State server.
Let’s get some perspective on this. First, the volume of classified material on HRC’s server was unlikely to have been large. Migrating material from the dedicated secured communication system to emails isn’t an easy task. Her most sensitive official communications were conducted in person or voice telecommunications. The latter was reason why a smartphone isn’t a good option for a senior official.
Not saying that there wasn’t more classified material on her server before the scrub and delete operations, but extremely unlikely that we’ll ever know. I’m sure many today wish they’d thought to look for and then break in and steal whatever was on HRC’s server. If nobody did, then it wasn’t a technological shortcoming but a conceptual one. Who knew that a SoS would do something so objectively stupid? Who knew that DNC employees would record in emails hints as to what they were doing on the QT?
A couple of decades ago, worked with a small company client that built dedicated industrial type automated systems. So small that it was surprising that they kept a few engineers in China on a contingency status. As explained to me, the on-going monthly cost was so low that it more than paid for itself if they were needed for a project.
On computers/systems ordinary Americans seem to be living back in the dark ages. When computers were on the list of what US companies couldn’t sell to those on the official USG enemies list and on tech the US was really number one. That ship sailed long ago.
The Big Three operating systems: Windows, O/S X, and Linux, are insecure by design since the designers wanted to be able to download programs off the net, load them into program memory, and run them. We learned back in the BBS days (late 70s, for you children 🙂 opening program memory to the outside ensured your system could be hacked and if it could be, it would be.
Manu Raju tweet:
Another lie to cover the lie to cover-up her communications. When last year that I was getting echoes of Nixon in Clinton’s candidacy, I didn’t know how true it was.