Smells fishy - Part 2

It's not just a couple of airlines.

Airlines, financial institutions and other companies around the world on Thursday reported that they were experiencing technical difficulties due to a brief series of internet outages.

The Associated Press reported that many of the outages were found in Australia as individuals attempted to make business transactions and book flights.

Among the impacted companies were U.S.-based United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, which has already been facing days-long technical issues resulting in flight delays and cancellations.

[...]

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange said in a tweet that it was “experiencing technical difficulties” and was “looking into the matter,” before adding in a follow-up post minutes later that its websites were “now functioning normally.”

[...]

Australia Post, the country’s postal service, said that an “external outage” was “impacting a number of our services,” adding in another tweet an hour later that while “most of our services are coming back online, we are continuing to monitor and investigate.”

[...]

The reported outages come just over a week after a global internet outage believed to have been triggered by a problem with software at web services company Fastly temporarily caused several websites to go offline, including The New York Times, Bloomberg News, the Financial Times and the Guardian.

Nearly 21,000 Reddit users also said they were experiencing issues with the platform at the time, and the British government's website was also experiencing loading problems.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Smells fishy

Three U.S. airlines were hit with technical issues on Monday that caused flight delays and hampered ticket purchases.

Southwest Airlines saw the biggest problems when its weather data provider went down, making it unsafe for planes to fly, CNN reported.

"While the vendor worked to restore connectivity, we implemented a ground stop to protect the safety of our crews and customers," Southwest said in a statement.

Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines also saw issues affecting booking and apps, but flights were not delayed.

  The Hill

UPDATE 6/17:

Not just airlines.

Great accomplishments in Paris

The United States and Russia are not among 50 countries that have signed a pledge to fight cybercrimes, including interference in elections, the Associated Press reported.

China is also not among the countries that have signed the document pledging to collaborate to prevent cybercrimes. The declaration was published Monday and is supported by European countries as well as tech companies Facebook, Google and Microsoft, according to the AP.

  The Hill

Casting our lot with Russia and China.  Good move, autocrat.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cyberwars

Coincidence?

That does seem a bit odd.

The sentencing of alleged Russian hacker Vladimir Drinkman, who pleaded guilty to his role in the largest data hack scheme ever prosecuted in the United States, has been once again rescheduled indefinitely, a spokesperson for the US District Court of New Jersey told Sputnik.

[...]

The case has been rescheduled at least six times in the past and was due to be heard on Thursday. The court's spokesperson told Sputnik on Wednesday that further delays are possible.

  Sputnik

This was a case that was held in September of 2015. I can't find any discussion of why this is being handled this way. Preet Bharara was in charge of the case. Maybe he'll talk about it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear and the Dutch

A new report has come out in the Dutch news about how the Dutch intel services were the first to detect and report Russian hacking into US systems, including the White House itself.

In the summer of 2014, the Joint Sigint Cyber Unit (JSCU) was launched, a joint unit of AIVD and MIVD, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service. Based in the Dutch city of Zoetermeer, it focuses on, among other things, obtaining intelligence through cyber operations. That same summer, the unit received a tip about a group of Russian hackers based at a university complex in Moscow. An AIVD hacking team, operating under the JSCU flag, subsequently succeeded in penetrating the internal Russian computer network. Not only did the AIVD gain access the computer network, it also hacked the security camera in the corridor.

[...]

This allowed them to see exactly who entered the hacking room. Information about these individuals was shared with the US intelligence services. Dutch intelligence services consider Cozy Bear an extension of the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, which is firmly controlled by President Putin.

[...]

After a few months, in November 2014, the Dutch watched as the Russian hackers penetrated the computer network of the State Department. After being alerted to this by the Dutch intelligence chiefs, it took the Americans over 24 hours to avert the Russian attack, after a digital clash.

[...]

In the autumn of 2014, the Russians also gained access to the non-classified computer network of the White House. This allowed them to see confidential memos and non-public information about the itinerary of President Obama, and to at least part of President Obama's email correspondence. These hacks, too, were exposed by the Dutch intelligence services, which subsequently notified the Americans.

[...]

In April 2016, Fancy Bear accessed the Washington servers of the Democrats; Cozy Bear had done so as early as the summer of 2015. Once more, the group was caught red-handed by the Dutch, who again alerted their U.S. counterparts.

It is not clear why the hacks at the DNC could continue for so long despite the Dutch warnings.Last year, The New York Times reported that for months, the DNC had not taken the FBI warnings seriously. Eventually, cybersecurity company Crowdstrike, which was investigating the matter on behalf of the Democratic Party, also concluded that Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear were jointly responsible for the hacks.

  NOS

And, of course, there was a huge scandal, and the 2016 election went tits up. I, along with other smarter folk, were not convinced by the reports at the time, because there was so much ambiguous information coming out in panicked tones. None of them indicated that the Dutch had been surveilling these Russian groups for two years already. One of the problems with having any trust in our intelligence and government pronouncements is the secrecy that they are either prevented from revealing because of actual national security (ours or allies) and their propensity to be secretive for the sake of being secretive.

Last Sunday on Dutch television programme College Tour, Rob Bertholee, head of AIVD, said that he had no doubt that the Kremlin was directly responsible for the Russian cyber campaign against U.S. government agencies. Bertholee as well as Pieter Bindt, who was heading MIVD at the time, personally discussed the DNC matter with James Clapper.

[...]

As of now, the AIVD hackers do not seem to have access to Cozy Bear any longer. Sources suggest that the openness of US intelligence sources, who in 2017 praised the help of a Western ally in news stories, may have ruined their operation.

Nice going, guys.

In the television programme College Tour, this month, AIVD director Bertholee stated that he is extra careful when it comes to sharing intelligence with the U.S., now that Donald Trump is President.

Understandable. He offered the Russian ambassador and the Foreign Minister top secret information that an intel ally had US counterparts about an IS threat, and told him where, in effect revealing which ally it was. And he leaked info about where we had submarines to Duterte.  Clueless fool.  We haven't heard any stories of this kind of blunder for months.  They may have quit giving him intel reports.  If they're smart, they did.

Deeper and Deeper

Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s digital operation – overseen by Jared Kushner – helped guide Russia’s sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.

[...]

By Election Day, an automated Kremlin cyberattack of unprecedented scale and sophistication had delivered critical and phony news [including a story in the final days of the campaign accusing her of running a pedophile ring at a Washington pizzeria] about the Democratic presidential nominee to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of millions of voters, many in swing states, even in key precincts.

[...]

Schiff said he wants the House panel to determine whether Trump aides helped Russia time its cyberattacks or target certain voters and whether there was “any exchange of information, any financial support funneled to organizations that were doing this kind of work.”

  McClatchy

[Kushner's] real estate finances and December meetings with Russia’s ambassador and the head of a sanctioned, state-controlled bank are also being examined.

[...]

Mike Carpenter, who in January left a senior Pentagon post where he worked on Russia matters, also has suspicions about collaboration between the campaign and Russia’s cyber operatives.

“There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia’s online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation,” he said, without naming any American suspects.

[...]

The Russians targeted women and African-Americans in two of the three decisive states, Wisconsin and Michigan, “where the Democrats were too brain dead to realize those states were even in play,” [Senate Intel co-chair Mark] Warner said.

[...]

It started even before Trump locked up the nomination. Throughout the Republican primary elections in early 2016, Russia sent armies of bots carrying pro-Trump messages and deployed human “trolls” to comment in his favor on Internet stories and in social media, former FBI special agent Clint Watts told Congress weeks ago.

Watts, now a cybersecurity specialist with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said the targets included former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

[...]

Kushner’s pivotal role in the Trump cyber effort was underscored by his hiring in 2015 of Brad Parscale, a Texas-based digital guru who previously had done work for the Trump Organization, said two GOP operatives familiar with the campaign.

Parscale’s company raked in about $90 million for work targeting many states with paid advertisements, social media messages and other cyber tools.

[...]

CNN quoted him last month as dismissing suggestions that Russian-directed online bots would have been effective in swinging votes to Trump. He said the campaign did not find Twitter -- where those bots mainly functioned – to be an effective tool.

  McClatchy

He's joking, right? Over and over and over Trump has railed about how they're not going to get him off Twitter because that's how he communicates with his base and talks directly to "the people."

All of the sources [that] spoke on condition of anonymity [did so] because the investigation, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is confidential.

And the sources don't give a shit, do they?

I thought the Mueller investigation would have a tighter lid.

Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, who was recently hired to be Kushner’s chief defense counsel and has “a reputation as a guy you hire if you're going to do battle with the government,” according to one former federal prosecutor, declined to comment on the Russia inquiries facing Kushner.

More hints that Jared is going solo. And may well be informing on the others even as we speak.

If it comes down to choosing between daddy and her husband, which way will Ivanka go?

UPDATE 7/16:

Parscale is questioned and says he's "unaware of any Russian involvement."   It's becoming clear that the best position you can take in this affair is ignorance.  And hope no one has evidence otherwise.

The National Security Agency Is Obviously Not Secure

Beyond Edward Snowden's stolen documents...

Seven cyber exploits purportedly stolen from the US National Security Agency (NSA) have been identified in 'EternalRocks', a new type of malware detected by a Croatian tech security advisor.

Similar to the WannaCry malware which struck hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide this month, EternalRocks apparently draws on NSA-identified network exploits EternalBlue, EternalChampion, EternalRoman, and EternalSynergy.

[...]

The worm utilizes DoublePulsar, Architouch and SMBtouch, a series of tools released in an apparent NSA leak by hacking group ShadowBrokers.

  RT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Will the Democrats Say?

The Justice Department is set to announce Wednesday the indictments of two Russian spies and two criminal hackers in connection with the heist of 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014, marking the first U.S. criminal cyber charges ever against Russian government officials.

  WaPo

Since they've been fixated on what they deem a Trump-Putin love affair, can't wait to see how they spin this.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About Rudy

Giuliani does head a consulting firm in New York called Giuliani Partners that supposedly focuses on cybersecurity, but Vice’s Motherboard reported yesterday, it’s tough to tell what they actually do, and it’s even tougher to tell what Giuliani does for them, besides being the face of the operation while saying outrageous things on television.

As Motherboard’s Jason Koebler and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai wrote, “Unlike many other cybersecurity firms, Giuliani Partners does not publish white papers about malware and large-scale hacks, or push for increased adoption of encryption, which would enhance cybersecurity across the board. In fact, it doesn’t talk much about cybersecurity at all, instead choosing to focus on its more traditional anti-crime consulting work.”

  Guardian

This made me wonder if Giuliani Partners is like Dubya's Crawford Ranch: created in preparation for a presidential administration. So, I thought I'd have a look at its website:



OK. Not encouraging. But maybe the website is having issues since Rudi was named as chief of cybersecurity for the Trump administration. Or maybe this is the problem:

Just after the Trump team’s announcement, security experts took a look at Giuliani Partner’s website and started mercilessly mocking it on Twitter for glaring vulnerabilities and its own lax cybersecurity practices that makes it looks more like a website built in the mid 1990s than a supposedly respected cybersecurity firm would present the public today.

Here's Wikipedia's summary:

And yet, that doesn't tell me anything about its cybersecurity services.

BlackBerry has been selected by Giuliani Partners to support cyber security consulting services to the government and to private firms. The recently released BlackBerry Secure platform will provide the underlying software for the firm’s cyber security consulting product.

The partnership was announced at the CES 2017 conference in Las Vegas.

  

I see. Crawford Ranch.

Rudy Giuliani, chairman and CEO of Giuliani Partners, believes that the partnership between his consulting firm and BlackBerry will ‘enable corporations to set a new standard for being cyber secure.’

[...]

Giuliani Partners will use BlackBerry Secure software to analyze existing infrastructure, identify vulnerabilities, and devise solutions to make cyber systems more secure. For its part, BlackBerry will achieve another step in the effort to reinvent itself as a provider of cyber security solutions, after last year’s announcement that the company would begin outsourcing production of its signature mobile phones.

BlackBerry’s foray into the cyber security arena is bolstered by last year’s acquisition of UK security firm Encription, which helped the company to change focus from a phone-based past to a more services-oriented future.

[...]

Giuliani was the keynote speaker at last July’s BlackBerry Security Summit. At the time, he said his interest in cyber security stemmed from his strong feelings about fighting crime and identity theft.

“Blackberry is on the cutting edge of thwarting crime,” he said. “I’m very proud to be working with them.”

And now I can get that appointment.

It does seem as though his company had some cybersecurity dealings in the early 2000s.

Marketwatch interview does little to show off Giuliani’s understanding of cybersecurity issues, and more to make him seems like a greedy bastard looking to line his own pockets.

MW: So Giuliani Partners began penetration-testing companies — attacking from the outside to find vulnerabilities hackers may exploit — back in 2003?

RG: 2004, 2005 by the time we got started.

MW: How many clients did you have back then?

RG: Maybe 30.

MW: Did you find that anyone cared about cybersecurity back then?

RG: These were all friends of mine, friends of his. They’d give me a nice meeting and they’d look at me, and they’d look at the bill. And the bill was high, but it wasn’t high for them — $10 million, $20 million, something like that. It wasn’t like the kind of money they’re spending now. (laughs)

So, because Giuliani made a bunch of money selling expensive cybersecurity services to his friends in the early 2000s—when the state of cybersecurity was completely different as it is today— he thinks he would be well equipped to tackle the multiple facets of America’s cybersecurity issue.

  Gizmodo

[H]iring people with little or no bona fide security experience to head up cybersecurity practices in government is sadly a tried and true pastime in Washington.

  Guardian

Isn't that the truth.

[I]t was only after the DNC’s leaked emails started being published in the summer that the committee announced it would create a Cybersecurity Advisory Board to “ensure that the DNC’s cybersecurity capabilities are best-in-class”.

As technologist Chris Soghoian asked at the time, “Will the DNC cyber board have experienced cybersecurity pros or just ex senior intelligence officials & politicians?” Sure enough, a day later when the lineup was announced, every person on it was either a lawyer or ex-government official – not an engineer or computer scientist among them.

Congress itself suffers from the same problem. While there are four members of the House with a computer science degree, none of them have been assigned to the cybersecurity subcommittee by their parties’ leadership.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Stormy This Morning

via GIPHY

Apparently, #PEEOTUS is trending on Twitter.

UPDATE: Touché

More

via GIPHY

'BuzzFeed Runs Unverifiable Trump-Russia Claims' #FakeNews https://t.co/d6daCFZHNh

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

Intel War on Trump

deep state in movies: CIA assassin garrotes the president
deep state IRL: old memo about presidential piss party winds up on buzzfeed

— Max Read (@max_read) January 11, 2017

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another Denial

A Trump lawyer named in the report, Michael Cohen, called ridiculous and false the assertion that a relative of his had a dacha near Putin's. Another assertion in the documents given to the FBI -- that Cohen supposedly met with the Russians in Prague last August -- is also false, he said. “I’ve never been in Prague in my life,” said the lawyer, Michael Cohen.

  ABC

UPDATE:

This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that “the FBI has found no evidence that [Cohen] traveled to the Czech Republic.”

  Glenn Greenwald

Aaaaaand...There It Is

via GIPHY

"Evidence" Leaked

Some documents from July through December, which are apparently the source of the intel regarding Russia hacking the DNC, have been published by Buzzfeed. They also include some fun stuff regarding Trump, that whether true or not, should provide us with a new Tweetstorm.

A dossier, compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, alleges Russia has compromising information on Trump. The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.
  Buzzfeed

It's like those TV prescription drug commercials. They tell you about it and then spend the last half telling you all the horrible things that could go wrong. No matter, though, because you've stopped listening after you heard it would cure your imagined ailment.

A dossier making explosive — but unverified — allegations that the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” President-elect Donald Trump for years and gained compromising information about him has been circulating among elected officials, intelligence agents, and journalists for weeks.

Of course it has. The Hillary camp just cannot get over the fact that she lost.

The dossier, which is a collection of memos written over a period of months, includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians.

"Potentially unverifible." And the jury will disregard what was just said. The best part is going to be the public speculation and the responding Inflatable Trump Rooster tweetstorms.  Also: there are no "graphic claims of sexual acts."  There are hints and one case of paid pissing.

CNN reported Tuesday that a two-page synopsis of the report was given to President Barack Obama and Trump.

Is that odd? Well, they can both read the whole thing now.  And so can you.

Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.

The document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent. It is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors. The report misspells the name of one company, “Alpha Group,” throughout. It is Alfa Group.

As errors go, does that really matter?

The report says the settlement of Barvikha, outside Moscow, is “reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates.” It is not reserved for anyone, and it is also populated by the very wealthy.

Okay. It was prepared by a crap (and former) intelligence agent. But, it doesn't matter. It's been published. And if it were aimed at anybody other than Donald Trump, that might make a difference. But since it's about him, it's just more of the same we got during the last months of the campaign, so that even if it's true, it's not going to change anything.

The documents have circulated for months and acquired a kind of legendary status among journalists, lawmakers, and intelligence officials who have seen them.

Months? So how come they didn't get spilled before the election?

The documents are included at this link if you care to read them.

They include the claim that Putin has been "cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least 5 years." And that "his conduct in Moscow has included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB."

One of his alleged "perverse" acts was to hire the Ritz Carlton presidential suite where he knew Pres and Mrs Obama had stayed on a trip to Russia and hired "a number of" Russian prostitutes to "perform a 'golden showers' show in front of him." Can't wait for the Tweets on that one. This was supposedly in 2013. If it actually happened, it sounds to me like he paid some hookers to pee on the bed where Obama slept. That actually sounds like something he would do. Would he really be too stupid to realize that the Russians bug all the hotels where foreign dignitaries might stay? More likely in 2013 he didn't care.

Another document claims that in St. Petersburg, Trump "paid bribes and engaged in" unspecified "sexual activities" but that the witnesses were "silenced" and evidence was "hard to obtain."  Not suspicious at all.  It's not that I don't think the Inflatable Trump Rooster is capable of paying for "sexual activities" (try not to picture it), but how ridiculous is that vague claim? He did it but we don't have evidence.  It also says he participated in sex parties in St. Petersburg.  Participated as in "watched"?  Same problem regarding witnesses and evidence.  Maybe he did, but there's no evidence.  And who the hell in this country (besides Hillary's supporters who can't believe they lost) gives a shit?  Or even a piss?  The only thing continuing to beat this dead horse does is create a bigger cushion of protection against anything helpful being done about Trump.  Unless you count the entertainment value of reading the Tweetstorms it provokes.

One document says that the Russians offered him "various lucrative real estate" deals but "for reasons unknown" he didn't take them up on any of them. What are we supposed to draw from that?  It claims he - or rather "his team", managed by Paul Manafort - was complicit in receiving intel from the Russians on Hillary Clinton and offering in exchange information on Russian oligarchs in the US.

The complaint about all the "perversions" seems to be that the Russians could blackmail him with the information. Really? Unless he had some little boys in bed with him, I'm pretty sure there's nothing he'd be afraid to admit to. If crude and even illegal behavior of a sexual nature were a problem for Trump, he would not be president.

Still, I'm looking forward to the tweets.

And, oh yes, the documents also include the claim that the Russians were indeed behind the leak of DNC emails to Wikileaks, with the "full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team," as well as "agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party structure itself."

So, there's your evidence.  Still zip.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  It begins.

via GIPHY

FURTHER UPDATE 1/11: Glenn Greenwald lays out the story of the documents, how they were created and disbersed, why they are either worse than useless - they're unethical and dangerous - or they've laid bare the nature of the attacks on Trump with these sorts of Russia-linked bullshit, and probably both.

YET FURTHER UPDATE:

NBC News: Trump was NOT briefed on the addendum—& NO documents were handed to Trump team, sr. US intel official says https://t.co/asdPgm3Hx1 pic.twitter.com/o5xTIihefZ

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) January 11, 2017

Russia Did It - Part ad Nauseum

[The continuing drumming of the idea that Russia stole the election from Hillary Clinton is] fueled even further by the belief among U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia wanted to help Donald Trump capture the presidency. Yet neither country is a stranger when it comes to directly trying to sway the election of other nations. In fact, the U.S. has a long and stunning history of attempting to influence foreign presidential elections, recent research by political scientist Dov Levin shows.

Levin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie-Mellon University, found that the U.S. attempted to influence the elections of foreign countries as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000. Often covert in their execution, these efforts included everything from CIA operatives running successful presidential campaigns in the Philippines during the 1950s to leaking damaging information on Marxist Sandanistas in order to sway Nicaraguan voters in 1990. All told, the U.S. allegedly targeted the elections of 45 nations across the globe during this period, Levin’s research shows. In the case of some countries, such as Italy and Japan, the U.S. attempted to intervene in four or more separate elections.

Levin’s figures do not include military coups or regime change attempts following the election of a candidate the U.S. opposed, such as when the CIA helped overthrow Mohammad Mosaddeq, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, in 1953. He defines an electoral intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.” According to Levin’s research, that includes: peddling misinformation or propaganda; creating campaign material for preferred candidates or parties; providing or withdrawing foreign aid, and; making public announcements that threaten or favor certain candidates. Often, it also includes the U.S. covertly delivering large sums of cash, as was the case in elections in Japan, Lebanon, Italy, and other countries.

  Vocativ

And here's Glenn Greenwald talking about the affair, if you care to have more.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Report - Part Whatever

The US would probably have been better off without that ridiculous report. Or they should have published it under the banner of the new Ministry of Truth.

The New York Times called the document “a damning and surprisingly detailed account of Russia’s efforts to undermine the American electoral system.” The Washington Post wrote that it’s a “remarkably blunt assessment” and “an extraordinary postmortem of a Russian assault on a pillar of American democracy.” According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. intelligence agencies have supplied the public with “surprisingly detailed findings.”

These assessments by three of America’s most influential newspapers are themselves surprising and remarkable, in light of the fact that the U.S. intelligence community revealed nothing new on Friday, repeating conclusions already publicized by the White House and officials like U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper.

[...]

The most remarkable thing about the government’s assessment released on Friday is that more than a quarter of the report is merely an annex dedicated to the colossal significance of the RT (Russia Today) television network.

[...]

Thanks to the C.I.A., F.B.I., and N.S.A., Russia Today can count on continued, likely expanded, Kremlin funding.

[...]

[T]he report [...] stresses that Dmitry Kiselyov, the Kremlin’s so-called “chief propagandist,” has treated Donald Trump sympathetically on his television show, while disparaging the U.S. democratic process. Kiselyov’s broadcasts — which air in Russian, for domestic viewers — are cited as an example of “messaging to Russian audiences” that presumably reveals the Kremlin’s preferences and intentions.

  Kevin Rothrock

I have to laugh every time some prominent idiot says something to this effect. Is that supposed to be an insult? Another country doesn't have America's best interests at heart? Another country promotes its own self interests? Then they're obviously evil.

The U.S. intelligence community says the Kremlin’s influence campaign was “multifaceted,” which is why the report also discusses the role played by Russian “Internet trolls,” focusing on the Internet Research Agency based in St. Petersburg.

[...]

In 2016, the Internet Research Agency’s two biggest feats were getting attacked by Molotov cocktails in October by Ukrainian activists, and being falsely accused by The Washington Post of masterminding the “#TrumpWon” post-debate Twitter hashtag in September.

[...]

The premise of this thinking is that Evgeny Prigozhin, the supposed owner of the factory, is taking cues from Vladimir Putin, given their long personal history and Prigozhin’s close business ties with the Russian state. Prigozhin is infamous, however, for diverting bits of his massive wealth to futile projects to disrupt and infiltrate the Russian opposition. He clearly believes that this kind of work keeps him in the good graces of the Kremlin, but attributing his efforts to direct orders from Putin is a stretch.

[...]

By far a more disturbing aspect of the declassified report, however, is that the U.S. intelligence community seems to accept RT’s own self-aggrandizing assessment of its global influence. The assessment even cites an unpublished Nielsen study supposedly claiming that RT rapidly expanded its audience in several American cities.

Also, when reviewing RT’s popularity on YouTube, the report completely ignores critics who say it owes its success to buying and redistributing licensed content about largely apolitical news events.

Although I regularly scan the RT website, I don't watch the RT channel. But it does carry programs by such iconic American TV personalities as Larry King. I wonder - and maybe I'm going out on a limb here - if its increased popularity could be because more Americans are finding its programming entertaining, or - and this is way out there - more Americans are beginning to realize what a load of crap American TV propaganda is.

Go ahead and peek at RT’s YouTube channel right now; the most popular videos are disaster footage — crashing meteorites, “golden voice” homeless men, and earthquakes.

So, maybe they just don't get enough charge from the bazillions of channels of vicarious thrills published by USG corporate "news" and individual YouTubers.

Or, hey, maybe they're becoming more politically aware and would like to know what other countries are saying.  I know that's a stretch, but wouldn't it be awesome?

After so many leaks and rumors, it is a relief finally to have the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment in writing. Now we know what the accusations are, and we have a vague idea about why Washington believes what it does.

Unfortunately, America’s case against the Kremlin suffers from some major flaws that should be acknowledged, even by individuals who argue reasonably that the Russian government likely used hackers to attack and undermine democratic institutions in the U.S.

I don't know why they'd waste precious funding. We do a good job of that ourselves.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway. UPDATE:

best part of DNI report: "alleged wall street greed" @JordanFreiman pic.twitter.com/9h3elJ9JdB

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) January 7, 2017

Truth in Journalism

NY Times says the US intelligence report on Russia is "damning and surprisingly detailed," then adds that it contains no actual evidence pic.twitter.com/qpncWboVEV

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 7, 2017

CIA Names Russians

The CIA has identified Russian officials who fed material hacked from the Democratic National Committee and party leaders to WikiLeaks at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin through third parties, according to a new U.S. intelligence report, senior U.S. officials said on Thursday.

  Reuters

So stop clamoring for evidence now.

The intelligence assessment was presented to President Barack Obama on Thursday and will be briefed to Trump on Friday.

That'll make for some fun tweets.

In some cases, one official said, the material followed what was called “a circuitous route” from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, to WikiLeaks in an apparent attempt to make the origins of the material harder to trace, a common practice used by all intelligence agencies, including U.S. ones.

These handoffs, the officials said, enabled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to say the Russian government or state agencies were not the source of the material published on his website.

[...]

Not all 17 intelligence agencies participated in preparing the assessment. An unclassified version of the report is expected to be released on Friday morning, two officials said.

[...]

One such example, the officials said, was that intercepted messages and conversations among senior Russian officials in Putin’s inner circle indicated they were aware of the hacking campaign and celebrated Trump’s election as a victorious end to the campaign.

[...]

"People who knew what this was about were celebrating a victory over the United States,” said one official.

Well, that satisfies me. (Like all those Arabs that Trump saw celebrating the 9/11 attack.) No question they were involved.

Another example of inferential evidence, the officials said, was that as time passed and the early leaks attracted media attention that undermined or eclipsed Clinton’s campaign, the Russians increasingly focused their hacking “almost exclusively” on Democratic rather than Republican targets.

Inferential evidence. How's that work in court?

Has someone checked all the Republican possible targets?

There was also strong resemblance -- including the use of the same computer malware -- the Russians have used against targets in Europe and the marriage of traditional espionage tactics used by Soviet and Russian intelligence such as bribery, blackmail and internet vulnerabilities, which they said Putin has devoted increasing resources and attention to exploiting.

Jesus Fucking Christ. This is the same bullshit over and over and over. It's not any more factually conclusory than it was before.

Where are the names of these Russian officials who supposedly fed the material to Wikileaks? That must be classified information. Presumably, Trump will get it. We'll be watching for the tweets.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.