Snowden speculates leak of NSA spying tools is tied to Russian DNC hack

Former NSA security scientist concurs "Equation Group" expose connected to DNC leak.

Read the whole story

 

[SlimSam]

jgee43[/url]":2xzfexec]I know that Snowden is something of a cult hero in privacy and security circles these days, but why do we care what Snowden thinks? I'm much more inclined to believe Snowden because of Aitel, not the other way around.

In fact, if it were just Snowden talking, I'd take the opinion of the average Ars poster as about the same value as his. Agree or disagree with his status as an American hero or a traitor (or whatever in between), Snowden's actual security expertise isn't something that would make me stand up and say, "Whoa, I'd better pay attention to this."

I asked myself your question and decided the distinction is that his perspective is entirely unique. Not like a typical Ars poster. Not like any other post-NSA contractor.

Should this mean I trust him more? Nope. However, I consider his insights far more interesting than my own.

 

[keithzg]

SlimSam[/url]":9a2sxznk]

jgee43[/url]":9a2sxznk]I know that Snowden is something of a cult hero in privacy and security circles these days, but why do we care what Snowden thinks? I'm much more inclined to believe Snowden because of Aitel, not the other way around.

In fact, if it were just Snowden talking, I'd take the opinion of the average Ars poster as about the same value as his. Agree or disagree with his status as an American hero or a traitor (or whatever in between), Snowden's actual security expertise isn't something that would make me stand up and say, "Whoa, I'd better pay attention to this."

I asked myself your question and decided the distinction is that his perspective is entirely unique. Not like a typical Ars poster. Not like any other post-NSA contractor.

Should this mean I trust him more? Nope. However, I consider his insights far more interesting than my own.

He also wrote a fair bit more than Ars quotes, and it relies more on his direct experience and perspective as a former NSA contractor---and in fact there seems to be a connection directly between aspects of this hack and Snowden's disclosures! So altogether that very much warrants him weighing in.

Techdirt ( https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160 ... ools.shtml ) is where I read it all consolidated, and I'll just quote Snowden's entire tweet set below here for the Ars commentariat's convenience:

The hack of an NSA malware staging server is not unprecedented, but the publication of the take is. Here's what you need to know:

NSA traces and targets malware C2 servers in a practice called Counter Computer Network Exploitation, or CCNE. So do our rivals. NSA is often lurking undetected for years on the C2 and ORBs (proxy hops) of state hackers. This is how we follow their operations. This is how we steal their rivals' hacking tools and reverse-engineer them to create "fingerprints" to help us detect them in the future.

Here's where it gets interesting: the NSA is not made of magic. Our rivals do the same thing to us -- and occasionally succeed. Knowing this, NSA's hackers (TAO) are told not to leave their hack tools ("binaries") on the server after an op. But people get lazy.

What's new? NSA malware staging servers getting hacked by a rival is not new. A rival publicly demonstrating they have done so is.

Why did they do it? No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the DNC hack. Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility. Here's why that is significant: This leak is likely a warning that someone can prove US responsibility for any attacks that originated from this malware server. That could have significant foreign policy consequences. Particularly if any of those operations targeted US allies. Particularly if any of those operations targeted elections. Accordingly, this may be an effort to influence the calculus of decision-makers wondering how sharply to respond to the DNC hacks.

TL;DR: This leak looks like a somebody sending a message that an escalation in the attribution game could get messy fast.

Bonus: When I came forward, NSA would have migrated offensive operations to new servers as a precaution - it's cheap and easy. So? So... The undetected hacker squatting on this NSA server lost access in June 2013. Rare public data point on the positive results of the leak.

You're welcome, @NSAGov. Lots of love.

 

[AxMi-24]

Oz7[/url]"0zmkofo]

High level US political officials seemed quite upset about the DNC hacks, which no doubt resulted in a covert response, which this is then likely a counter-response to.
(...)
No team of "hackers" would want to piss off Equation Group this much. That's the kind of cojones that only come from having a nation state protecting you.

One wonders what the counter-counter-response of the equation group is going to be? Or for that matter, what was their initial covert response? It's not like the Russians have an election that can be tampered with a la the current one in the US. There seems to be an asymmetry where one side is acting covertly and the other responding overtly.

Assuming Equation group is really US govt, I'd say Go USA. Tampering with an election by hacking one political party in the way it happened is despicable.

Unlike " we paid 5 billion for a new government and we are getting it one way or the other" approach?
It's obvious to anyone with a brain that US has an exceedingly long history of meddling in other countries (everything from coups, "revolutions" to meddling with voting and using media to campaign for the desired outcome).

Only thing happening now is that more and more of that is being exposed and confirmed. Kinda like snowden, Everyone intelligent sort of expected it but it was very nice to have it confirmed and in some cases realise that tinfoil was nowhere near thick enough.

Double morals work well as long as you control the media/PR but when things start leaking about you doing the same thing that you are accusing others off it becomes a bit more problematic. Especially if it turns out that some of the meddling was in EU countries where population is getting somewhat tired of dealing with US generated shit.

 

[AnchorClanker]

From what I've read lately the DNC hack could have been as little as typing Clinton2016 as a password for every login you tried. I'm betting you'd get in with less than ten attempts. You can do whatever you want to secure your hardware and software, people will screw you up every time.

 

[BlackTaxi2d]

how do we know that snowden is actually alive? the hash and the 10 days of silence makes me believe that russia may have gotten him and control of his account

 

[Big Wang]

dc4life90[/url]":30rkj339]

Big Wang[/url]":30rkj339]

Coriolanus[/url]":30rkj339]When the Russian government seems willing to interfere with US elections and to flaunt their ability to attack US agencies - I'm really left at a loss - what is the proportional response here? Clearly, economic sanctions haven't been all that terribly effective at deterring Russian malfeasance. What's left is there? Block Russian banks from the SWIFT interbank messaging system? That kind of response can have crippling ramification to the world economy.

considering the record of American government regarding spying on foreign nationals and officials as well as interfering with internal politics of foreign countries, I'd say Russia still has a long way to go to catch up with us.

You are assuming that they have not been doing the same as the US. Knowing Putin, they probably been doing it for awhile and equal or greater measure. We cannot forget, he has absolute power in Russia.

The fact that US is on par with Russia in terms of hacking and foreign interference despite US not being an authoritarian nation actually makes it worse. The people of the United States could be argued to be complicit in this.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

So hang on. Are they implying that guccifer got NSA tools by hacking the DNC or are they implying that guccifer got DNC data by hacking the NSA?

 

[iEvolution2]

My speculation of this hack was came from our own - our anti-terrorism task force or the like. The divisions that have the accessibility to everything and blame the hack on Russia, China, North Korea. They do have Russian speaking employees working for those anti-terrorism task force, right?

 

[KULawHawk]

elhousehead[/url]":6b0m9c0b]"Speculating" - the forming of an opinion or theory without firm evidence.

"US officials have privately said" - what US official? Can you give us some names? How about a verified quote?

"Most-Likely" - seeming to be true but not factually proved.

Why perpetuate that Russian's are behind the hacks when we really don't know? The focus should be on why did the DNC allow itself to get hacked. Retail stores get hacked and the Stores are held accountable for not securing their data. The DNC gets hacked and they get a free pass (blame the Russians). Secure your network and this conversation never occurs.

Every time I see unverified conjecture that is posted as fact, I am reminded of "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious."

Unnamed sources don't equal per se speculation.

 

[Takur]

BatCrapCrazy[/url]":22fy86lr]Careful what you say Snowden, you may find yourself persona non grata in Russia...

Or maybe Snowden just want to make clear Russia's message on this one.

 

[photochemsyn]

Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

Funny facts are very funny. The DNC, by its rather stupid behavior, on several levels, set itself up for this event. I mean, if you're going to conspire, at least have the brains to do it offline, person-to-person, gosh. You know, didn't Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld refuse to commit anything to email from 2001-2006? Learn from the criminal pros, people!

I still don't believe a word of it, anyhow, but so what. Monkeys playing tricks on monkeys, that's all we have here. The whole information manipulation game - it only goes so far. I mean, look at North Korea - they have no Internet, so no hacking is possible.

Keep it up, and every intelligence agency will be faced with the autistic North Korean strategy - throw away the cell phone, throw away the email system, and everyone goes blind. What will you do then, techno-monkeys? You'll have to go back to basics, back to messy human intelligence.

 

[Velma Velvet]

"Influence the US presidential election"

You can wait in that line of lobbyists, special interests and religious kooks over there.

 

[SixDegrees]

AnchorClanker[/url]":gvyxqhpk]From what I've read lately the DNC hack could have been as little as typing Clinton2016 as a password for every login you tried. I'm betting you'd get in with less than ten attempts. You can do whatever you want to secure your hardware and software, people will screw you up every time.

Certainly true. Or, you can set the system up to force more complex passwords, and then you'll see passwords on sticky notes pasted to every monitor.

We used those RSA electronic tokens at a couple places I worked. Everyone loathed them, but the principle made for much better security that really wasn't all that painful. I heard a bug made them potentially breachable, but I still see them around occasionally.

TFA seems inevitable. We should be moving in that direction as quickly as possible.

 

[SixDegrees]

photochemsyn[/url]":t3dlg317]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

Funny facts are very funny. The DNC, by its rather stupid behavior, on several levels, set itself up for this event. I mean, if you're going to conspire, at least have the brains to do it offline, person-to-person, gosh. You know, didn't Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld refuse to commit anything to email from 2001-2006? Learn from the criminal pros, people!

I still don't believe a word of it, anyhow, but so what. Monkeys playing tricks on monkeys, that's all we have here. The whole information manipulation game - it only goes so far. I mean, look at North Korea - they have no Internet, so no hacking is possible.

Keep it up, and every intelligence agency will be faced with the autistic North Korean strategy - throw away the cell phone, throw away the email system, and everyone goes blind. What will you do then, techno-monkeys? You'll have to go back to basics, back to messy human intelligence.

Actually, NK does have Internet, although not much of the population has access. Immediately following the Sony hack, all of NK's Internet connections to the outside world were abruptly shut down by some outside party in apparent retaliation, probably just to let them know such a thing was possible.

The man in the street in NK may not have Internet access, but it's still an important part of life for the government and the elite.

 

[browncoat]

"Ze Russians did it!" is not officially confirmed by an expert, who was not hired by the Clinton campaign. The guys at Jupiter Broadcasting have talked extensively on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ5Tx9AiaeI and later podcasts...

"Ze Russians did it" serves only to distract you from the revelations in the leaks. What does it matter who did it? Everyone spies on everyone, US spies even on its allies.

 

[RunnerMan]

adamrussell[/url]":19yj0bhk]So hang on. Are they implying that guccifer got NSA tools by hacking the DNC or are they implying that guccifer got DNC data by hacking the NSA?

None of the above.

According to Snowden, Russia is threatening to expose NSA secrets (of hacking and interfering with its allies elections) if people in the US keep blaming Russia for DNC and related hacks.

 

[AnonymousEngineer]

Serious question: What are the chances that Snowden himself pilfered the code in question alongside all the other information he took with him when he fled the US?

The timeframes actually make this plausible, and this might be confirmation that despite his protestations, he's handed a whole heap of stuff to Putin on a silver platter.

 

[JustQuestions]

photochemsyn[/url]":3deutgh5]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

No shit. That's the actual part of this worth discussing.

The "whodunnit" topic is just a massive deflection.

It's insane how many people are delusional enough to explain it away to themselves. "Oh, Hillary would have won anyway, so it doesn't matter."

Really? It doesn't matter? So by this logic, if the winning team is cheating in a sports event, that's fine. They would have won anyways, right?

It is beyond fucked up that the DNC is getting away with this, with nothing more than throwing around a few scapegoats. Clearly the entire organization is completely corrupt. They don't get to decide which candidate to support. That's not on them.

Or how about the other deflection that is being used. "The members of the DNC are allowed to support candidates, they are humans too!"

No shit, they get to vote. They don't get to support candidates during their official capacity. They don't get to negotiate with media bigwigs about how to elevate Clinton and make her look as great as possible, and cut down Sanders.

 

[williamlondon]

JustQuestions[/url]":2a7oined]

photochemsyn[/url]":2a7oined]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

No shit. That's the actual part of this worth discussing.

The "whodunnit" topic is just a massive deflection.

It's insane how many people are delusional enough to explain it away to themselves. "Oh, Hillary would have won anyway, so it doesn't matter."

Really? It doesn't matter? So by this logic, if the winning team is cheating in a sports event, that's fine. They would have won anyways, right?

It is beyond fucked up that the DNC is getting away with this, with nothing more than throwing around a few scapegoats. Clearly the entire organization is completely corrupt. They don't get to decide which candidate to support. That's not on them.

Or how about the other deflection that is being used. "The members of the DNC are allowed to support candidates, they are humans too!"

No shit, they get to vote. They don't get to support candidates during their official capacity. They don't get to negotiate with media bigwigs about how to elevate Clinton and make her look as great as possible, and cut down Sanders.

Absolutely, but what's worse is that Clinton then hired onto her campaign the main scapegoat in the biggest "I spit in your eye, fuck you public and US democracy!" gesture I've ever seen, except of course for Donald Trump's hiring of Roger Ailes, another fuck you to the world, "we're Presidential candidates, we don't run from impropriety, we embrace it!" Voters don't matter, democracy is dead (was it ever truly alive?).

 

[reginaldpeebottom]

Coriolanus[/url]":3ivubqq2]When the Russian government seems willing to interfere with US elections and to flaunt their ability to attack US agencies - I'm really left at a loss - what is the proportional response here? Clearly, economic sanctions haven't been all that terribly effective at deterring Russian malfeasance. What's left is there? Block Russian banks from the SWIFT interbank messaging system? That kind of response can have crippling ramification to the world economy.

Hold on. Did you read in the article the suggestion that these tools which were "stolen" from NSA backed hackers may have been used to disrupt or influence other countries elections?

What hypocrisy for America to get all up in arms about "foreign influence" in their internal politics when America does that all the time to other countries.

I think Russia, if it's them, is just fighting back. Good for them.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So, aside from the question of which person-we-probably-don't-approve-of actually managed to pull it off; isn't this episode a pretty compelling example for the notion that hoarding exploits is a terrible plan if you want 'security'?

This is no longer just the (true; but speculative) 'somebody else might also discover those cool zero-days you are keeping for your own use' situation; but a 'somebody else now definitely knows about those cool exploits; and also your tools, so this particular batch of NSA techniques now require only script-kiddie skill to exploit' situation.

I'd be very, very, surprised if whatever benefit we derived from using these attacks will measure up to the trouble that will probably be caused because they are in the wild and markedly less likely to have patches available, much less widely applied, because they were concealed in the first place.

 

[bugsbony]

williamlondon[/url]":1zsvn26i]

Wisetrader[/url]":1zsvn26i]The media coverage (including Ars) seems biased as there is moral outrage that Russia would dare to cyber-interfere in US politics, yet at the same time the implication that US government itself, via the Equation Group, has been covertly doing exactly that in other nation's affairs, is pretty much glossed over

The rule at Ars is anti-Russia and pro-Tesla always and for everything. As someone who has no skin in either game, it's comical, while at the same time a sad comment regarding human reason (with a capital 'R').

The fact that you think you have no skin in the game is a nice proof that you don't understand how the world works.

 

[williamlondon]

bugsbony[/url]":2t7dlnh7]

williamlondon[/url]":2t7dlnh7]

Wisetrader[/url]":2t7dlnh7]The media coverage (including Ars) seems biased as there is moral outrage that Russia would dare to cyber-interfere in US politics, yet at the same time the implication that US government itself, via the Equation Group, has been covertly doing exactly that in other nation's affairs, is pretty much glossed over

The rule at Ars is anti-Russia and pro-Tesla always and for everything. As someone who has no skin in either game, it's comical, while at the same time a sad comment regarding human reason (with a capital 'R').

The fact that you think you have no skin in the game is a nice proof that you don't understand how the world works.

What a pleasant peach you are, and with such a strong grasp of logical fallacies too!

An objective perspective is nothing I guess.

BTW, thanks for proving my point about human reason.

 

[RodoBobJon]

photochemsyn[/url]":32ogm2hc]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

Where is the evidence that the DNC was trying to cripple Bernie and boost Hillary? People keep pointing to emails from late April and May, perhaps forgetting that Hillary had a nearly insurmountable lead at that point in the race. They also apparently forget that by that point in the race the Sanders campaign and its supporters had begun trashing the DNC in the press with completely unsubstantiated claims of election rigging and fear-mongering about how Hillary would steal the election with superdelegates. The emails that people keep pointing to show the DNC scrambling to defend the legitimacy of their elections and understandably getting angry and frustrated with the Sanders campaign for putting them in that position.

If there was a concerted effort by the DNC to help Hillary win, where are the emails from the time period when the race was actually competitive?

 

[Derecho Imminent]

RunnerMan[/url]":2ksggh61]

adamrussell[/url]":2ksggh61]So hang on. Are they implying that guccifer got NSA tools by hacking the DNC or are they implying that guccifer got DNC data by hacking the NSA?

None of the above.

According to Snowden, Russia is threatening to expose NSA secrets (of hacking and interfering with its allies elections) if people in the US keep blaming Russia for DNC and related hacks.

Oh ok. So basically he is saying that they are threatening to say "but you do it too". Weak.

 

[shadedmagus]

JustQuestions[/url]":33mw2a5r]

photochemsyn[/url]":33mw2a5r]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

No shit. That's the actual part of this worth discussing.

The "whodunnit" topic is just a massive deflection.

It's insane how many people are delusional enough to explain it away to themselves. "Oh, Hillary would have won anyway, so it doesn't matter."

Really? It doesn't matter? So by this logic, if the winning team is cheating in a sports event, that's fine. They would have won anyways, right?

It is beyond fucked up that the DNC is getting away with this, with nothing more than throwing around a few scapegoats. Clearly the entire organization is completely corrupt. They don't get to decide which candidate to support. That's not on them.

Or how about the other deflection that is being used. "The members of the DNC are allowed to support candidates, they are humans too!"

No shit, they get to vote. They don't get to support candidates during their official capacity. They don't get to negotiate with media bigwigs about how to elevate Clinton and make her look as great as possible, and cut down Sanders.

Corey Robin put up a blog post a few days ago, and several people in the comments speculated that one of the aims of the Democratic party elite is to purge the party of the left element so they can officially swing center-right and become the new party of business, since the Republican party has swung too far to one side.

It's definitely something that I could see being true, in light of the concerted effort to play down Bernie Sanders' populist support in favor of HRC.

 

[williamlondon]

shadedmagus[/url]":312mju3l]

JustQuestions[/url]":312mju3l]

photochemsyn[/url]":312mju3l]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

No shit. That's the actual part of this worth discussing.

The "whodunnit" topic is just a massive deflection.

It's insane how many people are delusional enough to explain it away to themselves. "Oh, Hillary would have won anyway, so it doesn't matter."

Really? It doesn't matter? So by this logic, if the winning team is cheating in a sports event, that's fine. They would have won anyways, right?

It is beyond fucked up that the DNC is getting away with this, with nothing more than throwing around a few scapegoats. Clearly the entire organization is completely corrupt. They don't get to decide which candidate to support. That's not on them.

Or how about the other deflection that is being used. "The members of the DNC are allowed to support candidates, they are humans too!"

No shit, they get to vote. They don't get to support candidates during their official capacity. They don't get to negotiate with media bigwigs about how to elevate Clinton and make her look as great as possible, and cut down Sanders.

Corey Robin put up a blog post a few days ago, and several people in the comments speculated that one of the aims of the Democratic party elite is to purge the party of the left element so they can officially swing center-right and become the new party of business, since the Republican party has swung too far to one side.

It's definitely something that I could see being true, in light of the concerted effort to play down Bernie Sanders' populist support in favor of HRC.

If that were to happen and the Rubblecans continue their downward spiral, that might mean an opportunity for a party to come in to the left of Democrats and win populist support, which none of the elites of either side of the spectrum would like so I'm sure there's a plan already to ensure that doesn't happen. Perhaps the Dems just throw enough populist rhetoric and social programmes to the masses to satisfy the demands of the left? Interesting, though, not sure how the new Dems would deal with unions and business successfully. Still fun to watch, though.

 

[Scorp1us]

I am convinced that all this hacking is just an elaborate PR stunt for MR ROBOT season 2.

As an aside, the fact that the hackers got hacked makes me lose faith that if state-sponsored hackers can't keep things secure, then there is no ability for anyone to keep anything secure. It leads me to believe that the way we are approaching security is fundamentally broken. Which, granted, is not a new or original claim. I think we have to come up with a new architecture, starting with new hardware, compilers, then kernels, then socket libraries, and on up the chain. Maybe eventually we have existing apps using an translation library, but I am skeptical.

This hack of the state sponsored group has to be the death knell for how we do security as we know it. The bolt-on approach of the past 30 years is too flawed.

 

[Ezzy Black]

Ninhalem[/url]":fmism391]So he's a scientist now? Thought he was just a former NSA technician.

To Ars commenters he is also know as Our Lord on High Mr. Snowden. Whenever I see his name the phrase "attention whore" is the first thing that comes to mind.

In my day when you stole classified information from the US Government and ran away to Russia we just called them traitors.

How someone who copied a bunch of slides and posted them on the net becomes an "expert" to be quoted on such matters is baffling.

 

[X-AxSys]

Speculating.... DNC Hack was actually NSA Trying to look like Russia but gathering data as directed by NSA under Senior Spook requests from RNC Actors [conservatives] with significant business interests and substantial under the radar political influence. There may be no real way to tie this back a group of hideously well heeled politico-big-business entities or persons but you can bet those who really know will either disappear, suddenly become not alive or will rise quickly in political and business stature. Sounds remarkably like a good story line for a TV Series or Movie. This is truly beginning to look like life imitating art... Oh and expect some likely bombshell leaked anti-Hilary news later in the election cycle should she become a real threat to political conservative power holdings.

I would even make popcorn for this show and I don't really even like the stuff...

 

[castleblanc]

When the Russian government seems willing to interfere with US elections and to flaunt their ability to attack US agencies - I'm really left at a loss - what is the proportional response here? Clearly, economic sanctions haven't been all that terribly effective at deterring Russian malfeasance. What's left is there? Block Russian banks from the SWIFT interbank messaging system? That kind of response can have crippling ramification to the world economy.

Pics with Putin and a twink posted on RT website.

 

[castleblanc]

Careful what you say Snowden, you may find yourself persona non grata in Russia...

As though he were speaking without permission.

 

[castleblanc]

The media coverage (including Ars) seems biased as there is moral outrage that Russia would dare to cyber-interfere in US politics, yet at the same time the implication that US government itself, via the Equation Group, has been covertly doing exactly that in other nation's affairs, is pretty much glossed over

It's common knowledge that the US has directly, violently influenced the elections of many countries over the years. What's to gloss over?

 

[Rrr7]

williamlondon[/url]":3y7zle7v]

JustQuestions[/url]":3y7zle7v]

photochemsyn[/url]":3y7zle7v]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

No shit. That's the actual part of this worth discussing.

The "whodunnit" topic is just a massive deflection.

It's insane how many people are delusional enough to explain it away to themselves. "Oh, Hillary would have won anyway, so it doesn't matter."

Really? It doesn't matter? So by this logic, if the winning team is cheating in a sports event, that's fine. They would have won anyways, right?

It is beyond fucked up that the DNC is getting away with this, with nothing more than throwing around a few scapegoats. Clearly the entire organization is completely corrupt. They don't get to decide which candidate to support. That's not on them.

Or how about the other deflection that is being used. "The members of the DNC are allowed to support candidates, they are humans too!"

No shit, they get to vote. They don't get to support candidates during their official capacity. They don't get to negotiate with media bigwigs about how to elevate Clinton and make her look as great as possible, and cut down Sanders.

Absolutely, but what's worse is that Clinton then hired onto her campaign the main scapegoat in the biggest "I spit in your eye, fuck you public and US democracy!" gesture I've ever seen, except of course for Donald Trump's hiring of Roger Ailes, another fuck you to the world, "we're Presidential candidates, we don't run from impropriety, we embrace it!" Voters don't matter, democracy is dead (was it ever truly alive?).

It's really baffling how people get so riled up about the US parties bigwigs steering their primaries one way or another, since THEY ARE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS.
They are not public, or some sort of govt agencies, they write their own rules, subject to changes on their whim. The primaries are mainly a circus, organized and staged to give some semblance of 'democratic process'. There is no 'fairness' implied.(see 'super-delegates' rule)
As a side note, the Democratic party favoring an actual Democrat senator (Clinton) over an Independent senator (Sanders) is mind-boggling.. How dare they??

 

[MagicDot]

...Russian attempts to disrupt or influence the US presidential election

Wow...being President is a tough, tough job. You need to rail against foreign influence on elections while leading the country that has been influencing foreign elections since men wore wigs.

 

[Rrr7]

Ezzy Black[/url]"kpu9ew9]

Ninhalem[/url]"kpu9ew9]So he's a scientist now? Thought he was just a former NSA technician.

To Ars commenters he is also know as Our Lord on High Mr. Snowden. Whenever I see his name the phrase "attention whore" is the first thing that comes to mind.

In my day when you stole classified information from the US Government and ran away to Russia we just called them traitors.

How someone who copied a bunch of slides and posted them on the net becomes an "expert" to be quoted on such matters is baffling.

He stole information proving a part of the US govt was working against their own people , while wiping their collective ass with the US Constitution and laughing hysterically at the elected representatives of said people while doing it. By providing this public service, instead of getting praise and perhaps a medal, he got to be exiled, ending up in Russia almost by chance (he was on his way to South America when the US revoked his passport). Giving away his cozy life and future for a life in exile, while Clapper lies to Congress on TV while still getting his govt checks & pension is beyond ironic. Getting called a traitor by subservient idiots, instead of being acknowledged as the patriot he is versus the real traitors whom he exposed, speaks volumes about 'the home of the brave'.

Also from the 'in my day..' BS, get-off-my-lawn!! -type comment, you are probably a perfect example for my maximum-voting-age proposal

 

[KULawHawk]

RodoBobJon[/url]":24xu2et5]

photochemsyn[/url]":24xu2et5]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

Where is the evidence that the DNC was trying to cripple Bernie and boost Hillary? People keep pointing to emails from late April and May, perhaps forgetting that Hillary had a nearly insurmountable lead at that point in the race. They also apparently forget that by that point in the race the Sanders campaign and its supporters had begun trashing the DNC in the press with completely unsubstantiated claims of election rigging and fear-mongering about how Hillary would steal the election with superdelegates. The emails that people keep pointing to show the DNC scrambling to defend the legitimacy of their elections and understandably getting angry and frustrated with the Sanders campaign for putting them in that position.

If there was a concerted effort by the DNC to help Hillary win, where are the emails from the time period when the race was actually competitive?

If you need to be walked through it step by step in order to see what was going on, don't worry about it.

In this case, ignorance is bliss, or as Hemingway put it, "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

 

[SixDegrees]

RodoBobJon[/url]":1zy8x2im]

photochemsyn[/url]":1zy8x2im]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

Where is the evidence that the DNC was trying to cripple Bernie and boost Hillary? People keep pointing to emails from late April and May, perhaps forgetting that Hillary had a nearly insurmountable lead at that point in the race. They also apparently forget that by that point in the race the Sanders campaign and its supporters had begun trashing the DNC in the press with completely unsubstantiated claims of election rigging and fear-mongering about how Hillary would steal the election with superdelegates. The emails that people keep pointing to show the DNC scrambling to defend the legitimacy of their elections and understandably getting angry and frustrated with the Sanders campaign for putting them in that position.

If there was a concerted effort by the DNC to help Hillary win, where are the emails from the time period when the race was actually competitive?

Here's the thing: It doesn't surprise me at all that there was partisanship within the DNC; that's part and parcel of any political organization. But even if the organization as a whole was pulling for Clinton, they did an abysmal job of it. Sanders did best in states that held caucuses - exactly the places where the DNC could have mustered significant influence over the outcome.

If the DNC was really and truly promoting Clinton over Sanders, their efforts resulted in an epic fail of the first order.

 

[KULawHawk]

Rrr7[/url]":3e2ly90w]

Ezzy Black[/url]":3e2ly90w]

Ninhalem[/url]":3e2ly90w]So he's a scientist now? Thought he was just a former NSA technician.

To Ars commenters he is also know as Our Lord on High Mr. Snowden. Whenever I see his name the phrase "attention whore" is the first thing that comes to mind.

In my day when you stole classified information from the US Government and ran away to Russia we just called them traitors.

How someone who copied a bunch of slides and posted them on the net becomes an "expert" to be quoted on such matters is baffling.

He stole information proving a part of the US govt was working against their own people , while wiping their collective ass with the US Constitution and laughing hysterically at the elected representatives of said people while doing it. By providing this public service, instead of getting praise and perhaps a medal, he got to be exiled, ending up in Russia almost by chance (he was on his way to South America when the US revoked his passport). Giving away his cozy life and future for a life in exile, while Clapper lies to Congress on TV while still getting his govt checks & pension is beyond ironic. Getting called a traitor by subservient idiots, instead of being acknowledged as the patriot he is, speaks volumes about 'the home of the brave'.

Also from the 'in my day..' BS, get-off-my-lawn!! -type comment, you are probably a perfect example for my maximum-voting-age proposal

I love how the Snowden detractors cling to him being in Russia as proof of him somehow anti-American. Nevermind the fact that the US government revoked his passport specifically when he got there while in transit to South America. It was done as an PR stunt to try to control the optics of the situation and associate him as being a Russian actor.

 

[RodoBobJon]

KULawHawk[/url]":2wlzymzc]

RodoBobJon[/url]":2wlzymzc]

photochemsyn[/url]":2wlzymzc]Strange how nobody seems to point out an obvious issue, so allow me: if the DNC staffers hadn't sent a bunch of compromising emails to each other about how they were intervening in the DNC primary to boost Hillary Clinton and cripple Bernie Sanders, this hack would have been entirely lacking in effect. Think about that for a while.

Where is the evidence that the DNC was trying to cripple Bernie and boost Hillary? People keep pointing to emails from late April and May, perhaps forgetting that Hillary had a nearly insurmountable lead at that point in the race. They also apparently forget that by that point in the race the Sanders campaign and its supporters had begun trashing the DNC in the press with completely unsubstantiated claims of election rigging and fear-mongering about how Hillary would steal the election with superdelegates. The emails that people keep pointing to show the DNC scrambling to defend the legitimacy of their elections and understandably getting angry and frustrated with the Sanders campaign for putting them in that position.

If there was a concerted effort by the DNC to help Hillary win, where are the emails from the time period when the race was actually competitive?

If you need to be walked through it step by step in order to see what was going on, don't worry about it.

In this case, ignorance is bliss, or as Hemingway put it, "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

All of the supposed compromising DNC emails that I've been linked to come from a time in the race when it was all but decided. That doesn't seem to support the hypothesis that there was some kind of DNC conspiracy to throw the election to Hillary. My alternate hypothesis—that Bernie's campaign and his supporters were trashing the DNC in the media with accusations of rigging and this pissed off DNC staffers and made them want to defend themselves—seems a better fit for the facts. The relationship between the DNC and the Sanders campaign deteriorated severely at the end of the race and I think it makes little sense to hold the DNC alone responsible for that.

Maybe there are emails from earlier that I haven't seen yet, but I don't think I'm out of line for asking that purveyors of the "rigged election" hypothesis provide links to such emails.