lo yeeOn
2017-01-05 17:26:59 UTC
We all thought that Clapper was going to tell... But what happened?
Well, what actually happened seems to be that the authorities just
have nothing to say except to "weave around the issues"!
And, what surprise? They talked about the post-modern Russian version
of our very own _classic_ Voice of America.
It's RT, which altered the US election, sez Clapper! I bet you
haven't thought of that possibility, have you?
Jeez, Louise, I thought that's what the Voice of America and Radio
Free This and That were best-known for what RT is now trying to catch
up on. But, but, but, did RT hack the polling machine? And for that
matter, did any grizzly thing hack the polling machine? Has any of
the Podesta emails been altered to make Hillary look bad in order that
she lost the election?
Clapper used the term multi-faceted Russian campaign to describe what
RT purportedly has done to influence the US election.
First, I didn't know that the RT has so many American followers to
have an effect on our elections.
Second, it looks like the accusation that Putin hacked the election is
looking more and more like a multi-faceted campaign from Washington to
deligitimize the Trump presidency (as Assange pointed out) as well as
to get back at Russia for the State Department's spectacular loss of
face on Syria.
But what Clapper was doing today is such a plain act of projecting for
the Obama administration, it's pitiful. What these guys should know
is that the more they insist, the less credible they become!
lo yeeOn
Clapper: RT reporting on US problems part of 'multifaceted' Russian
campaign to undermine elections Published time: 5 Jan, 2017 16:18
Edited time: 5 Jan, 2017 16:37
https://www.rt.com/usa/372748-senate-committee-russian-hacking/
RT's reporting on US issues was part of a "multifaceted Russian
campaign" to undermine America, according to the outgoing Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper.
Trends US Elections 2016
RT was very active in promoting a particular point of view,
disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights,
etc. Whatever crack, fissure they could find in our tapestry, they
would exploit it," Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee on
Thursday, at a hearing about cybersecurity challenges.
LiberalismIsDead @DJTRevolution
Gee the Russians fund RT & have their own point of view regarding
USA Human Rights - how terrible of them! DNI Clapper
8:06 AM - 5 Jan 2017
David Prescott @prescottgolf014
DNI Clapper says fake news also altered the election, so then why
don't they just shut down @CNN and @MSNBC the leaders in fake news?
8:05 AM - 5 Jan 2017
In addition to hacking, Russia used fake news, social media and RT to
influence the recent US elections, Clapper argued. Though the US
intelligence community has not been able to gauge the actual impact of
any of these action, "the totality of that effort, not only as DNI but
as a citizen, I think is a grave concern," he said.
"We could do with having a USIA on steroids to fight this information
war a lot more aggressively than we're doing right now," Clapper later
said, referring to the body that oversaw US government propaganda
between 1953 and 1999, when it was replaced by the Broadcasting Board
of Governors (BBG). He qualified the statement as his personal
opinion.
Earlier in the hearing, committee chairman John McCain (R-Arizona)
asked whether Russian interference in the election would qualify as an
act of war.
"They did not change any vote tallies or anything of that sort. We
have no way of gauging any impact it had on the choices the electorate
made,' Clapper responded. "Whether or not that constitutes an act of
war is a very heavy policy call I don't believe the intelligence
community should make."
. . .
----------
January 4, 2017 Trump Is Right about the Russian Hacking Case By
Stephen D. Bryen and Shoshana Bryen
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/01/trump_is_right_about_the_russian_hacking_case.html
President-elect Donald Trump expressed skepticism over reports that
Russia hacked the U.S. election. It is well-known that Russia -- and
China, and various of our friends and allies -- spend a lot of time
and effort trying to access American military and industrial secrets,
as the U.S. does theirs. But in the case of altering the election,
Trump's skepticism appears warranted.
How did we get here?
An attempted hack into Georgia's voter registration database was
traced back to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
according to The Wall Street Journal last month. It was a criminal act
and possibly an attempt to interfere in an election. Even worse, DHS
appears to have outsourced the hacking activity. One might think the
breach of a state voter registration system by the Federal government
would be a big story. But it was quickly replaced by the Obama
administration's claims about Russian cyber attacks on American
political institutions. The FBI and DHS (yes, that DHS) then produced
the Joint Analysis Report under the seal of its National Cybersecurity
and Communications Integration Center.
It should be noted that the report was prepared without input from the
National Security Agency (NSA), Cyber Command, the Pentagon, or the
CIA. Wonder why? The answer most likely is that they declined to
endorse a report that fails to deliver proof and makes accusations
unsupported by evidence. If a college student turned this report in as
a research paper, he would flunk the course.
The report claims to provide an analysis of the "tools and
infrastructure" used by the Russian intelligence services to "exploit
networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election" as well as a
"range of U.S. government, political and private sector entities." The
report calls this "malicious cyber activity" and aggregates it under
the code name Grizzly Steppe.
The notion of "malicious activity" is scary and meaningless. If
information is stolen, it is theft; it is a crime. But the report
cannot demonstrate theft, or even describe the activity any of the
identified organizations actually engaged in, so it uses non-legal
"term of art". But grizzlies from the steppe sound pretty malicious.
Equally problematic is that the report cannot tie any of the "known"
Russian-located hacking activities directly to the Russian
intelligence services in respect to the hack of the email systems of
the Democratic National Committee or personal email accounts, such as
those of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta, to name a few of the
leading targets. There is plenty of notional information that the
Russian intelligence services have used private entities to carry out
hacking against various Western targets. And there is some important
proof that on a number of occasions the Russians have carried out
sophisticated cyber attacks against foreign countries. The cases that
are clear-cut include Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine, and there are
surely others. But in direct attacks like those (hitting everything
from power plants, banks, government agencies, military organizations,
air defense systems, and communications), it does not appear that the
Russians used third parties. Rather, those attacks were launched
mostly by the Russian military.
The FBI knows a lot about Hillary's email account and her
correspondents. Did the Russians hack her indiscreet dissemination of
classified information? Wouldn't that be relevant to the Joint
Analysis Report? Indeed, how could there be any serious analysis
without that?
But it isn't in there.
The Joint Analysis Report also does not say who else might have hacked
these same accounts. For example, China would have had plenty of
reason to attack Trump, not Clinton, because of Trump's position on
trade. So would Mexico. Japan is in a huge snit over the TPP deal,
which Trump has promised to cancel. Likewise Iran and Turkey would
much prefer Clinton to Trump and either could have tried to help
Hillary win.
So why are the Russians singled out here? The answer is that Democrats
want to pin their defeat on the Russians and claim the election was
"stolen by Putin." Unfortunately for them, they don't have any
evidence.
In any case, if you want to steal an election, leaking John Podesta or
DNC emails is not how anyone -- foreign or domestic -- would do it.
At the end of the day, no one even claimed that the information in the
e-mails wasn't legitimate; only that it was embarrassing. Embarrassing
people with their own words isn't by itself illegal.
The way to steal an election is to tamper with the voting system --
enter the registration system (as DHS tried to do in Georgia) or
change the vote count after the election. In fact, we had some of
those problems. In Detroit, discrepancies between machine counts and
registration books in 392 of 662 precincts prevented nearly 60% of the
total ballots from being included in a recount. Detroit's way of
dealing with the problem was simply to forego the recount and assume
everything was fine the first time.
The Joint Analysis Report has nothing to say about voting machines
because it does not have information of value to put on the table.
The report says the activity of the Russian Intelligence Services "is
part of an ongoing campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at
the U.S. government and its citizens". That is probably true, but the
same applies to many others with China in the lead, because China
manufactures most of the computer equipment, cameras, cell phones, and
communications gear America relies on. We know full well that China
puts all kinds of back doors in equipment it manufactures. This,
however, hasn't risen to the level of a yawn.
The Joint Analysis Report does not support the claims made by
politicians who want to link Putin to stealing the American election
-- namely that the sneaky Russians handed the election to Donald
Trump.
Well, what actually happened seems to be that the authorities just
have nothing to say except to "weave around the issues"!
And, what surprise? They talked about the post-modern Russian version
of our very own _classic_ Voice of America.
It's RT, which altered the US election, sez Clapper! I bet you
haven't thought of that possibility, have you?
Jeez, Louise, I thought that's what the Voice of America and Radio
Free This and That were best-known for what RT is now trying to catch
up on. But, but, but, did RT hack the polling machine? And for that
matter, did any grizzly thing hack the polling machine? Has any of
the Podesta emails been altered to make Hillary look bad in order that
she lost the election?
Clapper used the term multi-faceted Russian campaign to describe what
RT purportedly has done to influence the US election.
First, I didn't know that the RT has so many American followers to
have an effect on our elections.
Second, it looks like the accusation that Putin hacked the election is
looking more and more like a multi-faceted campaign from Washington to
deligitimize the Trump presidency (as Assange pointed out) as well as
to get back at Russia for the State Department's spectacular loss of
face on Syria.
But what Clapper was doing today is such a plain act of projecting for
the Obama administration, it's pitiful. What these guys should know
is that the more they insist, the less credible they become!
lo yeeOn
Clapper: RT reporting on US problems part of 'multifaceted' Russian
campaign to undermine elections Published time: 5 Jan, 2017 16:18
Edited time: 5 Jan, 2017 16:37
https://www.rt.com/usa/372748-senate-committee-russian-hacking/
RT's reporting on US issues was part of a "multifaceted Russian
campaign" to undermine America, according to the outgoing Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper.
Trends US Elections 2016
RT was very active in promoting a particular point of view,
disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights,
etc. Whatever crack, fissure they could find in our tapestry, they
would exploit it," Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee on
Thursday, at a hearing about cybersecurity challenges.
LiberalismIsDead @DJTRevolution
Gee the Russians fund RT & have their own point of view regarding
USA Human Rights - how terrible of them! DNI Clapper
8:06 AM - 5 Jan 2017
David Prescott @prescottgolf014
DNI Clapper says fake news also altered the election, so then why
don't they just shut down @CNN and @MSNBC the leaders in fake news?
8:05 AM - 5 Jan 2017
In addition to hacking, Russia used fake news, social media and RT to
influence the recent US elections, Clapper argued. Though the US
intelligence community has not been able to gauge the actual impact of
any of these action, "the totality of that effort, not only as DNI but
as a citizen, I think is a grave concern," he said.
"We could do with having a USIA on steroids to fight this information
war a lot more aggressively than we're doing right now," Clapper later
said, referring to the body that oversaw US government propaganda
between 1953 and 1999, when it was replaced by the Broadcasting Board
of Governors (BBG). He qualified the statement as his personal
opinion.
Earlier in the hearing, committee chairman John McCain (R-Arizona)
asked whether Russian interference in the election would qualify as an
act of war.
"They did not change any vote tallies or anything of that sort. We
have no way of gauging any impact it had on the choices the electorate
made,' Clapper responded. "Whether or not that constitutes an act of
war is a very heavy policy call I don't believe the intelligence
community should make."
. . .
----------
January 4, 2017 Trump Is Right about the Russian Hacking Case By
Stephen D. Bryen and Shoshana Bryen
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/01/trump_is_right_about_the_russian_hacking_case.html
President-elect Donald Trump expressed skepticism over reports that
Russia hacked the U.S. election. It is well-known that Russia -- and
China, and various of our friends and allies -- spend a lot of time
and effort trying to access American military and industrial secrets,
as the U.S. does theirs. But in the case of altering the election,
Trump's skepticism appears warranted.
How did we get here?
An attempted hack into Georgia's voter registration database was
traced back to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
according to The Wall Street Journal last month. It was a criminal act
and possibly an attempt to interfere in an election. Even worse, DHS
appears to have outsourced the hacking activity. One might think the
breach of a state voter registration system by the Federal government
would be a big story. But it was quickly replaced by the Obama
administration's claims about Russian cyber attacks on American
political institutions. The FBI and DHS (yes, that DHS) then produced
the Joint Analysis Report under the seal of its National Cybersecurity
and Communications Integration Center.
It should be noted that the report was prepared without input from the
National Security Agency (NSA), Cyber Command, the Pentagon, or the
CIA. Wonder why? The answer most likely is that they declined to
endorse a report that fails to deliver proof and makes accusations
unsupported by evidence. If a college student turned this report in as
a research paper, he would flunk the course.
The report claims to provide an analysis of the "tools and
infrastructure" used by the Russian intelligence services to "exploit
networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election" as well as a
"range of U.S. government, political and private sector entities." The
report calls this "malicious cyber activity" and aggregates it under
the code name Grizzly Steppe.
The notion of "malicious activity" is scary and meaningless. If
information is stolen, it is theft; it is a crime. But the report
cannot demonstrate theft, or even describe the activity any of the
identified organizations actually engaged in, so it uses non-legal
"term of art". But grizzlies from the steppe sound pretty malicious.
Equally problematic is that the report cannot tie any of the "known"
Russian-located hacking activities directly to the Russian
intelligence services in respect to the hack of the email systems of
the Democratic National Committee or personal email accounts, such as
those of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta, to name a few of the
leading targets. There is plenty of notional information that the
Russian intelligence services have used private entities to carry out
hacking against various Western targets. And there is some important
proof that on a number of occasions the Russians have carried out
sophisticated cyber attacks against foreign countries. The cases that
are clear-cut include Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine, and there are
surely others. But in direct attacks like those (hitting everything
from power plants, banks, government agencies, military organizations,
air defense systems, and communications), it does not appear that the
Russians used third parties. Rather, those attacks were launched
mostly by the Russian military.
The FBI knows a lot about Hillary's email account and her
correspondents. Did the Russians hack her indiscreet dissemination of
classified information? Wouldn't that be relevant to the Joint
Analysis Report? Indeed, how could there be any serious analysis
without that?
But it isn't in there.
The Joint Analysis Report also does not say who else might have hacked
these same accounts. For example, China would have had plenty of
reason to attack Trump, not Clinton, because of Trump's position on
trade. So would Mexico. Japan is in a huge snit over the TPP deal,
which Trump has promised to cancel. Likewise Iran and Turkey would
much prefer Clinton to Trump and either could have tried to help
Hillary win.
So why are the Russians singled out here? The answer is that Democrats
want to pin their defeat on the Russians and claim the election was
"stolen by Putin." Unfortunately for them, they don't have any
evidence.
In any case, if you want to steal an election, leaking John Podesta or
DNC emails is not how anyone -- foreign or domestic -- would do it.
At the end of the day, no one even claimed that the information in the
e-mails wasn't legitimate; only that it was embarrassing. Embarrassing
people with their own words isn't by itself illegal.
The way to steal an election is to tamper with the voting system --
enter the registration system (as DHS tried to do in Georgia) or
change the vote count after the election. In fact, we had some of
those problems. In Detroit, discrepancies between machine counts and
registration books in 392 of 662 precincts prevented nearly 60% of the
total ballots from being included in a recount. Detroit's way of
dealing with the problem was simply to forego the recount and assume
everything was fine the first time.
The Joint Analysis Report has nothing to say about voting machines
because it does not have information of value to put on the table.
The report says the activity of the Russian Intelligence Services "is
part of an ongoing campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at
the U.S. government and its citizens". That is probably true, but the
same applies to many others with China in the lead, because China
manufactures most of the computer equipment, cameras, cell phones, and
communications gear America relies on. We know full well that China
puts all kinds of back doors in equipment it manufactures. This,
however, hasn't risen to the level of a yawn.
The Joint Analysis Report does not support the claims made by
politicians who want to link Putin to stealing the American election
-- namely that the sneaky Russians handed the election to Donald
Trump.