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Title: A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack
Source:
The Nation
URL Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/a ... ons-about-last-years-dnc-hack/
Published: Aug 9, 2017
Author: Patrick Lawrence
Post Date: 2017-08-10 16:21:48 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 15678
Comments: 55
It is now a year since the Democratic National Committee’s mail system was compromised—a year since events in the spring and early summer of 2016 were identified as remote hacks and, in short order, attributed to Russians acting in behalf of Donald Trump. A great edifice has been erected during this time. President Trump, members of his family, and numerous people around him stand accused of various corruptions and extensive collusion with Russians. Half a dozen simultaneous investigations proceed into these matters. Last week news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had convened a grand jury, which issued its first subpoenas on August 3. Allegations of treason are common; prominent political figures and many media cultivate a case for impeachment. The president’s ability to conduct foreign policy, notably but not only with regard to Russia, is now crippled. Forced into a corner and having no choice, Trump just signed legislation imposing severe new sanctions on Russia and European companies working with it on pipeline projects vital to Russia’s energy sector. Striking this close to the core of another nation’s economy is customarily considered an act of war, we must not forget. In retaliation, Moscow has announced that the United States must cut its embassy staff by roughly two-thirds. All sides agree that relations between the United States and Russia are now as fragile as they were during some of the Cold War’s worst moments. To suggest that military conflict between two nuclear powers inches ever closer can no longer be dismissed as hyperbole. All this was set in motion when the DNC’s mail server was first violated in the spring of 2016 and by subsequent assertions that Russians were behind that “hack” and another such operation, also described as a Russian hack, on July 5. These are the foundation stones of the edifice just outlined. The evolution of public discourse in the year since is worthy of scholarly study: Possibilities became allegations, and these became probabilities. Then the probabilities turned into certainties, and these evolved into what are now taken to be established truths. By my reckoning, it required a few days to a few weeks to advance from each of these stages to the next. This was accomplished via the indefensibly corrupt manipulations of language repeated incessantly in our leading media. Lost in a year that often appeared to veer into our peculiarly American kind of hysteria is the absence of any credible evidence of what happened last year and who was responsible for it. It is tiresome to note, but none has been made available. Instead, we are urged to accept the word of institutions and senior officials with long records of deception. These officials profess “high confidence” in their “assessment” as to what happened in the spring and summer of last year—this standing as their authoritative judgment. Few have noticed since these evasive terms first appeared that an assessment is an opinion, nothing more, and to express high confidence is an upside-down way of admitting the absence of certain knowledge. This is how officials avoid putting their names on the assertions we are so strongly urged to accept—as the record shows many of them have done. We come now to a moment of great gravity. There has been a long effort to counter the official narrative we now call “Russiagate.” This effort has so far focused on the key events noted above, leaving numerous others still to be addressed. Until recently, researchers undertaking this work faced critical shortcomings, and these are to be explained. But they have achieved significant new momentum in the past several weeks, and what they have done now yields very consequential fruit. Forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed are now producing evidence disproving the official version of key events last year. Their work is intricate and continues at a kinetic pace as we speak. But its certain results so far are two, simply stated, and freighted with implications: This article is based on an examination of the documents these forensic experts and intelligence analysts have produced, notably the key papers written over the past several weeks, as well as detailed interviews with many of those conducting investigations and now drawing conclusions from them. Before proceeding into this material, several points bear noting. One, there are many other allegations implicating Russians in the 2016 political process. The work I will now report upon does not purport to prove or disprove any of them. Who delivered documents to WikiLeaks? Who was responsible for the “phishing” operation penetrating John Podesta’s e-mail in March 2016? We do not know the answers to such questions. It is entirely possible, indeed, that the answers we deserve and must demand could turn out to be multiple: One thing happened in one case, another thing in another. The new work done on the mid-June and July 5 events bears upon all else in only one respect. We are now on notice: Given that we now stand face to face with very considerable cases of duplicity, it is imperative that all official accounts of these many events be subject to rigorously skeptical questioning. Do we even know that John Podesta’s e-mail was in fact “phished”? What evidence of this has been produced? Such rock-bottom questions as these must now be posed in all other cases. Two, houses built on sand and made of cards are bound to collapse, and there can be no surprise that the one resting atop the “hack theory,” as we can call the prevailing wisdom on the DNC events, appears to be in the process of doing so. Neither is there anything far-fetched in a reversal of the truth of this magnitude. American history is replete with similar cases. The Spanish sank the Maine in Havana harbor in February 1898. Iran’s Mossadegh was a Communist. Guatemala’s Árbenz represented a Communist threat to the United States. Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh was a Soviet puppet. The Sandinistas were Communists. The truth of the Maine, a war and a revolution in between, took a century to find the light of day, whereupon the official story disintegrated. We can do better now. It is an odd sensation to live through one of these episodes, especially one as big as Russiagate. But its place atop a long line of precedents can no longer be disputed. Three, regardless of what one may think about the investigations and conclusions I will now outline—and, as noted, these investigations continue—there is a bottom line attaching to them. We can even call it a red line. Under no circumstance can it be acceptable that the relevant authorities—the National Security Agency, the Justice Department (via the Federal Bureau of Investigation), and the Central Intelligence Agency—leave these new findings without reply. Not credibly, in any case. Forensic investigators, prominent among them people with decades’ experience at high levels in these very institutions, have put a body of evidence on a table previously left empty. Silence now, should it ensue, cannot be written down as an admission of duplicity, but it will come very close to one. It requires no elaboration to apply the above point to the corporate media, which have been flaccidly satisfied with official explanations of the DNC matter from the start. Qualified experts working independently of one another began to examine the DNC case immediately after the July 2016 events. Prominent among these is a group comprising former intelligence officers, almost all of whom previously occupied senior positions. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), founded in 2003, now has 30 members, including a few associates with backgrounds in national-security fields other than intelligence. The chief researchers active on the DNC case are four: William Binney, formerly the NSA’s technical director for world geopolitical and military analysis and designer of many agency programs now in use; Kirk Wiebe, formerly a senior analyst at the NSA’s SIGINT Automation Research Center; Edward Loomis, formerly technical director in the NSA’s Office of Signal Processing; and Ray McGovern, an intelligence analyst for nearly three decades and formerly chief of the CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch. Most of these men have decades of experience in matters concerning Russian intelligence and the related technologies. This article reflects numerous interviews with all of them conducted in person, via Skype, or by telephone. The customary VIPS format is an open letter, typically addressed to the president. The group has written three such letters on the DNC incident, all of which were first published by Robert Parry at www.consortiumnews.com. Here is the latest, dated July 24; it blueprints the forensic work this article explores in detail. They have all argued that the hack theory is wrong and that a locally executed leak is the far more likely explanation. In a letter to Barack Obama dated January 17, three days before he left office, the group explained that the NSA’s known programs are fully capable of capturing all electronic transfers of data. “We strongly suggest that you ask NSA for any evidence it may have indicating that the results of Russian hacking were given to WikiLeaks,” the letter said. “If NSA cannot produce such evidence—and quickly—this would probably mean it does not have any.” The day after Parry published this letter, Obama gave his last press conference as president, at which he delivered one of the great gems among the official statements on the DNC e-mail question. “The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking,” the legacy-minded Obama said, “were not conclusive.” There is little to suggest the VIPS letter prompted this remark, but it is typical of the linguistic tap-dancing many officials connected to the case have indulged so as to avoid putting their names on the hack theory and all that derives from it. Until recently there was a serious hindrance to the VIPS’s work, and I have just suggested it. The group lacked access to positive data. It had no lump of cyber-material to place on its lab table and analyze, because no official agency had provided any. Donald Rumsfeld famously argued with regard to the WMD question in Iraq, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” In essence, Binney and others at VIPS say this logic turns upside down in the DNC case: Based on the knowledge of former officials such as Binney, the group knew that (1) if there was a hack and (2) if Russia was responsible for it, the NSA would have to have evidence of both. Binney and others surmised that the agency and associated institutions were hiding the absence of evidence behind the claim that they had to maintain secrecy to protect NSA programs. “Everything that they say must remain classified is already well-known,” Binney said in an interview. “They’re playing the Wizard of Oz game.” New findings indicate this is perfectly true, but until recently the VIPS experts could produce only “negative evidence,” as they put it: The absence of evidence supporting the hack theory demonstrates that it cannot be so. That is all VIPS had. They could allege and assert, but they could not conclude: They were stuck demanding evidence they did not have—if only to prove there was none. Research into the DNC case took a fateful turn in early July, when forensic investigators who had been working independently began to share findings and form loose collaborations wherein each could build on the work of others. In this a small, new website called www.disobedientmedia.com proved an important catalyst. Two independent researchers selected it, Snowden-like, as the medium through which to disclose their findings. One of these is known as Forensicator and the other as Adam Carter. On July 9, Adam Carter sent Elizabeth Vos, a co-founder of Disobedient Media, a paper by the Forensicator that split the DNC case open like a coconut. By this time Binney and the other technical-side people at VIPS had begun working with a man named Skip Folden. Folden was an IT executive at IBM for 33 years, serving 25 years as the IT program manager in the United States. He has also consulted for Pentagon officials, the FBI, and the Justice Department. Folden is effectively the VIPS group’s liaison to Forensicator, Adam Carter, and other investigators, but neither Folden nor anyone else knows the identity of either Forensicator or Adam Carter. This bears brief explanation. The Forensicator’s July 9 document indicates he lives in the Pacific Time Zone, which puts him on the West Coast. His notes describing his investigative procedures support this. But little else is known of him. Adam Carter, in turn, is located in England, but the name is a coy pseudonym: It derives from a character in a BBC espionage series called Spooks. It is protocol in this community, Elizabeth Vos told me in a telephone conversation this week, to respect this degree of anonymity. Kirk Wiebe, the former SIGINT analyst at the NSA, thinks Forensicator could be “someone very good with the FBI,” but there is no certainty. Unanimously, however, all the analysts and forensics investigators interviewed for this column say Forensicator’s advanced expertise, evident in the work he has done, is unassailable. They hold a similarly high opinion of Adam Carter’s work. Forensicator is working with the documents published by Guccifer 2.0, focusing for now on the July 5 intrusion into the DNC server. The contents of Guccifer’s files are known—they were published last September—and are not Forensicator’s concern. His work is with the metadata on those files. These data did not come to him via any clandestine means. Forensicator simply has access to them that others did not have. It is this access that prompts Kirk Wiebe and others to suggest that Forensicator may be someone with exceptional talent and training inside an agency such as the FBI. “Forensicator unlocked and then analyzed what had been the locked files Guccifer supposedly took from the DNC server,” Skip Folden explained in an interview. “To do this he would have to have ‘access privilege,’ meaning a key.” What has Forensicator proven since he turned his key? How? What has work done atop Forensicator’s findings proven? How? Forensicator’s first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate—the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second. These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds. What is the maximum achievable speed? Forensicator recently ran a test download of a comparable data volume (and using a server speed not available in 2016) 40 miles from his computer via a server 20 miles away and came up with a speed of 11.8 megabytes per second—half what the DNC operation would need were it a hack. Other investigators have built on this finding. Folden and Edward Loomis say a survey published August 3, 2016, by www.speedtest.net/reports is highly reliable and use it as their thumbnail index. It indicated that the highest average ISP speeds of first-half 2016 were achieved by Xfinity and Cox Communications. These speeds averaged 15.6 megabytes per second and 14.7 megabytes per second, respectively. Peak speeds at higher rates were recorded intermittently but still did not reach the required 22.7 megabytes per second. “A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer,” Folden said. “Based on the data we now have, what we’ve been calling a hack is impossible.” Last week Forensicator reported on a speed test he conducted more recently. It tightens the case considerably. “Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance,” he wrote. “Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive).” Time stamps in the metadata provide further evidence of what happened on July 5. The stamps recording the download indicate that it occurred in the Eastern Daylight Time Zone at approximately 6:45 pm. This confirms that the person entering the DNC system was working somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. In theory the operation could have been conducted from Bangor or Miami or anywhere in between—but not Russia, Romania, or anywhere else outside the EDT zone. Combined with Forensicator’s findings on the transfer rate, the time stamps constitute more evidence that the download was conducted locally, since delivery overheads—conversion of data into packets, addressing, sequencing times, error checks, and the like—degrade all data transfers conducted via the Internet, more or less according to the distance involved. In addition, there is the adulteration of the documents Guccifer 2.0 posted on June 15, when he made his first appearance. This came to light when researchers penetrated what Folden calls Guccifer’s top layer of metadata and analyzed what was in the layers beneath. They found that the first five files Guccifer made public had each been run, via ordinary cut-and-paste, through a single template that effectively immersed them in what could plausibly be cast as Russian fingerprints. They were not: The Russian markings were artificially inserted prior to posting. “It’s clear,” another forensics investigator self-identified as HET, wrote in a report on this question, “that metadata was deliberately altered and documents were deliberately pasted into a Russianified [W]ord document with Russian language settings and style headings.” To be noted in this connection: The list of the CIA’s cyber-tools WikiLeaks began to release in March and labeled Vault 7 includes one called Marble that is capable of obfuscating the origin of documents in false-flag operations and leaving markings that point to whatever the CIA wants to point to. (The tool can also “de-obfuscate” what it has obfuscated.) It is not known whether this tool was deployed in the Guccifer case, but it is there for such a use. It is not yet clear whether documents now shown to have been leaked locally on July 5 were tainted to suggest Russian hacking in the same way the June 15 Guccifer release was. This is among several outstanding questions awaiting answers, and the forensic scientists active on the DNC case are now investigating it. In a note Adam Carter sent to Folden and McGovern last week and copied to me, he reconfirmed the corruption of the June 15 documents, while indicating that his initial work on the July 5 documents—of which much more is to be done—had not yet turned up evidence of doctoring. In the meantime, VIPS has assembled a chronology that imposes a persuasive logic on the complex succession of events just reviewed. It is this: It does not require too much thought to read into this sequence. With his June 12 announcement, Assange effectively put the DNC on notice that it had a little time, probably not much, to act preemptively against the imminent publication of damaging documents. Did the DNC quickly conjure Guccifer from thin air to create a cyber-saboteur whose fingers point to Russia? There is no evidence of this one way or the other, but emphatically it is legitimate to pose the question in the context of the VIPS chronology. WikiLeaks began publishing on July 22. By that time, the case alleging Russian interference in the 2016 elections process was taking firm root. In short order Assange would be written down as a “Russian agent.” By any balanced reckoning, the official case purporting to assign a systematic hacking effort to Russia, the events of mid-June and July 5 last year being the foundation of this case, is shabby to the point taxpayers should ask for their money back. The Intelligence Community Assessment, the supposedly definitive report featuring the “high confidence” dodge, was greeted as farcically flimsy when issued January 6. Ray McGovern calls it a disgrace to the intelligence profession. It is spotlessly free of evidence, front to back, pertaining to any events in which Russia is implicated. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, admitted in May that “hand-picked” analysts from three agencies (not the 17 previously reported) drafted the ICA. There is a way to understand “hand-picked” that is less obvious than meets the eye: The report was sequestered from rigorous agency-wide reviews. This is the way these people have spoken to us for the past year. Behind the ICA lie other indefensible realities. The FBI has never examined the DNC’s computer servers—an omission that is beyond preposterous. It has instead relied on the reports produced by Crowdstrike, a firm that drips with conflicting interests well beyond the fact that it is in the DNC’s employ. Dmitri Alperovitch, its co-founder and chief technology officer, is on the record as vigorously anti-Russian. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which suffers the same prejudice. Problems such as this are many. “We continue to stand by our report,” CrowdStrike said, upon seeing the VIPS blueprint of the investigation. CrowdStrike argues that by July 5 all malware had been removed from the DNC’s computers. But the presence or absence of malware by that time is entirely immaterial, because the event of July 5 is proven to have been a leak and not a hack. Given that malware has nothing to do with leaks, CrowdStrike’s logic appears to be circular. In effect, the new forensic evidence considered here lands in a vacuum. We now enter a period when an official reply should be forthcoming. What the forensic people are now producing constitutes evidence, however one may view it, and it is the first scientifically derived evidence we have into any of the events in which Russia has been implicated. The investigators deserve a response, the betrayed professionals who formed VIPS as the WMD scandal unfolded in 2003 deserve it, and so do the rest of us. The cost of duplicity has rarely been so high. I concluded each of the interviews conducted for this column by asking for a degree of confidence in the new findings. These are careful, exacting people as a matter of professional training and standards, and I got careful, exacting replies. All those interviewed came in between 90 percent and 100 percent certain that the forensics prove out. I have already quoted Skip Folden’s answer: impossible based on the data. “The laws of physics don’t lie,” Ray McGovern volunteered at one point. “It’s QED, theorem demonstrated,” William Binney said in response to my question. “There’s no evidence out there to get me to change my mind.” When I asked Edward Loomis, a 90 percent man, about the 10 percent he held out, he replied, “I’ve looked at the work and it shows there was no Russian hack. But I didn’t do the work. That’s the 10 percent. I’m a scientist.” Editor’s note: In its chronology, VIPS mistakenly gave the wrong date for CrowdStrike’s announcement of its claim to have found malware on DNC servers. It said June 15, when it should have said June 14. VIPS has acknowledged the error, and we have made the correction. Poster Comment: The Nation is owned by Katrina vanden Heuval, a Lefty heiress. Before she ran it and after, it was always the biggest apologist for Russia around. In addition, in 1988 vanden Heuvel married Stephen F. Cohen, a writer on the Soviet Union and a professor of Russian Studies at Princeton University for 30 years, subsequently at New York University. Cohen is the most pro-Russian of all the respected foreign policy experts. 
So maybe the Nation has always carried water for Russia. But if this article is accurate about it being an inside job, perhaps by a Bernie bro, then that is only coincidence. But we can't ignore the Nation's pro-Soviet and pro-Russian stance over the decades either.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 38.
#5. To: Tooconservative (#0)
(Edited)
The supposed DNC hack is all hype to create a hysterical atmosphere as if the Russians had busted into the CIA or the Pentagon. There was never anything in the DNC to hack. Just bunch of low IQ leftist assholes mumbling about politics. Big deal.
There was stuff there, and it wound up on Wikileaks. It seems far more likely that it was leaked by a Bernie supporter than that it was hacked by anyone.
What material that was a violation of national security or required a security clearance? The fundamentals of making a complaint must be an injury of some kind. Was there an invasion of government secrecy or restricted information?
There was stuff there. It was not the stuff of the taker. It was wrongful conversion. Taking the data was unlawful. The stuff of the DNC was published at Wikileaks to the detriment of the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Security clearance is irrelevant. There is no allegation that it was an invasion of government secrecy or government restricted information.
Is that a fancy word for eavesdropping? The stuff of the DNC was published at Wikileaks to the detriment of the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Prove it was detrimental or that her loss wasn't due to other things. Find Guciffer and charge him with evesdropping if it is unlawful in the country in which he was operating.
Proving that the leak cost an election is not necessary to proving that the leak was detrimental, a tort, or criminal. Every sentient being on the planet knows it was detrimental. What other effect could one possibly attribute to the published emails??? - - - - - - - - - - WIKILEAKS 38478 - One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash From:donna@brazileassociates.com Subject: One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint. Folks, I did a service project today. It's so tragic. And what's worse, some homes have not been tested and it's important to encourage seniors to also get tested. Sent from Donna's I Pad. Follow me on twitter @donnabrazile - - - - - - - - - - WIKILEAKS - John Podesta - home server for security reasons which would fall apart under scrutiny Re: Hey bro quick question. From: Roy.Spence@gsdm.com Subject: Re: Hey bro quick question. Got it. Thank God u are there. Keep on Sent from my iPhone On Oct 17, 2015, at 5:27 AM, John Podesta Reluctant to go there. Makes it seem like she consciously went to the home server for security reasons which would fall apart under scrutiny. - - - - - - - - - - On Friday, October 16, 2015, Roy Spence IRS was hacked. I think the State Department was hacked. Sony hacked. Banks hacked. As we try and close the Benghazi Chapter and the email drip drip. Is there ever a moment in TiMe not to Defend the decision but layout the fact....HRC servers were not hacked. Know this is s naive thought but just thinking. Sent from my iPhone ————————————————————— This e-mail is intended only for the named person or entity to which it is addressed and contains valuable business information that is proprietary, privileged, confidential and/or otherwise protected from disclosure. If you received this email in error, any review, use, dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. Please notify us immediately of the error via email to disclaimerinquiries@gsdm.com and please delete the email from your system, retaining no copies in any media. We appreciate your cooperation. ----------gsdm.legal.disclaimer.03242011 - - - - - - - - - - WIKILEAKS - to John Podesta - "You represent a client that is not honest and is most likely criminal" 2015 From:joe@prospecialty.com Subject: 2015 John - you are loyal to a fault. You represent a client that is not honest and is most likely criminal. Hillary and Bill are not worth trying to defend as they are manipulative and they use people. Not exactly presidential material. Your defense of them losses all creditability to those that admire you. I hope you can see truth, live it and not live a lie. Joe Littlefield - - - - - - - - - - WIKILEAKS - WARNING TO HILLARY CLINTON [by Brent Budowski] Warning to Hillary Clinton From:brentbbi@webtv.net Subject: Warning to Hillary Clinton It was not uplifting to learn in recent hours that problems with foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation continue, Hillary Clinton was still making paid speeches for hire this week, and Tony Rodham is hustling gold mining deals in Haiti. From the minute the email story broke I have been out there publicly and unequivocally supporting Hillary Clinton in multiple ways in multiple media unlike many Democrats and unlike most in the media. My mama taught me long ago that when I am seriously angry I should count to ten and choose my words carefully. In that spirit here is my toned down advice which I seriously doubt the Clintons are hearing from those close to them, and if they are hearing it, they are not understanding it. If there is one thing that could well bring down a Hillary Clinton candidacy it is this cycle of money issues about which I am now feeling red alerts, loud bells, warning signals, and red flags and I am now seriously pissed off that there is a real chance that her candidacy and the Democratic Party could be destroyed by these self-created dangers that continue to proliferate the closer she gets to presumably announcing her candidacy. If she is not hearing this from others, please feel free to forward this to her, I will play the bad guy here because I do not want her money and because she needs to hear this from her friends and she will sure as hell be attacked for this by her enemies, and it will be megaphoned throughout the media, and foreign donations and paid speeches and hustling gold mining deals by her brother are entirely legitimate issues that are self-created, and must self-corrected before it is too late....and I do not believe the Clintons fully understand the magnitude and immediacy of the danger in the current political and media climate.....Brent Sent from my iPad - - - - - - - - - - WIKILEAKS 15893 - Spirit Cooking Fwd: Dinner From: podesta@podesta.com Are you in NYC Thursday July 9 Marina wants you to come to dinner Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: From: Marina Abramovic < marinaxabramovic@gmail.com> Dear Tony, I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is joining? All my love, Marina -- Feature, The New York Times, Marina Abramovic To Publish a Memoir in 2016 2015 May June December - - - - - - - - - - WIKILEAKS - [atty Erika Rottenberg] none of my friends circle can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server Erika Rottenberg: J.D. 1992 Fwd: Tomorrow From:lroitman@hillaryclinton.com Subject: Fwd: Tomorrow Begin forwarded message: *From:* Erika Rottenberg *Date:* June 21, 2015 at 9:20:19 PM PDT *Subject:* *Tomorrow* Hi Ann and Stephanie -- Looking forward to our discussion tomorrow night. I suspect it will be broad ranging. Few things: 2. I plan to do an intro and Jeff will close with a very brief how to get involved. I'll then close with a special toast and treat. I have not reached out to John - -please let me know if you think I should. Couple of questions that came in: *For my question*, it's basically some variation of [not quite phrased right yet]: I know when I talk to my friends who are attorneys we are all struggling with what happened to the emails and aren't satisfied with answers to date. While we all know of the occasional use of personal email addresses for business, none of my friends circle can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents without providing anyone outside her circle a chance to weigh in. It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I've either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc. 2) someone wants to ask a very specific question about updating export control laws - and why they've haven't been updated since (??) as they prevent american businesses selling abroad (she's GC of a consumer drone company). Going to the 20,000 foot level, you'lll do well to talk about needing to ensure regulation that's designed to protect consumers - yet not so much that it prevents innovation, like what happens here in SV, which has been the economic bright spot of our economy. The goverenment of the 21st century will need to be more nimble, and quicker to respond to rapidly changing busiensses, yet also ensure that it's not rash, and it regulates for not just for today but the future. too 3) we'll see whether asked - but I would suspect something on the balance of 4th amendment and cyber - and the US govt's request for companies to provide a backdoor to encryption -- we discussed that yesterday. 4) Number three leads to a more general and i think thoughtful question - -which permeates every aspect of our country - from the economy, to the government to institutions like health care, defense, education and the justice system. Trust of the American public in American institutions : A poll was just released showing that trust in Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court, big business, Wall Street, etc. is at historic lows. That does not bode well for the country (and in fact the military seems to be the only institution that Ameicans trust, which is evocative of a third world nation and not of the world's leading nation, for now). http://www.gallup.com/poll/183605/confidence-branches-government-remains-low.aspx?utm_source=position2&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=tiles ------------------------- The issues that Reid and I teed up for john when he was at the tech roundtable with Steph and Amanda at LinkedIn were: There should be a good crowd, but unfortunately a number of folks are out of town, and in terms of GC's, a number have annual meetings and the like. Nonetheless, there will be a reasonable showing - prob about 50 folks (though about 70 have said they're coming). They range from tech folks to GC's to law firm counsel to non profits to STanford folk and even one union leader (SEIU) may show. Steph, in terms of recruiting - -there are a few people that might be helpful - and each of them is a wonderful human being. Though I don't know that any are looking, they're defnitely worthwhile talking to: Hope this helps, and please do let me know if i can be of any help, though i'm out of pocket for most of tomorrow (talkign on cybersecurity at stanford directors college). Cheers, erika - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
You begin with the primace that there was an effect. I'm asking you to prove the effect wasn't negligible or miniscule. What you are trying to make us believe is hillary won the election buy was cheated out of it by a kid hacking with a computer.
A bit more on this story from a flagship of the Right. It contains a bit of discussion we haven't read already. HotAir: Another report: That Russian hack of the DNC probably… wasn’t Remember when the Russians hacked the DNC email and records system last year? Yeah, about that… Cyber experts have been digging through all of the available material for over a year now trying to pin down exactly what happened but the answers to date have been less than satisfying. This isn’t the first time, but now another report has come out saying that the standard explanation we’ve been given (Russia, Russia Russia) doesn’t appear to hold water. The interesting aspect here is that this one isn’t coming from some right wing source with an ax to grind against Hillary Clinton, but rather from The Nation, a source which is generally only a couple of steps removed from being a DNC public relations firm. The author is Patrick Lawrence, and if you take a look at other entries from his recent body of work, well… let’s just say he doesn’t spend his free time filling in for Rush Limbaugh. Lawrence’s report is a lengthy think-piece which initially spends quite a while on the background of the story and how critical the idea of Russia being behind the leaks is to many of President Trump’s detractors, But then he gets down to the complicated tale of the experts analyzing all of the evidence and the reasons they have for reaching these two, key conclusions (emphasis added): Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source—claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative. The analysis of the leaked documents is lengthy and of interest, but it also lends support to the underlying theory which prompted so many people to doubt the Russia claims in the first place. I’m not sure I personally buy into this one hundred percent, but they rely on the belief that the NSA currently has programs in place which can capture any and all electronic transfers of data to and from a known source (such as the DNC servers). If the data had been nabbed by the Russians or anyone else they should have been able to pin that down in fairly short order. But a year later they have not done so. Clearly they don’t want to reveal any of their methods our sources, but there should have been a conclusion long before now. Then we have the Julian Assange side of the story. Of course, Wikileaks has been claiming from the beginning that the material didn’t come from the Russians. Craig Murray claimed that he flew to Washington for a cloak and dagger style, clandestine meeting “in a wooded area” with a disgusted DNC staffer who personally handed off the trove of documents to him. Does that prove anything? Nope. But somebody is either lying or wrong (take your pick) and in this case, the absence of evidence might be reasonably interpreted as evidence of absence when it comes to the silence on the NSA side. Combine that with the forensic analysis of the revealed documents in the attached report and the Russiagate story starts looking like weak tea. If the government has anything which refutes this with some level of certainty, they should cough it up soon. Otherwise this entire narrative could collapse in a pile of failed memes.
It's time for Julian Assange to come forward. Or maybe he's waiting for the government investigative agencies to really get comfortable with the Russia story before he totally humiliates them.
I see this as a huge unreported story. Libmedia studiously ignores the growing pile of evidence of Russian hacking of the DNC.
I see this as a huge unreported story. Libmedia studiously ignores the growing pile of evidence of Russian hacking of the DNC. Do you mean "the growing pile of evidence that Russia didn't hack the DNC"?
Yep. Funny how the facts emerge that there is no story and suddenly the media has no more interest in the story other than repeating the same tired line that "we wuz hacked by Russia" (even when all the evidence is pointing to someone other than Vlad The Shirtless). Funny how that works.
I believe it was, "Russia hacked the election". But liberals are great at changing the narrative. Liberals became progressives. Global warming is now climate change. It's not a tax but a fee (but it's really as tax).
#39. To: misterwhite (#38)
I think that libmedia believes they have firmly established their "We wuz hacked by Russia" narrative and, as long as they don't report any further facts that contradict it, they will continue to flack this propaganda line more shamelessly than Joseph Goebbels. Any reporting of the actual facts can be dismissed as rightwing hacks or the ravings of Fox News.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestA New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack
#7. To: rlk, Tooconservative (#5)
There was never anything in the DNC to hack.
#10. To: nolu chan (#7)
(Edited)
There was stuff there...
#17. To: rlk (#10)
What material that was a violation of national security or required a security clearance? The fundamentals of making a complaint must be an injury of some kind.
#27. To: nolu chan (#17)
(Edited)
It was wrongful conversion.
#30. To: rlk (#27)
Prove it was detrimental or that her loss wasn't due to other things.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/38478
To: john.podesta@gmail.com, jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com
Date: 2016-03-05 21:16 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/23327
To: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2015-10-17 09:23
> wrote:
> wrote: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31959
To: podesta@law.georgetown.edu
Date: 2015-04-27 16:49 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/6900
To: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2015-03-21 10:48 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/15893
To: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2015-06-28 01:48
Subject: Fwd: Dinner
Mary?
Date: June 28, 2015 at 2:35:08 AM GMT+2
To: Tony Podesta < podesta@podesta.com>
Subject: Dinner
ABRAMOVIC LLC
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current & Upcoming Exhibitions & Events
Terra Comunal, Marina Abramovic + MAI, SESC Pompeia, S?o Paulo
6 - November 22, Proportio, curated by Axel Vervoordt, Palazzo Fortuny, Venezia
13 - October 5, Solo Exhibition, Private Archaeology, MONA, Tasmania
24 - July 5, Marina Abramovic: In Residence, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Pier 2/3, Sydney
30, Keynote Address, Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay
7-19, Goldberg Variations with Igor Levit, Park Avenue Armory, New York https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/4099
To: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2015-06-22 18:07
*To:* Stephanie Hannon , "Ann O'Leary" < aoleary@hillaryclinton.com>
*Cc:* Lindsay Roitman
1. are the two of you and john planning on spending about 15 mins chatting about the inside of the campaign, and policy broadly, and then opening up to Q&A for about 45 mins or doing all Q&A? I Actually think that it'd be great for y'all to hit on some key policy items first and i know folks would enjoy the inside glance at the campaign.
1. you're obviously amongst friends, but here's the one i referred to (can't remember which of you i talked about it with, if not both). It's from someone that wasn't goign to come, and i encouraged him to come. he comes at the issue slightly differnetly than what I've dsicussed with both of you (Ok, one thing to use personal email, but why the "twisted truth" (not my words) on why - with the two problematic areas being (a) emails to bill (when they were to bill's staff) and (b) i only used one device -- BB, when 2 weeks earlier, it was an iphone, BB and ipad. As Ann and I discussed, hopefully that's a timing issue and whilst in state, she only used one. :)
- surveillance and national security - the proper balance (it is not an either or -- it is an 'and')
- patent reform (less of an issue with s ct decision)
- net neutrality, and, of course,
- email issue - Madeline Fackler, who was recently CIO for Johnson and Johnson. She and her atty husband split their time between here and NYC.
- Ian McNish - one of the very early infrastructure folks at LinkedIn - he joined when the company was still in a garage. He's been at Box for the last couple of years advising them on IT, infrastructure and Ops. He may be looking for something BIG to be a part of. Tireless, passoinate, brilliant person. Catch will be his wonderful girlfriend, also from linkedin, now heads up communicatoins/PR at GogoBot. (she too will be here adn they'll both stay for the afterparty. they're a hoot)
- Ian McCarthy - consumer digital media. also early LI employee, and has been at a number of startups. Terrific guy.
- Unfortunately folks who were responsible for "growth" and some of the data scientists didn't respond, and i didn't have time to followup......we should set up some time to talk offline if you want.
650.417.5722
#32. To: nolu chan (#30)
Proving that the leak cost an election is not necessary to proving that the leak was detrimental, a tort, or criminal. Every sentient being on the planet knows it was detrimental. What other effect could one possibly attribute to the published emails?
#33. To: rlk, nolu chan, misterwhite (#32)
Another report: That Russian hack of the DNC probably… wasn’t
There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year—not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system. This casts serious doubt on the initial “hack,” as alleged, that led to the very consequential publication of a large store of documents on WikiLeaks last summer.
#34. To: Tooconservative (#33)
"Of course, Wikileaks has been claiming from the beginning that the material didn’t come from the Russians."
#35. To: misterwhite (#34)
#36. To: Tooconservative (#35)
#37. To: misterwhite (#36)
#38. To: Tooconservative (#37)
"we wuz hacked by Russia"
Replies to Comment # 38.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 38.
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