President Obama orders review on Russian election hacking

[Childless]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is getting ridiculous: "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say"

 

Yet Putin's Personal Fluffer will deny there is any issue and say we should just go on with our lives....

How can anyone, even Trump supporters, condone this or brush it off?  This is serious.  The minute Cheeto does something to tick off Putin (and he's Cheeto, so you know he eventually will), Putin will devastate our infrastructure.  We need to head this off now.  Putin is an egocentric dictator.  He's not our friend.  Hell, he doesn't give a shit about his own country men, why would anyone believe he gives a shit about the U.S.?

[Cartmann99]

17 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is getting ridiculous: "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say"

 

Yet Putin's Personal Fluffer will deny there is any issue and say we should just go on with our lives....

I'm waiting for the announcement that we all need to go shopping, and that the MAGA store is having a 25% off sale on all products shaped like his head. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I'm waiting for the announcement that we all need to go shopping, and that the MAGA store is having a 25% off sale on all products shaped like his head. 

 

Well, I think I could use a new toilet...Agent Orange's head might suffice.

[Mercer]

I really don't understand how anyone - regardless of their politics - can fail to be worried about this or not understand how urgent it is to get to the bottom of it.

Trump is going to be the president. That's not the outcome I wanted, but it is what it is, and it's not got to change at this point.

The Russia situation still needs to be investigated to the fullest extent of our resources, because we need to protect our national security and our ability to have free and fair elections in the future. Just saying "Oh well!" about it because it's the outcome you (general you, not posters here) wanted ignores the very real danger this poses going forward if the country doesn't get a handle on it now.

[CharlieInCharge]

WP retracted the story, FYI - https://www.google.com/amp/nypost.com/2017/01/01/washington-post-retracts-story-about-russian-hack-at-vermont-utility/amp/?client=ms-opera-mini-iphone

[GreyhoundFan]

32 minutes ago, CharlieInCharge said:

WP retracted the story, FYI - https://www.google.com/amp/nypost.com/2017/01/01/washington-post-retracts-story-about-russian-hack-at-vermont-utility/amp/?client=ms-opera-mini-iphone

Okay, so they didn't penetrate the actual electrical grid, but they did get to a laptop at the utility. This still isn't good. I fear that when examined, Russian state-sponsored hacking will be revealed to have touched much of the U.S.

[GreyhoundFan]

Hey, Agent Orange: Fuck you. "Trump derides intel briefing on 'so-called' Russian hacking". Partial quote below.

Quote

President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter Tuesday evening to deride the US intelligence agencies due to brief him on alleged Russian hacking of American political groups.

...

It was his latest attack on a key body he will rely on as commander in chief and again put him at odds with the agencies' unanimous conclusion that Russia hacked Democratic Party groups and individuals to interfere in the US presidential election.

Trump suggested that intelligence officials postponed an " 'intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' " that they were set to deliver to him this week because they might need more time "to build a case." He called the alleged delay "very strange."

Trump tweeted Wednesday, "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!"

 "Build a case"? Seriously? Maybe they're taking the time to boil down lots of important information into kindergarten-level 140 character bits so he can understand what he's being told. #TakeAwayHisTwitter

[tropaka]

and the authorities are saying they never postponed the briefing, it was always set for the upcoming date.  As for the hacking, one of the computers infected/used was from an Ontario Canada electrical utility as well.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump attacks set intelligence community on edge"

Quote

(CNN)Intelligence officials are increasingly dismayed about President-elect Donald Trump's tweets and continued public attacks against them, describing his conduct as distressing, officials told CNN Wednesday.

"Nobody wants to get off on the wrong foot with the new boss. We're heading into this different era where it's hostile," one official said.

Another official added, "It's a sad day when politicians place more stock in (Russian President Vladimir Putin and (WikiLeaks founder) Julian Assange than in the Americans who risk their lives daily to provide objective, non-partisan intelligence analysis."

That was a reference to Trump's tweet on Wednesday noting that Assange said he didn't get hacked Democratic Party emails from the Russians, who have also denied the hacking allegations.

Adding to the concern, officials said there is a disconnect between Trump's public pronouncements about the intelligence community and his behind-the-scenes behavior when he's sitting across the table at closed-door intel briefings.

US officials familiar with the briefings said Trump is for the most part professional, deferential and polite. He listens but does not engage frequently during the briefings, other officials said, although at times he has challenged and questioned information.

A senior transition source told CNN that Trump does ask questions, adding, "Questions are good." The transition official said the President-elect does not question the data presented to him but he does question some of the conclusions drawn from the data.

US officials said the alleged election hacks and Russia have come up in briefings with Trump, but the full picture of what all the different intelligence threads mean has not been presented to him yet. That will happen during a briefing that is scheduled Friday with leaders of the intelligence community.

As officials try to make sense of Trump's skepticism, one theory is that the President-elect is acting out because he believes that the intelligence community is trying to undermine his victory with information that Russia tried to affect the 2016 vote.

"The intelligence community is not saying that Vladimir Putin won the election for Trump," the official said. "We're saying they did a series of things to sow doubt and some people think they wanted Trump to win, but no one has ever said they got into the mechanics of the ballot boxes."

 

I so agree -- it's a sad day when the supposed leader of the free world believes Assange and Putin over our country's intelligence community.

I don't envy the folks who have to prepare briefings for him. They probably have to keep it at a kindergarten level. I keep thinking of the line from the movie, "Game Change" (about the 2008 election) when one character says something about Obama and Palin being stars and another character says, "difference being that Obama was a constitutional law professor and Palin can't name a Supreme Court decision." I bet if you held a gun to Agent Orange's head, he couldn't name a single Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade.  There was another good scene in the movie where a team of foreign policy advisers come to brief Palin and end up having to explain that Germany and Japan were our main enemies in WWII. She kept frantically taking notes on 3x5 cards. I wonder if Drumpf would know that info...

[Childless]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump attacks set intelligence community on edge"

 

I so agree -- it's a sad day when the supposed leader of the free world believes Assange and Putin over our country's intelligence community.

I don't envy the folks who have to prepare briefings for him. They probably have to keep it at a kindergarten level. I keep thinking of the line from the movie, "Game Change" (about the 2008 election) when one character says something about Obama and Palin being stars and another character says, "difference being that Obama was a constitutional law professor and Palin can't name a Supreme Court decision." I bet if you held a gun to Agent Orange's head, he couldn't name a single Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade.  There was another good scene in the movie where a team of foreign policy advisers come to brief Palin and end up having to explain that Germany and Japan were our main enemies in WWII. She kept frantically taking notes on 3x5 cards. I wonder if Drumpf would know that info...

No, he probably doesn't know that.  I have a feeling Trump doesn't know much of anything.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Top U.S. intelligence official: Russia meddled in 2016 election through hacking and spreading of propaganda"

Quote

The country’s top intelligence official said Thursday that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign consisted of hacking, as well as the spreading of traditional propaganda and “fake news.”

“Whatever crack, fissure, they could find in our tapestry . . . they would exploit it,” said Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on foreign cyberthreats, and especially Russian hacking and interference in the campaign.

President-elect Donald Trump has loudly and repeatedly voiced skepticism that the Kremlin was orchestrating the effort, directly clashing with the view of the U.S. intelligence community and the committee’s chairman, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Earlier this week, Trump praised Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, the radical transparency group that has been criticized by the Obama administration for damaging national security leaks. Trump has also indicated that he believes Assange’s comments that Russia is not behind the Democratic Party hacks.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Thursday took a swipe at Trump for disparaging the intelligence community. “Who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence community? . . . Who actually is the benefactor?” she said.

Clapper replied that “there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers, to include policymaker Number 1, should always have for intelligence, but I think there is a difference between skepticism and disparagement.’’

McCain said at the opening of the packed hearing that every American “should be alarmed by Russia’s attacks on our nation.”

“There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference,” he said.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) asked Clapper if he was ready to be challenged by Trump, and Clapper said he is. Graham also advised Trump, “Mr. President-elect, when you listen to these people, you can be skeptical, but understand they’re the best among us and they’re trying to protect us.”

Graham criticized President Obama’s response, saying he had thrown “a pebble” at the Russians, adding, “I’m ready to throw a rock.”

“To those of you who want to throw rocks, you’re going to get a chance here soon, and if we don’t throw rocks, we’re going to make a huge mistake,” Graham said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is time now not to throw pebbles, but to throw rocks.”

Clapper also called for a more aggressive counter-propaganda effort. “We could do with having a USIA on steroids,” he said, referring to the U.S. Information Agency.

McCain, who has been critical of the Obama administration’s responses to cyber-provocations by foreign nations such as China and Russia, pressed Clapper on whether the campaign meddling was an attack on the United States and an “act of war.”

“We have no way of gauging the impact, certainly the intelligence community can’t gauge the impact, it had on choices the electorate made,” Clapper replied.

Determining whether an action is an act of war is a “very heavy policy call that I don’t believe the intelligence community should make, but it certainly would carry, in my view, great gravity,” he said.

Also testifying were Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Marcel J. Lettre II and Michael S. Rogers, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency.

The three officials released a joint statement ahead of their testimony outlining cyberthreats against the country and the nation’s ongoing strategy to defend itself. The statement describes Russia as “a full-scope cyber actor that poses a major threat” to U.S. infrastructure and networks.

“In recent years, we have observed the Kremlin assume a more aggressive cyber posture,” the statement said.

Regarding the targeting of the Democratic Party in 2016, the statement repeated Obama’s assertion that the hacking operation could have been authorized only by “Russia’s senior-most officials.”

A classified report on Russian intelligence interference in the campaign has been prepared for Obama, who is to receive it Thursday.

Clapper said that intelligence officials “plan to brief the Congress and release an unclassified version of this report to the public early next week.”

Democrats share the intelligence community’s view that Russia was behind the meddling.

“There is still much we do not know, but Russia’s involvement in these intrusions does not appear to be in any doubt,” said Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the committee’s ranking Democrat. “In this case, detection and attribution were not so difficult, the implication being that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin may have wanted us to know what he had done, seeking only a level of plausible deniability to support an official rejection of culpability.”

 

Of course, Cheeto will Tweet that they are lying or some crap like that.

[Childless]

11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Top U.S. intelligence official: Russia meddled in 2016 election through hacking and spreading of propaganda"

 

Of course, Cheeto will Tweet that they are lying or some crap like that.

I don't understand this bromance between Putin and Cheeto.  Is Cheeto indebted to him for something?

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, Childless said:

I don't understand this bromance between Putin and Cheeto.  Is Cheeto indebted to him for something?

Cheeto probably owes him a ton of money.

 

"U.S. intercepts capture senior Russian officials celebrating Trump win"

Quote

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of “actors” involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.

Those and other data points are at the heart of an unprecedented intelligence report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years.

The classified document, which officials said is over 50 pages, was delivered to President Obama on Thursday, and it is expected to be presented to Trump in New York on Friday by the nation’s top spy officials, including Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and CIA Director John Brennan.

Given the president-elect’s skepticism about the intelligence community — particularly its conclusions about Russia — the Trump Tower briefing has taken on the tenor of a showdown between the president-elect and the intelligence agencies he has disparaged.

“The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on Nov. 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did,” a senior U.S. official said.

U.S. officials declined to say whether the intercepted communications were cited in the classified version of the report commissioned by Obama, and they emphasized that although the messages were seen as strong indicators of Moscow’s intent and clear preference for Trump, they were not regarded as conclusive evidence of Russian intelligence agencies’ efforts to achieve that outcome.

“There are a variety of different exhibits that make the case, different factors that have provided the intelligence community with high confidence” that Russia sought in part to help elect Trump, said a second senior U.S. official who has reviewed intelligence findings on Russia’s cyber operations.

Officials emphasized that “signals intelligence,” as such communication is known, is treated by analysts with caution because statements can be taken out of context and sophisticated adversaries including the Kremlin are adept at spreading disinformation.

U.S. officials who have reviewed the new report said it goes far beyond the brief public statement that Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued in October, accusing Russia of having “directed” cyber operations to disrupt the U.S. election, and concluding, in a reference to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

The new report incorporates material from previous assessments and assembles in a single document details of cyber operations dating back to 2008. Still, U.S. officials said there are no major new bombshell disclosures even in the classified report. A shorter, declassified version is expected to be released to the public early next week.

Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 election and the question of how the United States should respond have become bitterly polarizing issues in Washington, sowing discord among Republicans on Capitol Hill, complicating the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations, and exacerbating an increasingly toxic relationship between the president-elect and U.S. spy services.

Senior lawmakers have called for a full investigation of the Russian hacking. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Clapper said that Moscow’s cyber assault on the election went beyond interference and into “activism.”

At Thursday’s hearing, Clapper said that U.S. spy agencies “stand actually more resolutely” behind conclusions they reached last year on Russia’s determination to undermine the U.S. election. He also appeared to take aim at Trump’s social media sniping at U.S. intelligence services, saying that “there’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement.”

Obama last week announced a series of measures designed to punish Russia, actions he characterized as “a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests.” Obama moved to impose economic sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies, expelled dozens of alleged Russian intelligence operatives from the United States, and shuttered two compounds that for decades had purportedly served as retreats for Russian diplomats but were described by the administration as locations for espionage activities.

Meanwhile, Trump continued his string of Twitter attacks, accusing U.S. intelligence agencies — with the word “intelligence” set off in quotation marks — of delaying a planned briefing on Russia and the election, a charge that U.S. officials disputed. He also appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has denied that his organization got the hacked emails from Russia, over U.S. spy agencies, which think that WikiLeaks got the material through middlemen with ties to the Kremlin.

Trump appeared to retreat on Thursday, accusing the “dishonest media” of misrepresenting his comments about Assange. “The media lies to make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence,’ ” he said, “when in fact I am a big fan!”

U.S. officials said the captured messages, whose existence has not previously been disclosed, added to the confidence level at the CIA and other agencies that Putin’s goals went beyond seeking to undermine confidence in America’s election machinery and ultimately were aimed at tilting a fiercely contested presidential race toward a candidate seen as more in line with Moscow’s foreign policy goals.

Even so, the messages also revealed that top officials in Russia anticipated that Clinton would win and did not expect their effort to achieve its goal.

Russian officials “were as surprised as the rest of the world,” said the second U.S. official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

“In this case, you do learn things after the fact based on how they feel about it,” the first official said, adding that the intercepts added to the intelligence community’s “shifting level of confidence.”

The intercepts also echoed some public comments in Moscow. “Trump understood the mood of the people and kept going until the end, when nobody believed in him,” Putin said at a news conference last month, adding with a wry smile, “except for you and me.”

U.S. intelligence officials think that Putin has for years held a grudge against Clinton, whom he accused of fomenting demonstrations in Moscow in 2011 and 2012 that embarrassed Putin and rattled the former KGB operative’s confidence in his grip on power.

Russia’s elite spy services have for years used cyberespionage capabilities to gather information on U.S. policymakers and political candidates — as the United States does on Russia. But Moscow’s decision to dump thousands of stolen emails into public view on WikiLeaks was seen as a provocative departure from the traditional lanes of espionage, U.S. officials said.

Clapper on Thursday said there is a difference between “an act of espionage, which we conduct, as well, and other nations do, versus an attack.”

U.S. officials said that Russia’s goals appear to have shifted over time. Moscow’s initial hacking operations targeted almost every major candidate, including Trump’s Republican primary rivals, as part of a fairly typical clandestine collection program.

Russia’s initial objective may have been merely to meddle and undermine the legitimacy of an assumed Clinton victory. But as Trump captured the GOP nomination and showed that he could remain competitive with Clinton, Russia’s aims became more ambitious, officials said. The final months of the race saw a steady stream of leaked emails that damaged Clinton’s candidacy, without any corresponding release to embarrass Trump.

Russia also used social media and “fake news” platforms as an “accelerant” to try to boost Trump and undermine Clinton, the second official said.

This is terrifying. What else are they mucking with?