Pence used his private email (AOL) while Gov. Those emails were printed out and handed over to a lawyer to go through after he left office.
And his account got hacked.
Note the word ‘foreign’ in my sentence.
It is illegal to perform many acts in your own country — an American hacking the FBI or a Russian hacking the FSB; it is not illegal ( unless there are reciprocal treaties to prevent hacking [ something of very dubious international legality — especially since government agencies of all nations are spying on us all the time, and we need whistle-blowers to protect us ] ) for an American to hack Russia or a Russian to hack America. No country has automatic jurisdiction over foreigners.
Your only recourse would be to request the Russian government to prosecute it’s citizen for hacking an American entity.
As to whether it’s illegal for Russian agents, the further point comes up that such agents in this wired world need not be in any territory claimed by the USA when committing this ‘crime’. Nor need they even be Russian. Plus you need to produce hard solid proof to a court of law to show who committed any digital act — saying “Well, it seems like something they would do; and I’d say it was similar to other sort of stuff I think they may have done…” doesn’t really cut it.
There are dozens of state hackers from all countries willing to embarrass the USA and Russia; and many thousands of private hackers. They need to be eliminated before saying 'Putin did it ! The voices in my head said so."
And of course, the DNC is not a State Agency, hacking a private non-profit group ( not for money or blackmail ) is different to hacking the CIA; and it is up to the DNC to prosecute or not and to produce the computer forensic evidence that leads them to that prosecution.
Alternatively they may prefer to make themselves more attractive for the next election.
I’m sure, however the fact Gnome Pence did such may make him a hypocrite when denouncing the Wicked Witch. But it also means both were damned fools.
Basically you’re saying it’s legal because it would be hard to catch them.
I’m kind of amazed that no one that I’ve seen has factored the untimely demise of Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin into all this.
Trump’s interest in Russia goes back to the late '80s. He also has a long history of making flattering statements about dictators, usually focusing on how they crush rebellions or kill terrorists without respecting silly things like human rights.
No, it’s legal because there is no court with jurisdiction over foreign hackers who are alien to the court.
There is no such law covering non-Americans acting outside the USA.
Such people can definitely be caught. So far no admissible case has been made even were these individuals domestic hackers. ( And it looks a lot more probable that it was a leak from within the DNC, almost infinitely easier by magnitude than breaking in, all on a zip-drive or directed to the cloud — but no-one wants to go there. It means witch-hunting one’s friends [ like a le Carre novel. ] )
If money or profit is involved then it is a lot more easy to catch and prosecute cyber-criminals. In such a case as this, it is precisely analogous to breaking into the private web-servers of a local Freemasonic Lodge, and publishing their most intimate rituals. Embarrassing for them, to be sure, and deeply hurtful to their feelings.
If one used their bank account it would be of criminal interest; but just taking secrets * is not sufficient harm for the courts to get involved. **
- Sexual secrets and private personal secrets revealed might well be legal harm. These are not those.
** To claim consequence, “Revealing our secrets showed the world who we are and subjected us to just scorn and contempt — leading to less votes for us.” would not be sufficient legal cause., notably because the facts revealed from one’s own copied words are true and not malicious lies made up by the publisher.
See my post no.16.
Uh…not exactly. Turns out that hackers are often as lazy as any office worker. There are ‘fingerprints’ in modes of hacking, programming/software used, and annexes spoofed that say a little more than “it seems like something they would do” that can readily be determined. Try not to poo-poo what you plainly don’t know.
Any theory that doesn’t explain Trump pushing to withhold support for Ukraine, remove sanctions, and recognize Russian control of Crimea is inadequate.
That part is trivial. Putin is the richest, most powerful person in the world and is everything Trump strives to be. You don’t even have to get into all the political similarities.
Well, Hillary promised to significantly curtail fracking. Taking 4 million barrels per day of U.S. oil production and 45 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas production off the market would be a far greater boon to Russia’s economic fortune than some joint venture with Exxon.
Further, Russia is currently producing more oil than it ever has as a country. Sanctions have had absolutely no effect on production levels. This isn’t like Iranian sanctions where it crippled their oil industry.
Sixth Russian diplomat killed since the election – someone is cleaning up their tracks.
I don’t remotely buy that as an explanation. I’m supposed to believe that Trump is making doe eyes at Putin and giving him foreign policy gifts in the hopes that Putin will take him to prom?
I don’t think Trump is nearly as successful as he likes to portray himself, but he’s a business man. He at least understands that a deal means getting something when you give something.
Or quite possibly hacker one incorporates evidences to incriminate hacker two. Do try to keep up.
I think the Democrats have blown the Russian connection by trying to oversell it. Saying ‘Russians hacked the election to make Trump win’ doesn’t really fit the facts, that are someone got into a DNC server, maybe by hacking maybe it was a leak, and released internal DNC documents. If Russia did it it’s the kind of thing nations routinely do (spying is nothing new), and it’s not even clear that Russia is actually responsible last time I looked into it. But while talking it up as Russia deciding the election feels good to people who are already super-angry at Trump, the fact that the claim was so overblown for something that’s really pretty minor means that people who are on the fence or just apathetic will start to tune out any of the Trump-Russia stuff, figuring it’s more of the same.
The idea that Putin wanted Hillary to win but be weakened seems pretty plausible to me, but the idea that he had the power to make it happen isn’t. The problem now is that if there is more meat to Putin having some hold over Trump, a lot of the public isn’t going to pay attention because there’s been so much ‘Russia hacked the election’ noise to get them tired.
Yeah, but was that one of her real promises or her ‘just to get elected’ promises like pulling out of the TPP? If I was Putin, I certainly wouldn’t count on Hillary Clinton living up to a promise that runs against the interests of some of her big money contributors.
All true. I’d like to add that as someone who’s taken — or used to take — a deep interest in the operations of the Cheka/NKVD/KGB etc. gang since old Felix kicked it off, I feel — quite sincerely — offended that these penny-ante picayune allegations are taken seriously.
They were genuinely horrible in the old days; many were heroes, many were brutes, many were treacherous little shits, and they did great things. But amongst all their crimes, all the boredoms, all the nauseating idealisms, and all the splendeurs et misères of the criminal old Soviet Union — often excused by liberals — this stuff, even if true, would not rate the smallest footnote in their histories.
Attribution of malware and other kinds of attacks is notoriously difficult. Once code or techniques get out in the wild, they can be copied by other actors not affiliated with the original attacker. And, in some cases, attackers deliberately try to include clues in the code to direct suspicion elsewhere (see here for a recent clumsy attempt). In addition, not all attacks involve code that can be examined. Something like snaring credentials with a phishing attack or running a SQL Injection attack would not necessarily leave any kind of unique code behind. Finding “fingerprints” in an attack often involves a fair amount of inference, sometimes shaky. There may be cases in which investigators can get a pretty solid handle on attribution, but that’s not the rule.
Cite: I am a computer forensic examiner (well, information security director now, but forensic examiner up till a month ago).
I spend a large part of each day on news sources, and I’m not seeing anyone saying what you claim “Democrats” are saying: “Russia deciding the election.”
Can you provide some citations in support of your claim?
I think calling them “fingerprints” is a bit of a stretch for an analogy. It’s more like a modus operandi.