I don’t hold any particular animus against other countries trying to influence our elections. I don’t like it, but that’s in the same sense that I don’t like other teams scoring against the sports team I’m rooting for: It’s a fair play.
I do, however, have a huge problem with foreign powers actually coordinating such actions with the candidate they’re supporting.
You’re absolutely correct. That’s why I called it a warning shot. It shows how easy it is for one person who is not paying attention can open the door a crack to inadvertently allow the door to be flung open by the intruder.
There are a lot of consistent liberals who think that this part of what the CIA does is bad. Interfering with someone else’s free exercise in democracy isn’t good.
(Now, there are also liberals who doubt that all democracies - including ours - get to exercise it freely. Which is a problem - but we should work for increasing that - not just throwing in puppet governments)
So the “we’ve done it to others” isn’t going to carry a lot of weight with them.
20 years ago, if I had been told that the Russians are going to hack into the databases of both of the political parties and release the data from one of the political parties, holding on to the data from the other party for a rainy day, AND that the candidate from the second political party would be overtly encouraging the Russians to do so, that would be outrageous. Add to that that there is universal agreement in the intelligence community that the Russians were behind the data breach which is being denied by the second candidate, who is now apparently openly hostile to the American intelligence community, and choosing to side with the Russians. If I had then been told that the second candidate would win, and start to assemble a pro-Russian cabinet (again, with the shadow of the information being held back), I would start to consider the word “treason”.
Wouldn’t matter which party was which.
If the news was fake or the emails falsified or insignificant, why would she have to resign?
Regards,
Shodan
I’m pretty sure the DNC is a private organisation that is not obligated to release to the public every email it has written. Which is not to say that the DNC didn’t behave badly, but this idea that we have a right to access any information we want just because we want is taking the whole transparency thing into dangerous territory, and is a blatant rationalization for hacking and releasing private data.
Thank heavens the Republicans have never used their party servers to communicate sensitive information that, when discovered, was deleted en masse to avoid public scrutiny even though some of those emails were under Congressional subpoena. I mean, can you imagine how stupid they’d look talking up Clinton’s and the DNC’s emails if they’d done something like that?
This.
Although I also want to add the complaint about how appalling the media coverage has been and how stupid some of the resultant hysteria. There was hacking and the election was affected but the election has not been “hacked”.
The Democratic party is a private club and can select their candidate anyway they want. If they want to keep an outsider - Sanders was not a Democrat before or after his campaign - from getting their nomination, what is the problem? The purpose of the private club is to get people who share common views to work together to elect candidates and Sanders was not part of the club, his views overlapped a lot. It would be like someone with a lot of resources who had never been a Republican joining the party to run. The Republicans would be within their rights to try to keep that person from being their candidate.
The problem with the Russian (or whatever foreign entity) is what we don’t know. Is it possible that they have information on both sides and decided which was more damaging. Then the release stuff to hurt the other candidate. Once the election is over, they have all of this dirt on the sitting president.
The problem is that we don’t have those emails. We have what someone decided to release. We don’t know the rest. Did someone send an email suggesting having a plant ask Bernie about religion - yes. Did the follow up say “we can’t cover our tracks on that” or “Ha ha, good one. what is your real suggestion”. We know no one actually implemented that plan.
Sorry, but much of that would qualify as “fake news”. And did you really have to play the treason card to top it off?
Add me to the list of those not “outraged” by this news. What I’m surprised at is that we haven’t found evidence of any other countries doing the same thing (Hello, China, Israel, Iran, NK to name a few).
It wasn’t the actual content of HRC’s emails that was a problem for the D’s; rather, it was the drum beating by the R’s that HRC had threatened national security by having a private server. And, it wasn’t the content of the DNC’s emails that should have surprised anyone; rather, it was the insinuation by R’s that the content showed how dishonest and horrible the DNC was…It wasn’t the emails that Comey alluded to that was a problem, as there was nothing there of any interest to anyone; rather, it was the insinuation that HRC must have horrible secrets to conceal if she hid these emails on someone else’s computer (which didn’t actually have any HRC emails at all).
Dems look for, and easily find, contradictions and hypocritical statements and actions by R’s. They list them and let the public draw their own conclusions. The Republican electorate decided that all the things Trump said and admitted to were okay with them – as long as HRC and her liberal friends, the ones who, perhaps, rightfully described Trump voters as Deplorable, were not elected. The stuff R’s insinuated about HRC were just enough to discourage enough normal D voters to stay home.
Fake news? Are you, too, an apologist for the Destruction of Government Services (DOGS) Cabinet? Time to get your head out of Trump’s trousers. Trump may well have committed treason. Several of his people surely did and should be hanged for it.
No election was hacked or rigged. John Podesta’s email account was hacked. And then people we used to call journalists told us accurately what was in those emails. I’m going to need more than “the wrong people told the truth” to blame the Rooskies for Trump. 60-something million Americans voted for him. We inflicted him on ourselves.
I said that I would start to consider “treason”.
I don’t think that it’s out of the question at this point that the Russians are using the information that they have on the Republicans as blackmail. Why wouldn’t they?
Thing is that the Russian government has been pointed before as having lots of connections with organized crime. The point here being that it is likely that the hacks are not just benefiting foreign governments, but foreign criminals.
It is not just people like you and me who are affected, but the main targets are indeed people involved in government. The cache of information enemies can deduce or get from the activities from people involved is huge. And in the latest hack reported from Yahoo, Russia is one suspectas the attack has been reported to be made by a foreign agent.
What that means is that a lot of spies and hackers got information that will help not only damage the economy of the individuals affected, but also the government that was targeted. The opportunities for blackmail have also increased lot.
I don’t think it’s out of the question that Hilary Clinton ordered the death of Vince Foster.
But that’s not the correct standard upon which to base such a comment. The correct standard: since there is no credible evidence that such a thing happened, I reject it as completely unproven and lacking foundation for discussion.
Do you agree?
Gee, maybe the US government will recognize the value of strong encryption and protecting the internet from online government espionage now? Or is that too much to hope for?
It’s also not out of the question that the Russians read what was on the Republican servers and were convinced that the Republicans are correct and they will now take orders from Trump about what to do as soon as he is inaugurated.
Well, I’m not an American and I am slightly miffed. I’d probably be outranged if it happened in my country.
But ultimately, I think it really depends on how you feel about your own country and on outside powers interfering with, or controlling it. I can see that there are countries where foreign nations doing things like this would be seen as preferable to being strong-armed economically or militarily.
No, that one pretty much is out of the question, given that Trump has already said that he’ll give them everything they want. He’s not even going to be giving any orders for them to take.
They did. Long before Trump said anything (or found out about it, actually).
Any evidence of that?