1.78 was all it cost. That’s truly scary.
I’d be pretty pissed if someone did that to me. I’m glad it was rather innocent prank but these powers seem easily capable for evil. How many people pay attention it’s a sponsored post anyway… less than most realize I bet.
I don’t know how this is relevant. Yes, the U.S. government, through the CIA and other means, has conducted any number of coups, covert ops, subversions of democracy, etc., over the decades. I used to live in a state whose monarchy was overthrown by American business interests with the help of Federal troops. (And now I live in a state that was stolen from Mexico, after Spain stole it from the Indians.) All of this makes us moral hypocrites, perhaps, but I don’t see how it means we shouldn’t push back when the same things are tried against us.
It would be sort of like if there were a war and you said, “Well, don’t get pissed at the enemy for shooting at us… after all, we’ve shot at people too.” I mean, sure, maybe there’s a moral equivalency, and maybe your own country isn’t even benevolent, but you still have to do what you have to do to protect your own country.
I use a similar analogy - even if you’re a professional thief, you get a security system to protect your own house. Saying, “I steal from other people, so clearly I cannot possibly prevent other people from stealing from me” doesn’t magically absolve your sins and make you a better person. But it does make you stupid.
I’m actually with Sekulow here in large part. Wallace twisted what Sekulow was saying. Of course, the bigger picture is that the President continues to shoot himself in the head with tweet after tweet. I don’t feel sorry for his representation, but it can’t be an easy job.
Fortunately, Trump is opening a dialog to bring the US and Russia closer together!
"I think there’s a presumption amongst both the general public and lawmakers that DHS did some sort of investigation,” said Susan Greenhalgh, who serves as Elections Specialist at Verified Voting, a nonprofit devoted to U.S. election integrity.
“It didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean that something happened, but it also means it wasn’t investigated.”
The Georgia special election we are all watching is no more secure than the last time.
[quote]
Earlier this week, we revealed that US spy agencies had handed the British government high-grade intelligence that the Russian whistleblower Alexander Perepilichnyy, who died in Surrey in 2012, was likely assassinated on the direct orders of the Kremlin – but the authorities sidelined that and other evidence pointing to murder, instead declaring that he had died of natural causes. Today, we can reveal that US intelligence officials suspect a further 13 people – including Berezovsky and eight members of his circle – have been assassinated on British soil by Russia’s security services or mafia groups, two forces that sometimes work in tandem.
That intelligence – based on human sources, intercepted communications, and public material gathered by US spy agencies – has been shared with Britain in relation to all 14 deaths. Yet British police have ruled out foul play in every last case.[/quote]
[quote]
Senior US intelligence officials said they had been watching the pattern of suspected assassinations across the Atlantic with mounting alarm, concerned that it could spread to American shores. Their fears intensified following the strange death of the Russia Today founder Mikhail Lesin – who died of blunt force trauma to the head, neck, legs, arms, and torso in a Washington, DC, hotel room in 2015. Investigators announced that he had sustained his fatal injuries by falling while drunk – but a former senior national security official, echoing others, told BuzzFeed News the death had been privately viewed as “suspicious”, and there was “concern” that the Russian government would “start doing here what they do with some regularity in London”.[/quote]
WASHINGTON — Senior officials across the government became convinced in January that the incoming national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, had become vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
At the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — agencies responsible for keeping American secrets safe from foreign spies — career officials agreed that Mr. Flynn represented an urgent problem.
Yet nearly every day for three weeks, the new C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, sat in the Oval Office and briefed President Trump on the nation’s most sensitive intelligence — with Mr. Flynn listening. Mr. Pompeo has not said whether C.I.A. officials left him in the dark about their views of Mr. Flynn, but one administration official said Mr. Pompeo did not share any concerns about Mr. Flynn with the president.
“I think there’s a presumption amongst both the general public and lawmakers that DHS did some sort of investigation,” said Susan Greenhalgh, who serves as Elections Specialist at Verified Voting, a nonprofit devoted to U.S. election integrity.
“It didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean that something happened, but it also means it wasn’t investigated.”
Pretty good article on what the FBI should be looking for as they investigate possible Russian collusion with trump campaign:
If you didn’t catch the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian influence on 2016 U.S. election on live stream, you should try to catch a replay online. I missed the first panel but caught the second when University of Michigan Prof. J. Alex Halderman began his testimony with his opening statement.
The same Halderman who questioned the 2016 election could have been hacked based on his expertise.
The same Halderman who hacked a voting machine to play Pac Man.
When asked if it was possible Russia could change votes, Halderman told the SIC that he and a team of students demonstrated they were able to hack DC’s voting system, change votes, and do so undetected in under 48 hours. Conveniently, Fox News interviewed Halderman last September; Halderman explained the DC hack demonstration at that time (see embedded video); the interview fit well with Trump’s months-long narrative that the election was ‘rigged’.
If you aren’t at least mildly panicked after watching the second panel’s testimony and reading Halderman’s statement, you’re asleep or dead, or you just plain don’t care about the U.S.’ democratic system.
Contrast and compare this Senate hearing to the House Intelligence Committee’s hearing with former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson as a witness. Johnson sent out numerous messages last year expressing his concerns about election integrity, but after listening to the second Senate panel, Johnson should have been hair-on-fire (it’s figure of speech, go with it). But the Obama administration erred out of some twisted sense of heightened sensibility about appropriateness (which would have been better suited to its policies on drone use and domestic surveillance). The excess of caution feels more like foot dragging when viewed through the lens of time and Johnson’s testimony.
Early in the hearing, Johnson as well as DHS witnesses Jeanette Manfra and Samuel Liles said there was no evidence votes were changed. It’s important to note, though, that Johnson later clarifies in a round about way there was no way to be certain of hacking at that time (about 1:36:00-1:41:00 in hearing). I find it incredibly annoying Johnson didn’t simply defer to information security experts about the possibility there may never be evidence even if there were hacks; it’s simply not within in his skill set or experience then or now to say with absolute certainty based on forensic audit there was no evidence of votes changed. Gathering that evidence never happened because federal and state laws do not provide adequately for standardized full forensic audits before, during, or after an election.
Halderman’s SIC testimony today, in contrast, makes it clear our election system was highly vulnerable in many different ways last November.
Votes being changed is (possibly) a red herring anyway. Votes not being physically changed from one candidate to another doesn’t remotely mean that people weren’t prevented from voting or that voting decisions weren’t unduly influenced. The election could have been dramatically altered without Bob Smith’s vote being changed from Clinton to Trump.