* That whoever this is hasn't left out information that doesn't fit the narrative they're selling
* Hasn't edited the information to suit their narrative
* Hasn't included wholly false information
This matters even more if we believe it's Russia, because falsified leaks are part of Russia's M.O.
In this world of state disinformation programmes (US, Russia and others) we need these leaks AND we need journalists and civilians to take them seriously; looking to establish second sources to corroborate information.
Also I am a different commenter than the one that you responded to (I'm not the guy from your internet argument).
I think the logic is faulty because it is very specific about implying what sources to trust/not to trust - without motivating that trust/lack of trust on a logical basis.
As such the argument is open to selective application, whereby the party applying the logic decides a priori the result based on their biases about the trustworthiness of the source (and therefore the truthiness of the leaked documents).
In this case - in the domain of information warfare - hacks and leaks implicating US officials in foul activity (global surveillance, propaganda programming, election flipping, regime change, torture programs, corruption in election systems) ought not be questioned a priori less or more than leaks implicating non-US officials in foul activity (tax avoidance, e.g. Panama Papers; arming proxy groups that in turn cause accidental casualties, e.g. MH17).
Not fully stipulating - in a consistent, logical and sound format - a formal criteria for a comprehensive system to establish and evaluate a priori source trust leaves your logic wholly incomplete, unable to grapple with real world issues of information consumption and investigative reporting.
Resulting in what I had said: deeply incomplete, selectively applied logic.
A few points:
- Some may be DKIM/DomainKeys signed, which could provide evidence of tampering if the tamperer was unsophisticated enough to try tampering with a signed message.
- Any other party to any contested email could potentially produce a version of the email that differed from the leaked one.
- Chances are more than one group/individual hacked the server, so there could be other sources of verification, though it would still be difficult to determine which one to trust.
All in all, I hope that nothing interesting or troubling is found in the emails and we can all move on from this issue. I'm also skeptical Russia had anything to do with it.
Why are you skeptical that Russia had anything to do with this? Serious question!
* Russia is notorious for doing stuff like this online.
* Three threat intelligence firms --- including the two most reputable firms in the business, one of which is run by someone who hates Clinton --- publicly attributed the attacks to Russia.
* The basis of that attribution includes IOCs that weren't even publicly known before the attribution occurred, and would be difficult even for an expert to forge.
Clearly, anyone could have hacked the Clinton Foundation.
But I'm surprised people believe that it would be straightforward to hack the Clinton Foundation in such a way as to leave a trail of IOCs leading back to Russia. I think? you have to be an expert to do that.
I think your questions contain the assumptions for my answer:
A state sponsored intelligence agency has the sophistication to forge the IOCs (or not to). Russia has a state sponsored intelligence agency. Therefore, the IOCs would not have been found unless the state sponsored agency responsible for the leak wanted them found. Thus if the data was leaked by Russia, it would have been accountable only if being held accountable offered a strategic benefit.
I have not yet observed any strategic benefit to Russia doing this. In fact, unless the hypothetical smoking gun is so significant that it will harm the very likely election of HRC to the presidency (and that was deemed beneficial), I find it unlikely that Russia would have been willing to risk the significant harm in diplomacy caused by being caught meddling in a US election.
So I think the hack was either done by a less sophisticated group (likely Russian) or by a different state sponsored group who chose to leave the trail pointing to Russia. Considering that escalated US/Russia tensions will amount to Billions in appropriations, there is clearly a financial incentive for stewing the conflict. There is also a dedicated interest group in the US that has tried to nudge the US into more direct conflict with Russia over the Ukraine, etc. But the surprising factor has been how readily Clinton's campaign jumped into finger pointing.
I do not see how it possibly benefits Clinton (or her diplomatic core in 2017) to engage Russia in finger pointing and accusations of meddling in a US election. If a response was warranted, it should (in my opinion) have been measured, and it should have come from president Obama, and the issue should not have become a rallying cry for HRC's campaign. It's absurd and unprecedented for a candidate who does not hold office to levy such serious accusations at a foreign government. If accusations are warranted there is an existing group of officials whose job it is to deal with it.
The first version of the Russia finger pointing story didn't really get legs and was not vetted by any named/credible infosec experts. The second round was, by the firms you mention, and I believe at least one official made a statement confirming the suspicion of Russian involvement.
So there is some unknown motive for HRC deciding to circumvent the proper diplomatic method of resolving something as serious as election tampering by a foreign country. I doubt it amounts simply to trying to leverage the news cycle in a beneficial way, or even misdirection. It seems like too big a risk, one that a former Secretary of State would be abundantly cognizant of, especially if it really was Russia and some retaliatory action would need to be taken in the near future.
I think there is room for exploration of the various motives that other state actors might have had for leaking the docs, but my guess is that the goal is to get the information into public view so that it cannot be used against HRC later after she's elected. Only if the leaked information ends up containing an election-risking smoking gun will it be plausible to believe that a state actor released the information to harm HRC.
But I don't think it's very plausible. Break this down a bit:
* Possibility 1: The NSA/CIA/DHS deliberately attack the Democratic National Committee --- a black-letter crime --- and deliberately create a fraudulent attribution to Russia. In the process, they reveal unflattering secrets about the party of the government still in power, and generate fodder for one of the most volatile Presidential elections in recent history. Plausibility rating: HIGHLY IMPROBABLE.
* Possibility 2: The attack isn't instigated by the US government, but rather some group of randos who the USG finds convenient to frame for the attack. Since the attribution work is performed simultaneously by US federal law enforcement and multiple attribution firms, a conspiracy must be generated between the firms (who are unanimous in their opinion) and law enforcement --- and, since the act of framing Russia is both deliberate and highly strategic, probably the executive branch of the US government at the highest levels. This is technically possible to accomplish, but would represent the most sophisticated and ambitious conspiracy undertaken by the US government in the last 50 years. Plausibility rating: EVEN LESS PROBABLE.
* Possibility 3: Both the USG and the attribution firms believe in good faith that they have a firm attribution to Russia. But they're wrong. For example, perhaps Russia seeded the last generation of their attack tools to a bunch of randos in Eastern Europe. Problem: tools, implants, and exploits are important IOCs, but they aren't the only ones, and the attribution depends on some IOCs that can't be seeded --- previously used staging servers and command and control systems. Plausibility rating: SLIGHTLY MORE PLAUSIBLE BUT STILL IMPROBABLE.
* Possibility 4: As bystanders we don't have a clear enough understanding of Russia's M.O. to gauge their intent. We agree broadly that Russia is highly competent and capable, and that this is a high-profile attack, so it's unlikely that they were just too dumb to set up fresh staging servers. So Russia is comfortable with the world knowing they're doing this; in addition to hamfistedly manipulating the election and supporting their favorite candidate --- we know Trump is their favorite candidate, they just filed a complaint to the U.N. to that effect!!! --- they're also communicating something to the US about their willingness to sow chaos and exploit it to their own ends. Plausibility rating: SUBJECTIVE.
The biggest current unknowns in my opinion are:
- Why did the HRC campaign decide to circumvent normal channels and make immediate accusations of Russian involvement?
- Why did Clapper wait until today to make an official statement? Why did he make an official statement at all?
One thing I've noticed about information campaigns is that they often seem to rely upon the human tendency to replace AND with THEREFORE when news is released piecemeal.
Hence, Server hacked AND campaign blames Russia AND Clapper blames Russia AND _______ AND ________ AND ________ ...
These disparate facts will seemingly turn causal and will be attributable to specific protagonists as the campaign develops.
Since HRC's team is essentially setting the agenda for the data points we've received so far, I am expecting there to be a punchline, or some causal narrative we're going to be asked to believe at some point in the future.
In what I think are Robin Hanson's terms, for Trumpists the enemy in near mode is the Clintonistas.
Once the Democrats are defeated they would change again, like defeating an end of level boss, geopolitical concerns would become less abstract.
This is good for Clinton though because it should consolidate her base. Democrats will be feeling more patriotic than usual. I really am not sure whether geopolitics with Russia becomes more far or abstract after the election if she wins.
For my part I do not think she is a known quantity as many people have said. Familiar but not known. A known quantity is what people said about Merkel but then she became unpredictable. I have this suspicion that Trump is unpredictable in predictable ways but that Clinton could be just as unpredictable.
What I really do not know is what Clinton's position is on 'the decline of the empire'. Have there been acknowledgements? Declarations? Business as usual?
One of the strongest pieces of evidence linking GRU to the DNC hack is the equivalent of identical fingerprints found in two burglarized buildings: a reused command-and-control address—176.31.112[.]10—that was hard coded in a piece of malware found both in the German parliament as well as on the DNC’s servers. Russian military intelligence was identified by the German domestic security agency BfV as the actor responsible for the Bundestag breach. The infrastructure behind the fake MIS Department domain was also linked to the Berlin intrusion through at least one other element, a shared SSL certificate.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-signs-point-to-russia-b...