2017/06/10

Russian "interference" in U.S. elections?

Much is being made about Russian "interference" in the 2016 presidential election, and about possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to interfere to win the election for Trump. However, the suspicions are lacking in evidence.

However, we do have a classified report from the Director of National Intelligence, the declassified version of which is linked below. It Seems to have at least tacit support from other agencies, and it can be expected to be the basis for other investigations on the subject.

Despite the use of the word "Hacking" in the URL of the report, the only hacking discussed in the report is of the private Clinton server containing and sharing classified documents. It repeatedly says, "DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying." In other words, there was no known hacking of vote counts.

However, the report is also loose about what constitutes a "Russian actor". The hackers using the handle "Guccifer.2.0" are presumed in the report to be working for the Russian government, which Putin denies. However, that they might be independent is entirely plausible. Russia harbors a swarm of hackers, mostly bent on selling drugs or stealing page rank. It seems doubtful that all of them would work for the Russian government. Of course, the government would soon have what they found.

So what kind of "collusion" with Trump supporters could there have been? Giving the Trump people advance notice of what they found ans asking them what to do with it? So the Trump people said "Upload it to Wikileaks." So what. That is not "collusion".

In the report it says that "Guccifer.2.0 is identified as Romanian. That was the original Guccifer (without a version number). The report may be confused about all the Guccifers.

The hacking of the Clinton servers was easy for almost anyone to do. It appears that many people did. That it revealed evidence of criminal wrongdoing is hardly "interference" in our election. We need more of that kind of interference in every election. It is also doubtful that the revelations did much to change the way people voted. Clinton supporters just dismissed the revelations as political lies, and her opponents weren't going to vote for her anyway.

Most of what the rest of the report discuses is just propaganda, mainly delivered through the RT (formerly Russia Today) network. I have frequently watched RT. Yes it is slanted pro-Russian, but one can compensate for that. Just as most of the media in the U.S. is slanted progressive or Democrat. (Now increasingly communistic and pro Islamic conquest.) Only Fox news and a few other independents seem not to be part of that spin machine. They are slanted, but it is easy to compensate for their slant. That same U.S. based media interferes in the elections of almost every nation on earth. in much the way RT does. Propagandists have a right of free speech. Spreading their slants on the news is hardly "interference". That is also what political campaigns do. All part of the game.

Now the spreading of "fake news" can be a problem, especially if done too close to an election, before the corrections can propagate.

The DNI report is long on assertions, but short on evidence. Perhaps they are in the classified version, but the declassified version does not hint about what such evidence, if any, could be.

It seems likely that the excitement about "Russian hacking" is intended to deflect attention from the Trump complaints of Democrats bringing illegal aliens to the polls to vote. That is plausible. Although I have not seen it done, I have heard Democrat campaign workers discussing how they did it. It was just a matter of rounding up illegals, driving them to the polls, and then having poll workers look the other way as the votes were cast. Most staff positions at the local government level are filled by Democrats, which puts them in position to do things like steal elections.

Links:

  1. U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Background and Report, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution,” Jan. 6, 2017, available at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3254239-Russia-Hacking-report.html

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