Dissecting The WikiLeaks Russian Connection - Part One

a reply to: Azureblue

"overt" ? sounds like shill language to me. Well written but sounds to me like the kind of article a Clinton staffer would write. Pre-election hype to me.

I've learned that when posting a political thread, if the OP isn't called a shill at least once, he's probably doing something wrong.

So thanks! I'll add overt to my list of fancy shill words to use.

originally posted by: ParasuvO

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

That's what I always thought too but it seems to be only liberals being targeted by Russian hacks.

Liberals are the ones who need targeting lately, they are the ones causing all the problems and confusion in the world.

And everyone knows it.

Sure, support foreign interference... as long as bad things are said about liberals, right?

a reply to: Kali74

Sure, support foreign interference... as long as bad things are said about liberals, right?

Considering the implications of foreign interference seems to be beyond an unfortunately large number of people.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Sometimes my jaw literally drops.

Have you ever come across an article titled: How I lost My Dad to Fox News?

a reply to: Kali74

No but I could write the follow up, How I Lost My Mom To Neal Boortz. (or maybe that's more of a Georgia thing?)

I grew up in a Republican family though they're mostly very rational people (except my one uncle who spams Facebook with Breitbart links) but for a couple years there around the Obama election my mom was convinced that the government was going to start rounding up the children, impose martial law (or Sharia law or both — who knows?) and declare himself as Caliph or something.

As time went by, she switched from talk radio to cable news and settled down into more of a standard Fox News "Obama has destroyed America because he hates us (or he's weak — whatever works!)" worldview.

Whoa... what a thread. A lot to take in but it leads my mind to asking so many questions.

A poster wrote this below on the first page and this is where Im at as well.

The number one issue for Russia, imo, to attempt to manipulate US elections is to gain more control in the Middle East, particularly the path of the proposed natural gas lines from Qatar and Iran. Both run through Syria.

All this going on with Assange, Putin, and Trump are making me wonder whats REALLY going on.

Im leaning towards Syria and conquering the ME. I believe they think Trump if manipulated into the seat of Presidency he may have better chance with his investments in the ME than if Hillary were in office.

Have no idea... time will tell. Truth always prevails.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
I agree with that to an extent though I believe it's grown beyond a personal vendetta against the US govt or Clinton. If you look at WikiLeaks targets, they don't simply focus on the US and ignore Russia — they also ignore Russian allies while targetting those of the US.

I am not surprised since he is aligning himself with Putin. The quid pro quo is obvious.

Maybe that's what I'll do in the next post? A breakdown of the leaks, Tweets, etc for the past 5-6 years as way of quantifying WikiLeak's bias.

I think it would make an excellent thread.

In any case, I believe that citizens of the US and allied nations need to strongly consider Assange's agenda (which is clearly not neutral and not the stated mission of WikiLeaks) as they're swooning over him and holding him up as some sort of luminary of transparency and free speech.

I agree. Too many people are sucked into his manufactured persona as a champion of free speech but he purposefully hides or avoids exposing the aforementioned states.

a reply to: theantediluvian

You got a good sense of humor mate, 10 outa 10

Or maybe they are focusing on the Democrats because there seems to have been a skewed view that they are some how more innocent than the republicans that stole the election in Bush vs Gore.

So for at least the last 16 years most republicans I know were willing to admit the corruption in the party they support..while most democrats I know swear their party walked on water, and was as pure as new fallen snow.

I would say a larger segment of american society are willing to go yes both parties are fricking corrupt, thats a good thing.

And Of course they are only doing this for their own benefit, just like we have rarely done things for an altruistic reasons...

We spy and try to influence them, they do the same to us... heck we do it to our "allies" and they do the same to us.

Unfortunately thats the way society works now a days, with everything on the cloud... or barely secured servers its only going to get worse.

Great thread!!

There is a trend in Democratic policies with Bernie Sander's pushing the Platform to the left, along with all the tough talk regarding the Banks, that perhaps the "free ride" loopholes might be closed on some of the money-making tax evasion ventures of the rich/ultra-rich. This would impact interests at an international level to some degree, at least, and may also be a reason to want to take down the Democrats, lest the Left have the opportunity through public support and Electoral power to reduce income inequality.

I also think Putin is vindictive, and has a particular hatred for Clinton, and feels he can easily manipulate Trump, which is to his advantage. Clinton, however, sees Putin as someone to keep in check, and sees his vulnerabilities, which gives him a lot of reason to not want her in power.

As to Wikileaks, Assange is a tool. Period. He is living dangerously. How hard do you think it would be to assassinate someone stuck inside an Embassy for skilled jackals? Or perhaps the carrot has been used over the stick -- a sweet life somewhere if he just plays his part for now... (This is just my opinion however, which should be noted...)

a reply to: desert

Thought more about my questions. I can remember decades ago when Soviet aircraft routinely would fly close to Alaskan air space as a way to probe our defense system. Soviet intelligence would see which American citizens they could turn. Always looking for weaknesses in American systems or citizens. I see this 21st cen program in the same light. Russian intelligence probed America for weaknesses and found one.

Our weakness was our own decades long shift in thought, from engaging in reasonable, rational discourse to encouraging irrationality, paranoia, and unreasonableness. 1980 marks a turning point, when political power officially sanctioned a turn from what was perceived as the moral relevancy of the "culture war" of the 60s and 70s. The only response to the question of who would have to be saved in the life raft was to say that "everyone should be saved" and to even talk about such things shows a lack of morality. America needed to turn to black-and-white thinking, no gray areas, no nuance.

In starting down this road, we eventually ended up with false equivalency, where balance means everything is the same. A gash is the same as a nick, even though the first requires stitches but the second does not.

We also ended up regarding questioning as bad, because questioning could take you to an uncomfortable place (with the possibility of making decisions or change even), and, besides, one should not question a Higher Power's plans, whether that HP is of a spiritual nature or an earthly leader. (Well, it was alright to question someone else's HP or leader, but one's own HP or leader was off limits.)

And in a world where nuance doesn't exist, one does not need to have anything in context. There is no need to read behind the headline, think beyond the soundbite. The headline and soundbite are all that matters.

This is from 3 years ago! Think Again: 10 Years of False Equivalence and Still Going Strong

And so we end up with opinion as fact today....

On July 22, as the convention wound down, former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich talked to CNN New Day anchor Alisyn Camerota. The telling moment came when Camerota confronted Gingrich about Trump’s incendiary acceptance speech. The Republican nominee painted a bleak picture of the modern world — one where crime, chaos and terror lurk in America’s cities and no one is safe.

In reality, violent crime is down across the country, and the world is more peaceful than it was during most of the 20th century. Camerota pointed out the sinking crime rates to Gingrich.
“The average American … does not think crime is down, does not think they are safer,” Gingrich replied.

“But we are safer, and it is down,” Camerota retorted.

“No, that’s your view,” Gingrich said.

“It’s a fact,” she pressed.

“But what I said is also a fact … The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right, but it’s not where human beings are. People are frightened. People feel that their government has abandoned them.”

“Hold on, Mr. Speaker, because you’re saying liberals use these numbers, they use this sort of magic math,” Camerota said. “This is the FBI statistics. They’re not a liberal organization.”

“No, but what I said is equally true. People feel it.”

“They feel it, yes, but the facts don’t support it.”

“As a political candidate, I’ll go with how people feel and I’ll let you go with the theoreticians.”

Donald Trump Has Americanized Vladimir Putin’s War on Truth

Putin has found America's weakness to exploit.

Questionable source so I wont link it, but I just read in some of the early hacked emails Hillary asked outright if we can drone strike Assange...

IF that is true it would explain quite a bit about the vendetta being shown by Wiki leaks.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Kudos on not posting from True Pundit, the same folks who originated the earpiece hoax based on information from an anonymous "source."

a reply to: theantediluvian

Actually have no idea who that is... :p

It was something I saw in passing, figured I would toss that out there...

Just as likely as Assange is a Russian puppet... somehow a fairly inept FSB has been morphed into the great fearsome KGB through the media again. ( I am sure there are elements of the FSB that are very good... but I doubt they have the money to do the training needed to be as good as the KGB once was as a whole)

eta: Gogled true pundit, my anti virus and malware protection say its a moderate risk, unless I really need to go to the site I avoid moderate risk sites.

a reply to: theantediluvian

ante, I came across this article.

Russian Hackers Altered Emails Before Release to Wikileaks

The metadata show that the Russian operators apparently edited some documents, and in some cases created new documents after the intruders were already expunged from the DNC network on June 11. A file called donors.xls, for instance, was created more than a day after the story came out, on June 15, most likely by copy-pasting an existing list into a clean document. Although so far the actual content of the leaked documents appears not to have been tampered with, manipulation would fit an established pattern of operational behaviour in other contexts, such as troll farms or planting fake media stories. Subtle (or not so subtle) manipulation of content may be in the interest of the adversary in the future. Documents that were leaked by or through an intelligence operation should be handled with great care, and journalists should not simply treat them as reliable sources.

......

Instead of fighting Assange about releasing the material, it should be pointed out that not only is Assange using the Wikileaks platform in a personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton, he’s doing so with information that may have been altered and is therefore not trustworthy. First rule of real journalism: Make sure your sources can be trusted.

I have some questions, because I'm not sure I understand or am reading this correctly....


Does this mean that the "Russians" went back in after the first "intruders" and purposefully altered docs and created new docs?

Can they leave tampered docs, so that even though they might no longer return, the tampered docs would be left behind?

And then does this mean that when docs are then leaked in the future, that those docs should be suspect?


one more question....

Could this mean that leaked docs could come from sites that have been hacked previously but are not aware that they have been hacked? That these sites could have docs that have been altered which they are not even aware of?

I've posted the next thread on the WikiLeaks/Russia connection:

Did WikiLeaks Exclude Syria To Russia Bank Transfer Emails From Syria Files?

a reply to: Irishhaf

eta: Gogled true pundit, my anti virus and malware protection say its a moderate risk, unless I really need to go to the site I avoid moderate risk sites.

That'll be a front page thread if you decide to post it:

"Pro-Clinton Antivirus Blocking Conservative Sites?"

a reply to: theantediluvian

When I google something I get a million main stream hist from CNN BBC ABC, blah blah, their blah blah story is almost word for word the same diatribe from the western propaganda machine. I get that from the TV, from proponents here, the last thing I want is to hear the same story over and over. Thats how I in fact know its BS, they all carry the same news.

Anything but the same story over and over. So yah, wiki me.

a reply to: desert

There's a link to a ThreatConnect timeline in the OP I believe that shows all the file edits to the documents released by "Guccifer 2.0" on the Wordpress blog. The meta data analysis comes from an independent researcher, Pwn All The Things.

The hypothesis that I subscribe to is that the documents distributed directly by "Guccifer 2.0" are sloppily, hastily and inexpertly tossed together because the persons behind "Guccifer 2.0" are not necessarily the hackers themselves and more likely a far less tech savvy denial and deception operative working on an expedited time frame due to the CrowdStrike post.

In other words, the purpose wasn't to tamper with the documents — any legit hacktivist would have known that documents that are obviously not pristine are by and large useless.

There is evidence of the RevoluSec hackers (likely) joking among themselves that they should alter documents given to WikiLeaks (in the Daily Dot article linked in the "Did WikiLeaks Exclude Syria To Russia Bank Transfer Emails From Syria Files?" thread).

It's always a consideration but I haven't really come across many allegations of tampering with the content of the documents themselves but rather the claims are of WikiLeaks selectively releasing what benefits the agenda.

Can they leave tampered docs, so that even though they might no longer return, the tampered docs would be left behind?

A sufficiently sophisticated hacker/group could potentially edit email in situ by editing mail databases directly but that would be cumbersome. It would be far more difficult still if the data was stored encrypted. If the tampered emails were stored on another party's mail servers, they could of course be used to substantiate tampering.

Editing documents sitting out in the filesystem would be considerably easier.

Could this mean that leaked docs could come from sites that have been hacked previously but are not aware that they have been hacked? That these sites could have docs that have been altered which they are not even aware of?

Possible but in the case of recent releases, the targets have actually verified he authenticity of the documents which seems like a losing strategy (and frankly, shockingly honest) when it would be easy to claim otherwise.

a reply to: intrptr

Anything but the same story over and over.

But what if the alternative story is less honest and promotes a more nefarious agenda?

FTR, if you actually look at what most people consider as the "alternative media" they all aggregate from one another too.

My point is just because one is bad doesn't preclude the other from being worse. I think that's a trap a lot of people fall into.