Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

The tl;drs miss the hilarious assertion that Russia is somehow responsible for the outcome of the election. Nevermind Assange's denials.

"The espionage story of the year, and perhaps one of the greatest foreign operations in decades, has undoubtedly been Russia’s successful effort to influence this fall’s presidential election through hacking—penetrating Democratic National Committee servers and the e-mail account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman."




Saying that it influenced the election isn't the same as saying that it is solely responsible for the outcome, don't be disingenuous.


Then maybe the author would do well not to frame it as such by avoiding lines like "one of the greatest foreign operations in decades"


Why? Not unilaterally deciding the US presidential election isn't mutually exclusive with "one of the greatest foreign operations in decades". I might disagree with their assessment, but Russia did influence the election and someone could at least attempt the argument that it was "one of the greatest foreign operations in decades"


To be fair, cosmic rays also influenced the election. The degree of influence is unknown however.


I love how a weak assertion made by the DNC to deflect attention away from the actual email content has now been silently elevated into a "fact" mindlessly parroted like here.


"Silently elevated" by being the consensus opinion among the entire intelligence community.


Why would we know? Why would they tell us?

Those are the questions you should be asking.

They may be telling the truth. They may be telling part of the truth. They may be lying.


All of that is true, you should ask those questions. That doesn't mean one should lie and say that such accusations are fringe.


I trust in DKIM signatures. Any statement by an intelligence service ever is caked in multiple layers of conflicting motivations from expanding their budget, pleasing their lax overseers, deflecting incompetence to confusing adversaries.

And these are just the generic reasons. In this particular case, the first obvious question is why NSA et al. would ever state their certainty in a Russian attack publicly. There are no good outcomes. Either they are right and the Russians blow up the bridges as they retreat or they are wrong and the Russians know they are incompetent.


How would DKIM signatures show who stole the e-mails?

> I trust in DKIM signatures. Any statement by an intelligence service ever is caked in multiple layers of conflicting motivations from expanding their budget, pleasing their lax overseers, deflecting incompetence to confusing adversaries.

That is some of the motivations, the negative ones, but you fail to list all the reasons they wouldn't want to lie to make your argument sound stronger.

I understand being skeptical of an intelligence service, but all intelligence services? Well, you'd have to have a pretty strong reason to doubt.


Exactly, I was hoping for some details regarding this, but it seems that this line was added for catching eyeballs




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: