Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

> The hacks used implants that were only ever used by the respective groups, which had only targeted organizations that the Russian government was pursuing and were known to be RIS groups

So you're arguing that if you were state sponsored intelligence agency and you were using a crude technique that could be easily detected, that you'd only target organizations that your state had obvious strategic interest in?

Your assertion fails a test of reasonableness for several reasons. The most obvious of which is that since there are thousands of Nigerians doing the same kind of phishing campaigns, so there would be no tactical reason not to include a large number of randomly generated email addresses or email addresses from other hacked lists.

One obvious example is the Stratfor dump. Who were Stratfor's subscribers? Largely members of government agencies, large institutions, etc. Any hacking group would have had access to all of the emails in the dump, as well as other publicly available caches of email addresses.

Also, if you were a state actor wishing to conduct a phishing campaign like the one we're discussing, why would you dispatch it from the Ukraine? Even the links you sent claim it's quite unusual for the sender address of a phishing email to be the same as the one registered to the domain, but this fact is not deemed worthy of consideration.

So we're now down to three main possibilities: Either the state actor in question is extremely amateurish and careless, or it wasn't a state actor, or it was a state actor intending to lay a misleading trail.

My point is simply that it's very presumptuous to jump to the conclusion that it was definitely a state actor and definitely Russia.

The article you linked would perhaps be somewhat trustworthy if it were not the case that the NYT had a clear intent on helping HRC's candidacy and has been one of the chief supporters of propaganda about Russia. I consider the NYT to be America's own Pravda.

The article contains assertions that are not accompanied by data. We're told that one of the DNC's computers was "phoning home" to "Russia" but there is sadly no reason to believe this or any of the other information in the article.

I'd also add that due to the NYT's very poor adherence to journalistic best-practices and basic professionalism during the campaign, reading an article like that makes me doubt the truthfulness of the claims even more than I would have without reading it.

While there are a few good reporters left at the NYT, the paper has a set of propaganda goals that often take precedence over truthful reporting and real journalism. This is deeply saddening to me, as I would hope that our nation would have at least one reputable large news organization.

FWIW I'm horrified that Trump won the election, and did not expect him to, but I would also have been horrified (though less so) if HRC had won. We can do so much better.

> Did you forget that this metadata collection ended?

I do not believe this to be the case. We have been reassured multiple times that our agencies are not eavesdropping, etc., yet revelations have continued to emerge that these reassurances have been lies.

> Whatever you call it, this happens everywhere,

The fourth amendment is fairly unique in the world. It (and the first and second amendments) are even unique in the western tradition rooted in English common law. So yes, I know it happens almost everywhere. That does not mean it should happen here.

I'd also comment that there must be a bizarre, un-American cynicism among the people who write things like the "Patriot Act" and the sorts of legal briefs that allow agencies to burn the bill of rights at will. Who are the monsters who want to destroy the few things that could be considered unique cultural and humanitarian achievements of our nation? And why do you defend them!

> Remember, FISA court proceedings are secret, and at least as of 2013 (I'm getting this info from Wikipedia), a massive 12 out of 35,529 FISA warrent requests were rejected.

Yeah, that's a much higher rejection rate since 2003 than in the 24 previous years the court existed, when zero were denied. So, if the rate of rejections is a valid metric for how good the court is, with fewer rejections being worse, the process got better during the "War on Terror".

Would you please stop using HN for partisan battle? That's emphatically not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Your guy is.

I'm not defending Trump. His campaign strategy was to say somewhat ludicrous things and then when challenged, double down on them, thus amplifying the PR impact. To be quite clear, for every person who socially shared an article slamming one of Trump's ridiculous statements, perhaps 90% of their friends agreed, but the message also reached the 10% who approved of Trump's approach, or saw in it evidence he was not part of the establishment.

While I abhor Trump's approach of appealing to the worst parts of human nature (bigotry, fear, etc.) to rally support, it's sadly a very common technique used by politicians. HRC at one point in her career called for a "physical barrier" between the southern US and Mexico, and focused her talking points on "criminal aliens". Yes, HRC was playing to fear and bigotry when she said those things, just as Trump was when he called for a wall and described immigrants as "rapists". Trump brought a new level of crassness to something that had existed before but was spoken about in tones of moderation even though the intended audience read between the lines and found (and was animated by) the bigotry.

> you don't expect anyone to believe that Trump and Obama share the same position with regard to Russia

This is not the point of my comment. What I meant was that no president really has the power to dramatically shift US policy toward Russia, there are too many interest groups involved. The two main factions, those who are willing to accommodate Russia's adolescent mischief (led by strong man Putin taking the country for an authoritarian joy ride), and those who wish to send a signal that it will not be tolerated.

We've had 8 years of the former, during which time Putin has had quite a joy ride. Trump is inclined to let it continue, while HRC would likely have tried to put a stop to it one way or another. It's not clear Obama would do anything different than Trump in terms of policy. The revelations about alleged Russian meddling date back to July 2016, and according to the article you linked, it was known about for years prior. Yet Obama declined to impose sanctions, preferring instead some sort of back-channel communication (if any response at all).

Obama's decision to impose sanctions two weeks before the end of his term was likely a nod to the prevailing Democratic Party view, which Obama had not attempted to shape during the campaign. He had to be loyal to his party, and likely did the least consequential thing he could, sent a few people home and imposed sanctions that would be awkward for Trump to remove, etc.

So if you ignore Trump's rhetoric (as I think it is wise to ignore most of what politicians say, and instead focus on what they do), he is staying the course 100% with Obama's policy. Let's wait until there is actual policy change before concluding that he feels differently. We've seen him do a 180 on so many other campaign promises since taking office, why should Russia be any different?

> dramatic events such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine

US policy on this matter was set by president Obama and the congress at the time. The relevant before picture and after picture (in terms of US policy) have nothing to do with Trump unless he actually drives a policy change. There was a minority (including McCain, HRC, etc.) who harshly criticized Obama's inaction. This minority has become very vocal of late, and has attracted many HRC partisans to the chorus, but there is not really evidence that a majority of congress holds this view. Notably, the members of the GOP who are most vehement are the ones whose own opportunism calculus dictates that vocally calling out Trump on the issue suits their own personal objectives.

From a game theoretic perspective, I think the hawks may be right, though I personally hope we find a more peaceful, trade-driven equilibrium. I've worked with various Ukrainian and Russian software engineers before, and they are all nice, reasonable people who do not deserve to have the US launching missiles at them.