> A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
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A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
71–80 of 96 posts
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
wasn't 'Russia meddling' a planted story by US domestic intelligence, as has come to light in the Twitter files?
“Domestic intelligence”? You mean the FBI? US intelligence agencies by law do not operate within the US. Did the Russians interfere in the US election? This is unquestionably true. The DNC did not leak their strategy docs by themselves. Was Russian interference in the 2016 election decisive? Highly unlikely. Imo, it would be generous to say the effect was marginal at best. In hindsight the whole thing was pretty stup…
“US intelligence agencies by law do not operate within the US.”
This is an extremely naive statement with no basis in history. At least you recognize that Russian election interference had little, if any impact on the 2016 election.
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have direct democracy in Switzerland and they don't need the internet for that.
Many states in the USA have had ballot propositions for over one hundred years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_...
Yes but not once every 4 months. People keeping a check on the actions of their representatives needs to happen more than once per election cycle otherwise once the politician gets in they just do whatever they want.
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The argument that people aren't to be trusted with a more direct democracy always falls flat to me. The alternative is power concentrated to a few people which introduces a risk for developing a ruling class, an aristocracy, or plutocracy. Arguing against direct democracy feels elitist, like only certain people should be trusted with actual power. The truth is half of the population is dumber than the average, but th…
Smart and dumb is the wrong way to think about it. The important thing is that people want different things, there are real conflicts of interest. And moreover, we can't trust each other fully. We can try to aspire to it, but none of us can honestly say we just want what's best for everyone. Just because someone is smarter than you by some measure, doesn't mean you're better off letting them rule you.
My comment on intelligence was directly in response to my parent comment's quote "Aside from that, people in aggregate just aren't that bright"
> We can try to aspire to it, but none of us can honestly say we just want what's best for everyone.
This is exactly why having anything approaching a ruling class is a large hazard to avoid. Intermediate steps between citizens voting and power being executed are an attack area for people with selfish interests to inject themselves.
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what the USSR had. Didn't work so well. A secret ballot is a major requirement for democracy.
There was one option on the ballot, I think that was more the problem. Having choice and not having someone with a gun escort you to the ballot box are bigger requirements. If there were no repercussions, voting could totally be open, don't you think?
There will always be repercussions. Sweden have been doing public voting for decades by forcing you to pick the ballot out in the open, before going into a booth and putting the public ballot into an envelope. Your family, friends and the whole neighborhood will know whomever voted for the wrong party and will treat you thereafter.
EU and election authorities have demanded change to make it private but the previously ruling party didn't want to. Now we got a new government a few months ago and this was one of their first tasks, so it might be changed in time for the election in 2026.
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this sarcasm, or is there a subset of people here who truly believe that the Twitter “files” prove the significant investigative effort, offensive actions by US Cyber Command against the IRA, direct acknowledgement of the activities by Yevgeny Prigozhin, additional investigation and confirmation by private security companies that all echoed the same, highly-believable conclusion were fabricated in a coordinated ef…
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> as has come to light in the Twitter files
Your source cited is "the Twitter files" - they dont say what you say they said. So either you are ill informed or are disingenuous in your asserting that they prove what you say they prove.
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better article than this. The sad thing is we’re probably trivially close to the tech needed for direct democracy, but the powers that be use tech to confuse and supplant democratic institutions and propose their authoritarian rule.
> tech needed for direct democracy Tech isn't the issue, making everyone find time to stay sufficiently informed is. I already have one full-time job, I don't need 2-3 more (city and county which might be part-time, state, maybe federal).
There doesn't seem to be such a problem in Switzerland.
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#78Nation state government model is obsolete... each person needs to be self governed ... no passport needed... each person must be free to live and work anywhere globally... people must be free to choose who/what they align with... full anonymous... notion of zero trust from information theory to guide all transactions... currency also obsolete... until this full global cutover comes noone is fully actualized ... non h…
Yeah sure, tell that to all the obsolete nation states living on the border of Russia. Who is gonna protect you if the next village town or city decides your individual property is somehow theirs and they have the means and will to enforce it? As much as you can prep to defend yourself against attacks bh other individuals, nobody around you is bannaed from forming a band/group/nation. And if they are banned, who is g…
And who is going to protect Russian people rights in these "nation states on the border of Russia"? Your country?
The only moment when you care about "Russian people rights", is when some ignorant youngsters take out to the streets to make another "revolution" which might destroy their state.
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#79"Given their expertise in subterfuge, it is perhaps surprising that Hanan and his colleagues allowed themselves to be exposed by undercover reporters." Surprising, unless the guys are actually just good at lying to potential customers, to fleece them of as much $$ as possible. I'm not saying they don't use sock puppet social media accounts, etc. but really, how would any of their customers know if it was at all effec…
One of the tropes of spy novels is you can never trust a spy, and I think it'd be fair to say you can never trust a hacker or disinformation merchant either. Nevertheless, intelligence agencies and organized crime continues to exist, because the people employing said sources make their own risk assessments and incorporate that into the cost benefit analysis. And it appears that there is still at least some perceived…
1) well, they do remove some, and in order to not reveal how they identify them, they may not wish to talk all that much about it
2) it is baked into the model of free social media, not only that attention=advertising=money, but also that cost per user is very low (so they can keep the accounts free). If you add $1/user cost (to monitor with humans), for Facebook that would be billions more in cost. I don't know that a responsible social media company could be profitable; it may be that the very business model requires not policing it very well.
Re: A hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
You missed the update where it was proven that the "Russian meddling" story was fake. The meddling in our elections was the social media companies suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the election, which the media also claimed was "Russian ops" while Hunter since admitted it was his laptop (full of emails detailing the corruption in his family). The amount of propaganda and lies that is fed to the A…
One minute of googling found these: - https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download - https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu... - https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf - https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu... - https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download Spending some time flipping through these (ignore the last two if you please, one heavily…
It's one universe -- this activity within the government you're citing culminated in the Mueller investigation's final report, which read "insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy". Let me translate that for you: the whole thing was a hoax from day 1, discussed non-stop by our de-facto state media corporate press, and pushed non-stop for years on the American public by the DNC which is the source of those documents.
The dossier that was used as a basis for launching all of this in the first place: "Main Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko was FBI operative: court document" https://nypost.com/2022/09/14/main-steele-dossier-source-igo...
Actually it was discovered that the Clinton campaign paying for "opposition research" was in turn the source of that fake dossier.
The whole thing was made up, that's not even controversial at this point. The fact that you're on here citing those documents as if it wasn't just proves the pervasiveness of the corruption of our system of democracy and media.
Here's coverage on all of this from the journalist that broke the Snowden story and is maligned by our state/corporate/fascist media outlets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-lg5RU8xAI