Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

Also, the NSA, which is, according to Snowden, the organization best equipped to get to the bottom of this, expressed least amount of certainty in the report.

Weird of you to say "according to Snowden" - you don't have to get the NSA job description from Snowden - but yes, in the most recent (January) document put the NSA as reporting moderate confidence, or "the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence". This qualifier was for the specific claim that the Russian government wanted to see Trump elected and worked to contribute to his winning; for the rest, the NSA seems to share high confidence.

In the end, it wasn't even a hack. It was phishing. Which brings us to another problem because one of the most important "proofs" was that it was conducted on such a scale that it could have been only been done by a country like Russia, which is contrary to what phishing is. You don't need anything more than a computer with an internet connection to do it.

If the infiltrators were a single organization, then it would need to be more than a single individual given the scale of the operation. But the content accessed and disseminated is clearly political - the contention is that regardless of who or how many specifically executed the task itself, or participated in grabbing data, their employers or paymasters were state agents.

It does seem like the report was actually about telling the politicians and parts of the public what they want to hear. In the end, all involved in writing the report refused to categorically state anything or offer any proof. Instead, they covered their own asses by saying that Russian meddling is a probable conclusion based on what they know, so that no one can actually call them on it.

So we hope to receive updated information in the coming weeks. It seems like buying time or stalling. They made very strong claims, in fact, most significantly:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,
denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess
Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s
election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her
unfavorably to him.