Posted on 10/21/2016 12:18:42 AM PDT by Ray76
Hillary Clinton in last night’s presidential debate tried to avoid talking about the substance of the damaging WikiLeaks disclosures of DNC and Clinton campaign officials by claiming 17 U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russia was responsible for this. After Clinton made this claim, she scolded Trump for challenging U.S. intelligence professionals who have taken an oath to help defend this country.
What Clinton said was false and misleading. First of all, only two intelligence entities – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have weighed in on this issue, not 17 intelligence agencies. And what they said was ambiguous about Russian involvement.
Saying we think the hacks “are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts” is far short of saying we have evidence that Russia has been responsible for the hacks.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
It’s a Captain Obvious to say they’re leading the nation to Hell in a handbasket.
And their lies keep selling to some of the idiots out there. It’s astounding how clueless so many are. It’s unbelievable to me they would wreck the whole system; yet here we are.
This is interesting. Ex-Nsa worker has lots of TS papers and officials say he was in communication with Someone in Russia. (It’s always Russia these days)
http://www.wbal.com/article/197690/2/ex-nsa-worker-accused-of-stealing-secrets-to-stay-in-custody
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
WASHINGTON, DC 20511
October 07, 2016
Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security
and Office of the Director of National Intelligence
on Election Security
The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.
Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government. The USIC and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assess that it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion. This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place. States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process.
Nevertheless, DHS continues to urge state and local election officials to be vigilant and seek cybersecurity assistance from DHS. A number of states have already done so. DHS is providing several services to state and local election officials to assist in their cybersecurity. These services include cyber “hygiene” scans of Internet-facing systems, risk and vulnerability assessments, information sharing about cyber incidents, and best practices for securing voter registration databases and addressing potential cyber threats. DHS has convened an Election Infrastructure Cybersecurity Working Group with experts across all levels of government to raise awareness of cybersecurity risks potentially affecting election infrastructure and the elections process. Secretary Johnson and DHS officials are working directly with the National Association of Secretaries of State to offer assistance, share information, and provide additional resources to state and local officials.
New charges for ex-NSA contractor for allegedly taking elite hacking tools
Hal Martin allegedly was found with 50TB of data when arrested in August 2016.
Cyrus Farivar - 2/8/2017, 5:04 PM
I actually had been following this story since it first happened and posted about it here. It received no attention at all.
The first stories that came out talked about his shed was just filled with piles of papers and he discussed how he he was using the information to study and learn.
Apparently, although he’s married, was a geeky loner. I also came across the Shadow Brokers who is web entity that buys/sells hacking information. I’m yet to know if this guy actually distributed, sold, etc. any of the information he had stock piled in his shed and trunk of his car. But, either way, it was illegal.
I was curious if he gave some of his hacking tools info to WikiLeaks, since they released some similar stuff today.
Very interesting. It’s amazing how he went undetected for so long while he’s been hoarding information. It’s very plausible indeed. I’ll do some more reading about this case today and see what else I can dig up. While he, his wife, and co-workers try and make it sound like he was just an irresponsible nerd - He probably just knew how to stay on the down low. After all, prisons are filled with innocent people.
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