Amerika

As mentioned here before, the evidence of deliberate Russian state intervention by hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails is unconvincing for two important reasons:

1. No mention of how many phishing emails sent.

   If the number is low, the group was specifically targeted; if many emails were sent out, this was just an attempt to hack as many people as possible in order to get valuable information. That this was then released to Wikileaks suggests the group responsible found no way to make money from this information and wanted notoriety instead.

2. Lack of strong connection to the Russian state.

   From outside of these hacking groups, it is impossible to tell the difference between “state-sponsored” hacking and a group that merely paid the right bribes to be able to keep operating. That the IP address is in Russia is in fact indicative of the group not being Russian, since many hackers use Eastern European relay sites because of lax law enforcement.

The recent release of many other email hacks and the simultaneous Russian hack of the Republicans indicates that these Russian hackers were not targeting specific groups for political reasons, but raiding any public figures they could hit for profit.

That in turn suggests that this group is not state-sponsored, but for-profit and independent. Whether Wikileaks then chose to release documents at key times in order to embarrass Hillary Clinton, perhaps for her possibly facetious suggestion that Julian Assange be droned, remains unknown.

As always, it is unwise to trust the media. Like these Russian hackers, media is a for-profit business and it has zero obligation to be accurate, only to create something resembling “news” that many people want to buy. Its modus operandi is to mention only some of the relevant facts and to omit others, creating a “spin” or assumption that a certain narrative is true when it is at best partially true.

Tags: hillary clinton, julian assange, media, russia, wikileaks