Does anyone else out there see the latest Meuller indictments as evidence that our government is just itching to criminalize pseudonomonous political speech over the internet? And worse, that the main stream media couldn’t care less about the first ammendment implications of threatening to prosecut someone for saying naughty things about a candidate for office?
I’m a bit of a skeptic about the claims of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, but it seems clearly distinguishable from the stuff from that old Time story. As far as I know, no one objects to a U.S. campaign hiring political consultants who are foreign nationals. For example, it is public knowledge that the Trump campaign worked with Cambridge Analytica, which is a British firm.
By contrast, Russia is accused of hacking into email accounts, assuming false identities to deliberately spread misinformation, etc. And it’s the Russian government itself that is directing these activities, not just Russian nationals.
This one was categorised as Humor, so shouldn’t take it too seriously. Nevertheless, many a true word spoken in jest.
Can’t get the whole story without subscribing. The sub-heading says:
“THE SECRET STORY OF HOW FOUR U.S. ADVISERS USED POLLS, FOCUS GROUPS, NEGATIVE ADS AND ALL THE OTHER TECHNIQUES OF AMERICAN CAMPAIGNING TO HELP BORIS YELTSIN WIN”
Sorry for all caps, but that is how Time printed it. So these 4 advisors does seem to be quite different from the Russian thing.
It is quite usual for countries to arrest spies from foreign countries working against them, whilst simultaneously spying on those countries. I have never heard anyone say we shouldn’t worry about Russian spies because we have spies in Russia.
” Russia is accused of hacking into email accounts, assuming false identities to deliberately spread misinformation, etc. And it’s the Russian government itself that is directing these activities, not just Russian nationals.”
Josiah, you say you are a skeptic abut the claims, does that mean you doubt the Russians did those things?
By contrast, Russia is accused of hacking into email accounts, assuming false identities to deliberately spread misinformation, etc. And it’s the Russian government itself that is directing these activities, not just Russian nationals.
No. Not in any formal sense has Russia been accused of hacking into email accounts. The FBI has been investigating the broad question of Russian interference for more than a year and when they finally got to indictments there is nothing whatsoever contained in that about email hacking. If the FBI had any good cards they would have played them by now.
The only informal accusations are CNN articles citing anonymous “person who says they knew something but was not authorized to talk about it, yet decided to talk about it anyway”… but CNN has very little remaining credibility so they can largely be ignored.
If you want to search out Ray MvGovern, he has collected evidence, based on data transfer logs, that the DNC emails were dumped to a local thumb drive and carried out of the building by an insider (i.e. there was no Internet hack at all). McGovern is pretty careful about such claims, and he is no Trump supporter either so I would give that one a bit more credibility.
As for whether the Russian government is directing these activities, there’s not been any evidence of that put forward so far. Donald Trump junior met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya because she had promised dirt on Hillary (which she failed to provide) and DTJ left the meeting after a short time and never contacted her again. So Veselnitskaya had worked on one high profile case in Russia related to the Magnitsky Act and some Kremlin people. That’s her only known connection to the Kremlin.
Strangely though Veselnitskaya was allowed to be in the USA with an expired visa (the Justice Department apparently knew about it but allowed it anyway). If you are into indirect connections, you can connect Veselnitskaya via the Russian company Prevezon, which paid the US law firm Baker Hostetler who paid Glenn Simpson founder of Fusion GPS, thus getting right around to the Hillary campaign. It is admittedly a tenuous link, but no less tenuous than the kind of stuff put forward to suggest Trump has links to the Kremlin.
There’s some evidence that’s come out Veselnitskaya met with Glenn Simpson around the same time she went up to Trump Tower, so that would make the link somewhat less tenuous.
Now Natalia Veselnitskaya provided written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee denying meeting with Glenn Simpson between June 8 and June 10 but Glenn Simpson gave conflicting testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence saying that he had met with her. Make you wonder what’s really going on.
I saw a comment on anther blog a while ago. I can’t find it now but it said:
Special Counsel Mueller’s only and sole goal is to find “coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump”. If he is successful many at the FBI and DOJ can be forgiven, if he fails many will have sacrificed their honor, their careers, and possibly their freedom for nothing. Andrew McCarthy addresses this here.
As to the thirteen Russians posting political ads, I thought we had freedom of speech in the United States? My reading is that our rights don’t come from being citizens, they come from limited government. I can see where Clinton’s acceptance of campaign contributions from the Chinese was illegal but I can’t come to grips with anyone posting their opinion on social media as a problem even if they are Russians. If you are arguing some sort of “reverse” appeal to authority (i.e. if we would have known they were Russians we would have voted differently) I find that even more horrifying. Democracy is based upon the premise that on average the voters can distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lies. If you are saying that they can’t, then you are saying democracy doesn’t work. Every ten years I get a postcard telling me where I vote, my precinct, etc., I believe this postcard and a government issued photo ID should be my concealed carry permit. How about explaining to me what a person who is too corrupt, too criminal, and too crazy to be allowed to carry a firearm brings to the democracy?
Off topic, but related to earlier post. I just heard on the radio about a researcher, Keith Rayner, who has experimented with eye tracking. One experiment consists of a page of text, all simply X’s. As the viewer scans their eye over the page the text turns to words only where they are looking.
To an observer it looks like a page of X’s with words appearing and disappearing. To the subject it looks like a page of complete text.
Does anyone else out there see the latest Meuller indictments as evidence that our government is just itching to criminalize pseudonomonous political speech over the internet? And worse, that the main stream media couldn’t care less about the first ammendment implications of threatening to prosecut someone for saying naughty things about a candidate for office?
pseudonymous
Strategery
I’m a bit of a skeptic about the claims of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, but it seems clearly distinguishable from the stuff from that old Time story. As far as I know, no one objects to a U.S. campaign hiring political consultants who are foreign nationals. For example, it is public knowledge that the Trump campaign worked with Cambridge Analytica, which is a British firm.
By contrast, Russia is accused of hacking into email accounts, assuming false identities to deliberately spread misinformation, etc. And it’s the Russian government itself that is directing these activities, not just Russian nationals.
This one was categorised as Humor, so shouldn’t take it too seriously. Nevertheless, many a true word spoken in jest.
Can’t get the whole story without subscribing. The sub-heading says:
“THE SECRET STORY OF HOW FOUR U.S. ADVISERS USED POLLS, FOCUS GROUPS, NEGATIVE ADS AND ALL THE OTHER TECHNIQUES OF AMERICAN CAMPAIGNING TO HELP BORIS YELTSIN WIN”
Sorry for all caps, but that is how Time printed it. So these 4 advisors does seem to be quite different from the Russian thing.
It is quite usual for countries to arrest spies from foreign countries working against them, whilst simultaneously spying on those countries. I have never heard anyone say we shouldn’t worry about Russian spies because we have spies in Russia.
” Russia is accused of hacking into email accounts, assuming false identities to deliberately spread misinformation, etc. And it’s the Russian government itself that is directing these activities, not just Russian nationals.”
Josiah, you say you are a skeptic abut the claims, does that mean you doubt the Russians did those things?
Harold,
I believe Russia did those things, I’m just skeptical that it mattered much. Frankly, a lot of the Russian efforts seem pretty amateurish.
I agree that we don’t know how effective the Russian efforts were.
No. Not in any formal sense has Russia been accused of hacking into email accounts. The FBI has been investigating the broad question of Russian interference for more than a year and when they finally got to indictments there is nothing whatsoever contained in that about email hacking. If the FBI had any good cards they would have played them by now.
The only informal accusations are CNN articles citing anonymous “person who says they knew something but was not authorized to talk about it, yet decided to talk about it anyway”… but CNN has very little remaining credibility so they can largely be ignored.
If you want to search out Ray MvGovern, he has collected evidence, based on data transfer logs, that the DNC emails were dumped to a local thumb drive and carried out of the building by an insider (i.e. there was no Internet hack at all). McGovern is pretty careful about such claims, and he is no Trump supporter either so I would give that one a bit more credibility.
As for whether the Russian government is directing these activities, there’s not been any evidence of that put forward so far. Donald Trump junior met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya because she had promised dirt on Hillary (which she failed to provide) and DTJ left the meeting after a short time and never contacted her again. So Veselnitskaya had worked on one high profile case in Russia related to the Magnitsky Act and some Kremlin people. That’s her only known connection to the Kremlin.
Strangely though Veselnitskaya was allowed to be in the USA with an expired visa (the Justice Department apparently knew about it but allowed it anyway). If you are into indirect connections, you can connect Veselnitskaya via the Russian company Prevezon, which paid the US law firm Baker Hostetler who paid Glenn Simpson founder of Fusion GPS, thus getting right around to the Hillary campaign. It is admittedly a tenuous link, but no less tenuous than the kind of stuff put forward to suggest Trump has links to the Kremlin.
There’s some evidence that’s come out Veselnitskaya met with Glenn Simpson around the same time she went up to Trump Tower, so that would make the link somewhat less tenuous.
https://www.trunews.com/article/honey-pot-veselnitskaya-met-with-glenn-simpson-twice
Now Natalia Veselnitskaya provided written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee denying meeting with Glenn Simpson between June 8 and June 10 but Glenn Simpson gave conflicting testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence saying that he had met with her. Make you wonder what’s really going on.
Don’t leave us hanging, Bob… what WAS the best small movie of the summer?
I saw a comment on anther blog a while ago. I can’t find it now but it said:
Special Counsel Mueller’s only and sole goal is to find “coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump”. If he is successful many at the FBI and DOJ can be forgiven, if he fails many will have sacrificed their honor, their careers, and possibly their freedom for nothing. Andrew McCarthy addresses this here.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/robert-mueller-investigation-trump-collusion-case/
As to the thirteen Russians posting political ads, I thought we had freedom of speech in the United States? My reading is that our rights don’t come from being citizens, they come from limited government. I can see where Clinton’s acceptance of campaign contributions from the Chinese was illegal but I can’t come to grips with anyone posting their opinion on social media as a problem even if they are Russians. If you are arguing some sort of “reverse” appeal to authority (i.e. if we would have known they were Russians we would have voted differently) I find that even more horrifying. Democracy is based upon the premise that on average the voters can distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lies. If you are saying that they can’t, then you are saying democracy doesn’t work. Every ten years I get a postcard telling me where I vote, my precinct, etc., I believe this postcard and a government issued photo ID should be my concealed carry permit. How about explaining to me what a person who is too corrupt, too criminal, and too crazy to be allowed to carry a firearm brings to the democracy?
Off topic, but related to earlier post. I just heard on the radio about a researcher, Keith Rayner, who has experimented with eye tracking. One experiment consists of a page of text, all simply X’s. As the viewer scans their eye over the page the text turns to words only where they are looking.
To an observer it looks like a page of X’s with words appearing and disappearing. To the subject it looks like a page of complete text.
Can’t find this particular experiment, but this is the guy I think
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Rayner_(psychologist)