[Peace-discuss] My neighbor's dog is influencing the U.S. elections

[David Green]

Thus, it's the NYT that's doing the conspiring, or the USG intells, take
your pick. Thus, QAnon is more of a conspiracy of elites to get people to
believe that it's a thing, rather than an actual thing on the so-called
right.

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 8:15 AM David Johnson via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> Another bullshit evidence free conspiracy theory propaganda story from the
> New York Times. Look over there it's the Chinese. No it's now the Iranians.
> Those Russians are still hiding under your bed. Next it will be Venezuela.
> Nicolas Maduro told me who to vote for so I must obey. Why doesn't Facebook
> and Twitter censor / block this unsubstantiated story ( one of many ) like
> they did the N.Y. Post story about the Bidens ????
>
>
>
> *Iran and Russia Seek to Influence Election in Final Days, U.S. Officials
> Warn*
>
> Iran is behind threatening, spoofed emails sent to voters, the officials
> said, but there was no indication that any votes themselves had been
> altered.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> By Julian E. Barnes <https://www.nytimes.com/by/julian-e-barnes> and David
> E. Sanger <https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-e-sanger>
>
>    - Oct. 21, 2020
>
> ·
>
>    -
>
> ·  ·  ·  WASHINGTON — Iran and Russia have both obtained American voter
> registration data, top national security officials announced late on
> Wednesday, providing the first concrete evidence that the two countries are
> stepping in to try to influence the presidential election as it enters its
> final two weeks.
>
> Iran used the information to send threatening, faked emails
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/florida-alaska-trump-emails.html>
> to voters, said John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, and
> Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, in an evening announcement from
> the bureau’s headquarters. Intelligence agencies had collected information
> that Iran planned to take more steps to influence the vote in coming days,
> prompting the unusual timing of the briefing as an effort to deter further
> action by Tehran.
>
> There was no indication that any election result tallies were changed or
> that information about who is registered to vote was altered, either of
> which could affect the outcome of voting that has already begun across the
> United States. The officials also did not claim that either nation hacked
> into voter registration systems — leaving open the possibility that the
> data was available to anyone who knew where to look.
>
> The voter data obtained by Iran and Russia was mostly public, according to
> one intelligence official, and Iran was exploiting it as a political
> campaign might. Voters’ names, party registrations and some contact
> information are publicly available. That information may have been merged
> with other identifying material, like email addresses, obtained from other
> databases, according to intelligence officials, including some sold by
> criminal hacking networks on the “dark web.”
>
> “This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false
> information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow
> chaos and undermine your confidence in American democracy,” Mr. Ratcliffe
> said.
>
> The Trump administration’s announcement that a foreign adversary, Iran,
> had tried to influence the election by sending intimidating emails was both
> a stark warning and a reminder of how other powers can exploit the
> vulnerabilities exposed by the Russian interference in 2016. But it may
> also play into President Trump’s hands. For weeks, he has argued, without
> evidence, that the vote on Nov. 3 will be “rigged,” that mail-in ballots
> will lead to widespread fraud and that the only way he can be defeated is
> if his opponents cheat.
>
>    - Unlock more free articles.
>
> Create an account or log in
> <https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/register?application=Free_Experience&asset=InlineMessage&campaignId=7QF7X&client_id=freex&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fmultiproduct%2Flp8KQUS.html%3FEXIT_URI%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F10%2F21%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Firan-russia-election-interference.html%26campaignID%3D7QF7X&response_type=cookie>
>
> Now, on the eve of the final debate, he has evidence of foreign influence
> campaigns designed to hurt his re-election chances, even if they did not
> affect the voting infrastructure.
>
> Some of the spoofed emails, sent to Democratic voters, purported to be
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/florida-alaska-trump-emails.html>
> from pro-Trump far-right groups, including the Proud Boys. Iranian hackers
> tried to cover their tracks, intelligence and security officials said,
> first routing the emails through a compromised Saudi insurance company
> network. Later, they sent more than 1,500 emails using the website of an
> Estonian textbook company, according to an analysis by researchers at
> Proofpoint, a cybersecurity firm.
>
> Until now, some officials had insisted that Russia remains the primary
> threat to the election. But the new information, both Republican and
> Democratic officials said, demonstrates that Iran is building upon Russian
> techniques and trying to make clear that it, too, is capable of being a
> force in the election.
>
> Since August, intelligence officials have warned that Iran opposed Mr.
> Trump’s re-election, hardly a surprise after he exited the Iran nuclear
> deal more than two years ago and reimposed crushing economic sanctions on
> the country. The officials said Iran did not intend to deter voters, but
> rather to hurt Mr. Trump and mobilize support for Joseph R. Biden Jr., the
> Democratic nominee, by angering voters about the president’s apparent embrace
> of the Proud Boys
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/us/proud-boys-trump.html> in the
> first debate.
>
> *Keep up with Election 2020*
>
> Mr. Biden has indicated that he would re-enter the nuclear deal and lift
> many of those sanctions as long as Iran first returns to obeying the limits
> on its nuclear program that it agreed to five years ago.
>
> Iran sharply denied the accusations, suggesting they were fabricated and
> calling them an attempt by the American government to undermine its own
> voters’ confidence in the election.
>
> “Unlike the U.S., Iran does not interfere in other countries’ elections,”
> Alireza Miryousefi, the spokesman for the Iranian Mission to the United
> Nations, said in an apparent reference to the C.I.A.’s efforts to depose an
> Iranian leader in the 1950s.
>
> “Iran has no interest in interfering in the U.S. election and no
> preference for the outcome,” he added.
>
> But American officials have insisted that Iran has been considering how to
> influence the election for months. At one time, officials thought that the
> country’s military and clerical leaders could try to interrupt oil markets
> or mount some sort of attack in the Middle East intended to hurt Mr. Trump
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/us/politics/us-iran-election.html>.
> Tehran pulled back from those plans, and Wednesday’s announcement suggested
> that instead it was following a playbook closer to Russia’s — and one less
> likely to provoke an American military response.
>
> The fact that Iran — which has stepped up its cyberabilities drastically
> over the past decade, after its nuclear program was attacked with American
> and Israeli cyberweapons — was involved demonstrates how fast other nations
> have learned from Russia’s influence operations in 2016.
>
> “We are under attack, and we are going to be up to Nov. 3 and probably
> beyond,” said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, who sits on the
> Senate Intelligence Committee. “Both the American people have to be
> skeptical and thoughtful about information they receive, and certainly
> election officials have to be doubly cautious now that we know again they
> are targets.”
>
> Sign up to receive an email when we publish a new story about the 2020
> election.
>
> Mr. Ratcliffe has drawn criticism
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/us/politics/john-ratcliffe-intelligence.html>
> for embracing Mr. Trump’s political agenda from what is typically an
> apolitical post, while Mr. Wray has repeatedly been the target of the
> president’s ire over his refusal to do so, according to people briefed on
> the president’s private conversations. Mr. Trump has discussed firing the
> F.B.I. director after the election, the people said.
>
> Election 2020 ›
> <https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/2020-election?name=styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=storyline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a94110-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=0>
>
> *Latest Updates
> <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/22/us/trump-biden-debate-tonight?name=styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=storyline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a94111-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=1>*
>
> Updated
>
> Oct. 22, 2020, 8:37 a.m. ET32 minutes ago
>
> 32 minutes ago
>
>    - Under pressure to take a stand on court packing, Biden says he’ll
>    take cues from scholars.
>    <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/22/us/trump-biden-debate-tonight?name=styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=storyline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a94112-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=2#under-pressure-to-take-a-stand-on-court-packing-biden-says-hell-take-cues-from-scholars>
>    - Six former commerce secretaries endorse Biden.
>    <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/22/us/trump-biden-debate-tonight?name=styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=storyline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a94113-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=2#six-former-commerce-secretaries-endorse-biden>
>    - Trump’s cash crunch is constraining his campaign in the homestretch.
>    <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/22/us/trump-biden-debate-tonight?name=styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=storyline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a94114-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=2#trumps-cash-crunch-is-constraining-his-campaign-in-the-homestretch>
>
> Is this helpful?
>
> Intelligence officials briefed Senate leaders on Wednesday, including
> Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader; Senator Marco
> Rubio, Republican of Florida and the chairman of the Intelligence
> Committee; and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s top Democrat.
> Mr. Rubio and Mr. Warner urged the intelligence agencies to release more
> information about the threat, but officials said they had to limit what
> information they made public, according to people briefed on the meeting.
>
> Later, on “The Rachel Maddow Show”
> <https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1319089565848788993?s=20> on
> MSNBC, Mr. Schumer said the intelligence officials did not tell him that
> the Iranian activity was meant to hurt the Trump campaign. “From the
> briefing, I had the strong impression it was much rather to undermine
> confidence in elections and not aimed at any particular figure,” he said.
>
> Officials have been warning for months about the risk of what are known as
> perception hacks: efforts to use a mix of easily accessible data to create
> the impression among voters that foreign powers are actually inside voting
> infrastructure. That perception alone, officials said, could shake
> confidence in the integrity of the vote — exactly what Russia has been
> seeking to do since its interference in 2016, when it scanned the contents
> of many state election systems and penetrated a few, including Arizona and
> Illinois, even if it did not change any votes.
>
> “This may be the beginning of a more concerted operation,” Mr. King said.
> “They don’t have to do anything; they just have to make people think they
> are doing something.”
>
> Iran has tinkered at the edges of American election interference since
> 2012, but always as a minor actor. Last year, it stepped up its game,
> private cybersecurity firms have warned. They have caught Iranian
> operatives occasionally impersonating politicians and journalists around
> the world, often to spread narratives that are aimed at denigrating Israel
> or Saudi Arabia, its two major adversaries in the Middle East.
>
> “But they have gone from propaganda to deliberate interference in this
> election,” John Hultquist, the senior director of FireEye, a Silicon Valley
> security firm, said after Wednesday’s announcement.
>
> “Their focus here is to prey on existing fears that election
> infrastructure will be subverted and hacked, as well as fears of voter
> intimidation,” he said.
>
> Iran may not have had to hack the data it used for the emails, instead it
> simply may have bought the information. In recent days, Trustwave, a
> cybersecurity firm, discovered voter databases
> <https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/blogs/spiderlabs-blog/massive-us-voters-and-consumers-databases-circulate-among-hackers/>
> for sale on the dark web and alerted the F.B.I. The databases would be
> “highly desirable to U.S. adversaries,” said Mark Whitehead, a global vice
> president at the firm. Hackers, he said, are merging public information
> with material stolen in data breaches and selling the result.
>
> “The consumer and voter databases that we discovered hackers are currently
> selling significantly lowers the barrier to entry for nation-states to
> execute sophisticated phishing, disinformation and intimidation campaigns,”
> Mr. Whitehead said.
>
> Mr. Ratcliffe and Mr. Wray said little about Russia, but until the wave of
> fake emails, Moscow had been the No. 1 concern of the National Security
> Agency, the United States Cyber Command and the Department of Homeland
> Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has
> responsibility for helping states secure their voting systems.
>
> Two weeks ago, Cyber Command, a part of the military, helped paralyze a
> complex network developed by Russian-speaking hackers
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/election-hacking-trump-microsoft-cyber-command.html>
> and used in ransomware attacks on cities and towns across the United
> States, along with on many companies. Microsoft led a team of firms doing
> the same, armed with court orders that enabled them to take down the
> command-and-control servers used to distribute the tools, which are called
> TrickBot. The move was made to disrupt the system so that it could not be
> used to lock up voter registration systems.
>
> In recent days, another Russian hacking group called Energetic Bear, often
> linked to the F.S.B. — one of the successors to the Soviet Union’s K.G.B. —
> appears to have focused its attentions on gaining access to state and local
> government networks. That has caught the attention of federal investigators
> because, until now, the group had largely targeted energy firms, including
> public utilities.
>
> But there is no evidence that the hackers have directly attacked any
> election infrastructure. The fear among cybersecurity experts is that once
> inside local government networks, they could try to move laterally, into
> voter registration databases.
>
> So far, there is no evidence they have tried to do that, but officials
> said that kind of move would come only in the last days of the election
> campaign, if at all.
>
> Iran’s efforts appear to focus on voter intimidation and disinformation.
> Some spoofed emails sent to voters contained links to a false and deceptive
> video that tried to scare voters into believing the senders were also
> capable of manipulating the mail-in vote process, playing on fears that Mr.
> Trump has fanned with his insistence that mail-in ballots are subject to
> fraud.
>
> Though the link was not widely shared on social media, a few users did
> post it to Twitter. Twitter said in a statement on Wednesday night that it
> had moved “quickly to proactively and permanently suspend a small number of
> accounts and limit the sharing of media” in the Iran-led campaign, but it
> gave no specifics.
>
> Twitter said that the link to the video never gained traction on the
> platform or reached a widespread audience, though its investigation is
> still open.
>
>
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