US indictments against 12 Russian agents for hacking the Democratic Party in the 2016 presidential election demonstrates how journalistic practice is being weaponised to manipulate journalists themselves.
The indictments, released Saturday morning AEST, seemingly confirm what was reported at the time: in 2016, Russian agents penetrated the servers of the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The spearphishing was more behavioural than technical, relying on tricking staff into providing a password then, once inside, following the networks where they led.
Having stolen documents, the agents then turned to working a con on journalists. First, in early June 2016, the Russians set up a fake WikiLeaks-style website called DC Leaks and alerted journalists through Twitter and Facebook to documents posted there.
Then about a week after DC Leaks was activated — and after the DNC’s cyber adviser Crowd Strike accused the Russian government of hacking — the agents got creative. They created a hacker persona with the name Guccifer 2.0, complete with a colourful backstory and digital footprint of a blog, email and Twitter handle.
The persona was claimed to be Romanian, in apparent homage to an earlier Romanian hacker, Marcel Lehel Lazar, who had taken the pseudonym Guccifer, a portmanteau blend of Gucci and Lucifer. Lazar is reported now to be working with US authorities.
Guccifer 2.0 released documents through the blog and a tranche was provided through Washington-based political paper The Hill.
Vice’s tech journal Motherboard established in a June 2016 Twitter interview with the Guccifer 2.0 persona that it was definitely not Romanian and concluded that it was connected with Russian security. Thanks to the indictment, we now know the Russian identities involved.
WikiLeaks — or “the Organisation” as the indictment calls it — through Julian Assange, acted as though the Guccifer 2.0 persona was real. The indictment confirms earlier reports that Assange initiated contact seeking documents that would embarrass Clinton, promising “a much higher impact than what you are doing”. WikiLeaks’ dump came in late July, in the lead-up to the Democratic National Convention.
Of course, there is no evidence that any of the media, including WikiLeaks, definitively knew that they were dealing with Russian security, although by mid-June, it seemed broadly accepted in the mainstream media that the Russians had hacked the DNC and that that hack was the origin of the documents.
In a post-election interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity in December, Assange asserted his belief that the documents were independently hacked, suggesting they were perhaps deliberately shaped to look “too much like the Russians”.
Documents stolen by State security and released through the media as part of a cyber guerrilla war creates a tricky ethical dilemma for journalists. As a member of the MEAA, Assange should have been bound by the Australian code of ethics which, in this context, says:
Aim to attribute information to its source. Where a source seeks anonymity, do not agree without first considering the source’s motives and any alternative attributable source. Where confidences are accepted, respect them in all circumstances.
Few in the media seemed to spend much time considering the source’s motives, nor in thinking through what the obligation to confidentiality may be to a non-existent person. Rather, the reporting was more meta, proving that media interest in a document is more linked to its confidentiality than its contents.
This encouraged faking, with the dump becoming an all-purpose source to justify fake news, such as the widely shared canard that the Clinton Foundation funded Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.
WikiLeaks revolutionised media practice, alerting journalism to new tools that could keep sources confidential in the surveillance age. Most news organisations have now embedded these tools. WikiLeaks assumes transparency benefits from dumping leaked documents en masse, such as these DNC leaks or their earlier diplomatic cables.
The journalistically curated releases of tax evasion documents by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (most recently, the Panama Papers) show how this practice has shaped modern journalism.
However, both these WikiLeaks dumps and the tax leaks demonstrate that it’s the journalism that brings value by joining the dots: interrogating, testing and contextualising the otherwise misleadingly raw documents.
Leaving aside the complete misrepresentation of what Wikileaks does, to verify the validity of the information provided by sources, prior to release, it’s interesting you mention the value brought by journalism by connecting dots, interrogating, testing and contextualising.
Why interesting? Because there’s naught in evidence in this offering.
It might be an idea to do the odd review of a previous example of a much lauded Mueller tabling of charges, against Russian nationals, for ‘election meddling’.
I suggest you look up “Mueller + court + discovery + Russian + bot”, to see just how much credibility Mueller has got.
To quote a former US Attorney:
They [Mueller] indicted a case prematurely against people they thought would never show up from Russia and then one of the Russian companies hired lawyers and sent them to court to say ‘we’re here and we wanna plead not guilty and we want a lot of discovery on your criminal case against us”.
“Concord Management’s lawyers began by accusing Mueller’s team of ignoring over 70 discovery requests.
Rather, Mueller’s team offered to give Concord Management’s lawyers a massive amount of social media data from those dangerous trolls who sought to influence the US election and the majority of it is in RUSSIAN.
It got worse…
Mueller’s lawyers admitted that they don’t even have English translations for the Russian social media posts.”
Mueller is a hack.
This latest dump of charges will not survive the “discovery phase”, either, given how they’re premised, and the demonstrable lack of evidence presented.
Not that they were designed to get past the discovery phase, anyway. Seeking prosecutions was never the objective.
‘Narrative maintenance’ was the only objective.
Whatever happened to due diligence?
“Few in the media seemed to spend much time considering the source’s motives…..” Precisely! Odd how the “indictment” was released on the Friday preceding the Trump-Putin summit. Just like the “Skripal poisoning” story was released on the Friday preceding the Russian presidential election and the beginning of the countdown to the World Cup in Russia. This rehash based on the dribble from the US Dept of Justice, which masquerades as “journalism”, demonstrates amply why Paul Craig Roberts coined the word “presstitutes” for those journalists who write this stuff. Sadly, these days they are legion. Fortunately there are still a few genuine investigative journalists about who post on independent blogs and websites. Here is one which amply debunks much of what Christopher Warren has written above.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/14/clinging-to-collusion-why-evidence-will-probably-never-be-produced-in-the-indictments-of-russian-agents/
Unfortunately, good though Crikey might be on Australian political shenanigans, on foreign affairs it continues to be piss-weak. I have just renewed my subscription for a year, but fear this will be the last unless Crikey lifts its game.
Lord knows how your contribution got by the moderators, Iskandar, given what I’ve had awaiting ‘moderation’ for over 3 hours. But, all power to you, given your thrust is very much along the lines of mine.
I’ll just pluck part of what’s awaiting moderation, and see what happens…………
‘Leaving aside the complete misrepresentation of what Wikileaks does, to verify the validity of the information provided by sources, prior to release, it’s interesting you mention the value brought by journalism by connecting dots, interrogating, testing and contextualising.
Why interesting? Because there’s naught in evidence in this offering.
It might be an idea to do the odd review of a previous example of a much lauded Mueller tabling of charges, against Russian nationals, for ‘election meddling’.
I suggest you look up “Mueller + court + discovery + Russian + bot”, to see just how much credibility Mueller has got…………………
There has been very little attention paid to what happened when one of the groups of Russians previously indicted over meddling decided to front up to court, state they intended to plead not guilty, and applied for “discovery” of what evidence Mueller had to back up his indictments.
Mueller refused around 70 discovery applications.
No discovery, no case. Indictments contain assertions, not evidence for those assertions.
This latest indictment dump from Mueller will go the exact same way.
As you note, Iskandar, there are a number of genuine journos around who will look beyond the narrative line, Consortium News being one.
You may like to look for some very recent work on this matter by Helen Buyniski (she’s from New York).
OK, seeing that excerpt hit the board sans moderation time, let’s go again.
One of the pieces of evidence Mueller did concede to the Russian applicants’ lawyers was a trove of social media postings.
It was in Russian. When asked for the translations used in evidence (and anyone who knows how this works, knows the translations are vital, partly because of the frequent number of translation errors), ‘Team Mueller’ had to concede, with considerable embarrassment, they hadn’t bothered with any translations.
Given the rapidly diminishing credibility, Team Mueller is continuing to plead with the judge for further delays in proceedings.
Wouldn’t it be nice, if a few local journos took a look beyond the narrative handouts, and actually did more than common garden variety stenographers.
So there was no Skripal poisoning? Or there was but it was the UK that did it?
As to the timing of the indictments, it would seem that the US Justice Dept. were trying to temper the Orange Buffoons public enthusiasm for his handler…they failed and the whole World got to witness Trump kiss Putin’s backside. The cold war is over, Russia won.
Unlike many, TRH, I rather fancy presentable evidence. Stump up some in the Skripal matter, and I’ll have a squizz. Until such a time, I’m keeping my powder dry. I try to avoid relying on 100% confirmation bias to get me through the day.
On the matter of the US Justice Dept’s particular devotions, here’s an argument suggesting justice is not one of those devotions;
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/twelve-ham-sandwiches-with-russian-dressing/
As for who may have kissed who’s backside, not interested, me.
I have 1 primary interest – avoiding the prospect of nuclear armageddon driven by the MIC’s need for freakin’ revenue growth.
The evidence the UK showed their allies was compelling enough to have a swag of Russian “diplomats” in a number of countries asked to pack up and head home. Even Trump didn’t dispute whatever the Brits showed his people. Now I admit that it would have been better if they’d let you in on the evidence personally but alas, they weren’t considering comments on Crikey.
Lets be honest, these aren’t questions of evidence but more of who’s evidence you trust.
Not sure whether it is Pollyanna or Candide being invoked with “… it’s the journalism that brings value by joining the dots: interrogating, testing and contextualising…“.
Coz establishment hacks, gatekeepers & Swiftian yahoos have never mislead or been mislead or just too complicit in some of the minor scandals this century, Gulf warfare, neoliberalism, GFC, possibly nothing big or important but of passing interest to the victims.
Thanks David
I’ve already read Helen Buyniski’s piece here:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/fbi-chief-mueller-drops-indictments-against-russia-intel-ops-as-deep-state-panics-over-trump-putin-summit/5647560
Odd how you and I can find these articles so easily while so-called “professional” journalists cannot. I suppose they write their contracted 2500 words or whatever of rehashed bullshit and then go home and wait for their pay check or EFT to come in. Of course it helps that as Helen Buyniski’s name suggests, she is of Slavic origin, as am I, and therefore identify with our ancestral homelands when they are being bullied by the Anglosphere. But as the article shows, if the victims stand up to the bullies, the bullies implode. So it will happen with this latest outburst.
Christopher Warren, are you reading this?
Yes, that’s where I read it, Iskandar. Funny thing is, I’ve provided a number of links to the same site over the journey, and they never seem to escape ‘Awaiting moderation’. But, as previously noted, all power to ya.
Up late last night, and early this morning. From this morning’s responses, to you-know-what, I believe we may be approaching a record number of exploding heads. Those heads were looking ready to explode last night, and this morning ‘KABOOM!!’
Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the meet.
The presser after told a real story.
I’ve just read the full presser transcript, because of suspicions about what wasn’t being reported by the ‘mainies’.
And, there it was, Putin on Mueller’s first indictment dump, and the consequences of hitting the ‘discovery wall’ (here he’s clearly talking about Concord Management, the Russian based company that turned up in court);
‘We have heard the accusations about it. As far as I know, this company hired American lawyers and the accusations doesn’t have a fighting chance in the courts. There’s no evidence when it comes to the actual facts. So, we have to be guided by facts, not by rumours’.
Vox is one outfit supplying a full transcript of the presser.
There you can see why so many heads have exploded.
Or, if you don’t have time to read all that, this might help explain the exploding heads – Sergey Lavrov described the talks as “magnificent” and “beyond super”.
He’s not just the greatest diplomat to stride the global stage since, arguably, Chou en Lai, he’s also the ‘detonator man’.
Thanks to David and Iskandar for the links to some truly investigative journalism. I’m very disappointed in Crikey if they use “awaiting moderation” to censor non-profane reader comment to stem the flow of ideas.
I can go to thousands of regular media sites if I want intelligence PR dressed up as news, and they are free. I was hoping for something much better than lazy journalism from Crikey :(.