
Obama close to announcing measures to punish Russia for election interference - SonicSoul
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-white-house-is-scrambling-for-a-way-to-punish-russian-hackers-via-sanctions/2016/12/27/0eee2fdc-c58f-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html?utm_term=.36332116492b
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andrei_says_
Punish Russia??

How is this achievable? Russia is not a tiny third world country. It's a huge
nth world one. Its oligarchy/government couldn't care less about any
additional inconvenience applied to the general population. People are cynical
beyond the touch point of any such measures.

Also, how about attempt to identify and correct the results of the
interference?

This punishment business sounds like wagging the dog -- not doing anything
that matters, just populistic noise.

Apologies if this sounds harsh, had to get it off my chest.

~~~
walrus1066
Well, if common people who are struggling, get continually reminded of the
obscene wealth the oligarchs and Putin have accumulated at their expense, they
may not be so complacent about how the country is run.

~~~
zigzigzag
Just like what happened in Cuba, North Korea, Iraq and Iran then?

Sanctions achieve nothing except making the US hated around the world.

------
rokosbasilisk
what is the evidence for russian government hacking ?

edit: [https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-
evidenc...](https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidence-
russia-hacked-the-dnc-its-not-enough/)

The fbi and even lynch said there was no evidence. Everything is so vague and
speculative, its too similar to the iraq has wmds fake news.

~~~
13years
Exactly. I also wonder what public opinion would be if MSM headlines read "US
planning to retaliate against Russia for exposing the truth in US politics".

There are so many ironies here. The US has been involved in interfering and
over throwing governments for decades. The public should not be upset that the
truth was exposed, but rather should be calling for more truth to be exposed.
Let's expose the Republican corruption as well.

~~~
krapp
>The public should not be upset that the truth was exposed, but rather should
be calling for more truth to be exposed.

Perhaps - but having the "truth" be "exposed" by a foreign government
undermining your electoral process and waging a propaganda campaign on behalf
of one party exclusively is not something the public should be calling for.
The interests being served by that exposure will always be those of their
government, and not your own, and certainly not "the truth" in any objective
sense.

Otherwise, one could just as well say that the governments the US has
interfered with ought to be grateful that we "exposed the truth" in their case
as well.

>Let's expose the Republican corruption as well.

You mean, let's hope it's in the national interests of foreign governments to
expose Republican corruption, and that they choose to be honest about doing
so.

There are two separate issues here, which often seem to be conflated for
political purposes, or implied to be in conflict - the value of the integrity
of the electoral process and the value of an informed electorate.

If we presume that the only way to achieve the former is to destroy the
latter, then we're implicitly conceding the legitimacy of our own state.

~~~
crdoconnor
>Perhaps - but having the "truth" be "exposed" by a foreign government
undermining your electoral process and waging a propaganda campaign is not
something the public should be calling for

I can't imagine any situation whereby uncovering the truth undermines
democracy.

That sounds distinctly Orwellian, in fact.

~~~
krapp
>I can't imagine any situation whereby uncovering the truth undermines
democracy.

Can you imagine a situation in which the truth uncovered by a foreign
government or some unaccountable agency like Wikileaks is not, in fact,
actually true? Or where, as with Wikileaks, the selective exposure of some
truths and withholding of others is meant to serve an explicit political
purpose and to bias, rather than inform, the electorate?

~~~
crdoconnor
>Can you imagine a situation in which the truth uncovered by a foreign
government or some unaccountable agency like Wikileaks is not, in fact,
actually true?

Yes. All that would achieve would be to undermine wikileaks' credibility.

They literally would just have to do it once and every leak subsequent to that
would be suspect.

The main reason why wikileaks _has_ had such an effect is because they haven't
yet released any lies.

>Or where, as with Wikileaks, the selective exposure of some truths and
withholding of others is meant to serve an explicit political purpose and to
bias, rather than inform, the electorate?

If you were the subject of such leaks you could offset this problem by
releasing the rest of the information to the media rendering its selectivity
pointless.

The only way selective exposure as a means of propaganda works is if you
_actually wield a large degree of influence or control_ over the media (which
_does_ undermine democracy) and can 'bury' stories.

The DNC can make a claim to that (CNN, CBS, Viacom) as can the RNC (Fox) but
wikileaks doesn't wield any influence over those corporations.

~~~
krapp
>Yes. All that would achieve would be to undermine wikileaks' credibility.

You're assuming that the accuracy of the information Wikileaks releases is
crucial to its influence or credibility, but I disagree. A lie can travel
halfway around the world before the truth can put on its shoes, after all.

I submit that Wikileaks is more influential because of political bias than it
is because of objectivity.

>I don't doubt that the mainstream media would hammer home the point that they
released lies in the past from that point onward.

Many Americans have been trained to mistrust the mainstream media and to
assume they are biased, corrupt and bought by corporate and political
interests.

People who would be susceptible to political influence from sources like
Wikileaks would likely also reject the credibility of the mainstream media, so
the intended effect of influencing _partisans_ wouldn't really be countered by
MSM rebuttals.

The question is whether the set of such people is large enough to actually
influence an election.

>If you were the subject of such leaks you could offset this problem by
releasing the rest of the information rendering its selectivity pointless.

Yes ... and your releases wouldn't be believed, because many people have been
trained to assume that politicians are corrupt and that their denials
regarding accusations of scandal are lies.

Also, guaranteeing that anyone who leaks inaccurate information will be
answered with a leak of accurate information probably doesn't set a good
precedent regarding the integrity of classified material.

>The only way selective exposure as a means of propaganda works is if you
actually wield a large degree of influence or control in the media.

I present to you the recent US Presidential election in rebuttal, and argue
that selective exposure as a means of propaganda worked quite well in that
case. Not because of Wikileaks' influence over the media, but because of their
influence over social media and the cynicism of the electorate.

~~~
crdoconnor
>You're assuming that the accuracy of the information Wikileaks releases is
crucial to its influence or credibility

It did real harm to Dan Rather and CBS's credibility when they did it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy)

Wikileaks' position is even more precarious than theirs since unlike CBS they
own no distribution channels. If the mainstream media choose to ignore them
then they're toast.

>I submit that Wikileaks is more influential because of political bias

This doesn't even make any sense: the average Trump voter and Assange do not
see eye to eye.

>Many Americans have been trained to mistrust the mainstream media

They've got plenty of reason to mistrust them but that doesn't always stop the
truth from being believed.

What has trained them to mistrust the mainstream media in any case, is lies.
If they care about that (and all evidence points to the contrary), they can
start by lying less.

>People who would be susceptible to political influence from sources like
Wikileaks would likely also reject the credibility of the mainstream media, so
the intended effect of influencing partisans

Partisans don't decide elections and the stupidest part of this post-election
hand wringing has been the complaints about the idiocies they believe and how
they were influenced.

What killed this election for Hillary was low turnout by non-partisans, not
Trump.

>assume they are biased, corrupt and bought by corporate and political
interests.

No need to assume. Plenty of evidence for this.

>Yes ... and your releases wouldn't be believed

I think if the DNC released their own emails they wouldn't have much trouble
getting people to believe that they're real.

If they released _actual evidence_ about Russian hacking then likewise.

>many people have been trained to assume that politicians are corrupt and that
their denials regarding accusations of scandal are lies.

Again, there's no real need to 'train' people for this because it's self
evident and relatively more truthful and scandal free politicians (e.g.
Sanders) _do_ have a greater tendency to be believed.

>I present to you the recent US Presidential election in rebuttal, and argue
that selective exposure as a means of propaganda worked quite well in that
case.

I present to you Hillary Clinton: the most compromised, scandal ridden
politician that the DNC could possibly run and the only person who, under the
microscope of wikileaks, could actually end up making Trump look good.

If Sanders was the nominee Wikileaks wouldn't have had anything of substance
to leak.

------
lucker
The only retaliation I can think of that would be both proportionate and
ethical would be to hack secret data of the Russian leadership and release at
least part of it to the world public. The Russian government is accused of two
things: hacking and creating fake news. Assuming that the allegations are
correct, a perfectly mirrored response would include hacking and fake news.
However, it would be unethical for America to create anti-Russian government
fake news of its own. So the only part of a mirrored response that would be
appropriate is hacking followed by an at least partial public release of the
hacked data.

~~~
walrus1066
No need to create fake news, the corruption in Russia is insane, it goes
straight to the top, involving vast amounts of public money. Putin's net worth
may even be in the 100's of billions
([http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/15/putins-net-
wort...](http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/15/putins-net-worth-
is-200-billion-says-russias-once-largest-foreigner-investor/)).

Life is tough for the man on the street in Russia, they wouldn't be happy
knowing the entire government is profiteering at their expense.

All the US would need to do is flood vkontakte, news comment boards etc, with
repeated facts of corruption, as Russia has been doing many years now in the
West.

~~~
conanbatt
The poorman does not need someone to teach him he is getting screwed

~~~
walrus1066
Russians are aware of corruption at the local level, but not that of the
highest level, nor its scale.

They might tolerate it if they themselves were getting better off, a social
contract of sorts. But if people are worse off, and they know it's at least
partly due to oligarchs and Putin enriching themselves, at their expense,
Putin may find his grip over the people isn't as ironclad as he may think.

------
vonklaus
I have been saying this since pre-election-- the way this has been portrayed
in the media as well as other coverage of politics, ect leads me to believe
that they will throw out the election results.

I dont know what will happen after, but this election has been framed as
"tampered" and the language and posturing in all media does seem indicative of
creating a narrative that will over turn the results

~~~
mcbutterbunz
I'm not sure how that is legally possible at this point. After the electoral
college cast their vote, does the outgoing president have any sort of
authority on this?

~~~
grzm
Until Trump takes the oath of office at the inauguration on January 20, 2017,
Obama is the US President.

------
crdoconnor
The first thing they could to do to punish Russia is to release actual
evidence of their election tampering instead of just talking about it.

------
tr1ck5t3r
Thinks about this for a moment. The US cant be obvious about where their hacks
originate from, which means the US will be hacking other peoples computers,
non-Russian if you like, in order to attack Russian targets whilst covering
their trail. So in a way, if you support this game of rhetoric even though the
tech companies like Google & Facebook actually help fuel your bias which in
turn manipulates your actions, then go ahead and put your hand up to be hacked
by the US. I'm sure they will oblige.

------
rahrahrah
> A year later, Xi reached an agreement with Obama that his country would stop
> commercial cyber­spying. (Feng Li/Getty Images)

But the NSA continued commercial cyberspying against Petrobras. These people
are not to be trusted.

------
bamurphymac1
I hear it's going to be a _very_ stern lecture.

