Hackers emit 9GB of stolen Macron 'emails' two days before French presidential election Emmanuel Macron, the front-runner in France's presidential election, has condemned the online leakage of what's alleged to be his campaign staff's emails. A 9GB cache of internal documents was dumped onto the Magnet file-sharing network on Friday night, less than two days before the French people go to the polls on Sunday. …
This post has been deleted by its author
Am I being really naïve here, or is this just a sign of particularly sour grapes on the part of the party which is looking likely to lose at this time...?
Yes, you are being naïve, because the bigger picture is that foreign interference with democratic elections has moved from being the stuff of spy novels to being the new normal. In the US it has been since long a question if the elections are indeed democratic as their voting system is so open to manipulation that it almost seems by design, but active FOREIGN interference was fairly new and only became foreground news with Trump (also because they have been quite brazen about their contacts with Russia which seems finally to be catching up with them).
Now in France it is happening again, and I for one want to know who is doing it because it is IMHO pretty close to an act of war and ought to have consequences.
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
"So, you're saying that privacy advocates are now staunch Leftists?"
Yes.
See, here's how this works: right wingers are all about their own privacy. Those on the left care about everyone's privacy. It's really not that hard to work out. If you're on the right, your philosophy is "if I've got mine, then nobody else matters". If you're on the left, your life philosophy is "we all go together".
So absolutely, there are right wing privacy advocates, but what they are advocating is privacy for them, and whatever group they self-identify with. Anyone who is not a member of that group shouldn't have privacy, and should probably be demonized and dehumanized so that the authorities "do it to Julia" instead of them.
Leftists are all about pesky concepts like "universal human rights" that apply to everyone regardless of what identifiable group they're part of.
"So, you're saying that privacy advocates are now staunch Leftists?"
Yes.
See, here's how this works: right wingers are all about their own privacy. Those on the left care about everyone's privacy. It's really not that hard to work out. If you're on the right, your philosophy is "if I've got mine, then nobody else matters". If you're on the left, your life philosophy is "we all go together".
OK, I can see where you're coming from, but apologies for sound a bit Tony Blair-sih (perish the thought), but there is a third way, another reason why a right winger wants to advocate wider privacy: for simple, bare faced profit. There is money in privacy so we're buried under services that allege to offer privacy. Not all of them do (in fact, a shockingly large amount of them are simply security solutions with a cheap, hand-written sticker "Privacy" taped over the word security to take advantage of a "fashion"), but some do a reasonable job. They would be daft not to support privacy.
Personally, I prefer a right wing, profit focused solution for privacy. My experience with lefties and fanatics is that they're not quite stable when it comes to business, whereas someone who does privacy for profit has a clear motivation that I can keep an eye on. I have been involved in some charitable setups and "group" solutions and they universally die off because of funding problems, politics or personality clashes - it's all too woolly in the non-cloud variety for me to be comfortable with. This is the trick with defending privacy in general: find a way to express it as profit. It can inspire trust, it protects customers' rights - I find that generally works better than mentioning that not doing it right means you soon run the risk of getting the crapjezus fined out of you. That doesn't directly affect people's bonus much..
I'm not wholly disagreeing with you, but I think your view could be wider.
Way more money - and certainly more power - in stripping people of every single right and freedom you can. Starting with privacy, but by no means ending there. ANd when profit comes before people, it's the right that will be out there doing it.
In other words: you can't trust anyone whose only motive is profit: there will always be more profit in betrayal and lying about it than in doing right by one's customers. All of human history is nothing more than this lesson being relearned by subsequent generations of naive individuals desperate for some grand rationale to justify their own selfishness.
As Wikileaks (and others) have already discussed, if it were truly the Russians, why not release the dirt 2-3 days earlier, and give everyone the chance to see what's inside, then drag Macron through the mud?
Because the timing suggests that whatever is being released does not bear close examination. That could be because it's not quite as damaging as alleged, or because there's false information inserted that would immediately be detected if people had more time.
I find WL's participation in that activity evidence that they too have been flying under a false flag of "information freedom" for too long to justify what is simply criminal activity. Time to deal with them - and no crime expiry dates so they can just find a convenient bolthole and wait out the time.
if it were truly the Russians, why not release the dirt 2-3 days earlier, and give everyone the chance to see what's inside, then drag Macron through the mud?
Because there WAS no smoking gun or bombshell scandal, apart from a few clumsy forgeries. Having hacked him and spent a month or more analysing it (how many France analysts are there in the GRU / FSB I wonder?) , and then found nothing terribly exciting, how could they achieve maximum effect with what they had? By dropping it right at the start of the quiet period and hoping innuendo, rumour and bot-primed social media would be enough to affect the result. Which is exactly what happened.
It was called "unmasking" because that is the technical term for what happened. That is, voice calls intercepted and recorded, people's names not covered by the warrant were redacted, and later those names restored. Restoring the names is called "unmasking". There are people in government who have the right and duty to unmask such names (eg, when they are needed for context). The same term would have been used whoever was involved. The term does not indicate bias.
It's an orchestrated campaign by Russia to disrupt its enemies. They interfered in the US election, probably interfered with the UK referendum, are definitely interfering in the Balkans and in states like Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Finnland etc.
Wikileaks is nothing more than a Russian front and nationalist groups in these countries are easy pickings for them. Did you know Le Pen had a Russian bank fund her bankrupt party and was kissing ass with Putin even while the campaign was going on?
It's going to come to a head soon.
Wikileaks is nothing more than a Russian front
I don't think it's that specific. WL are simply naïve and thus very easy to manipulate. Offer them help against anyone they don't like and they'll be your pets. They don't strike me as having the ability to see the wider picture, so they're easy to enlist. That doesn't make them innocent, though, just stupid.
>It's an orchestrated campaign by Russia
So much concern about the actors and so little concern with the content. Are we really complaining about greater (if still imperfect) transparency for political parties? It is a good thing to find out their inner motivations before you let them into power.
What we should be asking is, "When we know what these people are like, do we still want them in office?"
Unless there is something really damaging in the dump (in which case they deserve to be found out) then its really too late for Le Pen to do anything with the information apart from laughing at their security. I don't care who did it or what their motivations were. If it does tilt the election and undo the 20 point advantage, that indicates that the French people happen to agree with the Russians about the candidates. There's nothing wrong with that.
This assumes that the dump is real and has not been tampered with. Then we're in to a whole different ball game. However, we still have to respect democracy. If people want to believe what they see on the internet more than what they hear the politicians say, then perhaps that says something about our politicians. Maybe politicians need to build an honourable reputation for themselves such that people dismiss lies about them because they have a proven track record of honesty and integrity. Perhaps if you live by lies and half-truths, you die by lies and half-truths.
Unless there is something really damaging in the dump (in which case they deserve to be found out) then its really too late for Le Pen to do anything with the information apart from laughing at their security. I don't care who did it or what their motivations were. If it does tilt the election and undo the 20 point advantage, that indicates that the French people happen to agree with the Russians about the candidates. There's nothing wrong with that.
There's everything wrong with that because either all are forced to be transparent or all are allowed their normal operation (which does not imply there are skeletons and/or smoking guns, just that organisations are not required to be transparent). By exposing one side and not the other, whoever hacked this setup had a very clear political goal that had nothing to do with transparency but everything with bias. Things discussed in confidence can be taken out of context when they are leaked, certainly when that takes place selectively (you don't know if this is really all or just a carefully selected collection).
Stop trying to defend such hacks. This is and remains a crime.
"There's everything wrong with that"
In an ideal situation, sure, I'd prefer BOTH (all) parties be transparent / hacked / leaked / whatever. But we know that's quite unlikely to happen, and if I have to chose between unilateral and NO transparency, I choose the former every time, even if it's "unfair". As noted, if there's anything _specific_ that's particularly egregious in there, that's indeed something better seen in the open that the "victims" should have to answer for; on the other hand, as "simple" as the common folk may be, even they realise that any run-of-the-mill filth most likely applies equally to any participating parties - don't tell me when you hear something unpleasant but not extraordinary about a particular political figure you don't immediately think "and all of them are doing it probably". So terribly sorry, but NO, you will not have me support dirty laundry being kept in the dark in the name of "fairness" and "equality" with the other lucky bastards who didn't have it happen to them - if this trend continues (and I expect it will) we just need to get better at judging politicians without or _with_ them being "leaked".
"If it does tilt the election and undo the 20 point advantage, that indicates that the French people happen to agree with the Russians about the candidates. There's nothing wrong with that."
Okay. Fair enough. Let's see a dump of Le Pen's data. Then the people can compare one with the other. Without equality, it's a blunt and obvious attempt to subvert the elective process. And while you're all pointing at Russia, to dump the data just prior to the media embargo suggests some inside information in the French process.
[Disclaimer: ex-pat living in France]
And while you're all pointing at Russia, to dump the data just prior to the media embargo suggests some inside information in the French process.
You think a major intelligence agency might read Wikipedia?! This changes EVERYTHING!
I'm with Pompeo on this:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/cia-mike-pompeo-wikileaks-assange-2017-4 :
""WikiLeaks walks like a foreign intelligence agency and talks like a foreign intelligence agency," Pompeo said during an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He added that "it's time to call out WikiLeaks what it is." "
Transparency must be universal to be fair, P. Lee. Where is Marine Le Pen's campaign information?
We know Le Pen has taken out a million-dollar-plus loan from Russian banks. What was discussed in her campaign's email? We know she supports the Russian aggression in the Crimea, and wants to lift sanctions on Putin's government. What did she tell her campaign staff privately, and what were her private instructions to them with respect to her sympathies toward Russia?
You wrote, "However, we still have to respect democracy."
Right: when one side is allowed to keep its discussions private and the other side has them revealed, then democracy is crippled.
And that is part of the Russian strategy: to destroy Western respect for democracy. To lead the citizens of the West believe that their governments' democratic ideals are completely rotten, rigged, and corrupt -- and therefore no better than Putin's autocratic version of "democracy". Other goals are the disintegration of NATO and the EU -- hence the effort to tilt voters toward Le Pen, Trump, and Brexit. But the overarching strategy is to destroy Western democracy.
Transparency, when it is applied impartially to all parties or all communication, is one thing. When it is targeted to reveal only one side, as the release of this material was, then it is profoundly anti-democratic.
"So much concern about the actors and so little concern with the content."
And as it turns out, the content is apparently mundane. Obviously Americans have a different slant on politics entirely. Also, there seems to be a lot of Trump in this one. Here's an article about the "leaks".
I could also imagine a counter-effect: More French voters think Le Pen is a Russian puppet and vote against her. In particular as there right from the beginning has been claimed there were planted/fake documents and nothing particularly damaging has been revealed so far.
False flag? Just because you are paranoid it does not mean they are not out to get you.
I could also imagine a counter-effect: More French voters think Le Pen is a Russian puppet and vote against her. In particular as there right from the beginning has been claimed there were planted/fake documents and nothing particularly damaging has been revealed so far.
.. and that appears to be exactly what happened. She did get a worrying high percentage of votes, but for now there has been a global sigh of relief. The problem Macron now has is finding parties that will want to go along with what he won the election with, and this is politics. It's not going to be easy, despite having found what voters want (which, by the way, is what is supposed to happen in a country that alleges to be a democracy, but which is something Theresa May would apparently be fighting all the way).
@P Lee, you're not thinking it through. It doesn't matter that Macron was apparently pretty much clean, they dumped 9gb of data and made claims, and had some fake documents embedded in it which they immediately started to push.
The idea here was clearly that they didn't have anything to report, so they lied and pretended they did!
Fortunately the game was easily spotted and some of the fakes were hilariously bad - the fake "returned cheque" letter, for instance, wasn't flattened in Photoshop, so the layers showing the header and text are separate scans are still there!
So it simply lowered the turnout. Not by enough to make a difference, fortunately.
And so, the Nazis were defeated in Europe for a second time.
The problem is, they are evolving, and worse, rebranding. What will come next?
I don't care who did it or what their motivations were
You damn well ought to. Why'd you think the UK recently went insane and voted to leave the EU? If you're unconcerned now, I suspect that in five years' time (once the consequences are clear) you'll be very interested indeed in that question.
It's an orchestrated campaign by Russia to disrupt its enemies.
Cannot really blame them. After all we invested tens of Billions after the fall of the wall into THEIR enemies around them after the fall of the wall and the end of the cold war.
It is a classic case of "cannot stand the heat - get out of the kitchen" by all accounts. This includes the online aspect as in this case.
The unnamed CIA staffer which facilitated the Panama leaks specially timed to last Russia elections and decided it is a good idea to filter out of all American content has a lot to answer for.
You do not lob a small hand grenade at someone who can and WILL respond with a nuclear salvo. While they always had an order of magnitude higher attack capability (by having better STEM and being able to "draft in" from the criminal contingent), they restrained from attack until the Panama leak. That was considered by them as openly hostile, an open attempt to interfere in their last elections (that was voiced even by their opposition) and a form of "information warfare".
We now reap what we saw and we are utterly unprepared for it - the information security of most political parties and other potential targets on our side is completely inexistent. There will be many more Macrons and DNCs going forward and very little for us to answer with.
Russia under Communism perpetrated aggression against the Baltic states, the nations of Eastern Europe, condemning millions of people to life under tyranny as a result. Of course those countries will not think fondly of Russia, just as France doesn't think fondly of Germany.
To say it is somehow a hostile act, to which Russia has a right to retaliate, to help these countries rebuild and maintain their independence in future makes no sense.
One or more innocent people have died in Georgia and the Ukraine, independent sovereign states, as the result of actions by Russia. The only proper and just result is for Putin to be sent to Georgia to stand trial, and to meet the same fate as Hideki Tojo, while Russia is placed under occupation until such time, like Germany after World War II, democratic institutions are securely established and there is no longer a threat of future aggression on its part. Helped, of course, by removing nuclear weapons capability - and any significant conventional weapons capability - from the country.
But since Russia now has nuclear weapons, justice cannot be done in any practical way for the time being.
"But since Russia now has nuclear weapons, justice cannot be done in any practical way for the time being."
Justice? Sounds a lot like you're advocating revenge. Revenge isn't justice.
Justice would be finding individuals responsible for crimes and holding them accountable. Revenge is orchestrating a campaign of hatred, intolerance and economic or military reprisals against entire populations because of something their antecedents and/or the tyrants that held control over them did.
The sins of the father are the burden only of the father. The child bears no responsibility.
Alternately: "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind".
"We now reap what we sow and we are utterly unprepared for it"
Speak for yourself. We have sown "openness" and most of the population is so prepared for it that they'd almost given up hope that it might eventually happen.
These leaks all have the effect that politicians can't do one thing in private and another in public. Worse, for the politicians, the fact that some of the leaked material later turns out to be false doesn't nullify the damage because people just get into the habit of using the leaks as a list of leads that have to be followed until they are independently confirmed or denied.
That, incidentally, is why you should ignore anything that is "leaked" just before an election (like this). A leaker who is trying to push a lie will leak some lies in amongst a lot of truth and do it at the last minute so that no-one has time to check.
I wouldn't call Wikileaks a Russian front. More a convenient tool.
Wikileaks exists in part to reveal state secrets to the common people. Russia knows that often, making sure their right secret leaks is to their advantage.
If that were true, Wikileaks would have released the data dump two weeks ago or today, not yesterday.
The timing is why it is obvious that Putin is behind this, and Julian Ass is clearly complicit.
The brighter thing to have done, since Le Pen was clearly doomed (biggest loss since her Nazi dad's try in 2002, or possibly even since 1958!) would've been for them to leak *Le Pen's* secrets, so WL could at least pretend to be neutral. Then the next WL tampering attempt might have been more successful.
Now, surely, since everyone predicted that WL would shill for the Russians, and did, it is confirmed we can't trust them any more.
> It's an orchestrated campaign by Russia to disrupt its enemies.
While possible, in the real world when you want to mess someone up with actions that can't be hidden, you make sure they're attributed to an external party. Best choice is one whom is already known to have issues (eg Russian) with your target (France/EU in this case).
Don't rule out the possibility of a careful, well resourced third party being behind this.
One of the particularly interesting aspects to the current series of active ops the Russians have been running is their cavalier disregard for evading attribution. They want us, or the various intel agencies at least, to know it was them.
Enumeration of possible reasons for this is left as an exercise for thre reader...
"Don't rule out the possibility of a careful, well resourced third party being behind this."
But also don't rule out the possibility of Occam's Razor being applicable in most cases. I don't know whether there is anyone playing five-dimensional chess out there, but when you can follow the money to a logical explanation, going out of your way to search further could be a poor allocation of resources.
This post has been deleted by its author
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
