data breech hack leak

redumbdent?<div>
</div><div>see blk hat</div><div>
</div><div>see dnc hack
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</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/anonymous-hack-fascist-internet/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/anonymous-hack-fascist-internet/</a></div><div>igor salon</div><div>
</div><div>The hacktivist collective Anonymous leaked over 150 gigabytes of private data after hacking the web registration company Epik, a popular domain host for far-right groups.Popular far-right platforms like Parler, Gab and 8chan, as well as far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and QAnon, recently migrated to <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-found-a-web-host-savior" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Epik</a> being banned from other platforms following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot for violating policies on hate speech and spreading misinformation. Last week, Anonymous dumped what it said was a "decade's worth" of company data in a torrent file, including passwords, internal emails, home addresses, and phone numbers."After years of bolstering the worst trash the Internet has to offer, this is, truly, the Epik moment we've all been waiting for," the group said in a statement it published along with the data dump, which was first reported by independent journalist <a href="https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Steven Monacelli</a>."This dataset is all that's needed to trace actual ownership and management of the fascist side of the Internet," the statement said. "Time to find out who in your family secretly ran an Ivermectin horse porn fetish site, disinfo publishing outfit, or yet another Qanon hellhole."Extremism researchers say the leak is akin to a "Rosetta Stone to the far right" and is helping them find new links among the groups."It's massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I've seen and, as an extremism researcher, it's certainly the most interesting," Megan Squire, a professor at Elon University who studies right-wing extremism, told the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/21/epik-far-right-hack-anonymous/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Washington Post</a>. "It's an embarrassment of riches — stress on the embarrassment."Epik drew <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/09/05/texas-anti-abortion-tip-website-gets-new-home-with-controversial-provider-known-for-neo-nazi-sites/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">national headlines</a> earlier this month after offering support to Texas Right to Life, an antiabortion group whose website was removed from GoDaddy because it solicited information on women who solicited abortions in violations of Texas' new near-total ban. But Epik ultimately stopped working with the site because it violated their rules against collecting private information. Epik has in recent years become a safe space for far-right platforms that were booted from major web hosts like Amazon Web Services, though it has tried to take steps to shed some of its most toxic clients, cutting ties with the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer and 8chan."The company played such a major role in keeping far-right terrorist cesspools alive," Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism, told the Post. "Without Epik, many extremist communities — from QAnon and white nationalists to accelerationist neo-Nazis — would have had far less oxygen to spread harm, whether that be building toward the Jan. 6 Capitol riots or sowing the misinformation and conspiracy theories chipping away at democracy."Epik founder Robert Monster has drawn growing criticism for hosting extremist content. Monster has denied holding extremist views but following that Christchurch shooting in New Zealand that killed 50 people, he <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-found-a-web-host-savior" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">uploaded links</a> to the shooter's video and published his so-called manifesto. Monster insisted that his employees watch the video, which he claimed was faked, according to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-04-14/qanon-daily-stormer-far-right-have-been-kept-online-by-nick-lim-s-vanwatech" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Bloomberg News</a>.Monster acknowledged the hack in an email to customers last week, alerting them of an "alleged security incident.""You are in our prayers today," he wrote, according to the Post. "When situations arise where individuals might not have honorable intentions, I pray for them. I believe that what the enemy intends for evil, God invariably transforms into good. Blessings to you all."But the company has come under "ridicule" from researchers who have "marveled at the site's apparent failure to take security precautions," according to the report. None of the files were encrypted, researchers say, including data revealing the administrators of far-right websites and passwords. The hack also exposed personal data from Anonymize, a privacy service the company offered to users that wanted to hide their identity. Previous similar hacks have drawn investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/12/14/ashley-madison-owner-agrees-to-pay-1-6-million-to-settle-u-s-investigations/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">hefty settlements</a>."Given Epik's boasts about security, and the scope of its Web hosting, I would think it would be an FTC target, especially if the company was warned but failed to take protective action," David Vladeck, the former director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau, told the Post. "I would add that the FTC wouldn't care about the content — right wing or left wing; the questions would be the possible magnitude and impact of the breach and the representations … the company may have made about security."Epik initially said it was unaware of the hack but Monster, on a "rambling three-hour live-stream" last week, acknowledged there was a "hijack of data that should not have been hijacked," according to the report."If you have a negative intent to use that data, it's not going to work out for you. I'm just telling you," he said. "If the demon tells you to do it, the demon is not your friend."But extremism researchers have likened the leak to the "Panama Papers of hate groups," Emma Best, co-founder of the nonprofit whistleblower group Distributed Denial of Secrets, told the Post."A lot of research begins with naming names," she said. "There's a lot of optimism and feeling of being overwhelmed, and people knowing they're in for the long haul with some of this data."</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/john-bolton-rudy-giuliani/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/john-bolton-rudy-giuliani/</a></div><div>
</div><div>When Former National Security Adviser John Bolton received a warning about President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani due to his suspected ties to Russian operatives, he wasted no time heeding the warning and urged his staff to steer clear of having any involvement or interactions with<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-bolton-warned-staff-to-stay-away-from-russia-aligned-rudy-giuliani" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Daily Beast</a> compiled a report based on what the publication described as "interviews with 11 knowledgeable sources" detailing Bolton's repeated attempts to maintain distance between his department and Giuliani.It has been reported that in January of 2019, the intelligence committee warned Capitol Hill and the White House that Giuliani was "a target of Russian intelligence operation to feed disinformation to Trump." As months passed, the warnings about Giuliani are said to have "intensified.""Officials said the warnings about Giuliani intensified in the spring and summer of 2019 as the president's personal attorney appeared on television propagating disinformation about the Bidens and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Masha Yovanovitch. One ex-NSC official said that Giuliani, as a U.S. citizen, was neither named nor referenced in contemporaneous intelligence reports about Russian disinformation efforts. But Giuliani's alarming role was the subject of informal discussions between White House and intelligence officials." - The Daily BeastA former official also raised concerns about Russia's server hack of the Ukranian energy company Burisma—where Hunter Biden once served on the executive board. It reportedly led to "informed speculation among professionals that this would be the entrée to fabricate material connecting Hunter Biden to corruption inside Burisma, and it wouldn't take more than 10 percent truth."Bolton even warned his subordinates to refrain from being in meetings with Giuliani present. In fact, Bolton's directives were so specific he even advised against his staff attending Trump's Oval Office meeting May 23, 2019 following the Ukrainian inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
An unnamed Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee also weighed in as he admitted that Giuliani had been a big topic of discussion."Rudy's been the topic of conversation a lot," said the other source, a Democratic member of the House intelligence committee. "Wittingly or unwittingly, Rudy seems to care more about what he can gain politically from his relationship and discussions with Russian assets than he does about how he might be being used."
When contacted about the latest debacle, Giuliani claimed he was unaware of Bolton's opposition toward him."I didn't find out that John was unhappy with me or opposed to me until he left [the administration]…I've known him for ten years," and claimed that "when I was being considered for Secretary of State, I told him I'd consider him for deputy."</div>=hmmn strategic vision sued by guo eastern profit for not hacking chops/ to find money laundering, wd that mean a hack?<div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/russian-state-hackers-are-accused-of-trying-to-infiltrate-bidens-campaign-firm/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/russian-state-hackers-are-accused-of-trying-to-infiltrate-bidens-campaign-firm/</a></div><div>
</div><div>a campaign advisory firm that was hired to help elect Democratic presidential candidate <a href="https://www.salon.com/topic/joe_biden" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Joe Biden</a> was targeted by suspected <a href="https://www.salon.com/topic/russian-hackers" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Russian state-backed hackers</a>, according to a recent report.</div>Microsoft Corp. recently alerted the Washington-based firm SKDKnickerbocker that its staff had been targeted by individuals believed to have been affiliated with Russian hacking networks, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-cyber-biden-exclusive/exclusive-russian-state-hackers-suspected-in-targeting-biden-campaign-firm-sources-idUSKBN2610I4" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">according to Reuters</a>. A person familiar with the hacking attempts told the wire agency that “they are well-defended, so there has been no breach.” Microsoft also <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/14/biden-app-voter-files/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANdTOeDgOFqbES-5RC6I96NHMUObT690ltOtZp30WEdunCgGjEAm5HkX84l5-Seqit5V0wyNdDwRZSz1ajcLNC-9eYpr7l5Yftjl4JsKb2hxTIhERJj9lriELb9NVJBWZgXS7X-67mFRL252b81PXC2KLni-pIuhBXvNzs-FY2d" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">warned</a> that both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns are being targeted by hackers backed by China, Iran and Russia.SKDKnickerbocker is a prominent Washington campaign firm whose partner, Anita Dunn, is a <a href="https://senior%20strategist%20for%20biden%27s%20campaign/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">senior strategist for Biden’s campaign</a>. It is responsible for efforts like “Vote Safe California,” a $35 million campaign to increase voter turnout in the upcoming presidential election.A spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, dismissed the accusations as “nonsense.""Over the past number of years, there’s been significant evidence documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan report and numerous other places, including the 17 intelligence agencies, that Russia infiltrated our elections in the 2016 race and was continuing to do that throughout not only the 2018 elections, but also into the 2020 election,” Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs at the government watchdog group Common Cause, told Salon. “And so it’s no surprise at all that this new evidence was revealed recently about their involvement in trying to hack the Biden campaign.”There is evidence that Russian state-sponsored hackers previously infiltrated prominent Democratic Party officials’ emails amid the 2016 election. While a special counsel report <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/03/22/robert-muellers-report-is-in-how-long-till-we-see-it/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">did not charge President Trump himself</a> with actively colluding with the Russian government, the investigation became politicized as a “<a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/07/22/trump-claims-he-wont-watch-mueller-testimony-because-its-a-ridiculous-witch-hunt/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">witch hunt</a>” by Republican Party officials and by the president himself.Lindsay Gorman, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, feared that this hacking attempt would become similarly politicized. “Politicization in this arena directly undermines our democracy,” Gorman told Salon.“Given the tactics we saw in 2016, it should come as no surprise that Russia would be interested in targeting a firm tied to a political campaign,” Gorman added. “It’s important to note though that for the foreign actors we worry about in the context of cyber-espionage and organizations relevant to US policymaking, a range of motives may be at play…. For example, we don’t know yet whether these cyber attempts on campaign-related infrastructure are part of a larger election interference plot or simply a means to gather intelligence on prospective future US policy should a particular candidate be elected in November.”While Russia’s attempts to meddle in US elections in the past four years have caused widespread political outrage and led to investigations such as <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/03/17/justice-department-moves-to-drop-charges-against-russian-shell-companies-indicted-in-mueller-probe_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation</a>, the United States also has a long history of meddling in other countries’ elections. There were <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has-a-long-history-of-election-meddling/565538/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">62 occasions</a> between 1946 and 1989, the height of the Cold War, when America intervened through direct or covert methods (or both) in other countries’ elections. In 1948, for instance, America’s foreign policy apparatus <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/all-feasible-means" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">intervened</a> in Italy’s parliamentary elections to help Rome’s pro-Western government defeat the Popular Front, a leftist alliance of parties. American intelligence officials have freely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">admitted</a> to influencing or even controlling media outlets, funding candidates and engaging in other electioneering activity in order to thwart politicians who were perceived as pro-Communist or simply not as friendly to perceived American interests.“If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules [in 2016] or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all,” Steven L. Hall, a retired CIA intelligence operative, previously <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">told the New York Times</a> in a 2018 interview. Hall said that he “hope[d]” that the United States would “keep doing it,” by which he meant carry out out “election influence operations.”<div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"></div></div>=<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_hack">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_hack</a>north korea PO'd about movie<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/this-is-what-collusion-looks-like-gop-led-senate-report-far-more-devastating-than-mueller-probe">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/this-is-what-collusion-looks-like-gop-led-senate-report-far-more-devastating-than-mueller-probe</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>  lots of docs in twt not here</div><div>
</div><div>‘This is what collusion looks like’: GOP-led Senate report ‘far more devastating’ than Mueller probe</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Igor Derysh / Salon August 18, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>The Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on its bipartisan Russia investigation revealed even more numerous contacts between President Donald Trump’s advisers and Russian operatives than former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.</div><div>
</div><div>The committee, which is chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Tuesday released its fifth and final report, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, following a three-year bipartsian investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The report documents the extent to which Russia sought to influence the election — and members of Trump’s team welcoming their assistance.</div><div>
</div><div>“The Senate report — even more extensive than the Mueller investigation — paints a far more devastating picture of Russian intelligence operatives’ access to the Trump campaign, describing far more insidious connections than even Mueller did in his report,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote.</div><div>
</div><div>The report, like Mueller’s, did not conclude that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia, but it found that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with a “Russian intelligence officer” and handed him internal campaign data. The report also suggested that Manafort might also be linked to Russia’s hack of the Clinton campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>“The committee obtained some information suggesting that the Russian intelligence officer, with whom Manafort had a longstanding relationship, may have been connected to the G.R.U.’s hack-and-leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the committee’s Democrats wrote. “This is what collusion looks like.”</div><div>
</div><div>The report found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Manafort, was a “Russian intelligence officer” who might be connected to Russia’s “hack and leak operation.” (Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to Kilimnik.)</div><div>
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</div><div>While the Senate Russia report mentioned Kilimnik 819 times, the House Republican report did not mention him once. The Senate report also found that Kilimnik later “almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election.” Trump has repeatedly echoed the claim that Ukraine interfered in the election — not Russia.</div><div>
</div><div>Another part of the report also cited evidence raising the “possibility of Manafort’s potential connection” to the hack and leak operation, though the evidence was redacted.</div><div>
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</div><div>The report described Trump’s former campaign chief as a “grave counterintelligence threat,” who worked with Russian operatives before and after the election.</div><div>
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</div><div>The report also found that Trump did discuss WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, even though he told Mueller’s team that he did “not recall” doing so. It also revealed that Stone directed an associate to request a leak of hacked emails by Clinton’s top aide when the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped. The emails were published a half hour after the release.</div><div>
</div><div>Like the Mueller report, the Senate report also detailed efforts by Trump and his team to impede the years-long probe.</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the committee, urged the public to “review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and reach their own independent conclusions.”</div><div>
</div><div>Rubio, however, tried to spin the report as favorable for the president.</div><div>
</div><div>“We can say, without any hesitation, that the committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.</div><div>
</div><div>“What the committee did find however is very troubling,” he added. “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”</div><div>
</div><div>But Rubio’s statement brushed over actions by Trump’s advisers, as well as the president’s own statements to investigators.</div><div>
</div><div>One part of the report notes that Trump told Mueller in written responses that he did “not recall” discussing WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, who was later convicted in the former special counsel’s probe before being granted clemency by the president.</div><div>
</div><div>“Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions,” the report said.</div><div>
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</div><div>The report also noted that WikiLeaks “likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort” by publishing stolen Democratic emails.</div><div>
</div><div>Stone “obtained information indicating” that Clinton campaign chief John Podesta would “be a target of an upcoming release, prior to WikiLeaks releasing Podesta’s emails . . . Stone then communicated his information to Trump,” the report said.</div><div>
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</div><div>Stone directed an associate to tell WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to “drop the Podesta emails immediately” the day the Trump campaign learned about the looming Access Hollywood tape.</div><div>
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</div><div>The report also noted that the Senate investigation was met with “unprecedented potential executive privilege claims” from the White House.</div><div>
</div><div>“The committee was surprised by these assertions, because they were made inconsistently and because they have no basis in law,” the report said.</div><div>
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</div><div>“The Trump campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort,” the report added.</div><div>
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</div><div>The report further concluded that Donald Trump Jr. might have obstructed the investigation, but the panel declined to pursue the issue due to “time and resource considerations.”</div><div>
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</div><div>Trump Jr. participated in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya about obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Russian government “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known,” the report said.</div><div>
</div><div>The report concluded by warning that “what happened to the United States in 2016 should be an alarm bell.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the president’s associates are amplifying those efforts,” the report said. “The Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats” to the homeland.</div></div><div>
</div><div></div><div>Putin's Goal Is to Bring Down American Democracy - The ...www.theatlantic.com › magazine › archive › 2020/06</div><div>The Russians were expecting the election of Hillary Clinton—and preparing to immediately declare it a fraud. The embassy in Washington had attempted to ...</div><div>Missing: qanon ?| Must include: qanon</div><div><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/</a></div><div>
</div><div>[long]</div><div>...<span class="smallcaps" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0.3px; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase; font-feature-settings: " onum="onum">#democracyrip was both the hashtag and the plan. The Russians were expecting the election of Hillary Clinton—and preparing to immediately declare it a fraud. The embassy in Washington had attempted to persuade American officials to allow its functionaries to act as observers in polling places. A Twitter campaign alleging voting irregularities was queued. Russian diplomats were ready to publicly denounce the results as illegitimate. Events in 2016, of course, veered in the other direction. Yet the hashtag is worth pausing over for a moment, because, though it was never put to its intended use, it remains an apt title for a mission that is still unfolding.</div><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-align: center; clear: both; padding-top: 16px; position: relative; letter-spacing: 0.3px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><gpt-ad targeting-pos="boxinjector3" format="injector" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" style="display: block; box-sizing: inherit;" /></div><section id="article-section-4" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 672px; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 672px; padding-right: 364px; letter-spacing: 0.3px;">Russia’s interference in the last presidential election is among the most closely studied phenomena in recent American history, having been examined by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors, by investigators working for congressional committees, by teams within Facebook and Twitter, by seemingly every think tank with access to a printing press. It’s possible, however, to mistake a plot point—the manipulation of the 2016 election—for the full sweep of the narrative.Events in the United States have unfolded more favorably than any operative in Moscow could have ever dreamed: Not only did Russia’s preferred candidate win, but he has spent his first term fulfilling the potential it saw in him, discrediting American institutions, rending the seams of American culture, and isolating a nation that had styled itself as indispensable to the free world. But instead of complacently enjoying its triumph, Russia almost immediately set about replicating it. Boosting the Trump campaign was a tactic; #DemocracyRIP remains the larger objective.[<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/how-to-destroy-a-government/606793/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'5',r'610570'" style="box-sizing: inherit;">From the April 2020 issue: George Packer on how Trump is winning his war on American institutions</a>]In the week that followed Donald Trump’s election, Russia used its fake accounts on social media to organize a rally in New York City supporting the president-elect—and another rally in New York decrying him. Hackers continued attempting to break into state voting systems; trolls continued to launch social-media campaigns intended to spark racial conflict. Through subsidiaries, the Russian government continued to funnel cash to viral-video channels with names like In the Now and ICYMI, which build audiences with ephemera (“Man Licks Store Shelves in Online Post”), then hit unsuspecting readers with arguments about Syria and the CIA. This winter, the Russians even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/russian-propaganda-radio.html" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'6',r'610570'" style="box-sizing: inherit;">secured airtime for their overt propaganda outlet Sputnik</a> on three radio stations in Kansas, bringing the network’s drive-time depictions of American hypocrisy to the heartland....The Russians have learned much about American weaknesses, and how to exploit them. Having probed state voting systems far more extensively than is generally understood by the public, they are now surely more capable of mayhem on Election Day—and possibly without leaving a detectable trace of their handiwork. Having hacked into the inboxes of political operatives in the U.S. and abroad, they’ve pioneered new techniques for infiltrating campaigns and disseminating their stolen goods. Even as to disinformation, the best-known and perhaps most overrated of their tactics, they have innovated, finding new ways to manipulate Americans and to poison the nation’s politics. Russia’s interference in 2016 might be remembered as the experimental prelude that foreshadowed the attack of 2020....
</section><div>=</div>=lucky just bitcoin grift<a href="https://theconversation.com/twitter-hack-exposes-broader-threat-to-democracy-and-society-142948">https://theconversation.com/twitter-hack-exposes-broader-threat-to-democracy-and-society-142948</a>919<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-hate-the-rncs-new-mandatory-shady-fundraising-tool-heres-who-profits-off-it/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-hate-the-rncs-new-mandatory-shady-fundraising-tool-heres-who-profits-off-it/</a>no lnx
Republicans hate the RNC’s new mandatory, shady fundraising tool. Here’s who profits off itWritten by Daily Kos Staff / Daily Kos September 15, 2019Thursday kicked off the House Republicans’ annual retreat, and featured a compulsory presentation on the GOP’s answer to ActBlue, the grassroots, small-donor platform that Democrats have been using for well over a decade. It did not go well at all, according to POLITICO. House Republicans openly argued with Trump/RNC political operatives over the Jared Kushner-pushed initiative.
The new tool is called WinRed, and it was initially released in June. To say that it is problem-plagued would be an understatement.  Suffice it to say that it is the antithesis of ActBlue—in more ways than one. Despite the obvious, that it’s a tool designed to help conservative candidates, the GOP’s new tool is: convoluted to use,for-profit (whereas ActBlue is nonprofit),secretive about plans for donors’ data,being forced upon candidates to use through “veiled threats”,and can take quite a large percentage of whatever donation is given.According to the Daily Kos’ own David Nir:
For starters, there’s the grifty fee structure: While ActBlue charges a flat 3.95% per contribution, WinRed takes a 3.8% cut plus 30 cents per transaction. That might not sound like a big difference, but it’s huge. On a $5 contribution, ActBlue will net 20 cents. WinRed, however, will take 49 cents, which in percentage terms is a giant 9.8%.
What’s more, on a contribution page that lists multiple campaigns, it sounds like WinRed will get 30 cents per donation. (From the site itself: “There is a 3.8% + 30 cents per transaction fee with each donation made.”) In other words, if you split $25 across five candidates, that’s a cool $2.45 for WinRed. ActBlue would take less than a buck.
But that’s not all.
WinRed has quite a few privacy and security concerns as well. Members of Congress ”can’t get straight answers about what’s going to happen with their data.” That’s not something donors want to hear. However, GOP lawmakers at the retreat seemed less concerned about their donors’ information ending up in criminal hands as they were worried that their primary opponent might scoop that info, since all the data goes to the RNC’s clearinghouse firm, Data Trust.
By the way, if you thought you heard of Data Trust before, it’s because their records were involved in that massive data leak in 2017, where the personal information of millions of people—including birthdates, cell numbers, and addresses—was exposed when it was accidentally put on a publicly accessible Amazon server.
Bottom line: WinRed sucks. The candidates don’t trust it. The donors don’t like using it. The only reason it’s being used is because everyone is being coerced, which is slightly ironic given how much lip service the GOP gives to their supposed belief in the free market.
Several GOP candidates have complained that that there was a competitor that actually did work, wasn’t secretive, and had lower fees. Give.GOP was gaining traction with a lot of candidates, but it’s parent company was recently given a cease and desist letter by the RNC, which forbade them from using any kind of GOP branding.
So the big question….. why would the RNC pick sides in a fight between for-profit competitors?
Since the RNC and the Trump 2020 campaign officially merged last year, Donald Trump has been calling the shots, and he made it clear that he wants everyone using WinRed. The platform is being forced upon the National Republican Senate Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee as well. Trump actually shilled for WinRed when it went live.Donald J. Trump?@realDonaldTrumpI am pleased to announce the launch of http://tmagac.winred.com . This new platform will allow my campaign and other Republicans to compete with the Democrats money machine. This has been a priority of mine and I’m pleased to share that it is up and running! #KeepAmericaGreatTrump Make America Great Again CommitteeSTAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP!
secure.winred.com
So, the short answer is that Trump wants it., and what Trump wants, Trump gets in his new GOP.But why does Trump want to force everyone to use such a crappy fundraising tool that no one likes?
Well …What Trump’s announcement did not mention was that the decision to use “WinRed” will potentially funnel millions of extra dollars to a firm owned by Gerrit Lansing, a former RNC staffer who left his White House job only three weeks into the administration after reportedly failing his FBI background screening.What’s more, about two-thirds of the total processing fee is used to pay Stripe, the credit-card processing company that saw a $30 million investment from Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital in 2014.Joshua Kushner is presidential son-in-law and White House aide Jared Kushner’s younger brother.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
See, that’s how it always works in Trumpland.
The victor is always the Trump family and their immediate friends.
—Rick Wilson, Republican political consultant
Duh.
Since 2004, ActBlue has brought in 3.5 billion dollars for progressive candidates. Just imagine the money to be made by Kushner the younger if WinRed manages to gain a foothold and get even a small percentage of that kind of success.
Everyday I learn about a new grift from this president. At least this one only hurts his supporters, for whom I have zero sympathy.
ref<a href="https://gizmodo.com/gop-data-firm-accidentally-leaks-personal-details-of-ne-1796211612">https://gizmodo.com/gop-data-firm-accidentally-leaks-personal-details-of-ne-1796211612</a>no lnx many docs
James Whitbrook2 hours ago
GOP Data Firm Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly 200 Million American Voters6/19/17 8:00AMFiled to:RNC DATA LEAKPolitical data gathered on more than 198 million US citizens was exposed this month after a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee stored internal documents on a publicly accessible Amazon server.The data leak contains a wealth of personal information on roughly 61 percent of the US population. Along with home addresses, birthdates, and phone numbers, the records include advanced sentiment analyses used by political groups to predict where individual voters fall on hot-button issues such as gun ownership, stem cell research, and the right to abortion, as well as suspected religious affiliation and ethnicity. The data was amassed from a variety of sources—from the banned subredditr/fatpeoplehate to American Crossroads, the super PAC co-founded by former White House strategist Karl Rove.
Deep Root Analytics, a conservative data firm that identifies audiences for political ads, confirmed ownership of the data to Gizmodo on Friday.
UpGuard cyber risk analyst Chris Vickery discovered Deep Root’s data online last week. More than a terabyte was stored on the cloud server without the protection of a password and could be accessed by anyone who found the URL. Many of the files did not originate at Deep Root, but are instead the aggregate of outside data firms and Republican super PACs, shedding light onto the increasingly advanced data ecosystem that helped propel President Donald Trump’s slim margins in key swing states.
Although files possessed by Deep Root would be typical in any campaign, Republican or Democratic, experts say its exposure in a single open database raises significant privacy concerns. “This is valuable for people who have nefarious purposes,” Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said of the data.
“This is valuable for people who have nefarious purposes.”The RNC paid Deep Root $983,000 last year, according to Federal Election Commission reports, but its server contained records from a variety of other conservative sources paid millions more, including The Data Trust (also known as GOP Data Trust), the Republican party’s primary voter file provider. Data Trust received over $6.7 million from the RNC during the 2016 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, and its president, Johnny DeStefano, now serves as Trump’s director of presidential personnel.
The Koch brothers’ political group Americans for Prosperity, which had a data-swapping agreement with Data Trust during the 2016 election cycle, contributed heavily to the exposed files, as did the market research firm TargetPoint, whose co-founder previously served as director of Mitt Romney’s strategy team. (The Koch brothers also subsidized a data company known as i360, which began exchanging voter files with Data Trust in 2014.) Furthermore, the files provided by Rove’s American Crossroads contain strategic voter data used to target, among others, disaffected Democrats and undecideds in Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, and other key battleground states.
Deep Root further obtained hundreds of files (at least) from The Kantar Group, a leading media and market research company with offices in New York, Beijing,Moscow, and more than a hundred other cities on six continents. Each file offers rich details about political ads—estimated cost, audience demographics, reach, and more—by and about figures and groups spanning the political spectrum. There are files on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Planned Parenthood, and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as files on every 2016 presidential candidate, Republicans included.
What’s more, the Kantar files each contain video links to related political ads stored on Kantar’s servers.
Kantar files on political ads involving US officials, candidates, and political organizations. (UpGuard)Kantar files on political ads involving US officials, candidates, and political organizations. (UpGuard)Spreadsheets acquired from TargetPoint, which partnered with Deep Root and GOP Data Trust during the 2016 election, include the home addresses, birthdates, and party affiliations of nearly 200 million registered voters in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, as well as some 2016 voters. TargetPoint’s data seeks to resolve questions about where individual voters stand on dozens of political issues. For example: Is the voter eco-friendly? Do they favor lowering taxes? Do they believe the Democrats should stand up to Trump? Do they agree with Trump’s “America First” economic stance? Pharmaceutical companies do great damage: Agree or Disagree?
The details of voters’ likely preferences for issues like stem cell research and gun control were likely drawn from a variety of sources according to a Democratic strategist who spoke with Gizmodo.
“Data like that would be a combination of polling data, real world data from door-knocking and phone-calling and other canvassing activities, coupled with modeling using the data we already have to extrapolate what the voters we don’t know about would think,” the strategist said. “The campaigns that do it right combine all the available data together to make the most robust model for every single voter in the target universe.”
“We take full responsibility for this situation.”In a statement, Deep Root founder Alex Lundry told Gizmodo, “We take full responsibility for this situation.” He said the data included proprietary information as well as publicly available voter data provided by state government officials. “Since this event has come to our attention, we have updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access,” Lundry said.
Deep Root’s data was exposed after the company updated its security settings on June 1, Lundry said. Deep Root has retained Stroz Friedberg, a cybersecurity and digital forensics firm, to investigate. “Based on the information we have gathered thus far, we do not believe that our systems have been hacked,” Lundry added.
So far, Deep Root doesn’t believe its proprietary data was accessed by any malicious third parties during the 12 days that the data was exposed on the open web.
Deep Root’s server was discovered by UpGuard’s Vickery on the night of June 12 as he was searching for data publicly accessible on Amazon’s cloud service. He used the same process last month to detect sensitive files tied to a US Defense Department project and exposed by an employee of a top defense contractor.
This is not the first leak of voter files uncovered by Vickery, who told Gizmodo that he was alarmed over how the data was apparently being used—some states, for instance, prohibit the commercial use of voter records. Moreover, it was not immediately clear to whom the data belonged. “It was decided that law enforcement should be contacted before attempting any contact with the entity responsible,” said Vickery, who reported that the server was secured two days later on June 14.
A web of data firms funnel research into campaignsDeep Root’s data sheds light onto the increasingly sophisticated data operation that has fed recent Republican campaigns and lays bare the intricate network of political organizations, PACs, and analysis firms that trade in bulk voter data. In an email to Gizmodo, Deep Root said that its voter models are used to enhance the understanding of TV viewership for political ad buyers. “The data accessed was not built for or used by any specific client,” Lundry said. “It is our proprietary analysis to help inform local television ad buying.”
However, the presence of data on the server from several political organizations, including TargetPoint and Data Trust, suggests that it was used for Republican political campaigns. Deep Root also works primarily with GOP customers (although similar vendors, such as NationBuilder, service the Democrats as well).
Deep Root is one of three data firms hired by the Republican National Committee in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Founded by Lundry, a data scientist on the Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney campaigns, the firm was one of three analytics teams that worked on the Trump campaign following the party’s national convention in the summer of 2016.
Lundry’s work brought him into Trump’s campaign war room, according to a post-election AdAge article that charted the GOP’s 2016 data efforts. Deep Root was hand-picked by the RNC’s then-chief of staff, Katie Walsh, in September of last year and joined two other data shops—TargetPoint Consulting and Causeway Solutions—in the effort to win Trump the presidency.
Walsh, who now works for the nonprofit America First Policies after a brief stint in the White House, oversaw Trump’s data operation in partnership with Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital director. (Parscale did not respond to a request for comment before press time. Attempts to reach Walsh for comment were also unsuccessful.) Walsh and Parscale focused their efforts on three categories of voters, AdAge reports: voters who might be predisposed to support Trump, Republican voters who were uncertain about Trump, and voters that were leaning toward Hillary Clinton but could be persuaded by Trump’s message of changing up government-as-usual.
A spreadsheet forecasting specific voters’ likely opinions on various issues weighed using a 0-to-1 scale. (UpGuard)A spreadsheet forecasting specific voters’ likely opinions on various issues weighed using a 0-to-1 scale. (UpGuard)To appeal to the three crucial categories, it appears that Trump’s team relied on voter data provided by Data Trust. Complete voter rolls for 2008 and 2012, as well as partial 2016 voter rolls for Florida and Ohio, apparently compiled by Data Trust are contained in the dataset exposed by Deep Root.
Data Trust acquires voter rolls from state officials and then standardizes the voter data to create a clean, manageable record of all registered US voters, a source familiar with the firm’s operations told Gizmodo. Voter data itself is public record and therefore not particularly sensitive, the source added, but the tools Data Trust uses to standardize that data are considered proprietary. That data is then provided to political clients, including analytics firms like Deep Root. While Data Trust requires its clients to protect the data, it has to take clients at their word that industry-standard encryption and security protocols are in place.
TargetPoint and Causeway, the two firms employed by the RNC in addition to Deep Root, apparently layered their own analytics atop the information provided by Data Trust. TargetPoint conducted thousands of surveys per week in 22 states, according to AdAge, gauging voter sentiment on a variety of topics. While Causeway helped manage the data, Deep Root used it to perfect its TV advertising targets—producing voter turnout estimates by county and using that intelligence to target its ad buys.
A source with years of experience working on political campaign data operations told Gizmodo that the data exposed by Deep Root appeared to be customized for the RNC and had apparently been used to create models for turnout and voter preferences. Metadata in the files suggested that the database wasn’t Deep Root’s working copy, but rather a post-election version of its data, the source said, adding that it was somewhat surprising the files hadn’t been discarded.
Because the data from the 2008 and 2012 elections is outdated—the source compared it to the kind of address and phone data one could find on a “lousy internet lookup site”—it’s not very valuable. Even the 2016 data is quickly becoming stale. “This is a proprietary dataset based on a mix of public records, data from commercial providers, and a variety of predictive models of uncertain provenance and quality,” the source said, adding: “Undoubtedly it took millions of dollars to produce.”
Although basic voter information is public record, Deep Root’s dataset contains a swirl of proprietary information from the RNC’s data firms. Many of the filenames indicate that they potentially contain market research on Democratic candidates and the independent expenditure committees that support them. (Up to two terabytes of data contained on the server was protected by permission settings.)
One exposed folder is labeled “Exxon-Mobile” [sic] and contains spreadsheets apparently used to predict which voters support the oil and gas industry. Divided by state, the files include the voters’ names and addresses, along with a unique RNC identification number assigned to every US citizen registered to vote. Each row indicates where voters likely fall on issues of interest to ExxonMobil, the country’s biggest natural gas producer.
The data evaluates, for example, whether or not a specific voter believes drilling for fossil fuels is vital to US security. It also predicts if the voter thinks the US should be moving away from fossil-fuel use. The ExxonMobil “national score” document alone contains data on 182,746,897 Americans spread across 19 fields.
The “Exxon-Mobile” file contains unique RNC codes and sentiment analyses for more than 182 million US voters. (UpGuard)The “Exxon-Mobile” file contains unique RNC codes and sentiment analyses for more than 182 million US voters. (UpGuard)Reddit analysisSome of the data included in Deep Root’s dataset veers into downright bizarre territory. A folder titled simply ‘reddit’ houses 170 GBs of data apparently scraped from several subreddits, including the controversial r/fatpeoplehate that was home to a community of people who posted pictures of people and mocked them for their weight before it was banned from Reddit’s platform in 2015. Other subreddits that appear to have been scraped by Deep Root or a partner organization focused on more benign topics, like mountain biking and the Spanish language.
The Reddit data could’ve been used as training data for an artificial intelligence algorithm focused on natural language processing, or it might have been harvested as part of an effort to match up Reddit users with their voter registration records. During the 2012 election cycle, Barack Obama’s campaign data team relied on information gleaned from Facebook profiles and matched profiles to voter records.
During the 2016 election season, Reddit played host to a legion of Trump supporters who gathered in subreddits like r/The_Donald to comb through leaked Democratic National Committee emails and craft pro-Trump memes. Trump himself participated in an “Ask Me Anything” session on r/The_Donald during his campaign.
Given how active some Trump supporters are on Reddit—r/The_Donald currently boasts more than 430,000 members—it makes sense that Trump’s data team might be interested in analyzing data from the site.
A FiveThirtyEight analysis that looked at where r/The_Donald members spend their time when they’re not talking politics might shed some light onto why Deep Root collected r/fatpeoplehate data. FiveThirtyEight found that, when Redditors weren’t commenting in political subreddits, they most often frequented r/fatpeoplehate.
Recent Videos from GizmodoVIEW MORE >Watch a Giant Army of Lego Droids Play the Star Wars Theme on Real Instruments9/02/19 8:00AMIt’s possible that Deep Root intended to use data from r/fatpeoplehate to build a more comprehensive profile of Trump voters. (Lundry declined to comment beyond his initial statement on any of information included in the Deep Root dataset.)
A raw excerpt of the scraped Reddit data stored on Deep Root’s server. (UpGuard)A raw excerpt of the scraped Reddit data stored on Deep Root’s server. (UpGuard)However, FiveThirtyEight’s investigation doesn’t account for Deep Root’s collection of data from mountain-biking and Spanish-speaking subreddits that weren’t as popular with r/The_Donald members—and data from these subreddits that are not so closely linked to Trump’s diehard supporters might be more useful for his campaign’s goal of pursuing swing voters.
“My guess is that they were scraping Reddit posts to match to the voter file as another input for individual modeling,” a source familiar with campaign data operations told Gizmodo. “Given the number of random forums, my guess is they started with a list of accounts to scrape from, rather than scraping from all forums then trying to match from there (in which case you’d start with the political ones).”
Matching voter records with Reddit usernames would be complicated and any large-scale effort would likely result in many inaccuracies, the source said. However, campaigns have attempted to match voter files with social media profiles in the past. Such an effort by Deep Root wouldn’t be entirely surprising, and would likely yield rich data on the small portion of users it was able to match with their voter profiles, the source explained.
Data exposes sensitive voter infoThe Deep Root incident represents the largest known leak of Americans’ voter records, outstripping past exposures by several million records. Five voter-file leaks over the past 18 months exposed between 350,000 and 191 million files, some of which paired voter data—name, race, gender, birthdate, address, phone number, party affiliation, etc.—with email accounts, social media profiles, and records of gun ownership.
“I can think of no avenues for punishing political data breaches or otherwise properly aligning the incentives.”Campaigns and the data analysis firms they employ are a particularly weak point for data exposure, security experts say. Corporations that don’t properly secure customer data can face significant financial repercussions—just ask Target or Yahoo. But because campaigns are short-term operations, there’s not much incentive for them to take data security seriously, and valuable data is often left out to rust after an election.
“Campaigns are very narrowly focused. They are shoestring operations, even presidential campaigns. So they don’t think of this as an asset they need to protect,” the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Hall told Gizmodo.
Even though voter rolls are public record and are easy to access—Ohio, for instance, makes its voter rolls available to download online—their exposure can still be harmful.
Voter registration records include ZIP codes, birthdates, and other personal information that have been crucial in research efforts to re-identify anonymous medical data. Latanya Sweeney, a professor of government and technology at Harvard University, famously used voter data to re-identify Massachusetts Governor William Weld from information in anonymous hospital discharge records.
Because of the personal information they contain, voter registration databases can also be useful in identity theft schemes.
Even though exposure of Deep Root’s data has the potential to harm voters, it’s exactly the kind of data that campaigns lust after and will spend millions of dollars to obtain. Campaigns are motivated to accumulate as much deeply personal information about voters as possible, so they can spend their ad dollars in the right swing districts where they’re likely to sway the greatest number of voters. But voter data rapidly goes stale and campaigns close up shop quickly, so data is seen as disposable and often isn’t well-protected.
“I can think of no avenues for punishing political data breaches or otherwise properly aligning the incentives. I worry that if there’s no way to punish campaigns for leaking this stuff, it’s going to continue to happen until something bad happens,” Hall said. The data left behind by campaigns can pose a lingering security issue, he added. “None of these motherfuckers were ever Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, they don’t pack out what they pack in.”
[UpGuard]
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