PUTIN IS WELL ON HIS WAY TO STEALING THE NEXT ELECTION

RIP democracy

By Franklin Foer

JUNE 2020 ISSUE (The Atlantic)

Jack cable sat down at the desk in his cramped dorm room to become an adult in the eyes of democracy. The rangy teenager, with neatly manicured brown hair and chunky glasses, had recently arrived at Stanford—his first semester of life away from home—and the 2018 midterm elections were less than two months away. Although he wasn’t one for covering his laptop with strident stickers or for taking loud stands, he felt a genuine thrill at the prospect of voting. But before he could cast an absentee ballot, he needed to register with the Board of Elections back home in Chicago.

When Cable tried to complete the digital forms, an error message stared at him from his browser. Clicking back to his initial entry, he realized that he had accidentally typed an extraneous quotation mark into his home address. The fact that a single keystroke had short-circuited his registration filled Cable with a sense of dread.

Despite his youth, Cable already enjoyed a global reputation as a gifted hacker—or, as he is prone to clarify, an “ethical hacker.” As a sophomore in high school, he had started participating in “bug bounties,” contests in which companies such as Google and Uber publicly invite attacks on their digital infrastructure so that they can identify and patch vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them. Cable, who is preternaturally persistent, had a knack for finding these soft spots. He collected enough cash prizes from the bug bounties to cover the costs of four years at Stanford.

Though it wouldn’t have given the average citizen a moment of pause, Cable recognized the error message on the Chicago Board of Elections website as a telltale sign of a gaping hole in its security. It suggested that the site was vulnerable to those with less beneficent intentions than his own, that they could read and perhaps even alter databases listing the names and addresses of voters in the country’s third-largest city. Despite his technical savvy, Cable was at a loss for how to alert the authorities. He began sending urgent warnings about the problem to every official email address he could find. Over the course of the next seven months, he tried to reach the city’s chief information officer, the Illinois governor’s office, and the Department of Homeland Security.

As he waited for someone to take notice of his missives, Cable started to wonder whether the rest of America’s electoral infrastructure was as weak as Chicago’s. He read about how, in 2016, when he was a junior in high school, Russian military intelligence—known by its initials, GRU—had hacked the Illinois State Board of Elections website, transferring the personal data of tens of thousands of voters to Moscow. The GRU had even tunneled into the computers of a small Florida company that sold software to election officials in eight states.

Read more crap:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/

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We should be grateful that the entire "liberal" "progressive" mass media did not post anything about the truth of Hunter Biden's computer (in FBI hands) nor about Joe's vanishing brainpower, nor about Joe's shenanigans in Ukraine, back in 2014, otherwise Trump would have won the day easily — especially when knowing from "The Atlantic" that the Ruskies were at it again — hacking hackers — even after having failed at being properly recognised by the Mueller Inquiry.

Putin would be amused (not really, just bemused at being blamed for everything since Genghis Khan's destruction of Asia and for the USA disintegrating on its own merit). Why would Putin add to the sauce? Worried that Joker Joe would win instead of Donald Dumbdumb? What a choice! Did Covid-19 start in Moscow? Why not? Meanwhile, it was obvious that the Murdoch media fired its Hunter Biden broadside too late, giving little time for Ship America to turn around, preventing it from going full speed towards disaster with Joe rather than going full bore towards disaster with Donald. The choice was dire, even worse than in 2016... Hey, not a woman contender!

So Putin's spying machine full of dorks that we can see on CCTV in Salisbury and who even use a set of office rubber stamps to tell us where they've been (like tomcats marking their extended territory). 

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Spying, attacks, murder: Moscow's secret services have shown they are capable of striking even in the heart of the West. However, intelligence expert Christopher Nehring says they are marked by failure and limited means.

Yes they failed to kill the Skripals and Navalny... Mostly because the Skripals' case was an M/16 and M/15 set-up and there is a great degree of certainty that Navalny was "poisoned" by the CIA. Failure of the GRU to get there first is a badge of honour.

But intelligence expert Christopher Nehring seems to be working for Bellingcat:

The Berlin secret service expert Christopher Nehring also tells the GRU is loosing its feeling of invulnerability after years of successful overseas operations. In addition, as in many authorities, there is sloppiness, denial of reality and corruption at the GRU. The western authorities were also often too lax with the agents, writes Nehring in an article for the Internet platform “Dekoder”.

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Ah.... We have been too lax... That's our problem. Actually it's a trick. Our being too lax, encourages the Russians spies to be sloppy...  Then we can catch them (or try to)... The Berlin secret service expert Christopher Nehring carries on telling us:

So far, 2021 has been the year of Russian intelligence, with four spectacular operations exposed in the last four months. In Berlin, Jens F., an electrician with a Stasi past, was caught selling Bundestag construction plans to secret service agents at the Russian Embassy. In Bulgaria, a Russian spy ring was uncovered around the ex-military intelligence officer Ivan Iliev. In Italy, a frigate captain named Walter Biot was found to be selling military information.

And in the Czech Republic, the Interior Ministry identified officers of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU as the perpetrators of two explosions at an ammunition depot in Vrbetice in 2014. These were the same men who allegedly poisoned Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in 2015, as well as former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in 2018.

The Bulgarian Prosecutor General's Office has also linked the GRU with four other instances of sabotage at weapons depots belonging to Gebrev's company, EMKO. All this, of course, comes after Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in August 2020, as well as cases of cyberespionage against the German Bundestag in 2015 and, in 2020, against the American IT company SolarWinds.

So, what can we learn from all this Russian activity?

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Well the answer — I mean the real answer — is: NOT MUCH. All these acts of sabotage and murders have been proven that THEY HAVE NOT BEEN DONE BY THE RUSSIAN SECRET SERVICES. Selling Bundestag construction plans? Olala... SURE. Okay... Even the Ruskies have found this one:

Estonia has condemned Russia for detaining one of its diplomats after a “set-up” designed to make him look like a spy, saying the incident showed Russia is choosing confrontation in its relations with Europe.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday it arrested Saint Petersburg-based diplomat Mart Latte after he was “caught red handed” receiving confidential information from a Russian citizen.

Read more:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/6/estonia-condemns-set-up-detention-of-its-diplomat-in-russia

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And this just the day after we posted about Estonia! What do we know? I'd like to know!

Coincidences do happen and the CIA knows how to make them happen...

assangex

Valentin Tsankov, a Bulgarian Brigadier General, gave an interview to Dir.bg publication, in which he compared the current state of affairs in the Black Sea with events that had happened on the border of the Soviet Union and Germany before the Great Patriotic War. The Bulgarian general warned of the risk of a military confrontation between Russia and NATO.

The Black Sea has become a place of direct contact between the armed forces of Russia and NATO. Naval exercises are regularly conducted there, which indicates that the parties prepare for real military action.

Tsankov drew attention to NATO's unprecedented Sea Breeze 2021 exercise and pointed out Russia's dominant position in the region. The general noted that Russia opposes the exercise, defending its borders, and stressed that any other country would do the same.

According to Tsankov, the North Atlantic Alliance "demonstrates the non-recognition of the annexation of Crimea,” which is manifested in the increased presence of warships from the countries that do not have access to the Black Sea, especially US warships. The general believes that Washington thus tries to put pressure on Moscow, while the latter sees all that as a threat and builds up its military potential in response. All the above escalates tensions in the region and aggravates the relationship, the Bulgarian general believes.

Tsankov compared the situation in the region with the situation in 1939-1941, when the Soviet Union and Germany shared a border.

"This is the easiest way to start a war,” he said.

The general also pointed out that in the event Ukraine obtains NATO's global partner status, this may lead to the permanent deployment of NATO troops near the Russian borders. Ukraine is now playing the role of a buffer, he concluded.

NATO's largest international military exercise Sea Breeze 2021 kicked off on June 28. Five thousand soldiers from 32 countries, as well as 32 warships, 40 aircraft, 18 special operations teams and diving groups take part in the exercise. Some of them represent NATO countries.

Читайте больше на https://english.pravda.ru/news/world/43017-nato_russia_war/

assange