Russian Hackers Are Linked To New Brexit Leak Website, Google Says (reuters.com) 68
A new website that published leaked emails from several leading proponents of Britain's exit from the European Union is tied to Russian hackers, according to a Google cybersecurity official and the former head of UK foreign intelligence. From a report: The website - titled "Very English Coop d'Etat" - says it has published private emails from former British spymaster Richard Dearlove, leading Brexit campaigner Gisela Stuart, pro-Brexit historian Robert Tombs, and other supporters of Britain's divorce from the EU, which was finalized in January 2020. The site contends that they are part of a group of hardline pro-Brexit figures secretly calling the shots in the United Kingdom. "I am well aware of a Russian operation against a Proton account which contained emails to and from me," said Dearlove, referring to the privacy-focused email service ProtonMail.
Wikileaks 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
So they're resetting their propaganda machine again.
Step 1: Set up (or "acquire") a front to leak information.
Step 2: Publish generic leaked intel to establish credibility and gain public support.
Step 3: Gradually shift scope of leaked intel to manipulate public opinion, allowing media and social network groups to evolve it into a full-blown disinformation campaign that you're not directly responsible for (and thus can't be held accountable)
Step 4: Sit back and enjoy the show as another foreign country tears itself apart through infighting over paranoia, lies, and propaganda.
"Private emails" have been established to work great for this, because there's usually thousands of e-mails and you can easily mine out select phrases or even straight up lie about what the e-mails say 'cause nobody will bother to check.
=Smidge=
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Re: You're saying they'll only post true info? (Score:5, Insightful)
Selective releases have the same effect as outright lies. Where's the trove of data reportedly hacked from the Republican National Committee in 2016, for instance? Wikileaks only released the DNC data.
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> Selective releases have the same effect as outright lies.
Why is it that you only ever say that about wikileaks and not every time corruption is exposed?
Oh, I guess you'll say that every time your side's corruption is exposed, in order to change the topic of conversation.
To expose corruption or any other crime you only need to prove those specific incidents.
But to establish an accurate narrative you need to include context.
A common tactic is to release (or focus on) a subset of the messages that remove context in order to present a false narrative that implies corruption.
> Where's the trove of data reportedly hacked from the Republican National Committee in 2016, for instance?
You'll have to ask the hackers that.
> Wikileaks only released the DNC data.
What, pray tell, leads you to the conclusion that Wikileaks even had that data?
Well the overwhelming consensus is that the GRU (Russian intelligence) was the hacker in both occasions, so they only gave Wikileaks the DNC data because they wanted the Republican (Trump) to win.
If Trump l
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Selective releases have the same effect as outright lies. Where's the trove of data reportedly hacked from the Republican National Committee in 2016, for instance? Wikileaks only released the DNC data.
Agreed. Also, I want an explanation for why there are no secret docs from bad actor countries, like Russia, China, Iran, etc. Seems really really unusual to me that nobody in those countries is disgruntled enough to leak anything. Or do they leak and it never gets published? Hmm...
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1 - the western corporate "media" completely ignored them after 2 days
2 - Putin's goons murdered the journalist who got them with a carbomb
3 - the media completely ignored that too
4 - Assange got a visit from Putin's murderers
5 - Wikileaks became a wholly owned subsidiary of the GRU and began supporting fascism across the world by only leaking information that would damage and destabilize democratic nations and very c
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Your memory seems to be a bit faulty. Wikileaks and Assange were not involved in the Panama Papers.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) took the leaked documents and enlisted help from journalists at The Guardian, the BBC, Le Monde, SonntagsZeitung, Falter, La NaciÃn, German broadcasters NDR and WDR, and Austrian broadcaster ORF, and eventually many others.
The ICIJ hailed it as the end of "amateur hour" Wikileaks leaks, demonstrating that credible journalists could securely
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The problem with WikiLeaks as an "example" or "model" of anything is that it's such a BAD version of journalism. Yeah, I understand that free speech is important and that journalists need to be respected and protected, but how do you define "journalism" and what do you do about propaganda below the extremely low bar that reasonably qualifies as journalism? (For what it's worth, I think that WikiLeaks did clearly qualify as a form of journalism, at least at first.)
At least the abusive propaganda of this stor
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Step 1: Invade Ukraine
Step 2: Divide NATO by remind the Brits how they got suckered into Brexit
PROFIT!
FTFM
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Well the Russian Misinformation Campaign in hind sight, was a long game to try to disassemble NATO.
Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, Invading Ukraine before it can get NATO membership...
Russian self interest is for a weak/dismantled NATO. As Russian Military can take on a lot of the Powers alone, but not with Full NATO backing. Having a sense of Nationalism where every country thinks they are so great that they can go alone, has made themselves weaker over all. But it is a rather easy sell, because when you are wor
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Well the Russian Misinformation Campaign in hind sight, was a long game to try to disassemble NATO.
Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, Invading Ukraine before it can get NATO membership...
Russian self interest is for a weak/dismantled NATO. As Russian Military can take on a lot of the Powers alone, but not with Full NATO backing. Having a sense of Nationalism where every country thinks they are so great that they can go alone, has made themselves weaker over all. But it is a rather easy sell, because when you are working together you may not always get your way.
I'm not rebutting any of those claims individually, however I do think this statement is as far as anyone can reasonably go in this direction. Anything stronger than this will sound like year 2019 comments that took dozens of emergent political situations and pieced them into a narrative about Trump playing "64D Chess" and deliberately setting everything up to "unmask the globalist ruling class" or save us from "the Chinese Communist plot to use the Democrat Party to destroy America".
While I have no doubt P
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I find it interesting how hard it is to find this website. Either it's already gone or all the major search engines have scrubbed it from their results. It seems that we are getting better at countering Russian attempts to interfere in our democracies, but it's quite worrying that this power exists at all.
Given that the UK government is still refusing to publish the report into Russian interference in UK politics and Brexit, and that they are right in the middle of a scandal where they attempted to cover up
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Basically the ACK, though I was fishing for a joke and there's nothing Funny here. But that reminds me to check the rest of the discussion for late-breaking humor...
Re: Wikileaks 2.0 (Score:1)
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The easiest step would be to formally define, and formally protect, a specific class of leak website that may be imperfect but is good enough.
We have three different areas that need protecting.
1. Leaks concerning Corruption - corrupt officials, be they corporate or government, should not be able to protect their position through the legal framework, via frivolous lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits that would be expensive (either financially or in terms of mindshare) to fight in court.
2. Leaks concerning Vio
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Wow... Deserves more than a simple ACK, but I feel like you're largely trying to define journalism within the specific context of leaked information. So though almost all of your specific points seem valid and even cogent, the entire thing isn't fitting together in a way that makes clear sense. Where should the analysis begin? I do think a lot of your ideas are covered within the scope of existing whistleblower protection laws, so many of the responses could be reduced to honest application of those laws. (
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ACK of the sad sort.
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We already know that Brexit was supported by Russia, with funding and social media operations via fake accounts.
We know it was really bad too, which is why the UK government is refusing to publish the report into it. The report is complete, has been for over a year now, but they don't want its contents known.
The summary is inaccurate too. It says Brexit was finalized in 2020. It wasn't, we are still trying to get it resolved and the government is still trying to negotiate a solution for the island of Irelan
Re:English QAnon (Score:4, Informative)
That's what you get (Score:1)
for biting the hand that feeds you. Britain and British politics is lousy with Russian oligarch money, and oligarch money is ultimately Putin money.
Now there's some pandering here to populist, anti-elitist sentiment, but does it shock anyone that there's a network of obscure but influential establishment people who are influential in policy behind the scenes? The very word "cabal" was an acronym for the names of a group of influential courtiers in the reign of Charles II.
This feels more like a warning sho
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> As opposed to being bossed around by a bunch of unelected self-serving elite bureaucrats in Brussels.
Now you are bossed around by unelected self-serving elite bureaucrats in UK, and with a worse economy.
"He's a loser, but he's our loser!"
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Didn't you elect representatives who had voting and power within the EU?
Are you just pissed off because you couldn't win every vote?
Because that is how Western Democracy works. You get a vote, however you may not always get your way. However, you do get a bunch of legal backing and support for your country as well.
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Re:Brexit (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn't you elect representatives who had voting and power within the EU?
Are you just pissed off because you couldn't win every vote?
Because that is how Western Democracy works. You get a vote, however you may not always get your way. However, you do get a bunch of legal backing and support for your country as well.
Sure, but even in a representative democracy, every higher level of representation dilutes your individual power.
"Monarchy" isn't necessarily a bad system when practiced as it still has been in some parts of Africa, where there have been hundreds of "kings" ranging from nation-state rulers to honored patriarchs of regional tribes. If your monarch is chieftain of 1000 people, lives within a day's hike of your home, and even if somewhat protected by his status, he has to at least think about the same challenges of drought or predation or disease or invasion that you and your neighbors face, then you are known to him either individually or as part of your family. Your concerns are known to him in a real way. And if he does bad crap that hurts you, it probably also hurts a few hundred others of your cohort, and that king will not be able to enjoy sleeping with his windows open.
Representative Democracy isn't some magic cure-all for the human condition or for effective governance. It's just usually a less-shitty alternative to the other ways large states/nations have been run in human history. By the time a signal that originates in, say, Dumfries, Scotland passes through dozens of relays and reaches the massive high-level convocation of powers in Brussels ruling a hundred million people across an entire continent, all with different languages and cultures and historical resentments for each other, do you really think anyone with the personality and means to seek a high-level position of power really REPRESENTS someone trying to eke out a life running a bake shop in Dumfries, Scotland?
Above a moderate level of vertical separation between governed and Governors, there isn't much difference between "Let them eat cake!" and "Let them eat Representation!"
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It very much depends on the exact set-up you have. With the EU many of the best, most pro-consumer, pro-employee and pro-citizen laws in the UK came from Europe.
The UK's most well funded political party, the Conservatives, is incredibly corrupt and mostly acts in the interests of the wealthy and of big business - i.e. their donors. The EU is far less corrupt and due to the very diffuse nature of it much less vulnerable to lobbying and donations. One of the main objectives with brexit was to do away with EU
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You didn't know members of the European Parliament were elected? Oh, deary me.
As for unelected elites, it's ironic that the House of Lords has done more to protect the freedom of the British than the elected government has, and has had rather fewer incidents of self-serving drinks parties during lockdown. At this point, abolishing the Commons and just keeping the HoL sounds really attractive and far better for the nation.
Re: Brexit (Score:1)
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... which it can reject thus forcing their choice of President.
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How's that working out for you chaps? Oh dear...
Fine thanks. Loved the 34% wage rise I got in 2020 once freedom of movement came to an end and we've got more job vacancies than unemployed people in the UK. Still waiting for the disasters we were promised would happen. So far everything is basically down to the covid pandemic and the global crisis.
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What he forgets to tell you is that a 34% wage rise isn't much use when things like energy prices are up 200%, the UK now has the highest tax levels it's had since World War II, the country is losing £440million a week from the added costs to international trade of Brexit, the pound is at it's weakest in about 40 years, and the UK is the slowest growing G7 economy (it was the fastest growing G7 economy in the 2 years prior to the Brexit vote), illegal immigrant crossings over the channel are at
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Russian? (Score:2)
The question is:
Are the emails real?
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Often there is a back-up copy of the original to verify at least some of the leaked material is legitimate.
Probably real (Score:2)
The question is:
Are the emails real?
In many official systems the E-mails are signed by the sending system, which appears as a field in the header. Within the limits of the chain of trust, you can tell whether an E-mail was sent from SomeSystem.gov.uk, or whether it was modified.
This is how Wikileaks verifies its E-mail batches before publishing.
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The full headers were published in a download: https://link.eu1.storjshare.io... [storjshare.io]
I really don't think Proton Mail's email headers leave much information. And the messages in both directions are pretty much all within Proton Mail.
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for operatives in Russians Iranians DPRK China Hackers
do
echo "Blame ${operatives}"
done
Shocked! Shocked I Say! (Score:2)
You mean that foreign operatives originating in countries that are hostile to your nation are trying to get people to leak sensitive information. That's a shocker!
It used to be that foreign governments used to pay for this kind of information [wikipedia.org], now they just put up a website and get foolish people to upload it to them; in other words useful idiots.
Cyber bollix .. (Score:1)