There's
journalism with sources and then there's this. I want to explain in my own
words the world the people who work in such fields live in and hopefully make
some humans out of this before they are smeared beyond recognition.
We're
flawed broken and damaged human beings, the lot of us. That's the point of
human upbringing in a way and its critical flaw. Keep that in mind, even the
worst of us were once human, even the dumbest of us had once the capacity of
being remarkable.
The story
broke that a US internal intel document was leaked to the Intercept detailing
the way a Russian Cyber Intelligence unit got access to the voting
infrastructure in several US areas.
That alone
should send ripples through the world. But it didn't - people didn't connect
the dots. The rest however was an exercise of civilians working a classified
field without any self-awareness. And again I am not thinking Winner here.
This is where
the problems emerge. Winner was communicated to via her work station and no one
questioned if this could be real bad for her. The Agencies were contacted to
ask about the report and what should be hidden. They said yes, almost all of it
should be hidden. So the Intercept did not do that and had a partially redacted
version printed. Then they also printed an open scan of the copy. People think
she was caught by the print. That was corroborating evidence, even when she
accessed the file the system kept a log of that. When she moved the file, a log
existed of that, when she sent a mail, that mail was tracked there. It was just
an extra bit on top of the sunday of sad delight.
So Winner
was arrested and confirmed all of it on the day of her arrest. She knew she
couldn't dodge questions. Not a single point to lie about, they had all her
logs. She had signed the papers and had read them. This is why I point that the
only non civilian I see is her. She could have done a naive and stupid thing.
And some of her posts that are now floating on the net link to naivety. Or she
didn't care. She saw the thing that shook her core and pushed her over the edge
already and didn't care who knew.
Maybe she
had made her peace with it or maybe she was naive and didn't think it would hit
this fast because the Intercept threw her under the bus for clicks in a
heartbeat. If I meet her ever I'd ask and tell you. Or maybe I won’t.
Her arrest
meant something else though. You're not taking that away. The story is true,
the report is legit. The data is fact. Gratz.
You also
leaked enough data for the Russian Intelligence Agency to know the social
security numbers of its people who got caught in the act. Which means these
people are no longer compromised by the US. They are dead weight.
It's a bomb
shell but maybe the US wanted to keep it a secret to a point they got the
marching orders and had a stronger case. All Cyber Intelligence operations are
essentially offense. There are mind-set differences, Russia as shown barges in,
the US focuses on creating vulnerabilities and fostering sources. This could
have been one source but now that intel source is gone, for good. Russian
agents who were compromised in the past have ended up dead, it doesn't have to
be direct orders it could be superiors or higher officials trying to second
guess the thought process of the Kremlin and to pre-empt their wishes. A system
like the Russian one where there's a struggle for favours in the high echelons
and who gets the ear of the Russian Presidential Administration breeds such institutional
peculiarities. Also life is negotiable in Russia, just read stories from the
timid side of the administration of the federal prisons system where a colonel
killed his subordinate so his stealing didn't become public.
And if
people want to hit Winner for being a contractor. No she wasn't, she was young,
but what's the right age for you to train a language specialist ? 50 ? No, you
get them in the special school at 18-9 and then assign them to a unit with
clearance. She wasn't a contractor, she was Air Force SIGINT who got made
redundant in some way but was valuable to the service and got rehired through a
subcontract and continued to work her post. She was military. If you're a vet
trashing her for that, sorry your service's baseline isn't higher than her mind
set. It's actually lower.
The gift of
Winner is that through admitting at face value when she was caught and getting
arrested for it you have the proof the voting was subject to tampering. Enough
to swing elections? Who knows. This who knows is why the IC didn't want to go
with it as a government structure, it's too much on an institution to push into
the public view. Winner was one person, her choices, her consequences and her
body behind bars.
To a person,
voting could be an echo of that exact thing. Your vote, your choice, that vote
was the integral part of the election in November. And this report was evidence
that the process was tampered in a way that could change the vote. If you have
the voter file with past voting habits and current registered voters you can do
target purging. In some states 15 k people being purged the day before the vote
can change a lot in others 120 k could change a lot. Did it happen to that
extent? Unknown. But when people internalise that “Unknown” doesn't mean yes or
no but a “Maybe” that's when you have a tent city permanently in front of 10
Pennsylvania avenue.
Once that
hits you're not making it go away. The election starts getting called by people
illegitimate. And when the government is called illegitimate without certain
proof it is or it isn't the strength of laws lanes. That’s legitimacy for you,
it’s hard to come back from once it’s taken away. All of our concepts on governance
stem off a broad internal understanding of what’s justified and what’s not. Our
entire world held up on a concept you can't even touch. And when that’s gone, the
world Breaks.
Except it already did. Last night.
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