Thread: Vladimir Putin gave direct instructions to help elect Trump, report says

Originally Posted by Judy

. . . If it isn't illegal, why didn't the DemoQuacks hack the Republicans and steal Trump's emails?

We don't know that they didn't. We only know they haven't been caught, yet.

THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2017 04:03 PM PDT

GOP strategist admits he colluded with Russian hackers to hurt Hillary Clinton, Democrats

It’s bigger than Trump

SOPHIA TESFAYE

The U.S. intelligence community has long since concluded Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and it was reported shortly after the 2016 presidential election that a GOP superPAC linked to Paul Ryan used illegally hacked material to attack Democratic House candidates. But a bombshell report published on Thursday confirms that Republican political operatives were working with the Russian government to hurt Hillary Clinton and Democrats during the election — the first direct evidence of so-called collusion.

(Credit: Getty/Zach Gibson)

The Wall Street Journal reported that hacked information was posted on a blog run by Aaron Nevins, the political operative, and then passed along to top Trump adviser Roger Stone during the campaign. The Republican operative in Florida received a trove of Democratic documents from the allegedly Kremlin-linked hacker, Guccifer 2.0. For months, both Congress and the FBI have been scrutinizing evidence that associates of Trump may have colluded with Russia during the campaign.
Nevins confirmed to the Journal that he told hacker Guccifer 2.0 to “feel free to send any Florida based information” after learning that the hacker had tapped into Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) computers last summer. From the DCCC, Guccifer 2.0 released internal assessments of Democratic congressional candidates, known as “self-opposition research,” to GOP operatives using social media. Nevins told the Journal that, after receiving the stolen documents from the hacker, he “realized it was a lot more than even Guccifer knew that he had.” The stolen DCCC documents also contained sensitive information on voters in key Florida districts, breaking down how many people were considered dependable Democratic voters, undecided Democrats, Republican voters and the like. Nevins made a war analogy, describing the data he received to Guccifer 2.0 as akin to a “map to where all the troops are deployed.”

After Nevins published some of the material on the blog HelloFLA.com, using his own pseudonym, Guccifer 2.0 sent a link of the information to close Trump associate Roger Stone — who is currently under federal investigation for potential collusion with Russia.
http://www.salon.com/2017/05/25/gop-...ton-democrats/

Russian Once Tied to Trump Aide Seeks Immunity to Cooperate With Congress

LOL!! Internet information is free speech, Bubba. The only guilty person is the "hacker", or downloader, or whoever took the information without authorization. That has nothing to do with federal election laws, that's covered by general hacking and theft laws. Hopefully the FBI will find out who hacked, if they hacked, or who downloaded and prosecute them. I totally support prosecuting hackers and information thieves. But using or releasing or printing information you get off the internet is free and clear baby. The same 1st Amendment that protects the New York Times and WaPo, protects "political operatives".

Hacker known as Guccifer sentenced to 52 months in prison
The man known as "Guccifer" learned his fate in a federal court in Virginia. The Romanian hacker, who used the Guccifer alias online, helped expose the existence of a private email domain Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state. (Reuters)

By Rachel Weiner and Spencer S. Hsu September 1, 2016

The Romanian hacker who first revealed that Hillary Clinton used a private email address while she was secretary of state was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison Thursday by a U.S. district judge in Alexandria, Va.

Marcel Lehel Lazar, 44, known online as “Guccifer,” was extradited in 2014 to the United States and pleaded guilty in May to one count each of aggravated identity theft and unauthorized access to a protected computer.

Lazar admitted to victimizing about 100 Americans from his home overseas over 14 months. They included celebrities, business executives and political figures such as Sidney Blumenthal, an adviser with whom Clinton corresponded using her personal email account; confidantes of former president George W. Bush; and former secretary of state Colin L. Powell.

U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris imposed a 52-month sentence, saying a tough penalty was needed to deter future hacking. He cited reports of escalating cyber*attacks against Americans in recent years, including this week’s FBI warnings of intrusions into state election systems.

“This epidemic must stop,” Cacheris said.

The State Department released 52,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails as part of a court-ordered process. Here's what else we learned from the publicly released emails. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

[Hacker who revealed Clinton email address admits to other intrusions]

Hacking passwords and employing social-engineering tactics including fraud, identity theft and harassment, Lazar stored megabytes of victims’ stolen private documents and turned them over to media outlets. He also leaked pictures of Bush’s paintings.

“The extent of the harm caused by defendant’s conduct is incalculable,” federal prosecutors wrote in seeking a maximum penalty of 4 1/2 years under U.S. sentencing guidelines.

A maximum punishment “would also help address any false perception that unauthorized access of a computer is ever justified or rationalized as the cost of living in a wired society — or even worse, a crime to be celebrated,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Maya D. Song wrote.

[Cyber researchers confirm Russian government hack of DNC]

Prosecutors said a stern sentence could deter other violators. They cited the case of Guccifer 2.0, an individual or group of hackers who U.S. officials say is tied to Russian intelligence services and who claimed credit for hacking the Democratic National Committee this year.

The online publication of DNC emails by WikiLeaks led to the resignation of the committee’s chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), in July. Guccifer 2.0 was branded “in homage to” Lazar, Song wrote.Contrary to Lazar’s claims, authorities say he never obtained access to Clinton’s email account.

[‘Guccifer 2.0’ claims credit for DNC hack]

In court documents, Lazar’s public defense counsel asked for a sentence of three years, calling his hacking expeditions “an addiction of sorts.”
Despite his “admittedly brash on-line personality,” public defender Shannon S. Quill wrote, Lazar is actually a devoted father and husband who was frustrated by his inability to find work in the computer sector.

“We need him because life is very hard in Romania,” his wife, Gabriela Violeta Lazar, wrote in a letter to the court.

He was also motivated, Quill wrote, “to expose what he saw as hypocrisy, especially in those connected to the defense and intelligence sectors.”

A high school graduate, Lazar had no formal training or computer expertise. He told the New York Times that he obtained access to the email and social-media accounts of high-profile people by reading their Wikipedia pages and guessing passwords based on their personal information.

Once he had access to one person’s account, he sometimes impersonated them to gain more passwords and personal information.

Although he told the FBI that he was interested in politics and “a better world for our children,” he targeted a seemingly random mix of politicians and celebrities. Along with Bush and Powell, he exposed the personal information of magazine editor Tina Brown, author Candace Bushnell and actor Jeffrey Tambor.

In his 2014 interview, Lazar told FBI agents that he trawled more or less randomly through the online accounts of “important people,” looking for weak spots. He succeeded only about 8 to 10 percent of the time, he estimated.

Prosecutors argued that although Lazar confessed, he showed no remorse and probably will return to hacking. He was on probation for a hacking offense in Romania when he began targeting American celebrities in 2012 and has been sentenced to seven years in prison there.

If he could go back in time and talk to his 2012 self, prosecutors say that he told one FBI agent, “I’d say, ‘All right, you have done a good job.’ ”

Cacheris said Romania’s Justice Ministry requested that Lazar be immediately released to his home country to serve his time there and indicated that he would be conditionally released in 2018 and returned to the United States to serve his prison term here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.406131d31a5b

LOL!! Romanian, not Russian, from his home, not the Kremlin. Does he weigh 400 lbs, too?! Is 2.0 his wife, his brother, his friend or him, using his prison computer?

You miss the hole point, hacking politicians computers must be illegal or else they wouldn't have put him in prison for it.

The law punishes hacking under the computer crime statutes. These crimes carry penalties ranging from a class B misdemeanor (punishable by up to six months in prison, a fine of up to $1,000, or both) to a class B felony (punishable by up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $15,000, or both).Jun 28, 2012

PENALTIES FOR COMPUTER HACKING

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

You miss the hole point, hacking politicians computers must be illegal or else they wouldn't have put him in prison for it.

No, you missed the point. Hacking ANYONE's computer without their permission is illegal and that's why they put him and anyone else they can catch in prison for it. It has nothing to do with the Federal Election, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with the Russians. Hacking someone's computer without their permission is illegal just as taking their information without their permission is illegal.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

The law punishes hacking under the computer crime statutes. These crimes carry penalties ranging from a class B misdemeanor (punishable by up to six months in prison, a fine of up to $1,000, or both) to a class B felony (punishable by up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $15,000, or both).Jun 28, 2012

PENALTIES FOR COMPUTER HACKING

Exactly. Nothing to do with Trump, Clinton, DNC, Republicans, Russians or Elections. Computer hacking is a crime, regardless of who does it to whose computer without permission or authorization from the computer owner.

I don't think the DNC computer was hacked. I think the information was downloaded by someone inside the DNC, and shared with Wikileaks. I suspect it was Seth Rich, and someone found out it was him, and they hired a hit man to kill him over it. That's why the FBI can't or won't be able to catch a computer hacker on this deal, that's why they're blaming the Russians, there is no computer hacker, just a Bernie Sanders supporter who was upset with what the DNC was doing to rig the primary and convention against Bernie for Hillary. Ir's the only scenario that makes sense to me.

The FBI is involved in this up to their ear lobes because Comey was working over-time to make sure Hillary won the nomination and then the General Election. He wasn't going to let some young Democrat from North Carolina mess up his big scam to hand Hillary the election.

Nothing at the DNC during the primary season had anything to do with Republicans or Trump that spring and summer. Democrats were hoping Trump would win his primary because they thought for sure if Hillary won the nomination, they could dump enough dirt and fake news on Trump to defeat him in the General Election.

But in the end, none of their schemes and strategies were sound, none of their prickly pranks were effective, nothing they did worked. It was all a Big Fail.