"I'm continually surprised at the number of people who dismiss the possibility that Russia is interfering in US elections, hacking emails, etc. Russia is basically run by gangsters but somehow a lot of people seem to think they are squeaky clean!"
Well the first part is easy, as in the US election "interference". Twitter came out with the numbers, along with Facebook, and the number of "Russian" created bots were somewhere in the region of 0.5% of the total tweets/posts sent regarding the election during the election campaign. The effect was tiny, if there was any effect at all.
Also, we've had the release of the memo's that point to the Obama administration getting FISA warrants based on discredited information from that Steel chap. You know, the guy who came out saying Trump paid prostitutes to piss on a bed slept in by Obama? That story came from 4Chan, and Mr.Steel himself was paid to investigate these claims by the DNC. It's been said that the FISA warrants wouldn't have been issued if his evidence hadn't been given during the FISA hearings.
The hacking of the DNC emails, the Podesta emails, came from Podesta getting an email looking like it was from Google asking him to change his password. He forwarded it to his IT guy, who said it was "legitimate" - when in fact he meant to say "illegitimate". So the sophisticated email hacking Russia did was nothing more than what everyone gets these days - the equivalent of throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. But the NSA, as well, have come out and said the download of internal DNC emails was localised, meaning someone inside the DNC leaked the emails. The transmission rates just wouldn't have been possible to get from a remote server.
Yeah, Russia is ran by gangsters. But you'd be a complete fool to believe America isn't being run by equally as bad - and inept in cases - gangsters.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
