United States set to announce its retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking

  29 Dec 2016 , 11:27

The Obama administration plans to announce on Thursday a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into U.S. political institutions and individuals and leaking information in an effort to help President-elect Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, two U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

Both officials declined to specify what actions President Barack Obama has approved, but said targeted economic sanctions, indictments, leaking information to embarrass Russian officials or oligarchs, and restrictions on Russian diplomats in the United States are among steps that have been discussed.

One decision that has been made, they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, is to avoid any moves that exceed the Russian election hacking and risk an escalating cyber conflict that could spiral out of control. One example of an excessive step might be interfering with Russian internet messaging.

 The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and Office of Director of National Intelligence agree that Russia was behind hacks into Democratic Party organizations and operatives ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. There is also agreement, according to U.S. officials, that Russia sought to intervene in the election to help Trump, a Republican, defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Russia has repeatedly denied hacking accusations. Trump has dismissed the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community. Obama, in an interview earlier this month with NPR, said, “We need to take action and we will” against Russia for interfering in the U.S. election. Trump seemed to suggest the United States should not impose sanctions on Russia.

“I think we ought to get on with our lives,” Trump told reporters in Florida on Wednesday when asked about remarks by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said Russia and President Vladimir Putin should expect tough sanctions for the cyber attacks. Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, promised retaliation on Wednesday against Washington in the event of new economic sanctions.

Jim Lewis, a cyber security expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said further sanctions may be an effective U.S. tool in part because they would be difficult for Trump to roll back and because Russia “hates” dealing with them. “For the rest of the world, it’s like having ‘scumball’ stamped on your forehead,” Lewis said.

How to respond to the growing problem of cyber attacks carried out or sponsored by foreign powers has bedeviled Obama, whose eight years in office witnessed a torrent of major hacks against the U.S. government and private organizations that were attributed to China, North Korea, Iran and Russia.

In past cases, administration officials have decided to publicly blame North Korea and indict members of China’s military for hacking because they decided the net benefit of public shaming – and increased awareness brought to cyber security – outweighed potential risks.

But determining an appropriate response to Russia’s actions has proven more complicated in part because Russia’s cyber capabilities are more advanced and due to fears about disrupting other geopolitical issues, such as the civil war in Syria. Obama may choose to invoke an April 2015 executive order that empowered him to levy sanctions in response to cyber attacks perpetrated by foreign groups targeting infrastructure, such as transportation, or done for economic purposes.

One option, said a U.S. government official who has participated in discussions on possible retaliation, would be leaking material on Russian officials or actions that the United States already has obtained in a way that would “parallel what the Russians did, but be impossible to prove.”

The official compared that option to Russian military and civilian intelligence agencies providing hacked material to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and trying – unsuccessfully, the official said – to cover their tracks.

Another option would be further economic sanctions against Russia. Washington has already sanctioned Russia over the past two years to punish Moscow for its role in annexing Crimea. But former U.S. officials say the existing measures leave Washington plenty of room to slap new, tougher sanction on Russia in response to cyber intrusions.

The Ukraine sanctions were “narrowly tailored” to hurt specific sectors of Russian industry, such as the energy sector, without causing the nation’s economy to tank, said Juan Zarate, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes.

The United States took a more measured approach, in part, to reserve tougher measures in case the situation worsened, said Zarate, chairman of the Financial Integrity Network, a private consulting firm that advises on financial threats.

The United States is still unlikely to impose blanket embargoes against Russia because of the danger it could harm the economies of Western Europe, said Peter Harrell, a former senior State Department official who worked on sanctions policy. Instead, the United States may target specific Russian intelligence officials or military divisions believed to be involved in the cyber intrusions. “The Russian defense sector would be fair game,” Harrell said.

Looming over any action the Obama administration takes against Russia is whether Trump will seek to reverse course once he takes office on Jan. 20. In addition to casting doubt on the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community about the hacks, Trump has repeatedly praised Putin and nominated people seen as friendly toward Moscow to senior administration posts.

Reuters

Big Data could be the deciding factor between Hillary and Trump

Image: Reuters

  07 Nov 2016 , 16:46

By Muqbil Ahmar

It is going to be a photo finish, predict the psephologists. In this head to head, technology could play a major role, particularly Big Data, in deciding who gets to wear the crown eventually. While Trump has berated the technology, calling it “overrated,” the Hillary camp has gone all out to mine and collect data from every possible source: from voter registration and public records to social media activity. They are following up on the data-driven election strategy that Barack Obama built to great success while running for his second term. Many election analysts have credited Obama’s Big Data initiatives for his 2012 election win, saying that his tactics have set up a novel precedent for how election campaigns of the future would be run.

On one side, Hillary has stood her ground, with her campaign team developing and harnessing cutting-edge analytics to target swing voters. Trump hasn’t. While other candidates entered into arrangements and partnerships with data strategists, the sole exception had been Trump, who has instead relied heavily on his own personal appeal. He has, in fact, been critical of Big Data Analytics during his campaigns. “I’ve always felt it [Big Data] was overrated. Obama got the votes much more so than his data processing machine. And I think the same is true with me.” On the contrary, Trump has used social media and the traditional media coverage to promote himself and his opinions. Trump’s strategy of not leveraging Big Data may turn against him and put him at a disadvantage as compared to his more analytically-aware rival.

But now, in the last moments, Trump has had to eat his words. In the month of September alone, Trump paid a Big Data Analytics UK firm Cambridge Analytica $5 million to help target voters. The company has claimed that it has data on around 230 million adults in the USA and approximately 4000 “data points” on every one of them, including gym and club memberships, charity donations, and card transactions. All this is a last ditch effort to analyze the ultimate voter and his political leanings and how to make them change their minds.

In the 2012 presidential election campaign, Obama used path-breaking data analytics. First of all, he focused on swing or undecided voters. His strategy was simple: there is no point in wasting resources wooing those who have already made up their minds or are political loyalists—they would not vote favorably even in a zillion years. A core team of more than 100 data analysts ran 66,000 computer simulations every day. Analysts put together data from various sources: voter registration records, charities and donations, and public department information. In fact, third-party data was also bought (including data collected from social media).

Ironically, even when Trump has belatedly decided to go for a data-centric strategy, he has followed the trodden road—one that followed in 2012. He hasn’t taken into account that technology, particularly Big Data Analytics, has been innovating fast and moving into uncharted territories to mine and process data, making the 2012 strategies look old school. Over the past four years, private vendors and companies have developed and sharpened Big Data tools, adding Predictive Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Sentiment Analysis, and Language Processing to the potent mix to leverage the state-of-the-art technologies and expand their scope.

“Big Data techniques and data mining have hugely enhanced and expanded in scope. Machine learning is a particularly helpful in increasing the correlation between the data and its influence as there is self-learning inbuilt, so that the tool adapts and learns in every new situation. This can be applied to any situation and business,” said Shashank Dixit, CEO, Deskera, a Cloud technology firm that has recently developed its own Big Data tool.

Campaigners within both the parties agree that Democrats have a sizable lead in collection of information on voters and their smart use of those leads could be the difference, particularly if the contest goes to the wire. Clearly, Hillary Clinton has the advantage of inheriting the database that Obama built over two campaigns; however, it remains to be seen how successfully she is able to leverage it. However, there is one thing that has been established beyond doubt: the candidate with the smartest data wins.

Will Trump’s last minute effort prove sufficient or will it be a classic case of too little too late? Only time will tell, the results would anyway be out soon.

With over 10 years of experience in the field of journalism, the author is a technology evangelist and avid blogger.

US boosting cyber defenses, but not police presence, for election

Representational

  04 Nov 2016 , 18:35

Federal and state authorities are beefing up cyber defenses against potential electronic attacks on voting systems ahead of US elections on 8 Nov, but taking few new steps to guard against possible civil unrest or violence.

The threat of computer hacking and the potential for violent clashes is darkening an already rancorous presidential race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, amid fears that Russia or other actors could spread political misinformation online or perhaps tamper with voting.

To counter the cyber threat, all but two US states have accepted help from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to probe and scan voter registration and election systems for vulnerabilities, a department official told Reuters.

Ohio has asked a cyber protection unit of the National Guard, a reserve force within the US military, for assistance to protect the state’s systems.

On Thursday, Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan and her cyber security team met with officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the DHS, in addition to state-level agencies, to discuss cyber threats, said Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Reagan.

Cyber security experts and US officials say chances that a hack could alter election outcomes are remote, in part because voting machines are typically not connected to the internet.

But the FBI sent a flash alert in August to states after detecting breaches in voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois.

ARMED GROUPS

Unidentified intelligence officials told NBC News on Thursday that there is no specific warning about an Election Day attack, but they remain concerned that hackers from Russia or elsewhere may try to disrupt the process, likely by spreading misinformation by manipulating social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

DHS cyber security experts plan to hold a media briefing on Friday to discuss the agency’s efforts with states to boost the security of their voting and election systems.

The potential for violence around the election has loomed in the background of the campaign for months. Armed groups around the country have pledged in unprecedented numbers to monitor voting sites for signs of election fraud.

Voter intimidation reported at polling sites so far prompted Democrats to accuse Trump of a “campaign of vigilante voter intimidation” in four states on Monday.

But local authorities surveyed by Reuters on Thursday in five states – Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Florida – said they were not increasing election-related law enforcement personnel or resources above 2012 levels.

‘A LOT OF TALK, LITTLE ACTION’

The FBI, which designates one special agent from each of its 56 field offices for election crime matters, has not increased its numbers or given staff additional training this year, said an FBI spokeswoman.

There has been no “substantive change” in the number of personnel deployed by the rest of the Justice Department, which designates Assistant US Attorneys and federal prosecutors within the agency’s Public Integrity Section to handle election crimes, according to a spokesman.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents hundreds of thousands of US officers, said cops are taking the same security measures they would take for any large event. He said he expects the vows by militias to monitor the polls to be “a lot of talk, little action.”

Civil rights groups said deploying more police officers to the polls can actually intimidate voters.

“The presence of law enforcement can have a chilling effect on the electorate,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a watchdog group. “That’s something we want to discourage.”

Reuters

Facebook adds features to helps US citizens decide who they want as their next President

Image: Reuters

  30 Oct 2016 , 10:04

With 8 November election day just around the corner, Facebook has introduced a new feature to help voters decide who they want to be their next president.

“Today, we’re introducing a new feature that shows you what’s on the ballot — from candidates to ballot initiatives,” Facebook announced on Friday.

Although the Facebook vote planner shows where the candidates stand on the issues before you make your selection, the social networking giant denies that it wants to make any kind of interference with your choice.

“How you vote is a personal matter, and we’ve taken steps to make sure that you have utmost control over your plan,” Facebook said in a statement.

“After you make a selection, you have to choose who you want to be able to see it (“Only me” or “Friends”). For example, you may want to be private about your choice for president, but share with friends your pick for a congressional race or a ballot initiative,” it added.

On the election day, Americans will not only decide who their next president or vice president will be, but they will also vote for some new members of Congress, state governors, as well as state and local officials.

And as not all states in the US mail out sample ballots ahead of an election, this can make it challenging to find comprehensive information about the questions voters will be expected to consider when they walk into the voting booth.

“Thanks to data gathered from election officials by the nonpartisan Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), we can present you with a preview of the ballot you’ll receive on November 8,” Facebook said.

With the new feature, you can preview the races and issues you will see on your ballot, learn more about the candidates and their positions, then email yourself your choices for later reference.

The feature presents candidates in random order. Users can view their issue positions (information candidates have provided about their policy positions), their endorsements, recent posts and their website.

“You can also add a candidate to your favorites to create your plan to bring with you on Election Day,” the statement said.

IANS

Julian Assange promises to release new material every week on Wikileaks, for next 10 weeks

Image Credit: Reuters

  05 Oct 2016 , 12:45

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced at a press conference on Tuesday that his platform will release new material in the coming months.

It is planned to publish new material every week in the next ten weeks, Xinhua news agency quoted Assange as saying in a live video broadcast to Berlin on the 10th birthday of WikiLeaks.

The new releases will cover the themes such as oil, weapons and corporations like Google, according to Assange.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks also wants to publish new details for the US election, but left the exact date open. However, WikiLeaks is working on publishing the material before the election date on 8 November, said Assange.

The upcoming publications were “of significant importance for the elections”, the 45-year-old Australian said in response to a question whether the new information “will destroy the Democratic presidential candidate”.

With a view to the 10th anniversary of the founding of WikiLeaks, Assange emphasised that despite all the hostility of “powerful opponents”, the website is still well positioned.

“We have a strong position, we are debt-free and completely independent,” he said.

“The attacks only make us stronger,” Assange said, “We believe in what we do, and when we are put under pressure, we will fight back.”

WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of secret documents over the past few years, including the US military’s actions in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The Australian, who has taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012, claimed that Sweden intends to hand him over to the United States, where he may face espionage charges for leaking thousands of secret US diplomatic cables and, if convicted, could be given a death penalty.

IANS