Instead to raise the question of the reliability of the electronic electoral system in the United States and practical readiness to the online voting, the media prefer to scare voters “by hackers from Russia,” writes The Nation. Although no real evidence of “Russian attacks” in the United States are still not represented, the headlines continue to make it possible to exploit the theme of the Russian “threat” in the election campaign, the article notes.
The American media led by The Washington Post are “unjustified crusade against Russia,” accusing it that the alleged hackers “on the instructions” of the Kremlin attacked the American system before the election — but if you want to blame someone and point a finger at him, it is necessary to have more concrete evidence, writes James Carden in an article for the Nation. Of course, the Russian intelligence service also has a program to collect information against the United States. But instead to raise the question about the reliability of U.S. data storage systems and electronic voting in General, the press still prefers to attract the reader’s attention with the help of Russia and attack Putin, says the author.
In particular, over the past few months, the Washington Post published a series of articles in which an attempt is made to show that “hackers of the Russian government is working overtime to influence the results of the November elections in the United States. For example, in The Washington Post of 14 June stated: “the Russian hackers have infiltrated the national Committee of the Democratic party and stole specially collected materials of a negative nature regarding trump”. A week later, on 20 June in the same newspaper an article appeared which stated: “researchers in the field of cyber security I confirm that the hacking of the National Committee of the Democratic party carried the hackers to the Russian government.” Later, on July 29 in The Washington Post has the headline: “the FBI investigation suggests that another organization of the Democratic party was hijacked by Russian hackers.” And on August 29, the same newspaper wrote: “Russian hackers conducted an attack on the electoral system of Arizona.”
Despite these flashy headlines that would be better suited to British tabloids such as the Sun or the Daily Mirror, The Washington Post was unable to provide hard evidence of any misconduct on the Russian side, stressed The Nation. Meanwhile, in the latest article in a series of published articles out there about “Russian cyber warfare” States that “the United States is conducting an investigation of possibly existing secret Russian plan to disrupt the November elections”. According to the editorial of The Washington Post, us intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating in relation to “large-scale Russian secret operation in the US aimed at spreading mistrust in society.” But an unnamed “senior intelligence officials” warning from the pages of the newspaper that Russia, apparently, holds a “global campaign” to influence public opinion of Americans: “We are carefully studying this issue”, — told reporters a certain unnamed “knowledgeable source”.
However, the text of these “sensation”, The Washington Post, is significantly below the catchy headline, designed to attract attention of the readers, contain very noticeable phrase that the U.S. intelligence community has no “absolute evidence” which could clearly confirm these “secret intentions” of Russia or the existence of any plans of this kind, notes The Nation. But don’t pay attention to it, as The Washington Post then reported that intelligence officers of the United States called this “covert campaign” to influence American public opinion “ambitious”. Perhaps the definition of “ambitious” is better suited to characterize the Democrats ‘ efforts in Congress designed to make Russia “a major theme in the election campaign, ironically The Nation. According to the author, this helps them “better yet, divert the attention of voters from the seemingly endless parade of unpleasant stories that can destroy the election campaign of Clinton.
And it is not surprising that The Washington Post not asked about what specifically gave rise to that investigation, Federal intelligence agencies and law enforcement: was it really caused by some evidence “of Russian cyber attacks” — or, more likely, the investigation was launched under pressure from the Congress? In particular, Senate majority leader Harry Reid last week sent to the Director of the FBI James Komi urging them to start investigating alleged break-ins, allegedly carried out by Russian hackers: “I felt anxiety about the fact that the threat from the Russian government to interfere in our presidential election, is more extensive than many think, and it may include the intention to falsify the official results of the election,” The Nation quoted a letter to reed. And the next day the Director of the FBI received another letter with a demand to initiate an investigation, this time from members of the Democratic party of the several committees of the house of representatives: oversight of judicial Affairs, international Affairs and national security. These parliamentarians demanded that the FBI answer to the question: “have Not contributed to the relationship between the members of the electoral headquarters of the trump and the interests of the Moscow attacks, undertaken to intervene in the American presidential election?”.
Although more and more probable seems the theory that someone actually used the Russian computers to hack into the system of the National Committee of the US Democratic party and then transfer the obtained data to Wikileaks, but no conclusive evidence for this still exists, emphasizes The Nation: “in addition, there is no evidence that Russia is behind hacking attack on the system of voting in Arizona, or for attempt to deliberately affect the entire electoral system of the United States. All this, of course, does not mean that Russia does not have a thorough spyware programs in the United States. The same thing Israel is doing the same thing China is doing. But if you spread throughout its catchy headlines and pointed the finger at a specific country, then you certainly need to have more evidence.”
In addition, all of these sensational publications lose sight of the bigger picture, says the author. As noted in an interview with The Nation, is an expert in the field of security, Jeffrey Carr, these articles concern: Interference in elections is the standard operating procedure for intelligence services worldwide, including to us, and our intelligence community, of course, is worried and wants to protect us from any tactical moves used by the Russian or any other foreign intelligence to undermine confidence in our system.” However, according to Carr, it is usually forget about the main problem, which is that “we are not ready for online voting, and our electronic voting system is not reliable.” That is what should be paid attention in the first place — but as a result of the attention, with the sensational publication of “Russian hackers”, and the question of the reliability of the system is constantly delayed until the next election season, when it’s too late to do something, the expert said.
“Meanwhile, The Washington Post, it is possible even not to doubt, will do everything possible in order to ignore real problems. Instead, provide readers with your traditional set will draw attention with the help of Russia and attack Putin,” concludes The Nation.
