It’s good of Special Counsel Mueller and to take pity on me for griping about the lack of news out of the investigation. As you’ve no doubt heard, 12 new indictments were filed in court today. Here’s the indictment. What caught my eye[1]?
Object of the Conspiracy
20. The object of the conspiracy ws to hack into the computers of U.S. persona and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Seems to be quite clear. Other sections detail attacks on Democratic and affiliated entities.
58. Although the Conspirators caused transactions to be conducted in a variety of currencies, including U.S. dollars, they principally used bitcoin when purchasing servers, registering domains, and otherwise making payments in furtherance of hacking activity. Many of these payments were processed by companies in the United States that provided processing services to hosting companies, domain registrars, and other vendors both international and domestic. The use of bitcoin allowed the Conspirators to avoid direct relationships with traditional financial institutions, allowing them to evade greater scrutiny of their identities and sources of funds.
If you’re inclined to see silver linings in dark clouds – and I’m not particularly – then this is an exemplar of one of the problems bitcoin brings to the world – the privacy and occultation of the activities of the users is great if the user is engaged in legal activities and is worried about illicit monitoring by the government, but it’s not desirable when the user is engaged in anti-social activities.
It’ll be interesting to see if this indictment becomes part of the cannon fodder for banning cryptocurrencies. My bet is that it will become that. But will it be the discussion be reasonable or ideological? Of late, and as stoked by our international adversaries, important discussions such as these become shouting matches in which the winners do what they want, and the losers, rather than consider the possibility that they were wrong, nurse their complaints, suckle at their own wounds, and vow vengeance upon their enemies.
Everyone thinks they know everything. Toss in a bit of religious mania and it becomes toxic septicemia for the arteries of society.
72. In or around July 2016, KOVALEV [one of the defendants] and his co-conspirators hacked the website of a state board of elections (“SBOE 1”) and stole information related to approximately 500,000 voters, including names, addresses, partial social security numbers, dates of birth, and driver’s license numbers.
Which suggests there was more going on than just social media influence. While there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of direct interference with vote counting, the known weaknesses of voting machines makes them a vulnerability in our system which should be immediately patched – or dispensed with.
[43]a. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.
Fascinating. Some candidate – and perhaps current member of Congress – has a serious ethics deficit. If his or her name comes out and they are a member of Congress, they may not have a chance to resign – they may be ridden out on a rail.
[43]b. On or about August 22, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC to a then-registered state lobbyist and online source of political news. The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying information for more than 2,000 Democratic donors.
Notice it doesn’t say the lobbyist asked for the information – an anonymous contribution of stolen information? But the fact that it was stolen should have been manifest. One wonders if the recipient rejected it or not.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff, and it should give Trump something to talk about with Putin at their upcoming summit. Of course, after the last indictment of Russian intelligence material was handed down, I had a suggestion as to how Trump should handle it:
- The President sends a diplomatic note to the Russians requesting immediate extradition.
- The Russians reply with a suitably snarky No.
- The sunny reply to that is, We’re pleased you have agreed to our request, and the entire United States 5th Fleet will be coming to the port of Vladivostok in order to place them under arrest. Your cooperation will be appreciated. We’ll send in an LST for the actual pickup.
With very little modification, I quite sincerely and strongly urge the President to use this simple script to win back respect of and admiration for America both within and without the United States. He and his team have made many mistakes during his time in office; this approach would clear up a lot of the mistrust and despair for which he’s responsible.
1All quotes hand typed. The PDF is made up of jpg files, I think. Apologies for typos.
