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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15602 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Twitter Files 7

Another Twitter Files post: Link

Michael Shellenberger writes this one, arguing that the FBI worked hard to prime social media platforms into thinking a hacked release would come out prior to the 2020 election. He writes the following.

  1. The FBI's regular meetings with people like Yoel Roth were characterized by the latter as telling him that state actors might try a "hack and leak" operation prior to the election.

  2. The FBI was aware that there wasn't anything to go by on this claim, as Special Agent Elvis Chan testified.

  3. Twitter found no evidence of significant Russian/foreign interference on the platform, and Roth repeatedly informed Chan/the FBI on multiple occasions about this.

  4. Twitter repeatedly resisted efforts by the FBI to get data outside the normal search warrant process and was aware that the FBI was trying to probe a lot.

  5. The FBI eventually got temporary clearances to share top-secret info with Twitter executives regarding APT28, a Russian hacking organization. Roth described himself as being "primed primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out."

  6. Former FBI employees were so numerous at Twitter that they had their own internal slack channels.

  7. In September 2020, Roth and others partook of a tabletop exercise to simulate a "hack and dump" operation regarding the Biden campaign. The goal was apparently to "shape" how the media would respond.

  8. When the Hunter Biden leak finally happened, Roth would argue that it appeared more like a subtle leak, since nothing appeared in clear violation of the rules. Jim Baker would respond that it seemed hacked, so Twitter was reasonable in suppressing it until more information came out. But this is nearly impossible, since the FBI's subpoena for the laptop was attached to the NYPost article.

  9. Roth appeared to buy this story now, and in an email said that it was likely that hacked materials were uploaded to the laptop and given to the shop.

  10. There is a pattern of the FBI trying to warn elected officials with a goal of leaking to the news. They did this with Senators Grassley and Johnson, who were investigating and believed that it compromised their credibility. Jim Baker was apparently investigated twice for leaking information (in 2017 and 2019).

As a reminder, the above is what he's arguing, not what I think is necessarily true.

From what I can see, it appears the FBI was very insistent upon the possibility of a 2016 DNC-style hack. I don't think this is necessarily unreasonable until the election is settled - that the hack didn't happen doesn't mean you could conclude it wouldn't were you in the months leading up to the election.

Far more damning is the attempts at getting Twitter's information outside the normal search warrant process. Twitter and its staff are vindicated in this regard, they appear to not have given in to the FBI's requests in 2020. A caveat to this, however, is that we don't necessarily know why they shut off this access in the first place, and how long it was open before that.

A secondary objection of mine is the blurring of public and private boundary with how intelligence officials and agencies were coordinating with and sharing classified information with these companies in an effort to get them on-board with doing work for the FBI. It's difficult to articulate what I precisely find problematic here. The closest I could come to explaining my feelings here is that I don't want these people to ever be more than formal acquaintances because it ends up reducing the chance of them acting as independent stations of power.

Special Agent Elvis Chan

Sorry, I didn't realise we were in the "Twin Peaks" timeline.

See, what my mind thought was: E-Elvis-Chan...!

I thought is was fairly oblivious with the $99 Trump photoshopped as Superman trading cards.

From what I can see, it appears the FBI was very insistent upon the possibility of a 2016 DNC-style hack. I don't think this is necessarily unreasonable until the election is settled - that the hack didn't happen doesn't mean you could conclude it wouldn't were you in the months leading up to the election.

It's not clear it's the FBI's role is to prevent disclosure of information from something like the 2016 DNC-style hack. They could arguably be charged with preventing such hacks, but going further than that runs into first amendment issues real quick.

In September 2020, Roth and others partook of a tabletop exercise to simulate a "hack and dump" operation regarding the Biden campaign. The goal was apparently to "shape" how the media would respond.

I'd also separately be very interested in the background behind things like the Aspen Digital meetup cited here, given other summaries. The Aspen Institute is technically a NGO, but it'd also be trivial for it to act as a cutout for government agencies, and Garrett himself has a comfy relationship to the FBI specifically.

Maybe there's some more plausible explanation, given everything else; perhaps the Aspen Digital wargame also had a few dozen other examples ranging from red-tribe-leaning to the non-political. But the incredible specificity to something that the FBI knew or should have known could have occurred without a foreign intelligence nexus (either their own people leaking, or Hunter fucking up somewhere they couldn't clean up fast enough) is... looking like at best the FBI trying to clean up potential problems ahead of time.

A secondary objection of mine is the blurring of public and private boundary with how intelligence officials and agencies were coordinating with and sharing classified information with these companies in an effort to get them on-board with doing work for the FBI. It's difficult to articulate what I precisely find problematic here.

I think the trivial objection is that far less direct entanglement has been treated as a violation of rights as a government actor in other environments. I'm sure the FBI's lawyers signed it off and no one would have standing to challenge it anyway, but the extent and degree that the FBI here appears to be pushing and providing recompense to people for the purpose of limiting political speech is a big deal, and worse than I expected to find.

What @Gdanning said below notwithstanding, it would be incredibly stupid of Twitter to leak these documents if Leaders were applicable here and someone could conceivably have standing because that would just expose them to liability.

That is a very odd citation for your claim, given that the district court said:

A private entity may be held liable under § 1983 when it "has exercised powers that are traditionally the exclusive prerogative of the state." Conner, 42 F.3d at 224 (quoting Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1005, 102 S. Ct. 2777 (1982)).

In this case, Persistent Surveillance System's actions may be attributable to the Baltimore Police Department for purposes of assessing the Plaintiffs' § 1983 claims. The Baltimore Police Department and Persistent Surveillance Systems have entered into a Professional Services Agreement, ratified by the Baltimore City Board of Estimates, to conduct aerial surveillance over Baltimore. As Defendants conceded during the Preliminary Injunction Hearing, Persistent Surveillance Systems would be exercising powers which are traditionally within the exclusive domain of the BPD when undertaking the actions authorized by the Professional Services Agreement.

Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. BPD, 456 F.Supp.3d 699, 707-708 (2020) (emphasis added).

Any argument that Twitter was a state actor must be based on a completely different theory.

I don't think there is a particularly severe difference between the Baltimore Professional Services Agreement and the contractual repayments present here, nor between the exclusivity of reading 9-11 reports in the Baltimore case and the access to classified documents in this one, or to the extent such a difference exists, that it favors the FBI here.

EDIT: to be clear, I think they fall under the state actor doctrine, too: it's the too that's an emphasis.

or threatening them with forcible compulsion if they didn't

I would contend that it is logically impossible for the government to request you to do anything without the (at least implicit) threat of forcible compulsion if you don't.

These people have a stupendous power imbalance over you and a monopoly on violence, they're (figuratively) tapping their truncheon in every interaction they have with everyone ever.

Is it not true that Twitter denied most of the removal requests? And, people refuse to cooperate with police every day of the week on the streets of every city in the country. . Similarly, public spirited people happily cooperate with police requests every day of the week. So, the implicit claim you are making -- that every govt request is so inherently coercive that it transforms every private compliance therewith into state action as a matter of law -- doesn't make much sense.

So, the implicit claim you are making -- that every govt request is so inherently coercive that it transforms every private compliance therewith into state action as a matter of law -- doesn't make much sense.

I don't understand why you think that the rest of your post constitutes evidence to this conclusion.

People stand up to violent bullies some of the time despite the threat to their physical health - this analogising to Twitter denying requests sometimes. And if you poiny a gun at s and tell me to eat a slice of delicious pizza, I'll eat the delicious pizza happily - but your gun-waving is incidental to the process, this analogising to people co-operating with police (to do things they wanted to do anyway, like snitch on disliked neighbours).

Is it not true that Twitter denied most of the removal requests?

Where are you getting this from?

And a 2021 report by the Election Integrity Partnership at Stanford University found that of nearly 4,800 flagged items, technology platforms took action on 35 percent — either removing, labeling, or soft-blocking speech, meaning the users were only able to view content after bypassing a warning screen. The research was done “in consultation with CISA,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

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The Intercept article on the DHS' attempt at something similar had this to say.

And a 2021 report by the Election Integrity Partnership at Stanford University found that of nearly 4,800 flagged items, technology platforms took action on 35 percent — either removing, labeling, or soft-blocking speech, meaning the users were only able to view content after bypassing a warning screen. The research was done “in consultation with CISA,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

This isn't the government per-se, but I think this is where the idea of Twitter rejecting most requests might come from.

In the Twitter case, Twitter received 3.4 million dollars in compensation from the FBI for its time reviewing takedown requests from the FBI.

In Beautiful Struggle, the company was paid solely by a private foundation sponsorship; I don’t know what the city contract actually provided.

I don’t think the distinction is meaningfully dispositive, any more than I think ignoring the funding path in favor of a purely org-chart approach would have made sense for Marsh, or even a ‘who can fire’ standard in some theoretical case. But I do think the lack of meaningfully dispositive traits makes the standard a farce.

There's... issues with Masnick's analysis

Most overtly, the part of the Twitter government order transparency page that Masnick screencaps is not limited to programs covered by 2706, nor court orders (EDRs, as 'voluntary' 212 requests, do not), nor FBI-originated requests, nor even federally-originated requests, so his base assumptions don't even make sense. Nor does his insistence that everything gets reviewed by a court, as the statute itself notices that the program can cover programs where "(or the court before which a criminal prosecution relating to such information would be brought, if no court order was issued for production of the information)." Similarly, Masnick compares compliance with general legal demands (regardless of source or type) with compliance with the FBI's totally not-legal-request we swear reporting, which is very much apples to oranges.

There is a table in that transparency report that at least separates out the federal-originated requests, albeit not by agency or by type of request, and is shows that federal requests made up around 70% of total information requests, which alone makes the compensation schema look increasingly lopsided (on top of Masnick apparently rounding up early and often).

But most seriously, Masnick ignores the "This money is used by LP for things like the TTR and other LE-related projects (LE training, tooling, etc.)." If Masnick's defense is that the compensation agreement from the FBI to Twitter did not specifically say 'this cash is for shutting up conservatives', then sure, I think that's exceptionally likely. As I said in the first post in this thread, I'm sure the FBI had lawyers signing off every single part (sometimes literally!) to make sure it was at least close enough to legal as to be unchallengable. But the vast majority of 2706 compensations are by sole agreement between the agency and the corporation, and if you check numbers even slightly harder than Masnick these compensations are wildly out-of-range under even the most charitable assumptions. And when an outsized amount of the unused money gets used for the broader legal response that just so happens to include the people responding to the FBI's non-legal takedown requests... well, it's probably still legal, but it's still the FBI paying for Twitter's review of takedown requests.

If you really want to nitpick that it's not compensation for review of takedown requests, it's just wildly outsized compensation for some unknown class of government requests, where the extra money happened to get used for takedown requests, fair, I'll give you that.

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I think it is fair to ask if commenting on the Twitter files to at least read them. It only takes about 5 minutes give or take a few.

Tweet #46

46 The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.

“I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!” reports an associate of Jim Baker in early 2021.

Ironically it looks like prior to 2019 Twitter was doing the work of responding/complying/working with the FBI for free.

As implied by the CRS report I linked to, whether the FBI involvement renders Twitter a state actor and hence demonstrates that the FBI violated the First Amendment is an open and difficult question. My only point is that the case you linked to is irrelevant, because there is no way that Twitter was "exercis[ing] powers that are traditionally the exclusive prerogative of the state," which is the only reason the BPD was on the hook in that case. Indeed, that case is a very easy one; as noted, the defendants conceded the issue. That is how obvious the case was. It tells us noting about the legal implications of the FBI actions re Twitter.

Twitter had its staff going into classified briefings, and was (uh, charitably) acting to counter international security threats. I think this is pretty close to the "traditional exclusive prerogative of the state".

How much do you think Twitter should be liable for, just as a ballpark estimate?

Probably not much; 1983 suits tend to be messy in the best of circumstances where there is clearly defined harm, and almost all of the actions here involved either de minimis damages and/or very indirect harm of the sort of that civil courts do not generally rate very highly. A saner world would probably have some class action-esque lawsuit that'd probably pay within an order of magnitude of 10 USD per improperly or unlawfully deplatformed user, but modern class actions are basically only useful for paying lawyers.

If you look at the relevant case law, you will see that it is not even close. Edit: "This is considered 'an arduous standard to satisfy[.]'" Chilcoat v. Odell, 517 F.Supp.3d 1299 (2021). Note that it is exercising power that is required, not attending briefings or helping law enforcement. Pvt parties cooperate with LEall the time. I attended a continuing ed training on this precise issue literally two days ago. The public function doctrine is very narrow. I would encourage you to read the CRS link in my original post; that is where your best arguments can be found, because it is all about when cooperation crosses the line into state action.

If you're making the legal realist argument that the courts won't recognize it as such, and don't want to open this can of worms, than I totally agree with you; perhaps even the Beautiful Struggle would have fallen had the Baltimore office not conceded that point. But it's very hard to see a principled distinction in the facts, even for the central cases of the doctrine.

That's especially true given the often-square-peg-round-hole nature of the doctrine: Terry v. Adams was clearly trying to find any way to break private blocks against African-American-preferred candidates, but the Jaybird Association had no state-like powers to exercise, merely outside influence on a different private organization that in turn had outsized influence on facially-neutral rules that favored it. The company town in Marsh v. Alabama did not perform arrests or convictions by its own staff; it merely reported a private sidewalk trespasser to police, a power later courts have allowed private businesses to use even against public sidewalk trespassers in some conditions. The park in Evans v. Newton had no powers at all; it 'merely' received public largess and benefits in its role as a transparent cutout for the discriminatory interests of the state. The difference is that these people were all assholes, in ways that judges care about, but that's not an especially compelling story.

But even beyond that, it's not that Twitter was cooperating with law enforcement. Nor would my objection apply if Twitter were just a random forum for public speech, as specifically excluded by Hudson (though see Marsh). It's not even (just) that Twitter was operating at FBI beck and call. It's that Twitter was taking a role that the federal government has long precluded private actors from engaging with: if you or I start to fuck with classified documents at best the FBI starts to look for leakers if it doesn't just start to subpoena us; the role of the federal government as the authority for common defense dates back to at least the era of privateers and the FBI can and does regularly investigate people who try to solo it. These are not 'traditional exercises of power' limited to the state, but neither in turn was the trespassing charge in Marsh nor the park management in Evans.

((And, to be fair, my objections are not limited to the case: the public function test regarding prisons is a clusterfuck and anyone paying attention knows why.))

Yes, if I had to argue it in front of SCOTUS, I'd probably take a better-explored and not-explicitly-disclaimed prong -- though it's worth noting how defunct the modern 'entwinement' tests of the state actor doctrine are, in turn, outside of very limited racial or religious discrimination contexts (bit of an overlap with Evans and Marsh there, isn't it), and how much of a mess the question of whether the joint action doctrine even exists is. And despite those limitations, I think the joint action doctrine (while barely described in the CRS report) would still probably be more likely to succeed.

But as a moral argument, and especially one from a libertarian perspective, this is a damning behavior from the public function one. Any other read would permit any private actor moving within the state's role and at the state's direction to cheerily violate rights coincident with its state-given power, even when at state direction.

EDIT: I don't retract the above, but I do think it's a distraction. If the broader state action doctrine not only covers the Baltimore case -- where the private company did not have the ability to bring charges as in Chilcoat's hypothetical, nor get pay and specific command as in this case -- but does so with such clarity that no defense is plausible, the exact terms and reasons that separate it from matter, but even if their clearly post-hoc manner happened to coincidentally support the modern abuses of power that would not make them good.

If you're making the legal realist argument

No, I am not making that argument.

But it's very hard to see a principled distinction in the facts, even for the central cases of the doctrine.

Then, quite honestly, you don't understand the doctrine. As evidenced by this argument: "It's that Twitter was taking a role that the federal government has long precluded private actors from engaging with: if you or I start to fuck with classified documents at best the FBI starts to look for leakers if it doesn't just start to subpoena us." Leaving aside that you are conflating unauthorized disclosure of classified material with authorized disclosure, which happens for more trivial reasons than those at issue here -- as noted, the public function doctrine is "'an arduous standard to satisfy'" and looking at documents doesn't cut it. In Terry v. Adams a private entity was running elections; in Marsh, a private company was the government, since it was a company town. And, it is simply incorrect to say that "[t]company town in Marsh v. Alabama did not perform arrests or convictions by its own staff; it merely reported a private sidewalk trespasser to police"; in fact, "A deputy of the Mobile County Sheriff, paid by the company, serves as the town's policeman," 526 US at 502, and "[w]hen [appellant] was asked to leave the sidewalk and Chickasaw, she declined. The deputy sheriff arrested her," 526 US at 503.

As for Evans, these are the facts:

If a testator wanted to leave a school or center for the use of one race only, and in no way implicated the State in the supervision, control, or management of that facility, we assume arguendo that no constitutional difficulty would be encountered.

This park, however, is in a different posture. For years, it was an integral part of the City of Macon's activities. From the pleadings we assume it was swept, manicured, watered, patroled, and maintained by the city as a public facility for whites only, as well as granted tax exemption under Ga.Code Ann. § 92-201. The momentum it acquired as a public facility is certainly not dissipated ipso facto by the appointment of "private" trustees. So far as this record shows, there has been no change in municipal maintenance and concern over this facility. Whether these public characteristics will, in time, be dissipated is wholly conjectural. If the municipality remains entwined in the management or control of the park, it remains subject to the restraints of the Fourteenth Amendment, just as the private utility in Public Utilities Comm'n v. Pollak, 343 U. S. 451, 343 U. S. 462, remained subject to the Fifth Amendment because of the surveillance which federal agencies had over its affairs. We only hold that, where the tradition of municipal control had become firmly established, we cannot take judicial notice that the mere substitution of trustees instantly transferred this park from the public to the private sector.

As I said before, the relationship between Twitter and the FBI might satisfy other bases for finding state action, but the claim that it meets the "public function" test is frivolous, and hence so, too, is the claim that Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. BPD is relevant, let alone that it shows that the FBI acted illegally.

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The FBI's regular meetings with people like Yoel Roth were characterized by the latter as telling him that state actors might try a "hack and leak" operation prior to the election.

One thing I've always found weird about this story is why I'm supposed to care about the provenance of the leak so long as it's credible. If it's a "fabricate and leak" operation, sure, and if the hackers are breaking the law I'd like them punished for it. But if the information is true and pertinent to voter why would that justify suppressing it? We aren't a court of law and the character of the people on display is most of the point. If Rittenhouse was running for public office that video they didn't let into the court of him talking about wishing he had his gun while watching shoplifters should definitely be in play. Same is true for the shit on Hunter's laptop. If someone has burned a zero day to hack something totally disqualifying on Trump no one would be batting an eye at spreading it as widely as possible.

I think the steelman is that selectively excerpting the truth can be misleading. /r/politics certainly likes to talk about the supposed materials Russia hacked from the GOP and never released. Mind, I've never seen any evidence that actually happened, so this sounds a lot like a "both sides" cope. And, uh, even if both sides have skeletons in the closest, it seems like a stretch to argue that means both sides should get to keep them secret.

Further that is an evergreen objection to any investigative journalism of a candidate.

It also falls flat when Twitter didn’t curtail the publishing of Trump’s tax returns.

It's an extended political pastiche of a bad boyfriend: Sure, yeah I was texting her but why did you go through my phone? That's the real problem, you don't trust me. How can I be with a girl when there's no trust in our relationship? I'm not even going to talk about the cheating until we address the trust issues.

A cheater with sufficient chutzpah can not just convince herself that his snooping was the real problem, so controlling! and no trust!, She'll convince herself that his snooping proved she was right to cheat on him, retroactively justifying the cheating that was discovered in the snooping. If he never trusted me, then I was right to cheat on him. Reverse causation worthy of Yudkowsky!

The provenance doesn't just distract, it can actually justify the bad behavior.

I don’t think twitter is look awful in these exchanges. They have a heavy left bias and act on it. Nothing we didn’t know. With the power of twitter to dominate the narrative I don’t think it’s a good thing to have the predominant speech platform dominated by one side but the right would probably be worse if they controlled it. All the pronoun people would have been banned.

The FBI and alphabets look as bad as I thought they were since they do have a true mandate to be neutral and not interfere with elections.

  1. The FBI had the Hunter laptop for nearly a year. What did these people know? Did they knowingly misinform the American people on a true story? Baker was a higher up fbi guy when they had the laptop. What did he know.

  2. The fbi was paying twitter. Granted it comes off as reimbursing for expenses but paying and requesting censorship gets well past the “twitter is a private company and Can do what they want” into a direct bribe for censorship plot.

How often did they interfere with Israelis twittering about American politics?

How many pro-Biden accounts were run by non-Americans and band?

Are non-Americans allowed to tweet about American politics? Does it depend on if they openly state that they aren't American? Can a British person have a pro-Biden twitter account? What if 100%. 50% oor 10%? of Tweets are about American politics?

It would be impossible to come up with an objective set of rules or goals that was imposed by the FBI and it fairly clear that the FBI was actively campaigning for a side in an election.

Ya i see no reason why foreign nationals should be limited in their discussion of US politics. First of all the US has a long arm and what we do effects them as much as their own government. So their speech is about the only thing they can do.

Ya i see no reason why foreign nationals should be limited in their discussion of US politics.

The problem with taking this stance is that you arrive at the conclusion that a Macedonian troll farm spamming pro-Trump propaganda and funded by the Russian state then becomes this is fine. They're just foreigners discussing American politics, why would anyone complain?

Whats the problem with a bunch of bots talking to themsleves?

But overall I have no problem with bots not getting promoted to others since their low quality and not human.

Giving bots human rights isn’t a core belief of mine or an American value (humans get free speech).

You are discussing American politics.

He is uncritically propagating fake news.

I am peddling Russian/Chinese disinformation.

A secondary objection of mine is the blurring of public and private boundary with how intelligence officials and agencies were coordinating with and sharing classified information with these companies in an effort to get them on-board with doing work for the FBI. It's difficult to articulate what I precisely find problematic here.

I have not been following the Twitter files particularly closely (nor am I a fan of Elon), but I think you're right here: while some of the actions are plausibly shady, it's unclear exactly where the lines that might have been crossed are. In particular, private parties like Twitter presumably have a right to report and discuss things with law enforcement. And law enforcement is allowed to ask nicely for data that would require a warrant to compel. In this instance, none of that data would seem to incriminate Twitter, so they might well choose to share it: props to them for choosing not to do so. Twitter can choose to hire ex-FBI folks -- indeed, for reducing certain unsavory criminal activities on their network, one can imagine that ex-FBI agents are in fact quite relevant subject matter experts on things.

There's certainly a level of implicit or explicit threat that would be too far, but I'm not sure I could pin that down. I haven't seen any particular suggestion of a clear, flagrant violation. The Hunter Biden laptop stuff (which seems to have been incorrectly flagged) gets quite close, but I haven't seen enough evidence to convince me that either side was deliberately acting in bad faith. I don't like that Twitter's moderation seems to have had quite the political bias, but that is an annoyance, not a crime.

They literally had a hack and dump scenario with Hunter Biden. Isnt that a bit of a smoking gun?

And the fbi was in possession of the laptop. If this isn’t direct interference in an election then I don’t know what is. The fbi literally knew the laptop was real and not a hack then misinformed the American people which led to a change in election outcomes.

I concur. This is shaping up to be the biggest American scandal ever — or at least it should be but won’t.

yeah this is orders of magnitude worse than the iran contra affair - i mean sure IC had sweeping geopolitical implications and directly exposed the judicial system of being a dog and pony show but this hunter biden laptop dick pic story, now this is the real deal.

  • -16

Your sarcasm aside, the story is that Joe Biden and his family effectuated a pay to play scheme. Not good. dismissing it as dick pics is one of the lowest cheapest ways to distract from the meat. You latch on to the sensational to avoid having to discuss the substance.

But my whole post (and Sliders) wasn’t about Biden directly. It was the FBI and the IC interfering in an U.S. presidential election to help one major candidate. That is a major scandal far worse than Iran Contra.

The substance is that Hunter Biden attempted to leverage his father's political status to elevate his personal business prospects. This is shady as fuck, but lots of connected people have shitty kids, its not that big of a deal unless Joe Biden was a willing participant, which as far as i can tell hasn't been shown.

How is the FBI pulling strings at twitter to suppress the distribution of this laptop's contents "interfering in an U.S. presidential election"? Is there any source that shows that the FBI knew that there was no planted information on that laptop? I just think we are applying the clarity of hindsight to a situation that may have been murky at the time, and also assuming a lot of motives. Beyond all that i think funding terrorist organizations in nicaragua and iran is a bit more scandalous than the fbi running interference on a laptop of questionable importance.

There are multiple incidents within the Hunter files showing Joe was involved. There is also testimony. Is it conclusive? No. But there is a decent amount of smoke.

As for the FBI, the evidence is (1) they had the info for a long time (and so were able to test the validity of it — it wasn’t new to them contrary to what you are saying), (2) they kept prompting Twitter (and Facebook) that a hack was going to be coming, (3) an NGO (which had overlapping people it seems) specifically war gamed with Twitter executive a hack and dump of Hunter Biden, and (iv) connected former FBI agents at Twitter pushed to ban the story.

So they knew the laptop was real, they were aware the info might be coming up, they primed the social media networks to think any leak — especially one connected to Hunter — would be illegitimate, and they had personal at Twitter who knew better but pushed in the opposite direction. That is election interference your attempts to downplay the severity of the details.

And yes, it is more scandalous compared to the IC interfering in third world countries. IC doing shady shit in third countries while not great is relatively par for the course for shady organizations such as the IC. But IC interfering in a domestic presidential election because one of the candidates was against the IC? That is eliminating civilian control of the IC; effectively usurping the constitutional order that the president is in charge of the executive.

Lots of smoke no concrete proof, sorry but that's not the biggest scandal in US history by a long shot.

You literally don't know that the FBI knew it was "real", you are just assuming and assigning malice.

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As an aside, I don't think you can call focusing on the dick pics distracting from the meat.

Ah Fruck, I can’t believe you’ve done this.

:Sigh:

Take your upvote and get out.

distracted by the meat

Bravo

Except it wasn't a Hack and Dump, while yes it was widely reported as such at the time, it turns out that Hunter Biden is exactly the sort of coked-out idiot to leave his laptop full of incriminating evidence at the service desk and then forget to pick it up.

Your link doesn't say that. It says the emails were genuine, and dances around implying that means the laptop was. I though the claim was the that the emails were acquired by the Russians via hacking and laundered through "finding" the laptop. Your link provides no discussion or evidence of that claim, just asserts it's false without evidence and tries to claim legitimacy by linking to a New York Times article which also does not discuss the provenance of the laptop.

I have not looked into this issue to have any strong opinions on where the laptop actually came from; I am not making any claims either way. I'm merely pointing out that your link isn't either.

NY Post publishes a story claiming that the FBI in possession a bunch of evidence implicating Biden in al sorts of shady dealings and is purposely burying it in an effort to hurt Trump/help Biden win. A bunch of intelligence officials including the Obama's SecDef and the Director of the NSA sign an open letter declaring the laptop story to be a Russian disinformation op. The official NY Post gets banned from Twitter and links to the article get scrubbed from both Twitter and Facebook. Two years after the fact even the hardcore partisans at CNN and MSNBC concede that it wasn't the Russians and that the linked emails were likely genuine, but that doesn't matter because the original purpose of helping Biden win has been served.

it wasn't the Russians and that the linked emails were likely genuine

You're still trying to smuggle in this claim. "email were likely genuine" and "it wasn't the Russians" are two separate claims. You've provided evidence for the first but not for the second.

AcocadoPanic's link does go as far as claiming the data appears to have really come from an actual laptop that Hunter Biden used, at which point Occam hints pretty strongly at the laptop in question really having been Hunter Biden's (as opposed to some more complicated plot where Hunter Biden's laptop was hacked by Russians, its contents copied onto a sufficiently similar laptop and that laptop laundered through the repair shop). But you didn't provide that evidence, you just claimed you did and linked to something else.

A bunch of intelligence officials including the Obama's SecDef and the Director of the NSA sign an open letter declaring the laptop story to be a Russian disinformation

"We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement

As much as I'd like to be skeptical of the IC, its hard to square these two claims.

Well, the IC made the statement with zero investigation of the underlying data. It was then used by the media and Biden campaign to say “misinformation.”

Yes the IC letter worded it carefully but they knew damn well how it would play out and they had zero reason to believe what they said.

I share most of the same skepticisms, but I disagree that they worded things carefully. The limits of their knowledge was stated clearly and prominently. Informative press would have highlighted this, but we privilege a free press over an accountable press for obvious reasons.

But there was zero reason to release anything. There was evidence they could’ve examined showing it was authentic. The only reason they made the statement was to run cover for the Biden campaign.

A bunch of intelligence officials including the Obama's SecDef and the Director of the NSA sign an open letter declaring the laptop story to be a Russian disinformation op.

Declaring? I see a lot of hedging that it might be from the Russians, not an explicit acknowledgement that it was.

The fact that two years later, conservatives are still complaining about the censorship of the story rather than discussing the contents of the laptop to me show that the censorship was far more damaging than helpful to Biden's cause and that there really isn't that much to the underlying laptop contents.

Everybody has known that Biden was engaging in pay for play schemes since the 90s. For all his "aw shucks" good guy posturing he didn't become a billionaire in Baltimore on a public servant's salary. Accordingly Biden being corrupt is not news. The FBI working with the media to quash a story/actively intervening on behalf of the DNC for the second presidential election in a row on the other hand is a new development.

he didn't become a billionaire in Baltimore on a public servant's salary

I think you're off by a factor of ~100. Googling puts his net worth at 2.5M in 2016; 17M in 2020. Given he has made his tax returns public for decades, it seems implausible he could hide 98% of his wealth.

Yeah and it turns out that his corrupt son pays for things on his behalf per the corrupt son. Wonder if the corrupt brother also pays for things on his behalf.

You wouldn’t see those items on his tax return though that is tax fraud. Doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And before you say “you can say that about anyone” the difference is here we have the corrupt son saying he gives over a large amount of money to his father. Statement against interest.

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When you looked at richest/poorest Senator lists, Biden was always at the bottom, or just above Bernie during his whole entire time there, and only became slightly more wealthy because of the usual appearance fee circuit, some book deals, and the like. Part of the reason the whole 'Biden is secretly corrupt' is failing outside the most partisan Red Tribers, when less than great views about Obama or Hillary extended past that, is that it doesn't pass the BS meter of the median voter - the median voter can buy Hillary is corrupt, Obama is conceited, and Trump is an asshole. They simply see nothing showing that Biden is making secret deals.

The argument is that if people knew the contents of the laptop and Biden ‘s pay for play, then he wouldn’t have won.

And yes, more people should be upset about it. The media has done a good job primarily making it seem like story is about Hunter or Twitter.

But something can help you then and hurt you now. I’d say Biden is probably happier to deal with the censorship story after being elected compared to having the story cost him the election.

Is there anyone still claiming it's Russians?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-data-analysis/

Strictly that doesn't prevent it being hacked information, or information obtained illegally.

"The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) was enacted in 1986 and prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, or in excess of authorization. "

If permission was given for the purposes of data retrieval, even after abandonment of the device recovering any data from a device in excess of the authorization given may well fall under relevant Federal or state laws. You can be in a position where the abandoned property becomes yours, but the data on it does not.

"So, was Hunter Biden’s email “hacked?” Yes, in the sense that it was read and disseminated without his knowledge or consent. But under the law? Magic 8 ball says, “situation unclear. Ask again later…”"

It's not as straight forward as saying he was hacked, but it is also not clear that he wasn't.

This has nothing to do with the reasons the story was squashed (other than to give a figleaf), but it isn't actually super clear cut as to whether it would fall under Delaware's Computer crime laws as hacking. It also depends if local copies of email were accessed or his online accounts were accessed through stored passwords.

If you take a computer to a repair place , give them your passwords to help with repair and they clone your drive and publish your emails online, they probably have hacked your data as described in the various statutes, and they probably can be prosecuted. And you can probably call it a Hack and dump. If they do it after you abandon it, the situation is unclear. In other words the fig leaf is real, the question is (ahem) how big it is in actuality.

I'd be interested to hear how you think the CFAA would apply here and to whom.

It's unlikely the abandoned personal laptop of the presidents fuck-up son qualifies as a 'protected computer'. Nor does any of the data disclosed appear to be restricted, etc.

He was hacked in the sense that if he'd taken his VCR to be repaired, abandoned it and the repair shop was able to remove and repair the cassette. On the tape was was the presidents fuck-up son, getting high, banging prostitutes, and talking about questionable business deals. They copy the tape and give a copy to Inside Edition, which runs the story.

That's not 'hacked' that's just being a skeevy adict fuck-up. Calling it hacked is a canard.

The State of Delaware can likely make many things a crime, criminalizing giveing abandoned property to the press especially so with a clear public interest in the story hopefully would be a protected 1st amendment activity.

I'm not sure there's good faith argument that it's hacked material. I consider all the alphabet agency people who called it Russian disinformation bad faith actors.

They got weev on CFAA conspiracy arguing that the publicly accessible, no authentication AT&T server that returned an email address when sent an ICC-ID (SIM card UUID) was a protected computer and sending it requests with ICC-IDs to harvest email addresses was accessing a protected computer without authorization in furtherance of a criminal activity. Overturned and freed based on improper venue, underlying substantial issue unaddressed.

I thought those charges were bullshit, but it was internet connected at least.

I don't think there have been any claims that this was 'hacking' because the laptop was internet connected.

I'm not sure there's good faith argument that it's hacked material.

There absolutely is. It may not be relevant as to whether the information should be distributed. But there is a decent claim that it is hacked material in the sense that the person who did so, did not have ownership of the files and accessed them in an unauthorized manner. It's not a slam dunk by any means but if the data ownership remains with Hunter even while the shop gets to own the computer (which is legally murky) then by accessing it and distributing it in an unauthorized manner he has breached the law. He can be a skeevy addict fuck up and also technically have had the information obtained by computer fraud.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't be distributed if it is in the public interest but that doesn't change how they were acquired.

"on the other hand, a good case could be made that the repairman “exceeded the scope of his authorization” to examine the files on the computer for a purpose other than repairing the device. What might complicate this is if Hunter Biden, the computer owner, gave the repairman some limiting instructions — express or implied, like “just fix the power supply” or “find out why the screen is not working…” In those cases, you could argue that, even though the repairman was in lawful possession of the computer (and presumably the data contained in it), they exceeded the scope of their authorization to access the computer when they looked at things that were not necessary to perform the task assigned. The Delaware Computer Crime statute additionally makes it a crime to make an “unauthorized copy” of data"

The repair person may be ok, but it isn't legally a slam dunk either. I would say it is both hacked material AND acceptable to distribute given the public interest. So there is very definitely a good faith interpretation that it is hacked material. Which doesn't mean that is why most places were acting in good faith of course.

As for the CFAA, the NACDL (who think it's too broad and want it reduced in scope) say:

"Since every computer connected to the Internet is used in interstate commerce or communication, it is a conceivable interpretation that every computer connected to the Internet is a “protected computer” covered by 18 U.S.C. § 1030." and that the definition was then expanded further twice since then.

He clearly had lawful possession, it was left in his care. Isn't the shop owner relying on his boilerplate forms that abandoned devices become the property of the shop, to transfer ownership of the device?

Having seen and used similar service agreements copying and transferring data is frequently authorized.

When the geek squad finds child porn, is that hacking? How about if they rat out the perv to the FBI in exchange for cash. https://www.kron4.com/news/national/documents-fbi-paid-best-buys-geek-squad-for-child-porn-info/

Have we seen evidence that this device was connected to the internet at the time of the alleged hacking?

Calling it hacking is a canard to distract and suppress the content.

Calling it hacking is a canard to distract and suppress the content.

Absolutley. But that doesn't mean it wasn't.

And in fact the CSAM issue isn't cut and dried either, this is part of why it is legally grey:

"In fact, the government has relied on this concept to essentially enlist computer repair personnel as informants, using them to scan computers for things like CSAM (kiddie porn), or other things that the government might use as evidence. In a highly publicized case several years ago, the FBI was paying Best Buy “Geek Squad” personnel a bounty (and listing them as confidential informants) to search for files the FBI was interested in on computers brought in for repair, and to provide that information to law enforcement. While the bulk of these cases involve contraband like child pornography which is illegal to possess, and for which certain individuals have a legal duty to report, the question of whether the repair person, in lawful (but temporary) possession of the computer for one purpose (to repair it), may then examine the files on the computer for the purpose not of fixing the computer, but of reporting crime. "

Whether the abandonment gives you ownership of the data is not clear. It doesn't transfer copyright, so the images captured are still legally owned by Hunter, but the rest is unclear. Did he file the appropriate report with the Delaware State Escheator? The law specifies "abandoned tangible property" and to complicate things the Mac Shop had a contract which specifies equipment would become abandoned after 90 days:

"Both the Mac Shop contract and the Delaware Code do not resolve the question as to what exactly Biden might have abandoned in his failure to pick up his laptop and hard drive. The physical devices are one thing, but what about the underlying data? The Mac Shop’s contract is limited to “equipment” and does not extend to intangible or intellectual property. With respect to any data on which Biden has a copyright claim, for example, it does not seem reasonable that Biden granted anything more than a limited use license to access data for the purpose of recovering it. "

To be clear most of the people you are talking about are using the hacking issue as a figleaf for partisan purposes. Completely agreed. The thing with a figleaf though, is usually there is something actually there, and that appears to be the case here. Just because they are saying it is cut and dried one way doesn't mean it is actually cut and dried the other. There are a lot of nuances here.

Combined with the overbroad "hacking" laws, it is quite possible the repair guy committed a crime when he accessed and shared it. It is pretty possible that people who report CSAM on devices they are asked to repair are in fact accessing the data in an unauthorized way and could in theory fall foul of various computer fraud and hacking laws.

If you ask an expert whether repair guy was engaged in hacking the answer is:

"Personally, I think that when you ask someone to repair your computer, you are asking them to repair your computer — not authorizing them to copy anything they find and give it to others. On the other hand, when you hire a cleaning person to clean your house, you run the risk that they will call the cops to report the dead body in the living room or the cocaine stash in the medicine cabinet. That’s the thing about privacy. So did the repairman “hack” Hunter Biden’s computer? Magic 8 ball says, “Maybe.” "

It's possible he was fine when passing it to the FBI, but not when copying it for the purposes of giving it to Giuliani. It's possible he was fine for both. It gets even sillier. If he accessed emails that were held on the laptop that's one thing. If he used the credentials to log into the box live all of a sudden:

"That’s just the box — the computer itself. What about the email on the computer? Just because we like to make things complicated, the law treats stored email differently than it treats other files. Sometimes. Under the Stored Communications Act it is generally illegal to access “stored” communications without authorization. The law treats different kinds of stored communications differently, including those that are stored incident to transmission, those that are in temporary storage, and those that are in more permanent storage. The point was to approximate the IRL world of “interception” of communications in transmission (e.g., wiretaps), reading mail, and reading mail that’s been sitting on the recipient’s kitchen table for a few weeks. (like Jerry Seinfeld’s piece on when clothes become laundry — when does an Ikea catalogue stop being “mail?”) The problem is, the SCA focuses on accessing stored email that is stored by a communications provider, not email that I store on my computer itself. When I store my own email on my own computer, it becomes just another file."

The statement that there is no good faith argument that it is hacked material is I think false. That doesn't mean most people ARE using those argument in good faith.

The Mac Shops boilerplate refers to equipment left after 90 days, but also included a hold harmless for any damage or loss of property. Further it clearly says they will 'backup' data.

Being a canard makes it bad faith.

The accurate description would be, Mac repairman uncovers evidence of corrupt practices and drug use by Biden scion and is ignored by the FBI until going to the press.

Wasn't the hacking claim referring to alleged Russian hackers that then allegedly placed the material on the laptop to be discovered? Also a bad faith canard.

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If you have a mechanic repair your car and you don't pay for the repair after X months, there should be no issue with the mechanic sizing the car in lieu of the unpaid bill. I see no issue with a computer repairer doing the same. If it happens that the most valuable use of an unclaimed computer is to sell it to a political campaign, that seems like a fine outcome.

One should pay their bills or suffer the consequences.

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If permission was given for the purposes of data retrieval, even after abandonment of the device recovering any data from a device in excess of the authorization given may well fall under relevant Federal or state laws.

My recollection was that the terms of NY property abandonment law, under which the laptop was left at the shop with IIRC an outstanding bill, effectively transferred ownership to the shop. At that point, the from whom part of the required authorization becomes germane: if you put your files on (now) my computer, I don't think you can claim it's a crime for me to look at or possibly[1] redistribute them. On the other hand, if I use your existing session token on (now) my computer to access your account on a different computer (say, GMail), it's quite plausibly still a crime.

On the other hand, I'd agree it certainly raises some interesting legal questions.

[1] I could imagine a very niche argument for copyright or likeness concerns, but I'm not aware of anyone successfully using copyright to prevent the publication of embarrassing materials, although I may well be missing an example there. Regardless, this would (typically) be a civil matter. "Revenge porn" laws might be relevant, but I'm not aware of the details for this case.

On the other hand, if I use your existing session token on (now) my computer to access your account on a different computer (say, GMail), it's quite plausibly still a crime

Yes, this would be hacking. Though lame and low effort. Has this been claimed? I've not seen this claim.

Those further civil claims would be better made against the actual publishers.

Isn't the technicians narrative that like the geek squad and child porn, he was concerned by his discovery, first went to the FBI, only when he perceived inaction he went to the press and Rudy Guliani.

To be clear, it was pretty clear early on that the laptop was genuine. Glenn Greenwald had a good post on that.

I meant the fact the whole “we are doing game plan where there is a hack and dump of Hunter Biden before the story broke” is pretty damning.

To be clear, it was pretty clear early on that the laptop was genuine. Glenn Greenwald had a good post on that.

Now, other people in this thread have presented good evidence suggesting the laptop was indeed genuine, but after he helped launder the Russian hacked emails through Wikileaks and denied any Russian connection, I'm supposed to take Glenn Greenwald said it wasn't the Russians as evidence that it wasn't the Russians? Is this a troll? I'm reminded of the old joke about how if the CIA tells you the sky is blue, you should probably go outside and look, get then get an eye test and look again just to be sure.

EDIT: Yes, I know Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange are different people. One of the things he's known for is being one of the most mainstream vocal deniers of the Wikileaks-Russia connection.

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In addition to the other comments, would Greenwald not be a good arbiter of what Russian shenanigans look like, even discounting the inaccuracy of "Greenwald laundered the emails"?

Besides you confusing Greenwald with Assange, those weren't Russian emails. Those were DNC emails, and those were genuine too. You may be upset about how they were acquired, but the content of the emails was all true, and so was the content of the laptop. So, in both cases, there was true information revealed, and in both cases US government tried to hide it for partisan political reasons, clearly throwing all the weight of the federal government to the side of one party. Which in a normally functioning state would be a scandal, but...

Glenn Greenwald didn’t help launder emails through Wikileaks. That was Julian Assange. Greenwald has done extensive investigative journalism regarding Snowden and Lula. He is as close of an expert as there is in journalistic methods of authenticating data. He laid out all the ways the Biden laptop was authenticated shortly after it came to light.

Also, it isn’t crystal clear that Russians were behind Wikileaks. Sure, that is what DoJ claims. But they’ve never had to fight that in an adversarial situation. The one time they did have the chance, the dropped the charges claiming Russia would get valuable intel. Which maybe but also could be because their actual case was weak.

It's kind of amazingly rich to do this whole "attack the messenger" routine on Greenwald, while 100% of the doubt cast on the laptop story came from bald lying (without even an attempt at faking evidence!) by IC spooks. This is a scenario where the CIA told us the sky was green, Greenwald wrote an article of evidence it was blue, and you're throwing skepticism at Greenwald.

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