Friday, December 23, 2016

How the New York Times knows it's wrong about Russian hacking

And how we know that they know.  A detailed analysis about how scraps of information are woven into a narrative to support the Democrats:
Here's a trick when reading New York Times articles: when they switch to passive voice, they are covering up a lie. An example is this paragraph from the above story [*]:
The Russians were also quicker to turn their attacks to political purposes. A 2007 cyberattack on Estonia, a former Soviet republic that had joined NATO, sent a message that Russia could paralyze the country without invading it. The next year cyberattacks were used during Russia’s war with Georgia.
Normally, editors would switch this to the active voice, or:
The next year, Russia used cyberattacks in their war against Georgia.
But that would be factually wrong. Yes, cyberattacks happened during the conflicts with Estonia and Georgia, but the evidence in both cases points to targets and tools going viral on social media and web forums. It was the people who conducted the attacks, not the government. Whether it was the government who encouraged the people is the big question -- to which we have no answer. Since the NYTimes has no evidence pointing to the Russian government, they switch to the passive voice, hoping you'll assume they meant the government was to blame.
There's a lot more.  All I can add is that (a) the line that "the Russians hacked the DNC to help Trump" is really weak from a facts and proof point of view, and (b) the only people who will believe it are Democratic Party supporters (like the Times) who don't care about facts and proof.  Oh, and (c) the people in (b) are entirely convinced that they are smarter and better thinkers than you and me, despite their utter lack of interest in thinking this one through.

The New York Times: All the news that confirms our bias is fit to print.

4 comments:

matism said...

Just more Fake News at its finest. Understand that when they officially start taking down "fake news" sites and refuse to touch the Leftist Liars, I will start shooting.

Old NFO said...

Good points all BP...

Sherm said...

Last night CBS ran a story about Russian hacking in the Ukraine that "cost lives." Some Ukrainian developed a smart phone app that enabled them to target artillery more effectively. Pretty cool.

However, he showed it off in a Youtube video for the world to see. The dirty Russians hacked it and turned it around to locate the command and control centers where the phone(s) were being used. Boom!

The story, of course, was about the nasty Russians and not about stupidly sharing secrets on Youtube (a step or five more stupid than an unsecured network in New York.)

Software security means little if you don't also have operational security.

Ken said...

This business will get out of control.

Probably already has.