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Have Russian hackers already handed Putin a win?
[CNN] Russian hackers have already scored key goals in their apparent bid to disrupt the US presidential election, according to researchers monitoring the closely fought political campaign.Allegations of dumping sensitive data, infiltrating official servers, manipulating online blogs and even hacking voter records, say analysts, have fueled concerns Moscow is trying to influence the election outcome. "Anything that undermines the legitimacy of the electoral process is bad news for democracy," said professor John Naughton, co-director of the Technology and Democracy Project at Cambridge University in the UK. The Kremlin categorically denies any Russian state involvement in hacking. Some of the emails, later released online, contained embarrassing details of the Democratic Party's inner workings, including correspondence revealing how opposed some party officials were to Hillary Clinton's rival, Bernie Sanders. The damaging revelations eventually forced Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down as Democratic National Committee chair in what could be an unprecedented example of the Kremlin not covertly, but directly, intervening in US politics. Both Trump and the Kremlin deny any links to hacking or to each other, but the issue again surfaced in the second US presidential debate on Sunday. "We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election," said Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee, during a heated exchange in the debate. "And believe me, they are not doing it to get me elected. They are doing it to influence the election for Donald Trump." Suspicions have been fueled by the tightly controlled Russian media, which have made no secret of their preference for a Trump presidency. Whatever the truth, the Putin factor has emerged as a key issue in the US presidential campaign and that in itself may be interpreted as a victory by the Kremlin. The issue of US electoral intervention also raises broader, much darker concerns -- that go way beyond Russia -- about the way the Internet can now be used not just to promote democracy but also to undermine it. "Only now are we beginning to see the long-term impact of the technology," Naughton warned. "We are beginning to find out what the Internet really means." Posted by: Pappy 2016-10-13 |
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