In recent days, the Hillary Clinton campaign has taken to accusing her GOP rival, Donald J. Trump, of what essentially amounts to treasonous collusion with the Russian government and its leader, Vladimir Putin.
This goofy accusation stems from the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email system, some of which has already been leaked by Wikileaks. The DNC has blamed the hack on the Russian government, and there appears to be some evidence that is true.
So, how is Trump involved? DNC and Clinton campaign officials say because the hack and the release of the stolen emails appears to help The Donald politically, then it only stands to reason that he and Putin are working together.
That’s so far of a stretch that it defies rationality. And this, from the campaign of a woman who claims to be uniquely qualified to lead the country and who also, as secretary of state, ensured that Russia was able to secure 20 percent of all U.S. strategic reserves of uranium, vital in powering nuclear plants and building nuclear weapons. Who’s treasonous, Mrs. Clinton?
But beyond that, the issue at hand is the cybersecurity of data. And clearly, the DNC cannot protect its own data. Do we now want these people in charge of “protecting” all U.S. data? Because cyberattacks are only going to get worse.
And really, as president, is Clinton the person to lead this charge? Mrs. Private Unsecured Email Server?
While FBI Director James Comey may have let her off the hook for her criminal misconduct regarding the handling of highly classified materials, he also found her to be “extremely careless” (which is just another way of saying “gross negligence” – a term found in the statute governing the handling of classified data) in handling her data. Further, he said there was evidence that “hostile actors” gained access to email accounts of associates with whom Clinton interacted digitally.
While Comey said that the FBI did not find direct evidence that Clinton’s devices and servers were hacked, he said that it wasn’t likely that they would anyway. But that said, current and former intelligence officials with years of experience would laugh anyone out of the room were they to seriously suggest that a foreign government with the means to do so (think Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.) would not hack the unprotected or lightly defended personal email server of a U.S. secretary of state.
“I can’t tell you how bad this is,” Bob Baer, a national security subject matter expert for CNN and former CIA operative, said. “A lot of things get talked about, a lot of gossip, but having documents like this sent across the Internet, it could be hacked very easily and probably were hacked, is a transgression that I don’t think the president of the United States should be allowed to, you know, have committed.”
“It is almost certain that at least some of the emails hosted at clintonemails.com were intercepted,” added independent security expert and developer Nic Cubrilovic.
“I have no doubt in my mind that this thing was penetrated by multiple foreign powers, to assume otherwise is to put blinders on,” Bob Gourley, the chief technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2005 to 2008 and the founder of Cognitio, a cybersecurity consultancy, says.
There is no question that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are the bigger security threat to the country. And while Trump may not be your favorite presidential candidate, to seriously believe he is in cahoots with the Russians is about as loony as it gets.
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