The corporate media has all but accepted the resounding narrative that Russia hacked the U.S. election. But as outlets like the Washington Post receive harsh criticism for perpetuating these as-of-yet unconfirmed allegations, it appears the media isn’t the only institution that’s failing to practice due diligence.
According to their report, Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, said in an email:
“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers.”
In May, private cyber security firm Crowdstrike claimed to have discovered evidence that Russian intelligence agencies had hacked the DNC. But as tech-oriented Ars Technica has noted of Crowdstrike’s findings:
“[W]hile the hackers may have been caught in the act digitally, the details by themselves don’t offer definitive proof of the identity of those behind the anti-Clinton hacking campaign. Public details currently don’t offer clear insight into the specific intent behind these hacks, either.”
In fact, one criticism of the recent joint FBI-DHS report pointed out the difference between private and public intelligence. Robert M. Lee, a former U.S. Air Force Cyber Warfare Operations Officer and founder and CEO of cyber security firm Dragos, explained that data from different sources bears different confidence ratings — and the FBI and DHS failed to disclose which data they were referencing in the report. As Buzzfeed notes, “…the analysis was attributed to broad intelligence across both public and private sectors. Nowhere in the report does it say that the government conducted its own computer forensics on the DNC servers.”
Regardless, Buzzfeed reports that an intelligence official said the FBI has relied on Crowdstrike’s information. “CrowdStrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate,” the official reportedly said.