Evidence that undermines the “election hack” narrative should get more attention.
The VIPS theory relies on forensic findings by independent researchers who go by the pseudonyms “Forensicator” and “Adam Carter.” The former found that 1,976 MB of Guccifer’s files were copied from a DNC server on July 5 in just 87 seconds, implying a transfer rate of 22.6 megabytes per second — or, converted to a measure most people use, about 180 megabits per second, a speed not commonly available from U.S. internet providers.
.. However, as Forensicator has pointed out, the files could have been copied to a thumb drive — something only an insider could have done — at about that speed.
.. Adam Carter, the pseudonym for the other analyst, showed that the content of the Guccifer files was at some point cut and pasted into Microsoft Word templates that used the Russian language.
.. VIPS includes former National Security Agency staffers with considerable technical expertise, such as William Binney, the agency’s former technical director for world geopolitical and military analysis, and Edward Loomis Jr., former technical director for the office of signals processing, as well as other ex-intelligence officers with impressive credentials. That doesn’t, of course, mean the group is right when it finds the expert analysis by Forensicator and Carter persuasive. Another former intelligence professional who has examined it, Scott Ritter, has pointed out that these findings don’t necessarily refute that Guccifer’s material constitute the spoils of a hack.
.. Having been burned so badly on the Iraq intelligence claims in 2003, you would think major U.S. media would apply more journalistic skepticism and rigor here, even if, to the broader public, Russia is a faraway power to which it’s easy to ascribe pretty much any nefarious activity. Instead, these outlets seem more intent on noting Putin’s bare-chested physique and accusing him of further meddling on social networks