>>21390734

>On Friday, the Maine Wire — a local right-wing outlet — published undercover audio of a discussion between a “citizen journalist”

>and Peter Mills, the former executive director of the Maine Turnpike Authority andthe brother of the state’s Democrat governor, Janet Mills.

Maine Gov’s Democrat Brother Admits ‘Republicans for Harris’ Organized by Harris Campaign [AUDIO]

Gov. Janet Mills' brother Peter Mills reveals "Republicans for Harris" is one big con

Steve RobinsonBy Steve RobinsonAugust 9, 2024Updated:August 9,

Peter Mills, the former executive director of the Maine Turnpike Authority, emerged this week as one of the top faces of “Republicans for Harris.”

The group mirrored in Maine the sudden emergence of a supposed Republican outpouring of support nationally for far-left Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

But in secretly recorded audio obtained by the Maine Wire from a citizen journalist, Peter Mills revealed that the entire group is astroturf organized by Amy Cookson, a campaign staffer for Vice President Harris’s campaign.

In the recorded audio, Mills, who is the brother of Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and is himself a registered Democrat, explains to a man posing as ‘Tim Dillon’ — an aspiring member of the astroturf group — that it’s being run by Cookson.

[OTHER BROTHER: Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ Brother Helped Transfer Nine-Acre Black Market Cannabis Grow to Chinese National “Mother” Living in Guangdong Province…]

The man was asked to contact Cookson, who has previously worked for Planned Parenthood and some elected Democrats, at an email account ending @kamalaharris.com.

“I think she’s a paid worker,” said Mills. “I think that’s her job here is to find– she’s looking– she has an organization called Republicans for Harris.”

“She’d be the main representative of that group,” he said. “I think it’s a national structure that’s being organized by, obviously, by the Harris campaign.”

Offering an insight into the Harris’ campaigns strategy for Maine’s Second Congressional District, Mills explained on the recorded call that Harris’s paid staffers were “anxious” to find people from northern Maine who could claim to be Republican former Trump supporters that planned to vote for Harris.

“They’re really, really, very anxious to find some Second District Republicans who can say, well, I’ve had enough of this Trump guy, and I’ll probably stay a Republican, but I can’t vote for him,” Mills said. “You know, words of that effect, it would be very influential.”

Mills, who more than a decade ago ran for governor as a Republican, was one of three “Republicans” put forward as the faces of the pro-Harris group organized by Democrats.

Tony Payne, a lobbyist who is listed in the Maine voter file as unaffiliated with either party, was also listed in the press release, along with Roger Katz, a former GOP State Senator who frequently criticized and opposed conservative Republican Gov. Paul LePage.

[RELATED: Maine Wire Sues Janet Mills for Violating Freedom of Access Act…]

Although the “Republicans for Harris” that Cookson managed to drum up aren’t all registered Republicans or even active in Maine politics, the astroturf scheme did serve its purpose thanks to credulous media outlets and a sympathetic left-wing blog.

In an email sent around Thursday, Cookson bragged about the success of the “Republicans for Harris” ploy in getting local media coverage — an email chain that included a list of coverage from dozens of other states for similar efforts.

The email suggests that the Harris campaign centrally orchestrated a series of press releases to make it appears as though a groundswell of prominent Republicans had announced support for Harris.

Instead, at least in Maine, the “Republicans for Harris” group appears to be comprised of paid-lobbyists, registered Democrats, and a Republican ex-politician known mostly for his criticisms of other Republicans.

Apart from putting out press releases to take advantage of gullible news reporters, it’s not clear whether the group of pseudo-Republicans have any further activities planned in Maine.

[RELATED: How the U.S. Treasury Department Helps Chinese Organized Crime Transform American Homes Into Drug Dens…]

Although Mills has previously announced his resignation from the Maine Turnpike Authority, on the call he claims that he is still working for the MTA and is, in fact, on the job during the call.

In other words, the Democratic governor’s Democrat brother was recruiting for the Harris presidential campaign while working at his government job.

Full disclosure: Maine Wire Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson once interned for Peter Mills’ gubernatorial campaign. He regrets the error.)

>>21390783

>OTHER BROTHER: Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ Brother Helped Transfer Nine-Acre Black Market Cannabis Grow to Chinese National “Mother” Living in Guangdong Province…]

>https://www.themainewire.com/2024/08/maine-govs-democrat-brother-admits-republicans-for-harris-organized-by-harris-campaign-audio/

Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ Brother Helped Transfer Nine-Acre Black Market Cannabis Grow to Chinese National “Mother” Living in Guangdong Province: Triad Weed

Paul Mills, the eldest brother of Gov. Janet Mills, says he never met Xiling Ou or Xiaoyu Lu before helping them transfer ownership of a black market cannabis grow

Steve RobinsonBy Steve RobinsonMarch 26, 2024Updated:March 26,

A Chinese national living in the Guangdong Province, China, became the proud owner of a “fixer upper” in Penobscot County in February thanks, in part, to title transfer services provided by Paul H. Mills, the eldest brother of Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D).

Xiling Ou, 44, of Malden, Mass., was the original owner of the ramshackle house and its three-bay garage, along with nine-acres of land, located at 51 Cider Hill in Corinna.

But 13 days after the Penobscot Sheriff’s Department and Homeland Security agents raided an illegal marijuana grow just five miles away, she gifted the property to her mother in Foshan City.

The public records list Paul Mills as the “preparer” of the transfer tax declaration forms and Xiaoyu Lu as the recipient of the gift.

Reached by phone Tuesday, Paul Mills said he was unfamiliar with the specifics of the Feb. 22 transfer; however, he doubted that he would have communicated directly with Lu or Ou before filling out the paperwork.

“I don’t know the purpose of the property which was being devoted to and ordinarily you do not do an analysis of that when you’re asked to do a deed,” Mills said.

According to his recollection, though he was unfamiliar with other details of the transactions, Mills believed that a real estate professional local to the Farmington area asked him to process the transfer on behalf of Lu and Ou.

Mills said he was unaware of local and national reporting about the proliferation of illegal drug trafficking operations throughout rural Maine or their connections to Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations. He was also unaware of ongoing political debates in Maine and other states about prohibiting foreign nationals of adversarial nations from owning property in the U.S.

“That would be news to me,” said Mills.

The attorney denied having any knowledge of the activities taking place at 51 Cider Hill.

According to multiple sources, including Corinna’s code enforcement officer and state electrical records, the property is an unlicensed, illicit marijuana growing operation.

Corinna is among the many municipalities that did not “opt-in” to the state’s legal marijuana program, meaning there should not be any large-scale marijuana grows in the town.

When the Maine Wire visited the property Friday, the smell of cannabis was obvious from the public dirt road.

According to a leaked Department of Homeland Security memo, Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) control and operate more than 270 illegal marijuana cultivation and trafficking facilities throughout Maine, and the proceeds from those illicit activities are used to finance fentanyl trafficking, human trafficking, and other illegal activities.

A Gift for Mother: 51 Cider Hill Road – Corinna

The 44-year-old Xiling Ou purchased and renovated the structures on the nine-acre Corinna property, described by the listing agent as a “fixer upper,” in Feb. 2023.

Photos from the real estate listing, as archived by RedFin, show the house in a dilapidated state prior to Ou’s purchase. According to the real estate site, Ou used Realty of Maine as her agent for the transaction. Municipal property records indicate the house did not have any heating at the time of Ou’s purchase.

Despite Corinna’s policies against large-scale marijuana cultivation, electrical records obtained by the Maine Wire via a Freedom of Access Act request show that Ou’s property was described as a cannabis grow in May 2023 when she applied for a permit to have commercial-grade electricity (i.e. 400-amps or greater) installed. Ou was the point of contact with the state throughout the electrical inspection process, according to the worksite permit.

Multiple sources in Corinna, including Code Enforcement Officer Al Tempesta, confirmed that the location was one of many in Corinna and the surrounding area that have been denied permit approvals or reported to law enforcement as illegal cannabis grows.

Tempesta, along with Penobscot County Electrical Inspector Kern Butler, inspected the property together last year and conducted the plumbing and electrical inspections for the property.

According to Tempesta, the property failed both inspections.

>>21390802

>Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ Brother Helped Transfer Nine-Acre Black Market Cannabis Grow to Chinese National “Mother” Living in Guangdong Province: Triad Weed

>Paul Mills, the eldest brothe

“I went back a second time after they said they were all set,” said Tempesta. “And I said no. It’s not done yet. Failed. And [Ou] said okay, I’ll call you.”

Tempesta never heard back from Ou and never approved the 1190 Form, a form that Central Maine Power (CMP) requires local officials to approve before they will turn on electricity for a customer.

The form certifies to CMP that a property owner has obtained “all local permits and/or approvals” required under state law.

Tempesta refused to sign the 1190 Form.

“It never passed. And the Form 1190 — I did not sign off on that because the application with the state said ‘to grow marijuana’, and Kern [Butler] told me that, and I said, ‘I can’t sign off on that, Corinna did not opt in’,” said Tempesta.

Butler did not respond to inquiries submitted to him through the Maine Electrical Examiners Board.

Despite Tempesta never signing off on the Form 1190, the 51 Cider Hill property had plenty of electricity flowing to the garage — but not the house — on Friday when the Maine Wire used an infrared camera to measure the heat signature emanating from the structures.

According to the infrared measurements, the garage was warmer than the ambient 20 degrees — well above 70 degrees — while the house was around 30 degrees, a clear indicator that power of some kind was flowing into the property.

Infrared images of 51 Cider Hill taken on March 22 registered well above the ambient 22 degrees.

Ou did not respond to multiple different phone calls placed to the phone numbers she supplied during the permitting and inspection process.

Although Ou owned the property outright, she never appears to have made it her primary residence, as the property tax assessment was sent to her address in Malden, Mass. However, when the Maine Wire visited the property, there was a vehicle with Mass. plates in the driveway which, judging by the fresh tracks in recently fallen snow, had arrived at the property within the last 24 hours.

Ou signed the property over to Lu in February, shortly after local law enforcement raided a number of illegal marijuana grows in the area, including a property at 9 St. Albans Road located just five miles as-the-crow-flies from her property.

Lu, the mother, gave the following address, according to the deed filed with Penobscot County: “1501, 3 Dong, Bi Hai Ming Xuan, Hai Tao Ge Xi Yuan, Shunde Bi Gui Yuan, Foshan, GuangDong, China”.

It appears that the address was incompletely filled in on the Maine Real Estate Transfer Tax Declaration Form by someone unfamiliar with how Chinese mailing addresses are written, and who had only the deed to work with.

>>21390802

>>21390804

>>Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ Brother Helped Transfer Nine-Acre Black Market Cannabis Grow to Chinese National “Mother” Living in Guangdong Province: Triad Weed

The full address from the deed corresponds to a massive housing complex in Foshan, Guangdong Province, China, a city of nine million people that sits roughly 70 miles northwest of Hong Kong.

As far back as 2007, Guangdong Province had become a hotbed of activity for triad criminal organizations, which had historically operated out of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

According to a report from the South China Morning Post, an 18-month investigation by the “High People’s Court” found evidence of significant organized criminal activity in the province.

“[O]fficials said there were worrying signs that ‘overseas’ triads had taken root in Guangdong,” the SCMP report said.

Under Maine law, Ou is not obligated to pay any real estate transfer taxes or capital gain taxes because the transfer is categorized as a gift.

Title transfer preparers, like Paul Mills, are not required to do any due diligence on the recipient of the gift transfer — or even prove that the recipient is an actual living person. Nothing in Maine or U.S. law prevents property owners from “gifting” land to individuals supposedly living in China.

As a resident of China, Lu would be far beyond the reach of Maine and U.S. law enforcement should they ever need to contact her in relation to the marijuana operation occuring on her new Penobscot County compound.

Paul Mills, 71, is the founder and managing partner of the Mills & Mills law firm, located at 163 Main Street in Farmington. People familiar with the real estate transfer process in Penobscot County said it would be uncommon for Mills — or any attorney based in Franklin County — to handle title transfers in Corinna.

“Mills & Mills is located in Farmington, ME and serves clients in and around Farmington, West Farmington, Farmington Falls, East Wilton, Temple, Dryden, Wilton, New Sharon, Jay and Franklin County,” the Mills & Mills website states.

When the Maine Wire called Mills & Mills posing as an attorney seeking title services on a property in St. Albans, a town abutting Corinna, Mills declined the job and offered the phone number of a Skowhegan law firm that, he said, “does work in that area.”

t’s unclear how or why Ou, who is a resident in Malden, Mass., would seek or obtain title transfer services from a Franklin County attorney for property in Corinna.

Gov. Mills did not respond to inquiries regarding her brother’s business dealings with the operators of a Chinese-owned illegal marijuana cultivation site in the heart of Maine.

>https://www.themainewire.com/2024/03/maine-gov-janet-mills-brother-helped-transfer-nine-acre-black-market-cannabis-grow-to-chinese-national-mother-living-in-guangdong-province-triad-weed/

>>21390796

>DJT repost

>>21390803

>stale

Potus just retruthed it. Not stale

TT21520

[Profile picture from source site (X Post/Truth Social)] Donald J. Trump / @realDonaldTrump08/11/2024 08:37:29

ID: Not Available

Truth Social: 112943421812014968

Donald J. Trump / @realDonaldTrump 06/28/2024 11:03:47

ID:Not Available

Truth Social: 112694855453165647

Image Name: 6e47fb1e56cd8046.jpg

Filename: 6e47fb1e56cd8046.jpg

Big News!

A GREAT VICTORY FOR JUSTICE - RELEASE THE J6 HOSTAGES, NOW!!!

>>21390734

>>21390783

>>21390802

>>21390804

>>21390810

>Audio: Dem Insider Says ‘Republicans For Harris’ is Scam Created By Kamala’s Campaign

Peter Mills Exposes Republicans for Harris

MaineWire

151 followers

1 day ago

25.2K

Viral

Peter Mills admits that "Republicans for Harris" has been completely orchestrated by the Harris campaign.

>>21390796

>https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112694855453165647

>>21390819

>TT21520

> [Profile picture from source site (X Post/Truth Social)] Donald J. Trump / @realDonaldTrump08/11/2024 08:37:29

>>21390829

>Not seeing that anon.

Don't think I can help then, anon

Think Mirror

Fake News getting exposed

PB

>>21388273 Trump campaign confirms it was hacked after POLITICO received internal documents from "Robert"

Garrett M. Graff

Ideas

10.07.2020 02:02 PM

The Right Way to Cover Hacks and Leaks Before the Election

The media knows it screwed up in 2016 with John Podesta. Here’s how it should do better in the final weeks of the 2020 race.

The media continues to struggle to contextualize the release of stolen documents, without doing the bidding of the thief.​Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

New!

It seems clear, with four years of hindsight, that the American news media owes John Podesta an apology. The political media did almost everything wrong in covering the theft-and-leak of his private emails amid the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign, four years ago today—and yet it’s not at all clear that if confronted by an operation similar to what Russian intelligence executed in targeting the Democratic National Committee via Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, that we’d get it any more right now.

In fact, so-called “hack-and-leaks” remain one of the most difficult stories to confront appropriately. As we enter the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, when each day seems primed for an October surprise, it’s worth thinking deeply about what makes these incidents so pernicious—and how we as a news media and a society might respond more maturely and rationally than in 2016.

From dozens of conversations this year with numerous reporters, editors, researchers, and executives—as well as a tabletop exercise I ran at the Aspen Institute this summer along with Vivian Schiller, the former CEO of National Public Radio, who now directs Aspen’s media and technology program—it’s clear there’s a shared unease about how the news media handled the 2016 Russian attack on the DNC and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. The unease stems not from any partisan preference for or against Hillary Clinton; it has to do with the sense that the US media allowed itself to be the delivery mechanism for a Russian attack on our democracy.

The basic details of the Podesta leak have come into focus thanks to the work of US intelligence and Robert Mueller’s investigation as special counsel: On October 7, 2016, just hours after US intelligence first warned publicly of Russia’s unfolding attack on the presidential election and just 30 minutes after the damaging Access Hollywood tape was released, Wikileaks began publishing thousands of emails stolen earlier that year by Russia intelligence from Podesta’s personal email account.

Ever since the dust settled in November following Trump’s surprise victory, there’s been an uncomfortable sense that the media’s tendency toward horse-race coverage aided and abetted a surprise attack by America’s foremost foreign adversary. The Podesta theft and subsequent leak destabilized the campaign and muddled the line between two controversies—confusing many voters between the leak of the Podesta emails and the questions around Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email at the State Department.

A “hack and leak” is among the most likely attacks the US might face in the closing weeks of the presidential race, and it is also one of the hardest to respond to adequately and effectively. The path forward requires understanding both the lessons of previous attacks and why Donald Trump’s words and actions have made the current landscape particularly vulnerable.

>>21390879

>10.07.2020 02:02 PM

>The Right Way to Cover Hacks and Leaks Before the Election

How We Got to Now

The first major hack-and-leak was met with more amusement than alarm. To this day, North Korea’s 2014 attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment remains misunderstood—a bizarre incident by a bizarre regime, more embarrassing than harmful, protesting a mediocre stoner movie with Seth Rogen and James Franco.

Yet it was actually a deeply destructive landmark attack, as it turns out, for reasons we didn’t realize at the time. Beyond the actual financial and physical damage, the Sony hack burned itself into America’s mind because the hackers hit the softest part of the company’s IT system—emails—and weaponized that information through the use of social media. North Korea got the mainstream media to pick up on those leaks and do the hackers’ bidding, causing reputational and financial damage to the company as Sony’s innermost secrets were spread across the internet for all to read. A stolen spreadsheet of a company’s executive salaries proved irresistible to reporters, who published it quickly; ditto for reporting on executives’ candid comments on colleagues, actors, directors, and other Hollywood luminaries. Particularly in the sped-up news cycles of the digital age, the media had decided that the “newsworthiness” of purloined internal secrets outweighed any ethical dilemmas raised by how that material was obtained. In Sony’s case, there was no sense or allegation of wrongdoing—just hot gossip.

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Unfortunately, that part of Sony’s legacy—so obvious now in hindsight—didn’t sink in with the government and the private sector. America learned the wrong lesson and focused on deterring destructive attackers and hardening network IT systems. Russia, meanwhile, watched the Sony hack and learned the power of stolen information to influence public opinion and undermine confidence in an organization. Russia also saw how American society had been quick to blame and isolate the victim—Sony—rather than unite against the perpetrator of the hack. Russia saw that media organizations—some reputable, some not—would rush to cover such leaks, amplifying the thefts with little self-reflection.

In the years since, we’ve seen similar operations targeting public figures from French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron to Paul Manafort’s daughter, all carried out by foreign adversaries who see such thefts as advancing their own strategic agendas. Yet the media continues to struggle to contextualize the release of stolen documents, without doing the bidding of the thief.

Hack-and-leaks are a particularly difficult and challenging threat to address precisely because they exploit the seams of democracy, as well as long-held norms and instincts of the news media and news organizations themselves. We’ve seen reporting stray from the newsworthy to the salacious, like the Amazon order history of Sony executive Amy Pascal, or the silly, like John Podesta’s risotto recipe. But stolen, leaked documents often contain legitimate news and insights into key decisions or relationships—news which editors and reporters rightfully feel they can’t ignore, regardless of the source.

Even the nearly unthinkable idea of a complete US media boycott and blackout on leak revelations would prove unlikely to stop such revelations from penetrating the US political landscape. Less reliable fringe or partisan websites can publish material that forces more mainstream and reliable organizations to confront stories they’d normally argue don’t rise to their standards. As we’ve seen from QAnon’s Pizzagate to the president’s own Twitter feed to the rumored-and-never-spotted giant antifa bus during the protests in recent weeks, news organizations often now have to wrestle with fringe provocateurs and conspiratorial ideas in a way that they didn’t have to before.

>>21390879

>From dozens of conversations this year with numerous reporters, editors, researchers, and executives—aswell as a tabletop exercise I ran at the Aspen Institute this summeralong with Vivian Schiller, the former CEO of National Public Radio, who now directs Aspen’s media and technology program—it’s clear there’s a shared unease about how the news media handled the 2016 Russian attack on the DNC and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta

>>21390884

Couple that with the press corps’ normal bias toward competitive scoops, speed, and horse-race-style coverage and you had a recipe for trouble. Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who was at the center of much of the 2016 mess as it unfolded, had a stark warning as part of his recent book tour. “The press hasn’t solved any of this,” he told me. “If the [Russian intelligence service] GRU dumped the Biden campaign’s binder of opposition research on Kamala Harris right now, every news organization and publishing house would race to publish it. I think if you reset the players and the facts of 2016, I’m willing to bet it plays out exactly the same way.”

The biggest challenge, though, is that we rarely know the origins and motivations behind such leaks in real time. Intelligence agencies and news organizations are left to speculate about the provenance of the documents and the motives and desired outcomes from the attack, leaving a critical void as to the goals of the perpetrators. We now know how concerted, extensive, and coordinated the Kremlin’s attack on the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign truly was, but none of that detail came out until years after the fact.

Put another way, as one tech platform executive told me, the challenge of an “information influence operation” is that at the start only the adversary knows it’s an operation—a coordinated series of actions that has been thought out and planned in advance. A game of chess has begun, but it might take several moves for the news media or a campaign to notice. By then it may be too late.

News organizations need to recognize that in such maneuvers they are the target of an active information influence operation, either by a foreign adversary or a campaign foe. That requires treating adversarial hack-and-leak operations—or, just as importantly, the possibility of an adversarial hack-and-leak operation—as unique and different from a “normal” whistle-blower like an Edward Snowden or Reality Winner.

What We Might Expect This Fall

The most troubling problem with confronting hack-and-leak operations in 2020 is the special challenge of Donald Trump—a president uniquely inclined to disregard democratic norms, spread unfounded conspiratorial notions, and encourage questions about the legitimacy of the election. Trump’s day-to-day mendacity and encouragement of foreign assistance means that rather than eschewing or condemning such operations, he seems uniquely inclined to wholeheartedly embrace the leak of stolen documents.

>>21390879

>>21390884

>>21390898

Everything we’ve seen over the past five years about Trump’s behavior should warn us that he would embrace aid from foreign adversaries and turn it to his political benefit. He’s said as much, as evidenced by his actions in Ukraine, which led to his impeachment in January seemingly a million news cycles and crises ago, and his calls for China and others to release information that may harm opponent Joe Biden. Similarly, recent evidence shows that attorney general Bill Barr and secretary of state Mike Pompeo both seem willing to use their offices to promote the Trump campaign’s interests. Together, such behaviors represent dangerous, fertile ground for a hack-and-leak operation to take root.

One scenario that seems likely to stymie the best possible intentions of the news media is how a hack-and-leak operation might collide with Donald Trump’s natural instincts to inspire second- and third-order political effects that would be impossible to ignore. Trump, for instance, might weaponize and give oxygen to even a mundane, milquetoast leak to undermine the credibility of the Biden campaign or to raise questions about the legitimacy of the election, distracting and clouding the presidential race with the vaguest of misconduct allegations.

So how should the news media avoid allowing its pages and programs from being turned into weapons? How do we build on the awareness to do a better job of saying “Caveat lector,” let the reader beware?

This summer at the Aspen Institute, Vivian Schiller and I designed and ran a tabletop exercise geared toward an unfolding hack-and-leak operation timed to the second presidential debate in October.

We imagined how the media might respond to an anonymous “DCLeaks”-style website that appears and purportedly contains internal document stolen from Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that was at the center of the impeachment inquiry. It wouldn’t take much effort for such an operation to reveal a few key doctored documents, appearing to allege that perhaps we don’t know the full truth about Hunter Biden’s role with the company. In the days ahead, journalists compete ferociously, racing to confirm the authenticity of the documents and, within a relatively few days, determine that the most damning documents are false—that there’s no concrete evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens at all, just some Sony-style internal Burisma corporate gossip, some financial records, and strategy PowerPoints.

In the meantime, though, the mere existence of the leak ricochets through the right-wing media bubble—it is speculated about on Fox & Friends, OAN, and elevated online by Trump fan sites. The president—who in real life today spent the anniversary of the Podesta leaks tweeting unceasingly about some made-up scandal about “Obamagate”—begins amplifying the claims as evidence that Joe Biden is crooked. He calls for the FBI to investigate. He tweets something reckless and unproven, like “Is Joe Biden biggest criminal of all time?” His supporters break into “Lock him up!” chants at rallies. Before the authenticity of the documents are even disproved by reporters, “senior Justice Department officials” leak that a grand jury has been empaneled to investigate the Biden family, and secretary of state Mike Pompeo and director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe announce that they’re traveling to Ukraine to find out the truth. The Biden campaign hits back, saying that the Trump campaign is acting as a pawn of Russia, weaponizing the US government for the president’s reelection. By that point, even if responsible news organizations decide the underlying documents are forgeries, the story has morphed from an “information operation” to an arguably genuine political controversy.

Through the exercise, which was designed to build upon the work of Stanford researchers Janine Zacharia and Andrew Grotto—who have studied hack-and-leaks and published 10 guidelines for what they call “propaganda reporting”—we tested how various responses by journalists and news media might alter the trajectory of the story.

It’s clear that there’s a better path forward. What we found is that a successful response to a hack-and-leak requires news organizations to blend one thing they’re good at—skepticism—and one thing they’re not—careful, slow deliberation.

We boiled our lessons down tofour C’s: cooperate, contextualize, control, and curate

>>21390879

>>21390884

>>21390898

>>21390904

Cooperate. One of the most critical aspects of confronting a hack-and-leak goes against the instincts of most news organizations: Early cooperation among newsrooms turns out to be key, both between reporters who don’t often work together—say national security or intelligence reporters and the day-to-day political teams—and between competing news organizations. An adversary’s operation is likely to exploit the scoop-hungry nature of both individual reporters and collective newsrooms, each of whom want to be first in breaking big news. But one of the few opportunities news organizations have to avoid becoming pawns is simply to slow down—talk among reporting teams, talk among senior news executives, check with other news organizations about how they’re responding and what additional context they may have gathered or be privy to, double-check documents’ provenance and the attribution of leaked documents with campaigns and the US government, both intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

Contextualize. Reporting responsibly also requires providing readers and viewers the best available context. Just as news organizations have gotten better about confronting Donald Trump’s myriad lies and distortions with “truth sandwiches,” that is, contextualizing his inaccuracies with actual facts, both news organizations and tech platforms should endeavor to preface reporting on hack-and-leaks with the clearest possible attribution. Every article and report on the subject should be framed at the start—ideally even in the headline—as reinforcing the adversarial nature of the news. In the 2016 DNC and John Podesta email leak, for instance, the coverage should have been more explicit: You’re reading this because Vladimir Putin wants you to.

Control. Remember at all times to double-check and critique your own coverage: Is this information actually newsworthy? Just because something is published on the internet doesn’t mean it needs to be published. This sounds so obvious and silly, but past incidents, from Sony to Podesta, have proven how quickly news organizations will stray from publishing arguably legitimate news contained in stolen documents to highlighting the embarrassing or frivolous, how thoughtful analysis can be quickly replaced on deadline by clickbait. Responsible reporting on hack-and-leaks requires the same sensitivity as reporting on any other victim of a crime. Zacharia and Grotto argue that news organizations need to do a better job of sticking to subjects deemed to be in the public interest and refrain from reprinting messages that are solely personal or salacious in nature.

Curate. News organizations also need to think technically about how their own web-savvy instincts can advance an adversary’s attack. How news organizations curate and present their reporting online will help determine how much it’s amplified and how readers and viewers access stolen material. Social media policies should be clear about whether individual reporters can tweet or post links to hacked material. Zacharia and Grotto in their work also called for news organizations to stop linking in news stories to hacked material—a new “norm” also apparently embraced as part of Washington Post editor Marty Baron’s new principles for covering such material as well. (If a news organization does choose to link, Zacharia and Grotto also identified and outlined a key technical detail by the Thoughtful Technology Project's Aviv Ovadya, known as a “no-follow link,” that would allow news organizations to link to hacked material without amplifying it for search engines like Google.)

None of these steps would stop legitimate news stemming from stolen documents from getting appropriate coverage—however, together, these four broad guidelines would help ensure both that news organizations don’t re-victimize the victim of a hack-and-leak operation, while minimizing the ability of a foreign adversary to weaponize America’s free press against its democracy.

Russia learned the wrong lessons from the Sony attack; we should take this chance to learn the right lessons from Russia.

Updated 10/18/2020 10:00 pm ET: This story has been updated to clarify Aviv Ovadya’s work on "no-follow links."

>>21390879

>>21390884

>>21390898

>>21390904

>>21390912

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-right-way-to-cover-hacks-and-leaks-before-the-election/

>>21390879

>Think Mirror

>Fake News getting exposed

>>21390926

Facebook and Twitter took drastic measures to limit the reach of a disputed news story about Hunter Biden

Scrutiny over a New York Post article is reviving accusations of anti-conservative bias at social media companies.

by Shirin Ghaffary

Updated Oct 15, 2020, 2:05 AM EDT

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/14/21516194/hunter-biden-new-york-post-facebook-twitter-removed

>>21390957

Biden campaign lashes out at New York Post

The campaign cast the allegations against Joe and Hunter Biden as “Russian disinformation,” while Republicans complained that social media companies were censoring the story.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lashes-out-new-york-post-429486