Exclusive: Russia carried out a 'stunning' breach of FBI communications system

[Zorro]

Source: Yahoo News

escalating the spy game on U.S. soil.

On Dec. 29, 2016, the Obama administration announced that it was giving nearly three dozen Russian diplomats just 72 hours to leave the United States and was seizing two rural East Coast estates owned by the Russian government. As the Russians burned papers and scrambled to pack their bags, the Kremlin protested the treatment of its diplomats, and denied that those compounds -- sometimes known as the "dachas" -- were anything more than vacation spots for their personnel.

The Obama administration's public rationale for the expulsions and closures -- the harshest U.S. diplomatic reprisals taken against Russia in several decades -- was to retaliate for Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. But there was another critical, and secret, reason why those locations and diplomats were targeted.

Both compounds, and at least some of the expelled diplomats, played key roles in a brazen Russian counterintelligence operation that stretched from the Bay Area to the heart of the nation's capital, according to former U.S. officials. The operation, which targeted FBI communications, hampered the bureau's ability to track Russian spies on U.S. soil at a time of increasing tension with Moscow, forced the FBI and CIA to cease contact with some of their Russian assets, and prompted tighter security procedures at key U.S. national security facilities in the Washington area and elsewhere, according to former U.S. officials. It even raised concerns among some U.S. officials about a Russian mole within the U.S. intelligence community.

"It was a very broad effort to try and penetrate our most sensitive operations," said a former senior CIA official.

Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-russia-carried-out-a-stunning-breach-of-fbi-communications-system-escalating-the-spy-game-on-us-soil-090024212.html

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Dachas me arse-- this orange guy would give them free rooms at the golf course.

[Iliyah]

2. McTurtle?

He refused to allow any investigation.

[Bayard]

4. Back in the day....

When we had a real president who was trying to safeguard this country.

[The_jackalope]

5. This is a horrifying story. The depth of the report indicates how worried the IC is.

The US intelligence community has essentially been blown wide open. While some systems may remain secure, the depth and breadth of the breach means that Russia probably has all the crown jewels they need.

Reading the story was like feeling a depth charge explode deep inside America.

Fuck.

[dalton99a]

6. Trump: "Did you find what you needed? Let me know if I can help with anything else."

[ancianita]

7. This was in the works for a long time. MF45's walk-on just added the dumbfuckery to it.

Bruce Schneier's explanations of the unpublished Snowden documents to the Intelligence committees revealed how long. The hacking community knows how long it's been going on, too.

The US has been hoist by its own petard -- all the shoddy coding Gates got rich from, all the zero days now bought and sold, all the back doors, vulnerable ports bullshit, all global DDoS attacks, shutdowns of other countries' data, malware, ransomware attacks -- serves the tech manufacturers, corporate and intel spy worlds right.

The US built a global network, inserted almost all the spying tools it could, until those got turned against it.

Add to it that too much of its First, Second and Third branches of govt are captured or corrupted, and that mass surveillance is ubiquitous, and 1984 is no longer fiction.

The only cost for the average lied-to, sold-out American, is that the world will never trust the US to do general trade with it again, or trade in tech with it again. Tech trade is already down, along with so much else.

Hoist by its own petard.

[The_jackalope]

8. +1000

Short term gain for long-term pain. The same mindset that brought us climate change - if Mother Nature was a evil, vengeful goddess on the other side...

[CrispyQ]

10. Looking one quarter ahead vs seven generations.

Hard to not to see how fucked we are - as a species, not just a nation.

[CrispyQ]

9. I've stopped watching news. Is this being reported on?

How can any American be okay with this? I remember that photo of the two good ole boys wearing their tee shirts that read, "I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat" & I just want to scream, "Then move to Russia, assholes."