Charging Russian Hackers

In a news piece today , the Wall Street Journal says the US Justice Department is preparing a case against the people who hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) before the national election a year ago.  This is a bad idea, gone completely off the rails.

This is, of course, similar to charging 5 Army officers in China who were hacking US businesses.  The Army officers were not going to be able to travel to the US or to any place with an extradition agreement with the US.  That can be annoying, but not stressful to a person who is hired and helped to hack.  It is part of the business and only a small number of people are ever caught doing this kind of thing.  Of those who are, only a couple have ever been arrested.  Bringing those charges leads to open court presentation of sources and methods used to identify who they were and how the prosecutors knew it was that person.  That knowledge only helped the Chinese not make the same mistakes again.

The Journal article points to a belief that the Russian Intelligence Services are involved and this is part of a campaign by Russia to undermine the US election.    If so, you can bet nobody identified by name can be tried since Russia will never agree to help out.  The names are probably cover names used while they hack.  People have been tried under pseudonyms (hacker handles) and the real person was eventually identified but this is an intelligence agent or a contractor unlikely to give his/her real name.  The Russians deny any involvement in the US elections.

What is Justice thinking?   I’m beginning to think there are still too many Obama appointees still working at the Justice Department.  The previous Director of National Intelligence publicly warned a Senate Committee about his kind of thing, using the analogy that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.  They still brought charges against the Chinese Army officers, who are slightly different because they were stealing proprietary and trade secret information.  I doubt that he wanted to bring charges against the Chinese hackers who go into the security clearances at OPM, the context for his comments.  None have been.

The charges, if brought, might make somebody feel good and show that “we are aggressively pursuing hackers” but neither of those would be worthwhile.  The feel good feeling only lasts until the next hack.  The aggressive pursuit of hackers does not extend to the intelligence services of other countries for a good reason.  Every country spies, to DNI Clapper’s point.