But digital forensic evidence is a bit like looking at the Mona Lisa painting through a magnifying glass: If you zoom in on a fingernail, it will look unconvincing, and like something that can be forged easily. Worse, even recognizing it as a fingernail in isolation, and as an authentic one that wasn’t forged, requires technical skills, experience, and time. Once this painstaking analysis is complete, and after zooming back out, only then will the full picture become visible in detail and in color. It’s the same with an intelligence assessment of a complex campaign.
The consequence: additional evidence may convince some skeptics, for instance technically literate civil liberties proponents critical of authority who embrace leaking in principle and don’t want to see it hijacked by Russian covert operators. But additional evidence would not convince the fiercest and loudest critics, and many press reports will likely cover the forthcoming intelligence report with more faux balance, as if the intelligence community and the far-out critics see eye-to-eye on this issue. They don’t. Even if the U.S. Intelligence Community were presenting a live specimen of a 400-pound Russian government hacker right there in the White House briefing room, a good number of people—the president-elect probably among them—would still refuse to accept the evidence. “Clearly not good enough,” they would say, “This could be doctored!” Already today the attribution discussion is less and less about forensic evidence and intelligence estimates; it is driven more and more by ideology and naked political interest.
The second, sobering insight follows: The Russian intelligence operation has been spectacularly successful so far. The press coverage of the hacked files was relentless—before the election, the coverage divided Democrats; since the election, it is dividing Republicans.
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