Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be clear and cold, with a high temperature of eight degrees. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 02m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1791, following ratification by Virginia, the Bill of Rights takes effect. On this day in 1847, Wisconsin convenes its second constitutional convention in Madison.
Worth reading in full —
William Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Cynthia McFadden unsurprisingly report that U.S. Officials: Putin [Was] Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack: “U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News. Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said. Putin’s objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a “vendetta” against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to “split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn’t depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,” the official said.”
Eli Lake suggests that Obama Should Out Putin’s Wealth as Payback for Election Hacking: “Obama should shine a spotlight on the Russian president’s money. Since the 2014 stealth invasion of Ukraine, the CIA and the Treasury Department have devoted more resources to learning the details of Putin’s personal wealth. Obama should declassify dossiers of Putin’s and his inner circle’s fortune: their front companies, their homes, their yachts, their secret bank accounts. If he’s feeling puckish, Obama could tell his administration to anonymously post all that information on random public websites. He could say the CIA was hacked. Oops. Sorry, Vladimir. Our cyber security is a mess right now. U.S. officials have hinted before that they know more than they are saying about Putin’s money. Adam Szubin, the acting undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, told the BBC in January that Putin “supposedly draws a state salary of something like $110,000 a year. That is not an accurate statement of the man’s wealth, and he has long time training and practices in terms of how to mask his actual wealth.” In October, retired Admiral James Stavridis told NBC News: “It’s well known that there’s a great deal of offshore money moved outside of Russia from oligarchs. … It would be very embarrassing if that was revealed, and that would be a proportional response to what we’ve seen.”
Mark Galeotti writes that Putin Is Waging Information Warfare. Here’s How to Fight Back: “Instead of trying to combat each leak directly, the United States government should teach the public to tell when they are being manipulated. Via schools and nongovernmental organizations and public service campaigns, Americans should be taught the basic skills necessary to be savvy media consumers, from how to fact-check news articles to how pictures can lie.Deterrence can also take the form of limiting the Russians’ ability to buy media muscle covertly. Global finance is still gangsters and the spooks’ best friend, allowing them to secretly move and spend money. By joining the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s latest and most stringent Common Reporting Standards agreement for sharing financial information, for example, and by putting pressure on American states with notoriously tough secrecy laws, Washington would make it harder for not just corrupt Russians officials but also Moscow’s security apparatus to spend money at will in America.”
Elizabethn Weise writes that It’s new and it’s bad: Yahoo discloses 1B account breach: “The latest breach is separate from a 500-million-account breach the company disclosed in September of this year. At the time, the 500-million-account breach, which took place in 2014, was believed to be the largest on record. Yahoo (YHOO) shares fell 2.5% after hours.”
Great Big Story tells describes how “[t]hree paralyzed men take up one of sailing’s most grueling challenges—a 750 mile race to Alaska through some of the most treacherous and remote waters on the planet. With no motors allowed and many miles from any help, the competition can be too dangerous for the world’s most fearless sailors. This team is out to prove they have what it takes to finish…”:
Hard Ship | A Really Great Big Story from Great Big Story on Vimeo.