Factbase is another excellent searchable archive of Trump-related information—not just tweets and deleted tweets, but also includes news interviews, video transcripts, White House statements, financial disclosures, and other documents. Most are tagged with keywords, persons/places/entities, and even sentiment analysis on some video segments. It also provides common associated topics with search query results.
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Updated with an important resource that just launched today.
Committee to Investigate Russia: a interactive website to understand Russia’s interference in our democracy
Today, the Committee to Investigate Russia was launched by most notably former DNI James Clapper. It’s a non-partisan, non-profit effort designed to help Americans understand and recognize the scope and scale of Russia’s continuing attacks on our democracy.
Advisory Board:
James Clapper - Former Director of National Intelligence
Max Boot - Military Historian and Foreign Policy Analyst
Norman Ornstein - American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar
Rob Reiner - Director, Actor, and Activist
Charles Sykes - Conservative Commentator
Update 10/8: CIR has added quite a few notable people to its advisory board since its launch.
Evelyn Farkas - Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia
General Michael Hayden - Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency
Michael Morell - Former Acting Director of the CIA
Leon Panetta - Former Secretary of Defense, Former Director of the CIA, and Former White House Chief of Staff
Clint Watts - Foreign Policy Research Institute Fellow, Former FBI Agent and co-creator of Hamilton 68
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Updated with some great resources I’ve come across in the past few weeks.
CNN: Tracking the Russia Investigation: This interactive tracks the publicly known developments of the sprawling investigations into Trump and Russia – and probably represents a slice of what has actually taken place.
CNN’s interactive timeline is excellent – it is in timeline format and you can filter by “actor” (could be a person, org, etc) and type of development (charges, warrants, subpoenas, testimony and documents).
WaPo Trump/Russia Timeline: What Trump was saying about Russia and Putin — and what the campaign was doing
Washington Post created an interactive timeline from multiple resources that overlays three components in a chronological format.
- What Trump has said about Putin
- What Trump said about Russian interference in the election
- What is happening in the Trump/Russia orbit
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Check out @Kasparov63 . Garry Kasparov - former Soviet/world chess champion. Now a champion for human rights everywhere and very knowledgeable about Putin and what he is up to.
Wired article on the Democratic response to the Nunes memo.
Still no movement from the President to protect the US power grid from Russian hackers. However, I did find this quote reassuring.
Can Americans feel confident the U.S. grid is protected? “Very much so,” Aaronson said. “The electric power sector takes a lot of different measures to protect our systems.” That includes operating power plants without digital controls, just like in the old days, he said.
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(per the NPR interview) Geez, did anyone find that very reassuring? - me either. I worked for a Biotech firm for 12 years but prior to that I worked for an “automated controls engineering firm” they made sensors and controls for automated systems. The main customers were any place needing to automate functions; could be the postal service, UPS, car makers and utilities. The big push at the time was ‘smart controls’ and open systems, PLC with communication of smart nodes on the factory floor, etc. Since this was around 96-2001 and the internet was the new shiny thing, most of the engineers were thinking how great it would be to control operations from a portable device without being on site just before mobile phones became common. I am sure any ideas of security needs was more than just passwords - hopefully. But if so many ransomware frauds have been due to old operating systems and poor passwords like using old Windows systems what is to say this isn’t also happening at utility systems… and voting systems?
Of course, my other big paranoid thoughts are that there are at least a few GOP House members in office that also have Russian PAC money that they want to remain hidden and are protecting their own asses with their complicit silence or their completely horrid accusations of the FBI and the DOJ.
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Bingo, you found the problem. Could you please explain PLC’s for the folks who don’t know what they are and how they are used?
PLC or Programmable Logic Controller is kind of like a computer as a desktop user might know it but it is what is used industrially to get factory automation to ‘happen’. Allen Bradley is probably the largest manufacturer although there are many others and these units were used and designed prior to any thoughts of an internet threat. Most factor automation from the 1990 and before are 'open source in this case just getting to it - even via an online PC is enough to interfere with it. This is how we 'suxneted" Iran, fyi.
Smart nodes are part of a wiring network you might find industrially that are the hamburger helper to the PLC adding ‘switching’ mechanisms that of a higher order than a simple relay yet are not a full PLC or computer. Most of these work with programs like Profibus and other automated factory programs.
Does this help or is it more confusing?
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@Maxfacter I think it’s still confusing. I’m wondering how we could break this down even more? Also, I wanted to add the alert Homeland Security posted on this issue. It contains a lot of code and a few screen shots of the affected systems. 
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No collusion, my ass!
There’s actually lots of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion - Vox
The number of contacts between the Trump team and Russia-linked operatives to 76, and 23 of these contacts were meetings (including Skype calls.) None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.
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Explaining PLC’s isn’t easy, bravo for tackling this. It might help to add what type of control systems were primarily used prior to PLC’s. I worked around manufacturing for years but not in a technical role and saw engineers implement changes evolving to PLC’s when process systems were changed.
Hey Mr. Sept. (pls provide centerfold - hahah) - actually, PLCs are very old tech but kind of a work-horse in the plug and play factory/industrial model. I would say in the 1990s they weren’t new but common. I do not know when they were introduced but I would think this was a tech in growth/adapting in the same time as 286-386 PCs - 1987-89? I am not an engineer - would have to google or ask others I know from work long ago. In the later 90s there was a lot of programing in ‘nodes’ little smart boxes in wiring to other controls - whether in processing or factory mode. The thing is “up stream” back in the control room in power plant it was pretty easy to access and direct. There are a lot of common programs out there back in that time period for factory control - Profibus, etc. I think hand held controllers (think VERY early cell phone like app) was the next “thing”. There was a lot of open source and wouldn’t it be great you didn’t have to walk a mile to get “sparky” to do what you could do away from the site. SO with that in mind and that the next and the next layer was added… it really isn’t that hard to think that Russian hackers had not figure out how to fuck with us… especially on the electrical grid. And more so on the net. I sound all paranoid like - ah because I am.
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It’s my understanding PLC’s evolved to today’s higher level of control systems used in manufacturing today. True?
An awesome interactive info-graphic that has just been updated. I like the “filter option” at the bottom of the page. For example, you can display just the Mueller Team, or just the people who have been indicted, or just those related to the Steele Dossier, etc. It’s a fun page to explore as well as being a great resource.
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These guys do try to keep their facts straight…good resource to review the constant flow of information coming in.
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I like that one and the one on Bill Moyers from a Prof from Northwestern who had no idea there would be this much to see, review… like here smile.
Selective recap on what areas Mueller is looking at…another connect-the-dots document with links.
They link to a lot of articles…
The premise was a bit hard to follow but the new piece for me was the illegality of using foreign resources in a U.S. election.
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