Why It's Unlikely A "Hacker" Was Responsible For the Alleged Sinanyan Comments*

*4/19/13 UPDATE: Zareh Sinanyan Has Finally Admitted Responsibility For Online Comments

If City Council candidate Zareh Sinanyan chooses to deny the allegations that he made dozens of obscene Youtube comments in front of the City Council on Tuesday night (PDF) rather than apologizing and moving forward with his campaign, I'm guessing he will claim some variation on "I was hacked!"

There are two possible scenarios that explain the events we’ve seen. One in which Sinanyan is responsible for the comments, and one in which a supposed “hacker” is responsible.

A commenter named D. Johnson on the Glendale News-Press article makes a concise case against a supposed “hack” quite nicely, that I've expanded on:

Five years ago, someone named "Zareh Sinanyan" posted a comment on YouTube that said, among other things, "your entire family is composed of whores and ****suckers." In that same 5-year-old comment thread on YouTube, that same "Zareh Sinanyan" also said "I'm a business litigator" 

Now, there are only a few possibilities here: 

1. The comment was posted 5 years ago by the same Zareh Sinanyan now running for Glendale City Council 

2. The comment was posted 5 years ago by some other Zareh Sinanyan, not the person currently running for Glendale City Council, but also a business litigator 

3. The comment was posted 5 years ago by some nasty person using the name "Zareh Sinanyan", knowing that Zareh Sinanyan would be a political candidate sometime in the future, and that the comment could then be used to smear him 

4. The comment was posted anonymously 5 years ago under a pseudonym that due to Google+ and YouTube interaction later became linked to the real name of Zareh Sinanyan 

The simple fact is that makes #4 by far the most likely option is that the comment was posted to YouTube 5 years ago - unless you believe that YouTube, which is owned by Google, the world's largest and most secure website, is in on the "conspiracy." 

Additional evidence against the possibility of a nasty person impersonating Mr. Sinanyan is that somehow, that person would need to:

• fluidly write hundreds of comments in a mix Russian, Armenian and English, the exact languages Mr. Sinanyan speaks
• in addition to the vulgar and racist posts; have the literary imagination to write dozens of comments about Armenian and Russian history, completely banal posts (“Wow, ribeye steak in Yerevan!”), and otherwise maintain a lively online life with lots of back and forth comments on dozens of threads over a half a decade period
• somehow get into Mr. Sinanyan’s Google account to merge it with the Youtube account WITHOUT Mr. Sinanyan knowing or realizing the two had been merged, since Mr. Sinanyan apparently continued to use the Google account normally after the two were merged
• break into Mr. Sinanyan’s absolutely 100% verified Facebook account in September to leave a comment referring to “Mongol Tatars,” a favorite enemy of the Youtube persona
• change the username of the Youtube account from “Zareh Sinanyan” to “Thomas Paine” and then “Lightbulb”
• Change the name used on the Google account linked to the Youtube account to "Thomas Paine," and send an official campaign related e-mail via Sinanyan’s personal e-mail address to the Glendale Association of Realtors that linked Sinanyan’s e-mail address to the renamed “Thomas Paine” account

More things that don't make sense if an impostor was involved:

Why would any impersonator conduct a thorough cover-up of the damaging posts right after the e-mail with the tip had been circulated but before most of the public was aware of the allegations?

Would an impostor really go to the trouble of creating FIVE YEARS worth of fake posts, then not leave them up online for the world to see? Wouldn’t they leave them up instead of hoping local media could put the pieces together using incomplete cached versions of the comments? I’ve found dozens of very nasty posts in the cached versions of the comments, but those who viewed the original e-mail and looked through the full set of comments made by the Youtube account before the cover-up saw many, many more incriminating posts that were deleted and not cached.

Which explanation is most likely to be true?

As with any event that one does not personally witness, you can only verify information to a degree of probability based on the evidence available. And every single piece of publicly available evidence in this matter thus far points to a high probability that Mr. Sinanyan was responsible for the content of the posts and attempted to hide his connection to the Youtube and Google account when knowledge of the obscene comments became public.

previously:

• Zareh Sinanyan's Infamous Alleged Youtube Comments
• Adam Schiff Withdraws Sinanyan Glendale City Council Endorsement in Light of Allegations
• Sinanyan Scandal Updates & Detailed Responses to His Defenders

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Sinanyan Scandal Updates & Detailed Responses to His Defenders*

*4/19/13 UPDATE: Zareh Sinanyan Has Finally Admitted Responsibility For Online Comments

In the wake of the scandal that broke here Tuesday linking City Council candidate Zareh Sinanyan to a large volume of obscene comments on various websites, additional prominent political leaders have rescinded their earlier support. In addition to Congressman Adam Schiff, Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel, and Paul Krekorian have also all retracted their endorsements. To Sinanyan’s credit, he has promptly removed references to them from his official campaign website. The ongoing scandal has since been covered in the Daily News, Glendale News-Press, LA Observed and LAist.

Most importantly, it was covered in this agenda item for this Tuesday’s City Council meeting (PDF), where the City Council will inquire into whether Mr. Sinanyan authored the comments. Mr. Sinanyan serves as a commissioner at the pleasure of the council, so if a majority of the council believes it’s likely he is responsible for the comments and that it is damaging to the reputation of the city to have him continue as a Community Block Grant commissioner, they are free to remove him from his appointed position.

Among Zareh supporters in the comment section on my previous posts (first post, second post) there there have been five main defenses against the allegations. As it is impractical for me to respond to each individual comment, here are the main defenses I've heard and a detailed response to each one.

**warning: many of the image links below contain offensive content**

1. It was a smear campaign by an anonymous source/shady political operative/Turkish Intelligence!

While I’m sure Mr. Sinanyan does have political enemies, and the timing is potentially damaging to his City Council campaign, these observations do nothing to challenge the volume of third-party evidence that shows that he is very likely to have said was is alleged to have said. As I documented in my previous posts, I did not publish any information from the original anonymous e-mail that was sent to many in Glendale without investigating it myself, verifying the links between the account that made the comments and Sinanyan's confirmed accounts and describing my process. The Glendale News-Press also investigated the claims and came to similar conclusions. Every bit of information alleged in the initial anonymous e-mail was verifiable by third party sources with no stake in the election, including the cached files of several of the world’s largest and most secure tech companies. The technical skills required to uncover the comments initially weren’t hacker-level ninjitsu - anyone who has ever used a search engine could find them just as easily by simply typing the candidate’s name into Google or Yahoo. It would be a smear campaign against Mr. Sinanyan if the allegations weren’t true, but as one commenter noted, using someone’s racist and vulgar statements to portray them as being racist and vulgar isn’t a smear; it’s accountability.

And yes, I did get a comment blaming it on Turkish Intelligence, as well as numerous anonymous comments decrying the anonymity of the original tip with no apparent sense of irony.

2. He was only attacking people who were denying the Armenian Genocide.

This was claimed by the highly partisan Asbarez Armenian newspaper. They are correct that some posts were on videos and comment threads that discussed the Armenian genocide, in which the Ottoman Turks are well documented to have killed 1.5 million Armenians between 1915-1920; but many of the disturbing posts were on videos and topics unrelated to the horror of the genocide, including MMA videos.

3. The comments weren’t really so bad! Who hasn’t gotten into a heated argument online?

I certainly have. But not like this, this or this. Especially disturbing are the numerous posts referring to Muslims as “raghead cockroaches” and wishing them death. I have many, many more examples of these comments that will singe your hair. The sheer volume and inventiveness of obscenity is stunning. If you think this is acceptable language for a candidate for higher office, so be it, but it would be far-fetched for Mr. Sinanyan to claim that he didn’t know that city commissioners and candidates for elected office would be held to a higher standard of behavior than the average Youtube flame-war participant.

4. Perhaps Sinanyan wrote the comments, but an anonymous hacker got into his home computer and made them public! That hacker should be prosecuted!

The allegations in the initial anonymous e-mail had nothing to do with linking the comments to a specific computer or IP address; the allegations are linked to Sinanyan via his Google account, which he could log into from any computer he had access to. The comments themselves were openly published online and didn’t require any “hacking” to view - they were all freely visible under Mr. Sinanyan’s name. Additionally, the connections shown between the Youtube account and the Google account were all made using information that Mr. Sinanyan himself had chosen to make public in various online profiles, no special access or “hacking” required.

5. He didn’t write the comments at all - he was hacked by an impostor!

This is the big argument that keeps coming up, so I've written a post with an analysis of why a "hack" of the necessary scope and duration is highly unlikely.

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Adam Schiff Withdraws Sinanyan Glendale City Council Endorsement in Light of Allegations*

*4/19/13 UPDATE: Zareh Sinanyan Has Finally Admitted Responsibility For Online Comments

Congressman Adam Schiff has officially withdrawn his support for Glendale City Council candidate Zareh Sinanyan in light of the allegations that became public at Tuesday's City Council meeting.


From Patrick Boland, Communications Director for Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Burbank):

"When this issue was brought to his attention on Tuesday, Congressman Schiff immediately directed his staff to inform the Sinanyan campaign that he was withdrawing his endorsement.  In the letter to the Sinanyan campaign from his campaign, Schiff confirmed that he could not support anyone who made such deeply offensive and bigoted statements."

The letter sent by Congressman's staff is below:

"It has been alleged that Mr. Sinanyan may have posted deeply offensive and bigoted  messages on websites and social media platforms.  We certainly hope that this is not the case, and that he has no connection to the vile comments that are being attributed to him. 

Until this matter is resolved, however, Mr. Schiff must withdraw his endorsement and ask that his name not be included on any campaign materials.  The comments alleged are deeply disturbing and not befitting any member of the public let alone one seeking to  represent the city on an elected body." 

Here's some background on the allegations that I published on Tuesday: I received a tip about the comments on Monday morning via an anonymous e-mail. I know others in Glendale received the same e-mail, and I've had several people contact me this week (before I published my post) asking if I knew about the alleged comments. So I didn't uncover the comments per se, though I was the first person to publish them besides Sinanyan himself. When I first received the e-mail, I checked and verified that all of the comments were online from the account linked to Sinanyan's name, that all of the timestamps were correct (since some of the posts go back five years), and I verified that all of the information in the screen captures I received was accurate and not Photoshopped. And indeed, all of the comments were publicly available online at Youtube at that time, with that time stamp information, under the name Zareh Sinanyan. I also looked at other comments made by the same account, and there were dozens, maybe hundreds of additional comments, all similarly vulgar. By Monday afternoon the comments started disappearing from YouTube, presumably as Sinanyan got word that people were poking around his comment history. Also, I believe that for most of the account's history, it was an "anonymous" account -- but that Sinanyan unwisely chose to link his YouTube account to his Google Plus account, which retroactively revealed him as the author of the formerly anonymous comments.

I also would also like to highlight criticism of the allegations from the lively comment section under the initial post:

Anonymous commented: 

"I can't believe the amount of people who have given these accusations any real merit. What if I took your name and doctored comments on your behalf, passing them out to your neighbors saying you're a thief? What would you do?
These are a fool's attempt to discredit Zareh, who is the right choice for this city."

To address the very valid concerns of this commenter:

I fully agree with you that it would be terrible if someone doctored comments to incriminate a candidate. I am very concerned about that very possibility when dealing with anonymously sourced information. As a result, I took extensive steps to verify myself that all of the comments in the screen captures I received were accurate with what had been published online over a period of many years. In doing so, I concluded that the images I received were not doctored, that the comments were easily findable, on many sites, and part of a much larger pattern of vitriolic comments going back years. Most of the trail of comments is still online in some form. Googling "Zareh Sinanyan" and various obscenities yields many results on many sites over a long period of time. 

Additionally, I checked Sinanyan's Google+ profile (The name has since been rather preposterously changed to "Thomas Paine," but the original name is still visible in Google searches. The Youtube account is part of his Google+ Profile), and it lists his Google + connections as M Toumajan, Hovanes Manucharyan, Sarkis Jacob Babachanian, and Stepan Boyajian. I checked Sinanyan's Facebook profile -- the completely official profile through which he comments on his campaign -- and every single one of those people is Facebook friends with Zareh through his official Facebook account.

This proved to me that it was overwhelmingly likely that the Youtube account belonged to the same Zareh Sinanyan and not an impostor or someone with the same name. 

respectfully, 

Scott Lowe
Tropico Station

The Sinanyan campaign has not addressed the matter publicly. The Glendale City Council will be inquiring into the matter at next Tuesday's council meeting.

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