Bruce Schneier: Our Election Systems Must Be Secured If We Want To Stop Foreign Hackers (schneier.com) 204
Okian Warrior writes: Bruce Schneier notes that state actors are hacking our political system computers, intending to influence the results. For example, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia was behind the release of DNC emails before the party convention, and WikiLeaks is promising more leaked dirt on Hillary Clinton. He points out, quite rightly, that the U.S. needs to secure its electronic voting machines, and we need to do it in a hurry lest outside interests hack the results. From the article: "Over the years, more and more states have moved to electronic voting machines and have flirted with internet voting. These systems are insecure and vulnerable to attack. But while computer security experts like me have sounded the alarm for many years, states have largely ignored the threat, and the machine manufacturers have thrown up enough obfuscating babble that election officials are largely mollified. We no longer have time for that. We must ignore the machine manufacturers' spurious claims of security, create tiger teams to test the machines' and systems' resistance to attack, drastically increase their cyber-defenses and take them offline if we can't guarantee their security online."
Better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
For something as important as voting, how about paper only? And another thing, we should really do vote-by-mail nationwide just like Washington state does it.
Re:Better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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Can't blockchain technology work to validate electronic vote authenticity and integrity? It seems this would be a pretty good application for it here, to ensure electronic voting transactions couldn't be altered. Of course, authentication is the real problem, as we don't yet have an ID systems that allows for good public/private crypto yet. And of course, there are too many forces working against actually making sure voters are properly authenticated as citizens, on both sides, but for different reasons.
Re:Better idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Paper is simple, easy to understand, and hard to manipulate on a mass scale. Not so with crypto.
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Pencil is fine. When it comes to counting those paper ballots the security is really easy to set up and pretty fool proof. A paid election official counts the vote and that count is checked and monitored by volunteers of the people seeking to get elected. The process is after all about people and as many people as possible should be involved in the process which is why in most reasonable countries elections are on weekends and are more of a social event. The idea is to put people back into the election pro
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Then whoever controls 51% of the mining, controls the election. I dont see how this is a good idea.
Bitcoin != blockchains. There is no "mining" in a generic blockchain, nor any notion of "51% = control". Those are Bitcoin-specific implementation details.
A blockchain is just a digital ledger that's been encrypted in such a way that you can't alter previous entries without invalidating the entire results. Essentially, it's a way of preventing someone from going back in time and "cooking the books". Think of it as a set of data entries sorted by time, each digitally signed, with the results depending on
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Yeah, good point. You'd want just a validation hash of someone's identity so it couldn't be reversed.
When I say "invalidates the entire results", I don't mean it destroys the blockchain. Rather, I meant that any illicitly modified blockchain can be easily detected as invalid. A better way of putting it is that the electronic ledger is essentially "tamper-proof". It's impossible for anyone to modify any piece of the ledger without invalidating the entire thing - and because the ledger is widely dissemin
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Agreed. Bruce gets this completely wrong. The answer to security in this is not greater and more complex levels of security and secrecy. It is the exact opposite that will create the security we need, namely openness, transparency, and simplicity.
I was also thinking that an "opt-in" secret ballot would be and interesting way to reduce the error bars on the problem. Since many are already rabidly dedicated to a certain party, why not give those brainwashed minions the option of grandstanding for their ov
Re:Better idea (Score:5, Informative)
The secret ballot is the only effective control anyone has come up with to prevent vote selling or exchanging.
If you can't prove how you voted its difficult to sell you vote because nobody will trust you. Similarly its difficult for someone to coerce your vote because they can't control you while you are in the booth, and have only your word you did what you were 'supposed' to.
This is why I am ardently opposed to all these absentee ballot early voting measures. Absentee ballots should be for people who can't be present at the polling place because they are away or infirm only. They should be rejected unless they carry a post mark from at least 20mi from your polling place or are accompanied by a signed statement on pain of prejury that you were physical unable to be present for medical reason (yours or someone you were caring for).
What we should to make sure everyone can vote is split it over two days, and bar exit polling. Additionally make it a holiday and require all employers to make a 1/2 day of vacation available for all employees on one of the two election days, no exceptions.
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bar exit polling
Why on Earth would you do that? How will we tell when an election has been stolen?
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Because if you don't it will only make the west coast problem we have now worse. People will simply stay home if they thing their candidate is to far behind.
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People will simply stay home if they thing their candidate is to far behind.
Ah, you're worried about exit polls being published before the polls close. That shouldn't happen, I agree. But they should be taken, preferably at every polling station.
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But only anonymously, which means you don't allow small numbers of votes to be reported. Only aggregates.
For that matter, I'd be in favor of paper ballots being the official vote, but electronic counts (possibly via a scanner system) being used to collect "exit polls". And interview based exit polls by an independent party being used to validate the official exit polls.
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Well okay being able to censor the publishing of exit poll data would do the trick, but there are probably free speech issues, and preventing leaks in the internet age would be nearly impossible.
Its probably easier legally speaking to pass a law that says you can't exit poll than the other options.
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Re: Better idea (Score:2)
Bruce is not calling for greater complexity and secrecy. He is calling for better security. And in this case that includes the most transparency.
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there is no reason to prefer ink over pencil. In fact, pencil is safer because of the ever present risk of water ingress - graphite marks are impervious to it. Also, at what point do you think a ballot is going to be adjusted? When it goes into the box, that's it, it doesn't see the light of day again until it reaches the counting hall, in the interim the box itself has at least two pairs of eyes on it at ALL TIMES and the chain of custody is rigorously audited for every single box.
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I'd rather use the Russian method.
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not only did the Russians use graphite pencils prior to 1968, pencils were also used on all Mercury and Gemini flights. They were replaced with the Fisher pen for Apollo and subsequent missions while the Russians used grease pencils for a year before ordering a hundred Fisher pens in 1969. And NASA never spent a dime on space pen development, that was all Fisher's work, paid for out of his own pocket. (sources: Snopes, NASA)
Re: Better idea (Score:2)
Re:Better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The fear is that someone might swap out the pen for one with disappearing ink. That's why pencil is used.
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Election fraud could hand Trump the presidency and there will be no way to prove it. That is a fact.
So you are only worried if election fraud helps Trump get elected? What is wrong with you??
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No need to debate. I am against any and all types and forms of election fraud. This is fundamentally because I believe in freedom, fairness, self determination, and the rule of law. I will not support disenfranchising my American brothers and sisters, regardless of whether or not they agree with my political leanings.
Thank you for your candor in admitting you are fundamentally dishonest and are willing to sacrifice our electoral system in support of whichever candidate you support. You really had me go
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I don't disagree with you on the subject of Trump. I also don't think the other offering is any better, just a different flavor of ass if you will. I wanted Bernie. Still do.
Regardless, I won't sacrifice my values and I am not a "the ends justify the means" kind of person. That kind of thinking got us our current choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, among other things, and put Trump in a good position to actually win.
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No conspiracies needed - as PEOPLE want to have easy digital votes.
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No conspiracies are *needed*. I'll agree with that. But there are existing conspiracies that would quickly take advantage of the increased scope for their exercise. Two of the conspiracies exist within the Democratic and the Republican parties, but I have no reason to believe there aren't others.
Re: Better idea (Score:2)
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Sharpies are definitely better. Even better would be Bingo Markers (easier to put a big dot of ink in the right place.)
I *think* the GPs suggestion of No. 2 pencils was a joke. Those are definitely erasable, though there is usually a mark left even if you use an art-gum eraser followed by an India-rubber eraser.
Lack of anonymity (Score:5, Interesting)
Vote-by-mail, or any system where there is no voting booth with official overseer, lacks anonymity.
Voters need the right of keeping their vote secret, but that is not enough. If voters can show who they voted for, they can be intimidated or otherwise induced into voting for someone in particular. They can of course say who they voted for, but they cannot be allowed to prove it to someone else.
That is what the voting booth is for. With generalized vote-by-mail, we would see much more vote buying and small-scale intimidation such as “vote for my stepbrother if you want to keep your job”.
I am surprised that so few people make that connection when the issue arises.
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That is what the voting booth is for. With generalized vote-by-mail, we would see much more vote buying and small-scale intimidation such as “vote for my stepbrother if you want to keep your job”.
Another issue is that the elderly in nursing homes and elsewhere are often "helped" to vote by people who actually mark the ballots according to their own preferences.
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I am surprised that so few people make that connection when the issue arises.
You're surprised that most people are uninformed morons? What planet have you been living on? We have Clinton and Trump as the major party nominees...
Our society is FULL of uninformed morons... The majority of people I speak with have really no idea what they are talking about most of the time, but thanks to the Internet, everyone thinks they are an expert...
This goes both ways, I hear stuff about Clinton and Trump that is wildly untrue, but people parrot what they hear without any critical thinking what
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Your conclusion is wrong, due several factors:
There is no perfect system (nirvana fallacy) and your discussion does not compare the advantages and disadvantages of each system, and instead arrives at a conclusion based on listing disadvantages.
Voters can already be intimidated and provide proof of their vote with MMS, or any of the myriad photo-sharing apps, many of which are now providing end-to-end encryption.
The elimination of the voter being able to prove how they voted through official documentation re
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There is no perfect system (nirvana fallacy) and your discussion does not compare the advantages and disadvantages of each system, and instead arrives at a conclusion based on listing disadvantages. Voters can already be intimidated and provide proof of their vote with MMS, or any of the myriad photo-sharing apps, many of which are now providing end-to-end encryption.
Not the way paper ballots are done here in Norway at least. You pick a ballot, fold it double so your vote is on the inside but they all look identical on the outside. Then you go outside the booth to get a stamp, not really sure why and then put it in the ballot box. You can of course film yourself picking up the "right" ballot, but you won't be allowed to film your actual placing of the vote. Nothing can stop you from putting the ballot back and picking another one before stepping outside.
The elimination of the voter being able to prove how they voted through official documentation removes the voter's ability to perform an audit of their own vote's tabulation. Voters uncovering elections fraud outweighs the very small (non-existent? - provide a link to cases of these claims, ever? Appeal to probability much?) vote-buying instances.
Outright buying
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The elimination of the voter being able to prove how they voted through official documentation removes the voter's ability to perform an audit of their own vote's tabulation. Voters uncovering elections fraud outweighs the very small (non-existent? - provide a link to cases of these claims, ever? Appeal to probability much?) vote-buying instances.
In all sane voting systems I have been so far, this is easily countered by public counting. If you want to be sure that your vote is tabulated correctly, watch the count, which is performed in public.
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The issue of public counting is the same as "publicly available" information, which is that the information is only available to those who go to witness the counting, which means that the real world effectiveness of the audit method approaches zero. Auditing should be as conveniently available as possible to everyone who casts a vote, and an anonymous verification of each vote cast, plus being able to count all votes cast, would provide an incremental improvement in protecting against election fraud.
(It is
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I think it's a good thing that Turkey has a secret ballot, otherwise many more could be in jail by now.
Re:Lack of anonymity (Score:4, Insightful)
You shouldn't be anonymous for the voting process, otherwise you'll get all kinds of shenanigans occurring. People voting twice, ineligible people voting, using someone else's vote, etc. Who you voted for is all that needs to be anonymous.
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Yes, it is known that you went to the voting place, but it is not possible to connect an individual vote with you. Someone willing to buy a vote would have to buy the whole voting precinct and hand out the bribe according to the final result to everyone, even to those who did vote otherwise, because he can't make a difference between the individual voters (or punish the whole voting precinct after the vote goes not acco
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Incidentally, that is how it is done all over Europe. Works well.
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For something as important as voting, how about paper only?
We actually have solutions that are much better than that. This wasn't true a few years ago when the whole voting machine fiasco started, but that discussion provoked a fair amount of research into secure voting systems, and security and cryptography experts have proposed a number of systems that provide verifiable end-to-end integrity. Each voter can verify that his or her vote was actually included correctly in the final count -- but without being able to prove to anyone else how he or she voted (importan
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Paper ballots in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
In Canada we use standardized paper ballots across the nation. They're counted manually in each poll.
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In Canada we use standardized paper ballots across the nation. They're counted manually in each poll.
So what happens with the manually counted votes afterwards . . . ? They get entered into a computer system somewhere.
Back to square one.
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This.
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Well, in Australia certainly not because the ballot count is supervised by scrutineers, and they communicate totals back to there candidates independently from the government. There is no way things could not add up.
(The senate is a different issue, nobody really knows how that is supposed to be counted so the result is a mystery to all.)
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In a case like that, go to court and get the results thrown out and hold a new election. In Canada, the Constitutional requirements for elections is fairly loose, basically there has to be an election after 5 years or so (actually it is 5 Parliaments). Governments can call elections any time though the electorate gets pissed off if there are too many elections so usually every 4 years, and courts can throw out election results forcing a new election.
Elections are also much simpler, for Federal and Provincia
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How exactly is Al Franken in office again?
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Because it's the Year of Al Franken.
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I thought it was the "Al Franken Decade".
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He did win re-election with a significantly improved margin of victory.
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Because, when the paper ballots were counted very carefully, under very close supervision by both major parties and the State of Minnesota, it turned out that a few hundred more people voted for Franken than Coleman. Simple.
The preliminary announcements can easily be a thousand or more votes off, for whatever reasons (there are millions cast, so the initial reports are pretty darn accurate). The Franken election was exceedingly close, and so that shift decided the election, with no hanky-panky involved
Hell, we're not even allowed to verify *WHO* votes (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. We're not allowed to require voters to produce identification.
"But there's no vote fraud!!!!"
HOW THE HELL CAN YOU EVEN KNOW IF THERE'S FRAUD WHEN YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO VERIFY WHO VOTES?!?!
The lack of positive voter identification means US elections don't meet UN standards for free and fair elections [ipu.org].
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HOW THE HELL CAN YOU EVEN KNOW IF THERE'S FRAUD WHEN YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO VERIFY WHO VOTES?!?!
In scenic Camden, New Jersey, lots of folks who have been dead for years still vote. I think that is very liberally progressive from Camden, New Jersey, that they let Zombies vote.
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ID not required in England. Just a verbal confirmation of name and address, which is indelibly checked off a list as you are being passed your ballot and directed to the polling booth. You don't need ID for postal ballots either, which IMO is where the process breaks down since postal voting is a relatively new thing, designed to cater for the lazy and the fraudster. Ever worked in a mail office?? Any idea how many envelopes one person can stick and stamp in an hour??
No, vague DNC spin, not US intelligence agencies (Score:5, Informative)
> For example, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia was behind the release of DNC emails before the party convention
Citation sorely needed. The DNC has suggested it's possible Russia was involved. A small security company called ThreatConnect pointed out that one of the tools used had some Russian language strings, meaning that the attacker used a tool which was written by someone who spoke Russian.
"US intelligence agencies" have announced no conclusions and there is scant evidence that "Russia", the Russian government, was involved.
Re: No, vague DNC spin, not US intelligence agenci (Score:2)
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All the government/intelligence community has said officially is that "they're investigating it."
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The identity of the hacker(s) is not very relevant to Schneier's point. There are players out there who are quite interested in either influencing the results of the elections or just making mischief, and the US is not well-protected against these parties.
Quite probably some of those parties were involved in its creation and deliberately set it up to be unsecure. So then what? They are supposed to put aside their vested interest and allow it to be secured so they can't fuck with it? Hardly likely!
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Sure no evidence, except for the whole stack of damning digital forensics evidence.
What stack of evidence?
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Re: No, vague DNC spin, not US intelligence agenci (Score:2)
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If I knew more about you, I could no doubt construct a completely true narrative that would make you look like an asshole. You can lie with the truth; it just takes more skill. Goebbels wanted to have truth in his propaganda, because it made it more convincing.
It simply isn't true that we're better off the more true statements we know, if the statements have a systemic bias.
Remember when journalists dug for the truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else remember when journalists actually did research like this? (In a free society, digging up "dirt" on politicians is a GOOD thing.) Where is the Watergate reporting crew when we need them?
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What I find funny is everyone is calling Trump a traitor, but no one is going to investigate the illegal handling of campaign contributions the DNC did?
We live in a world where a DNC candidate can take bribes from Russia, lie under oath in Congressional hearings, and illegaly get campaign donations while using her party to prevent her rival from having a chance of winning. She goes free, but anyone who points it out or releases evidence of her wrong doings is the evil person.
I wonder what Clinton has to ac
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What I find funny is everyone is calling Trump a traitor,
Not everyone, half of them, and the other half is calling Hillary a traitor (and both halves are idiotic nincompoops, who haven't the foggiest idea what treason actually is)
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I'm not sure that either counts as a traitor by the definition given in the constitution. Neither, however, seems particularly concerned with honesty, honor, or trustworthiness. Or adhering to their oaths of office.
They have probably both committed major felonies, but neither seems likely to be prosecuted for it. (Clearly inviting a major foreign power to intervene in our elections should be a major crime, but I'm not certain that it is, and, IIUC, it would only be treason if we had declared war against
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From your explanation is sounds like she carefully didn't break the law, but rather exploited flaws in it. I may not be understanding this correctly, though, and yesterday a less explicit post *did* claim that documents in the Wikileaks release *did* show she broke the law. You have caused me to wonder whether that poster was just confused rather than either accurate or lying.
(I'll admit I didn't follow your link. This isn't something that's going to change either how I vote or how I feel about her, but
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But do remember that saying "it breaks the intent of the law" isn't the same as saying "it breaks the law". And the problem with "intent" is that it's no explicitly demonstrable. It like handwaving during a mathematical proof. Perhaps the step is justified and perhaps it isn't. I wasn't there when they passed the law, so for me to claim to know their intent would be inaccurate, but I'm cynical enough to suspect that many who helped write the law were aware of precisely this loophole, and if that were tr
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Reporters don't care if the government makes mistakes or hurts people. The media is on the left. They want more government control of everyone's life, and they want fellow leftists in charge, regardless of how many people get hurt. Telling people about government wrongdoing is only part of their mission when a Republican is in charge. When Democrats are in charge, the media hides government problems and helps run the defense.
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Sanders is very old, very white, and a bit of a crank. The media is not omnipotent. They tell some stories and hide or censor other stories. They don't actually vote for people.
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You don't understand the degrees of right-wingness. I think of Hillary as right wing, but among US politicians she's rather centrist.
Your point about the, neutrality, of the media is, however, quite valid. What people don't seem to understand is that the reporters tend to be leftists, but the editors tend to be slightly right wing, and *their* policies are controlled by the owners to tend to be much more right wing. This produces a stream of news with a variety of different spins applied to the politics,
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Where is the Watergate reporting crew when we need them?
Well, the one suffering from the leaks ( Hillary! ) was a junior lawyer in the Watergate scandal, so she knows all too well what it can do - and it's certain she's asking her friends in the media to NOT do what Woodward and Bernstein did.
false positivity? (Score:2)
" U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia was behind the release of DNC emails "
actually "u.s. intelligence agencies" and nsa director have NOT said anything so positive on the subject, deliberately.
here is clapper himself on hyperventilating media on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
i would be skeptical of conclusions of people making false statements such as the one quoted,without the qualifications.
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This may be because they themselves are the actual culprits and have yet to decide whom if anyone to frame.
It has been harder over the years for me to convince myself that I did not build for the Central Intelligence Agency the prototype (or maybe just a mock-up) of the first internally-mounted peripheral that issued an alternate vote count to be used in U. S. elections.
Subsequently there was an attempt to draw me into some project, but that meeting did not last a full minute, because it began with bragging
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I can only imagine what you could have accomplished by playing along, amassing proof, and revealing it not to those people in the government that perpetrate and participate in these heinous actions, but to the PEOPLE who, ostensibly, still run this country as stated in the Constitution.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hold it against you in any way and I might have reacted the same as you in the same position. It just reinforces the fact that we need more people like Snowden who understand what a gift this coun
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Fifteen years later the CIA tried to recruit me again. It wasn't a long conversation. All they talked about was the immense money I would make as an international business operator. Nothing about helping the country.
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Fifteen years later the CIA tried to recruit me again. It wasn't a long conversation. All they talked about was the immense money I would make as an international business operator. Nothing about helping the country.
John, is that you?
Time and a place (Score:2)
There are situations where technological advances do make life easier, and more accountable, and fairer for all. The democratic process is NOT such a situation. For fuck's sake, can we forget this voting computer bullshit and get back to PAPER ballots and HUMAN counters, which has been time-proven for the last two fucking millennia??
Come to Britain (Score:2)
We've never abolished paper ballot, and our method of execution - until we stopped doing executions - was hanging. In both cases the USA has abandoned the traditional methods to be 'up to date' and 'modern', and as a result made a pig ear of things; no hanging chads in a British election, and no extended, messed up executions with hanging as long as the rope is long enough when the person drops that their neck is broken by the drop. But no, our rebellious ex-colonists think they know better ;)
Secure Voting Systems? (Score:3)
The only thing that most electronic voting systems "secure" is funding; lots and LOTS of money. The voting machines are trivially hackable, provide no possible way to do an audit trail, are quirky and failure prone, and HIDEOUSLY expensive.
We need to go back to paper ballots and require positive identification in order to vote. The only thing that the Democrats are trying to accomplish in opposing voter ID requirements is to encourage voter fraud.
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Your first paragraph reads like a sales blurb for the machines. It does not imply the second paragraph.
But it wasn't the russians who compromised your (Score:4, Insightful)
it wasn't the russians who compromised your elections, it was one of the political parties, by sabotaging itself, and "the russians" (yet to be clear if it was actually the government) are the ones who exposed it. This is a pretty bizarre spin on the actual facts. If anything failed you, it was the FEC and the journalists whose job was to investigate and expose this, the foreign actors actually helped you out.
US Intelligence... (Score:3)
...has said no such thing. James Clapper said. ""I don't think we're quite ready yet to make a call on attribution," Clapper said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. "There are just a few usual suspects out there." Additionally, he said, "We don't know enough to ascribe motivation regardless of who it might have been.""
We need to ELIMINATE electronic voting (Score:2)
There is no security, only obstacles in excess of the value of the successful assault.
Anything secure will need non electronic verification, which will fail if voters don't confirm their ballot. Which they won't.
Paper can't be compromised so easily. Writing the numbers down in a public process could work. . We just have to adopt transparent elections.
And in the words of a brilliant realist, "yeah, like that's gonna happen".
Hacking the DNC was stage 1 (Score:2)
There is no point hacking electronic voting computers if the result is not plausible. That's why anyone rigging the election will not make their candidate win with 99% of the votes. But even a candidate winning with 50.5% of the votes is implausible if he normally gets 5% of the votes. And implausible results trigger investigations, lawsuits... and reelections. That's no good.
So the first step is to rig the campaign so that the result you want will at least seem plausible. You can do that by helping your
That link doesn't say what the article says it (Score:2)
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If they somehow make a third party candidate win...
Re:What is there to protect? (Score:5, Funny)
If they somehow make a third party candidate win...
The whole point of electronic voting is so that its unsecure and the ruling elite can use that unsecurity to ensure they stay in power.
Now that foreign players have entered the fray theres no telling what will happen next. Perhaps the ruling elite in the USA may find themselves unseated in an electronic coup!
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I agree. The article conflates two separate issues: 1) the hacking of voting machines and 2) the leaking of DNC emails. The first is a real problem that needs to be avoided because it is a direct attack on a democracy.
But the hacking of the DNC servers led to more transparency and a more informed public, who were made aware of corruption within the Democratic Party. These are good things. Hopefully future DNC leaders will think twice before acting this way, and if they continue to do these things, hopefully
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Hopefully future DNC leaders will think twice before acting this way, and if they continue to do these things, hopefully there will be more leaks.
They will think twice, but not about changing their actions. They will just become more clandestine and untraceable in their actions. They learned from Nixon (why didn't he just burn the tapes?) to cover their tracks well (disappearing hard drives, wiped severs, documents stolen from the national archives, etc. ad nauseum.)
However, as the American people increasingly choose and support partisan-ism as a surrogate for law, order, and justice the need for our leaders to conceal their misdeeds becomes less r
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Are you implying that law, order, and justice are violated by not being strictly neutral in a nomination race?
If you think this sort of thing doesn't go on all over, you're painfully naive. If you think a political organization can function with full transparency, you're overidealistic. If you let crimes and misdeeds committed by foreigners to influence you during the electoral process, you're unpatriotic.
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The DNC hack was a threat to democracy. It is necessary for political organizations to be able to discuss things in secret. Leaks are always going to show the people whose email is hacked in an unfavorable light, since private expressions are less sanitized than public ones. Since the DNC was hacked in this case, that makes the DNC look bad. If the RNC emails had been hacked, the RNC would doubtless look roughly as bad, perhaps better, perhaps worse.
The DNC is a political organization, and it was pre
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if you're going to ask a security question, who better to ask than a security guy?
Or are you planning on asking him for advice on spinal surgery while you're there?
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Right now, in my state, we've got a simple and reliable method of verification, since the ballots are paper, and are preserved while the election is in doubt. There are random precinct-level recounts, and mandatory recounts for particularly close elections. The ballots are electronically counted and tabulated for the preliminary results, but can be independently checked later. I consider this a simple and reliable method of verification.
More importantly, I can explain this verification to, say, my cou