Conspiracy Theory? FBI Detects Hacked Voter Registration Databases in AZ and IL
From Reuters:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has found breaches in Illinois and Arizona's voter registration databases and is urging states to increase computer security ahead of the November presidential election, according to a U.S. official familiar with the probe.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday that investigators were also seeking evidence of whether other states may have been targeted.
It was a conspiracy theory when Bernie Sanders' supporters claimed they were wrongfully purged from voter registration data bases, or had their registrations changed during the primary. But hey, now that Huillary Clinton is safely ensconced as the Democratic nominee, suddenly the FBI finds evidence that voter registration databases in AZ and Illinois, two critical states that Sanders needed to win, were the victim of hackers, and other states may have been victimized in this way as well. Of course, the official spin, despite the lack of any real evidence, is that these "unsophisticated" and "exploratory" attacks were by the Russians.
What a shock. Those Russians sure have been busy is all I have to say.
Comments
Those Democrats are spouting CT!
--- Republicans.
The treatment of this assault on democracy by the parties and the media, as merely some political kerfluffle, is an ugly demonstration of just how far we have sunk into the mud. Election Justice USA has it right; Democracy Lost.
P.S.; so, is TOP going to apologize for all those CT bans now? Heh.
Democracy Lost sounds familiar...
But we never had the former here.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
No, they aren't going to apologize for the CT bans
but they will write a Breaking News This Is Bad diary and include this statement.
Oh, the hypocrisy.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/29/1564877/-BREAKING-No-hyperbole...
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
The comments in that diary are hysterical, as in hysteria.
The comments are hysterical, not as in funny, but as being born out of fear, terror, and hysteria. Is this mass self fed hysteria what fed the HUAC for so long?
I believe TOP sees itself as a "reality based community". That dairy forever puts that self congratulatory idea into the trash bin.
I tried to find one of two voices of reason, and found one that called it out as CT. The poster put up several links that actually showed how it would be impossible to hack a national presidential election. Here are several links that show the impossibility of such an undertaking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/03/one-reason-to-...
http://fortune.com/2016/08/09/voting-machines-hackers/
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-presidential-election-process-...
But logic and rationality don't matter anymore. Hillary democrats are like the mob in Holy Grail who found out a witch. They have made the nexus which always happens between the evil doer Putin and Russians as a people--between a leader and a people. Now the ordinary Russians perfectly reflect the evil doer Putin. An entire nation is now marginalized and demonized. The rest of that story is too often etched in history.
I am afraid the hysteria will grow, and with it all the ugliness.
that level of hysteria
has been out there on the right for some time now. once you start moving in that direction and accept less rationality, why would you not expect that centralist liberals are now subject to the same forces? It starts with the first sets of lies you convince yourself of, then you spin an entire alternate universe out those first threads.
Hacking isn't beyond the realm of possibility.
The fault I find is the attribution to Russia. That sounds like conspiracy theory to me. But maybe it is just propaganda. We seem to need Russia as an enemy again.
I am a retired programmer/analyst. There are many points of vulnerability in any electronic voting method. If we simply MUST have electronic voting, it should be law that the code is open source. Not that open source prevents hacking, but we saw in the California primary that in all open source precincts Sanders won, whereas in all closed source precincts, Hillary won. The probability of that being coincidental is fairly low.
Hackers put date stamps on hacks?
Not unless they want to be found is my bet. Finds of invasions now are probably the DNC. But we will never know.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
So Russians...
Are now hacking voter rolls in AZ and IL - to purge voter registrations ... to support Hillary??? I'm so confused.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
Russians are tricky devils.
They make those matryoshka dolls where opening an outer doll reveals an inner doll over and over. As Churchill said, "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
That being the case, I've taken to citing Russia as the reason for my actions any time I do something wrong. Speeding in my car? The Russians made me do it. Cut in line at the grocery store? Russian vodka. Posted a nasty comment online? Russians hacked my account.
That's pretty handy...
I'm going to steal it. Why? Russia.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
So, that must mean
that the entire state and national DNC leadership must be Russian.
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
Or...
The Russians are supporting Hillary and the reason why they released the DNC e-mails before the convention is because she was late on a payment. Or something.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
Yep:
A noun, a verb and
9/11The Rooskies!!1!Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
The Red Menace
Everything old is new again. It's time (again) to build your very own nuclear bomb fallout shelter, right in your newly built surburban home. Maybe we should all also stock up on poodle skirts, crinolines, mink stoles, unisex saddle shoes and zoot suits.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w26AZfdm700]
Well look at the bright side,
at least we don't need to fear those nasty Communists anymore. Nowadays it's just Russians in general trying to attack our freedoms. In Arizona even! Man that Putin he is one sneaky dude for sure. No one is safe from him. Next thing you know he'll be trying to creep into Alaska.
native
some would say
he has already. guy gets around.
Putin solves nearly every problem.
The problems of our election system now boil down to Putin. No longer is big money an issue, voter suppression, corporate influence, bad policy, mass propaganda, etc. Nope, it has all been reduced to
the Red ScarePutin. Every ill and discord in our society can now be reduced to the Russians--many many Americans believed the Civil Rights movement was communist inspired. Name a problem, and instanta-explanation: Putin. The Europeans are already way head of this. Just a surface level daily reading of the European press and the establishment powers in Europe blames all social ills on Putin. Putin has "weaponized" everything imaginable in Western Europe.On the surface, this could be fun. But problem is, people act on propaganda. The the reaction of West European governments has been aggressive military moves against Russia. Such as putting up German soldiers in Lithuania. I don't think Americans understand how deeply that gesture is rooted in invoking German Nazism.
Just as a side note. While Americans of many stripes saw the 50's and 60's Civil Rights movement as communist inspired, MLK was considered a hero in Soviet presses/TV. Russians who I know who lived during that era said he was portrayed as very a popular liberator of African Americans. And I do remember seeing clips from popular Sunday talk shows during the 60's that saw MLK and the entire Civil Rights movement with utter suspicion and arrogance.
That's a relief
I was starting to get confused who I was supposed to be scared of.
Fear Russia and all non white nations. Hope that helps.
LOL. Hey no problema.
I used to have ex-inlaws were who were rather rabid born again Christians. Everything that went haywire they sincerely blamed Satan. I remember them sitting down with a relative who had the flu who said they must have done something wrong which allowed Satan to entire him and give him the flu. I never heard that theory on the transmission of illness before.
I know a nun who got appendicitis from Satan, costing her
order money.
Not a Catholic nun, though.
Looks like all this is being used as an excuse
to put our elections under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security.
A side benefit of people rigging the election for Hillary is that it can be used as an excuse to put our elections under direct control of the police state.
[video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdx4xovh61s]
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Great video. (nm)
I guess Muslims can stop being jealous of our freedoms.
/sarcasm
I have to confess ...
... I have yet to make it through the full length of even one Debbie video, and I only made it about 5 minutes into this one.
But I've long thought that election mechanisms, especially ones for Federal office, should be a Federal standard and not left to the states. Seems to me there's much more room for corruption when more people have their hands on the machinery, as has amply been shown over decades.
Not for my money--
I'd say it's far easier to corrupt a mechanism when it's centralized and run from one place. Then, you only have to corrupt one small set of people.
That said, the debate isn't really over states-vs-feds; just b/c you put it under control of the federal government doesn't mean you have to put it under the control of the Department of Fucking Homeland Security. The point is that it's being put under control of the portion of our government that rides herd, both covertly and overtly, on the American people.
Why don't we just put it under the CIA's control. After all, if the Russkies are coming for our elections, it's the CIA that's supposed to deal with cyberattacks from Bad Foreign Actors, isn't it? Or is that the NSA? Let's have a joint NSA/CIA committee run our election process. George H.W. Bush can head the committee--he used to run the CIA. James Baker can be there too, in some sort of lame gesture towards good governance.
None of this ire is meant as directed toward you. This move just disgusts the hell out of me.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
simplifying systems and standardizing processes
make them more resilient. Single sets of standards are actually good.
I think you're making an unwarranted leap of non-faith here. Elections themselves are not proposed to be run by Homeland. It's being used as a mechanism to get the state's electoral people up to speed with best practice security processes.
AFAIK. For the life of me, I just can't get through Debbie's meandering delivery. She may have something good to say, but my mind is already off doing other things by the time she gets there.
YMMV. And all that.
This is what I'm talking about:
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/290525-dhs-weighs-classifyin...
In an evil way, it's almost impressive: using the election fraud that just happened to justify handing oversight of the electoral process over to DHS where, I'm sure, their concerns for "cybersecurity" will be ample justification for any fiddling around with the data they want to do.
You're right. I don't trust DHS. I don't trust them as far as I could throw them.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
sure, that could happen ...
... but right now, I'm guessing just about anyone including a high schooler next door could get in.
Focus here, ignore the Russians for a moment ...
"
If true, security experts say, it has unnerving implications given the shaky infrastructure underlying most voting technology.
Researchers say digital security guidelines — which are often determined state by state — were not well established when electronic voting systems were being developed. Local electoral authorities often didn’t have the technical know-how to properly protect their machines, they say, so Russian operatives could in theory hack voting machines to color the results red.
"
I'd love to see how things have advanced since 2000. My guess is not faster than the holes that have been opened up. You think the Feds are behind in security, try your local precinct, where no one in local government has changed even one password, ever.
I myself am wondering if the FBI has caught on to the hacking this cycle, while publicly saying "ROOSKIES", they're actually warning party operatives and voting machine companies that they're watching.
Eventually, you're going to have to figure out a way to trust someone. It's hard right now, I know.
If I do, that someone
sure as hell isn't going to be named Department of Homeland Security.
Nor is it likely to be an organization signed into existence by George W Bush, and first run by Tom Ridge.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
My response at this point
is more about the best way to talk about this, in particular with people off site.
When the system is in-secure, anybody can use that as a means to hack in, anybody. When someone does hack in, odds are you will have no idea who really did it. Even if someone suggests they have a clue, you'll never really be sure will you?
In the end, does it really matter who?
Elections are supposed to be sure and bulletproof. A good electoral system should be efficient enough that nobody wants to question. If people get into the habit of wondering about every election, you already know its a crappy process.
My own suspicion, privately, is that multiple groups of people are screwing around with the system at different points along the way. China has already targeted industry, and attacking our electoral process to manufacture doubt is the next logical step.
I wouldn't be surprised if some kid with a huge student loan, a useless degree in Computer Science, and way too much time on his hands is doing it for the lolz.
When people say the system is insecure, they aren't kidding. It isn't even just the structure in my opinion, it's the laws that govern the process across fifty states. Two hundred years of obsolete laws based on ideas drafted back when people would have been really impressed by a light bulb.
It's pretty esoteric for most on Main Street to understand ...
After all, everything has the appearance of working, and after a lot of hand wringing, a result comes out that TPTB seem to agree with. Until or unless something really untoward happens, like there's a real smoking gun/foreign power influence, we'll probably continue on our merry way.
The kids out there, the foreign governments out there, don't forget the voting machine companies themselves. I think it was the CEO of Diebold that promised to deliver the votes for Bush in 2000. It's likely he did, since the code that runs on the machines is a trade secret and not available for review to an outside agent (even state election people). It gets certified as a black box.
What a country. Sometimes the more you know, the less you want to.
So...
The Russians hacked the DNC to attack and undermine HRC... but also were hacking voter registrations to undermine Sanders and ensure that HRC would be the nominee? The only way to make that any kind of logical at all...
is...
FEAR TRUMP!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2jUhnCU9iA]
I've got some half baked theories
1. The FBI is laying cover for Gillary. I the Voting machines decide to backstab her and allow Trump to win she can claim "Russian hackers"
2. It's my theory that if Hillary wins the Democratic Party would cease to exist by 2020, (especially if the post election day scandal is that Hillary only won because the Russians rigged the election for her) while Trump is destroying the Republicans. This would throw the American establishment into chaos, which could benefit the Russians. (for example by preventing Hillary from starting WW3)
On to Biden since 1973
With $$Hillary...
...the Dems can finally have their very own Nixon.
Many have given up on 'the revolution', but perhaps we should be heartened by the fact that both parties are currently seeking to destroy themselves with their POTUS choices.
As a resident of AZ I am shocked only
That the election commission supposedly blocked infiltration. We are assured none of our data was taken unlike IL. Now THAT is shocking -- Why in the world would Putin be interested in AZ? A winter getaway where he can ride horseback shirtless perhaps?--