6 ms·

Evidence Shows Hackers Changed Votes in the 2016 Election but No One Admits It

58 points by nhoven 8y ago

kangnkodos 8y ago
Georgia Exit polls: Trump 51%, Clinton 46%, Other 3% Georgia reported results after possible Russian hacking: Trump 51%, Clinton 46%, Other 3% https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/georgia/president https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/georgia... https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/georgia/ https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hellofunk 8y ago
This article is amateur. > And despite what Donald Trump, the Kremlin’s Executive in Charge of U.S. Operations, would have you believe It's hard to take an article seriously when it uses a tone like this (even if there is some truth behind it).
- sbov 8y ago
  I'm amazed you're getting downvoted. I would love to share this article with conservative friends, but potshots like the above make it pointless. If you want to inform anyone other than your own echo chamber, this article is pointless.
- pohl 8y ago
  There once was a time on HN when it was customary to respond to a comment like this with a referral to Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement, suggesting that it might be better to aim higher than "responding to tone."
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    It's not just tone though; it's an obvious journalistic bias. It couldn't possibly be _more_ obvious. It's nonsensical to pretend that doesn't affect the author's credibility.
    - pohl 8y ago
      Someone should probably mention that calling the source biased is just circumstantial ad hominem, which is even lower on the pyramid than responding to tone.
      - EpicEng 8y ago
        >Someone should probably mention that calling the source biased is just circumstantial ad hominem, which is even lower on the pyramid than responding to tone. Yeah, that gets thrown around a lot by people who like to parrot logical fallacies to sound smarter than they are. In reality credibility matters. A lot. Especially for journalists. You're trusting this person to report the facts accurately. You're trusting them to report fully and not omit relevant details. You're trusting this person to commit to an investigation which is as impartial as possible. All of those require trust, and trust is built by credibility, which is built by demonstrating that you do your job well. So no, of course it doesn't mean that everything else in the article is incorrect. Of course, I never said that (straw man on your part? Thought you may enjoy that.) It _does_ mean that I will take anything I read afterwards with a grain of salt.
        pohl 8y ago
        I see it as a tradeoff. If someone wears their bias on their sleeve, you know where they're coming from. If not, you have no way of knowing whether you're reading someone who is judiciously adhering to a process that minimizes bias, or whether they are deliberately concealing their bias, or whether they are so deluded that they imagine themselves to have no bias whatsoever, which would be absurd. Regardless, you're still advocating for a low form of argument.
        8y ago
- thrden 8y ago
  its part of the gawker family so its not surprising that it uses non-professional language
ceejayoz 8y ago
I remain shocked that voting machines are not open source and publicly auditable. I'm also surprised the NSA isn't specifically tasked with a regular, detailed, high-resources code review of the codebase.
- enzanki_ars 8y ago
  The biggest problem would be open sourcing everything, not just the software that used. The OS, the network configurations/setup, access controls/policies, etc. Even then, without a verifiable and private way of verifying counts, we could never be sure about a vote count.
  - rusk 8y ago
    Do it on an openly observable blockchain so everyone can see what’s going on in realtime
    - enzanki_ars 8y ago
      I knew once I posted it that someone would suggest using a block chain. The problem with the block chain is privacy. Publishing people’s votes can and will have a huge impact on their life. It would also make buying votes much easier. A block chain solution would have to find a way to ensure that only valid voters can place a vote, ensure that only people that could vote were the only people that placed a vote after the fact, and ensure that none of this can be tied to a real identity. Otherwise, either bad actors could place votes, or a complete voting record for a person is published. Solve all of the above, and a block chain may be an acceptable way to go, though it would be a waste of energy in my mind compared to a normal database, which could easily be exported with only the vote and signature stating it was a valid and verified vote for a person. In the end, we have just made something more complicated than a paper ballot, which has been shown to be reasonably secure against foreign and/or national actors attempting to influence an election, except in already corrupt nations, especially those without term limits...
      - 8y ago
bhouston 8y ago
Georgia was traditionally a red state so even if the votes were changed it wouldn't have affected the result. Are any swing states suspected of having their voting system hacked to have changed the final result? It is weird that the electronic voting system is u likely to get fixed. I guess it will have to get much worse in the future to cause action?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Georgia was traditionally a red state Georgia has been becoming progressively less red, and was early on in the 2016 cycle seen as a potentially swingable state. > I guess it will have to get much worse in the future to cause action? At least, it will have to not help the party in power in the state.
  - eli 8y ago
    > Georgia has been becoming progressively less red, and was early on in the 2016 cycle seen as a potentially swingable state. I'm having a really hard time imagining an EV scenario where Georgia is the deciding state. An election where Clinton takes Georgia is one where she wins by a landslide. And in the end the results in Georgia were right in line with both those of other states and with the exit polls. There's no story here and, frankly, it distracts from real issues affecting voters like bogus Voter ID requirements, intentionally understaffing or removing polling places on college campuses, etc.
    - tomrod 8y ago
      Under traditional expectations, sure.
eli 8y ago
This is a really weak article that does not support its headline and veers into conspiracy theory territory.
dalore 8y ago
So Georgia rather then let DHS look at their machines decided to delete and wipe them clean? and the backups? Why would they do that unless something was wrong?
- criley2 8y ago
  The FBI made full images of all Georgia machines.
  - tomrod 8y ago
    Source?
    - criley2 8y ago
      https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-indictments-georgia-voting-infrastructure-219018 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-i... "The good news is that FBI agents in Atlanta made a mirror image of the server that Lamb breached when they were investigating his intrusion, and the plaintiffs are hoping the judge overseeing their case will rule that they can examine this image. It’s unclear, however, whether the image preserved everything that was on the server and whether the image still exists. A spokesman for the FBI’s Atlanta office refused to comment on the matter and referred POLITICO to KSU. KSU did not respond." https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/26/computer-files-heart-georgia-election-security-case-deleted-day-after-suit-filed/803579001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/26/computer-file... "The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole. The email that disclosed the server wipe said the state attorney general's office was "reaching out to the FBI to determine whether they still have the image." Atlanta FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett, responding to AP questions, would not say whether that image still exists. Nor would he say whether agents examined it to determine whether the server's files might have been altered by unauthorized users."
travmatt 8y ago
Even stronger evidence shows the Republican Party worked with Russian intelligence to obtain the voter rolls that they used in their micro-targeting ad campaigns, but oddly enough nobody is talking about that. Aaron Nevins literally bragged about recieving stolen property from Russian intelligence and using that to further his political goals of electing republicans.
- cgb223 8y ago
  Thats a big claim. Do you have a source on that?
  - eli 8y ago
    It's a much smaller claim than the one in the article.
  - travmatt 8y ago
    Literally google Aaron Nevins. He openly discusses it.
  - makomk 8y ago
    It's a ridiculous claim. The Republicans and Democrats already had official, above-board access to the electoral roll data, and it's not sufficient for even the most basic campaign let alone micro-targetting. Political parties put a huge amount of effort into augmenting that data with the information they need to actually run their campaign, sometimes literally sending volunteers door-to-door to ask voters. This is how campaigning has worked since before Facebook even existed. The whole idea that Republicans and Russians conspired to do micro-targetting with voter rolls basically preys on people's cluelessness about how political campaigns work and their willingness to believe anything that involves Trump and Russia stealing the election. The fact that it wouldn't work and makes no sense doesn't matter.
deweller 8y ago
This article asserts that Donald Trump is the Kremlin’s Executive in Charge of U.S. Operations. That makes it very difficult for me to take seriously.
- rusk 8y ago
  That actually sounds like one of the more plausible assertions
squozzer 8y ago
>Russia actually got inside the voting systems of seven states, including 4 of the 5 largest states in terms of electoral votes—California (55) Texas (38) Florida (29) and Illinois (20). And yet two of those states listed went for Hillary. Maybe the Russians didn't want to be obvious. Author spends a lot of time on Georgia, with its "D" rated voting system and its 16 electoral votes. >Georgia’s systems would have been an “ideal” target for Russian hackers because the state doesn’t use a system with a paper trail so there is no way to audit the system. Let's accept that for the sake of my next question - would a paper trail actually help? Maybe, depending on who gets the paper. Does it mean the voter gets a receipt? That might cause a few problems of its own. For instance, a group of well-armed people acting as a "voting integrity militia" might decide to inspect people's voting receipts for any "errors." One can only imagine how the article's writer would characterize that. Now let's pretend some of all of the states admit their systems had been compromised. Should we trust the results of any election, or just the results we don't like? We can reasonably guess the author's answer to that question.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  > Maybe the Russians didn't want to be obvious. If California voted for Trump, that would in fact be obvious...
Pokepokalypse 8y ago
Russians decide to hack campaign in order to create chaos in target nation; and hopefully establish a Russia-friendly authoritarian. Russians weigh the costs of good opsec to avoid being caught - versus the effect of word getting out. Good opsec is expensive. Particularly when it's on the adversary's network, using tools that spy on you - Russia lacks the manufacturing capacity and supply chain discipline to ensure their devices are secure. (NOTE: One of Trumps VERY FIRST acts of office, was to relax a very obscure commerce-department rule on Russian Sanctions; forbidding export of certain encrypted communication devices. It was VERY targeted, and VERY low key. The press glossed it over. I suspect it was a direct request from Trump's GRU handlers to accomplish a very specific goal). (also; you'll recall the fire at the Russian embassy in SF last year - just prior to Trump's fake "expulsion of Russian spies"; massive destruction of evidence - - remember also, Trump attempted to release the Russian spy compound back to Russia; the one that Obama seized when Magnisky act was passed.) So the EFFECT of getting "caught" - actually accomplishes Russia's goal better than a stealthy intervention. It costs less. And it sews more distrust in our election system, if the tampering is discovered, and the stories get out. This fosters unrest, and hopefully chaos and likely even violence, when the American People learn (enough but not all of) the truth of what happened. To that end: one of the most prolific early spreaders of "Russia-Trump" stories, was Twitter's Louise Mensch. Who worked for Rupert Murdoch (but claimed to be a "citizen journalist"). With the help of a small team of followers, plus a stable of sophisticated bots (and other tools) for amplification and promotion, Louise Mensch (and her team) made sure that the ball got rolling. Note: Rupert Murdoch has associated with one Wendy Deng; who is also closely associated with Vladimir Putin. We have all been shocked, of course, to learn that many GOP congressmen and senators received money from Russian sources. Even more shocked to learn that a lot more money was funneled through the NRA. I think Americans are going to be REALLY shocked when they discover that FoxNews, and related Rupert Murdoch organizations are also agents of Russia.(or: they have interests in common with Russian oligarchy/organized-crime). Was Roger Ailes assassinated? (Trivially accomplished - an old man on blood-thinners, one little bump in the head, and it looks like an accident). Was Andrew Brietbart also assassinated? Was Antonin Scalia assassinated? Was Bill Shine's efforts to foster an environment of sexual harassment at Fox, designed to create enough compromising blackmail material to make sure all of their on-air personalities kept going along with their plan?
tomrod 8y ago
We are hackers, and this is a technology problem. Was it flagged because it have overlap with politics?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  It gets flagged by users, not moderators. Flagging is kind of like upvoting. No one person gets to say what ends up on the front page. It's an outcome of group consensus, basically. I don't ever bother to ask "Why is this being flagged?" because the answer is that the exact reason will vary from person to person, my understanding is that multiple people have to flag it (I don't know how many) to have a noticeable effect, I have no means to determine who flagged it, etc. So I consider it to be unanswerable.
- makomk 8y ago
  It doesn't just have an overlap with politics, this whole thing's 99% partisan political. Notice this part? "But the hacker soon discovered that WINvote machines all had the same password. The password, which could not be changed, was (you might want to take a deep breath) “abcde.”" This particular bit's got a lot of attention on Twitter for obvious reasons, and it's sort-of true - you can read the report about it here: https://www.elections.virginia.gov/WebDocs/VotingEquipReport/WINVote-final.pdf https://www.elections.virginia.gov/WebDocs/VotingEquipReport... There's plenty of other hilariously terrible security issues in that security report, but the particular thing I want you to notice is the date, April 14th 2015. This isn't news - it was discovered over a year before the 2016 presidential election, and it lead to the machines being pulled from service almost immediately. (See e.g. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/17/virginia_nixes_highly_pwnable_voting_boxes/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/17/virginia_nixes_high...). There's no particular reason to believe the other machines are any more secure, since the only reason those were audited was because of an unrelated reliability issue, but those ones had already been pulled before the election. Despite this warning sign, in the run-up to the election the consensus amongst right-thinking people was that voting machines were essentially unhackable. Tweetstorms like this went viral: https://twitter.com/ashbylaw/status/787352959633981440 https://twitter.com/ashbylaw/status/787352959633981440 (On the WINVote machines, the "multiple interconnected counters" that tweetstorm claims make tampering impossible were editable fields in an Access DB with a short hardcoded password.) Publications like Wired insisted it would require a ludicrously impossible conspiracy: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rigging-presidential-election/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rig... Why? Trump was pushing the idea of vote hacking, and therefore only Trump-supporting conspiracy nuts would believe it. (A few hardcore infosec folks still understood how insecure the whole thing was, but they kept their mouths shut or were ignored.) It was only once Trump won and his opponents suddenly had a reason to dispute the results that this flipped over, and suddenly it became just as obvious and indisputable that the machines were horribly hackable. The audits and safeguards that Wired treated as infallable instantly became feeble and useless: https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest... The underlying facts about the security of the election and voting machines didn't change - that terrible "abcde" password had been sitting there, public knowledge, since early 2015 - all that changed was the motivation to believe the election had been hacked.
RickJWagner 8y ago
What a waste of time. There's not a shred of evidence in that article.

58 points by nhoven 8y ago

Georgia Exit polls: Trump 51%, Clinton 46%, Other 3% Georgia reported results after possible Russian hacking: Trump 51%, Clinton 46%, Other 3% https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/georgia/president https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/georgia... https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/georgia/ https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

hellofunk 8y ago

This article is amateur. > And despite what Donald Trump, the Kremlin’s Executive in Charge of U.S. Operations, would have you believe It's hard to take an article seriously when it uses a tone like this (even if there is some truth behind it).

sbov 8y ago
I'm amazed you're getting downvoted. I would love to share this article with conservative friends, but potshots like the above make it pointless. If you want to inform anyone other than your own echo chamber, this article is pointless.
pohl 8y ago
There once was a time on HN when it was customary to respond to a comment like this with a referral to Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement, suggesting that it might be better to aim higher than "responding to tone."
- EpicEng 8y ago
  It's not just tone though; it's an obvious journalistic bias. It couldn't possibly be _more_ obvious. It's nonsensical to pretend that doesn't affect the author's credibility.
  - pohl 8y ago
    Someone should probably mention that calling the source biased is just circumstantial ad hominem, which is even lower on the pyramid than responding to tone.
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      >Someone should probably mention that calling the source biased is just circumstantial ad hominem, which is even lower on the pyramid than responding to tone. Yeah, that gets thrown around a lot by people who like to parrot logical fallacies to sound smarter than they are. In reality credibility matters. A lot. Especially for journalists. You're trusting this person to report the facts accurately. You're trusting them to report fully and not omit relevant details. You're trusting this person to commit to an investigation which is as impartial as possible. All of those require trust, and trust is built by credibility, which is built by demonstrating that you do your job well. So no, of course it doesn't mean that everything else in the article is incorrect. Of course, I never said that (straw man on your part? Thought you may enjoy that.) It _does_ mean that I will take anything I read afterwards with a grain of salt.
      - pohl 8y ago
        I see it as a tradeoff. If someone wears their bias on their sleeve, you know where they're coming from. If not, you have no way of knowing whether you're reading someone who is judiciously adhering to a process that minimizes bias, or whether they are deliberately concealing their bias, or whether they are so deluded that they imagine themselves to have no bias whatsoever, which would be absurd. Regardless, you're still advocating for a low form of argument.
        8y ago
thrden 8y ago
its part of the gawker family so its not surprising that it uses non-professional language

ceejayoz 8y ago

I remain shocked that voting machines are not open source and publicly auditable. I'm also surprised the NSA isn't specifically tasked with a regular, detailed, high-resources code review of the codebase.

enzanki_ars 8y ago
The biggest problem would be open sourcing everything, not just the software that used. The OS, the network configurations/setup, access controls/policies, etc. Even then, without a verifiable and private way of verifying counts, we could never be sure about a vote count.
- rusk 8y ago
  Do it on an openly observable blockchain so everyone can see what’s going on in realtime
  - enzanki_ars 8y ago
    I knew once I posted it that someone would suggest using a block chain. The problem with the block chain is privacy. Publishing people’s votes can and will have a huge impact on their life. It would also make buying votes much easier. A block chain solution would have to find a way to ensure that only valid voters can place a vote, ensure that only people that could vote were the only people that placed a vote after the fact, and ensure that none of this can be tied to a real identity. Otherwise, either bad actors could place votes, or a complete voting record for a person is published. Solve all of the above, and a block chain may be an acceptable way to go, though it would be a waste of energy in my mind compared to a normal database, which could easily be exported with only the vote and signature stating it was a valid and verified vote for a person. In the end, we have just made something more complicated than a paper ballot, which has been shown to be reasonably secure against foreign and/or national actors attempting to influence an election, except in already corrupt nations, especially those without term limits...
    - 8y ago

bhouston 8y ago

Georgia was traditionally a red state so even if the votes were changed it wouldn't have affected the result. Are any swing states suspected of having their voting system hacked to have changed the final result? It is weird that the electronic voting system is u likely to get fixed. I guess it will have to get much worse in the future to cause action?

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Georgia was traditionally a red state Georgia has been becoming progressively less red, and was early on in the 2016 cycle seen as a potentially swingable state. > I guess it will have to get much worse in the future to cause action? At least, it will have to not help the party in power in the state.
- eli 8y ago
  > Georgia has been becoming progressively less red, and was early on in the 2016 cycle seen as a potentially swingable state. I'm having a really hard time imagining an EV scenario where Georgia is the deciding state. An election where Clinton takes Georgia is one where she wins by a landslide. And in the end the results in Georgia were right in line with both those of other states and with the exit polls. There's no story here and, frankly, it distracts from real issues affecting voters like bogus Voter ID requirements, intentionally understaffing or removing polling places on college campuses, etc.
  - tomrod 8y ago
    Under traditional expectations, sure.

eli 8y ago

This is a really weak article that does not support its headline and veers into conspiracy theory territory.

dalore 8y ago

So Georgia rather then let DHS look at their machines decided to delete and wipe them clean? and the backups? Why would they do that unless something was wrong?

criley2 8y ago
The FBI made full images of all Georgia machines.
- tomrod 8y ago
  Source?
  - criley2 8y ago
    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-indictments-georgia-voting-infrastructure-219018 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-i... "The good news is that FBI agents in Atlanta made a mirror image of the server that Lamb breached when they were investigating his intrusion, and the plaintiffs are hoping the judge overseeing their case will rule that they can examine this image. It’s unclear, however, whether the image preserved everything that was on the server and whether the image still exists. A spokesman for the FBI’s Atlanta office refused to comment on the matter and referred POLITICO to KSU. KSU did not respond." https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/26/computer-files-heart-georgia-election-security-case-deleted-day-after-suit-filed/803579001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/26/computer-file... "The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole. The email that disclosed the server wipe said the state attorney general's office was "reaching out to the FBI to determine whether they still have the image." Atlanta FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett, responding to AP questions, would not say whether that image still exists. Nor would he say whether agents examined it to determine whether the server's files might have been altered by unauthorized users."

travmatt 8y ago

Even stronger evidence shows the Republican Party worked with Russian intelligence to obtain the voter rolls that they used in their micro-targeting ad campaigns, but oddly enough nobody is talking about that. Aaron Nevins literally bragged about recieving stolen property from Russian intelligence and using that to further his political goals of electing republicans.

cgb223 8y ago
Thats a big claim. Do you have a source on that?
- eli 8y ago
  It's a much smaller claim than the one in the article.
- travmatt 8y ago
  Literally google Aaron Nevins. He openly discusses it.
- makomk 8y ago
  It's a ridiculous claim. The Republicans and Democrats already had official, above-board access to the electoral roll data, and it's not sufficient for even the most basic campaign let alone micro-targetting. Political parties put a huge amount of effort into augmenting that data with the information they need to actually run their campaign, sometimes literally sending volunteers door-to-door to ask voters. This is how campaigning has worked since before Facebook even existed. The whole idea that Republicans and Russians conspired to do micro-targetting with voter rolls basically preys on people's cluelessness about how political campaigns work and their willingness to believe anything that involves Trump and Russia stealing the election. The fact that it wouldn't work and makes no sense doesn't matter.

deweller 8y ago

This article asserts that Donald Trump is the Kremlin’s Executive in Charge of U.S. Operations. That makes it very difficult for me to take seriously.

rusk 8y ago
That actually sounds like one of the more plausible assertions

squozzer 8y ago

>Russia actually got inside the voting systems of seven states, including 4 of the 5 largest states in terms of electoral votes—California (55) Texas (38) Florida (29) and Illinois (20). And yet two of those states listed went for Hillary. Maybe the Russians didn't want to be obvious. Author spends a lot of time on Georgia, with its "D" rated voting system and its 16 electoral votes. >Georgia’s systems would have been an “ideal” target for Russian hackers because the state doesn’t use a system with a paper trail so there is no way to audit the system. Let's accept that for the sake of my next question - would a paper trail actually help? Maybe, depending on who gets the paper. Does it mean the voter gets a receipt? That might cause a few problems of its own. For instance, a group of well-armed people acting as a "voting integrity militia" might decide to inspect people's voting receipts for any "errors." One can only imagine how the article's writer would characterize that. Now let's pretend some of all of the states admit their systems had been compromised. Should we trust the results of any election, or just the results we don't like? We can reasonably guess the author's answer to that question.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
> Maybe the Russians didn't want to be obvious. If California voted for Trump, that would in fact be obvious...

Pokepokalypse 8y ago

Russians decide to hack campaign in order to create chaos in target nation; and hopefully establish a Russia-friendly authoritarian. Russians weigh the costs of good opsec to avoid being caught - versus the effect of word getting out. Good opsec is expensive. Particularly when it's on the adversary's network, using tools that spy on you - Russia lacks the manufacturing capacity and supply chain discipline to ensure their devices are secure. (NOTE: One of Trumps VERY FIRST acts of office, was to relax a very obscure commerce-department rule on Russian Sanctions; forbidding export of certain encrypted communication devices. It was VERY targeted, and VERY low key. The press glossed it over. I suspect it was a direct request from Trump's GRU handlers to accomplish a very specific goal). (also; you'll recall the fire at the Russian embassy in SF last year - just prior to Trump's fake "expulsion of Russian spies"; massive destruction of evidence - - remember also, Trump attempted to release the Russian spy compound back to Russia; the one that Obama seized when Magnisky act was passed.) So the EFFECT of getting "caught" - actually accomplishes Russia's goal better than a stealthy intervention. It costs less. And it sews more distrust in our election system, if the tampering is discovered, and the stories get out. This fosters unrest, and hopefully chaos and likely even violence, when the American People learn (enough but not all of) the truth of what happened. To that end: one of the most prolific early spreaders of "Russia-Trump" stories, was Twitter's Louise Mensch. Who worked for Rupert Murdoch (but claimed to be a "citizen journalist"). With the help of a small team of followers, plus a stable of sophisticated bots (and other tools) for amplification and promotion, Louise Mensch (and her team) made sure that the ball got rolling. Note: Rupert Murdoch has associated with one Wendy Deng; who is also closely associated with Vladimir Putin. We have all been shocked, of course, to learn that many GOP congressmen and senators received money from Russian sources. Even more shocked to learn that a lot more money was funneled through the NRA. I think Americans are going to be REALLY shocked when they discover that FoxNews, and related Rupert Murdoch organizations are also agents of Russia.(or: they have interests in common with Russian oligarchy/organized-crime). Was Roger Ailes assassinated? (Trivially accomplished - an old man on blood-thinners, one little bump in the head, and it looks like an accident). Was Andrew Brietbart also assassinated? Was Antonin Scalia assassinated? Was Bill Shine's efforts to foster an environment of sexual harassment at Fox, designed to create enough compromising blackmail material to make sure all of their on-air personalities kept going along with their plan?

tomrod 8y ago

We are hackers, and this is a technology problem. Was it flagged because it have overlap with politics?

DoreenMichele 8y ago
It gets flagged by users, not moderators. Flagging is kind of like upvoting. No one person gets to say what ends up on the front page. It's an outcome of group consensus, basically. I don't ever bother to ask "Why is this being flagged?" because the answer is that the exact reason will vary from person to person, my understanding is that multiple people have to flag it (I don't know how many) to have a noticeable effect, I have no means to determine who flagged it, etc. So I consider it to be unanswerable.
makomk 8y ago
It doesn't just have an overlap with politics, this whole thing's 99% partisan political. Notice this part? "But the hacker soon discovered that WINvote machines all had the same password. The password, which could not be changed, was (you might want to take a deep breath) “abcde.”" This particular bit's got a lot of attention on Twitter for obvious reasons, and it's sort-of true - you can read the report about it here: https://www.elections.virginia.gov/WebDocs/VotingEquipReport/WINVote-final.pdf https://www.elections.virginia.gov/WebDocs/VotingEquipReport... There's plenty of other hilariously terrible security issues in that security report, but the particular thing I want you to notice is the date, April 14th 2015. This isn't news - it was discovered over a year before the 2016 presidential election, and it lead to the machines being pulled from service almost immediately. (See e.g. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/17/virginia_nixes_highly_pwnable_voting_boxes/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/17/virginia_nixes_high...). There's no particular reason to believe the other machines are any more secure, since the only reason those were audited was because of an unrelated reliability issue, but those ones had already been pulled before the election. Despite this warning sign, in the run-up to the election the consensus amongst right-thinking people was that voting machines were essentially unhackable. Tweetstorms like this went viral: https://twitter.com/ashbylaw/status/787352959633981440 https://twitter.com/ashbylaw/status/787352959633981440 (On the WINVote machines, the "multiple interconnected counters" that tweetstorm claims make tampering impossible were editable fields in an Access DB with a short hardcoded password.) Publications like Wired insisted it would require a ludicrously impossible conspiracy: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rigging-presidential-election/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rig... Why? Trump was pushing the idea of vote hacking, and therefore only Trump-supporting conspiracy nuts would believe it. (A few hardcore infosec folks still understood how insecure the whole thing was, but they kept their mouths shut or were ignored.) It was only once Trump won and his opponents suddenly had a reason to dispute the results that this flipped over, and suddenly it became just as obvious and indisputable that the machines were horribly hackable. The audits and safeguards that Wired treated as infallable instantly became feeble and useless: https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest... The underlying facts about the security of the election and voting machines didn't change - that terrible "abcde" password had been sitting there, public knowledge, since early 2015 - all that changed was the motivation to believe the election had been hacked.

RickJWagner 8y ago

What a waste of time. There's not a shred of evidence in that article.