8 ms·

I sincerely hope that whatever happens with these lawsuits doesn't chill the speech of actual voting machine security research.

ashtonkem 6y ago
I’d be much more worried about the absolutely insane nonsense that Giuliani and his ilk have been spewing. That is far more damaging to voting machine research than this lawsuit.
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  Wasn’t that the kraken thing that Giuliani wasn’t really involved with?
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    The claims Giuliani made against Dominion and it's voting equipment is verbose in articles related to this topic, as well as the case filing.
  - loonster 6y ago
    He wasn't. That was a Sidney Powell thing. I think this 4chan Post describes the Kraken very well: http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/301180971/#301180971 http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/301180971/#301180971 >This is my contribution to the Trump team's legal case against election fraud. The Kraken was a crowdsourced legal case that they were building with the help of hundreds of volunteer experts, but most of it never got to see the light of day. We were explicitly told not to release any information to the public because that could undermine their case, since it would expose our work to the ongoing media slander campaign and allow the defense to more easily prepare counterarguments. Clearly that's no longer a concern, so I'm publicly releasing my contribution to the case. >Interactive Colab notebook with code and full replication of findings: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1PwiipIQif63EMCxGFYA9jAjL-8Y5cCE1?usp=sharing https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1PwiipIQif63EMCxGFYA... >The key takeaway of this analysis is that the Biden vs. Trump advantage of a vote tally reporting batch is highly (i.e. extremely) correlated with meta information about the counting process itself. This implies that if you counted the votes a different way you would have gotten a different final total, which is absolutely preposterous and a clear indicator of fraud. Additionally, we don't see this happen
    - tptacek 6y ago
      In case anyone else was about to waste a couple minutes of their life that they will never get back, a quick warning that you will never get the minutes of your life back that you lose paging through this very silly Python notebook, which was very clearly created to snow people who don't know what a Python notebook looks like.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  As long as potentially hackable voting machines are used in elections, the anxiety about hacking will be there and will eventually be exploited by politicians. If we want to fix the issue, we really just need to move back to hand counting paper ballots.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Dominion voting machines leave an auditable paper trail and thus do support hand-counting of paper ballots, which was done as part of the recounts in disputed states. No discrepancies beyond the margin of error of hand counting were found in those recounts vs the electronically reported results. You can see how they work in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      I'm not saying they were hacked. I'm saying the layman needs to be confident beyond a reasonable doubt. A normal non-security professional needs to understand and have confidence in the system they use to vote. Most people don't even know how to troubleshoot computer issues beyond rebooting, let alone understanding complex IT security or auditing measures put in place for these machines.
      - Me1000 6y ago
        If you watch the video you can see that a layman would easily understand how it all works. It literally prints a ballot where you can verify your choices, and you drop it off. This is pretty much the gold standard: a paper trail that can be audited every step of the process.
    - tunesmith 6y ago
      Still not sufficient though, you only need to hack enough to get outside the automatic recount margin. You also need hand-recount of random samples in all elections.
gameswithgo 6y ago
It has been fascinating to watch recent events unfold, wherein various horrible things including direct threats to democracy have happened due to people increasingly being able to just completely make up stuff, and spread it around readily and effectively on unfiltered internet mediums, and a great number of people's immediate concern is that free speech may get quelled too much which will do great harm. This here is another example, nobody did any voting security research, some Trump associates just made up the idea, and were able to easily spread that messages to millions of people, playing a large part in inciting an attempted coup. The maker of that device is now suing for damages, as they should, and your concern is free speech again. It seems almost performative.
- lovecg 6y ago
  That’s a story as old as time. Getting millions of people to believe a lie is not exactly an innovation.
DonHopkins 6y ago
Anyone actually involved in voting machine security research, and not just a fraudulent troll like Rudy Giuliani, welcomes this lawsuit. His unhinged spouting of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories has only harmed and discredited legitimate voting security research.
- the_local_host 6y ago
  It'll be a win/win situation if baseless allegations of fraud are punished, and every detail of how voting machines work, including source code, are made public.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    I agree but wouldn't making the source code becoming public make the machines more prone to hacking?
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      Not if they're well designed, if the security of the system depends on it's function being completely secret it's not secure.
      - tartoran 6y ago
        Yes, security by obfuscation is not good but imagine a bad actor discovers a bug and by the time the bug gets discovered and patched they could do a lot of harm in an election. Somehow I agree with the idea of making the code public only with the idea in mind that it gets scrutinized my more eyeballs but since we're talking about elections maybe this changes the perspective a bit?
        rtkwe 6y ago
        If you have the access to the machines to hack a number of them you likely already have the access to dump and analyze the source code, the physical access required is basically the same in both cases and getting the code initially is easier because you only need one machine (/maybe/ two to see if there's any interesting differences) where the final hack would require more. Also just because the code isn't released doesn't mean it's secure that same bad actor can theoretically hack the same code out of the writing company to start with. It's a debate we've had with secure messengers the benefit of having that many eyes on a piece of software outweighs the minor risk of a secret zero day.
user3939382 6y ago
I’m reminded of an xkcd alt text, “ There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired.” https://xkcd.com/2030/ https://xkcd.com/2030/
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Good thing Dominion voting machines do leave an auditable paper trail, which was hand-audited in all of these disputed states and which verified the electronically-reported results.
  - throwaway23242 6y ago
    what about reports out of michigan that audit trails / logs were missing for election night? https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_michigan_forensics_report_%5B121320%5D_v2_%5Bredacted%5D.pdf https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_m...
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Do you have a link to anything that has been established as true in court? Because that link is pants-on-fire lying: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-james-ramsland-jr/affidavit-michigan-lawsuit-seeking-overturn-electi/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-ja...
      - throwaway23242 6y ago
        oh, cabal fact checkers seem to say this link is garbage (do they though?). i will flog myself and pledge allegiance to the cabal to repent.
        gamblor956 6y ago
        Even a cursory review of the Ramsland report you linked to indicates it was largely fiction. From the politifact review: Ramsland lists "Fenton" without specifying Fenton City or Fenton Township. But the turnout Ramsland lists for Fenton does not match the turnout in either jurisdiction. The actual turnout statistics reveal the inaccuracy of Ramsland’s numbers. His figure for North Muskegon is off by a factor of 10: The actual number is 78.11%, not 781.91%. For Zeeland Charter Township, he inflated the turnout nearly sixfold. For Grout Township and the City of Muskegon, his number is more than triple the correct number.
nkassis 6y ago
Researchers usually have well research and evidence to back their claims which wouldn't put them at risk like Giuliani. Giuliani has also repeated these claims that have so far been unsubstantiated repeatedly even after being asked to retract them. There is some willful level malice implied in this lawsuit that is I think is not applicable to security researchers so I'm personally not worried but I do get the general sentiment whenever libel laws are brought up.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  And researchers aren't usually operating under the delusionally optimistic assumption that they'll get $20,000 per day and a presidential pardon for their work.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Let's see. $1 billion damages vs. earning $20,000 per day. Guiliani comes out ahead after 50,000 days. I kind of doubt he got that long...
elicash 6y ago
Why would it? Voting machine research isn't at issue in this case. What you're concerned about would require a change in law, if not the Constitution.
duxup 6y ago
>These pieces rely on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion's supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud on Dominion's machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes, and other claims falsely stating that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted fraudulently That's Dominion's statement. They're describing a pretty exceptional situation / distant from what I would think of as security research. Obviously that's not a legally binding statement or anything but I think that at least illustrates what this situation is about. This isn't a case of someone being mistaken or putting forth a good faith concern about security. These accusations are based in nothing at all, disproven, and Giuliani and others just kept at it. Researchers usually have actual evidence for concerns and so forth. And their motivations usually really is security. This situation with Giuliani and actual security research seem completely disconnected.
joshuakelly 6y ago
I think you have to be outside of America to have this perspective now, it's too drowned out inside to make sense to anyone who can only read it through the American lens. I would be less concerned with any particular legal case though, and more concerned with the chilling effects of American political culture itself. By its very nature, any supposedly disinterested researcher will now be viewed with intense suspicion.
tshaddox 6y ago
Do defamation lawsuits tend to chill speech that isn’t defamation? I would assume not.
3395810 6y ago
You think voting machines are suspect but just this one time there was nothing wrong with them?

ashtonkem 6y ago

I’d be much more worried about the absolutely insane nonsense that Giuliani and his ilk have been spewing. That is far more damaging to voting machine research than this lawsuit.

AzzieElbab 6y ago
Wasn’t that the kraken thing that Giuliani wasn’t really involved with?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  The claims Giuliani made against Dominion and it's voting equipment is verbose in articles related to this topic, as well as the case filing.
- loonster 6y ago
  He wasn't. That was a Sidney Powell thing. I think this 4chan Post describes the Kraken very well: http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/301180971/#301180971 http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/301180971/#301180971 >This is my contribution to the Trump team's legal case against election fraud. The Kraken was a crowdsourced legal case that they were building with the help of hundreds of volunteer experts, but most of it never got to see the light of day. We were explicitly told not to release any information to the public because that could undermine their case, since it would expose our work to the ongoing media slander campaign and allow the defense to more easily prepare counterarguments. Clearly that's no longer a concern, so I'm publicly releasing my contribution to the case. >Interactive Colab notebook with code and full replication of findings: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1PwiipIQif63EMCxGFYA9jAjL-8Y5cCE1?usp=sharing https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1PwiipIQif63EMCxGFYA... >The key takeaway of this analysis is that the Biden vs. Trump advantage of a vote tally reporting batch is highly (i.e. extremely) correlated with meta information about the counting process itself. This implies that if you counted the votes a different way you would have gotten a different final total, which is absolutely preposterous and a clear indicator of fraud. Additionally, we don't see this happen
  - tptacek 6y ago
    In case anyone else was about to waste a couple minutes of their life that they will never get back, a quick warning that you will never get the minutes of your life back that you lose paging through this very silly Python notebook, which was very clearly created to snow people who don't know what a Python notebook looks like.
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
As long as potentially hackable voting machines are used in elections, the anxiety about hacking will be there and will eventually be exploited by politicians. If we want to fix the issue, we really just need to move back to hand counting paper ballots.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Dominion voting machines leave an auditable paper trail and thus do support hand-counting of paper ballots, which was done as part of the recounts in disputed states. No discrepancies beyond the margin of error of hand counting were found in those recounts vs the electronically reported results. You can see how they work in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    I'm not saying they were hacked. I'm saying the layman needs to be confident beyond a reasonable doubt. A normal non-security professional needs to understand and have confidence in the system they use to vote. Most people don't even know how to troubleshoot computer issues beyond rebooting, let alone understanding complex IT security or auditing measures put in place for these machines.
    - Me1000 6y ago
      If you watch the video you can see that a layman would easily understand how it all works. It literally prints a ballot where you can verify your choices, and you drop it off. This is pretty much the gold standard: a paper trail that can be audited every step of the process.
  - tunesmith 6y ago
    Still not sufficient though, you only need to hack enough to get outside the automatic recount margin. You also need hand-recount of random samples in all elections.

gameswithgo 6y ago

It has been fascinating to watch recent events unfold, wherein various horrible things including direct threats to democracy have happened due to people increasingly being able to just completely make up stuff, and spread it around readily and effectively on unfiltered internet mediums, and a great number of people's immediate concern is that free speech may get quelled too much which will do great harm. This here is another example, nobody did any voting security research, some Trump associates just made up the idea, and were able to easily spread that messages to millions of people, playing a large part in inciting an attempted coup. The maker of that device is now suing for damages, as they should, and your concern is free speech again. It seems almost performative.

lovecg 6y ago
That’s a story as old as time. Getting millions of people to believe a lie is not exactly an innovation.

DonHopkins 6y ago

Anyone actually involved in voting machine security research, and not just a fraudulent troll like Rudy Giuliani, welcomes this lawsuit. His unhinged spouting of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories has only harmed and discredited legitimate voting security research.

the_local_host 6y ago
It'll be a win/win situation if baseless allegations of fraud are punished, and every detail of how voting machines work, including source code, are made public.
- tartoran 6y ago
  I agree but wouldn't making the source code becoming public make the machines more prone to hacking?
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    Not if they're well designed, if the security of the system depends on it's function being completely secret it's not secure.
    - tartoran 6y ago
      Yes, security by obfuscation is not good but imagine a bad actor discovers a bug and by the time the bug gets discovered and patched they could do a lot of harm in an election. Somehow I agree with the idea of making the code public only with the idea in mind that it gets scrutinized my more eyeballs but since we're talking about elections maybe this changes the perspective a bit?
      - rtkwe 6y ago
        If you have the access to the machines to hack a number of them you likely already have the access to dump and analyze the source code, the physical access required is basically the same in both cases and getting the code initially is easier because you only need one machine (/maybe/ two to see if there's any interesting differences) where the final hack would require more. Also just because the code isn't released doesn't mean it's secure that same bad actor can theoretically hack the same code out of the writing company to start with. It's a debate we've had with secure messengers the benefit of having that many eyes on a piece of software outweighs the minor risk of a secret zero day.

user3939382 6y ago

I’m reminded of an xkcd alt text, “ There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired.” https://xkcd.com/2030/ https://xkcd.com/2030/

CydeWeys 6y ago
Good thing Dominion voting machines do leave an auditable paper trail, which was hand-audited in all of these disputed states and which verified the electronically-reported results.
- throwaway23242 6y ago
  what about reports out of michigan that audit trails / logs were missing for election night? https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_michigan_forensics_report_%5B121320%5D_v2_%5Bredacted%5D.pdf https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_m...
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Do you have a link to anything that has been established as true in court? Because that link is pants-on-fire lying: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-james-ramsland-jr/affidavit-michigan-lawsuit-seeking-overturn-electi/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-ja...
    - throwaway23242 6y ago
      oh, cabal fact checkers seem to say this link is garbage (do they though?). i will flog myself and pledge allegiance to the cabal to repent.
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        Even a cursory review of the Ramsland report you linked to indicates it was largely fiction. From the politifact review: Ramsland lists "Fenton" without specifying Fenton City or Fenton Township. But the turnout Ramsland lists for Fenton does not match the turnout in either jurisdiction. The actual turnout statistics reveal the inaccuracy of Ramsland’s numbers. His figure for North Muskegon is off by a factor of 10: The actual number is 78.11%, not 781.91%. For Zeeland Charter Township, he inflated the turnout nearly sixfold. For Grout Township and the City of Muskegon, his number is more than triple the correct number.

nkassis 6y ago

Researchers usually have well research and evidence to back their claims which wouldn't put them at risk like Giuliani. Giuliani has also repeated these claims that have so far been unsubstantiated repeatedly even after being asked to retract them. There is some willful level malice implied in this lawsuit that is I think is not applicable to security researchers so I'm personally not worried but I do get the general sentiment whenever libel laws are brought up.

DonHopkins 6y ago
And researchers aren't usually operating under the delusionally optimistic assumption that they'll get $20,000 per day and a presidential pardon for their work.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Let's see. $1 billion damages vs. earning $20,000 per day. Guiliani comes out ahead after 50,000 days. I kind of doubt he got that long...

elicash 6y ago

Why would it? Voting machine research isn't at issue in this case. What you're concerned about would require a change in law, if not the Constitution.

duxup 6y ago

>These pieces rely on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion's supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud on Dominion's machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes, and other claims falsely stating that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted fraudulently That's Dominion's statement. They're describing a pretty exceptional situation / distant from what I would think of as security research. Obviously that's not a legally binding statement or anything but I think that at least illustrates what this situation is about. This isn't a case of someone being mistaken or putting forth a good faith concern about security. These accusations are based in nothing at all, disproven, and Giuliani and others just kept at it. Researchers usually have actual evidence for concerns and so forth. And their motivations usually really is security. This situation with Giuliani and actual security research seem completely disconnected.

joshuakelly 6y ago

I think you have to be outside of America to have this perspective now, it's too drowned out inside to make sense to anyone who can only read it through the American lens. I would be less concerned with any particular legal case though, and more concerned with the chilling effects of American political culture itself. By its very nature, any supposedly disinterested researcher will now be viewed with intense suspicion.

tshaddox 6y ago

Do defamation lawsuits tend to chill speech that isn’t defamation? I would assume not.

3395810 6y ago

You think voting machines are suspect but just this one time there was nothing wrong with them?