6 ms·

Iranian nationals charged with interfering in the 2020 US presidential election

34 points by DantesKite 5y ago

DantesKite 5y ago
Regardless of political affiliation, it does seem like going forward, technology is going to play an important role in elections. And it doesn't seem like we've developed a rigorous standard for it yet.
- livinginfear 5y ago
  All that technology, yet you need more identification to open a gmail account than you do to vote in a United States federal election. They can't even use it to transparently monitor what was arguably the most controversial election of our lifetime. It's like the United States government is willing to use technology in elections, but only in ways that don't fundamentally matter.
  - akhosravian 5y ago
    The US federal government doesn’t run elections. The individual states set the rules, and they are run based on those rules at a hyper local (sub city sized) level.
  - Teever 5y ago
    Rank the following aspects of the US voting system in descending order of importance w.r.t. election outcomes accurately reflecting electorate voting intention. A. Convoluted ballots B. Electronic voting C. Voter ID D. Gerrymandering E. Super PACs F. Convicted Felon voting eligibility G. The Electoral College H. First past the post I. Two party system J. Mail in ballots As a Canadian who has worked at several polling stations on election day for Elections Canada I'm appalled at the state of democracy in the United States and the continually flabbergasted by the obsession over voting ID by some Americans. Canadians vote for representatives in non-gerrymandered districts in a process that involves simple paper ballots that are almost always counted with results finalized the night of the election. The process is simple, transparent and most curiously does not mandate ID. To an outsider watching Americans complain about voter ID laws is like watching someone standing in a burning house complaining that the power just went out. There are so many bigger issues with the American voting process and if those issues were resolved/mitigated you'd see that whatever issues arise from non-mandated voter ID are most often statistically negligible and easily identifiable.
    - tata71 5y ago
      > in a process that involves simple paper ballots that are almost always counted with results finalized the night of the election. 40 million people in Canada 400 million in USA Is it the same?
      - impendingchange 5y ago
        How did they do it before technology?
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Paper, stamps, and seals. Guess that's technology as well. Before then we just bashed each other with rocks I guess.
        impendingchange 5y ago
        Sorry, I should have qualified it: How did they do it in one night before technology?
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Distribution. Local counties handle tallying, they report to state representatives whether it's pony express, telegraph, trucks or otherwise. States run their own elections and vote for candidates, electoral votes from states are tallied. Makes Santa Claus look like a bitch right?
      - Teever 5y ago
        40 million != 400 million, this is true but vote counting is an embarrassingly parallel problem that is easily solved by hiring many nonskilled workers. Vote counting is an activity that more or less requires basic literacy and numeracy and Western democracies that have switched over to service based economies have many surplus workers pre-trained for this sort of work.
    - 5y ago
RNCTX 5y ago
> ... obtained United States voter information from at least one state election website, sent threatening voter email messages to intimidate voters, crafted and disseminated disinformation pertaining to the election and election security, and accessed, and attempted to access, without authorization, the computer systems of several online United States media entities and states. Both US political parties have done all of this in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. 1. some states allow anyone to get voter registration records, not necessarily a crime. [1] 2. The DNC has been claiming that there was some secret collusion with Russians since 2016, when in fact they paid a guy to make all that up. The same goes for the Trump campaign sending false information about fraud in the 2020 election. The former chief justice of the supreme court (Rehnquist) lived in a neighborhood in AZ deed restricted to whites only and formed a group to physically intimidate minority voters before being appointed as a federal judge. The same chief justice ordered recounts after the 2000 election to stop and declared GW Bush the winner after people from the administrations that made him chief justice arrived in FL to harass local election commissioners. [2] [3] [4] 3. Everyone who posts a Facebook message about Russian conspiracies or mail in voter fraud in support of either political party crafts and disseminates disinformation pertaining to the election. 4. Accessed or attempted to access how? Prosecutors have tried and imprisoned a US citizen for typing in URLs before. Is it the without-authorization they claim is illegal? Because buying authorization is fine, there is at least one content service that specifically advertises disinformation publishing services to customers who want to bribe people with "publish" access in media organizations' CMSes. [5] [6] The FBI is as big a joke as the political parties they serve. 1 - https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access-to-and-use-of-voter-registration-lists.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access... 2 - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58591969 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58591969 3 - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/rudy-giuliani-is-probably-screwed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/rudy-giuliani-is-pro... 4 - https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/04/us/rehnquist-in-arizona-a-militant-conservative-in-60-s-politics.html https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/04/us/rehnquist-in-arizona-a... 5 - https://www.wired.com/2014/04/att-hacker-conviction-vacated/ https://www.wired.com/2014/04/att-hacker-conviction-vacated/ 6 - https://contently.com https://contently.com
finite_jest 5y ago
Here's the indictment which has more details: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1449276/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1449276... They had apparently sent the following email to a large number of registered voters: We are in possession of all your information (email , address, telephone ... everything) . You are currently registered as a Democrat and we know this because we have gained access into the entire voting infrastructure. You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you. Change your party affiliation to Republican to let us know you received our message and will comply. We will know which candidate you voted for . I would take this seriously if I were you . This kinda reads like a Nigerian Prince™-level email scam, except that it looks like they had the actual residential address of the registered voters. It is interesting that their campaign seems to be pro-Trump, the guy who once vowed to tear apart the Iran deal.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- djanogo 5y ago
  "campaign seems to be pro-Trump", or the more obvious reason that if you mail this to lot of people one of them will report to media (or FB or Twitter or gov) to make pro-Trump people look bad.

34 points by DantesKite 5y ago

Regardless of political affiliation, it does seem like going forward, technology is going to play an important role in elections. And it doesn't seem like we've developed a rigorous standard for it yet.

livinginfear 5y ago
All that technology, yet you need more identification to open a gmail account than you do to vote in a United States federal election. They can't even use it to transparently monitor what was arguably the most controversial election of our lifetime. It's like the United States government is willing to use technology in elections, but only in ways that don't fundamentally matter.
- akhosravian 5y ago
  The US federal government doesn’t run elections. The individual states set the rules, and they are run based on those rules at a hyper local (sub city sized) level.
- Teever 5y ago
  Rank the following aspects of the US voting system in descending order of importance w.r.t. election outcomes accurately reflecting electorate voting intention. A. Convoluted ballots B. Electronic voting C. Voter ID D. Gerrymandering E. Super PACs F. Convicted Felon voting eligibility G. The Electoral College H. First past the post I. Two party system J. Mail in ballots As a Canadian who has worked at several polling stations on election day for Elections Canada I'm appalled at the state of democracy in the United States and the continually flabbergasted by the obsession over voting ID by some Americans. Canadians vote for representatives in non-gerrymandered districts in a process that involves simple paper ballots that are almost always counted with results finalized the night of the election. The process is simple, transparent and most curiously does not mandate ID. To an outsider watching Americans complain about voter ID laws is like watching someone standing in a burning house complaining that the power just went out. There are so many bigger issues with the American voting process and if those issues were resolved/mitigated you'd see that whatever issues arise from non-mandated voter ID are most often statistically negligible and easily identifiable.
  - tata71 5y ago
    > in a process that involves simple paper ballots that are almost always counted with results finalized the night of the election. 40 million people in Canada 400 million in USA Is it the same?
    - impendingchange 5y ago
      How did they do it before technology?
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        Paper, stamps, and seals. Guess that's technology as well. Before then we just bashed each other with rocks I guess.
        impendingchange 5y ago
        Sorry, I should have qualified it: How did they do it in one night before technology?
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Distribution. Local counties handle tallying, they report to state representatives whether it's pony express, telegraph, trucks or otherwise. States run their own elections and vote for candidates, electoral votes from states are tallied. Makes Santa Claus look like a bitch right?
    - Teever 5y ago
      40 million != 400 million, this is true but vote counting is an embarrassingly parallel problem that is easily solved by hiring many nonskilled workers. Vote counting is an activity that more or less requires basic literacy and numeracy and Western democracies that have switched over to service based economies have many surplus workers pre-trained for this sort of work.
  - 5y ago

RNCTX 5y ago

> ... obtained United States voter information from at least one state election website, sent threatening voter email messages to intimidate voters, crafted and disseminated disinformation pertaining to the election and election security, and accessed, and attempted to access, without authorization, the computer systems of several online United States media entities and states. Both US political parties have done all of this in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. 1. some states allow anyone to get voter registration records, not necessarily a crime. [1] 2. The DNC has been claiming that there was some secret collusion with Russians since 2016, when in fact they paid a guy to make all that up. The same goes for the Trump campaign sending false information about fraud in the 2020 election. The former chief justice of the supreme court (Rehnquist) lived in a neighborhood in AZ deed restricted to whites only and formed a group to physically intimidate minority voters before being appointed as a federal judge. The same chief justice ordered recounts after the 2000 election to stop and declared GW Bush the winner after people from the administrations that made him chief justice arrived in FL to harass local election commissioners. [2] [3] [4] 3. Everyone who posts a Facebook message about Russian conspiracies or mail in voter fraud in support of either political party crafts and disseminates disinformation pertaining to the election. 4. Accessed or attempted to access how? Prosecutors have tried and imprisoned a US citizen for typing in URLs before. Is it the without-authorization they claim is illegal? Because buying authorization is fine, there is at least one content service that specifically advertises disinformation publishing services to customers who want to bribe people with "publish" access in media organizations' CMSes. [5] [6] The FBI is as big a joke as the political parties they serve. 1 - https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access-to-and-use-of-voter-registration-lists.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access... 2 - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58591969 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58591969 3 - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/rudy-giuliani-is-probably-screwed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/rudy-giuliani-is-pro... 4 - https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/04/us/rehnquist-in-arizona-a-militant-conservative-in-60-s-politics.html https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/04/us/rehnquist-in-arizona-a... 5 - https://www.wired.com/2014/04/att-hacker-conviction-vacated/ https://www.wired.com/2014/04/att-hacker-conviction-vacated/ 6 - https://contently.com https://contently.com

finite_jest 5y ago

Here's the indictment which has more details: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1449276/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1449276... They had apparently sent the following email to a large number of registered voters: We are in possession of all your information (email , address, telephone ... everything) . You are currently registered as a Democrat and we know this because we have gained access into the entire voting infrastructure. You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you. Change your party affiliation to Republican to let us know you received our message and will comply. We will know which candidate you voted for . I would take this seriously if I were you . This kinda reads like a Nigerian Prince™-level email scam, except that it looks like they had the actual residential address of the registered voters. It is interesting that their campaign seems to be pro-Trump, the guy who once vowed to tear apart the Iran deal.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
djanogo 5y ago
"campaign seems to be pro-Trump", or the more obvious reason that if you mail this to lot of people one of them will report to media (or FB or Twitter or gov) to make pro-Trump people look bad.