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DEFCON Conference To Target Voting Machines (politico.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: Hackers will target American voting machines -- as a public service, to prove how vulnerable they are. When over 25,000 of them descend on Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas at the end of July for DEFCON, the world's largest hacking conference, organizers are planning to have waiting what they call "a village" of different opportunities to test how easily voting machines can be manipulated. Some will let people go after the network software remotely, some will be broken apart to let people dig into the hardware, and some will be set up to see how a prepared hacker could fiddle with individual machines on site in a polling place through a combination of physical and virtual attacks. With all the attention on Russia's apparent attempts to meddle in American elections --
former President Barack Obama and aides have made many accusations toward Moscow, but insisted that there's no evidence of actual vote tampering --
voting machines were an obvious next target, said DEFCON founder Jeff Moss.
"Russians" didn't hack the voting machines (I don't know for sure, mind you, but it's pretty implausible). *If* they did anything (and this is far more plausible), then it was messing with the voter's brains, aka "social engineering", aka FUD, aka PsyOps.
Yes, the vulnerabilities in the voting machines are embarrasing. Yes, it's fun uncovering them. There are many other reasons for counting votes the "traditional" way, secure machines or not. Still: don't let all this geeky stuff detract from the elephant in the room: buying Facebook personal data in bulk and correlating it with past votes, then sending targeted fake news has done much more in the last big polls (at least for Brexit and for the US Presidentials it is *known*) than any "classical hacker" vote fraud could have done.
Hey, you USians even have a word for it, courtesy of one of your three-letter agencies: PsyOPS!
I guess ten minutes until the first crack and that all of them will be broken within a day, two at most.
Because it's too hard to get an ID?
Indeed, that idea itself is most definitely racist, if you go by a reasonable definition of "racism". It implies that black people are incapable of obtaining a state-issued ID while everyone else who wants to vote has no problem doing it.
Apparently this is solely because they are black. It cannot be because of any concern about poverty because there are lots of poor white people (more in fact). Also, the proposed "solution" is always to abandon any voter ID requirement. To subsidize the small cost of state-issued IDs (the DMV fee/etc) or give them away for free to low-income people is never seriously proposed.
Of course, when the shoe is on the other foot, Dems sqauwk for voter ID:
If you were expecting a principled stance from any politician you are definitely going to be disappointed. They support whatever seems to be in their immediate interests at that particular time, no matter what they perceived to be in their interests in the past. The "Dems" are not unique in this respect. Power plus a lack of any real personal accountability seems to do this to people.
It won't change until we all realize that an honest, trustworthy voting/electoral process is in everyone's interests and that this is not a difficult problem to solve.
Anyone who wants voting machines the way they are now, in reality wants to commit voting fraud.
The possibilities for attack are too numerous and too easy.
And if the machine at the end of the day just spits out a list of numbers, who can verify/falsify these numbers?
Make the computer a tool to fill out the voting form correctly, use the aggregated number from the machines for the first estimate and then count the ballots manually. It's really no black magic to do it right.
Of course, because mandating a separate photo ID for voting only, which expires after a single election, and is only able to be obtained from a limited number of locales, some of which disproportionately placed in affluent neighborhoods is in no way thinly veiled racism.
Thirty four characters live here.
Well clearly Psychops didn't work because the people voted against Trump. The psychops didn't sway the people.
There's two problems here, firstly the electoral college that makes some peoples votes worth more than others. In a democracy that is a weak spot, and its incompatible with "all men are equal" basis of the constitution.
But there's a second problem, and that's the "people must have faith in the voting system even if its fraudulant" thinking. So nobody really wants to look into these crappy voting machines because they're frightened they might undermind the confidence in the vote by finding something!
You see it in the way the Putin story is reported:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-election-exclusive-idUSKBN17L2N3
The above link is Reuters report on the revealed Putin plan plans to get Trump elected.
"A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said."
If you recall Trump switching to a "massive voter fraud" line shortly after this document was prepared. Which in turn led a counter push to shore up confidence in the US voting system.
So nobody really wants to look into the voting machines in case they're helping Putin undermine confidence in the vote. (!)
(IMHO, it doesn't matter that Putin wanted to undermine confidence in the vote, and by hacking these machines you are helping his work. It is necessary to fix the voting machines even if a short term reduction in the confidence of the vote is an outcome. People have to realize they DID NOT VOTE for Trump, he is not their fault, even if they did vote for him, they are not to blame for believing the lies, they have to have faith that they can fix previous mistakes with their vote).
Of course, because mandating a separate photo ID for voting only, which expires after a single election, and is only able to be obtained from a limited number of locales, some of which disproportionately placed in affluent neighborhoods is in no way thinly veiled racism.
Nice strawman.
Why are you against holding the US to UN standards for free and fair elections?
Those standards require states to "[e]nsure the integrity of the ballot through appropriate measures to prevent multiple voting or voting by those not entitled thereto;"
Why do you want the US to continue to fail to meet accepted international standards for free and fair elections?
Why do you want the US to continue to fail to "ensure the integrity of the ballot"?
NO ONE asked for that. The requirement is to provide your drivers license or Equivalent (State Issued ID)
Might matter in other countries but here? It doesn't matter how good the ballot box is when the whole rest of the electoral system is broken.
From non-ranked single votes to gerrmandering; the vote is bascially sham. All of the security is there to put on a show; the actual process barely matters. The system has pre-ordained that the two parties that have won the most in the past will pretty much continue indefinitely.
Its not democracy, its not worth voting, much less working on voting machines; they are the LEAST of the problem.
The problem is not suppressing the black vote it is allowing NONCITIZENS to vote.This is only because the Dems need that illegal voting bloc to win a national election. They had it this past election and STILL did not win. 30 + million illegals in the US. It is not a hardship to prove who you are and your citizen status. The only people arguing against voter ID is the Dems wanting the illegals vote. This has nothing to do with the black vote. That is used so the race card can be played.
Add to this, closing DMV offices in areas where minorities live. Add to that Kafka-esque requirements for how you document who you are before they give you an ID in the first place. Send people away with no idea for bureaucratic reasons for a couple of times. The obvious question is how big a problem is voter impersonation fraud. And when pressed, officials are only able to come up with a *very* small number of cases.
I understand the sentiment, though I disagree with it. "Trump == BAD || Trump == OTHERPARTY" so let's do all we can to delegitimize the election."
But widespread hacking seems to me to be a near impossibility, due to the way the US election system is set up. For those outside the country: We don't have a central counting system. It's district-by-district, state-by-state. With different machines, people, safeguards, watchers, etc. Not impermeable, but pretty darn good.
If the Russians did "hack" the election, it was via propaganda to change the hearts and minds of voters. Which is exactly what our politicians do every day. So even if they were involved, even at the request of a given candidate, I don't quite see the problem. It's just the modus operandi, working as designed to fool the American public into voting for a particular candidate.
Add to this, closing DMV offices in areas where minorities live. Add to that Kafka-esque requirements for how you document who you are before they give you an ID in the first place. Send people away with no idea for bureaucratic reasons for a couple of times.
The obvious question is how big a problem is voter impersonation fraud. And when pressed, officials are only able to come up with a *very* small number of cases.
How the hell can you know if there is any voter impersonation fraud when there's no requirement for a voter to actually identify himself?
My Gransmother didn't have any kind of legal picture ID until she was well into her 80s and only got it because shit banking regulations made it nearly impossible for her to deal with the banks. I shouldn't say the regulations.....no... because our government meddles in other countries, commits murder, and we suffer the blowback... and then get extra laws to "protect us" from the same blowback those same law making assholes caused.
Instead of tightening bank regulations, we should tighten our constitution to shut down the CIA and other groups that make us targets for blowback. We would be much safer without the CIA than with banking and ID regulations. But...here we are.
False,
They had recounts in all those states. In Detroit it was found there was enough significant voter fraud that they were unable to do the recount. The fraud in Detroit appeared to favor Hillary heavily. Michigan was unable to complete a recount that was demanded and paid for by the Jill Stein and the Green party because of how poorly the heavily democratic counties handled votes and counted some ballots 8 times election night. Parts of Michigan that there wasn't obvious voter fraud went strongly to Trump.
Your entire post is an outright lie.
Story
Also remember, the only outright evidence of election rigging was by the DNC, not Trump or Russia.
My Gransmother didn't have any kind of legal picture ID until she was well into her 80s and only got it because shit banking regulations made it nearly impossible for her to deal with the banks. I shouldn't say the regulations.....no... because our government meddles in other countries, commits murder, and we suffer the blowback... and then get extra laws to "protect us" from the same blowback those same law making assholes caused.
Instead of tightening bank regulations, we should tighten our constitution to shut down the CIA and other groups that make us targets for blowback. We would be much safer without the CIA than with banking and ID regulations. But...here we are.
Why do you think amending the US Constitution would help?
Republicans ignore the 4th Amendment, Democrats barely give lip service to the 1st and count directly from 1 to 3 when it comes to the Constitution - 2 is right out.
We're screwed. President Obama was a self-proclaimed "constitutional scholar" who ran on restoring Constitutional rule (among other things), and once in office he got bitch-slapped 9-0 by the Supreme Court more than once for exceeding his Consitutional authority.
I have no hope whatsoever that Trump even read the damn document.
Last prescription I got I didn't need an ID. Granted it was a bowel prep kit for a colonocapy. I assume they figured no kid would ever buy one of those in a desperate attempt to get high. Lets be honest, in a perfect world I wouldn't have bought it either, it's just hours of something that can only be described as the exact opposite of fun.
You know as well as I do, the hackers doesn't travel to the PC, only the hack does. These are networked systems. When your PC gets hacked, the hacker didn't break into your house! Neither would they need to with these voting machines. You're trying to deceive with that comment I think.
Russia DID hack the electoral roll for Florida, this WAS confirmed by the FBI, and the election system contractor in California was also hacked.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/florida-election-hack/index.html
Key states DID NOT accept the FBI's help in securing their networks, we do not know if their systems were hacked. And since these systems are dumb ass networked, (even the COUNTING machines!) you do not need to be physically present and hack each machine one by one.
Sorry your world view is so twisted and you want to believe that people actually liked your candidate. You should research what it takes to vote or be registered to vote in each state. People always talk about California because they can get IDs, but those don't come with voting privileges.
Story from LA times. When you go to get ID or a driver's license you are registered to vote automatically, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown (D). Hmm, how about that.
Wow, its like they wrote a story 2 years ago to refute your sentence exactly. How did they know 2 years ago you would say that?
Was not my candidate. Tell me WHY I should not need to prove my identity and my citizenship status to vote. I need to get a background check to exercise my Second amendment rights. I say voting is more important than that.
I think you have a short memory, Russia was confirmed to have hacked two election databases, and so FBI offered help to states to secure their voter machine networks (which some took up and others did not).:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/russians-hacked-two-u-s-voter-databases-say-officials-n639551
"Hackers based in Russia were behind two recent attempts to breach state voter registration databases, fueling concerns the Russian government may be trying to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials tell NBC News. ....The breaches included the theft of data from as many as 200,000 voter records in Illinois, officials say."
"The incidents led the FBI to send a "flash alert" earlier this month to election officials nationwide, asking them to be on the lookout for any similar cyber intrusions.
[See FBI Issues Warning After Two State Election Systems Are Hacked]"
"One official tells NBC News that the attacks have been attributed to Russian intelligence agencies...
"This is the closest we've come to tying a recent hack to the Russian government," the official said."
Of course it is. After all, African Americans can't be expected to be able to figure out how get an ID in 2017 America! Oh, wait, perhaps THAT is the actual racist viewpoint: Voter ID is racist!
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
How the hell can you know if there is any voter impersonation fraud when there's no requirement for a voter to actually identify himself?
You are required to identify yourself.
You state who you are when voting.
CNN is fake news.
The electoral roll for Florida is publically available to ANYONE for like $300.
The FBI has yet to release ANY evidence of Russian hacking. They released a 17 page PDF with "evidence" which was basically an explanation of how Phising attacks work and a hacker name of HoneyBear or something like that. No evidence of who Honey Bear is, what he did, or even if he did a phishing attack. Their PDF showed no evidence of anything.
Is it just me, or is every Hillary supporter posting here on this story just posting easily disproven lies? I thought only Trump supporters fell for "fake news".
I'm all for requiring ID, if you make it free and easy to get.
But that's not really what this is about, and claims to the contrary ignore both the factual evidence, as well as the long history in the U.S. of politically motivated hurdles to voting. Only in the USA do we actively make it HARDER for people to cast a ballot.
This is why, in states where they've mandated voter ID, those same legislatures have also closed down DMV offices and cut hours, making it actively harder for people to get that ID. Oh, sure, they're not stopping you from voting, they're simply putting up another hurdle, knowing that some portion of the people it's targeted against will simply decide it's too much hassle.
Empirical evidence has also shown that it's a vanishingly small problem, on the order of magnitude where misprocessed ballots are likely to have more impact on an election. Also, the size and scope of a conspiracy required to mobilize a number of people large enough to have a significant impact, at the direct risk of felony conviction for something that is easily traced to them, is the stuff of ridiculous Hollywood movie plots at best.
On the other hand, there's real reason to be concerned about closed-source systems being used to tabulate votes, especially when in some cases there is no outside paper trail to confirm what the machine is saying. Why bother bribing people to come in person, when I can just have a hacker run a program that adds or alters the counts in the machine?
Incidentally, this is one of the really cool things about DEFCON, and one of the reasons why I like to go. It really is a -hacking- conference, in the original sense of the word. There's all sorts of things you can get hands-on with, take apart, scan, mess with, etc. No releases, no NDAs, no "but don't really do anything that could break it." In the last two years I saw everything from cars to home appliances to ICS/SCADA systems and more. This is exactly the kind of thing that DEFCON is known for, and I look forward to messing with them myself (as well as watching what others do and find).
What's even more interesting is that from what I've seen, it's increasingly the companies and the government themselves bringing this stuff, because they're realizing the value of unleashing the curiousity and skill of the hacker mindset on some of these things, never-mind the PR value (Two years ago Tesla brought a Model S to the main ballroom, and let people hack away at it, while advertising their bug bounty program, for instance).
I NEVER cared for ANY electronic voting machines. It is way too easy to change electronics. All these hack attempts do is give whomever is the opposition in DC, a 30 second sound bite on TV, as to why they lost an election. To remove that, go back to paper ballots. To add to that, after you vote, you should dip your finger in that non removable ink also.
In-person voter fraud is shockingly rare. (Some states have mandated picture ID or other forms of identification to vote for years, by the way.) From 2000-2012, there were 2,068 cases of voter fraud. 10 of those were in-person voter fraud.
10.
So, the ostensible goal of most of these voter ID laws, that they need to be in place to stop voter fraud, is really a non-factor. This is a solution in search of a problem.
Then why do it?
Well, for one, it's an appeal to ignorance. "There has to be voter fraud, we don't have any way to stop it!" Except, of course, we do. Even states that don't require picture ID have methods of catching fraudulent ballots.
For another, it's clearly being used as a way to block certain types of voters (poor, minorities) from legally accessing one of their rights. It's not a coincidence that those blocks of voters tend towards voting for the Democratic party.
Now, don't get me wrong. I think it makes sense that everyone should have a picture ID. It's damn useful to be able to prove who you are to the cops, to potential employers, whatever.
But let's make it accessible. Don't close down places that provide picture ID, don't make it harder.
No political party with honest intent should be trying to restrict people from voting.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Yes, maybe voting machines were hacked. It's been demonstrated several times that it's possible, and the closed-source proprietary hardware and software doesn't help anyone (except the companies who sell them), but if you look into how the electronic machines are set up, it's not the voting machines that are the big problem, it's the privately owned servers they report their information to on it's way to the various Secretaries of State.
Percentage-wise, poverty disproportionately effects some races more than others, and while poverty in and of itself is not a protected class, race is. That's why it's used as a legal challenge.
Plus, in the US, we consider poverty to be a moral failing, unless we can excuse it through racism, disability, etc.
But there's an easy way to require voter ID without running into a legal challenge - make it easy to get. Nowadays it just takes a digital camera to make an ID - so why not set it up so that any public assistance office has the ability to take a picture, send in a form, and the voter ID can be mailed to the poor person.
For the working poor who aren't living off assistance, we could apply a tax credit - have a valid ID for voting - $25 off your taxes.
This way would likely survive a legal challenge. But it would also increase the number of voters.
Now if you are for voter ID, the above plan doesn't sound bad. If you are for voter suppression in order to favor a particular party, the above sounds horrible.
Have any of the official US agencies had a go at hacking these voting machines or is security left entirely to the manufacturer?
In my state, I have to give my name to vote. The volunteers cross my name (and address) off a pre-printed list of voters.
Not once, in any place I have voted, have I ever found anyone who claimed to be me. Nor have I heard about it happening to anyone else. I have not seen any claims in the news that can document people claiming to be someone else.
It isn't about citizens proving anything.
It is about preventing those without the right to vote from voting and altering elections.
Should we just trust everyone who shows up to vote? Really?
A govt photo ID is the cheapest way I know to do that which still actually works well enough.
In the USA, probably 95% of all adults have a drivers license. Where I live, you can get a govt photo ID for free if you are low income and don't have a DL.
I don't have a better idea than that. Do you?
That's because in-person voter fraud is so shockingly rare as to be non-existent. Depending on the state, it can be very easy to register to vote fraudulently, or send in a fraudulent mail ballot.
But in-person voter fraud, which is the only type of voter fraud that picture IDs would address, hardly ever happens. But it's the only type of voter fraud that gets fixated on by the GOP.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
In-person voter fraud is shockingly rare. (Some states have mandated picture ID or other forms of identification to vote for years, by the way.) From 2000-2012, there were 2,068 cases of voter fraud. 10 of those were in-person voter fraud.
10.
How do we know there isn't in-person fraud in the states that don't require picture ID?
Unless the voter is positively ID'd there's no way to know if someone else is fraudulently voting in place of the real person.
The problem with politics is the process only allows for dishonest candidates.
They are there to outsource and sell off all our resources.
99% of candidates are corrupt and will never represent citizens.
Check out how many are Business types and Chamber of Commerce members (Way too many)
The corrupt political system makes it almost impossible for anyone honest to get on the ballot.
Challenge: I have better access to my Video, Music, Pics and Text than anyone on Earth.
The objective was to damage or disable voting machines in areas not likely to vote for a Russian operative.
That mission succeeded wildly.
Only states with non-networked voting machines using printed ballots and optical scanners were able to avoid it.
Only had to work in key counties.
And it succeeded.
But we're not supposed to admit that.
I guess we're already at the stage where the narrative is considered defacto truth in this propoganda campaign being levied by the corporate media. What is it, an attempt to delegitimize the last election as a form of damage control?
If exposing the insecurities of voting machines, and more checks and balances are introduced into the voting process comes as a result, then at least something good will come of this.
Brennen Center, Washington Post, Atlantic, Mother Jones, UCSD, UW, Cornell, Cambridge. There is a mix a academic original research and easily accessible, but thoughtful articles in that list.
Here is an example
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
And based on the comments she voted republican not democratic.
A bit like the lady who was so concerned about vote fraud - that her vote would be switched over to Clinton - that she decided to commit voter fraud...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Of course, because mandating a separate photo ID for voting only, which expires after a single election, and is only able to be obtained from a limited number of locales, some of which disproportionately placed in affluent neighborhoods is in no way thinly veiled racism.
Nobody suggested any of that. What the hell are you talking about? Strawman much?
They had both candidates in their pockets and either didn't care who won (controlling both) or that Comey's actions were unexpected and caused a PR crisis that shifted public favor towards Trump.
Either way, people both nationally and internationally would have lost out whichever candidate won. America had a weak election with weak primary candidates, collusion to keep out secondary candidates (although realistically Sanders, if he'd kept the independent ticket, was the only 'Perot' level candidate that might've tipped the scales away. And no I didn't/don't support him, but he had the third strongest groups of rabid fans. If he hadn't told them 'support Clinton instead of letting Trump ruin america!' we probably would have had a dramatically different election take place, if only because the electoral college votes might not have been enough for either Clinton or Trump to outright win the election, falling back to and causing scrutiny of the 'non-electoral win' laws.
Fraud in vote-by-mail is lower risk and easier. Why would anybody even attempt in-person voter fraud? It would be like stealing guns from a military armory when you could steal them from a random person's house while he or she is gone for the weekend.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The only confirmed hacking attempts were performed by DHS against Indiana's and Idaho's election systems.
Indiana joins Idaho in claiming DHS tried to hack their election systems
Please show me where the Obama justice department even enforced the law. Just it is not enforced does not make it OK. Stupid argument. Being in the country should get them prosecuted and deported. But "Sanctuary Cities" and their voting blocks like LA.
Cops often steal ("confiscate") ID from homeless people just to mess with them.
Most voter fraud would be prosecuted at the state level, so for example ask the republican Alabama Secretary of State, John Merril, how many convictions he his state has for at poll voter impersonation.