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US Voting Server At Heart of Russian Hack Probe Mysteriously Wiped (theregister.co.uk)
A computer at the center of a lawsuit digging into Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election has been wiped. "The server in question is based in Georgia -- a state that narrowly backed Donald Trump, giving him 16 electoral votes -- and stored the results of the state's vote-management system," reports The Register. "The deletion of its filesystem data makes analysis of whether the system was compromised impossible to ascertain." From the report: There is good reason to believe that the computer may have been tampered with: it is 15 years old, and could be harboring all sorts of exploitable software and hardware vulnerabilities. No hard copies of the votes are kept, making the electronic copy the only official record. While investigating the Kennesaw State University's Center for Election Systems, which oversees Georgia's voting system, last year, security researcher Logan Lamb found its system was misconfigured, exposing the state's entire voter registration records, multiple PDFs with instructions and passwords for election workers, and the software systems used to tally votes cast. Despite Lamb letting the election center knows of his findings, the security holes were left unpatched for seven months. He later went public after the U.S. security services announced there had been a determined effort by the Russian government to sway the presidential elections, including looking at compromising electronic voting machines.
In an effort to force the state to scrap the system, a number of Georgia voters bandied together and sued. They asked for an independent security review of the server, expecting to find flaws that would lend weight to their argument for investment in a more modern and secure system. But emails released this week following a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that technicians at the election center deleted the server's data on July 7 -- just days after the lawsuit was filed. The memos reveal multiple references to the data wipe, including a message sent just last week from an assistant state attorney general to the plaintiffs in the case. That same email also notes that backups of the server data were also deleted more than a month after the initial wipe -- just as the lawsuit moved to a federal court. It is unclear who ordered the destruction of the data, and why, but they have raised yet more suspicions of collusion between the Trump campaign team, the Republican Party, and the Russian government.
In an effort to force the state to scrap the system, a number of Georgia voters bandied together and sued. They asked for an independent security review of the server, expecting to find flaws that would lend weight to their argument for investment in a more modern and secure system. But emails released this week following a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that technicians at the election center deleted the server's data on July 7 -- just days after the lawsuit was filed. The memos reveal multiple references to the data wipe, including a message sent just last week from an assistant state attorney general to the plaintiffs in the case. That same email also notes that backups of the server data were also deleted more than a month after the initial wipe -- just as the lawsuit moved to a federal court. It is unclear who ordered the destruction of the data, and why, but they have raised yet more suspicions of collusion between the Trump campaign team, the Republican Party, and the Russian government.
Black box voting machines make it easy for election officials to throw the results however they pleased. Let's skip the Russian conspiracy theories when good ol' domestic corruption is more than enough to explain suspiciously wiped servers.
Hopefully this server wiping is as thoroughly investigated.
I won't hold my breath.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Oh please shut up with your petty partisan politics.
Election rigging has a long history in the US, and neither major party has shown much interest in reforming the system.
Why would it have to be mentioned? The Georgia Secretary of State is responsible for elections there, top-to-bottom (he's a Republican). The Governor of Georgia is a Republican. The state legislature is controlled by Republicans. The Attorney General of Georgia is a Republican. Republicans control every single state-wide lever of power.
The server was wiped after voting rights activists filed a lawsuit against the Republican Secretary of State. The reason for the lawsuit? To force the Republican Secretary of State to have the server independently analyzed.
So, please explain why and how "Dems are burning the evidence" in this case? And how did they manage to get a server, and all of its backups simultaneously wiped when they were under Republican control.
You are welcome on my lawn.
7 years? If he gets through this term; if he gets re-elected.
If the USA votes Trump in for a second term then your decline into irrelevance will fall off a cliff. Such insanity should be punished.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
It's time to get over it.
Really. Like the way Republicans "got over" Obama winning twice?
The "Hillary lost, get over it" meme is old and tired. Get over that.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Diebold's CEO promised to deliver Ohio to Bush, and in contradiction to the exit polls, the Diebold machines made good on the promise. Not proof (polls are tricky), but there was a "magic" card that could set the machine to deliver and specified result. Might have been a test card to check the the central server correctly tallied the remote machines, but production code should never have had it.
There is no mystery about who wiped the machine or how it got wiped. The question is, why isn't someone being charged with evidence tampering?
I'm sure the people who support Drumpf have already started their own noise to try to turn this into some kind of non-issue. And most people won't give a darn either way. This country is screwed.
"but all Trump has to do is fire Mueller, and that investigation is over." So what you're saying is you're a moron. See you at the gallows, traitor lol. Bring your long necktie! #Winning!
Firing the guy investigating you is basically the next thing to admitting guilt, particularly when the reason given was that they felt bad how they treated Hillary. I actually talked to a guy at work. He believed that you had to successfully stop an investigation for it to be obstruction of justice. That is not the law. Here is the quote from wikipedia.
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
Note that it doesn't say success. Mueller is spotless. There is no plausible reason to fire him other than to obstruct justice. I think at that point enough republicans might support impeachment, since getting rid of him asap allows them to recover sooner.
I wouldn't be at all disappointed if Trump fired enough people until he could get rid of Mueller. I think it would signal his end, with all the evidence Mueller and the Senate/House collected used to speed along his removal. Firing Comey should have been enough to start the process, but the republicans wanted power more than they wanted to do what was right. Note that I don't agree that Comey should have revealed all he did, when he did, but to think Trump fired him because he disapproved is beyond nonsense.
Also, just think. Comey prepared for the day of his possible firing, though didn't really expect it. Just think how prepared Mueller must be now...
Come to think of it, Trump's attempts to influence the outcome of the investigation by calling it all fake news, and attempting to discredit everyone who disagrees, could be seen as a form of obstruction.
Yes, lets equate emails with voting records and use this news to flog a dead horse. Distract and dodge. Works every time, and the best bit is, you don't even need to do it yourself, an army of tribal supporters are willing to do your work for you on internet discussion spaces everywhere.
One statement does not contradict the other. If the FBI never served a formal request to investigate the physical server, it won't have had access to it. And still the DNC never had denied the FBI access to the server.
a lady who poorly managed her IT
What? You bought her "aw shucks, gee whiz" performance?
With malice of forethought she NEVER, EVER logged in or in any way touched a government email account in her entire term as Secretary of State because, being so backwards technically, she found it easier to hire her own IT consultant, have a server built and managed on her own dime, and have to tell everyone she worked with her email was not hrc@state,gov but instead Hillary@hrc45.com?
Hillary somehow "for simplicity sake" abandoned her official email that she used as a US Senator opting for one run by a guy that does IT work on the side when she stepped into Obama's Cabinet?
As an Ivy League educated lawyer, who was on the wrong side of dozens and dozens of "he said, she said" lawsuits and investigations, you honestly believe she has no idea how emails can derail a political career?
Ken