"And that's the problem here. The people denying Russian involvement and denying evidence know damned well that no security service is going to fully elaborate on how the intelligence was gathered."
It would be less of an issue if those security services would brief the congressional subcommittee on national security rather than say "Nah... don't think so".
Without doing that it looks suspicious and it's completely appropriate to ask for more evidence before announcing responses and sanctions.
"I am so glad we're more concerned with some DNC emails that showed office staff being office staff, "
Yeah... that's all it was. No attempts to try and get Trump to be the nominee because the DNC didn't feel Clinton beat many of the others... no attempts to sabotage Sanders campaign in various ways. Nobody from CNN provided debate questions to Clinton... Just office staff being office staff.
"nameless faceless sources....like the director of the CIA, the head of the DIA, and the head of the NSA. also, do you think the CIA just burns their sources in Russia so quickly? or did you not realize that the evidence would itself reveal who those assets are?"
Except Wikileaks -- who LEADED the emails says they didn't get those from the Russians.
"I think people get a smart watch because they believe it will make them efficient about alerts and messages, when what they really want is to turn their phone off."
You can think that. But I think the GP had it right. It's so I can see if a call or notification rises to the level of "pull my phone out of my pocket and deal with it right now".
"I think you are right... in as much as ebooks costing as much as paper backs are "appropriately priced""
I've never understood that. If I buy an ebook I really cant do anything with it other than READ it. With a RealPaperBook(tm), I can re-sell it. I can donate it. I can prop up a wobbly table with it.
With an ebook, maybe you are paying for not taking up gobs of your living space and maybe that has some extra value -- but not a value of parity of price.
Fire TV (Amazon) started doing something close to that. I was looking for a movie (Floyd Norman: An Animated Life) and thought it might be available on prime. I used the Fire TV Search function. Nope. Not on prime -- but it had "Other Viewing Options" with NETFLIX there. I selected it and POOF. Netflix launched and automagically started playing the movie.
"Nothing in this post is untrue, so why is it marked as flame-bait?"
For the same reason this country is having so many problems. Truth be damned. Our "party" is like our sports team. God help the Mets fan that talks ill about the Yankees. Doesn't matter if what is said is an honest opinion, demonstrable fact or just posting something "nice" the opposing team did. Expect to get your head bit off.
And wouldn't it be nice to get a consensus of intel agengencies to agree? Because they don't here. And their refusal to brief congress on this isn't helping.
"Doesn't it bother you that, somewhere out there, that data is floating around, just waiting to be used as leverage to blackmail Trump or other senior officials at some later date?"
The same Trump who can deny whatever the hell he wants to deny -- even if crap is recorded? No. It doesn't bother me.
You are making some pretty big assumptions.
1: Russia was involved DNC "hacks" (CIA doesn't say they were. They say they have "high confidence" they were involved. Doesn't mean they were right and some of our other intel agencies don't share their opinion)
2: Russia was involved with RNC "hacks". (this one has multiple assumptions -- one that the RNC *WAS* hacked -- and it was hacked by Russia -- again, CIA doesn't say they were-- they say they have a "high confidence" they were.
3: Russia withheld RNC emails for "somereason" (getting past that there is no EVIDENCE of any of this, you are also assuming there is something of substance in the RNC emails worth hiding. Maybe they were boring emails -- unlike the DNCs which showed them to be a bunch of misogynistic hypocritical race baiters displaying ugly hubris.
"Except that what the CIA is stating is that Russia broke into both the DNC and RNC, but only choose to release the info from the DNC."
Maybe the RNC's emails weren't showing the RNC to be a bunch of hypocritical misogynistic race baiters rife with hubris -- like the DNC emails showed the DNC? Or maybe the CIA didn't state that Russia broke in to both the DNC and RNC. Maybe they indicated they have "high confidence" of that (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-election-hack.html?_r=0).
Remember IRAQ and WMDs? There was high confidence there, too. Not just with the CIA both most other intelligence organizations as well. Hell, our own intel agencies don't even have the consensus on this EMAIL hacking thing that they had on WMDs in Iraq.
"So Putin directly involved in the hacks, hmm, hunched over a keyboard typing away, expert computer hacker, on top of everything else. "
The only group we know of with certainty (outside of the RNC) that was actively working to get Trump elected was the DNC. Wikileaks ALSO released emails which showed the DNC coordinating to have Trump win the nomination by focusing all responses to him (as if he were the presumptive nominee and encouraging the press to do the same. They didn't want to face anyone other than Trump or Cruz as they didn't think Clinton could win.
The Republicans deserve their crappy candidate -- but the Democrats? They have a special hell -- they helped nominate TWO crappy candidates (one of which was going to win the election).
My brown-coat heart cries for the loss -- but beyond Firefly, I grew up watching him on Barney Miller. I don't think there was a member of that show that wasn't a spectacular spectacular comedic actor. With Ron's passing, the last surviving cast member of Barney Miller is Max Gail (Wojo). You could argue Gregory Sierra (Chano) also -- but he was gone after season 2. It was a great show but it has aged poorly.
The idea here is that you can remove yourself from social media -- they just provide simple shortcuts to get you to the right URLs at the various social media sites such as facebook, This is nice -- but hardly insightful. What is needed is an ability to filter key words in search page rankings. Simple terms: Make Google and Bing ignore Phil Smith (or whoever's) name on particular web pages. It's complicated trying to explain how search algorithms rank pages but a part of it has to do with linking to sources. If a page about Phil Smith (at say, the LA times) is linked to by a bunch of other sites that never MENTION Phil Smith but just point to the article then a search at Bing or Google of "Phil Smith" will show the article higher (closer to the top) than any other web page about Phil Smith.
I took advantage of this when my Nephew was kidnapped (parental abduction) a few years ago to keep his name and the names of his kidnappers appearing high in search results by creating a few dozen pages cross linked to each other and linking to any news articles that would surface. It worked well at the time and my nephew was recovered.
Now, how to "undo" that kind of ranking? My daughter was kidnapped a few years ago (age 10) and recovered alive. It was horrific what happened and the monster got life and then some. I've spent countless hours going to various news outlets and blogs requesting they change JUST my daughter's name from "%HER NAME%" to "THE VICTIM" or somesuch so that if you do a google search of just her name you no longer see HER (well -- almost -- I have one more thorn -- IBTIMES.COM which have ignored my requests but I'll get them eventually). Then I simply request google to re-index the offending article. And for the most part most sites have been accommodating. IBTIMES.COM not so much. They haven't acknowledged I exist but I'll ware them down.
When googling my daughter, I've managed to get pages and pages of search results of stories about her and the ordeal she suffered down to just one that fluctuates it's ranking between the top 3 pages. Why go to all this trouble? Because EVERYONE google's themselves -- or friends and I'd like my daughter to have SOME amount of privacy about her ordeal.
Rather than deleting oneself from social media (which honestly is fairly easy to do) we need something to streamline the process of what *IM* doing. That would be an amazing tool if just for children or victims of crime.
It's incredible difficult if not impossible to completely delete anything from the internet but if I can make it so it's not as easy as just typing my daughters name in a search engine and finding out what happened to her in graphic detail then that's a win I'll happily accept.
"I don't quite understand why Hillary is so despised in the US"
Because she and Bill skirt the law and it certainly LOOKS like The Clinton Foundation is a political money laundering apparatus. She becomes SoS and then BOOM. Her and Bill's speaking fees skyrocket -- by people donating to the Clinton Foundation. And many of those donors end up getting lucrative contracts. BTW, there's an investigation on-going on the Clinton Foundation.
The email issue is another example. It appears the sole function of her private server (which suffered from known security issues as late as early this year) was to allow her to skirt FOI requests. Vanishing emails, completely destroyed hard drives, unusual immunity deals for employees...
These are just two of the recent LARGE issues. Benghazi? Claiming publicly that it was due to some youtube video while we now now (because of now found previously deleted emails) was known to be completely unrelated. Ignoring multiple requests from the ambassador's office in Benghazi for increased security is another concern... It smells really bad.
You can go back to the 70's and 80's with the Whitewater real estate scandal which had several people placed in prison while the Clintons remained completely untouched. Then in Bill's "12th hour" as President, just before leaving office grants pardons to many of those found guilty. Why? It has the APPEARANCE of "dont say anything about Hillary and before I leave I'll wipe your record clean". It also smells really bad. Especially when you look at many of the other pardon's by Clinton before he left office.
There's a ton of stuff in between. Yes -- nothing that can get a "conviction" against them in court but enough "smoke" to tell any reasonable voter to make sure they never hold public office.
More than half the country do not like her and do not trust her. A huge number literally hate her. That's not a good candidate for leader.
"Even if I didn't like her, I would have supported her to prevent Trump. There's just too much at stake, like the possibly 4 (I think) supreme court judges to nominate. It's a disaster that this will fall into Trumps hands."
I can't get behind the idea of voting for "A" because they are not "B" rather than voting for "A" because I think "A" is a good candidate. Luckily, I live in California -- where they was no way Trump would win. Were it others, I would have had a much harder time deciding not to vote for either.
With regards to SCOTUS -- I fall on the side of liking conservative justices. They tend not to find "magic rights" that never existed before. The reason why I find that idea horrific is that if rights can "magically appears" they can also "magically vanish". The Kelo decision should be a particularly frightening example -- and it was all 4 of the liberal justices who made that choice with Kennedy (50/50) falling with them.
This is why it's so hard getting justices through the Senate now -- because we're not looking at their qualifications any more -- we're looking at their POLITICAL VIEWS to make their voter base happy. I blame the unintended consequences of the 17th amendment for that -- the Senate should be appointed by the various states and not popularly elected (changed by the 17th). They aren't SUPPOSED to be beholden to the people -- that's the job of the House.
There's an incredible balancing act our founders created to protect freedom and liberty. Democracy was feared by them but they used it to help protect against a tyranny by an over zealous government -- and they used a republican (little r) form of government with our three branches of government as a balance against a tyranny of the majority.
"Anyhow, this time, let me respectfully disagree. I think the article you quoted on Business Insider might be wrong or misleading, because the way I understood the page that I linked is, that while there are paper ballots, they are being read electronically by a machine with an optical scanner."
1. I humbly accept your apology. 2. With regards to the optical scanners and Michigan -- this is why *I* have a very skeptical take on original report (from the original citation):
"After examining results in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin computer scientists have discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots."
So... Michigan -- which is only paper ballots (which are optically scanned) is suspected of hacked evoting machines -- which they dont even have.
The fact is, there was only a SINGLE example provided by those "computer scientists" -- and that was Wisconsin. And yes -- there was a difference in evoting counties vs. non-voting counties there -- but heres the thing: They were in RURAL counties that used evoting machines. Counties that typically would lean trump anyway -- or Republican in general. And here's the kicker from the article:
"Clinton performed worse on average in Wisconsin counties that used electronic voting machines, but it could be that Trump simply performed better in those counties."
Really? That's the standard? If pressed, I'll admit that yes -- almost any machine can be hacked or affected somehow. This is true in ANY election. However, there is zero evidence of it and this request and it's justification to recount these states is just so much noise over nothing and will do nothing but make Clinton look bad and the democrats look worse.
I hate the fact that Trump won. I didn't vote for him. I think he's a functional psychopath with poor impulse control. But I didn't vote for Clinton either because I think she's a liar and a crook.. They were both horrible candidates. We were given a choice between arsenic and strychnine.
"Forth (sic), just because a machine is "old" doesn't mean it's hack-proof."
Fifth, you never read any of the articles on this.
"Third, the machines have to be accessed to get results out of the machine. This is another point at which that the results could be tampered with. Doesn't matter if the machine is reporting 1000 votes for Candidate X and 200 votes for candidate Y if the man in the middle alters that to 500 and 700 as it's transmitted."
There was zero evidence provided of hacking or tampering. Just a sketchy report. They include Michigan in with their "concern" which is only paper ballots (which are optically scanned) but note that "...Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin computer scientists have discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots."
Only one example was provided, if you bothered to read any of the articles. They note the following:
"Clinton performed worse on average in Wisconsin counties that used electronic voting machines, but it could be that Trump simply performed better in those counties."
And guess what? The counties where Clinton did worse with evoting machines were RURAL counties. Where she (and democrats in general) do worse.
This basically comes down to "they might have been hacked -- but there's not evidence of it so lets waste a lot of time and cause a lot of angst".
"By the way, this is how you "cite" sources. Not some vague reference to something from yesteryear."
A: Was posting from my phone. My reference was more than adequate for my post. B: Article was easily found as it's the most active post since the election and was less than 24 hours ago and was bumped up to the top at least once C: Yesterday is not "yesteryear" It's still on the front page of slashdot!
"we proved many times before the election that many elections machines could be hacked. the election"
The three states in question (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) -- where it's claimed evoting had suspicious results:
Michigan is all paper ballots -- no evoting machines. Pennsylviania -- evoting machines so old they aren't on any network and couldn't possibility be hacked Wisconsin -- Evoting machines were only present in rural areas -- where Trump (and republicans in general) do better anyway. (source: Business insider -- cited in the story summary from yesterday)
" which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail."
Michigan is only paper ballots Wisconsin e-voting machines are located only in rural parts of the state (where Trump typically does better than Clinton) Pennsylvania's evoting machines are so old that they are pretty much unhackable (no possible network connection) (Business Insider -- Summary links to this)
It's a waste of time to do any of this and will just make people angry at Clinton and the Dems in general.
" which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail.)"
Michigan has only paper ballots. Pennsylvania's voting machines are so old they are pretty much unhackable. Wisconsin's e-voting machines are located in rural counties -- where Trump does well. (Business Insider -- the Summary links to it).
It's looking like a total waste of time to look in to this and will only make people annoyed at her and the dems in general.
Slashdot Mirror
"And that's the problem here. The people denying Russian involvement and denying evidence know damned well that no security service is going to fully elaborate on how the intelligence was gathered."
It would be less of an issue if those security services would brief the congressional subcommittee on national security rather than say "Nah... don't think so".
Without doing that it looks suspicious and it's completely appropriate to ask for more evidence before announcing responses and sanctions.
"I am so glad we're more concerned with some DNC emails that showed office staff being office staff, "
Yeah... that's all it was. No attempts to try and get Trump to be the nominee because the DNC didn't feel Clinton beat many of the others... no attempts to sabotage Sanders campaign in various ways. Nobody from CNN provided debate questions to Clinton... Just office staff being office staff.
"nameless faceless sources....like the director of the CIA, the head of the DIA, and the head of the NSA.
also, do you think the CIA just burns their sources in Russia so quickly?
or did you not realize that the evidence would itself reveal who those assets are?"
Except Wikileaks -- who LEADED the emails says they didn't get those from the Russians.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
"Life doesn't need to fit to definitions."
But it's our nature. And not only that, change the language and you change perceptions.
Ever read 1984?
"I think people get a smart watch because they believe it will make them efficient about alerts and messages, when what they really want is to turn their phone off."
You can think that. But I think the GP had it right. It's so I can see if a call or notification rises to the level of "pull my phone out of my pocket and deal with it right now".
"I think you are right... in as much as ebooks costing as much as paper backs are "appropriately priced""
I've never understood that. If I buy an ebook I really cant do anything with it other than READ it. With a RealPaperBook(tm), I can re-sell it. I can donate it. I can prop up a wobbly table with it.
With an ebook, maybe you are paying for not taking up gobs of your living space and maybe that has some extra value -- but not a value of parity of price.
Fire TV (Amazon) started doing something close to that. I was looking for a movie (Floyd Norman: An Animated Life) and thought it might be available on prime. I used the Fire TV Search function. Nope. Not on prime -- but it had "Other Viewing Options" with NETFLIX there. I selected it and POOF. Netflix launched and automagically started playing the movie.
"Nothing in this post is untrue, so why is it marked as flame-bait?"
For the same reason this country is having so many problems. Truth be damned. Our "party" is like our sports team. God help the Mets fan that talks ill about the Yankees. Doesn't matter if what is said is an honest opinion, demonstrable fact or just posting something "nice" the opposing team did. Expect to get your head bit off.
"You have a selective, and faulty, memory. "
Same to you but more of it...
Judith Miller basically put all nonsense to rest. The Iraq intel was wrong. ALL intel has doubt. And the Iraq intel had a pretty wide consensus.
Two words: Judith Miller.
And wouldn't it be nice to get a consensus of intel agengencies to agree? Because they don't here. And their refusal to brief congress on this isn't helping.
"Doesn't it bother you that, somewhere out there, that data is floating around, just waiting to be used as leverage to blackmail Trump or other senior officials at some later date?"
The same Trump who can deny whatever the hell he wants to deny -- even if crap is recorded? No. It doesn't bother me.
You are making some pretty big assumptions.
1: Russia was involved DNC "hacks"
(CIA doesn't say they were. They say they have "high confidence" they were involved. Doesn't mean they were right and some of our other intel agencies don't share their opinion)
2: Russia was involved with RNC "hacks".
(this one has multiple assumptions -- one that the RNC *WAS* hacked -- and it was hacked by Russia -- again, CIA doesn't say they were-- they say they have a "high confidence" they were.
3: Russia withheld RNC emails for "somereason"
(getting past that there is no EVIDENCE of any of this, you are also assuming there is something of substance in the RNC emails worth hiding. Maybe they were boring emails -- unlike the DNCs which showed them to be a bunch of misogynistic hypocritical race baiters displaying ugly hubris.
"Except that what the CIA is stating is that Russia broke into both the DNC and RNC, but only choose to release the info from the DNC."
Maybe the RNC's emails weren't showing the RNC to be a bunch of hypocritical misogynistic race baiters rife with hubris -- like the DNC emails showed the DNC? Or maybe the CIA didn't state that Russia broke in to both the DNC and RNC. Maybe they indicated they have "high confidence" of that (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-election-hack.html?_r=0).
Remember IRAQ and WMDs? There was high confidence there, too. Not just with the CIA both most other intelligence organizations as well. Hell, our own intel agencies don't even have the consensus on this EMAIL hacking thing that they had on WMDs in Iraq.
"So Putin directly involved in the hacks, hmm, hunched over a keyboard typing away, expert computer hacker, on top of everything else. "
The only group we know of with certainty (outside of the RNC) that was actively working to get Trump elected was the DNC. Wikileaks ALSO released emails which showed the DNC coordinating to have Trump win the nomination by focusing all responses to him (as if he were the presumptive nominee and encouraging the press to do the same. They didn't want to face anyone other than Trump or Cruz as they didn't think Clinton could win.
The Republicans deserve their crappy candidate -- but the Democrats? They have a special hell -- they helped nominate TWO crappy candidates (one of which was going to win the election).
"Let the US government fake news win!"
War on drugs!
War on poverty!
Oh crap... we're hosed.
Holy crap, he is! I thought he died years ago!
Maybe we can now Light the Linden now that Abe Vigoda has passed on.
My brown-coat heart cries for the loss -- but beyond Firefly, I grew up watching him on Barney Miller. I don't think there was a member of that show that wasn't a spectacular spectacular comedic actor. With Ron's passing, the last surviving cast member of Barney Miller is Max Gail (Wojo). You could argue Gregory Sierra (Chano) also -- but he was gone after season 2. It was a great show but it has aged poorly.
2016 has been a rough year for great talent.
Delete Yourself from the Internet! Not REALLY...
The idea here is that you can remove yourself from social media -- they just provide simple shortcuts to get you to the right URLs at the various social media sites such as facebook, This is nice -- but hardly insightful. What is needed is an ability to filter key words in search page rankings. Simple terms: Make Google and Bing ignore Phil Smith (or whoever's) name on particular web pages. It's complicated trying to explain how search algorithms rank pages but a part of it has to do with linking to sources. If a page about Phil Smith (at say, the LA times) is linked to by a bunch of other sites that never MENTION Phil Smith but just point to the article then a search at Bing or Google of "Phil Smith" will show the article higher (closer to the top) than any other web page about Phil Smith.
I took advantage of this when my Nephew was kidnapped (parental abduction) a few years ago to keep his name and the names of his kidnappers appearing high in search results by creating a few dozen pages cross linked to each other and linking to any news articles that would surface. It worked well at the time and my nephew was recovered.
Now, how to "undo" that kind of ranking? My daughter was kidnapped a few years ago (age 10) and recovered alive. It was horrific what happened and the monster got life and then some. I've spent countless hours going to various news outlets and blogs requesting they change JUST my daughter's name from "%HER NAME%" to "THE VICTIM" or somesuch so that if you do a google search of just her name you no longer see HER (well -- almost -- I have one more thorn -- IBTIMES.COM which have ignored my requests but I'll get them eventually). Then I simply request google to re-index the offending article. And for the most part most sites have been accommodating. IBTIMES.COM not so much. They haven't acknowledged I exist but I'll ware them down.
When googling my daughter, I've managed to get pages and pages of search results of stories about her and the ordeal she suffered down to just one that fluctuates it's ranking between the top 3 pages. Why go to all this trouble? Because EVERYONE google's themselves -- or friends and I'd like my daughter to have SOME amount of privacy about her ordeal.
Rather than deleting oneself from social media (which honestly is fairly easy to do) we need something to streamline the process of what *IM* doing. That would be an amazing tool if just for children or victims of crime.
It's incredible difficult if not impossible to completely delete anything from the internet but if I can make it so it's not as easy as just typing my daughters name in a search engine and finding out what happened to her in graphic detail then that's a win I'll happily accept.
"I don't quite understand why Hillary is so despised in the US"
Because she and Bill skirt the law and it certainly LOOKS like The Clinton Foundation is a political money laundering apparatus. She becomes SoS and then BOOM. Her and Bill's speaking fees skyrocket -- by people donating to the Clinton Foundation. And many of those donors end up getting lucrative contracts. BTW, there's an investigation on-going on the Clinton Foundation.
The email issue is another example. It appears the sole function of her private server (which suffered from known security issues as late as early this year) was to allow her to skirt FOI requests. Vanishing emails, completely destroyed hard drives, unusual immunity deals for employees...
These are just two of the recent LARGE issues. Benghazi? Claiming publicly that it was due to some youtube video while we now now (because of now found previously deleted emails) was known to be completely unrelated. Ignoring multiple requests from the ambassador's office in Benghazi for increased security is another concern... It smells really bad.
You can go back to the 70's and 80's with the Whitewater real estate scandal which had several people placed in prison while the Clintons remained completely untouched. Then in Bill's "12th hour" as President, just before leaving office grants pardons to many of those found guilty. Why? It has the APPEARANCE of "dont say anything about Hillary and before I leave I'll wipe your record clean". It also smells really bad. Especially when you look at many of the other pardon's by Clinton before he left office.
There's a ton of stuff in between. Yes -- nothing that can get a "conviction" against them in court but enough "smoke" to tell any reasonable voter to make sure they never hold public office.
More than half the country do not like her and do not trust her. A huge number literally hate her. That's not a good candidate for leader.
"Even if I didn't like her, I would have supported her to prevent Trump. There's just too much at stake, like the possibly 4 (I think) supreme court judges to nominate. It's a disaster that this will fall into Trumps hands."
I can't get behind the idea of voting for "A" because they are not "B" rather than voting for "A" because I think "A" is a good candidate. Luckily, I live in California -- where they was no way Trump would win. Were it others, I would have had a much harder time deciding not to vote for either.
With regards to SCOTUS -- I fall on the side of liking conservative justices. They tend not to find "magic rights" that never existed before. The reason why I find that idea horrific is that if rights can "magically appears" they can also "magically vanish". The Kelo decision should be a particularly frightening example -- and it was all 4 of the liberal justices who made that choice with Kennedy (50/50) falling with them.
This is why it's so hard getting justices through the Senate now -- because we're not looking at their qualifications any more -- we're looking at their POLITICAL VIEWS to make their voter base happy. I blame the unintended consequences of the 17th amendment for that -- the Senate should be appointed by the various states and not popularly elected (changed by the 17th). They aren't SUPPOSED to be beholden to the people -- that's the job of the House.
There's an incredible balancing act our founders created to protect freedom and liberty. Democracy was feared by them but they used it to help protect against a tyranny by an over zealous government -- and they used a republican (little r) form of government with our three branches of government as a balance against a tyranny of the majority.
"Anyhow, this time, let me respectfully disagree. I think the article you quoted on Business Insider might be wrong or misleading, because the way I understood the page that I linked is, that while there are paper ballots, they are being read electronically by a machine with an optical scanner."
1. I humbly accept your apology.
2. With regards to the optical scanners and Michigan -- this is why *I* have a very skeptical take on original report (from the original citation):
"After examining results in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin computer scientists have discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots."
So... Michigan -- which is only paper ballots (which are optically scanned) is suspected of hacked evoting machines -- which they dont even have.
The fact is, there was only a SINGLE example provided by those "computer scientists" -- and that was Wisconsin. And yes -- there was a difference in evoting counties vs. non-voting counties there -- but heres the thing: They were in RURAL counties that used evoting machines. Counties that typically would lean trump anyway -- or Republican in general. And here's the kicker from the article:
"Clinton performed worse on average in Wisconsin counties that used electronic voting machines, but it could be that Trump simply performed better in those counties."
Really? That's the standard? If pressed, I'll admit that yes -- almost any machine can be hacked or affected somehow. This is true in ANY election. However, there is zero evidence of it and this request and it's justification to recount these states is just so much noise over nothing and will do nothing but make Clinton look bad and the democrats look worse.
I hate the fact that Trump won. I didn't vote for him. I think he's a functional psychopath with poor impulse control. But I didn't vote for Clinton either because I think she's a liar and a crook.. They were both horrible candidates. We were given a choice between arsenic and strychnine.
"Forth (sic), just because a machine is "old" doesn't mean it's hack-proof."
Fifth, you never read any of the articles on this.
"Third, the machines have to be accessed to get results out of the machine. This is another point at which that the results could be tampered with. Doesn't matter if the machine is reporting 1000 votes for Candidate X and 200 votes for candidate Y if the man in the middle alters that to 500 and 700 as it's transmitted."
There was zero evidence provided of hacking or tampering. Just a sketchy report. They include Michigan in with their "concern" which is only paper ballots (which are optically scanned) but note that "...Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin computer scientists have discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots."
Only one example was provided, if you bothered to read any of the articles. They note the following:
"Clinton performed worse on average in Wisconsin counties that used electronic voting machines, but it could be that Trump simply performed better in those counties."
And guess what? The counties where Clinton did worse with evoting machines were RURAL counties. Where she (and democrats in general) do worse.
This basically comes down to "they might have been hacked -- but there's not evidence of it so lets waste a lot of time and cause a lot of angst".
"By the way, this is how you "cite" sources. Not some vague reference to something from yesteryear."
A: Was posting from my phone. My reference was more than adequate for my post.
B: Article was easily found as it's the most active post since the election and was less than 24 hours ago and was bumped up to the top at least once
C: Yesterday is not "yesteryear" It's still on the front page of slashdot!
Slashdot article I cited that is STILL on the front page: https://politics.slashdot.org/...
Business Insider article references in that article summary: http://www.businessinsider.com...
Relevant text: "And Michigan uses only paper ballots."
And "scantrons" are not evoting machines. They read paper ballots.
Lastly, why do you feel the need to be an ass? Fake news? How about your impotent indignation?
"we proved many times before the election that many elections machines could be hacked. the election"
The three states in question (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) -- where it's claimed evoting had suspicious results:
Michigan is all paper ballots -- no evoting machines.
Pennsylviania -- evoting machines so old they aren't on any network and couldn't possibility be hacked
Wisconsin -- Evoting machines were only present in rural areas -- where Trump (and republicans in general) do better anyway.
(source: Business insider -- cited in the story summary from yesterday)
This really looks like a non-story.
" which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail."
Michigan is only paper ballots
Wisconsin e-voting machines are located only in rural parts of the state (where Trump typically does better than Clinton)
Pennsylvania's evoting machines are so old that they are pretty much unhackable (no possible network connection)
(Business Insider -- Summary links to this)
It's a waste of time to do any of this and will just make people angry at Clinton and the Dems in general.
" which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail.)"
Michigan has only paper ballots.
Pennsylvania's voting machines are so old they are pretty much unhackable.
Wisconsin's e-voting machines are located in rural counties -- where Trump does well.
(Business Insider -- the Summary links to it).
It's looking like a total waste of time to look in to this and will only make people annoyed at her and the dems in general.
No.. you misunderstand. He's going to get them to plant a TREE. When it grows, it will be a "big plant"!