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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsYIKES! FBI says foreign hackers penetrated state election systems
The FBI has uncovered evidence that foreign hackers penetrated two state election databases in recent weeks, prompting the bureau to warn election officials across the country to take new steps to enhance the security of their computer systems, according to federal and state law enforcement officials.
The FBI warning, contained in a flash alert from the FBIs Cyber Division, a copy of which was obtained by Yahoo News, comes amid heightened concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about the possibility of cyberintrusions, potentially by Russian state-sponsored hackers, aimed at disrupting the November elections.
Those concerns prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to convene a conference call with state election officials on Aug. 15, in which he offered his departments help to make state voting systems more secure, including providing federal cyber security experts to scan for vulnerabilities, according to a readout of the call released by the department.
Johnson emphasized in the call that Homeland Security was not aware of specific or credible cybersecurity threats to the election, officials said. But three days after that call, the FBI Cyber Division issued a potentially more disturbing warning, entitled Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems. The alert, labeled as restricted for NEED TO KNOW recipients, disclosed that the bureau was investigating cyberintrusions against two state election websites this summer, including one that resulted in the exfiltration, or theft, of voter registration data. It was an eye opener, one senior law enforcement official said of the bureaus discovery of the intrusions. We believe its kind of serious, and were investigating.
MORE:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-says-foreign-hackers-penetrated-000000175.html
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Fortunately, we have the Ministry of Truth on the case!
liberal N proud
(60,336 posts)It also mentioned Pennsylvania which makes you wonder about Trump and his fraud in Pennsylvania remarks.
Stinky The Clown
(67,808 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)We marched in protest against his voter suppression in Ohio in '04. John Lewis led the march.
lindysalsagal
(20,692 posts)I certainly hope our pentagon cyber experts can get a grip on it all.
Makes me want to return to the old fashioned lever machines.
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)When Beavis gets more electoral votes this November we're going to with we had hard copies.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)But pretty hard to hack. Keep an eye on who lines up for hard copy verifiable voting results and who is in favor of ethereal, black box tabulation of votes.
Igel
(35,320 posts)Dead people on the rolls voted not infrequently. That's one reason for purging voting rolls of inactive voters from time to time--otherwise over time there are more registered voters than there are people living in the precinct, and that's a bad thing.
Chicago was famous for electoral corruption. One popular slogan was "Vote early, vote often, and vote in pencil so we can fix your mistakes." It was funny, but accurate.
If you think of the alternatives critically, you realize that in a lot of places with really bad electoral corruption they're using paper ballots, but the level of electoral fraud is much higher than here. Bags of paper ballots go missing, urns are partly filled before the polls open, bags of ballots are visible before the polls open, etc., etc. "Not like it is here and now" does not mean "better." Not all change is good.
Moreover, if you have a secret ballot you cannot connect the ballot back to you. Write your name on it, somebody will know who voted. That's historically been a bad thing--like violating other Constitutional provisions. The arc of history had tended to be towards greater, not fewer, civil liberties, and that's most often been driven by progressives. It's easy to define a narrow problem and solve it but fail to realize that outside that narrow perspective more problems are created than solved.
Some progressives apparently want negative progress.
Orrex
(63,216 posts)In the event of a stolen election with paper ballots, there would be absolutely no way to establish a clean result by resorting to ballot receipts. Most people either wouldn't keep their receipts or else they wouldn't bother to participate in a recount.
Unfortunately, a paper ballot is no guarantee of a clean election. In fact, the concept of secret ballots is itself incompatible with fully verifiable results because someone can always say "hey, that's not how I voted."
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)Sure, they are then scanned (just like the SAT answer sheets), but we can hold on to the original paper, sealed and stored until the election is certified and any legal challenges satisfied.
Orrex
(63,216 posts)Consider the logistics of contacting those 1.5 million secret ballot holders, confirming that they retain their original, unaltered ballots, and that they're willing to go through the trouble of essentially re-voting.
How could that possibly work in reality?
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)If there's a problem, they recount what they've held on to since the election. Voters would not need to be contacted.
progree
(10,909 posts)and I'm sure that in all cases the state keeps the paper ballots. At least I've never heard of a state or locality that had people take their ballots home after scanning.
About 40 states use optical-scan electronic-voting machines, allowing voters to fill out their choices on paper. The results are tabulated by computers.
These are reasonably safe because the voting machines are backed up by paper ballots that can be checked, says Andrew W. Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor who has studied election security. But six states and parts of four others (including large swaths of Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state in this years race) are more vulnerable because they rely on paperless touchscreen voting, known as DREs or Direct-Recording Electronic voting machines, for which there are no paper ballot backups.
Orrex
(63,216 posts)We need look no further than the hanging chads for all the proof we need.
We also have the precedent of "lost" ballots (as in Florida) as well as the question of dubious oversight (as in Florida).
What do we do if there's a discrepancy between the votes cast and the hardcopy ballots? Do we throw out the votes in favor of the ballots? If so, then why not do that in the first place?
Short of a non-secret vote-by-voter-name system, I don't believe that a secret balloting system can offer anything like a true promise of integrity.
Fine, paper ballots.
It's not the election machines at risk, it's the database of voters. So you go and find that you've been deleted. You don't get the paper ballot. Or you find that 500 people have been added, or people doubled.
It's not the machines you vote on, it's the database and where the data's stored.
Orrex
(63,216 posts)I've been focusing on the danger of fraudulently (mis)handled ballots, but you're exactly right about the bigger and immediate threat of fraudulent voter disenfranchisement.
ornotna
(10,803 posts)Kick a couple hundred thousand more off the voting rolls. That'll teach them hackers.
vdogg
(1,384 posts)It would be an act of war. I can't imagine the fury if they were doing this to help the Democratic candidate...
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Dustlawyer
(10,495 posts)I am sure you can figure out why. Now MAYBE they will do something about it. I will not be holding my breath!
Jeffersons Ghost
(15,235 posts)Many of his comments appear to invite hackers of computer-driven polling places, because he realizes that is the only way he will win the election. Why do readers think Trump is so cozy with North Korea, a nation accused of hacking Sony?
Atlanta (CNN)Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would receive North Korea's dictator for a visit to the United States and again rejected criticism over his willingness to sit down with Kim Jong Un.
"What the hell is wrong with speaking?" Trump asked during a campaign event here, while conceding that he would have a very slim chance of convincing the North Korean leader to abandon his country's nuclear weapons program. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/15/politics/donald-trump-north-korea-kim-jong-un/
Has Trump ever heard of "speaking" through a telephone?
On edit, ANY use of the Swastika is offensive. To view the original image go to "MAKE AMERICA HATE AGAIN"
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/comments/4rofyf/i_dont_know_about_you_but_im_definitely_triggered/
Takket
(21,577 posts)even if the attempt failed, when word gets out about hacking into the elections it would still call chaos, with trumpites saying it was all rigged for Hillary when trump loses. could be VERY ugly. putin is using trump to split American in two.
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)Ford_Prefect
(7,901 posts)The discussion of who wants to "adjust" our election system has meaning and should continue.
Ford_Prefect
(7,901 posts)JaneQPublic
(7,113 posts)Seriously, while hackers have in fact penetrated these state election systems, as well as the State Dept., OMB, NSA, and other government agencies, there's no evidence Hillary's server was ever hacked, on speculation that it could have been.