DOJ likely to issue public report on foreign election interference in July

[DonViejo]

Source: The Hill




BY MORGAN CHALFANT - 06/12/18 11:00 AM EDT

The Department of Justice is likely to issue a public report on foreign efforts to interfere in U.S. elections next month, a top official told lawmakers on Tuesday.

The report will represent the first public product of the department’s effort to study foreign government efforts to meddle in elections, nearly four months after Attorney General Jeff Sessions set up a task force to assess the threat landscape.

Adam Hickey, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s national security division, told senators Tuesday that the task force would submit a report on election interference efforts to Sessions at the end of June. After that, he said he anticipates that the department would issue a public version of the document.

“I anticipate then the department will issue a public report in mid-July,” Hickey told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I expect that report will provide additional insight into how the department intends to apply longstanding principles and policies in the sensitive context of foreign influence operations.” Hickey provided few further details on what either report would contain.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/391812-doj-likely-to-issue-public-report-on-foreign-election-interference-in

[donkeypoofed]

1. This really doesn't matter

Spanky's Administration is not going to want/able to stop hacking of the mid-terms. The only way to stop it would be to go to paper ballots.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Paper ballots are not a "cure all" for vote tampering

and other shenanigans. See Florida's election in 2000.

There are a whole pile of things that need to go with whatever method is used to verify that there are no "stuffed" ballot boxes (e.g., many absentee ballots are already "paper" but there needs to be tamper-resistant/verifiable submissions) or ridiculous reasons to reject what should be valid votes. It took passage of HAVA just to force states to use of provisional ballots in cases of inability to validate a voter.

But the biggest issue is voter suppression and restrictions on when one can vote. One of the things the GOP has been doing is rolling back or eliminating early voting (sadly we never had any of that here in PA), eliminating same-day registration/voting, and purging voter rolls.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. To piggyback on the OP, PA's State Auditor General is working on an audit of voter records

I had heard a story earlier on the local news radio station here in Philly yesterday and found an article -

Are Pa. voter records secure from hackers or other tampering? Auditor intends to find out

Mark Scolforo, Associated Press Published 10:50 p.m. ET June 11, 2018 | Updated 9:32 a.m. ET June 12, 2018

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's elected governmental watchdog announced Monday a team from his agency will take a closer look at the state's voter registration records to make sure they are accurate and safe from outside interference before the 2020 presidential election.

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said his investigation was prompted by findings from federal intelligence agencies that Russian hackers had targeted Pennsylvania and 20 other states ahead of the 2016 presidential contest.

He said the review, to be done "as soon as possible," will study the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, including its security measures, the accuracy of its records and the quality of its internal controls. The SURE system, as it is called, contains voter registration information for about 8 million Pennsylvanians. "It's not about who won or lost the election," said DePasquale, a Democrat serving his second term in the elected position. He said potential concerns include a scenario in which outsiders could delete voter registrations or could add people who should not be registered.

<...>

Robert Torres, who as acting secretary of state under Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf plays a lead role in running Pennsylvania's elections, said the federal study indicated hackers with Russia-based computers attempted to probe the state's systems, looking for vulnerabilities. They specifically targeted the SURE system, an aide to Torres said. "To the best of our knowledge, they were not successful," DePasquale said. Torres said federal workers were at his offices last week, performing an elections vulnerability assessment. The results have not been announced.

https://www.ydr.com/story/news/local/pennsylvania/2018/06/11/auditor-general-eugene-depasquale-russian-hacking-study-security-pennsylvania-voter-rolls/693234002/

I bolded the interesting part about "elections vulnerability" testing here in PA last week.

[The_jackalope]

4. Russia showed that it's feasible to hack the voters rather than the vote.

Yes, tightening up the voting process is essential. But you also need to stop the flow of dark money (hello Citizens United) and stop or at least slow the flood of social media (and talk radio) mind-hacking.

[Sophia4]

5. I wonder how much in total was spent on the effort to have an impact on our vote.

Not just the hacking of e-mails but also the Facebook and other influence work.

Who paid for it? Who received the money for it?

And among those who received the money for it, who knew what was going on? Who suspected something? What was the role of Cambridge Analytica really? Who contacted Wikileaks? How much had the e-mails been processed and organized before they were published? Who did that processing and organizing? What are all the details of the process that was used to achieve what was achieved? What cultural insights were used and how and where were those insights acquired?

The influence on our election had to have been a well organized effort that involved a lot of analysis of our culture and us as a people. That is why it is most likely to me that a foreign state, a state with a lot of resources and an intelligence community was involved. That is why it is so believable to me that it was Russia.

I cannot imagine any European country bothering with such a project. There are some other countries in the world that might be interested in organizing a team to influence our elections to this extent, but most of them have "their own fish to fry."

The influencing of our elections took a lot of organizational ability, of individuals who could work together, who were innovative but cooperative. I would like to know how they did this without our being aware sooner.

I don't go to Facebook. I just instinctively don't like it although I have family members who go there a lot.

[The_jackalope]

6. Of all the possible actors, only Russia would benefit from Trump's election

I agree with all your reasons for suspecting Russia. Certainly no European nation would have worked to elect Trump. Only a state that wished to see the USA (and global democracy in general) destabilized and ripped apart would have done such a thing. The only other possibility is China, but there's no evidence implicating them in the election influence.

One of the reasons we weren't aware earlier may be the firewall that has been erected (for very good reasons) between the intelligence and political communities. It's a double-edged sword, as we have seen here. The IC knew well before the election that funny business was going on, but the couldn't share what they knew openly, and the political situation in Congress allowed the effort they did make to be shut down.

One of the key elements to the current fiasco is the power of Republicans in Congress. With Democratic majorities such an outcome would not have been possible. That makes me wonder if significant effort/money was expended by Russia to encourage/promote the current situation. For example, dark money flowing into right-wing talk radio and the NRA over the last decade or so. I have no proof or anything, but it's a possibility worth investigating.

[Sophia4]

7. Yes. Thank you.

[lagomorph777]

8. Including $30-$50 million in #NRAROUBLES ?

Probably hundreds of millions. Chump change in a Presidential election. But very deviously spent.