Judge Says Voting Machine Company Can Continue To Sue Trump's Buddies Over Bogus Election Fraud Claims

from the but-will-they-be-judgment-proof-by-the-time-judgment-arrives? dept

A federal judge has said Dominion's lawsuit against a former Trump lawyer can move forward. Sidney Powell -- the self-proclaimed "Kraken" -- was supposed to storm into federal courts and present irrefutable evidence President Joe Biden's position as president had been fraudulently obtained.

Instead, Powell -- like several other pro-Trump lawyers with more time than common sense -- proved nothing but their own willful ignorance and inability to abide by the rules of their law licenses. Powell is not only facing a billion-dollar lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, but also possible sanctions in Michigan.

Powell has claimed her allegations against Dominion -- repeated in press conferences and court filings -- were just the heated rhetoric that often accompanies "disputed" elections (even if the Kraken was doing most of the disputing). While that may be a decent defense against defamation allegations (i.e., "no reasonable person would take my partisan shit-talking as statements of fact"), it kind of falls flat when the same allegations are presented as sworn allegations in court filings attempting to challenge the election outcome.

Powell's assertions that the alleged defamation was just crazy talk have dead-ended in federal court. As the court sees it, Dominion should be allowed to move forward and dig into the "these are/aren't facts" assertions by Sidney "Krack Happens" Powell. (h/t Brad Heath)

The court's dismissal [PDF] of Powell's motion to dismiss is this summer's best beach read because it casts so much shade it makes the heat waves tolerable. And while it's casting a long, low-key snarky shadow over Powell's attempt to escape a billion-dollar judgment, it refuses to let any of her co-conspiracy theorists off the hook, like Rudy Giuliani and one of the weirdest symptoms of late-stage capitalism, hyper-partisan bedding manufacturer, MyPillow.

How far away from facts did these defendants get (allegedly)? Welp:

Dominion alleges that each Defendant made defamatory statements about its role in the 2020 election. Those statements are too numerous to summarize in their entirety…

But many are still summarized. It takes several pages. A large portion of the alleged defamatory remarks were delivered via social media platforms and contained multiple exclamation points, which are considered marks of authenticity by the sort of people who are easily swayed by exclamation points.

The court also discusses Mike Lindell and MyPillow. It goes further than social media accounts. Lindell also runs his own production company, which has produced a "documentary" about the "fraudulent" 2020 election that is promoted nonstop by Lindell.

All three defendants want out of this lawsuit. Powell raises jurisdictional counterarguments as well as her patented "but I was just talking out of my ass!" defense. Giuliani asserts that Dominion's claims for damages are improper. And Lindell claims his company hasn't actually made any statements about the election, even if he's been using the company's money (and social media accounts) to make claims about the election.

None of this matters, at least as this point. Dominion's lawsuits can continue, says the court, while taking some shots at the attempting-to-flee defendants. As for Powell, the former Trump lawyer, there's this opening admonishment:

As an initial matter, there is no blanket immunity for statements that are “political” in nature…

And this:

Powell cannot shield herself from liability for her widely disseminated out-of-court statements by casting them as protected statements about in-court litigation; an attorney’s out-of-court statements to the public can be actionable, even if those statements concern contemplated or ongoing litigation.

For example:

Powell has stated publicly that she has “evidence from [the] mouth of the guy who founded [Dominion] admit[ting that] he can change a million votes, no problem at all.” PShe told audiences that she would “tweet out the video.” These statements are either true or not; either Powell has a video depicting the founder of Dominion saying he can “change a million votes,” or she does not.

Lindell and MyPillow get slapped even harder. The court notes that Lindell claims he can back up his statements with verifiable facts but has yet to present any evidence that supports his claims that Dominion "flipped" votes and conspired to throw the election for Biden. This sets the table for this amazing sentence by the court -- one that should make Lindell fear for his finances.

As a preliminary matter, a reasonable juror could conclude that the existence of a vast international conspiracy that is ignored by the government but proven by a spreadsheet on an internet blog is so inherently improbable that only a reckless man would believe it.

If Lindell isn't staggered by this sentence, he's stupider than he appears. And this gets added on top of that:

Dominion also alleges that Lindell was made aware of that countervailing evidence in Dominion’s retraction letters, id. ¶¶ 63, 69, but—instead of reconsidering his claims in light of the mountain of evidence against them—doubled down and “dare[d] Dominion to sue [him],” id. ¶ 160.

Lindell must love compounding his mistakes. While this was being written, Lindell was in South Dakota hosting a 72-hour conspiracy theory-laden "cyber symposium" where he made additional claims about evidence he apparently doesn't possess that cannot possibly back the claims about Dominion he continues to make.

Giuliani's procedural motions are also tossed, allowing Dominion to continue to sue all three defendants. While it's unlikely Dominion will extract more than a billion dollars from any of the individual defendants, it seems unlikely any of these Trump-toadying loudmouths will escape the lawsuits unscathed. They played to Trump's base and are now in danger of losing. And it's guaranteed the man they idolize will do nothing to save them from the consequences of their Trump-enabled actions. When you're winning, Trump is willing to take part of the credit. But when you're losing, you're on your own.

Filed Under: defamation, elections, kraken, sidney powell, voting machines
Companies: dominion

Dominion Sues Newsmax, OAN, And The Head Of Overstock.Com For Election-Related Defamation

from the paper-tigers-asked-to-convert-allegations-to-USD dept

The failed insurrection may be over -- all but the Capitol cops ending their own lives after being assaulted by "law and order" types, who thought they could bypass the peaceful transfer of power with violence. (Fuck all those people, by the way -- all 500+ of them.) But the hope remains. It must have been stolen, say a collection of denialists and grifters. Let's win back the election process, say those unable to count votes or put their faith in the institution that put their boy in the White House in the first place (looking at you, Electoral College).

So the grift continues. So does the denialism. But it's going to start costing people some serious money. The people that decided that backdrafting Trump's odorous emanations following the November election are still theoretically on the hook for besmirching the election process and the machinery behind it.

While it's always appropriate to question the security and trustworthiness of election tech, it makes zero sense to air a bunch of insane conspiracies as actual fact. A bunch of acolytes thought they could call the presidential election into question if they amplified QAnon-level speculation into the public discourse. The stupidity of these actions has been called out by a frequent target of unvetted speculation: Dominion Voting Systems.

The challenges were only raised in areas where Trump expected to win but lost, indicating these "challenges" had nothing to do with election integrity. After all, if the integrity of the election was in question, wouldn't these people be questioning election results where Trump won? Everyone knows it's a façade -- a carelessly edited sermon to the converted. Playing to the base usually pays off. But it may not in these cases.

Dominion has been suing over these false statements, implications, and complete, utter bullshit. The company first targeted Trump legal figures (both past and present) like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. Now it's coming for Trump's favorite non-gorilla-related programmers: One America Network and Newsmax. Both companies stepped up during Trump's last couple of years mismanaging the country to prove they could be even further right than far-right mainstay Fox News.

Two more lawsuits have been filed by Dominion. They reiterate many of the same allegations raised against Powell and Giuliani. That shows "Republican" figureheads have all been operating off the same cheat sheet when it comes to contesting the parts of the election they don't like.

I won't quote the latest lawsuits by Dominion at length. We've already covered the lies and misinformation spread by defendants who now claim this was all just heated rhetoric and hyperbole (even when portraying these same claims as "evidence" of voter fraud in lawsuits where they were the plaintiff). It's all more of the same: a debunking of literally incredible claims by defendants willing to sell out their credibility (if not their defamation insurance providers) by attaching themselves like so many remora on a shark in the midst of capsizing in its own wake.

Here's one representative accusation (taken from Dominion's suit [PDF] against One America Network):

OAN spread these lies by broadcasting and promoting interviews with discredited figures such as Sidney Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, Patrick Byrne, and Mike Lindell. But OAN went further, helping create and nurture the false and fabricated Dominion narrative by endorsing, promoting, and manufacturing these known falsehoods, including by pointing to the so-called “evidence” OAN was broadcasting in support of these lies and by falsely claiming the lies had corroborated “all of our investigations.”

To capitalize on the interest its target audience had in the false Dominion narrative, OAN effectively deputized its Chief White House Correspondent, Chanel Rion, as an in-house spokesperson for all Dominion-related content. After priming its viewers with a steady diet of post-election programming falsely claiming Dominion rigged the 2020 election, OAN and Rion began producing an entire line of programming exclusively devoted to defaming Dominion, descriptively named “Dominion-izing the Vote,” which branded OAN’s disinformation and defamation campaign against Dominion into a single catchy phrase that is now synonymous with fraudulently flipping votes.

How much of this will be determined to be defamation rather than heated electoral-related rhetoric remains to be seen. But enough Trump acolytes decided it was better to tongue the ex-presidential boot than protect themselves from billions of dollars of defamation damages. And that's fine. The law protects the assertions of inveterate assholes. But it doesn't protect the supposedly factual claims of people not in possession of actual facts. That's libel. And that's going to add up to real money should a court decide Dominion is in the right.

Dominion has also sued [PDF] Patrick Byrne, the Overstock.com founder. Someday the time capsule will be exhumed and our descendants will wonder how a pillow salesman and an internet entrepreneur became inextricably entangled in presidential politics. Wikipedia's explanation of "dark money" will likely fail to clarify anything. But Byrne better have a satisfactory explanation for his decision to translate his late-stage-capitalism failures into election theft electioneering. LOL deeply at the opening sentence:

After blowing up his career at Overstock by having an affair with a Russian spy, Patrick Byrne soon found himself a new pet project: promoting the false narrative that the 2020 election had been stolen. In fact, as Byrne has publicly admitted, he had already committed to that narrative three months before the election took place. After the election, Byrne manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen as part of a massive international conspiracy among China, Venezuelan and Spanish companies, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), prominent Republicans, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Dominion, which, Byrne falsely claimed, committed fraud and helped steal the 2020 presidential election.

Don't be shitty, Patty. You're too smart for that, alleges Dominion.

Byrne was not hoodwinked by the ex-con or the conspiracy-theorists-for-hire. He is far too intelligent to buy the nonsense he has been selling to the American public. He is a Dartmouth-educated Marshall Scholar with a PhD from Stanford who, until he was pushed out in disgrace in 2019, had a national platform as the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company. By lying about the 2020 election, Byrne catapulted himself back into the national spotlight, where he promoted himself as an “us-against-the-world” hero, and won access to the highest echelons of political power, including an in-person meeting with Trump at the White House.

LOL. This is Dominion preemptively striking any motions by Byrne saying he was just talking out of his ass. He had to know what he said was not only false, but demonstrably false. And yet he chose to do it anyway.

Dominion has a high bar to meet in its defamation lawsuits. Good. That's the way it should be. If defendants can indicate they were just being hyperbolic when discussing election issues, that protects the rest of us who don't have internet startups or pillow companies to absorb the blows of speech-related lawsuits. But Dominion's suits appear to allege defendants knew they were trafficking in lies but chose to do so anyway. And that certainly shouldn't protect the Sydney Powells and OANs of the world from putting their reputations (and liquid funds) at stake to stump for an obstinate failure and his inability to accept reality.

Filed Under: defamation, election, election integrity, patrick byrne, voting, voting machines
Companies: dominion, newsmax, oan, oann

Arizona County's Voting Machines Rendered Unusable By OAN-Financed Vote Auditors

from the nice-work,-cyber-idiots dept

The libs have been owned. They've been owned so thoroughly that Maricopa County, Arizona is going to need to buy millions of dollars of new electronic voting machines.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent a letter Thursday to Maricopa County officials to let them know that the fake "audit" of the 2020 election probably ruined hundreds of voting machines the county sent for "testing" under a subpoena from the state Senate. Since there's no knowing whether Cyber Ninjas, the QAnon enthusiasts running the audit, had messed up the machines, they can't safely be used again in future elections.

Once the machines were no longer under Maricopa County's control, Hobbs explained, the "chain of custody" was broken, leaving her with "grave concerns regarding the security and integrity of these machines," she wrote.

Before we get into the more expensive implications of this, let's backtrack a little to see how this came to be.

For months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump and his enablers claimed the upcoming election would be fraudulent. Suspecting he was on his way out, Trump ramped up his baseless claims that everything from voting machines to mail-in votes couldn't be trusted.

Once he had lost, the claims went into overdrive. The election had been "stolen." Hundreds of true believers stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 with the intent of preventing the election from being certified as a win for Joe Biden.

The claims of fraud continued. Nobody could prove any fraudulent activity had occurred but Trump and his acolytes continued to insist Trump had been illegally removed from power. This group of idiots included several Congressional reps and Senators. It also included everyone from a pillow salesman to a cybersecurity "expert" who claimed his inability to properly compose a tweet was evidence of malicious hacking.

Welcome to Maricopa County, where everyday is another scene cut from "Veep" because it was considered too improbable. State senate Republicans hired the ridiculous-sounding "Cyber Ninjas" to perform "America's Audit" (called this despite the fact it's confined to a single county in a single state) -- a recount of every vote in the county.

Since then, it's been fiascoes piled on debacles piled on a foundation of conspiracy theories. It started with auditors working with blue pens that could be used to change ballots. Auditors are only supposed to use red pens, which can't be read by auditing equipment and voting machines.

That's the most sane part of this. The CEO of the Cyber Ninjas has tweeted out stuff about "stopping the steal." The audit is partially financed by One America News Network, one of several entities sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems. At one point, auditors were using UV lights and 5k cameras to search for traces of bamboo, following up on the absurd claim that a box of filled ballots had been shipped in from China. How this was supposed to prove a link between ballots and China is best left to the brain geniuses at Cyber Ninja, who probably assume nothing is above slanty-eyed furriners and their desire to elect Sleepy Joe.

Even the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors found the whole thing appalling. Its scathing letter to state Senate leadership pointed out the auditors' inexperience and apparent inability to count and said the whole thing was nothing more than the state Senate placing election integrity in the hands of "grifters and con artists."

This brings us back to the latest insanity. The voting machines were turned over to the Cyber Ninjas, who then acted as though chain-of-custody isn't that big of a deal. Since they followed none of the steps needed to ensure the machines remained intact and secure, the county has no choice but to decertify them once the Ninjas are done entertaining their "stolen election" fantasies. This isn't just the Secretary of State saying this. This is also the DHS's election security experts.

[DHS officials] unanimously advised that once election officials lose custody and control over voting systems and components, those devices should not be reused in future elections. Rather, decommissioning and replacing those devices is the safest option as no methods exist to adequately ensure those machines are safe to use in future elections.

As many as 358 machines may be affected by the actions of cybersecurity "experts" who have no previous experience with either election security or conducting a vote audit. The total cost for replacement could be more than $6 million.

The only upshot is that local residents won't be paying for these. Thanks to the agreement reached with the so-called auditors, Maricopa County isn't responsible for costs like these. No, it will be the entire state paying for the clusterfuck that is "America's Audit." The state is on the hook. And with lawsuits already flying, taxpayers will be out even more money no matter what the outcome of this litigation is. And it all could have been prevented by either 1) hiring competent people to conduct the audit or 2) Senate Republicans not indulging the worst members and supporters of their party.

Filed Under: arizona, audit, chain of custody, cybersecurity, election security, elections, maricopa county, recount, voting machines
Companies: cyber ninjas

DNC Sues Georgia Governor Over His Bullshit Claims Democrats Hacked The State's Voter Registration System

from the hope-you've-got-a-20-on-you,-Kempster dept

The never-ending amount of election related litigation keeps on coming. The Trump campaign is still heavily invested in lawsuits -- a practice it started before the election and it hasn't scaled back now that its boy has been handed an L.

Georgia remains a hotly contested state, thanks in part to pressure applied by the outbound President and his many minions. It will recount all five million votes, which Trump appears to believe will reverse Biden's 14,000-vote lead.

Georgia has long been a victim of its Governor, dating back to his days as the Secretary of State. During Brian Kemp's tenure as an elected official, voting in Georgia has been little more than his political plaything. Issues with the state's voting tech were ignored in favor of Kemp's indulgence in wild speculation, culminating with his baseless claims the Democratic National Committee had hacked the state's voter registration system. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation investigation found no evidence supporting Kemp's ridiculous assertions.

Now, as Courthouse News reports, the DNC is suing Kemp over his election related bullshit. This isn't a defamation suit, even though it's possible to see that claim being raised. Instead, the DNC alleges the then Secretary of State violated federal election laws with his claims of DNC hacking and his decision to air his speculation hours before the polls opened in 2018.

The lawsuit [PDF] opens with this stinging sentence, which highlights one the many problems with allowing Brian Kemp to oversee the 2018 election.

Kemp was also a candidate in the governor’s election that year. He claimed, however, that he could fairly manage an election at the same time as was running in it.

And how did he "manage" it? Like this:

Two days before the election, Kemp worked with others to release a statement on the Secretary of State’s website that said in all capital letters: “AFTER FAILED HACKING ATTEMPT, SOS LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO GEORGIA DEMOCRATIC PARTY.”

The statement further claimed to “confirm that the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cyber crimes,” and noted that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had been alerted.

The DNC never hacked the voter registration system. Instead, a private citizen reported security flaws in the Secretary of State's website to a DC election lawyer. This report later made its way to the DNC local branch in Georgia. Eventually, news made its way back to Brian Kemp -- via the DNC, FBI, and the DC election lawyer. It was this information Kemp spun into a fantastic tale of DNC hackery.

The lawsuit recounts Brian Kemp's ineffectual run as Secretary of State, an era marked by multiple reports of serious flaws in the voting system he was supposed to be overseeing. Then, as he was running for a new post, he decided to broadcast unsupported claims about Democratic Party interference in the very election he was interfering with. This included Kemp's bizarre anger over DHS penetration testing -- testing he had apparently asked the DHS to perform.

He converted both of his fantasies into last-minute electioneering for his governor run, sending out emails to supporters claiming he had "intercepted" the Democrats' "fourth quarter Hail Mary pass" and would be holding these "power-hungry radicals" accountable for their "criminal behavior."

The lawsuit says many people and entities were informed about security flaws in the voting system, but Kemp chose a single target to attack with baseless claims of criminal behavior.

The DNC accuses Kemp of violating federal law by falsely targeting it with these accusations. It alleges this was done in retaliation for its efforts to unseat Kemp and support its own candidates.

Here, Defendant Kemp has shown a pattern of falsely accusing Democratic administrations and Democratic parties of “hacking.” In 2016, he accused President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security of a “large attack on our system.” Unsatisfied with the DHS explanation for why there was no attack, Defendant Kemp asked the incoming Trump administration to investigate further. Later, he conceded that there had never been any hacking.

[...]

Defendants accused the Democratic Party of Georgia even though the Democratic Party of Georgia’s only involvement was to (1) receive information from Richard Wright on a voter security hotline; (2) forward that information to two experts at Georgia Tech; and (3) inform the Secretary of State’s office.

[...]

Defendants conspired to accuse the Democratic Party of Georgia of cyber crimes without any basis.

[...]

Defendants’ choice to maintain the public statements on the Secretary of State website even after they found out that the Democratic Party of Georgia was not the source of the vulnerability information was and is an ongoing substantial step in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Defendants’ choice not to remove the public statements on the Secretary of State website even after they found out that the supposed “intrusion” was the Department of Homeland Security acting at the request of the Secretary of State was and is an ongoing substantial step in furtherance of the conspiracy.

That's one potential federal law violation. There's another one listed in the lawsuit. Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act forbids anyone from intimidating voters or coercing votes. The DNC alleges Kemp's actions and statements were meant to intimidate the DNC and divert its resources towards responding to baseless accusations during the final days of the state election.

The DNC isn't asking for much. The damage request is limited to $20.00. But it does want an injunction in place requiring the removal of Kemp's disproven accusations from the state's Secretary of State website.

This lawsuit is one of what will likely be several postscripts appended to the 2020 elections. Claims of hacking, fraud, and other voting related misconduct have been delivered by a number of Republicans over the past several weeks. But baseless claims of election malfeasance aren't a recent development.

They've been a permanent fixture of the Republican party since Trump took office -- urged on by a president who lost the popular vote in 2016 but ended up with the most Electoral College votes. Ever since then, the Republican Party has waged war on the democratic process, having realized allowing the voting process to go unfucked could possibly result in fewer Republicans being elected.

Filed Under: brian kemp, elections, georgia, voting, voting machines
Companies: dnc

Investigation Shows Governor's Claims That Democrats Tried To Hack The Georgia Election Were Bullshit

from the another-unforced-error-by-Brian-Kemp dept

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is very involved with the electorate. Well, perhaps not that involved with the residents of the state, but he does seem to keep a very close -- and very partisan -- eye on election security. Election security is important, especially as more states move to electronic ballots, but Kemp has spent most of the last four years using election security as a political football to score points with.

When President Obama was still leading the nation, Kemp (while still Georgia's Secretary of State) claimed the DHS had breached his office's firewall during its security testing -- something he had directly asked it not to do. Kemp claimed his state had already implemented the DHS's recommendations and had asked to be left out of this nationwide testing. The DHS apparently ignored that, resulting in Kemp making lots of noise about an overreaching federal agency.

Kemp's tune changed once Trump was elected. While running for the job of governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams, Kemp -- a Republican -- generated a lot of bad press for himself by allegedly engaging in voter suppression efforts. He capped this off with a bad judgment two-fer.

First, he insisted the Democratic Party was trying to hack the voter registration system. The only evidence Kemp had for this is that a hacking attempt had been made. He responded to this by opening an investigation into the Democratic Party based on apparently nothing more than his animosity towards it. This was capped off a few days later when Kemp released a ton of absentee voting info, including names, addresses, and the reason they voted absentee.

Two years later, ProPublica -- using documents obtained from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) -- has published the investigation's findings. No surprise, GBI's conclusions don't agree with Kemp's baseless and partisan assertions.

“The investigation by the GBI revealed no evidence of damage to (the secretary of state’s office’s) network or computers, and no evidence of theft, damage, or loss of data,” according to a March 2 memo from a senior assistant attorney general recommending that the case be closed.

Unlike Kemp's 2016 assertion about DHS meddling (which was later shown to be routine checks of the state's firearm database by law enforcement) where it wasn't asked to, the alleged "failed hacking attempt" seen by Brian Kemp's office was actually the DHS doing something the state had asked it to do.

The internet activity that Kemp’s staff described as hacking attempts was actually scans by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that the secretary of state’s office had agreed to, according to the GBI. Kemp’s chief information officer signed off on the DHS scans three months beforehand.

Kemp continues to be wrong about election security -- something that only seems to concern him when it can be leveraged to (incorrectly in every case) target political opponents. The state's election system still has security issues. The article points out the site where voters can check their information still contains a "significant vulnerability" that Kemp has been notified of, but refused to acknowledge.

All the bluster worked, though. Kemp was elected governor in 2018 and now has an even bigger platform to be wrong about election security issues. And he -- and his former office -- were completely wrong about this one. The other alleged hacking his office thought it was witnessing -- other than the DHS's pentest traffic -- was nothing more than someone doing what anyone could do: altering site URLs to view other voters' data.

That's not hacking. That's what anyone who knows how websites work can do at any time with zero skill or additional tools. And from that, an entire conspiracy theory was erected by Kemp's office, resulting in thousands of tax dollars being wasted to pursue Kemp's politically motivated accusations. There's some hackery going on here, but it's only of the partisan variety.

Filed Under: brian kemp, dhs, e-voting, georgia, hacking, politics, voting machines, voting security

John Oliver Takes On Fucked Up Voting Machines In The Way Only He Can

from the nicely-done dept

At Techdirt, we've been writing about the problems of electronic voting for just about our entire existence. I believe the first time we wrote about the problematic nature of electronic voting was in June of the year 2000, a few months before the controversy over "hanging chads" in the 2000 election in Florida. Over the years, we've continued to write about electronic voting and its myriad problems dozens upon dozens of times -- and to this day I remain amazed at how little companies and election officials have taken this space seriously. Part of the issue is that there is no easy solution. There isn't a "good" solution, there are only options that are "less bad" than others. The problem is that many places use solutions that are obviously bad when there are at least better options on the table.

So it's great to see John Oliver step in and explain the problems with voting machines in a way that only he can:

If you've followed this space for some time (as, apparently, we have), you won't find much that's surprising in the piece, but it does such a good job of highlighting just how ridiculous the discussion currently is around voting machines, and how little politicians and voting machine companies seem inclined to do anything about it all.

Filed Under: e-voting, electronic voting, john oliver, voting machines, voting security

Voting Machine Makers Claim The Names Of The Entities That Own Them Are Trade Secrets

from the yeah-this-makes-you-all-look-way-less-shady dept

Recently, the North Carolina State Board of Elections asked suppliers of electronic voting machines a simple question: who owns you? (h/t Annemarie Bridy)

On June 14, 2019, the State Board of Elections requested that your companies disclose any owners or shareholders with a 5% or greater interest or share in each of the vendor’s company, any subsidiary company, of the vendor, and the vendor’s parent company.

This seems like very basic information -- information the Board should know and should be able to pass on to the general public. After all, these are the makers of devices used by the public while electing their representatives. They should know who's running these companies and who their majority stakeholders are. If something goes wrong (and something always does), they should know who's ultimately responsible for the latest debacle.

It's not like the state was asking the manufacturers to cough up code and machine schematics. All it wanted to know is the people behind the company nameplates. But the responses the board received indicate voting system manufacturers believe releasing any info about their companies' compositions will somehow compromise their market advantage.

Hart Intercivic said letting the public know that the company is owned by H.I.G. Hart, LLC and Gregg L. Burt is a fact that would devalue the company if it were made public.

Hart InterCivic, a corporation that derives independent actual value from this information not being generally known or readily ascertainable and makes reasonable efforts to maintain the secrecy of this information, requests that it be designated as a trade secret pursuant to G.S. § 132-1.2(1)d. and G.S. § 66-152(3).

Election Systems & Software (ES&S) said basically the same thing, claiming this information is "proprietary and confidential information:"

The following individuals and/or entities own 5% or more of the shares of Government Systems, Software & Services, Inc.:

McCarthy Group, LLC
Tom Burt
Tom O'Brien

Clear Ballot also claimed its list of owners was a trade secret:

Hello, per your request please see below for a list of our shareholders with a 5% or greater share of Clear Ballot Group, Inc. We have no other parent companies or subsidiaries:

1. Larry Moore
2. Tim Halvorsen
3. Steven Papa
4. Raging Capital Opportunity Fund V, LLC

Even this minimal amount of transparency had to be extracted at Board-point. While it's true private companies such as these are under no obligation to inform the public about the details of their ownership, they're all involved with providing goods and services to government agencies. Government agencies hooking up with private companies that treat ownership details as trade secrets isn't a good idea -- not when the government has certain transparency obligations.

Even with the release of these details, there's still plenty of secrecy to go around. Election security advocate Lynn Berstein says the ownership of voting machine companies is a deliberate, multi-layered mess designed to obscure who's running these shops -- and to possibly hide a bunch of stuff that looks like corruption, fraud, or general financial malfeasance.

One of ES&S's subsidiaries (and there are at least 39 of those) -- Meritage Homes Corp. -- shuffled some securities ownership the same day the North Carolina election board asked it to provide information about the company's ownership. Maybe it's a coincidence. Or maybe ES&S was offloading a politically-inconvenient owner. Whatever the case is, it certainly doesn't look good.

The government can't do everything itself. It will need vendors to supply goods and services. But these vendors need to operate under the same transparency the government is forced to, if they want to secure these lucrative contracts. Voters aren't given a choice in voting machine providers. They're stuck with whatever their government gives them. But when the government actually decides to perform a little vetting, the makes of the machines trusted to deliver accurate vote counts want to hide behind trade secret exceptions to prevent the public -- and their elected officials -- from knowing exactly who they're dealing with when they head into the voting booth.

Given the abhorrent track record of so many voting machine companies, it's no surprise they're extremely reluctant to share any details with the voting public. But that doesn't make them right. It just makes them a little bit more evil.

Filed Under: elections, north carolina, trade secrets, transparency, voting machines

Voting Device Manufacturer Encourages Users To Use (And Re-Use) Easily-Guessed Passwords

from the thanks-for-the-tips,-sparky dept

As Election Day 2K18 rolls on, the good news continues to roll in, he said in his most Professor Farnsworth voice. It's never good news, not if we're talking voting machine security. Kim Zetter, writing for Motherboard, has obtained a manual for devices made by Unisyn Voting Solutions, which provides horrendous security advice for users of its products.

There are federal guidelines for voting systems. The Elections Assistance Committee makes the following recommendations for passwords:

[E]lection officials are encouraged to change passwords after every election. Passwords should also have the following characteristics: they should be at least six characters, preferably eight, and include at least one uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, at least one number and a symbol. It also says, though, that passwords should be easy to remember so that employees won't need to write them down, "yet sufficiently vague that they cannot be easily guessed."

Unisyn has apparently decided minimal security efforts are badly in need of disruption. To begin with, the device manual suggests users should simply use variations of the default password the devices ship with. That password is the company's name with a "1" appended to the end of it. This easily-guessed admin password should then be immediately replaced with… an easily-guessed password.

Once logged into the system the credentials needed to access the tabulation monitor or the system for creating reports of ballots and vote tallies are different. The username is again a simple word to log in. The password is the same word with "1" appended to it. Users are told that to change the password when prompted, they should simply change the number sequentially to 2, 3, 4, etc.

The Unisyn manual takes the EAC guidelines and throws them out. It then makes a minimal nod towards compliance before throwing everything out a second time. Remember the part about not writing down passwords? The sort of thing no one should do because it defeats the purpose of password security? Here's Unisyn's scorching hot take on EAC compliance:

"You will be periodically asked to change your password per EAC regulations," [the manual] notes. But instead of providing customers with sound instructions for changing passwords—such as creating completely new passwords and not re-using them—the manual instructs them to simply alternate between a system administrator and a root password each time they are prompted to change the password. Space is provided below this instruction for election workers to write down which password they are using at any given time.

If there's good news, it's that these machines aren't in use everywhere. Just 3,500+ jurisdictions in ten states. They're also fairly insulated from online attacks, since they're not supposed to be connected to the internet. This means attackers will most likely need physical access to the devices. Good thing these only get touched by non-election personnel every couple of years or so!

Filed Under: election security, passwords, voting, voting machines
Companies: unisyn voting solutions

Virginia (Again) Dumps Electronic Voting Devices Over Concerns About Election Interference

from the deja-vu-for-President! dept

It seems Virginia can't catch a break when it comes to voting. Trusting vendors to provide secure electronic voting devices just isn't paying off. Two years ago, Virginia pulled a bunch of voting machines after it was discovered they were leaky, insecure devices masquerading as something American voters could trust.

The security wasn't just bad in the way many machines are -- frailties that can only be sussed out by security researchers and talented criminals. No, they were bad in the way your grandparents' Google Box is: "secured" with passwords like "abcde" or "admin," along with accessible DOS prompts and multiple open ports.

Time moves on but the electronic portion of Virginia's electoral system does not.

Virginia’s election supervisors on Friday directed counties to ditch touchscreen voting machines before November’s elections, saying the devices posed unacceptable digital risks.

[...]

The decision forces Virginia counties to swiftly replace any touchscreen devices with machines that produce a paper trail, ensuring the state can audit its closely watched gubernatorial race this November between Democrat Ralph Northam and Republican Ed Gillespie.

With possible interference in last year's presidential election not even in the rearview mirror yet, Virginia's government is moving up the date of its planned obsolescence. As Politico notes, there's already a law on the books in Virginia phasing out use of touchscreen voting devices by 2020. This just moves that date forward three years, just in time for this year's elections.

It's not that electronic voting devices are inherently bad. It's just that they appear to be inherently flawed. Report after report shows multiple vulnerabilities in voting machines and yet, year after year, there appears to be little forward motion on the security side. This is baffling, considering learning from mistakes is one of those things even lab rats can do -- but it often seems to be almost impossible for voting device vendors. The flaws generally aren't the result of meticulously-targeted exploits by criminals, but rather the sorts of things that shouldn't go overlooked when vetting machines for use in the public sector.

The paperless office may be on the threshold but the (secure) paperless vote is continually several years away.

Filed Under: dre, e-voting, elections, hacking, paper trail, virginia, voting machines

Election Day CyberFest: Hackers, Hacking, 'Journalism,' The FBI, And Jiveass Baloney

from the The-Year-to-End-All-Years dept

As this election's perfect argument for the dismantling of the two-party system has shuddered to a halt, the overriding issue appeared not to be a race run pretty much on no issues at all, but an unhealthy amount of paranoia.

Between the FBI's inadvertently bipartisan investigation (and reinvestigation) of Hillary Clinton's emails, the constant cry that the Russians are coming (two if by underwater cable), and Donald Trump's insistence that the election is rigged (until he won), voting (and voting machines) are the cyber-est thing of all this election season.

If no one's tampering with the machines, someone's tampering with the voters. Trump greeted early returns with a lawsuit over the supposed illegality of letting everyone lined up to vote actually vote before closing the booths. The bold new face of bounty-based "journalism" -- spearheaded by Pax Dickinson and questionable lawsuit enthusiast Chuck Johnson -- spent all day offering a $6720 bounty for evidence of voter fraud. At this point it remains uncollected, and the law of diminishing returns has sapped the energy from retweeters.

Add into the fun a set of researchers finding (SHOCKER!) voting machines to be terribly insecure. That in itself isn't new, but letting everyone in on how exactly to do it certainly is.

The problem relates to a 16MB Compact Flash card that each AVC Edge machine relies upon, which can be easily removed, modified and replaced for the purpose of modifying voter counts.

“After about four days and about $25 worth of hardware we had the machines spitting out results that cannot be technically refuted,” Ryan Smith, vice president of research at Cylance, tells Newsweek.

“It is an odd state of affairs when the technology in your phone is so strong that the FBI, with an $8.3 billion budget and months of work, cannot find a way into the machine protecting your text messages, yet the machines protecting our democracy can be foiled with just $25 in 32 hours.”

While we all can appreciate the offhand suggestion that it's the government that should be "nerding harder," plenty of people seemed upset that the researchers would drop this news into the already-overboiling election pot.

“This disclosure seems political in nature,” bug-bounty expert Katie Moussouris told The Verge. “Releasing this publicly, after DHS and states have been aware of these types of attacks for years, only serves to fuel the fires of doubting the election results.”

Hackers for Trump or whatever. This concern seems misplaced, given the inherent hackability of voting machines. It certainly grabs more eyeballs than it would in an off year, but there's nothing in here that suggests the release's timing was motivated by Trump's claims that voter fraud would be the only explanation for him not collecting more of the popular vote.

Finally, we get to the nadir of election paranoia. And, of course, it involves the FBI.

A tweet suggesting hacking of voting machines was in the works was sent out on October 21st. With impeccable timing, the FBI apparently showed up at the tweeter's door on election day.

This tweet just earned ya boy Jive a visit from the motherfucking FBI. Not even joking.

So, a photo of some USB drives and screencap of supposed code was enough to motivate the feds into investigating almost three weeks later. Things were cleared up when it became apparent a.) it was a joke and b.) the screencapped code wouldn't even work.

But if you're going to draw the heat, you may as well do in style. Choose your social media handle for maximum federal uncomfortableness, kids.

First question they asked me was "Are you the Twitter user, uh Jiveass *checked notes*...Baloney?

So, we have a new president-elect. At least that much is out of the way. There are only 45 shopping days till Christmas and an eon to go before this stupid year finally ends.

Filed Under: e-voting, elections, hacking, voter fraud, voting machines