KENOSHA, Wis. — Gunfire rang out from a crowd of protesters early
Wednesday morning in Kenosha, Wis., on the third night of unrest over
the police shooting of Jacob Blake Jr. At least three people were
injured. It is unclear who fired the shots, and police and hospital
officials have not yet confirmed the severity of the injuries.
Shots were first fired after midnight, as a group of protesters on
Sheridan Road faced off with police in armored trucks. A young White man
carrying an AR-15-style rifle began running north on Sheridan, away
from the group. As people chased after the man, another round of
rapid-fire shots rang out, and two more people fell to the ground with
wounds. Bystanders dragged both the people who had been hit to separate
sides of the road.
In a completely not-shocking turn of events, the Trump 2020 Campaign app has been found to be sucking up all the data that it can access from the people who have downloaded it, including their contacts, location data, and even their bluetooth connections.
The Biden is also taking data from users, but nowhere close to the amount that the Trump team is taking, according to researchers. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.
A classified briefing to lawmakers angered the resident, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.
American
intelligence agencies concluded that Russia, on the orders of President
Vladimir V. Putin, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.Credit...Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON
— Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia
was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get resident Trump
re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to
Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use
it against him.
The day after the
Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the
outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to
take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the
presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the
California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a
particular irritant.
During the
briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies
challenged the conclusions, arguing that he has been tough on Russia and
strengthened European security. Some intelligence officials viewed the
briefing as a tactical error, saying that had the official who delivered
the conclusion spoken less pointedly or left it out, they would have
avoided angering the Republicans.
That
intelligence official, Shelby Pierson, is an aide to Mr. Maguire who
has a reputation of delivering intelligence in somewhat blunt terms. The resident announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with
Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and long an aggressively
vocal Trump supporter.
Though
some current and former officials speculated that the briefing may have
played a role in the removal of Mr. Maguire, who had told people in
recent days that he believed he would remain in the job, two
administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell
had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new
roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr.
Maguire.
Spokeswomen for the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence and its election security office
declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.
A Democratic
House intelligence committee official called the Feb. 13 briefing an
important update about “the integrity of our upcoming elections” and
said that members of both parties attended, including Representative
Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the committee.
Image
Joseph
Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, is planning to
leave government, according to an American official.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Mr.
Trump has long accused the intelligence community’s assessment of
Russia’s 2016 interference as the work of a “deep-state” conspiracy
intent on undermining the validity of his election. Intelligence
officials feel burned by their experience after the last election, where
their work became subject of intense political debate and is now a
focus of a Justice Department investigation.
Part
of the resident’s anger over the intelligence briefing stemmed from
the administration’s reluctance to provide sensitive information to Mr.
Schiff. He has been a leading critic of Mr. Trump since 2016, doggedly
investigating Russian election interference and later leading the
impeachment inquiry into the resident’s dealings with Ukraine.
After
asking about the briefing that the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence and other agencies gave to the House, Mr. Trump complained
that Mr. Schiff would “weaponize” the intelligence about Russia’s
support for him, according to a person familiar with the briefing. And
he was angry that no one had told him sooner about the briefing, the
person said.
Mr. Trump has fixated on
Mr. Schiff since the impeachment saga began, pummeling him publicly with
insults and unfounded accusations of corruption. At one point in
October, Mr. Trump refused to invite lawmakers from the congressional
intelligence committees to a White House briefing on Syria because he
did not want Mr. Schiff there, according to three people briefed on the
matter.
Mr. Trump did not erupt at Mr.
Maguire, and instead just asked pointed questions, according to the
person. But the message was unmistakable: He was displeased by what took
place.
Ms. Pierson, officials said,
was delivering the conclusion of multiple intelligence agencies, not her
own opinion. The Washington Post first reported the Oval Office confrontation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Maguire.
The intelligence community issued an assessment in early 2017 that President Vladimir V. Putin personally ordered
an influence campaign in the previous year’s election and developed “a
clear preference for resident-elect Trump.” But Republicans have long
argued that Moscow’s campaign was designed to sow chaos, not aid Mr.
Trump specifically.
And some
Republicans have accused the intelligence agencies of opposing Mr.
Trump, but intelligence officials reject those allegations. They
fiercely guard their work as nonpartisan, saying it is the only way to
ensure its validity.
At
the House briefing, Representative Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who
has been considered for the director’s post, was among the Republicans
who challenged the conclusion about Russia’s support for the resident.
Mr. Stewart insisted that Mr. Trump has aggressively confronted Moscow,
providing anti-tank weapons to Ukraine for its war against
Russian-backed separatists and strengthening the NATO alliance with new
resources, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
Mr.
Stewart declined to discuss the briefing but said that Moscow had no
reason to support Mr. Trump. He pointed to the resident’s work to
confront Iran, a Russian ally, and encourage European energy
independence from Moscow. “I’d challenge anyone to give me a real-world
argument where Putin would rather have resident Trump and not Bernie
Sanders,” the nominal Democratic primary front-runner, Mr. Stewart said
in an interview.
Mr.
Trump believes that Russian efforts to get him elected in 2016 have
cast doubts about the legitimacy of his campaign victory. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Under
Mr. Putin, Russian intelligence has long sought broadly to sow chaos
among adversaries around the world. The United States and key allies on
Thursday accused Russian military intelligence, the group responsible
for much of the 2016 election interference in the United States, of a cyber-attack on neighboring Georgia that took out websites and television
broadcasts.
Though intelligence
officials have previously informed lawmakers that Russia’s interference
campaign was ongoing, last week’s briefing did contain what appeared to
be new information, including that Russia intends to interfere with the
ongoing Democratic primaries as well as the general election.
They
have made more creative use of Facebook and other social media. Rather
than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are
working to get Americans to repeat disinformation to get around social
media companies’ rules that prohibit “inauthentic speech.”
And
they are working from servers located in the United States, rather than
abroad, knowing that American intelligence agencies are prohibited from
operating inside the country. (The F.B.I. and the Department of
Homeland Security can, with aid from the intelligence agencies.)
Russian
hackers have also infiltrated Iran’s cyber-warfare unit, perhaps with
the intent of launching attacks that would look like they were coming
from Tehran, the National Security Agency has warned.
Some
officials believe that foreign powers, possibly including Russia, could
use ransomware attacks, like those that have debilitated some local
governments, to damage or interfere with voting systems or registration
databases.
Still, much of the Russian
aim is similar to its 2016 interference, officials said: Search for
issues that stir controversy in the United States and use various
methods to stoke division.
One of
Moscow’s main goals is undermining confidence in American election
systems, intelligence officials have told lawmakers, seeking to sow
doubts over close elections and recounts. Confronting those Russian
efforts is difficult, officials have said, because they want to maintain
American confidence in voting systems.
Both
Republicans and Democrats asked the intelligence agencies to hand over
the underlying material that prompted their conclusion that Russia again
is favoring Mr. Trump’s election.
How
soon the House committee might get that information is not clear. Since
the impeachment inquiry, tensions have risen between the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence and the committee. As officials
navigate the disputes, the intelligence agencies have slowed the amount
of material they provide to the House, officials said. The agencies are
required by law to regularly brief Congress on threats.
While
Republicans have long been critical of the Obama administration for not
doing enough to track and deter Russian interference in 2016, current
and former intelligence officials said the party is at risk of making a
similar mistake now. Mr. Trump has been reluctant to even hear about
election interference, and Republicans dislike discussing it publicly.
The
aftermath of last week’s briefing prompted some intelligence officials
to voice concerns that the White House will dismantle a key election
security effort by Dan Coats, the former director of national
intelligence: the establishment of an election interference czar. Ms. Pierson has held the post since last summer.
And
some current and former intelligence officials expressed fears that Mr.
Grenell may have been put in place explicitly to slow the pace of
information on election interference to Congress. The revelations about
Mr. Trump’s confrontation with Mr. Maguire raised new concerns about Mr.
Grenell’s appointment, said the Democratic House committee official,
who added that the upcoming election could be more vulnerable to foreign
interference.
Mr. Trump, former
officials have said, is typically uninterested in election interference
briefings, and Mr. Grenell might see it as unwise to emphasize such
intelligence with the resident.
“The
biggest concern I would have is if the intelligence community was not
forthcoming and not providing the analysis in the run-up to the next
election,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence official
now with the Center for New American Security. “It is really concerning
that this is happening in the run-up to an election.”
Mr.
Grenell’s unbridled loyalty is clearly important to Mr. Trump but may
not be ideally suited for an intelligence chief making difficult
decisions about what to brief to the resident and Congress, Ms.
Kendall-Taylor said.
“Trump is trying
to whitewash or rewrite the narrative about Russia’s involvement in the
election,” she said. “Grenell’s appointment suggests he is really
serious about that.”
The
acting deputy to Mr. Maguire, Andrew P. Hallman, will step down on
Friday, officials said, paving the way for Mr. Grenell to put in place
his own management team. Mr. Hallman was the intelligence office’s
principal executive, but since the resignation in August of the previous
deputy, Sue Gordon, he has been performing the duties of that post.
Mr. Maguire is planning to leave government, according to an American official.
Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. from Washington and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. @adamgoldmanNYT
Julian
E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering
the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote
about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes•Facebook
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015
as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer
Prize in 2018 for reporting on resident Trump’s advisers and their
connections to Russia. @maggieNYT
Nicholas
Fandos is a national reporter based in the Washington bureau. He has
covered Congress since 2017 and is part of a team of reporters who have
chronicled investigations by the Justice Department and Congress into residentt Trump and his administration. @npfandos
A report indicates that the House Intel Committee got their hands on
recordings from Giuliani associate, Lev Parnas. Cenk Uygur and Ana
Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.
Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the intelligence gathering
and security of the United States. The CIA exfiltrated its top spy from
Russia out of fears that Trump would out the asset and risk their life!
To be part of your local law enforcement's surveillance network, all you need is a little tech from Amazon. Amazon's Ring doorbell/camera is being handed out to cops, who can then give them to citizens with the implication the recipients of this corporate/government largesse will deliver recordings upon request.
Every Ring installed is another contributor to this ad hoc network of cameras -- something both cops and Amazon have access to. Amazon is looking to corner two markets at one time, roping in both the public and private sectors with an eye on dominating both. The added bonus -- at least as far as Amazon is concerned -- is its Neighbors app. Neighbors allows people to report suspicious things to other neighbors, as well as law enforcement.
The whole process is guided by Amazon's heavy hand. Government agencies participating in the Ring handouts are given talking points, pre-written press releases, and contractual obligations to promote the product they're giving away. Recently-obtained documents show Amazon has even crafted scripts for police officers and press relations staff to use when questioned by citizens.
If the community member doesn’t want to supply a Ring video that seems vital to a local law enforcement investigation, police can contact Amazon, which will then essentially “subpoena” the video.
“If we ask within 60 days of the recording and as long as it’s been uploaded to the cloud, then Ring can take it out of the cloud and send it to us legally so that we can use it as part of our investigation,” [Fresno County Sheriff's Office public information officer Tony Botti] said.
So much for asserting your rights. The only way to shut law enforcement out completely and demand they actually get a warrant supported by probable cause is to store all recordings locally. (It appears only a subpoena is needed to obtain footage from Amazon.) Very few people will be taking those steps. And, as Tony Botti points out, most people "play ball" and allow cops to collect footage without a warrant.
If the implicit obligation of "repaying" a government agency for giving you a free doorbell camera isn't persuasive enough, Amazon is crafting scripts for law enforcement to use to talk people out of their Constitutional rights. Thanks to even more public document requests, the pitches are now public. Caroline Haskins has more details at Motherboard.
Emails obtained from police department in Maywood, NJ—and emails from the police department of Bloomfield, NJ, which were also posted by Wired—show that Ring coaches police on how to obtain footage. The company provides cops with templates for requesting footage, which they do not need a court warrant to do. Ring suggests cops post often on Neighbors, Ring’s free “neighborhood watch” app, where Ring camera owners have the option of sharing their camera footage.
"I have noticed you have been posting alerts and receiving feedback from the community,” a Ring representative told Bloomfield police. “You are doing a great job interacting with them and that will be critical in increasing the opt-in rate.”
“The more users you have, the more useful the information you can collect,” the representative added.
“Seems like you wasted no time sending out your video Request out to Ring Users which is awesome!!” a Ring “Partner Success Associate” told Maywood police.
This guidance is supposed to create a perverse circle of life that ditches Constitutional niceties in favor of keeping cops awash in doorbell footage and Amazon well ahead of the pack in the doorbell camera market.
Ring's PR partners encourage law enforcement agencies to increase their social media presence. (There are scripts for that as well.) While engaging with local residents, agencies should also be pushing the Neighbors app. This gives cops more credits to trade in for more cameras to give to more people. Everyone receiving a camera is nudged by the app to post footage publicly. Cops will be online more often to encourage further sharing of recordings.
Once this feedback loop is engaged, people will be nudged towards thinking there are no legal barriers between police officers and their camera footage. When the cops ask for footage they haven't seen yet, homeowners will likely feel there's no difference between posting footage to Neighbors or handing it over to law enforcement.
While many people do install security cameras at their homes, they seldom do so with the intent of becoming an unofficial extension of a government agency's surveillance network. The pitches and scripted pushes accompanying the Ring rollout suggest Amazon believes this is nothing more than the evolution of snitch tech. It has repeatedly shown it prefers to ingratiate itself to government agencies at the expense of the millions of customers who helped it become the retail behemoth it is.
And those are the people Amazon is leaving behind in its quest to dominate a market very few consumers wanted to see it entering.
In a stunning admission, the resident told ABC News that he has no
problem accepting dirt on a political opponent from a foreign power. In
fact, Trump denied that foreign help should even be considered election
interference.
During an interview with George Stephanopoulos for ABC News, Donald
Trump said that he would take information from a foreign country if he
felt that it could help his campaign and that no one in their right
minds would contact the FBI. He contradicted himself multiple times in
the short interview, but the bottom line is that he’s now willing to
admit that he’d absolutely accept illegal foreign help for his
campaigns. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Donald Trump is a menace and it seems Republicans don't care and
Democrats lack the fortitude to stop him. He told George Stephanopoulos
that, not only is the FBI Director WRONG, but that if he's approached by
a foreign operative with dirt on an opponent, he would take the meeting
and the information they have to offer!
resident Donald Trump may not alert the FBI if foreign governments
offered damaging information against his 2020 rivals during the upcoming
presidential race, he said, despite the deluge of investigations
stemming from his campaign's interactions with Russians during the 2016
campaign.
Asked by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office
on Wednesday whether his campaign would accept such information from
foreigners - such as China or Russia - or hand it over the FBI, Trump
said, "I think maybe you do both."
You've heard it over and over from Republicans: they are just concerned
about undocumented immigrants (or "illegal aliens," as the Justice
Department has been ordered
to say). If you ignore the fact that Customs and Border Protection
treated asylum seekers who presented themselves as such at the proper
border crossings - doing everything legally - like they were
undocumented migrants, and if you ignore the mostly-Muslim ban, well,
you could maybe sort of believe Republicans if you squinted and stuck
your fingers in your ears.
Of course, mistreating the undocumented was never the full plan.
Because, see, White House adviser and Man Most Likely to Be Caught
Eating Hamsters Whole, Stephen Miller, is a fucking ghoul, and he's
getting the Trump administration to change
how legal immigrants are treated. And if you're thinking, "Oh, they
must be getting extra nice to documented immigrants because they've been
such pricks to undocumented ones," then you're a fucking idiot who
doesn't understand the level of cruelty for cruelty's sake these
shit heels exist on.
What they want to do now is get rid of legal immigrants and they're
gonna contort the fuckin' law to do it so they don't need congressional
approval. The plan: "immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever
used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children's
health insurance, food stamps and other benefits could be hindered from
obtaining legal status in the U.S." You got that? You have a kid who's a
U.S. citizen and is on CHIP? No green card for you. You have a green
card and get an Obamacare subsidy? No citizenship and, hey, we'll take
that green card away. Back to the unstable visa system for you or, the
real goal, deportation.
How fucked do you have to be to believe that this is in any way good for
the country? You gotta be some bullshit white genocide-believing,
Nazi-loving motherfucker to go along with this. Or, you know, an average
Republican in this worthless age of Trump.
So you can live in this country legally for years, have kids here, and
pay your taxes. But if you avail yourself of something that your taxes
are helping to fund, you can go fuck off back to Mexico or whatever
shit hole you came from. You're a "public charge" now, even if you're
just getting the barest of help from the government.
Trumpistas also say that they are targeting people who did something
else wrong at some point in their lives, like lie on a visa application.
But, as is the way with Donald Trump, who never met a contract he
wouldn't violate, even people who had an agreement with the government
are finding that the deal has been broken by this administration.
In one example, a Haitian man who has a green card "had used a fake
passport given to him by smugglers when he entered the U.S. from Haiti
in 1989, but confessed to border officers and received a waiver from
USCIS absolving him of his wrongdoing and allowing him to obtain a green
card in 2011." Now, though? Fuck the waiver we gave you. "When he went
for his citizenship interview in August 2017, the USCIS officers told
him they were going to revisit the decision to waive the fake passport
incident, meaning he could potentially lose his green card as well." And
then he found out he was denied citizenship. The man works 80 hours a
week and takes care of a disabled daughter. He's further fucked because
he has used public assistance to help with his American kid. How does
this make America great again? If "great" means "whiter," then, sure,
goal met.
Here you go, Republicans. Another shot to stand up and say to Trump,
"No. Fuck this. This is too far. Fire that Miller cockhole and act like
you're a goddamned human being." Except you won't. Because it is you. It
has been you for decades. You're just finally getting to be your worst
selves.
In a tweet, ABC News called Trump’s child concentration camps “shelters.”When did you first realize that the Republican Party jumped the shark
and began falling into a deep dark abyss of hostility to facts, reason,
and empathy?
Was it when Nixon sent the National Guard to Kent State which
resulted in that horrific massacre of anti-war protesters? Maybe for
some it was Nixon and Watergate? Well, I get it. It would be fairly understandable to believe those were just aberrations.
But why wasn’t it enough to come to that understanding when Reagan
decided to launch his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi the
city where some of the most brutal civil rights killings took place, but
not to memorialize the dead and and send a warning to the future, but
to embrace concepts like “reverse racism,” which was clearly a dog
whistle to the “I will tell you who the REAL racists are”?
OK, maybe coincidence? What about his nomination of a deeply racist
man in Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship? Or the nomination of an
equally racist man in Judge Bork to the Supreme Court who also called
the Ninth amendment to the constitution an “irrelevant inkblot.”
No?
What about Reagan’s press secretary cracking jokes about gay men dying of AIDS during an official White House press conference?
What about Reagan’s cynical invention of the racist “welfare queen” stereotype of poor black women?
What about what remains one of the most hateful political conventions in history in the 1992 Republican Convention?
No? Just a few bad apples?
What about Bob Dole’s return of donations to the Log Cabin
Republicans as to avoid offending his right wing base because he did not
want to be seen as affiliating himself with LGBT who agreed with the
Republican Party’s platform on all but one measure?
What about the subliminal confession of an absence of compassion for
the suffering of others among the Republican faithful when George W Bush
felt a need to coin the term “compassionate conservatism.”
No? What about when the Republican majority on Supreme Court decided
to take the unprecedented step of reviewing state election law to
shutdown attempts to have a proper recount in Florida?
No? Not then either?
What about when the Bush administration fabricated an excuse to go
into a preemptive war in Iraq? What about Colin Powell’s fake vial of
anthrax at the UN? What about Condi Rice’s mushroom cloud scare tactics
to grow support for that illegal war? And it was an illegal war.
What about Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? Water boarding? “Enhanced interrogation? No?
What about the cult of personality surrounding Sarah Palin who ran
a smear campaign against Obama so awful that her own running mate had to
refute her claims?
What about the threat of martial law in the USA if Congress did not give $800 billion to the big banks?
What about lies about “death panels?” What about “do not ask what
good you could do?”
What about tea party activists waving guns at
protests outside of events featuring Obama?
When did you figure it out? Was it when Republicans booed Rick Perry
from uttering that very politically incorrect term “compassion” at a
Republican debate? Did you figure it out then? Did you figure it out
when mass shooting after mass shooting Republicans refused to act to
protect the citizenry for the sake of the gun industry that lined their
pockets?
What about the enthusiasm for Trump’s overt racism, xenophobia, islamaphobia?
If you just figured out the Republican Party is deep into an abyss of
darkness, lies, mendacity, racism, and bigotry when they got to ripping
babies from their mother’s arms, and refusing to give those children
back to the mothers after immigration proceedings were over, you figured
it out too late.
The FBI on Friday issued a formal warning that a sophisticated Russia-linked hacking campaign is compromising hundreds of thousands of home network devices worldwide and it is advising owners to reboot these devices in an attempt to disrupt the malicious software.
The law enforcement agency said foreign cyber actors are targeting routers in small or home offices with a botnet — or a network of infected devices — known as VPNFilter.
Cybersecurity experts and officials say VPNFilter has infected an estimated 500,000 devices worldwide.
The FBI recommends any owner of small office and home office routers reboot the devices to temporarily disrupt the malware and aid the potential identification of infected devices," the bureau's cyber division wrote in a public alert.
"Owners are advised to consider disabling remote management settings on devices and secure with strong passwords and encryption when enabled. Network devices should be upgraded to the latest available versions of firmware."
Earlier this week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the bureau was working to disrupt the malware, which officials have linked to the cyber espionage group known as APT 28 or Sofacy.
Experts at Cisco’s threat intelligence arm Talos on Wednesday first called attention to VPNFilter, warning that hackers are ramping up malware attacks against Ukraine, infecting thousands of devices ahead of an upcoming national holiday in the country.
"While this isn't definitive by any means, we have also observed VPNFilter, a potentially destructive malware, actively infecting Ukrainian hosts at an alarming rate, utilizing a command and control infrastructure dedicated to that country," Talos wrote in a blog post.
"Both the scale and the capability of this operation are concerning. Working with our partners, we estimate the number of infected devices to be at least 500,000 in at least 54 countries."
The firm warned that VPNFilter could wreak havoc in a number of ways, from stealing website credentials to causing widespread internet disruption.
"The malware has a destructive capability that can render an infected device unusable, which can be triggered on individual victim machines or en masse, and has the potential of cutting off Internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide."
There has been extensive discussion of Russian efforts to hack into US voting systems (for example, see the report of the Director of National Intelligence from January of last year), and it is no longer in dispute that Russia was successful in ‘compromising’
a number of voting systems. Nor is it in dispute that many elements of
our voting system (not just the voting machines themselves) are
vulnerable to cyberattacks, and old-fashioned tampering, as explained in the excellent diary
from yesterday by DKos contributor Leslie Sazillo, which highlights the
work of Dr. Barbara Simons, an expert in computer security and voting
systems.
For all the efforts Russia engaged in over the course of years to
attempt to determine the outcome of the 2016 election, and install their
preferred candidate, and all that is publicly known of their
multifaceted operations to penetrate our voting systems, there are still
many here and elsewhere who hold onto the contention there is no direct
evidence that any votes, or vote totals, were changed.
That contention relies on the notion that Russia did everything in its capability to capture the election, from hijacking social media platforms to recruiting Americans
to assist them, and they breached various voting systems in dozens of
states, but the one the one thing they held back from doing, was change
votes themselves (even though, as the work of Dr. Simons and otherexperts show,
they could do so ‘invisibly’). Why would Putin hold back in this one
instance, when he has shown no such restraint in any other way?
The answer is, in all likelihood: he didn’t hold back. Claims that votes were not changed to ensure the election of Putin’s tool, are looking less plausible by the day.
An article by Dr. Eric Haseltine (in, of all places,Psychology Today) from last month, explicates why this is the case.
Eric joined the National Security Agency to run its Research
Directorate. Three years later, he was promoted to associate of director
of National Intelligence, wherehe oversaw all science and technology efforts within the United States Intelligence Communityas
well as fostering development innovative new technologies for
countering cyber threats and terrorism. For his work on
counter-terrorism technologies, he received the National Intelligence
Distinguished Service Medal in 2007.
A little more background on him, from Wikipedia:
Haseltine spent 13 years atHughes Aircraft, where he rose to the position of Director of Engineering. He then left forWalt Disney Imagineeringin 1992, where he joined the research and development group, working on large-scalevirtual-realityprojects. In 1998, he was promoted to senior vice president responsible for all technology projects.[1]In 2000, he was made Executive Vice President. Haseltine was head of research and development for Walt Disney Imagineering[2]by the time he left in 2002 to join theNational Security Agencyas Director of Research. From 2005 to 2007, Haseltine was Associate Director for Science and Technology,Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)—that organization's first—a position he described in a 2006US News and World Reportinterview by stating: "You can think of me as the CTO [chief technology officer] of the intelligence community"… Eric has 23 patents in optics, special
effects and electronic media, and more than 150 publications in science
and technical journals, the web, and Discover Magazine.
Seems reasonably qualified, and from his years at NSA, reasonably informed. Here’s his takeon tampering with vote totals:
HOW TO HACK AN ELECTION: AN INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS.
After the last presidential election, I heard one expert after
another reassure voters that the Russians could not have hacked voting
machines or state vote tallying systems on a scale large enough to tip
the presidential election…
As much as we’d all like to believe suchconfidentpronouncements,
my experience in the intelligence world, where I served as Associate
Director of National Intelligence, has lead me to one inescapable
conclusion—theoptimistic“experts”
are probably wrong, and all of us should acknowledge that our
unconscious (or not-so-unconscious) need to believe that our democracy
can’t be subverted by foreigners, blinds us to powerful
evidence to the contrary. And, after embracing this scary possibility,
we should do a lot more to secure our voting systems than we are doing
now…
The case for Russian tampering with the vote
Let me start by explaining the way intelligence professionals would
approach the question of whether the Russians, or other skilled actors,
could change the outcome of a U.S. election by tampering with voting.
Then I’ll show why intelligence-style analysis leads to uncomfortable
conclusions.
In making assessments about a state actor, such as the Russians,
intelligence analysts ask two questions: what are the intentions of this
actor and what are their capabilities?…
So, do the Russians intend to elect American candidates they prefer over those that we, the voters, prefer?
In a word, yes. In a rare display of unanimity, last year the U.S.
Intelligence Community assessed that Putin, acting through his
intelligence services, had indeed tried to tip the presidential
election. One of the Russian Intelligence’s scariest
accomplishments was to break into voter databases in 21 states (up to 50
states if you believe some sources). This success alone could
have influenced the election by dictating who could and could not vote.
In one target of Russian hacking, North Carolina for instance, some
legitimate voters (in a “blue” precinct, as it turns out,) could not
vote because the e-poll registration system used to allow voters to vote
erroneously asserted that some legitimate voters weren’t registered…
One more thing. You might be wondering whether, despite their
motivation to subvert our national elections, Russian leadership might
still hesitate to alter vote tallies out offearof
getting caught. Whereas the U.S. Congress responded to voter
registration hacks and email leaks from the Clinton campaign with
sanctions—a mere slap on the wrist—the U.S. just might view outright
alteration of vote counts an act of war and respond accordingly.
Sadly, I think the Kremlin views getting caught as more of agoodthing,
than a bad thing, because the net result would be favorable to Russia.
Based on the way we responded to Russian behavior in 2016, Putin knows
that a sizable portion of America—members of whichever major party the
Kremlin favored—would, by and large, accept the inevitable Russian
denials about vote tampering because we all believe what we want to
believe, particularly when believing Russia committed an act of war
could lead to armed conflict with a superpower…
In other words, if Russia were caught changing vote counts, America
would be even more divided than today: exactly what the Kremlin wants.
And the national will to respond to Russia’s provocation as an act of
war simply wouldn’t be there.
Russia wins if they don’t get caught and Russia wins if they do get caught; what’s not to like? (emphasis added)
Note that Dr. Haseltine makes reference to information that, rather
than the 39 states we know were in some way compromised, it may be the
voting systems in all 50 states the Russians accessed.
Dr. Haseltine goes into detail about the vulnerabilities of voting
systems, covering much of the same territory as Leslie’s review of Dr.
Simon’s work, so I won’t go through it here, but Dr. Haseltine’s summary
is well worth the read.
For our discussion, it’s his ultimate conclusion that warrants attention:
Adding up what we know about Russian intentions and
capabilities, and factoring in the vulnerabilities just listed, I
believe that it was entirely possible votes in the 2016 election were
tampered with, and that attempts could be made to compromise future
elections.
Why hold onto the notion that Russia didn’t try to change votes? (And
if they tried, there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t be ‘invisibly’
successful.)
Dr. Haseltine suggests it is simply not wanting to believe it to be true: “theoptimistic“experts”
are probably wrong, and all of us should acknowledge that our
unconscious (or not-so-unconscious) need to believe that our democracy
can’t be subverted by foreigners”.
Charles Pierce, at Esquire, echoes this view:
The last outpost of moderate opinion on the subject of the
Russian ratfucking during the 2016 presidential election seems to be
that, yes, there was mischief done and steps should be taken both to
reveal its extent and to prevent it from happening again in the future,
but that the ratfucking, thank baby Jesus, did not materially affect the
vote totals anywhere in the country. This is a calm, measured,
evidence-based judgment. It is also a kind of prayer. If the Russian
cyber-assault managed to change the vote totals anywhere, then the 2016
presidential election is wholly illegitimate. That rocks too many
comfort zones in too many places.
Putin isn’t playing.
Saturday, Mar 10, 2018 · 8:21:45 AM EST
·
ian douglas rushlau
DKos member Hudson Valley Mark
in a comment stressed the importance of communicating clear policy
goals to address the vulnerabilities of our voting systems, and his
point is well-taken.
Any new voting system should conform to the following principles:
1. It should use human-readable marks on paper as the official record
of voter preferences and as the official medium to store votes.1
2. It should be usable by all voters; accessible to all voters,
including those with disabilities; and available in all mandated
languages.2
3. It should provide voters the means and opportunity to verify that
the human-readable marks correctly represent their intended selections,
before casting the ballot.3
4. It should preserve vote anonymity: it should not be possible to
link any voter to his or her selections, when the system is used
appropriately. It should be difficult or impossible to compromise or
waive voter anonymity accidentally or deliberately.4No voter should be able to prove how he or she voted.5
5. It should export contest results in a standard, open, machine-readable format.6
6. It should be easily and transparently auditable at the ballot level. It should:
export a cast vote record (CVR) for every ballot,
in a standard, open, machine-readable format,
in a way that the original paper ballot corresponding to any CVR can be quickly and unambiguously identified, andvice versa.7
7. It should use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware components
and open-source software (OSS) in preference to proprietary hardware and
proprietary software, especially when doing so will reduce costs,
facilitate maintenance and customization, facilitate replacing failed or
obsolete equipment, improve security or reliability, or facilitate
adopting technological improvements quickly and affordably.8
8. It should be able to create CVRs from ballots designed for currently deployed systems9and it should be readily configurable to create CVRs for new ballot designs.10
9. It should be sufficiently open11to allow a competitive market for support, including configuration, maintenance, integration, and customization.
10.It should be usable by election officials: they should be able to
configure, operate, and maintain the system, create ballots, tabulate
votes, and audit the accuracy of the results without relying on external
expertise or labor, even in small jurisdictions with limited staff.
Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle
on NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens, knows a thing or two about
spying. He’s now released an app, Haven, that makes it easier to defend
yourself against the most aggressive kinds.
Haven, now in public beta, turns any Android
smartphone into a sensitive security system. It’s primarily intended to
be installed on a secondary phone — say, last year’s model — which then
takes photos and records sound of any activity in a room where it’s
placed. Haven will then send alerts of any intrusion to a user’s primary
phone over encrypted channels.
Donald Trump is not happy about the resurgence of the “piss tape dossier”
that claimed that Trump paid prostitutes to piss on him in a Russian
hotel.
While there were far more explosive claims in the report, the
“Golden Shower” claim has gained the most attention due to the overall
creepiness of that assertion.
But Trump is fighting back, and he now
says that this entire dossier was the result of the FBI, the Democratic
Party, and Russia coming together to smear him. Ring of Fire’s Farron
Cousins discusses this.
A
quarter of the members of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council,
whose purview includes national cybersecurity, have resigned. In a
group resignation letter, they cited both specific shortfalls in the
administration’s approach to cybersecurity, and broader concerns that
Trump and his administration have undermined the “moral infrastructure”
of the U.S.
The resignations came Monday and were acknowledged by the White House on Tuesday. Nextgov has recently published the resignation letter that the departing councilors submitted. According to Roll Call, seven members resigned from the 27 member Council.
Several of those resigning were Obama-era appointees, including former U.S. Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil and former Office of Science and Technology Policy Chief of Staff Cristin Dorgelo.
Not surprisingly, then, the issues outlined in the resignation letter
were broad, faulting both Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris
climate accords and his inflammatory statements after the
Charlottesville attacks, some of which came during what was intended to
be an infrastructure-focused event.
“The
moral infrastructure of our Nation is the foundation on which our
physical infrastructure is built,” reads the letter in part. “The
Administration’s actions undermine that foundation.”
But
the resigning advisors also said the Administration was not “adequately
attentive to the pressing national security matters within the NIAC’s
purview, or responsive to sound advice received from experts and
advisors.” The letter also zeroed in on “insufficient attention to the
growing threats to the cybersecurity of the critical systems upon which
all Americans depend,” including election systems.
While he has ordered better security for government networks, Trump has shown little understanding
or seriousness when it comes to the broader issues surrounding, in his
words, “the cyber.” Most notably, he has refused to accept the U.S.
intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia engineered a hacking and
propaganda campaign meant to subvert the 2016 presidential election,
and even floated the idea of forming a cyber-security task force with Russia. The administration also missed a self-imposed deadline for presenting a comprehensive cyber-security plan.
In a report issued just after the mass resignations, the NIAC issued a report saying that dramatic steps were required to prevent a possible "9/11-level cyberattack."
