QuotePlaintiffs in the lawsuit, mostly Georgia voters, want to scrap the state’s 15-year-old vote-management system â€" particularly its 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting machines, hackable devices that don’t use paper ballots or keep hardcopy proof of voter intent. The plaintiffs were counting on an independent security review of the Kennesaw server, which held elections staging data for counties, to demonstrate the system’s unreliability.
QuoteThe server data could have revealed whether Georgia’s most recent elections were compromised by hackers.
QuoteA 180-page collection of Kennesaw State emails, obtained Friday by the Coalition for Good Governments via an open records search, details the destruction of the data on all three servers and a partial and ultimately ineffective effort by Kennesaw State systems engineers to fix the main server’s security hole.
As a result of the failed effort, sensitive data on Georgia’s 6.7 million voters â€" including social security numbers, party affiliation and birthdates â€" as well as passwords used by county officials to access elections management files remained exposed for months.
Quote
Based on his review of the emails, Lamb believes that electronic polling books could have been altered in Georgia’s biggest counties to add or drop voters or to scramble their data. Malicious hackers could have altered the templates of voting machine memory cards to skew results. An attacker could even have potentially modified “ballot-building†files to corrupt the outcome, said Lamb, who works at Atlanta-based security firm Bastille Networks.
QuoteWiping the server “forestalls any forensic investigation at all,†said Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist following the case. “People who have nothing to hide don’t behave this way.â€
Source (https://apnews.com/877ee1015f1c43f1965f63538b035d3f/APNewsBreak:-Georgia-election-server-wiped-after-suit-filed)
Awfully suspicious behavior.
And in Georgia's House of Representatives special election (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia%27s_6th_congressional_district_special_election,_2017#Runoff) - the most expensive House election in history - the GOP candidate squeaked by, winning an extremely close election.
According to The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/opinion/georgia-election-karen-handel-jon-ossoff.html), the unexpected results were "demoralizing" for Democrats but fortunate for Trump, who "got fresh hope for his stalled legislative agenda." How *very* fortunate for Trump, the GOP candidate, and Georgia's GOP Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the man overseeing the election servers, both during the election and during the mysterious erasure. Btw, he's running for Governor next year.
Not to worry. Everything is OK. It's a computer. No computer has ever been hacked. No program has ever been known to render false data. Nothing bad can happen because it's a computer. Voters can sleep well. It's OK that the records no longer exist. They were correct. You can trust us because we are the government.
I think everyone involved with wiping the server needs to be instantly jailed for destruction of evidence. Can regular citizens, in the middle of a lawsuit, just destroy evidence with everyone knowing and get away with it?
Quote from: Shiranu on October 26, 2017, 09:17:11 PMI think everyone involved with wiping the server needs to be instantly jailed for destruction of evidence.
"J.Tom Morgan, a former Georgia prosecutor, said destruction of the drive would not be a criminal act unless it was in violation of a protective court order (It appears no such order was requested). But it could seriously damage the defendants’ case, he said."
Strange that you have to specifically ask the court to protect the server data as evidence. You'd think that'd be assumed. Apparently not.
Quote from: SGOS on October 26, 2017, 09:02:33 PM
Not to worry. Everything is OK. It's a computer. No computer has ever been hacked. No program has ever been known to render false data. Nothing bad can happen because it's a computer. Voters can sleep well. It's OK that the records no longer exist. They were correct. You can trust us because we are the government.
The FBI went around trying to hack various state election board computers. Who is the enemy? Yes, thank goodness we use paper ballots here. So primitive.
Quote from: Shiranu on October 26, 2017, 09:17:11 PM
I think everyone involved with wiping the server needs to be instantly jailed for destruction of evidence. Can regular citizens, in the middle of a lawsuit, just destroy evidence with everyone knowing and get away with it?
Hillary much? DNC much? Some of that was already under subpoena from Congress ... and it got deleted by Obama. When will the Democrats jail their own people ... when will the Muslims kill their own terrorists ...
Quote from: Hydra009 on October 26, 2017, 10:46:43 PM
"J.Tom Morgan, a former Georgia prosecutor, said destruction of the drive would not be a criminal act unless it was in violation of a protective court order (It appears no such order was requested). But it could seriously damage the defendants’ case, he said."
Strange that you have to specifically ask the court to protect the server data as evidence. You'd think that'd be assumed. Apparently not.
No it is not. Attorneys are much more clever than you or I. But here was data, on another server, under subpoena (and thus protected) and they wiped it anyway. Y'all are just a bunch of simple country folk, being taken to the cleaners by city slickers.
Quote from: Baruch on October 26, 2017, 10:58:37 PMThe FBI went around trying to hack various state election board computers. Who is the enemy?
Actually, the FBI may actually be the one silver lining in this case.
The FBI made an exact system image of the server back in March. If they can find it again, they might hand over some incriminating evidence to the prosecution. Lots of ifs and mights in that sentence, but it's better than nothing.
Quote from: Baruch on October 26, 2017, 11:00:45 PMHillary much? DNC much?
For the record, I was pretty aghast at that, as well. Just like I'm aghast at Kushner, Bannon, Priebus, and Ivanka (I might've missed a couple) similarly using private emails to conduct official business. Clinton wiping her server angered me but Georgian officials may have potentially exposed citizens' personal information and cast doubt on the legitimacy of Georgia's recent elections to boot.
If conservatives have principles and are consistent, they'll raise a fuss about this, too. If not, you'll know what principles they truly hold and which they're just pretending to have.
Traditionally, this was all private snail mail and rotary phone ... and a gentleman would never read another persons snail mail, or wire tap their phone ;-) And politicians used to keep excess campaign funds in their own personal account. Of course they can still legally front run the finance markets (inside trade) ... because they are so poor ...
Quote from: Hydra009 on October 26, 2017, 10:46:43 PM
"J.Tom Morgan, a former Georgia prosecutor, said destruction of the drive would not be a criminal act unless it was in violation of a protective court order (It appears no such order was requested). But it could seriously damage the defendants’ case, he said."
Strange that you have to specifically ask the court to protect the server data as evidence. You'd think that'd be assumed. Apparently not.
Alright, I now just don't know why Americans even remotely pretend the law is equal; it's not equal for the rich vs the poor, it's not equal for whites vs blacks, it's not equal for men vs women... shit, at this point I'm wonder who it is at all equal for. I guess if I am ever in deep shit, I'll just roll the dice and destroy incriminating evidence and refer to this case... the court never specifically said what was or wasn't evidence and that I couldn't destroy it, so tally ho set me free!
Quote from: Hydra009 on October 26, 2017, 08:28:02 PM
Source (https://apnews.com/877ee1015f1c43f1965f63538b035d3f/APNewsBreak:-Georgia-election-server-wiped-after-suit-filed)
Awfully suspicious behavior.
And in Georgia's House of Representatives special election (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia%27s_6th_congressional_district_special_election,_2017#Runoff) - the most expensive House election in history - the GOP candidate squeaked by, winning an extremely close election.
According to The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/opinion/georgia-election-karen-handel-jon-ossoff.html), the unexpected results were "demoralizing" for Democrats but fortunate for Trump, who "got fresh hope for his stalled legislative agenda." How *very* fortunate for Trump, the GOP candidate, and Georgia's GOP Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the man overseeing the election servers, both during the election and during the mysterious erasure. Btw, he's running for Governor next year.
The Coalition For Good Government is a fake organization. Any info from is is suspect.
Coalition For Good Government is estimated to generate $56,000 in annual revenues, and employs approximately 1 people at this single location.
Sector: Business Services
Category: Business Services, nec
Industry: Business Activities At Non-commercial Site
SIC Code: 7389
Weird.
According to the article, the suit was filed by "a diverse group of election reform advocates" and that the plantiffs are "mostly Georgia voters". So some rando (good intentioned or not) being involved doesn't make or break this case for me. And of course, pulling the plug looks really bad regardless.
Quote from: Hydra009 on October 27, 2017, 12:18:09 PM
Weird.
According to the article, the suit was filed by "a diverse group of election reform advocates" and that the plantiffs are "mostly Georgia voters". So some rando (good intentioned or not) being involved doesn't make or break this case for me. And of course, pulling the plug looks really bad regardless.
Anyone can claim to be "a diverse group of election reform advocates". It's called "astroturfs". Fake "ground level up groups". I could start one today if I wanted to pay Go-Daddy for a site. Let's say I called it ""Advocates For America". It could mean anything. And I could push any agenda. I could claim top-down support from Trump or populist leanings against him.
Quote from: Cavebear on October 27, 2017, 12:51:08 PMAnyone can claim to be "a diverse group of election reform advocates". It's called "astroturfs". Fake "ground level up groups".
You could, but just calling something an astroturf doesn't necessarily mean it actually is an astroturf. The plantiffs are identified as Georgia voters, so unless you have evidence otherwise, I'm inclined to take that at face value.
And yeah, the Colorado Coalition for Good Governance appears to consist entirely of three elections activists (https://coalitionforgoodgovernance.org/bios/). Good for them. Doesn't necessarily discount what they're doing (and what others are doing alongside them), it just highlights that their billing as a "coalition" is overstated - in actuality, it's an extremely small group.
Quote from: Hydra009 on October 27, 2017, 01:06:42 PM
You could, but just calling something an astroturf doesn't necessarily mean it actually is an astroturf. The plantiffs are identified as Georgia voters, so unless you have evidence otherwise, I'm inclined to take that at face value.
OOPs, you are right. I don't have the facts of that particular situation at hand. I spoke in general. My apologies.
I suppose I could ask who "the Georgia voters" were. but I accept you at your word.
Enlighten me.
It could be Daffy Duck or Adolf Hitler bringing up the case for all I care, the plaintiff is irrelevant... what is relevant is did the accused (and at this point, guilty) party intentionally destroy evidence? Yes. Yes they did.
If they hadn't have done that, I might be a smidggin' sympathetic towards them, but when they start destroying evidence to hide their tracks, and the court allows it, then the entire case is a farce anyways and might as well feature Daffy Duck as the plaintiff, Frank the Tank as judge and a jury composed of Oompa Lumpas.
The only valuable thing that come out of it in that situation is that we can take what reliable information we can get, such as the evidence being destroyed, and form our own opinions on it. Although if you live outside Georgia, you don't really have much say in it anyways. It's a lose/lose/lose situation no matter what.
Quote from: Shiranu on October 27, 2017, 07:29:42 PM
It could be Daffy Duck or Adolf Hitler bringing up the case for all I care, the plaintiff is irrelevant... what is relevant is did the accused (and at this point, guilty) party intentionally destroy evidence?
Yes, I would hope the courts focus on the issue.
Quote from: SGOS on October 28, 2017, 04:31:22 AM
Yes, I would hope the courts focus on the issue.
I equally hope fair courts resolve this issue.
Quote from: Cavebear on October 31, 2017, 01:16:52 AM
I equally hope fair courts resolve this issue.
Don't worry, Justice Scalia has been moved to a higher court. He will rule on this from there ;-)
Quote from: Baruch on October 31, 2017, 07:17:29 AM
Don't worry, Justice Scalia has been moved to a higher court. He will rule on this from there ;-)
Unfortunately, there are Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. Two of whom shouldn't even be judges on Fox.
Quote from: Hydra009 on October 26, 2017, 10:46:43 PM
"J.Tom Morgan, a former Georgia prosecutor, said destruction of the drive would not be a criminal act unless it was in violation of a protective court order (It appears no such order was requested). But it could seriously damage the defendants’ case, he said."
Strange that you have to specifically ask the court to protect the server data as evidence. You'd think that'd be assumed. Apparently not.
This is the reason I don't believe in electronic voting. A ballot needs to be a physical, countable, non-remotely-hackable thing. Paper ballots don't make election fraud impossible, but they do make it impossible to do from a PC in a Moscow office block, and they make it considerably more difficult to do with large masses of ballots. And they're protected by a chain of custody. Box of ballots went missing? You grab the last person who signed off on them.
To this day, I am not convinced that my vote in 2004 was properly counted. We know that the head of Dubya's campaign in Ohio was the elected official responsible for ensuring fair elections statewide, and that the distribution of machines was skewed so that Republican areas had more than they needed and Democratic areas fewer, and that the manufacturer of the machines promised not that he would provide the securest and safest machines he could,
but that he would "deliver" Ohio for Bush.
The difference between the exit polls and the "official" result would have taken flipping only one out of every 37 Kerry votes to Bush.
Food for thought.
Quote from: trdsf on November 02, 2017, 12:47:46 PMThis is the reason I don't believe in electronic voting. A ballot needs to be a physical, countable, non-remotely-hackable thing.
It's possible to do electronic voting in a relatively secure way (part of the problem with Georgia's voting is that its system is archaic), but the voting network should absolutely not be connected to the internet, it should be auditable (which means no mysterious server wipes), and should be protected from physical tampering, etc.
When instituted correctly, electronic voting should be no more unreliable than paper voting.
Everyone seems to think that since the counting is done by a computer, it has to be more accurate, and of course computers are better equipped to process data accurately than any living human. The problem is that computers can be programmed to miscount. This is not a computer error. There will always be a human, often one with an agenda, to teach the computer how to do it to achieve a desired result rather than a true result. From what I can tell, people tend to believe computers are tamper proof because of some mysterious property inherent in electronics.
Electronic voting could be made more tamper proof, but you would be hard pressed to find enough politicians who want to close down a system that allows for Third World political tactics and lends itself so well to fraudulent use. I think that is obvious when a state like Georgia claims everything is hunky dory and it doesn't need to leave a paper trail that can be checked for authenticity.
Quote from: Hydra009 on November 02, 2017, 02:13:39 PM
It's possible to do electronic voting in a relatively secure way (part of the problem with Georgia's voting is that its system is archaic), but the voting network should absolutely not be connected to the internet, it should be auditable (which means no mysterious server wipes), and should be protected from physical tampering, etc.
When instituted correctly, electronic voting should be no more unreliable than paper voting.
Will never happen. There are no honest humans.
Quote from: SGOS on November 02, 2017, 02:41:09 PMFrom what I can tell, people tend to believe computers are tamper proof because of some mysterious property inherent in electronics.
Garbage in, gospel out? (overtrust of computerized data)
Computers are just very complex calculators. Of course it can't correct for a crappy process or crappy input.
People, on the other hand, are reliably unreliable. Undervote, overvote, maybe they illegally purge voter rolls (https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/judge-says-north-carolina-illegally-purged-voter-lists-n677431)...
Just because you're holding a piece of paper in your hand doesn't mean it's a good process. I personally filled out a bubble sheet where it wasn't entirely clear whose bubble was whose. I very nearly messed up. And the less said about hanging chads and butterfly ballots, the better.
The best of both worlds is ethical, competent people overseeing a good process implemented on tamper-resistant equipment. Good leaders could implement such a system, but how would they get elected in the first place?
Quote from: Hydra009 on November 02, 2017, 09:28:20 PM
Garbage in, gospel out? (overtrust of computerized data)
Computers are just very complex calculators. Of course it can't correct for a crappy process or crappy input.
People, on the other hand, are reliably unreliable. Undervote, overvote, maybe they illegally purge voter rolls (https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/judge-says-north-carolina-illegally-purged-voter-lists-n677431)...
Just because you're holding a piece of paper in your hand doesn't mean it's a good process. I personally filled out a bubble sheet where it wasn't entirely clear whose bubble was whose. I very nearly messed up. And the less said about hanging chads and butterfly ballots, the better.
The best of both worlds is ethical, competent people overseeing a good process implemented on tamper-resistant equipment. Good leaders could implement such a system, but how would they get elected in the first place?
That is why, as a B&W SJW ... we either have utopia now, or destroy the world. The way things are going, I would ban voting entirely. I don't care how the damn voters do it, they need to be stopped.
Quote from: Baruch on November 03, 2017, 03:18:35 AM
That is why, as a B&W SJW ... we either have utopia now, or destroy the world. The way things are going, I would ban voting entirely. I don't care how the damn voters do it, they need to be stopped.
Yes, just have politicians appointed by corporations.
Quote from: SGOS on November 03, 2017, 07:53:39 AM
Yes, just have politicians appointed by corporations.
They already are, by NWO. You cooperate by giving them plausible deniability. They own both candidates of both parties.
Quote from: SGOS on November 03, 2017, 07:53:39 AM
Yes, just have politicians appointed by corporations.
My Vanguard account keeps emailing me to vote for the Board Of Directors. I don't know the least bit about any of them (as if their one paragragh informs me). And actually what they want is for me to GIVE my vote to the Board for THEM to use in voting.
I refuse...
Quote from: Cavebear on November 04, 2017, 01:38:15 AM
My Vanguard account keeps emailing me to vote for the Board Of Directors. I don't know the least bit about any of them (as if their one paragragh informs me). And actually what they want is for me to GIVE my vote to the Board for THEM to use in voting.
I refuse...
Same here, I had to put on more Right Guard to keep down the BO.
Quote from: Baruch on November 04, 2017, 10:55:04 AM
Same here, I had to put on more Right Guard to keep down the BO.
Besides, when I become President, I might want one of the losers to be in my cabinet... I'm NOT leaving any trails for the reporters to follow. Except for here of course. I will be the first atheist President.