Hacking
Steve Friess has explored the dangers of voter hacking in depth with Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan professor and computer expert, for the above-noted Playboy piece. Halderman has worked on all sides of the security issue, demonstrating how best to slow down the hackers of the NSA , how to work around government censorship, and, perhaps, most importantly, the vulnerability of state electioneering to direct manipulation. Halderman demonstrated that “hack proof” machines used in India were easily manipulated. He similarly weighed in on the vulnerability of a recent New Jersey election allowing voting by email. In 2006 he was part of the team showing how the Florida Diebold voting machines could be easily hacked. In 2010, he, with a team of grad students, manipulated the results in a Washington, D.C. trial internet election.Clint Watts on Russia’s Disinformation Campaign
Clint Watts
An April 20 Podcast, Episode 190 at DecodeDC, contains an interview of former FBI agent Clint Watts discussing the Russian disinformation campaign during the 2016 election. At least since 2015, Russian operatives have discovered, developed, and enhanced methods for disseminating “Russian spin”, largely targeting populations that have become alienated from the mainstream government. Russian operatives, using social media, cultivate relationships with target groups, then actively feed their targets misinformation, or at least spun information, with the goal of advancing Russian state interests. In particular, this information during the 2016 campaign was embraced by the alt Right and by Donald Trump himself, amplifying its effectiveness and undermining the access of the public to verifiable and honest news. Watts discusses this new and ugly phenomenon in depth and goes on to suggest potential remedies. The podcast is about a half hour long, a must listen that you need to fit into your day.
The broader theme is that our Democratic process is failing: in the 2016 election, with the election of the narcissistic demagogue Donald Trump, the process went into cardiac arrest.
The failure was hastened along by Russia – they have their own fish to fry and took advantage of our vulnerabilities to advance their interests through Mr. Trump. But on the broader scale, the process has been undermined by its vulnerability to influence peddling and big money – a problem that is devastatingly chronic. The catch 22 is that a majority of the representatives are elected by big money and those same representatives would have to vote to limit campaign spending and lobbying to get money out of politics. Of course, the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, by opening the flood gates to the money of corporations, accentuated the problem. Finally, the voting process itself has been increasingly corrupted by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and most recently by the use of computerized voting machines that are vulnerable to hacking. See earlier blogs at Computer Programmer, Going All the Way, Hacking Voting Machines, and Getting Money out of Politics.
Yet perhaps all is not lost. For the first time in generations, these weaknesses of the American system have become highly visible and increasingly recognized. Perhaps paradoxically, because the weaknesses are in the open, there is an opportunity to gather the critical mass of voters needed to restore our democracy. What we need is for a significant majority to demand that our system represent the public interest as promised and reject candidates who disenfranchise the voters. You want to gerrymander? You want money in politics? We will vote you out. Sounds simple. How about it?
Computer Programmer Created Software in 2000 to Rig Elections by Voting Machine Hacking
On April 7 and 8, in two blogs, Hacking Voting Machines, and Going all the Way, I speculated that the 2016 election may have been flipped by direct hacking of voting machines. I came to that conclusion based on the known Russian cyber warfare conducted on Trump’s behalf by Russian cyber experts and the fact that direct hacking of election computers was a known possibility. See also the Palmer Report article noting that the surprise swing states were suspiciously won by almost identical margins. The possibility of election hacking throws doubt on the legitimacy of the vote count in the 2016 presidential election and under the circumstances requires Congressional action to review the election and to consider laws to ensure the integrity of future elections.
These concerns were emphasized yesterday when I learned that on December 13, 2004, a computer programmer, Clinton Curtis, testified before a Congressional Committee that he designed software for Florida Speaker of the House Tom Feeny to rig elections in Florida in 2000. This is the YouTube link. A second link from Twitter is here. Here’s the accompanying blurb to the YouTube link:
“Published on Feb 19, 2016
Clinton Eugene Curtis, a computer programmer from Florida, testified before a congressional panel that there are computer programs that can be used to secretly fix elections. He explains how he created a prototype for Florida Congressman Tom Feeny that would flip the vote 51%-49% in favor of a specified candidate.
This happened all the way back in 2001 but you might not have heard anything about this claim unless you searched for it. I’ve seen a Wired News report on this topic and a few local Florida newspaper stories but otherwise, no real media coverage has been provided. You’d think claims of election rigging software would be splattered all over the News yet as it turns out, our news media prefers to point out voting fraud in other nations but not here in THE UNITED STATES.
Mr Curtis a Software programmer who worked for NASA, Exxon Mobil & the US Department of Transportation in a sworn-oath deposition testifies that US elections are rigged by inserting software into the voting system. The timing of this deposition was just after George W Bush being re-elected president of the United States. We are not surprised that this never made it into the main stream media.
Mr Curtis goes on to name US Representatives who attempted to pay him to rig their election vote counts.
Transcript of sworn testimony by computer programmer Clint Curtis, before the U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Democrats of the Judiciary Committee, December 13, 2004, as seen on video above follows at the link below.
http://www.bradblog.com/?page_id=9437 “
The bottom line is this. The election of the current President, Donald Trump, occurred in the face of election eve polling that predicted his defeat. He won the election based on anomalous results in several large swing states that defied the pollsters, and notwithstanding that Trump lost the popular count by almost three million votes. Those results alone should raise suspicion. We now also know that Russian operatives were active in the election, quite possibly with the cooperation of Trump and American computer analytics. In short, it is reasonable to question whether the US election was stolen. We can’t investigate sooner. Congressional action must begin now.
Going All the Way
No one has said it, but we should investigate whether voting machines were hacked in the recent election to change the vote count and flip the election. Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointedly tells us that 25% of the voting machines can be hacked without a trace. See my blog Hacking Voting Machines. Maybe we should pay attention. Here’s a scenario:
Since speculation is fun, let’s say there are billions, perhaps, trillions of dollars at stake in the election. And let’s hypothesize that you are a billionaire TV celebrity, a gambler who has made his fortune rubbing elbows with organized crime, and you have access to a rogue nation-state with highly developed cyber-warfare capabilities, and access to the ear of a right-wing hedge-fund billionaire who made his fortune using computer algorithms to game future behavior in the stock market and who is now dabbling in computer algorithms in politics. What would you do if you are willing to stop at nothing?
For a start, you use the traditional political tactics against your opponent. Stir up misogyny. Find an incident you can blame on her. Smear her with Benghazi and use of a private email server. Exploit the xenophobia of the alt-right. Rouse the rabble.
But you also have these computer resources – wouldn’t it be interesting to exploit the internet. Use the new resources like Breitbart and Facebook to target misinformation to the right people? Maybe you could hack your opponent’s emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
Now it’s coming down to the wire – the polls say you are behind by that crucial bit – you won’t be able to pull it off. But wait, there’s an Electoral College that allows you to win without the popular vote. And you have computers to find the electoral votes you need. If only you could find a few more popular votes. And lo and behold, your computer experts tell you they can hack the voting machines themselves – a few more votes here, a few more votes there, they don’t even leave a paper trail. What do you think? You are not a loser. Are you going to give it a shot?
Hacking Voting Machines – Reforms – Trump the Usurper
Former CIA Director James Woolsey warns that 25% of American voting machines can be hacked and leave no paper trail to allow a recount. See this link. See also this article by Ben Wofford in Politico, “How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes.” Here’s a quote from Wofford’s article: “’This isn’t a crazy hypothetical anymore,’ says Dan Wallach, … a computer science professor at Rice. ‘Once you bring nation states’ cyber activity into the game?’ He snorts with pity. ‘These machines, they barely work in a friendly environment.'”
No electronic information is totally secure. See my blog “Compute This“. American intelligence services tell us there was a major Russian effort involving hacking and disinformation to flip the American election – an effort that, given the narrow 70,000 vote margin of the Trump victory, determined Trump’s win. There is also voluminous evidence that Trump and his operatives colluded with that Russian effort and that agents allied to Trump engaged in massive disinformation campaigns. See yesterday’s blog “Hi Ho, Hi Ho”.
In short, our electoral process was compromised and Trump’s election was illegitimate, stolen, undeserved. Let’s call him Trump the Usurper. He should be investigated, impeached, and sent to jail. Furthermore, a federal election law is necessary to require that election machines are secure from hacking and provide a verifiable paper trail.
More broadly, the election was a wake-up call for electoral reform. The following reforms are necessary:
1. Secure voting machines with verifiable paper trails must be acquired for all voting centers.
2. Campaign finance reform must be enacted to remove money from politics. See my blog “Getting Money Out of Politics”.
3. Independent bi-partisan commissions must be established to end gerrymandering. Computer models using established computer algorithms should ensure that electoral district boundaries are not drawn for partisan advantage.
4. The Electoral College must be abolished and all national elections determined by popular vote.
5. Strong national voting laws must prohibit voter suppression.
The facts are out there. Our country is no longer a democracy. Our most recent election was stolen. We will have to act forcefully if we want our country back.
Compute This
Computers have been a game changer and I, for one, have been slow to appreciate the implications. I’m catching on.
One change has been the death of any expectation of privacy. See my March 16 blog On the Death of Privacy., As I noted, if the CIA’s most protected documents can be hacked and then released through Wikileaks, we can throw in the towel on being assured that our information is secure. Any information that has shown up on a computer somewhere is fair game. Forewarned is forewarned, if nothing else. It is a reality of current life – our primary protection being that most of us are not targets most of the time.
We are now also learning that the new access to information and the ability of computers to crunch that information can be, and has been, effectively weaponized. In the stock market, computer innovator Robert Mercer made billions by developing algorithms that allowed him to game future prices. Since the total value of the market depends on its underlying dynamics, someone who has a house edge is taking more than his share of the pie from the rest of us – much as happens with insider trading. You might reflect on that before you start your day-trading.
What is worse, it now appears, is that Mercer took his computer expertise into the realm of politics. Computers had already increased the effectiveness of gerrymandering. Mercer, through a company called Cambridge Analytics, appears to have leveraged his computer algorithms, together with hacked information on the electorate from voting rolls and social media, into stealing the 2016 election. That mechanism may have targeted anti-Clinton rants and misinformation through social media to suppress the Clinton vote.
None of this, of course, is the “fault” of the computer itself. This new and evolving technology also provides wonderful tools for understanding our world – for scientific research on health and climate change. Similarly, the evolving social media has enabled keeping up with friends and forming social networks in ways that many of us never would have dreamed possible. The ability to video chat in real time with someone on the other side of the world still feels like science fiction. The simple physics – the virtually instantaneous transmission of the necessary electrical impulses – how is that even possible? I suppose my grandparents said the same thing when they first heard radio.
And finally, I am beginning to appreciate how the blogging and social networking is impacting, and speeding up, the availability of news and of investigative reporting. In particular, my Twitter account – which I have tended to scorn for its character limitations – has the ability to instantly disseminate evolving threads of news . That dynamic is now playing out, in real time, with the investigations into the misdeeds of Trump and his associates. Because Twitter allows one to post links, the character limitation serves to keep each individual post concise – allowing one to quickly scan what is new. These new tools, combined with a rising class of investigative journalists, are going to bring Mr. Trump down. The sooner the better.
The Perfect Storm
William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp describes how Hitler’s rise in Nazi Germany was enabled by his alliance with Germany’s “military-industrial complex” (the Krupps) and Germany’s conservative Junker class. Each party perceived it could use the other two to further its goals. Arguably Hitler came out on top, but the alliance was necessary to get him there.
Similar dynamics have been at work in Trump’s rise to power. See my blog at The Tripartite Coalition. To get elected, Trump, Manafort, Stone, and Flynn – the shady dealers – allied (1) with Steve Bannon and the Robert Mercer forces, and (2) with the Republican establishment, which is enthralled to the conservative corporate and military industrial complex and led by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Trump, Manafort, Stone, and Flynn brought long-standing contacts with Putin and the Russian oligarchy to the party. The Russians were key because of their access to resources to hack Democratic emails and disseminate misinformation. The evidence of collusion, given the timeline of contacts, is self-evident. See Hannah Levintova’s Mother Jones timeline. Ryan and McConnell provided the legitimacy and political base and ideological support necessary to run. So what did Bannon and Mercer supply?
Jane Mayer in her New Yorker article “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency” exposes Robert Mercer as the force behind Bannon and Breitbart. Her article also describes how Mercer made his millions as an innovative computer programmer who figured out how to use computer algorithms to game the stock market. In essence, he figured out that, for short-term trades, he could use computers to crunch massive amounts of data to understand where the market would go next – getting a significant advantage over other market investors. Just like the casino house in a gambling operation, he used his computers to create a “house” edge by being able to predict future behavior. Mercer understood that what worked in the stock market could also be used to analyse behavior in politics. He brought that expertise to at least one company, Cambridge Analytics, for use in advancing his right-wing political goals.
From all appearances, the Mercer analytics were used to maximize the benefit of the Russian and Breitbart disinformation campaign. In an election determined by approximately 70,000 votes in three key states, that alliance almost certainly tipped the election in Trump’s favor. See this article by Bill Palmer, “FBI now investigating Breitbart and InfoWars as part of its probe into Donald Trump and Russia.” Here’s Palmer, “Just hours after FBI Director James Comey confirmed on live national television today that his agency is actively investigating Russia and the Donald Trump campaign for their roles in rigging the 2016 election, it turns out the probe is even wider than acknowledged. McClatchy is now confirming that the FBI is also investigating the actions of two far right news outlets with direct ties to the Trump administration, as part of its Trump-Russia probe.
Part of the Russian government’s strategy for rigging the election involved using automated internet bots to spread pro-Trump news stories from sites like Breitbart and InfoWars in rapid fashion, helping those stories artificially go viral on social media, and giving Donald Trump a boost in the process.”
As has been well established, Breitbart was funded by Robert Mercer and led by Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Finally, we have the further circumstantial evidence that Trump, himself, personally amplified the effect of the misinformation campaign by publicly asserting, repeating, and insisting on the truth of various allegations. See this article by Aaron Rupar at ThinkProgress: “Former FBI agent details how Trump and Russia team up to weaponize fake news“.
As Rupar notes: “During the first public Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about Russia’s meddling in the presidential election on Thursday, former FBI special agent Clint Watts explained how Russia and the Trump campaign team up to weaponize fake news.
Asked by Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) about why Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to make more of an effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election than in years past, Watts, who is now a a fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, said, ‘the answer is very simple and it’s what nobody is really saying in this room.’
‘Which is, part of the reason active measures have worked in this U.S. election is because the Commander-in-Chief [Trump] has used Russian active measures at times, against his opponents,’ Watts continued.” Watts goes on to detail two specific circumstances.
It has been evident for some time that Trump successfully used a campaign of innuendo, smears, and misinformation to steal the 2016 election. The degree to which his election was further enabled by the perfect storm of Russian collusion and the computer expertise of Robert Mercer to leverage the disinformation campaign is now coming into focus. Given that the collusion was illegal and covert, it is reasonable to anticipate that substantially more activity will come to light as law enforcement investigates and as those who are culpable face subpoenas and are required to testify under oath. This reddit link “magicsonar comments” contains some of the anonymous research and speculation that deserves mainstream attention.
In summary, Trump’s election was illegitimate. He should be investigated and removed from office and the election nullified.
Investigating Trump
The Mayflower Hotel
When Richard Nixon was investigated for his role in Watergate, the underlying story was relatively straight-forward. A group of Republican operatives was caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. The gist of the investigation was whether Nixon was somehow involved. Basically, there was one act and an ensuing cover up. No one got confused trying to understand which particular malfeasance was being talked about.
Trumpgate is much more complex because the actions that are being unveiled are substantially more wide ranging. Here’s my list for keeping track:
The Trump-Russia Scandal: US intelligence has confirmed that Russian operatives actively undermined the integrity of the 2016 election, among other acts releasing hacked emails and misinformation intended to damage the Clinton campaign. Numerous Trump aides were in contact with Russian officials during this period and many of the contacts were initially denied. Several theories have arisen as to what was going on, including the possibility of direct collusion between Trump and Putin to swing the election, the possibility of an oil deal underlying such cooperation, and the possibility that Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence.
Here are a couple recent pieces addressing where that stands. Jefferson Morley article posted on Salon, “5 key questions about the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation“. Read the Morley piece for five areas he would like investigated.
See also Seth Abramson’s Twitter threads. Following these threads is a bit more work – Abramson hasn’t yet collected it together, or if he has I didn’t find it. Still, the threads are compelling and raise questions concerning whether a deal for oil was cut at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, and concerning the Christopher Steele dossier.
Secondly, Was there a Domestic Manipulation of the Election? Did Trump operatives work with a faction in the FBI New York office to manipulate intelligence information? Again, see Abramson, in The Huffington Post, “The Domestic Conspiracy That Gave Trump The Election Is In Plain Sight.”
Here’s Abramson’s lead: “Information presently public and available confirms that Erik Prince, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump conspired to intimidate FBI Director James Comey into interfering in, and thus directly affecting, the 2016 presidential election. This conspiracy was made possible with the assistance of officers in the New York Police Department and agents within the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All of the major actors in the conspiracy have already confessed to its particulars either in word or in deed; moreover, all of the major actors have publicly exhibited consciousness of guilt after the fact. This assessment has already been the subject of articles in news outlets on both sides of the political spectrum, but has not yet received substantial investigation by major media.”
Read Abramson for the underlying allegations. I found the information concerning Erik Prince new and interesting. Abramson notes that “Erik Prince—the founder of Blackwater private security, one of Trump’s biggest donors, a conspiracy theorist who’d previously accused Huma Abedin of being a terrorist in the employ of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a man who blamed Clinton family friend and former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta for outing him as a CIA asset in 2009″ was actively involved in the Clinton disinformation campaign. Prince, it turns out, is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s brother. Consider this excerpt: “It seems clear that Giuliani, who was the top surrogate for the Trump campaign and in near-daily contact with the candidate, acted under orders from Trump, and that Prince either acted under orders from Trump or Steve Bannon—well-known to Prince from their mutual association with, and financial investment in, Breitbart and its ownership, including Robert Mercer—and, moreover, that all those associated with the conspiracy were subsequently rewarded. Erik Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, was named Education Secretary by Trump, despite having no experience for the job other than advocating sporadically for charter schools in Michigan. Prince himself was named a shadow adviser to Trump, even though, by November 8th, the fact that his statements to Breitbart had been part of a domestic disinformation campaign was clear. Prince is so close to Trump that he appears to have been present at the election-night returns-watching party to which Trump invited only close friends and associates…”
Violation of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Third, while the questions of Trump’s collusion with Russia and manipulation of the FBI seem to be the most visible areas of investigation, Adam Davidson in The New Yorker, “Donald Trump’s Worst Deal”, presents a strong case that Trump violated The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by partnering with organized crime in a Trump hotel project in Azerbaijan. I am puzzled that Davidson’s piece has gained so little traction in Congress, given that proof could be reasonably obtained through available paper and money trails.
Violation of the Emoluments Clause. Even more puzzling is the failure of Congressional members to pursue Trump’s violation of the Emoluments Clause, given that Trump is profiting from a world-wide web of business ventures that create an inevitable tangle of conflicts of interest. Trump, in public view, benefits every time a foreign entity contracts with a Trump facility. There was a brief flurry of headlines when China granted Trump valuable patents. It is difficult to construct an innocent explanation for the Republican leadership ignoring such a direct and visible Constitutional challenge.
The Fourth Amendment, that Constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, has just taken another hit from the realities of electronic media. Our world has changed in a fundamental way and we need to adjust. That is the take away from the recent WikiLeaks and Russian hacking and the exposure of CIA documents. Because, aside from all the salacious details about how you can be surveilled and hacked, the leak reveals what is now a fundamental truth: there is no longer a true expectation of privacy with respect to any electronic media. If the CIA can’t protect their information, no one’s information is protected against a determined modern hacker. Secure cell phone or not, classification or not, if someone puts information out there, or even stores it in electronic form, a determined and funded hacker may get it.
Dave Hemond's Fleet Street 