The FBI will brief state officials in future election hacks

[steven36]

They weren’t doing this before?

 

 

As the 2020 presidential election nears, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on Thursday that it would start notifying states when local election systems are hacked in an effort to make elections more secure. Before, the bureau would only notify the owners of the breached equipment of cyberattacks, which were typically counties and local governments with less capacity to respond.

 

The FBI’s announcement comes after months of criticism from lawmakers and election officials who feared the agency was failing to brief states of possible threats, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. In a call with reporters, an FBI official also said the bureau will not notify election technology vendors of breaches.

 

“Cyber intrusions affecting election infrastructure have the potential to cause significant negative impacts on the integrity of elections,” an FBI press release said. “Understanding that mitigation of such incidents often hinges on timely notification.”

 

Last year, former special counsel Robert Mueller released his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

 

The Mueller report revealed that, in 2016, a Florida county election network was breached by Russian hackers, although they were unable to alter voting tallies. When the report was released in 2019, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had reportedly still not been briefed by the FBI on the incident, and requested a briefing in the wake of the publication.

 

“Decisions surrounding notification continue to be dependent on the nature and breadth of an incident and the nature of the infrastructure impacted,” the FBI said in a press release.

 

Source

[xkryptonx]

2 hours ago, steven36 said:

They weren’t doing this before?

 

 

 

“Cyber intrusions affecting election infrastructure have the potential to cause significant negative impacts on the integrity of elections,” an FBI press release said. “Understanding that mitigation of such incidents often hinges on timely notification.”

 

 

 

The risk of intrusions will always be there as long as the technology is used in elections. Anyone say China, Russia, Iran, even the NSA and the CIA can cause intruder even may become successful in altering the election results. I remember such intrusions happened in elections in Pakistan but they were successfully thwarted by IT teams appointed to watch over and ensure security of elections campaign. There are always two sides of a coin. Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. On the bright side, using electronic election can help citizens of a country who residing in other help them choose the government of their choice as it did local election and broke the monopoly of elections and brought new people in power to rule the country.

[Edion Gecos]

The only solution is to have humanly verifiable paper ballots that are later publicly hand counted in each district. None of these electronic voting machines with no trace (and in the rare cases where paper slips are issued afterwards as "proof", they are often not verifiable by the voter as they only show some codes/numbers, and in some states they are even by law not allowed to be used for recounts).

 

For almost 4 years now there is the hysteria of "foreign" intervention and "Russian" interference in the election, but instead of securing the whole process, in about 33 states they are now even including wifi-receivers into the machines!

By making it even easier to "hack" into the voting process and alter the outcome, I wonder who is actually benefiting from it all?!? Any answer from the status-quo establishment hacks who constantly cry wolf, but block any effort to actually provide a fair and secure vote count?    

[mp68terr]

Paper ballots in transparent sealed ballot boxes. Public count. Secure communication of the count to the higher level (is there a country where there are more than 3-4 such levels). Final official count.

It does not take much human power at each local place. Can be done without any computer.

Doing that way since starting to vote. In case of trouble, just recount.

No hack, can be done quickly, no hysteria, no never-ending-blablabla.

[Edion Gecos]

On 1/18/2020 at 6:23 PM, mp68terr said:

Paper ballots in transparent sealed ballot boxes. Public count. Secure communication of the count to the higher level (is there a country where there are more than 3-4 such levels). Final official count.

It does not take much human power at each local place. Can be done without any computer.

Doing that way since starting to vote. In case of trouble, just recount.

No hack, can be done quickly, no hysteria, no never-ending-blablabla.

In essence this is exactly what I said above: Paper ballots, public hand-count, at the local level.

This would be such an easy solution and is successfully done in so many other places in the world that it becomes blatantly obvious why "both sides of the aisle" in reality don't care about secure & fair elections as the present process can be used to "their" advantage.