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Comment by alexeldeib | Hacker News Reader

Later in the article, they mention that wiping the server was in response to a security vulnerability leaving 6.7 million sensitive voter records vulnerable. The governor's office claims to not be aware, so it sounds like they're still following the trail, as you put it. Fortunately:

> The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole

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They could've just unplugged the server from the internet if it's vulnerable.

Electronic access, phyiscal access...it sounds more like it was a "routine" disposal of sensitive information 10 months after the election.

United States national ballot records must be kept for 22 months, and then they are likewise disposed. Florida kept (keeps?) its ballots especially long after the 2000 recount.

> Electronic access, phyiscal access...it sounds more like it was a "routine" disposal of sensitive information 10 months after the election.

When a lawsuit is filed (or even when you reasonably know lawsuit will be filed), you can not legally destroy evidence related to it, even in the course of otherwise routine document destruction.

In state agencies and other large orgs, it's common to receive mass email orders from legal to preserve all documents and communications related to matter under dispute, regardless of normal retention policies, with reminders of severe legal consequences to the org and dire personal consequences if the directive is not complied with.

Of course. And that's exactly why Florida kept around its 2000 ballots especially long.

My claim is that this sort of action in itself is not bizzare.

That it was done with a pending lawsuit is bizzare. Whether it was due to malice or incompetance remains to be seen.

They were informed 3-4 weeks before the lawsuit was filed that they were going to be sued and they should not delete the data. But did it anyway so seems like they might be hiding something

Either they are acting in bad faith, or are completely incompetent. Neither sounds like what we want out of the folks running elections.

>Electronic access, phyiscal access...it sounds more like it was a "routine" disposal of sensitive information 10 months after the election.

There was a special election in Georgia on June 20; the servers were wiped two and a half weeks later on July 7.

Those couple of paragraphs are confusing to read. They don't mention if the backup servers were also vulnerable to whatever the security problem is, and if they weren't, how they also ended up getting wiped. The article also says the failed attempt also left all that data vulnerable for months -- how is that? I wish the article was more clear and with more info. They also got the name of the coalition wrong. It's the Coalition for Good Governance*, not Governments.

In any case, I hope the FBI still has the image.

KSU does not have the... "most academically rigorous" reputation. How they ended up handling election records instead of GaTech (literally 30 minutes away, and closer to the Capitol) boggles the mind.

But then, why would you possibly want to house sensitive records at a state university with an actual cybersecurity research focus [1]? That would just be crazy.

[1] https://cyber.gatech.edu/

Most of the GA state legislature went to or has ties to UGA. Not saying that a school rivalry would affect their decisions, but not saying it wouldn’t either.

I wonder if it was a physical image backup or a logical image backup. If the latter then deleted data on the server would be likely lost if the original disks were reformatted.

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