US elections remain 'dangerously vulnerable' to cyber-attacks
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
If the past is any indication, there will almost certainly be a lot of comments on this article proposing complicated schemes for making electronic voting secure and verifiable. Consider when evaluating these schemes whether there is any benefit or upside at all over good old fashioned unhackable paper.
With paper voting, all votes are counted by several people, with oversight and random recounts. It is _possible_ to cheat, but it would require a local conspiracy for a limited number of votes.
With electronic voting, the counting is done by machines and the mechanism is obfuscated and unverifiable. If it's working correctly, it should be perfect; but if the machines were hacked, it could be done through a network and the impacts could be massive. It would require a large conspiracy to pull off, but the number of votes that could be affected could change an election.
So in summary: paper voting = higher chance of small irregularities, with limited impact; electronic voting = lower chance of massive irregularities with election changing consequences. In paper voting, the trust is distributed, while in electronic voting, it is centralized.
> With electronic voting, the counting is done by machines and the mechanism is obfuscated and unverifiable.
Could a blockchain not address that with public/private keys? Why is this ridiculous?
To prevent selling of votes, or forced votes via blackmail.
The main issue is the hardware, and added complexity. But these are interesting problems that should be talked about.
Plus we would need culture changes around key management, so that non-tech-literate people can create and protect keys. Which means the people would need some standard for secure hardware to generate keys and sign ballots. Which means we'd need some government standard for "trusted hardware", and that would quickly become an attack vector.
Only after all of that would it be possible for the government to trust votes via public key cryptography. And as Jacob says, the important thing is that the _public_ has trust in the vote, regardless of what government officials believe.
So what problem does it solve? What does the blockchain accomplish that a paper ballot does not? And what are the costs in terms of user interface and voter education, relative to paper?
I'm not saying this would be good necessarily, only that such a technology would enable fast, frequent, continuous control distributed across the population. Such a country would be very different from anything that exists today.
Assuming that voting would become effectively free, the second point does sound quite intriguing. It's the sort of direct democracy that is practiced by some countries (e.g. Switzerland). It does require a certain level of voter education though - so people look at the longer term. Otherwise you'll never push through an initiative that raises taxes for example.
If someone asks "why should I trust this count is correct" you can say "well these are the people that counted the votes - these are the people who watched (selected by parties A, B and C) and here's some video of it all happening".
That's a lot more comprehensible than "well, do you know what a blockchain is?".
Being trustable is great - but it also needs to be trusted!
I don't think my mom knows what a blockchain is.
I know in other poorer nations thugs just straight stuff the ballots with votes, some even steal the box, some set it on fire, and it can be in general a complete shit show.
What is simply required is a publicly available audit of elections, where any citizen can verify for themselves the outcome of their local results.
Yes, you need some minimum of civil society infrastructure for paper ballots to be categorically more secure than electronic ballots.
But the article is about the US. In the US, paper is simply safer.
It's not just the paper system it's that the paper system can be monitored by representatives of each party, there's no good way to do that with an electronic system that doesn't at least create a separate paper record of the vote that's counted separately.
Yeah, well, don't drive into trees then.
Well-designed, verifiable, auditable paper ballot systems already exist in the US. In many states, the paper-based ballot process is completely safe and reliable. For those states that struggle, the correct solution is to look to the states that don't struggle, and imitate them.
If corruption is widespread at all levels of society no system will work.
> I know in other poorer nations thugs just straight stuff the ballots with votes, some even steal the box, some set it on fire, and it can be in general a complete shit show.
And you know that this happens because you need a shit show to mess election at that level. With electronic voting, you will not even notice.
Paper voting is inefficient and is what it makes it hard to break. You need a lot of manpower to alter an election. If you can alter the election result with manpower, the system that you use does not matter anymore.
Can someone explain why I am ignorant here: Is it not just feasible to open source and open access everything with only obfuscating voter identity as a hash? That way people can voluntarily make public their votes for third-party investigation?
Note: I'm not saying this is better than paper voting. But if voting is to be electronic then this seems like the best model?
In many environments, secret votes and public votes lead to different outcomes: requests to make regularly public votes secret is not that uncommon in elections for private groups: Everyone knows that there's a big percentage of people that want to vote in an unpopular way, and suddenly either an old leader is ousted, or a very corrupt choice is made.
So no, the ability to voluntarily make your own vote public and verifiable is a dealbreaker for elections in a modern state.
These combine with "at will" employment such that I could be fired for voting in the "wrong" primary for my company, with no laws broken. I'm not saying it has ever happened, but it could. Murphy's Law provides the rest.
In the general election, the only public information is whether I voted or not. So I vote as I please. I can still be fired for wearing only the minimum required amount of flair, but at least that's not interfering with democracy.
Public votes can also be sold. If you say you'll pay me $X if I vote for Y, making the Y vote public means they buyer can know that they got what they paid for.
First, that requires a new Constitution, throwing out our existing representative democracy and starting over with a new model.
Second, not everyone agrees direct democracy is a good idea. Adding a layer of focused expertise in the form of representation is arguably a very good thing.
Other than that, what I have seen in representative democracies (and authoritarian states) worldwide have never sparked the "expertise" feeling in me.
There are all sorts of changes that wouldn't require a new constitution, just likely an amendment. They're unlikely to happen though, as our current representative democracy would need to voluntarily give up some of their power.
>Second, not everyone agrees direct democracy is a good idea. Adding a layer of focused expertise in the form of representation is arguably a very good thing
There is a massive amount of room between a pure direct democracy and our current system. Our two party system removes any semblance of Democratic choice on issues the parties agree on.
For this to be true, you need a majority of the population to be well informed voters, which just isn't true. I'd be surprised if 25% of American's knew about a US bomb blowing up a bus of schoolchildren recently, and doubt a strong majority would support that bombing. Yet my vote does not matter on the issue.
Not saying it's a bad idea. Questioning whether you're contradicting yourself.
Not really, even on some highly salient issues. Universal public health care has had majority public support most of the time since the early 1990s, but the Democratic Party has opposed it (in favor of various complex public/private schemes with insurance companies front and center) as has the Republican Party.
It's even less true in issues that are of extreme interest to a narrow group and low public salience.
When these experts are bought and sold by corporations who write the laws to benefit themselves and hurt the people who voted for said representatives, the system is utterly broken.
I think regardless of if paper or digital is used, we need an anonymous verification method. i.e. I can confirm that my vote was cast and tallied for X candidate. And if you got your whole community together, you could prove there are no injected or altered votes.
The receipt of a vote could be a UUID that you can then use later to verify your vote, for instance.
Just because there is no immediate benefit doesn't mean there won't one day be benefit. Initial versions of many forms of technology were near useless and only became better after refinement. Just look at how useless the original electric cars were. But electronic voting, if someone could make it safe and secure, could have benefits we can't recognize.
The risk is implementing an incomplete system and the very likely possibility that any government attempt will be very lacking (and often filled with the standard amount of corrupt in similar large IT projects). I would not support removing the paper process currently, but I would support development going into electronic voting so that one day the technology will be mature enough for us to see benefits that current paper voting can't provide.
A few examples of what may one day be possible is massively lowering the cost to vote (for many poor people getting a few hours off of work to go vote ends up costing them far more than they value their vote being worth), making it possible to do voting a more regular event which would allow more direct democratic versions of government, the ability to have something we can trust more than slips of paper that have to be hand tallied (current systems are far less trustable, but future systems may be able to become more trustable than paper).
I agree with you, but let's not kid ourselves.
"Vote early, vote often" did not originate with electronic voting. Paper systems are hackable as well.
Edit: press release with link to the full text of the bill - https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-gilli...
Get this idea out of your head that the Democrats in the current form even give the slightest of shit about American's ability to vote safely & securely unless it has something do with Russia.
DNC, DCCC, the people who control the party. The actual people who vote would agree, but the party leadership itself does not care.
Schumer won't whip votes to block Kavanaugh [1]. Democrats voted overwhelmingly in favor of the largest Military defense budget in history [2]. Tom Perez reversed a ban on taking donations from fossil fuel companies [3].
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/schumer-plays-long-...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2018/06/20/house-an...
[3] http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/401356-dnc-pass...
What does this even mean? I clearly stated leadership. The voters want to help themselves and others with things like a green new deal, medicare/medicaid for all, free college/trade, but the leadership continuously votes against the actual voters that identify as being in the Democratic Party.
And yet, here we are, despite voting machines and paper ballots have been a topic of discussion for a very long time in the US.
Above you say "The GOP won't, for, um, reasons", but I'm not aware of Democrat politicians and the overall party pushing this initiative in any particularly noteworthy way either.
Am I missing something, or are you holding them to a lower standard?
He's a politician, and a Democrat.
I think the GOP has been actively involved with voter suppression and manipulation since the outcome of the 2000 election. The whole push for touchscreen voting machines in the first place is to weaken the electoral process, imho. So no, they're not going to push for an all-paper system, and they'll resist such a push.
Democrats don't have an interest in actively undermining the verification of the voting process. Clean elections are better for them, generally, so they have no reason to be opposed.
So no, not a lower standard. Just different interests. If the Democrats had the kind of anti-democratic interests the GOP does, they'd be doing the same things the GOP does. But they don't, and distrust in the process of voting itself is a major problem with America today. Pushing for free, fair, and understandable elections is a political winner for Democrats.
There's no rush to the polls, nobody has to skip voting because they couldn't get to the polls, and for the outliers who aren't able to receive/send mail, they can pickup their ballots at the local county elections office.
Oregon was also the first state that instituted automatic voter registration.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/27/15701708/v...
Any system, even 100% paper ballots, are hackable. They key is making the hack difficult to scale.
Computer systems are easy to hack from a distance and in large numbers. Theoretically, one person could hack many devices from another country.
Paper ballots require someone to change/stuff in person. One person can do limited damage and would have to be in the country. You'd need to recruit large numbers for an effective operation.
Electric assistance is fine but ultimately you need a paper result that a human can read.
A computer can help you make selections and fill out the ballot but the voter must be able to read the printed result and confirm their vote was properly printed.
I'd be against any computer counting for the initial count. Manual is slower and expensive but it's worth the added cost to have a more secure voting system.
And that would essentially make the voting machine a very expensive pen.
"[The hackers] wouldn’t need too heavy a hand... just a couple of tweaks here and there." [1]
Sadly, it's in the interest of the ruling party to look the other way.
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-russia-could-steal-...
In February, the NY Times writes, "The Justice Department charged 13 Russians and three companies on Friday in a sprawling indictment that unveiled a sophisticated network designed to subvert the 2016 election" [1]
OK, so Russia had this expensive, sophisticated operation to influence the election. It wasn't a half-assed effort.
So why wouldn't this operation include attacking voting machines? Especially if the machines are vulnerable and virtually unprotected?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/us/politics/russians-indi...
Are you talking about some entity releasing damaging emails and details from Clinton's campaign and the DNC that made Clinton look bad?
Was the content of those messages not more important than how they were released?
How does showing Clinton campaigns dirt related to voting machine hacking?
I hope there can be some sort of a partial agreement that Noam Chomsky isn't a partisan hack, let's see what he has to say on the matter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vVXlLgifxQ
I encourage everyone to watch the whole video, as there is some interesting (in that is it rather contradictory to the current mainstream narrative) footage of various Democrat opinions on Russia, and the degree to which they should be considered a threat to America. I feel fairly confident this footage predates "Deep Fakes" technology, if anyone suspects it isn't legit please let me know.
Do you believe the content of this video is untrue?
Do you disagree with the words I've written?
Is it something else?
Unfortunately, your desire to apply some critical thinking, places you in a minority.
This is confirmed every time I see a post such as yours, and the inevitable downvoting.
I'm patient, and stubborn.
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."
I don't know anything about electronic voting but if it can guarantee there is no personal opinion in the middle, good.
Coming from Germany I don't even comprehend how the US is not able to run elections in a way that can be trusted. The 2000 Supreme Court decision should have been a big warning. I really believe there are a lot of people who don't want to fix the system because it would take away the opportunity to create more theater and conspiracy theories along party lines
Then that died out around September...
This is a really dangerous game. Once people don't trust elections or the judiciary democracy is in grave danger.
My intuitive reckoning is that making the "verifiability check" for a given vote something that non-technical people could carry out would increase the number of eyes on both sides which could point out inconsistencies.
EDIT: added/removed words for clarity
The last time I voted was a municipal election in my city. I was given 3 separate ballots (mayor, my city councillor and my school board trustee). My understanding is that many elections in the states also have multiple propositions and other things the citizens are asked to vote on. So the paper system could become cumbersome and confusing with many issues on the ballot. Therefore, an electronic system where you are presented a single item at a time could be easier.
I'd still argue that paper ballots are better for security issues, but the above could be one argument against paper ballots.
I am all for having a paper trail, mandatory audits, and secure infrastructure. I agree with those who thing the current private sector systems for voting have huge issues. What I don't understand is what I see as media pushing a false choice between paper or digital.
Estonia has been using e-voting alongside paper ballots for years without serious issues. (Of course, they have national ID and have digitized a lot of their gov't functions, so maybe this is a special case.)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-di...
There are a lot of ways to improve our elections, from social engineering (France's media blackout a few days before elections, moving voting day to the weekend, making it multiple days, or just using the mail system) to improved systems like Scantegrity or increased use of optical scanning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
The cynic in me fears this is a push designed to make it harder for us to use things like RCV and entrench FPTP.
Re: your comment on social engineering, etc. There has been a ton of effort in arenas in the US electoral system(s), but the goals have not been security or access - sometimes quite the opposite.
The problem is that an individual ballot in RCV if counted manually, needs to be counted several times if the vote ends up switching to the 2nd, 3rd, or fourth choice etc. As the number of total votes increases from the thousands to hundreds of thousands (or even millions), this can cause a pseudo-exponential growth in the amount of counting labor performed. Large municipalities that have trialed RCV have forged ahead with manual counts and succeeded despite the increased effort, but it has sometimes taken days to report results. That's only after massive amounts of labor from volunteers.
Going statewide with manual-only counts of paper ballots (no optical scanning or other machine-assisted counting) makes RCV or other methods of determining winner much more difficult because of the labor or cost involved.
It should be clear that I quite like RCV, but this is a factor to consider.
Personally I'm a fan of just committing to doing it by hand and accepting the cost in exchange for robustness against many types of manipulation. The problem is your argument works the other way also, the easier/cheaper it is to tally the votes due to reduced labor and # of people involved, the higher the risk of significant interference, imo.
Media is hyping the fear of 'election hacking' to the point where people I know personally want everything to be done manually, no machine or computer involvement at all.
Whats wrong with this?
I tried to write that in a neutral tone. However you might find it as amusing as me to read it (with required word changes) in different dialects. I think the stereotypical "valley girl" best captures how I feel about it.
I come up with the news media who need to excitement of the vote to not wane.
It makes IRV (“RCV” is an annoying name designed specifically to obscure other ranked-choice methods) impractical, particularly for large electorates, if you want to avoid machine tallying, but that's a reason not to use IRV, not a reason to avoid paper ballots and manual tabulation.
A simply tallyable ranked choice method like Bucklin is amenable to manual tabulation. (And, compared to IRV, getting rid of loser elimination reduces the degree to which IRV produces undesirable results and makes the system easier to understand.)
But it won't ever be so, which is curious.
I find statements like this to be immediately discrediting of journalistic integrity. The intent was not to enter into an illicit agreement with a third party. Reacting in this ridiculous fashion only aids in his popularity. I think Democrat (obviously false) hyperbole is in danger of giving us a second term
His guilt over Russia involvement can be inferred by his constant obsession and attempts to discredit typical law enforcement investigation practices. It is a big deal to have a sitting president acting similar to how a guilty defendant would with (1) a video inviting computer hacking, (2) documented lies or rewrites of "official" statements about a Trump tower meeting of senior Trump campaign officials with the representatives of the invitees, (3) an announcement of an upcoming press briefing about contents (emails) of the hacking target made at the time of the meeting, (4) news reports of surveilled increase in hacker activities at the time of the hacking invite.
All of the above are not credit-giving or childish. At the same time, an alternative of explaining government policies and trade numbers would likely not get through the electorate, and in my opinion unlikely to change hardened or media-saturated minds.
The president was encouraging a foreign adversary to illegally hack into messages by a former secretary of state that might contain sensitive information, then release them publicly."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/russia-...
Did he or did he not say that?
It is not a fact that "[He] was encouraging a foreign adversary to illegal hack into messages by a former Secretary of State...." That is an interpretation of the fact. Likely he is aware that Russia and other adversaries have already attempted such hacks.
One can disagree with him making such a statement without offering interpretations that are more complex than the obvious: a jab at Clinton. And one can offer more complex interpretations without resorting to obvious hyperbole.
The media "on both sides" is filled with hyperbole and rhetoric, and I am saddened that it is controversial to point this out, just because the underlying event is controversial.
The GP's point seems to be that we should attack things on merits rather than resorting to hyperbole and mischaracterization. In any other context, I think most of HN would agree with this idea, but whenever politics are mentioned, HN posters and voters seem to become a microcosm of American politics at large: anything is justified because the other side is wrong.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/13/russians-hil...
It's a fact that Trump made the request to the russians, and it's a fact that the russians interpreted the request as a request.
First, the allegations against the Russians and Trump can be 100% true without this particular item being a request made and fulfilled. Second, what the article claims as hard fact is not strictly supported by the indictment, which uses the legalese "on or about", which means prosecutors are sure it happened, but not exactly the timing. Third, per the indictment this was a part of an ongoing Russian campaign, so it is hard to imagine the Russians named were "encouraged" to engage in behavior they were already engaged in. Fourth, as the article notes, no link between the statement and the activity is alleged in the indictment.
Finally, this would be very foolish of Trump. That's not to say he can't be foolish, but it does suggest that we should think twice about such an interpretation; especially since the Russians win here regardless of the outcome. Either they get what they want or they create even more division in American politics and make the president weak. (And, for the record, this 'request' suggestion is some of the less hyperbolic stuff I've seen.)
I already think there's fire because I'm looking at fire. I just don't see the value in peddling weak interpretations (or, in many cases, egregious hyperbole) as fact.
This part confuses me. Is it not possible to encourage someone to do something if they're already in the process of doing so?
I think the only part of this puzzle that's in contention is if the public statement directly led to the hack of the emails taking place, as in a cause and effect thing:
1. Hack the servers.
2. Okay, the servers are now hacked.
But what the encouragement statement might have done instead is:
1. The servers are being hacked.
2. "... I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing ..." (encouragement/invitation).
3. The servers are now hacked.
So the statement that you had an issue with isn't wrong, technically or in spirit.
And this part:
> Finally, this would be very foolish of Trump. That's not to say he can't be foolish, but it does suggest that we should think twice about such an interpretation
is more frustrating than anything else. Based on part actions and statements, I disagree with being charitable and trying to find good interpretations. I would only agree on being charitable if he had been reading off of the teleprompter or a written statement, because that's when Trump actually appears composed.
> For example, on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.
Emphasis added.
I see your point that "on or about" is vague, but it seems like they just appended it to every date for legalese reasons. They would have the timestamps for most of the dates in the document, it's not like they're not sure when the phishing emails were sent. Plus, they're sure about the time, but not the date? How does that make sense?
Regarding the connection not being spelled out in the document, it's not legally relevant so they didn't think to include it. Just because a tangentially related legal document doesn't find it relevant doesn't mean the request being made and accepted is impossible. What's more likely, that Donald Trump made the request, and then the Russians stayed late at the office completely coincidentally to do exactly what was in the request, or that the Russians saw the tweet and stayed late at the office to fulfill the request?
I think most reasonable people would agree that the request was being made, but personal interpretation is moot here because the involved parties agreed that it was a request and fulfilled it.
The exact point is that this is not a fact. This is the conclusion you are reaching based solely on a coincidence of time and excluding other factors, including the months long campaign already operating by the Russians.
> What's more likely, that Donald Trump made the request, and then the Russians stayed late at the office completely coincidentally to do exactly what was in the request, or that the Russians saw the tweet and stayed late at the office to fulfill the request?
It's just as likely the Russians thought it would be worthwhile, funny, disruptive, or otherwise desirable to include these targets because he said this, but that it was neither a request nor a fulfillment of that request. The timing of the event can be significant without it being a literal request.
> Emphasis added.
Yes, this is the first time they attacked those particular accounts, yet it is a long list of attacks made by this group. This isn't really saying anything at all except repeating that you consider the timing of it to be significant.
This the most famous historical example of the concept that weasel words don't absolve you of responsibility. If everyone knows what you mean then you said it directly.
James Comey later referenced the quote "will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest" when Trump told him "I hope you can see your way to letting Flynn go."
The beginning and end of support for Trump is that we he says, goes, period, and anything that criticizes him is being unscrupulous in some way. There is no way to legitimately criticize Trump in the eyes of his supporters. It is a cult.
What is left is the wast majority in the middle and both left and right depend on their support to win elections. Those voters are usually receptive when politicians are criticized and may swing. The 2016 election had both side accusing the other of committing crimes worthy of jail time, which is when criticism in politics took a very dark turn. When you ask the public to conduct criminal trials through public debate and voting it should come as no surprise that criticism based on merits will fall on deaf ears at both camps, and anyone suggesting any validity in the criticism are labeled a traitor to the cause.