Russian Hack of Elections System Was Far-Reaching, Report Finds | Hacker News Reader

Russian Hack of Elections System Was Far-Reaching, Report Finds

nytimes.com

53 pointskediz60 comments

I don't understand Mitch McConnell's reluctance to passing an election security measure, I would've that assumed that a voter suppression strategy that utilized the new law would be finalized by now.

You would have to know more about the proposals he blocked to have an informed opinion. This is such a surface level strife of McConnell that it’s close to “why won’t he think of the children?” The article should have linked to a previous story specifically about that proposed legislation.

> Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also asked for consent to pass legislation that would require candidates, campaign officials and their family members to notify the FBI of assistance offers from foreign governments.

> McConnell also objected to that bill.

Make up your own mind.

100% chance it wasn't the only thing in that bill. It also opens up any candidate, democratic or republican, to FISA surveillance down the line, which is something that I can guarantee will be abused at some point. In fact it already _was_ abused against Trump. FISA warrants to spy on his campaign were obtained by misleading the FISA court with what we now know was fake evidence. There's also a strong possibility that McConell wants voter ID, which is something the Democrats are strangely reluctant to introduce even though it's quite a popular thing to require: Mexico, for instance, does have voter ID.

I'm hypothesizing here, I haven't read the bill, but then neither have you, so you're "making up your own mind" based on a shallow regurgitation of democrat talking points and without any critical thinking.

I have read the bill.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1247/text

It sounds reasonable to me.

Would the Clinton campaign have to report its (indirect) $1.02M payment for the Steele (who, let's not forget, is a foreign agent) "dossier" under this law? If not, it's not worth the paper it's written on.

I'm not a lawyer but upon cursory reading it looks like it would not, unless you were solicited by a foreign agent in the first place. If you go out and have your PAC hire Perkins Coie to pay for kompromat without explicit solicitation, it'd seem you don't have to report it.

Then there's a question of what happens after you report. Is your campaign then put under counterintelligence surveillance? How difficult is it to direct a foreign agent to solicit a payment from e.g. a dem campaign to lawfully trigger this? This is something that doesn't even have to be done by a campaign, some idiot from 4-chan could do it.

I am not sure tbh, I don't know enough about the situation you speak of. The text of the amendment is pretty straightforward though, I would give it a read and it should be pretty clear what situations it would apply to!

Section 2 Reporting to the FEC b) Reporting meetings with foreign governments or their agents doesn't specify who had to have initiated the meeting, only that a meeting took place.

>In fact it already _was_ abused against Trump. FISA warrants to spy on his campaign were obtained by misleading the FISA court with what we now know was fake evidence.

Source? Carter Page had a FISA warrant against him after he left the Trump campaign. And none of it was based on fake evidence. Sounds like you're just regurgitating Republican and Fox News talking points without any critical thinking.

>There's also a strong possibility that McConell wants voter ID, which is something the Democrats are strangely reluctant to introduce even though it's quite a popular thing to require

Republicans are strangely against giving voting IDs or state IDs for free to low income people. They also restrict early voting to make poor people choose between losing pay and voting, and are also against making election day a national holiday. They are also on record stating that the voter ID laws will help them win.

>Republicans are strangely against giving voting IDs or state IDs for free to low income people. They also restrict early voting to make poor people choose between losing pay and voting, and are also against making election day a national holiday. They are also on record stating that the voter ID laws will help them win.

In the United States, we have 50 sovereign states that are responsible for election systems/laws. Distributing power was a key feature in the founding of the USA, and shitting on the design in order meet a goal (I personally happen to appreciate) does not justify the means.

Mis-characterizing your opponent's argument is not helpful.

I seem to recall the voter ID laws that Democrats at the state level worked so hard to kill did include free ID provisions for low income and disadvantaged. Republicans certainly aren't against it.

There's a reason Democrats don't like voter ID laws:

https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/tammany-h...

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/10/27/2-investigators-chic...

Dead voters (who magically cast ballots) and social strong-arming and vote-buying like Tammany Hall (over two different periods in New York's history) all tend to vote Democrat.

If this is real, there would be a corresponding amendment with actual text of proposed legislation.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1247/text

That's the full bill, not the claimed amendment.

Which would make it trivial to set up a candidate so that he/she could be investigated (“legally”!) by the FBI under the guise of “protecting democracy”. I’m old enough to remember when Democrats didn’t want to empower the FBI/CIA/etc any further for fear of a police state.

I might be in the minority on this issue, but I personally think it is reasonable for a political candidate to be investigated prior to running for office once they publicly announce that they are running. Tax returns, felonies, misdemeanors, credit reports, the whole kit and kaboodle. There are professions where interview candidates already go through varying levels of background checks, and I've gone through a few myself. Running for political office is very much a personal choice, and obtaining that office unlocks varying amounts of power and control over the lives of fellow citizens. If the candidate runs through that investigative gauntlet and comes out clean, then the corresponding voters have a much better idea of who is on the election night ticket.

However, from the coverage by Think Progress:

"The heavily redacted, 67-page report found no evidence that Russia was able to alter vote counts in 2016, when Russia carried out what Mueller’s final report called a “sweeping and systematic” hacking and disinformation campaign."

Isn't the whole point of the disinformation campaign to make people vote a certain way? With this in mind, altering votes _directly_ by hacking voting machines isn't necessarily the problem people are worried about. It's indirectly changing votes due to the foreign assistance/misinformation, which is illegal under our system. I think it's a reasonable concern and we shouldn't ignore it, just because votes weren't changed directly by hacking. A law that requires campaigns to disclose to authorities if they receive illegal offers of assistance is sensible IMHO.

The title of the article seems taylor-made to suggest that Russia hacked voting machines. That’s what prompted the top level response. The headline is misleading.

Nobody suggested that Russian disinformation is unimportant.

Are technical details on what they actually did publicly available?

Was this just a portscan and someone logging into an unsecured database? Did they use a zero day or was a system unpatched with a known vulnerability?

This has been my problem with the Russia story. We never get enough detail to make our own judgement of the severity of this. The media and the Democrats lump everything together under the umbrella of “Russia hacked our election/democracy”. Aside from the nonsensical nature of that statement, it has been a catch-all term for everything from Facebook ads to hacking some state commission’s Wordpress site that contained no secure data.... to possibly real hacks of important systems which are still classified. I really don’t care about the former but the later would be a big deal.

Lets ignore the nomenclature for a minute. Russians used American social media to manipulate public opinion to help implement a Russian sympathizing Administration. Ignore the verbiage. Start with that.

That sounds like a great thing to raise as an issue in an election. Lots of voters might care about that. However, we have a First Amendment, so it's not against the law for anyone to talk to anyone else. That's the case whether it's some weird social media thing like those pictures of Bernie with big muscles or an actual true fact like that the DNC staff sent emails to each other discussing how they had screwed over Bernie. That is strictly legal, whether it is done by Russians or by the Citizens United dudes or by the actual Wikipedia source.

The first amendment does not protect the right of foreign nations to dispense propaganda. Indeed there are in fact provisions prohibiting foreign nations involving themselves in the election process in the US constitution.

Try again, greenbean. The text is literally this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I don't see the words "foreign nations" in there anywhere? Why are you posting this falsehood under a new account?

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20538796.

That’s not good. But as with all things in life, you have to treat it proportionally to the impact as well as weigh it against other issues. Russian nationals (who, as of last week, Mueller was unable to convince a judge were tied to the Kremlin) buying Facebook ads to post memes of Jesus arm wrestling Satan is pretty damn low on my give-a-shit list.

All sorts of foreign nationals participate in our elections. They volunteer on campaigns. They appear as pundits on our news shows. Clinton’s campaign contracted with a foreigner (Steele) to dig up dirt.

The threat posed by China to the United States is 100x greater than Russia. Casting Russia as our greatest enemy rather than trying to find areas of mutual interest is a huge foreign policy misstep by the left in America.

Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia

The actual report is available on the Senate's website[1]. It is written for a non-technical audience so the specifics are sparse and it is heavily redacted in certain sections, but there are some details. For example, "SQL Injection" is mentioned 8 times and it appears those injection attacks were noticed in three states with one successful attack and two failures.

[1] - https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

If this far-reaching hack succeed, it might be the end of Democracy as we know it: Now the elected official has a vested-interest not to deter foreign hacking and the vicious cycle might go on.

People always have incentives to commit crimes. That's why police and prosecutors have to make good on threats to ensure their "best interests" line up with everyone else.

That's not just a hypothetical. From the article:

> It also landed hours after Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, personally stepped forward to block consideration of a package of election security bills.

The Republicans are rejecting election security bills precisely because Russia has intervened to their benefit, and will probably continue to do so. President Trump has also openly asked for interference from Russia, if memory serves.

These attacks are acts of war and we need to start treating them as such. That won't happen as long as those attacks benefit those in power.

It would seem that the first step would be to delegitimize those election results and any ensuing laws or orders from those officials.

Then de-legitimization might become a weapon of its own right...

The problem is that if/when the Democrats win, the Republicans will use the same tactics and delegitimize those election results. We are effectively living in two forked realities with no way to rejoin them.

If it’s a problem of election fraud then we can fix this in 2020 with all paper ballots and a restoration of the voting rights act.

Unfortunately violence might be necessary if fair elections can’t be guaranteed.

In some other countries, foreign election monitors are routinely invited to monitor elections. They aren't all-seeing or all-knowing, but they can at least highlight irregularities in the voting process.

What type of issue would you expect these monitors to prevent or uncover?

Election monitors make sense in third-world countries, where elections are administrated by corrupt government officials and literal ballot-box-stuffing is a possibility. But in the US, civilian volunteers with known party affiliations administer elections, and many states cast ballots electronically.

If you’re really concerned about the integrity of our elections at a ballot-box level, the best thing you could do would be to volunteer to administer elections in your local precinct.

It's an extra check on the whole system with a known cost. People could voluntarily go on exchange trips to other countries when they have their elections. If foreign election monitors state that some places didn't have enough ballot boxes, then it will be more difficult to ignore that sort of problem as business as usual.

> These attacks are acts of war

They're no different than what lobbyists do. Just that the beneficiary is another country instead of a corporation. The oval office (and Congress) are for sale. They have been this whole time. Hillary Clinton amassed $1.4 bn in campaign funds. That kind of money doesn't come from everyday working class people.

As an American citizen, I see nothing worse about Russia buying a candidate than any corporate lobby. Either way my vote doesn't matter, my voice doesn't count, and the only thing politicians will do in our name is throw us a bone now and then with "win-win" legislation like banning robocalls. Anything else immediately becomes a "partisan issue" subject to whatever lobby paid them the most to do (and will cost them reelection if they vote otherwise). Meanwhile my health insurance is still going up 10% per year, a college degree means a lifetime of indentured servitude, and corporations are getting away with whatever they want. Please, any country: hack us. I don't fucking care.

If you have a health plan that only goes up 10% a year, please let me know where to find it.

Careful now, on HN we're not supposed to recognize the First Amendment. Free speech is not meant for us subjects.

There is no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines. The committee found no evidence that voter data in the Illinois voter database was deleted or changed.

The report do not say that Russia intervened in regard to voting machines or the Illinois voter database. The report simply state that Russia were in a position to do so.

A few years ago there were a bunch of leaks from inside NSA by Snowden. One of of the leaks documented how NSA had hacked into core telecom routers of a country in the middle of a civil war. NSA was very much in the position to intervene for either side.

The US would be in quite many wars if everything NSA did should be seen as acts of war and treated as such. They even hacked the UN.

To quote a headline from the Esquire:

"We're Supposed to Believe the Russians Hacked Into Voting Systems But Did Nothing Once They Got There?"

Americans have been hacking other countries' elections for decades. But now it has happened to America, it will cause the collapse of democracy. What, really?

lol you are right. Its a crooked world we live in

NYT yesterday: "Mueller Hearings Present Make-or-Break Moment"

NYT today: TFA. We wondered what they were going to do in response to the dud that the hearings turned out to be. That confused old man learned more about his report than we did! MFW it seems possible they might actually talk about real problems rather than fairy tales...

People of good faith have been warning of the flaws in election infrastructure since long before Obama made his "of course the elections can't be rigged" comments [0]. There are lots of flaws with voting machines: closed source, no tangible verifiable records, confusing for voters, etc. There are lots of flaws with voting in general: voters removed for specious reasons, greater inconvenience for poor voters, one-party-two-heads, etc.

Actually now that I hear it again, what Obama had to say makes a lot of sense to me... how do the anonymous-yet-somehow-official sources account for this? Sure, someone could cheat in a small number of precincts, but if they try to affect a national election using a small number of precincts they're definitely going to inspire recounts. It's too bad that Congress won't pass Tulsi's bill that would require recountable paper records...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjaO2953os

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