HN Gopher Feed (2017-10-26) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Georgia election server wiped after lawsuit filed
161 points by wglb
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/26/georgia-election-server-wi...___________________________________________________________________
deltamidway - 57 minutes ago
If there is "nothing to ever see" then there is no reason to
verify....right guys and girls? Right? So frustrating.We should be
having a large national initiative to improve voting nationwide.
wyc - 57 minutes ago
I feel that voting data should be made public record after de-
identifying individuals. This is one area where stronger standards
and norms may be helpful. If there was a market for third-party
voter archival services at low costs, this would be far less
likely.The storage and technology should be very cheap, especially
with the blockchain hype floating around. As skeptical as I am of
new regulation, the requirement that de-identified voting data is
made broadly available, and for all intents and purposes,
immutable, sounds like a reasonable one worthy of further
investigation.Some governments already use similar services to
archive emergency responses from social media, as is required by
law in many jurisdictions[1]. That voter data, the foundations of
the democratic US society, doesn't receive the same treatment is
truly awful.[1] https://archivesocial.com/
matt_wulfeck - 21 minutes ago
> The server?s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the
Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State UniversityI'm
willing to bet that there was a whispered conversation between
somebody in authority to a subordinate, promising to protect them
if they'll take care of it.Let this be a warning to everybody: you
need to cover your butts. The pressure can be really great in
situations like this, but if anything hits the fan you better
believe the manager will toss you under a boss.
PatientTrades - 50 minutes ago
Wiping a server while under investigation or at the threat of a
potential investigation should automatically be obstruction of
justice. This happens far too often in politics and white collar
crimes. Disgraceful
tobetobe - 43 minutes ago
all the tech companies meet president one day before election on
tv, next day president supporter wins georgia election.there is no
connection at all.why r we even voting? have we not realized that
we are all jus being pranked at a massive scale. r v that dumb to
not see it.is thr any option for alternate rule to be switched any
time in the timeline.i hope thr r still some good people with
authority, it is time for u to come out and i am sure u ll gain all
the support u demand.
sandworm101 - 38 minutes ago
If that were actually true then we would see wild differentials
between poles and election results. I admit the possibility that
results may be shifted a few percent either way, enough to swing
an election, but this will only ever be at the margins. Should
the population be truly set on one candidate or the other (more
than 5% difference) then rigging would differ from poling very
significantly and be detected.
marchenko - 1 hours ago
The lack of paper ballots or hardcopy proof of voter intent in the
GA system is unacceptable. Transparency and verifiability - using
means comprehensible to the average voter - are more important to
free and fair elections than efficiency.
sambull - 1 hours ago
Without verifiable paper receipt and ballot electronic voting just
can't be trusted.
r3bl - 21 minutes ago
That's not even the top problem with electronic voting in my
book. Counting is.If there's one central machine crunching all
the raw data, you can bet your ass that every APT out there is
going to be looking at the possibility of completely changing the
outcome of the elections.The way this problem is tackled with
ballots is rather simple: way too many people to bribe to change
the outcome.
Mikeb85 - 49 minutes ago
Isn't that the point? What incumbent government wants it to be
possible to lose?
ISL - 34 minutes ago
One worth having.
ddoolin - 1 hours ago
How is this not immediately obstruction of justice? The article
makes it seem like they know who actually wiped it, so just ask
them who ordered it and follow the trail, no? It can't even be an
accident since not one but two backups were also wiped.
amigoingtodie - 1 hours ago
Because you have to pay to even read the state laws of Georgia,
so nobody knows the law?
AnimalMuppet - 26 minutes ago
True. But how is that relevant? Nobody can read the law (the
annotated copy), so nobody knows that wiping the servers is
destroying evidence, and therefore illegal? I doubt that
that's how this went down...
googlryas - 22 minutes ago
False. You don't need to pay to read the laws, but you do need
to pay if you want to read a private groups annotations to the
laws, which include things like judicial rulings. The
annotations are a value add and not required to understand or
practice law in GA. You can also access the judicial rulings
and all other sources which the annotations are derived from
for free, but you would need to put the work in yourself to
compile that data.
[deleted]
Retric - 1 minutes ago
It's not quite that clear cut. Georgia places unusual weight
to these specific annotations so simply having access to the
rulings will not result in the same exact output.
edoceo - 52 minutes ago
Wut?
alsetmusic - 38 minutes ago
They were referencing this:https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2017/03/public-records-a...
lovich - 38 minutes ago
The text of Georgias law is publicly available, but there is
a version with annotations from legal precendents that is
considered necessary to understand the law as it is currently
interpreted. LexisNexis collates those annotations for the
state of Georgia and maintains a copyright on the
annotations, you cannot access them without paying. The
government in Georgia feel this is perfectly acceptable as
you can tehcnically access the law even though, in practice,
you have no idea
rayiner - 24 minutes ago
The annotated version is freely available:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/default.asp.
What the kerfuffle is about is that the State of Georgia
has (1) Georgia law is highly unusual in giving the
annotations authoritative force; (2) the State of Georgia
has asserted copyright over the annotated version.
amigoingtodie - 37 minutes ago
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/public-
records-a...
alexeldeib - 59 minutes ago
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
olegkikin - 57 minutes ago
They could've just unplugged the server from the internet if
it's vulnerable.
paulddraper - 23 minutes ago
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.
ddoolin - 50 minutes ago
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.
lsh123 - 31 minutes ago
Because this is a new
norm:https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/01/20/irs-
wipes...
neuronexmachina - 2 minutes ago
This is worrisome:> It?s not clear who ordered the server?s data
irretrievably erased. The Kennesaw election center answers to
Georgia?s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, a Republican who is
running for governor in 2018 and is the main defendant in the suit.
... The server data could have revealed whether Georgia?s most
recent elections were compromised by malicious hackers. The
plaintiffs contend that the results of both last November?s
election and a special June 20 congressional runoff ? won by Kemp?s
predecessor, Karen Handel ? cannot be trusted.
idibidiart - 1 hours ago
Data Recovery tools can still get the data, no?
partycoder - 46 minutes ago
Not if they were careful enough to overwrite the free disk space
with more data.
idibidiart - 43 minutes ago
But then that would incriminate them even more! right? because
it's not just "We erased it to make room for new data" ... This
is in the realm of obstruction of justice.
alsetmusic - 33 minutes ago
Can anyone comment on viability of recovering a multiple
degaussing?> The new e-mails, which were sent by the Coalition
for Good Governance to Ars, show that Chris Dehner, one of the
Information Security staffers, e-mailed his boss, Stephen Gay, to
say that the two backup servers had been "degaussed three
times."https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-
activ...
idibidiart - 5 minutes ago
I think the email itself is evidence of crime. Why bother with
recovering the data when the absence of it allows the
prosecution to portray the worst imaginable criminal scenario.
They actually shot themselves in the foot because no matter how
bad their crime is it cannot be as bad as erasing the data and
degaussing 3 times. The prosecution can claim the absolute
worst has happened. And they have no way to prove them wrong.
And a murder weapon (the email)
[deleted]
osteele - 59 minutes ago
For a framework for thinking about election technology
infrastructure and its risks, I recommend reading:[1] OSET
Institute web site, http://www.osetfoundation.org/[2] ?Critical
Technology Infrastructure: Protecting American Elections in the
Digital Age?, OSET Institute. PDF
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/528d46a2e4b059766439f...I?m
not affiliated with OSET; just co-teaching a college co-curricular
on election technology, that includes this material.
wyc - 48 minutes ago
Thank you for the links, I had no idea about OSET, but find them
really interesting. It's always good to look at prior work before
rushing in with the new shiny technologies of the month.
menerva - 59 minutes ago
magnets - how do they work?
aceon48 - 59 minutes ago
Whoever wiped it needs to burn in jail for decades
howard941 - 58 minutes ago
Spoliation
wglb - 43 minutes ago
Exactly.