Category: National

If Russia hacked the DNC? What me worry?

Did Russia hack the DNC, DCCC, and Hillary’s Campaign.  And does it only matter who the hackers are?

With little disclosed evidence, the prime story has been the question of who hacked the sites.  That is an important aspect of the news, yet there are other important issues obscured, perhaps intentionally by the focus on that one aspect of the hacks.

Did Russia hack the DNC, DCCC, and Hillary’s Campaign.  And does it only matter who the hackers are?

This has been quite a week with for hackers and the media coverage of hacks.  With little disclosed evidence, the prime story has been the question of who hacked the sites.  That is an important aspect of the news, yet there are other important issues obscured, perhaps intentionally by the focus on that one aspect of the hacks.  Less covered are:

  • The unfair, perhaps illegal, conduct of the DNC disclosed in the emails and voice mails.
  • The possibility that elections themselves can be manipulated directly through changing results, messing with registration systems etc.
  • Is Wikileaks extra guilty for disclosing the information when they did?  Should they have held it until after the election, like the NYTimes did with James Risen’s story of a failed CIA operation?
  • Should we feel safer if the hacks are not from the Russian government, and are actually the work of foreign amateurs? Domestic amateurs? Republicans?  Business interests?  Israel? China? The CIA? The NSA?  Political Insiders? or Vendor Insiders? Which group, if any, would you rather have manipulate our elections?
  • Would we be safer if the perpetrator(s) kept the information secret?  Why would that be preferred?  What if Trump had secret information on Hillary or her campaign?  What if Democrats or their supporters have hacked similar information on Trump or the Republicans and are not disclosing it? The information disclosed obviously hurts the DNC, yet other information could be more valuable to opponents, if it were not disclosed.
  • In whose interest is the disclosure of the information? In whose interest is blaming the attack on Russia?
  • In whose interest is focusing only on determining the perpetrators? Obviously those exposed by the emails and the actual perpetrators, if not Russia.

Some articles to consider.  Bruce Schnier in the Washington Post: By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines <read>

The political nature of this cyberattack means that Democrats and Republicans are trying to spin this as much as possible. Even so,  we have to accept that someone is attacking our nation’s computer systems in an apparent attempt to influence a presidential election. This kind of cyberattack targets the very core of our democratic process. And it points to the possibility of an even worse problem in November —  that our election systems and our voting machines could be vulnerable to a similar attack.

From The Conversation by Richard Forno: How vulnerable to hacking is the US election cyber infrastructure? <read>

Of course, the desire to interfere with another country’s internal political processes is nothing new. Global powers routinely monitor their adversaries and, when deemed necessary, will try to clandestinely undermine or influence foreign domestic politics to their own benefit. For example, the Soviet Union’s foreign intelligence service engaged in so-called “active measures” designed to influence Western opinion. Among other efforts, it spread conspiracy theories about government officials and fabricated documents intended to exploit the social tensions of the 1960s. Similarly, U.S. intelligence services have conducted their own secret activities against foreign political systems – perhaps most notably its repeated attempts to help overthrow pro-communist Fidel Castro in Cuba…

One of the most obvious, direct ways to affect a country’s election is to interfere with the way citizens actually cast votes. As the United States (and other nations) embrace electronic voting, it must take steps to ensure the security – and more importantly, the trustworthiness – of the systems. Not doing so can endanger a nation’s domestic democratic will and create general political discord – a situation that can be exploited by an adversary for its own purposes…

Democracies endure based not on the whims of a single ruler but the shared electoral responsibility of informed citizens who trust their government and its systems. That trust must not be broken by complacency, lack of resources or the intentional actions of a foreign power.

 

 

 

Skeptics Guide Part 2: Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence

A couple of weeks ago, based on claims that exit polls showed that the primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders, I said: “I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Now we have the reverse situation from the NYTimes: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders <read>

I seems like a pretty good case that the exit polls do not prove  the election was stolen.

Unfortunately, the Times headline is incorrect.  This evidence in this article only claims  that the exit polls do not prove that Bernie won. There is no proof that the official results are correct.  They may be, they may not be.  We still need Evidence Based Elections, providing strong evidence that the results are correct.

A couple of weeks ago, based on claims that exit polls showed that the primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders, I said: “I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Now we have the reverse situation from the NYTimes: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders <read>

I seems like a pretty good case that the exit polls do not prove  the election was stolen:

All of this starts with a basic misconception: that the exit polls are usually pretty good.

I have no idea where this idea comes from, because everyone who knows anything about early exit polls knows that they’re not great.

We can start in 2008, when the exit polls showed a pretty similar bias toward Barack Obama. Or in 2004, when the exit polls showed John Kerry easily winning an election he clearly lost — with both a huge error and systematic bias outside of the “margin of error.” The national exits showed Kerry ahead by three points (and keep in mind the sample size on the national exit is vastly larger than for a state primary exit poll) and leading in states like Virginia, Ohio and Florida — which all went to George W. Bush.

The story was similar in 2000. The early exit polls showed Al Gore winning Alabama, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina. Mr. Bush won these states by between six and 15 points. The exit polls showed Mr. Gore winning Florida by six points — leading the networks to call the race before 8 p.m. in the East.

Young Voters Love Exit Polls. Old Voters Do Not.
Younger voters are more likely to complete exit polls than older voters across all interviewer ages.

Unfortunately, the Times headline is incorrect.  This evidence in this article only claims  that the exit polls do not prove that Bernie won. There is no proof that the official results are correct.  They may be, they may not be.  We still need Evidence Based Elections, providing strong evidence that the results are correct.

And the opposing case from Richard Charmin: Response to Nate Cohn of the NY Times <read>

Book Review: Down for the Count

Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America
by Andrew Gumbel.  An updated version of Gumbel’s earlier Steal This Vote.  A lot has happened in 12 years!

I highly recommend, for an overview of the history of voting issues in the United States.. I can add a small caveat the to the description on Amazon:

Down for the Count explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States—a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the U.S. Supreme Court—and uses it to explain why we are now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century…

Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America
by Andrew Gumbel.  An updated version of Gumbel’s earlier Steal This Vote.  A lot has happened in 12 years!

I highly recommend, for an overview of the history of voting issues in the United States.. I can add a small caveat the to the description on Amazon:

Down for the Count explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States—a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the U.S. Supreme Court—and uses it to explain why we are now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century. This thoroughly revised edition, first published to acclaim and some controversy in 2005 as Steal This Vote, reveals why America is unique among established Western democracies in its inability to run clean, transparent elections. And it demonstrates, in crisp, clear, accessible language, how the partisan battles now raging over voter ID, out-of-control campaign spending, and minority voting rights fit into a long, largely unspoken tradition of hostility to the very notion of representative democracy.
Andrew Gumbel has interviewed Democrats, Republicans, and a range of voting rights activists to offer a multifaceted, deeply researched, and engaging critical assessment of a system whose ostensible commitment to democratic integrity so often falls apart on contact with race, money, and power. In an age of high-stakes electoral combat, billionaire-backed candidacies, and bottom-of-the-barrel campaigning, there can be no better time to reissue this troubling and revealing book.

Some of the items that stuck out for me:

  • The problems and rigging of lever machines pp 106-108.
  • Software is not the only problem with electronic voting machines. Consider microcode.
  • Before the technical reports of the early 2000’s those suspicious of electronic voting were ‘crazies’ p155. I am not so sure that has changed in many circles.
  • Money has almost removed people from elections p 205.
  • “The less grassroots activists know, the more they think they know” p 211. Consider when that might apply to you (or to me), as well as the “others”.
  • The same set of general fixes emerge over and over p 212.

A caveat:

Near the end, the author provides a list of more detailed fixes that he recommends.  I strongly disagree with his recommendation of circumventing the Electoral College, rather than replacing it Constitutionally. Actually it requires more than a Constitutional amendment. As always I can understand that many grassroots individuals see the problems with the current system, including the Electoral College.  Yet the fixes aren’t always so clear and simple. The devil is in the details, wrapped up in the Constitution, the 12th Amendment, and the Electoral Count Act, along with the state-by-state election system we have.  The current system far from a match for a National Popular Vote scheme. They all would need to be changed significantly before we can have a National Popular vote that treats every citizen/voter equally and that can provide a trusted result.  For more on this, see past our posts <here>.

I can only suggest that this is an example for considering the book’s statement that “The less grassroots activists know, the more they think they know”.

Why Online Voting is a Danger to Democracy

An article by David Dill, founder of Verified Voting, from Stanford University: Why Online Voting is a Danger to Democracy

How could we be fooled?

Suppose masses of emails get sent out to naive users saying the voting website has been changed and, after you submit your ballot and your credentials to the fake website, it helpfully votes for you, but changes some of the votes. You also have bots where millions of individual machines are controlled by a single person who uses them to send out spam…

How bad could it be?…

An article by David Dill, founder of Verified Voting, from Stanford University: Why Online Voting is a Danger to Democracy <read>

How could we be fooled?

Suppose masses of emails get sent out to naive users saying the voting website has been changed and, after you submit your ballot and your credentials to the fake website, it helpfully votes for you, but changes some of the votes. You also have bots where millions of individual machines are controlled by a single person who uses them to send out spam…

How bad could it be?

Without being paranoid, there are reasons to believe that people would want to affect the outcome of elections. Right now, they spend billions of dollars trying to do it through campaign contributions and advertising and political consultants and all of that…What is the value of controlling the U.S. presidency? …

Professor Dill ends by explaining the current necessity of paper ballots:

We’ve had a long time to work out the procedures with paper ballots and need to think twice before we try to throw a new technology at the problem. People take paper ballots for granted and don’t understand how carefully thought through they are.

We would add that even paper is vulnerable.  We like the public counting of the paper by optical scanners, followed by strong ballot security, meaningful post-election audits, and close vote recounts.

If they fear Internet privacy and security, why would they vote that way?

A new government survey highlights the consequences of Internet insecurity.  From the Washington Post: Why a staggering number of Americans have stopped using the Internet the way they used to <read>

Nearly one in two Internet users say privacy and security concerns have now stopped them from doing basic things online — such as posting to social networks, expressing opinions in forums or even buying things from websites, according to a new government survey released Friday…

The research suggests some consumers are reaching a tipping point where they feel they can no longer trust using the Internet for everyday activities…

A new government survey highlights the consequences of Internet insecurity.  From the Washington Post: Why a staggering number of Americans have stopped using the Internet the way they used to <read>

Nearly one in two Internet users say privacy and security concerns have now stopped them from doing basic things online — such as posting to social networks, expressing opinions in forums or even buying things from websites, according to a new government survey released Friday.

This chilling effect, pulled out of a survey of 41,000 U.S. households who use the Internet, show the insecurity of the Web is beginning to have consequences that stretch beyond the direct fall-out of an individual losing personal data in breach. The research suggests some consumers are reaching a tipping point where they feel they can no longer trust using the Internet for everyday activities…

The survey showed that nearly 20 percent of the survey’s respondents had personally experienced some form of identity theft, an online security breach, or another similar problem over the year before the survey was taken last July. Overall, 45 percent said their concerns about online privacy and security stopped them from using the Web in very practical ways…

“NTIA’s initial analysis only scratches the surface of this important area, but it is clear that policymakers need to develop a better understanding of mistrust in the privacy and security of the Internet and the resulting chilling effects,” wrote Goldberg, the NTIA analyst. “In addition to being a problem of great concern to many Americans, privacy and security issues may reduce economic activity and hamper the free exchange of ideas online.”

 

Bloomberg Businessweek: A Decade Hacking Elections

From Bloomberg Businessweek: How to Hack an Election: <read>

Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe’s turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts…
“Having a phone hacked by the opposition is not a novelty. When I work on a campaign, the assumption is that everything I talk about on the phone will be heard by the opponents.”

We note that similar issues have been raised in our current primary season. With charges and verifications that Twitter followers of at least one candidate appear to be largely fake accounts, along with unverified accusations that campaigns and their databases have been infiltrated, web access disrupted at critical times.  Given the current state of web  security, we see no reason that the same has, is, and will go on in our U.S. Elections.

It is best to be skeptical of anything you read in any media.  On the campaign trail assume the video is always on and every keystroke is captured by the opposition, media, and Government.  As always authenticity makes life simpler.

From Bloomberg Businessweek: How to Hack an Election: <read>

It was just before midnight when Enrique Peña Nieto declared victory as the newly elected president of Mexico. Peña Nieto was a lawyer and a millionaire, from a family of mayors and governors… Returning the party to power on that night in July 2012, Peña Nieto vowed to tame drug violence, fight corruption, and open a more transparent era in Mexican politics…

When Peña Nieto won, Sepúlveda began destroying evidence. He drilled holes in flash drives, hard drives, and cell phones, fried their circuits in a microwave, then broke them to shards with a hammer. He shredded documents and flushed them down the toilet and erased servers in Russia and Ukraine rented anonymously with Bitcoins. He was dismantling what he says was a secret history of one of the dirtiest Latin American campaigns in recent memory.

For eight years, Sepúlveda, now 31, says he traveled the continent rigging major political campaigns. With a budget of $600,000, the Peña Nieto job was by far his most complex. He led a team of hackers that stole campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices, all to help Peña Nieto, a right-of-center candidate, eke out a victory. On that July night, he cracked bottle after bottle of Colón Negra beer in celebration. As usual on election night, he was alone.

Sepúlveda’s career began in 2005, and his first jobs were small—mostly defacing campaign websites and breaking into opponents’ donor databases. Within a few years he was assembling teams that spied, stole, and smeared on behalf of presidential campaigns across Latin America. He wasn’t cheap, but his services were extensive. For $12,000 a month, a customer hired a crew that could hack smartphones, spoof and clone Web pages, and send mass e-mails and texts. The premium package, at $20,000 a month, also included a full range of digital interception, attack, decryption, and defense. The jobs were carefully laundered through layers of middlemen and consultants. Sepúlveda says many of the candidates he helped might not even have known about his role; he says he met only a few…

Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe’s turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts…

“Having a phone hacked by the opposition is not a novelty. When I work on a campaign, the assumption is that everything I talk about on the phone will be heard by the opponents.”

We note that similar issues have been raised in our current primary season. With charges and verifications that Twitter followers of at least one candidate appear to be largely fake accounts, along with unverified accusations that campaigns and their databases have been infiltrated, web access disrupted at critical times.  Given the current state of web  security, we see no reason that the same has, is, and will go on in our U.S. Elections.

It is best to be skeptical of anything you read in any media.  On the campaign trail assume the video is always on and every keystroke is captured by the opposition, media, and Government. As always authenticity makes life simpler.

For doubters:

Sepúlveda provided Bloomberg Businessweek with what he says are e-mails showing conversations between him, Rendón, and Rendón’s consulting firm concerning hacking and the progress of campaign-related cyber attacks. Rendón says the e-mails are fake. An analysis by an independent computer security firm said a sample of the e-mails they examined appeared authentic. Some of Sepúlveda’s descriptions of his actions match published accounts of events during various election campaigns, but other details couldn’t be independently verified. One person working on the campaign in Mexico, who asked not to be identified out of fear for his safety, substantially confirmed Sepúlveda’s accounts of his and Rendón’s roles in that election.

 

Arizona should not go away.

Certainly the officials in Arizona would like the interest in what happened in the primary to wane. It should not.  Democracy deserves better than this.

It is typically a high bar to re-run an election, maybe too high.  Typically you need to prove that enough voters would have been disenfranchised to change the result.  Sometimes as far as proving they would have voted for the looser.  Arizona’s Democratic Primary is near that bar.  In fact, if we consider the number of votes that would have awarded one more and one less delegate to either campaign its not that high a bar compared to the disenfranchisement.

Here is a video of the 5.5 hours of hearings. And comments from a Connecticut advocate.

Certainly the officials in Arizona would like the interest in what happened in the primary to wane. It should not.  Democracy deserves better than this.

It is typically a high bar to re-run an election, maybe too high.  Typically you need to prove that enough voters would have been disenfranchised to change the result.  Sometimes as far as proving they would have voted for the looser.  Arizona’s Democratic Primary is near that bar.  In fact, if we consider the number of votes that would have awarded one more and one less delegate to either campaign its not that high a bar compared to the disenfranchisement.

Here is a video of the 5.5 hours of hearings: https://youtu.be/ESyXvGLMIS0?t=1s  So far we are about half-way through.  Here is a  summary from a Connecticut advocate who prefers to remain anonymous:

POLLWORKER with 18 yrs experience:  In the electronic poll book where she was working, when a screen came up for whether the voter was a  Dem or R, when she hit Dem, an R ballot was produced.  She solved the problem by giving them a  Dem ballot any how and noting on the paperwork that the person was a Dem, not R.  She said it happened 36 times  at their site I believe she said, 21 times in 3 hours of her shift, 18 times where a D input produced an R ballot.  I think in the other direction, where it happened from R producing a D ballot, it only happened 3 times.  She also commented that in her 18 years of working elections, this was the smallest room for voting polling place she had ever seen.

Somebody else testified that at their polling place, there was no parking because they were repaving the lot!  Pure voter suppression.

Somebody else did an overlay of polling places to income levels, and found in wealthy areas the polling places were numerous, but in the poor areas, there were only a handful of polls and  many could not be reached by walking.

One person said she used to live in a wealthier part of town, and polling places were within a mile of her house.  She moved, and now they were 4 miles from where she lives.

AZ just made “ballot harvesting” a class 6 felony.  Angry voters asked, ” If I bring my handicapped husband’s ballot  to the polls, I would be a felon.  But I want to know:  What is the crime for taking away my right to vote?”

One guy had helped register hundreds of students and turned in registrations timely.  Then, on election day, they were not in the books.  Or course the candidate with the most youth support was affected by this.

One person said that in her polling place there were 9 workers, 6 stations, but only 3 voters voting with three empty stations, even though a long line.  There were 2 people at the door controlling the flow to the stations.  That right there requires some explanation.

A schoolteacher said she had to apologize to her students, because she always taught them we live in a democracy and they have the right to vote.

SOS office had a chart on website on election day that was designed to show the overall statewide vote.  If you pulled it up by county, there was a problem — the counties showed that 100% of the votes were in from early in day onward.  AP started calling the race apparently at 1% of the vote.  People were deeply disturbed to be standing in line and hearing the vote called so early.  They are fixing this chart software now.

Also:

It goes beyond VRA — testimony that somebody entered extremely small polling place, two at door limiting who could enter, 6 polling booths and only 3 people inside.
http://azleg.granicus.com/Mediaplayer.php?publish_id=8

Here is the 18 yr election veteran’s  cogent testimony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p-yCMcTm1E

Secretary State admits errors: http://usuncut.com/politics/arizona-election-fraud-primary/

Editorial: We didn’t “Fix this” or was it Fixed? We all lose anyway.

After the long lines in some states in 2012, President Obama said “We Have To Fix That“. Four years and a Presidential Commission later, it seems, at least Arizona is going the wrong way.

The results, entirely predictable, were endless lines akin to those that await the release of new iPhones.

We say:

  • Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in the United States.  Our vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others.  We could have a different President and different party in power next January based on a distorted result.
  • Even if there was no disenfranchisement, (unlikely from what we see at this point), our democracy suffers from the lack of credibility unless the issues are investigated and effectively fully resolved.

 

After the long lines in some states in 2012, President Obama said “We Have To Fix That“. our years and a Presidential Commission later, it seems, at least Arizona is going the wrong way.. E.g. from the Washington Post:  Arizona’s voting rights fire bell  <read>

In a move rationalized as an attempt to save money, officials of Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, cut the number of polling places by 70 percent, from 200 in the last presidential election to 60 this time around. Maricopa includes Phoenix, the state’s largest city, which happens to have a non-white majority and is a Democratic island in an otherwise Republican county. What did the cutbacks mean? As the Arizona Republic reported, the county’s move left one polling place for every 21,000 voters — compared with one polling place for every 2,500 voters in the rest of the state.

The results, entirely predictable, were endless lines akin to those that await the release of new iPhones. It’s an analogy worth thinking about, as there is no right to own an iPhone but there is a right to vote[*]. Many people had to wait hours to cast a ballot, and some polling stations had to stay open long after the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time to accommodate those who had been waiting — and waiting.

*  There should be a right to vote.  Yet, there is none in the Constitution.  In recent years attempts by representatives to amend the Constitution to assure a right to vote have repeatedly gone nowhere.

In addition we have heard many claims of voter registration changes in party not made or reversed and ballot shortages, potentially disenfranchising additional voters.  We agree with the calls for investigation of all the charges to determine the facts:

  • Why were the polling places actually reduced and under staffed?  Were there memos, emails and reports justifying the changes.  Did they even consider parking?
  • Were there massive changes in voter registrations not made?  Were there changes dropped from the databases?  Any reasonable system with logs and backups should have some evidence.
  • Absence of evidence should raise questions as well.
  • Were there significant ballot shortages? Why?
  • Did all the problems target particular populations, sub-populations, or benefit/harm particular candidates?

Our Editorial:

  • If anything was done to effectively disenfranchise voters or harm candidates there is a huge problem.
  • If anything was done intentionally to disenfranchise voters or harm candidates there should be prosecutions AND something done to address the distorted results.
  • Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in Arizona.  Their vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others.
  • Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in the United States.  Our vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others.  We could have a different President and different party in power next January based on a distorted result.
  • Even if there was no disenfranchisement, (unlikely from what we see at this point), our democracy suffers from the lack of credibility unless the issues are investigated and effectively fully resolved.

 

 

Apple vs. the Government: Security and Privacy overlap

Apple is right to object to the government’s request to help open an iPhone.  Many claim it is an issue of balance between Security and Privacy. Perhaps. Yet, the Constitution talks of the the right of the people to be Secure in their effects.

To all those voices discussing this issue, we add:

  • Cracking “just one phone” and destroying the program thereafter is a myth…

While we applaud Apple’s efforts to make it impossible to crack new iPhones, such claims, in our view, are mythical.

Apple is right to object to the government’s request to help open an iPhone.  Many claim it is an issue of balance between Security and Privacy. Perhaps. Yet, the Constitution talks of the the right of the people to be Secure in their effects.

To all those voices discussing this issue, we add:

  • These same agencies spied illegally on the staff of the congressional committee whose job was oversight of those same agencies.
  • Employees of these same agencies used their illegal powers to spy on ex-wives etc.
  • Security in these same agencies is such that a young contractor could access and download unlimited highly classified documents, i.e. Ed Snowden.
  • Cracking “just one phone” and destroying the program thereafter is a myth.  It would be impossible to prove that all copies of the software were destroyed, that some low-level (or high-level) Apple or government employee did not keep copies of the code, or knew enough to recreate it.

While we applaud Apple’s efforts to make it impossible to crack new iPhones, such claims, in our view, are mythical:

  • Nobody, even Apple, can guarantee that any complex software is free of bugs, that could open a back door.
  • Nobody, even Apple, can guarantee an intentional back door was not added by an employee or contractor.
  • Nobody can be sure that the software and firmware actually present on your smartphone matches the software version created by the manufacturer.
  • Software or firmware could be specially installed with a backdoor or to create a “man in the middle attack”, with an interface between your screen and the expected smartphone software.
  • My iPhone, like most comes from a third party. In my case AT&T, which does not support Apple’s position.  What would AT&T do when the government next asks for their help?  What would a low level employee – a dedicated “patriot” – do?

For more details and opinions on the controversy, see Dan Wallach’s comments at Freedom To Tinker: Apple, the FBI, and the San Bernadino iPhone <read>

And Jenna McLaughlin at the Intercept Apple Slams Order to Hack a Killer’s iPhone, Inflaming Encryption Debate <read>

 

The Iowa Caucus vs. a Primary

There are several differences between a caucus and a primary election.  These differences are glaring, especially in the case of the Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucus.  Like all elections, the rules,  eligibility, and voting methods vary from state to state. In presidential primaries and caucuses they can vary from party to party.

Here is our list of important concerns with the Iowa Democratic Caucus. All things considered, democracy would be better served by a  primary than the Iowa Caucus.

There are several differences between a caucus and a primary election.  These differences are glaring, especially in the case of the Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucus.  Like all elections, the rules,  eligibility, and voting methods vary from state to state. In presidential primaries and caucuses they can vary from party to party.

Here is our list of important concerns with the Iowa Democratic Caucus.  Certainly others could add to the list.

  • Unlike an election many voters are disenfranchised.  To participate, voters must be present for two to three hours at a designated place and time:
    • For some disabled votes, particularly the elderly, and the temporarily sick, this precludes participation.
    • Weather can be a consideration varying by age, distance to the polls, and regional conditions.
    • For those required to work, this precludes participation: Police, fire, hospital staff, etc.  Workers in warehouses, fast food, retail etc. Caregivers, parents without babysitters.
    • For those who must be away:  Business trips, overseas voters, and those attending funerals etc.
  • Unlike an election it is not a secret ballot.  Many may be intimidated either directly or by fear of actual or imagined pressure and repercussions:
    • Party members, office holders, appointed officials, and civil service employees, or those aspiring to be, may feel pressure go along with party regulars or officials.
    • Employees and union members may feel pressure to go a particular way base on the views of bosses, supervisors, union leaders, or co-workers.
    • Church and community organization members may feel pressure to go along with leaders or peers.
    • Some may want to go along with family members and neighbors.
  • The vote is a headcount in public and thus could be more transparent. Unfortunately, the transparency seems to be limited.
    • The party has refused to release the actual counts of attendees and those siding with each candidate.  Those numbers should be posted at the event, agreed to by everyone and provided in a way that is transparent and verifiable.
    • The rules for translating votes into delegates are complex. They involve careful calculation to the number finally supporting each candidate and the number originally present at the caucus even if they do not finally vote. The rules can easily be misunderstood or intentionally misapplied.

All things considered, democracy would be better served by a  primary than the Iowa Caucus.