Thread! Russian hackers "targeted state & county offices responsible for administering the U.S. 2016 elections. For example, on or about 10/18/16, [they] visited the websites of certain counties in GEORGIA, IOWA, & FLORIDA to identify vulnerabilities! politico.com/f/?id=00000164… 1/
2/ Russian ambassador Kislyak visited Kennesaw University, which housed Georgia’s Election Center, in April 2016. . editiondigital.net/publication/?i…
3/ In August 2016, Secretary of State Kemp refused help from the Department of Homeland Security to secure its systems! (GA was one of only two states to do this.) thehill.com/policy/technol…
4/ The same month, August 2016, a white hat hacker Logan Lamb discovered the Georgia Election Center had left 15 gigabytes of data, which looked like it could be used to hack an election, online and without password protection. politico.com/magazine/story…
5/ Merle King, GA Election Dir., told Lamb that he shld "drop" his shocking find "or the people downtown, the politicians..will crush [you]." (Id.)
6/ King told Lamb he would fix the problem. (Id.) Again, this was in August 2016.
7/ Per the indictment released today, in October 2016, Russian hackers "visited the websites of certain counties in GEORGIA, IOWA, & FLORIDA to identify vulnerabilities." politico.com/f/?id=00000164… …
8/ In March 2017, however, a colleague of Logan Lamb's (the guy who discovered the initial security problem in August 2016) discovered that, for the most part, the problem with the Election Center's exposed files had NOT been fixed! politico.com/magazine/story…
8/ In April 2017, about a week before the #GA06 primary election (Handel v Ossoff), the director of Fulton County’s Election Board (Rick Barron) — who had recently observed elections in Kazakhstan — was chatting on Facebook with a woman in Moscow named Julya Kudaneeva.
9/ Another screenshot relevant to post 8. I obtained both screenshots via @rigel2020. They were originally discovered by someone else who wishes to remain anonymous.
10/ Sorry the screenshot in post 9 is blurry. It says "You are always welcome in Moscow" and is from Kudeneeva to Rick Barron, Director of Elections for Fulton County Georgia.
11/ Someone by the name of “Yulia Kudaneeva” is apparently a Chief Consultant to the Russian Election Federation. via @rigel2020
12/ Recall that it was a "rare error" on a memory card in FULTON COUNTY, Rick Barron's county, that caused the counting stop when Ossoff was head the night of the primary. ajc.com/news/local-gov…
13/ Before the counting stopped, Ossoff was above 50% and poised to win the primary outright. When it started again an hour or so later--after the card was "processed," he was under 50% and thus forced into a runoff with Handel to whom he eventually lost.
9/ I cover all of this and more in my article here. For the info on Kislyak, please see the Updates section at the end. medium.com/@jennycohn1/ge…
10/ You can also see how it unfolded on Twitter the night of the #GA06 primary via these screenshots. It is extremely unsettling. To say the least.
Study shows that people of all political persuasions are willing to modify their beliefs based on corrective info from reliable sources, but “subjects ‘re-believed’ the false info when retested a week later.” 1/ news.northeastern.edu/2018/06/18/tir…
2/ The author of the article says It may help to warn people in advance that they are likely to forget the correction bc “this helps them mentally tag the bogus information as false.”
3/ It’s also “important that the corrective information be repeated as frequently, and with even greater clarity, than the myth.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but elections have been electronically suspect starting long before the Trump/Russia scandal. This article is lulling folks into a false sense of security, which is dangerous. Domestic hackers & insiders were always an equal threat. 1/
I agree, tho not enuf time (and 0 political will) to do this in Nov. Wish it were different. For now I hope to stop states from doubling up on electronics w/ touchscreen ballot markers. Using electronics to count votes is bad enuf. Having them mark our ballots too is nuts. 1/
Nuts except for those who are unable to hand mark their ballots. Once you have hand marked paper ballots they can be either scanned or hand counted (my preference) or both. 2/
Any time u put a machine between the voter and the paper record of voter intent there is an opportunity for programming mischief. Here is just the latest example.: 3/
I’m hoping some of the cyber experts who signed the letter about the risks of using cellular modems to transfer election results can answer this question. Thx! @philipbstark@SEGreenhalgh@rad_atl@jhalderm
Seeing as no one has answered yet, I will say that even if the cellular modems CAN be configured to bypass the internet, we should not have to blindly trust that vendors or whoever else is hired to set them up will do that.
Kathy Rogers, the face & voice of @ESSVote, which has installed CELLULAR MODEMS in tabulators in WI & FL, is cozying up to @DHSgov which refuses to advise states to remove the modems despite a letter from 30 cyber experts & EI groups stating it should do so. #CorruptElections 1/
The notion that cellular modems affect only “unofficial” results is bogus bc, among other reasons, in certain jurisdictions, unofficial results become the official results once added to absentees & provisionals—sometimes w/o ever comparing them to the precinct results tapes! 1/
And Wisconsin doesn’t even require that counties publicly post the results tapes so that the public itself can make this comparison! (I don’t know about Florida, Michigan, & Illinois.) 2/
Thus, we must simply trust that someone trustworthy is conducting this due diligence. In Johnson County, Kansas, the County acknowledged that it does NOT conduct this basic due diligence. 3/