The fact that we are handing over the keys of American democracy to the military-industrial complex its like giving the keys to the henhouse to a fox and saying, here come in and take whatever you want. Its obviously dangerous. Investigative journalist Yasha Levine
Earlier this month, tech giant Microsoft announced its solution to protect American elections from interference, which it has named ElectionGuard. The election technology is already set to be adopted by half of voting machine manufacturers and some state governments for the 2020 general election. Though it has been heavily promoted by the mainstream media in recent weeks, none of those reports have disclosed that ElectionGuard has several glaring conflicts of interest that greatly undermine its claim aimed at protecting U.S. democracy.
In this investigation, MintPress will reveal how ElectionGuard was developed by companies with deep ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence communities and Israeli military intelligence, as well as the fact that it is far from clear that the technology would prevent foreign or domestic interference with, or the manipulation of, vote totals or other aspects of American election systems.
Election forensics analyst and author Jonathan Simon as well as investigative journalist Yasha Levine, who has written extensively on how the military has long sought to weaponize public technologies including the internet, were consulted for their views on ElectionGuard, its connections to the military-industrial complex and the implication of those connections for American democracy as part of this investigation.
In January, MintPress published an exposé that later went viral on a news-rating company known as Newsguard. Officially aimed at fighting fake news, the companys many connections to U.S. intelligence, a top neoconservative think tank, and self-admitted government propagandists revealed its real intention was to promote corporate media over independent alternatives.
Newsguard was among the first initiatives that comprise Microsofts Defending Democracy program, a program that the tech giant created under the auspices of protecting American democratic processes from cyber-enabled interference [which] have become a critical concern. Through its partnership with Microsoft, Newsguard has been installed in public libraries and universities throughout the country, even while private-sector companies have continued to avoid adopting the problematic browser plug-in.
Now, Microsoft is promoting a new Defending Democracy initiative one equally ridden with glaring conflicts of interest that threatens American democracy in ways Newsguard never could. ElectionGuard is touted by Microsoft as a system that aims to make voting secure, more accessible, and more efficient anywhere its used in the United States or in democratic nations around the world. It has since been heavily promoted by mainstream and U.S. government-funded media outlets in preparation for its use in the 2020 general election.
However, according to Jonathan Simon, election forensic analyst and author of CODE RED: Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy, this public relations campaign is likely just cover for more insider control over U.S. elections. Its encouraging that after close to two decades of ignoring the security issues with computerized voting, theres suddenly a scramble to protect our next election that suggests those issues are finally being taken seriously, Simon told MintPress. Unfortunately the proposed solution is just more computerization and complexity which translates to more control by experts and insiders, though of course that is not part of the PR campaign.
As to the likely identity of those insiders, the fact that Microsofts ElectionGuard was developed in tandem with a private military and intelligence contractor whose only investor is the U.S. Department of Defense offers a troubling clue. As a consequence, ElectionGuards promise to secure elections is dubious, especially given that Microsoft itself is a U.S. military contractor. Furthermore, amid the unfolding scandal of Israeli meddling in foreign elections, Microsofts growing ties to Israeli military intelligence and private Israeli cybersecurity firms raise even more concerns about whether ElectionGuards real purpose is to secure American elections for candidates friendly to the establishment, especially the military-industrial complex.
Explaining ElectionGuard
According to an announcement made in early May by Tom Burt, Microsofts Vice President for Customer Security and Trust, ElectionGuard is a free open-source software development kit (SDK) that will make voting secure, more accessible, and more efficient anywhere its used. Burts statement further claims that the ElectionGuard system will enable end-to-end verification of elections, open results to third-party organizations for secure validation, and allow individual voters to confirm their votes were correctly counted. While ElectionGuard may appear to concern itself only with electronic ballots, the announcement states that the system is designed to work with systems that use paper ballots through the use of an optical scanner.
Notably, Microsoft chose to announce ElectionGuard only after it had already partnered with major election technology suppliers who are exploring the integration of ElectionGuard into their voting systems. Burt further noted that Microsoft now has partnerships with election technology suppliers responsible for more than half of the voting machines sold in the U.S. ElectionGuard partner companies include Democracy Live, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, BPro, MicroVote, and VotingWorks.
Another interesting, and deeply troubling, admission in the Microsoft announcement is that Microsofts ElectionGuard development partner, the Portland-based cybersecurity firm Galois, recently received $10 million in funding from the Pentagons Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to build a demonstration voting system to help evaluate secure hardware DARPA researchers are developing as part of a separate DARPA program.
Microsofts announcement then notes that the agency views ensuring the integrity and security of the election process as a critical national security concern and plans to implement the ElectionGuard SDK as part of their effort to enable an end-to-end verifiable component in future versions of their demonstration voting system.
As deeply troubling as DARPAs $10 million indirect investment in ElectionGuard may seem, it is merely scratching the surface, as Galois itself is essentially an extension of DARPA in the private cybersecurity industry.
The private company whose only investor is the Pentagon
Founded in 1999 by John Launchbury, Galois quickly became close to numerous government agencies that now according to the Galois website form the vast majority of its clientele. In fact, Galois currently only lists the following U.S. government agencies in its clients section: DARPA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, Intelligence Community (i.e., CIA, NSA, etc.) and NASA. However, other clients of Galois include top U.S. weapons manufacturer General Dynamics. Galois stated focus as a company is research and development in advanced computer science, with an emphasis on securing critical systems and cybersecurity. It also dabbles in artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and machine learning.
Though it describes itself as a privately held U.S.-owned and -operated company, public records indicate that Galois only investors are DARPA and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), both of which are divisions of the Department of Defense. In other words, while officially a private company, its only investor is the U.S. government, more specifically the Pentagon.
However, the companys connections to DARPA go even further. The companys founder and chief scientist John Launchbury, left Galois in 2014 to become program manager and subsequently the director of DARPAs Information Innovation Office, which deals with nation-scale investments in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. In 2017, he left DARPA and went back to work at Galois as the companys chief scientist. DARPAs Information Innovation Offices official purpose is to develop advanced technology for issues of national security interest, but it also focuses on enhancing human/machine partnership.
A Galois spin-off company called Free & Fair, which develops election technology, partnered with Microsoft to produce ElectionGuard. Free & Fairs website lists its partners as DARPA, Microsoft, voting machine manufacturer VotingWorks, vote tallying software developer Verificatum, the state government of Colorado, and the OSET (Open Source Election Technology) Institute. VotingWorks is a non-profit voting machine manufacturer founded by a former Mozilla director of engineering and closely affiliated with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). In addition to Colorado, other states like Minnesota have partnered with Microsofts Defending Democracy program, but it is unclear if they have adopted or plan to adopt ElectionGuard as a consequence of that partnership.
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