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Title: CIA expert: Electronic voting not secure - A CIA cybersecurity expert said electronic voting machines like those used in the U.S. have likely been tampered with during elections in other countries.
Source:
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URL Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/966214.html
Published: Mar 25, 2009
Author: GREG GORDON
Post Date: 2009-03-25 13:45:31 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 631
Comments: 9
WASHINGTON -- The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries' use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines' vulnerability to tampering. Appearing last month before a U.S. Election Assistance Commission field hearing in Orlando, a CIA cybersecurity expert suggested that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his allies fixed a 2004 election recount, an assertion that could further roil U.S. relations with the Latin leader. In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now. Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results. VULNERABILITIES 'You heard the old adage `follow the money,' '' Stigall said, according to a transcript of his hourlong presentation obtained by McClatchy. ``I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that's an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to . . . make bad things happen.'' Stigall said voting equipment connected to the Internet could be hacked, and machines that weren't connected could be compromised wirelessly. Eleven U.S. states have banned or limited wireless capability in voting equipment, but Stigall said elections officials didn't always know it when wireless cards were embedded in their machines. While Stigall said he wasn't speaking for the CIA and wouldn't address U.S. voting systems, his presentation appeared to undercut calls by some U.S. politicians to shift to Internet balloting, at least for military personnel and other American citizens living overseas. Stigall said that most Web-based ballot systems had proved to be insecure. The commission has been criticized for giving states more than $1 billion to buy electronic equipment without first setting performance standards. Numerous computer-security experts have concluded that U.S. systems can be hacked, and allegations of tampering in Ohio, Florida and other swing states have triggered a campaign to require all voting machines to produce paper audit trails. The CIA got interested in electronic systems a few years ago, Stigall said, after concluding that foreigners might try to hack U.S. election systems. He said he couldn't elaborate ''in an open, unclassified forum,'' but that any concerns would be relayed to U.S. election officials. PAPER IS NO PROOF Stigall, who has studied electronic systems in about three dozen countries, said most countries' machines produced paper receipts that voters then dropped into boxes. However, even that doesn't prevent corruption, he said. Turning to Venezuela, he said that Chávez controlled all of the country's voting equipment before he won a 2004 nationwide recall vote that had threatened to end his rule. When Chávez won, Venezuelan mathematicians challenged results that showed him to be consistently strong in parts of the country where he had weak support. The mathematicians found ''a very subtle algorithm'' that appeared to adjust the vote in Chávez's favor, Stigall said. Calls for a recount left Chávez facing a dilemma, because the voting machines produced paper ballots, Stigall said. ''How do you defeat the paper ballots the machines spit out?'' Stigall asked. ``Those numbers must agree, must they not, with the electronic voting-machine count? . . . In this case, he simply took a gamble.'' Stigall said Chávez agreed to allow 100 of 19,000 voting machines to be audited. ''It is my understanding that the computer software program that generated the random number list of voting machines that were being randomly audited, that program was provided by Chávez,'' Stigall said. ``That's my understanding. It generated a list of computers that could be audited, and they audited those computers. ``You know. No pattern of fraud there.'' Electronic voting systems have been controversial in advanced countries, too. Germany's constitutional court banned computerized machines this month on the grounds that they don't allow voters to check their selections.
Poster Comment: It can't happen here.....keep voting.....
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#1. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
Why I am SHOCKED ! Who knew !!??
Odd isn't it? Or perhaps it is odd to me, but it does appear that in the present society the majority of Americans seem to think if a government offical says it or they see it on TV then it must be reality. Wow.................just wow.
It not only can happen here. It has already happened here. Repeatedly. There is no other reason to have this system of voting OTHER than to be able to rig the results. I think all three presidential elections so far in the touchscreen era have been rigged and the winner foreordained. I used to think only the GOPers had the proprietary codes to be able to do it, but this last time around proved it is the puppetmasters ABOVE both the parties who have the code and will use it to thrown the election to whichever puppet is favored. I don't think Obama won by 9.5 million votes. I think at least the last 3 or 4 million of that margin came from rigged touchscreens.
“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston
Odd isn't it? Or perhaps it is odd to me, but it does appear that in the present society the majority of Americans seem to think if a government offical says it or they see it on TV then it must be reality. Wow.................just wow. Lambs headed to the slaughter house.
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson
The odds are rising.
as long as the peoples of these united states of america keep accepting the illusion of choice offered by the CFR the barbarous acts of shadyism will continue.
Certainly seems so.
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson
Now for some Steven Seagal treatment for the vote fraudsters. Crooked mathematicians everywhere.
easy like Sunday morning
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams 
#2. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#3. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#4. To: Lysander_Spooner (#2)
#5. To: phantom patriot (#4)
#6. To: Sam Houston (#3)
#7. To: Lysander_Spooner (#5)
The odds are rising.
#8. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections
The mathematicians found ''a very subtle algorithm'' that appeared to adjust the vote in Chávez's favor
I've already said too much.
#9. To: MUDDOG (#8)
Crooked mathematicians everywhere.
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