h2ebits
h2ebits's JournalNew word for the day: Quockerwodger
From 1860:
A quockerwodger was a type of wooden puppet. In politics, a quockerwodger was a type of politician acting on the instructions of an influential third party, rather than properly representing their constituents.
Third County Clerk in Colorado now being investigated.
[link:https://www.cpr.org/2022/02/03/douglas-clerk-questioned-by-state-about-allegedly-copying-election-equipment-hard-drives/
Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state Jena Griswold is requesting more information about a potential election security breach by Douglas county’s Republican clerk and recorder Merlin Klotz.
This makes Klotz the third GOP election official in Colorado under investigation for their alleged handling of sensitive election technology.
Griswold said her office became aware of a social media post from last October in which Klotz wrote, “we, as always, took a full image backup of our server before a trusted build was done this year.”
The trusted build is a regular process every county goes through after an election, in which the makers of its election equipment update the operating system. Douglas is one of two counties in the state whose equipment is supplied by a company called Clear Ballot. The rest of Colorado uses technology from Dominion Voting Systems, based in Denver.
More at the link. . . .
Update from Colorado Secretary of State's Office regarding Mesa County Election Equipment 08/16/21
RELEASE: Colorado Secretary of State’s Office Confirms that Mesa County Election Equipment Hard Drive Images were Publicly Posted; DHS Confirms Posting does not Heighten Risk to State or Nation’s Elections
Colorado Secretary of State sent this bulletin at 08/16/2021 04:22 PM MDT
colorado secretary of state
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Annie Orloff
annie.orloff@sos.state.co.us
Steve Hurlbert
steve.hurlbert@sos.state.co.us
August 16, 2021
Colorado Secretary of State’s Office Confirms that Mesa County Election Equipment Hard Drive Images were Publicly Posted; DHS Confirms Posting does not Heighten Risk to State or Nation’s Elections
DENVER, Colo- The Colorado Department of State has been alerted to and confirmed the release of two hard drive images from Mesa County election servers by election conspiracy theorists. While the investigation is ongoing, it appears these hard drive images contain copies of the election management software that runs voting system equipment in Mesa County.
The Colorado Secretary of State alerted the Director of the U.S. Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is an agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, of this aspect of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s Office security breach. CISA has confirmed that it does not view this breach as a significant heightening of the election risk landscape at this point.
One of the hard drive images is believed to have been taken on May 23. New information acquired during the Department of State’s investigation reveals that the secure room where this election equipment is stored was accessed on the evening of Sunday May 23, 2021, outside of normal work hours, by the Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters; Gerald Wood, the unauthorized individual who attended the Mesa County trusted build; and another Mesa County Clerk and Recorder employee.
Under the authority outlined in the Colorado Election Code, with respect to the Secretary’s role as the Chief Election Officer for the State of Colorado and her duty to supervise the conduct of elections, the Secretary of State Jena Griswold is now determining who to appoint to supervise Mesa County Elections.
Colorado leads the way in secure elections, and has layers of security measures, both preventative and for detection purposes. This includes restricted access, chain-of-custody logs, equipment that is under lock and key, multiple sets of passwords or keys that no single person holds, and tamper evident seals. Colorado’s election system is also segmented, with each county having its own closed network and systems across counties are not connected to one another. Election systems have separate sets of passwords; one set is only held by a few specific civil servants with the Department of State and the other is held by the county officials. No one person has all the keys to the castle, as there are several passwords that are kept separate and protected by separate parties. Should there be an internal security breach like the one that occurred in Mesa County, in addition to the safeguards outlined prior to an election, Colorado also requires security protocols such as bipartisan testing on election equipment like tabulation machines before and after elections, mail ballot signature verification, and bipartisan risk limiting audits.
Last week, Secretary Griswold prohibited Mesa County’s election equipment from further use. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office will continue its investigation into Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s Office and is fully cooperating with the investigation undergoing concurrently by the District Attorney of the 21st Judicial District.
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Statement from Colorado Secretary of State's Office on August 9, 2021--
Statement from Colorado Secretary of State’s Office Regarding Official Order to Mesa County
DENVER, Colo- Today, the Colorado Secretary of State’s office issued an Order in response to a potential chain-of-custody and security protocol breach for Mesa County’s voting system components.
Several items were published online that constituted a breach in the security protocols for Mesa County voting system components. The posted images depict the BIOS passwords specific to the individual hardware stations of Mesa County’s voting system. The public disclosure of the BIOS passwords for one or more components of Mesa County’s voting system alone constitutes a serious breach of voting system security protocols, as well as a violation of Election Rule 20.6.1. This breach in security protocol has not created an imminent direct security risk to Colorado’s elections, and did not occur during an election.
It is likely from the content of the social media postings that this sensitive information was collected during the limited access trusted build installation in Mesa County on May 25, 2021. The collection and dissemination of this information during the trusted build installation violated security protocols and Department of State rules governing the process.
In response to this breach in protocols, the Secretary of State’s office has sent an Order requesting inspection of election equipment and other relevant materials to the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder. Depending on the outcome of the investigation, these violations may result in the decertification of the voting systems in Mesa County.
The Green New Deal and Dianne Feinstein
More on the Dianne Feinstein meeting with kids regarding the Green New Deal:
". . . .But Feinstein was, in fact, demonstrating why climate change exemplifies an issue on which older people should listen to the young. Because—to put it bluntly—older generations will be dead before the worst of it hits. The kids whom Feinstein was talking to are going to be dealing with climate chaos for the rest of their lives, as any Californian who has lived through the past few years of drought, flood, and fire must recognize. . . ."
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-hard-lessons-of-dianne-feinsteins-encounter-with-the-young-green-new-deal-activists-video
Edited to add: Article written by Bill McKibben of 350.org
Copy and paste from my FB feed
For you to read and consider...
From Heather Richardson, professor of History at Boston College:
"I don't like to talk about politics on Facebook-- political history is my job, after all, and you are my friends-- but there is an important non-partisan point to make today.
What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event."
Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.
When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.
Last night's Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.
Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.
My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like.
I don't know what Bannon is up to-- although I have some guesses-- but because I know Bannon's ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle-- and my friends range pretty widely-- who will benefit from whatever it is.
If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.
But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event.
A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union.
If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln's strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power.
Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable.
Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it."
COPY AND PASTE. DON'T "SHARE"
