Some thoughts on Anon and hacking and all that (as well as the culture)

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. Would you mind actually dealing with the real facts on the ground

1.- A denial of service attack did happen.... ComCast did shut down all inbound traffic. Granted, it could also have been really bad programing. Orca was not the best effort in this department ever.

2.- We did have issuance of credentials to people who should not have gotten then. Granted, some bad programing can cause that.

These two are not made up by the letter, they are all over geeky sites. They have been like reported and shit as facts.

We also have the tape of a machine, that may, depending on model, have or not an I\R port or wireless system... we really do not know if that was machine failure, as the PA officials said, or not. I'd like to have that machine looked at and over by forensics experts, but you think the private company that owns the code will want that? I don't... OH 2004, they kept their machines as far as they could from any like actual expert.

Those are the facts that actually match the letter. Yup, it could have been a few kids writing the letter after the fact, since well, shit, we all know EXACTLY who anon is, with any measure of certainty. And I would like to offer you beach front property in Arizona.

What I wrote in the OP, which some of you are even having issues with is... with current technology it is FEASIBLE. I did not say it did happen. There is a huge ocean of difference. Of course these shades of gray don't go well in a black and white world.

Of course, the mere idea that somebody might have wanted to screw with the election and a group of others decided to intervene and prevent it, sends some people into paroxysms here. For some reason this seems to invalidate their work over the last year or so. That I am still trying to understand how is this violating the word view of partisans, but hey, I probably should stop trying to understand partisans on both sides, for the record. It is a form of religious experience that escapes me, I admit.

I thought that we could discuss this as a possibility because you know what? The system has actual holes, and as an expert you should know that attacks happen regularly in the real world. Why wouldn't our elections be at risk too? In an ideal world I want those machines, AND CODE, to belong to WE THE PEOPLE and have the same level of security as DoD, NSA or any of the top tier government agencies. I also would prefer a uniform voting system nationwide and a few other reforms to allow for more people voting, but that is a whole different discussion. This sends people into paroxysms of fear and knee jerk reaction that we have the bestest system in the world and there are zero problems.

It almost reminds me of Republicans screaming, "We have the best medical system in the world." (Like 47, per WHO, but who's counting?). The first step in fixing problems is coming in from the cold and realizing that first, they exist, and second, they can be fixed. Some of the fixes already exist. I like what Bowen did in California, mostly decertifying all electronic machines. They kept some for handicapped people, and mostly paper ballots used with an optiscan. Yes, the central tabulator can still be fucked with, but you have the paper trail. So, if there is evidence of tampering. we can still count them.