There is a tendency to exaggerate attacks, although genuine cyberwarfare attacks do exist starting
from Stuxnet.
The term “war” could be applied to “cyber” activity only if there is a deliberate attempt to destroy
some kind of infrastructure of foreign state like was the case of Stuxnet.
If country A blocks country B’s intelligence from transmitting; if country B “blocks” country A’s
battlefield communications capability during a military skirmish — that is a clear “cyber warfare”.
Criminal hacking, Web site defacement, denial-of-service attacks — especially those directed against
non-military and non-infrastructure targets — aren't “war” of any kind. It's more like (possibly a state-sponsored
terrorism): attempt to get attention to specific group or goals. Not that different from, for example,
support of jihadists bythe USA during Soviet Afgan war,
Let’s be very clear; "real" war results in people being killed, in property being destroyed, in infrastructure
and logistical capabilities being crippled. So for Internet attack to be called cyberwarfare it should
meet at least one of this criteria; if not in effect, then in intention. And by “infrastructure” I mean
real infrastructure— factories, hospitals, water treatment plants, power-generation facilities, roads
and bridges. At least web sites that provide some kind of essential services like financial websites,
not the Internet web site with general public information.
Anything short of this is merely criminality, propaganda war, or "cold war" if you wish.
Hacking high officials email is more like a color revolution inspired trick, then anything else.
Pennsylvania 's
top election official has decertified the voting system of rural Fulton County for future elections, saying
that an election assessment by a third party had violated the Keystone State's election code,
according to a release on Wednesday.
Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf,
informed the Fulton County Board of Elections that she "did not arrive at this decision
lightly."
Wake Technology Services Inc. (Wake TSI), a software company based in West Chester,
Pennsylvania, had carried out an election assessment that involved its workers visiting Fulton
County in December 2020 and in early February.
The company in May released a report that concluded the election was "well-run" and did not
indicate any signs of fraud in Fulton County. However,
five "issues of note" were uncovered , three of which are related to Dominion Voting Systems ,
whose electronic voting system was used in the county for the 2020 election.
"While these may seem minor, the impact on an election can be huge," Wake TSI said of the
five issues. At the time, Dominion disputed the report's findings.
The Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement on Wednesday that
Wake TSI's access to the Fulton County's voting system "undermined the chain of custody
requirements and strict access limitations necessary to prevent both intentional and
inadvertent tampering with electronic voting systems."
It added that the "unauthorized access" prevents the vendor -- Dominion -- from "affirming
that the system continues to meet state and federal certification standards."
Fulton county officials had allowed Wake TSI to "access certain key components of its
certified system, including the county's election database, results files, and Windows systems
logs," and to "use a system imaging tool to take complete hard drive images of these computers
and other digital equipment," the department noted.
"These actions were taken in a manner that was not transparent," Degraffenreid said in her
letter to Fulton County officials on Tuesday. She said the access given to Wake TSI has
caused Fulton County's voting system to be "compromised," and that neither the county, state
officials, nor Dominion could now "verify that the impacted components of Fulton County's
leased voting system are safe to use in future elections."
"I have no other choice but to decertify the use of Fulton County's leased Dominion
Democracy Suite 5.5A voting system last used in the November 2020 election," Degraffenreid
wrote.
The Fulton County Board of Elections and Wake TSI did not immediately respond to requests
for comment.
The Pennsylvania Department of State previously said that a risk-limiting audit of the 2020
election has confirmed the state's election results.
The
Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported that Fulton County needed to pay $25,000 to lease new
equipment for its municipal elections in May, because Dominion refused to let the county use
the voting machines that Wake TSI had accessed. According to the outlet, Dominion told the
county that it violated its contract in letting a unaccredited and non-certified company
inspect the machines.
Wake TSI's assessment in Fulton County was "set" by Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano, a
Republican, according to a Dec. 31, 2020 document
signed by the company that was obtained and published by the Arizona Mirror and The Washington
Post. Wake TSI said in its report that Mastriano and Pennsylvania Sen. Judy Ward, also a
Republican, "were aware of our efforts."
The document also said that Wake TSI was "contracted to Defending the Republic," a nonprofit
founded by lawyer Sidney Powell, who has alleged that widespread fraud occurred in the 2020
election.
Mastriano earlier this month
issued letters to York, Tioga, and Philadelphia counties requesting that they voluntarily
submit information and materials by July 31, to enable what he calls a "forensic investigation"
of the 2020 and 2021 elections. He told The Epoch Times that he seeks for an investigation that
would be "a big deep dive, like we saw in Arizona, but even deeper."
Wake TSI was also involved in the election audit still underway in Arizona's Maricopa County
up until
its contract expired in May. The audit in Maricopa County was ordered by the Arizona state
Senate's Republican majority. Dominion machines in Maricopa County will also be
replaced .
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, said the machines were not tampered with
during the audit and questioned the Board of Supervisors' decision to get new machines.
"If their experts can't prove the machines have not been tampered with, then how does the
[Secretary of State's office] or County Elections certify the machines before every audit to
make sure the machines haven't been tampered with?" she asked in June.
One of the things that makes Wi-Fi work is its ability to break big chunks of
data into smaller chunks and combine smaller chunks into bigger chunks, depending on the needs of the network at any given
moment. These mundane network plumbing features, it turns out, have been harboring vulnerabilities that can be exploited to send
users to malicious websites or exploit or tamper with network-connected devices, newly published research shows.
In all, researcher Mathy Vanhoef found a dozen vulnerabilities, either in the
Wi-Fi specification or in the way the specification has been implemented in huge numbers of devices. Vanhoef has dubbed the
vulnerabilities
FragAttacks
,
short for fragmentation and aggregation attacks, because they all involve frame fragmentation or frame aggregation. Broadly
speaking, they allow people within radio range to inject frames of their choice into networks protected by WPA-based encryption.
Bad news
FURTHER READING
Serious flaw in WPA2 protocol lets attackers intercept passwords and much more
Assessing the impact of the vulnerabilities isn't straightforward. FragAttacks allow data to be injected into Wi-Fi traffic, but
they don't make it possible to exfiltrate anything out. That means FragAttacks can't be used to read passwords or other sensitive
information the way a previous Wi-Fi attack of Vanhoef, called
Krack
,
did. But it turns out that the vulnerabilities -- some that have been part of Wi-Fi since its release in 1997 -- can be exploited to
inflict other kinds of damage, particularly if paired with other types of hacks.
"It's never good to have someone able to drop packets into your network or target your devices on the network," Mike Kershaw, a
Wi-Fi security expert and developer of the open source Kismet wireless sniffer and IDS, wrote in an email. "In some regards,
these are no worse than using an unencrypted access point at a coffee shop -- someone can do the same to you there, trivially -- but
because they can happen on networks you'd otherwise think are secure and might have configured as a trusted network, it's
certainly bad news."
He added: "Overall, I think they give someone who was already targeting an
attack against an individual or company a foothold they wouldn't have had before, which is definitely impactful, but probably
don't pose as huge a risk as drive-by attacks to the average person."
While the flaws were disclosed last week in an industry-wide effort nine months
in the making, it remains unclear in many cases which devices were vulnerable to which vulnerabilities and which vulnerabilities,
if any, have received security updates. It's almost a certainty that many Wi-Fi-enabled devices will never be fixed.
Rogue DNS injection
One of the most severe vulnerabilities in the FragAttacks suite resides in the
Wi-Fi specification itself. Tracked as CVE-2020-24588, the flaw can be exploited in a way that forces Wi-Fi devices to use a
rogue DNS server, which in turn can deliver users to malicious websites rather than the ones they intended. From there, hackers
can read and modify any unencrypted traffic. Rogue DNS servers also allow hackers to perform
DNS
rebinding attacks
, in which malicious websites manipulate a browser to attack other devices connected to the same network.
The rogue DNS server is introduced when an attacker injects an
ICMPv6
Router Advertisement
into Wi-Fi traffic. Routers typically issue these announcements so other devices on the network can
locate them. The injected advertisement instructs all devices to use a DNS specified by the attacker for lookups of both IPv6 and
IPv4 addresses.
In an email, Vanhoef explained, saying, "The IPv6 router advertisement is put
in the payload (i.e. data portion) of the TCP packet. This data is by default passed on to the application that created the TCP
connection. In the demo, that would be the browser, which is expecting an image. This means that by default, the client won't
process the IPv6 router advertisement but instead process the TCP payload as application data."
Vanhoef said that it's possible to perform the attack without user interaction
when the target's access point is vulnerable to
CVE-2021-26139
,
one of the 12 vulnerabilities that make up the FragAttacks package. The security flaw stems from a kernel flaw in NetBSD 7.1 that
causes Wi-Fi access points to forward
Extensible
Authentication Protocol (AP) over LAN
frames to other devices even when the sender has not yet authenticated to the AP.
It's safe to skip ahead, but for those curious about the specific software bug
and the reason the video demo uses a malicious image, Vanhoef explained:
To make the victim process the TCP payload (i.e. data portion) as a separate
packet, the aggregation design flaw in Wi-Fi is abused. That is, the attacker intercepts the malicious TCP packet at the Wi-Fi
layer and sets the "is aggregated" flag in the Wi-Fi header. As a result, the receiver will split the Wi-Fi frame into two
network packets. The first network packet contains part of the original TCP header and is discarded. The second packet
corresponds with the TCP payload, which we made sure will now correspond to the ICMPv6 packet, and as a result, the ICMPv6
router advertisement is now processed by the victim as a separate packet. So proximity to the victim is required to set the
"is aggregated" Wi-Fi flag so that the malicious TCP packet will be split into two by the receiver.
The design flaw is that an adversary can change/set the "is aggregated" flag
without the receiver noticing this. This flag should have been authenticated so that a receiver can detect if it has been
modified.
It's possible to perform the attack without user interaction when the
access point is vulnerable to CVE-2020-26139. Out of four tested home routers, two of them had this vulnerability. It seems
that most Linux-based routers are affected by this vulnerability. The research paper discusses in more detail how this
works -- essentially, instead of including the ICMPV6 router advertisement in a malicious TCP packet, it can then be included in
an unencrypted handshake message (which the AP will then forward to the client after which the adversary can again set the "is
aggregated" flag etc).
Punching a hole in
the firewall
Four of the 12 vulnerabilities that make up the FragAttacks are implementation
flaws, meaning they stem from bugs that software developers introduced when writing code based on the Wi-Fi specification. An
attacker can exploit them against access points to bypass a key security benefit they provide.
Besides allowing multiple devices to share a single Internet connection,
routers prevent incoming traffic from reaching connected devices unless the devices have requested it. This firewall works by
using network address translation, or NAT, which maps private IP addresses that the AP assigns each device on the local network
to a single IP address that the AP uses to send data over the Internet.
The result is that routers forward data to connected devices only when they
have previously requested it from a website, email server, or other machine on the Internet. When one of those machines tries to
send unsolicited data to a device behind the router, the router automatically discards it. This arrangement
isn't
perfect
, but it does provide a vital defense that protects billions of devices.
Vanhoef figured out how to exploit the four vulnerabilities in a way that
allows an attacker to, as he put it, "punch a hole through a router's firewall." With the ability to connect directly to devices
behind a firewall, an Internet attacker can then send them malicious code or commands.
In one demo in the video, Vanhoef exploits the vulnerabilities to control an
Internet-of-things device, specifically to remotely turn on and off a smart power socket. Normally, NAT would prevent a device
outside the network from interacting with the socket unless the socket had first initiated a connection. The implementation
exploits remove this barrier.
FURTHER READING
Microsoft practically begs Windows users to fix wormable BlueKeep flaw
In a separate demo, Vanhoef shows how the vulnerabilities allow a device on the Internet to initiate a connection with a computer
running Windows 7, an operating system that stopped receiving security updates years ago. The researcher used that ability to
gain complete control over the PC by sending it malicious code that exploited a
critical
vulnerability called BlueKeep
.
"That means that when an access point is
vulnerable, it becomes easy to attack clients!" Vanhoef wrote. "So we're abusing the Wi-Fi implementation flaws in an
access
point
as a first step in order to subsequently attack (outdated)
clients
."
Getting your fix
Despite Vanhoef spending nine months coordinating patches with more than a
dozen hardware and software makers, it's not easy to figure out which devices or software are vulnerable to which
vulnerabilities, and of those vulnerable products, which ones have received fixes.
This page
provides the status for products from several companies. A more comprehensive list of known advisories is
here
.
Other advisories are available individually from their respective vendors. The vulnerabilities to look for are:
Design flaws:
CVE-2020-24588
: aggregation attack (accepting non-SPP A-MSDU frames)
CVE-2020-24587
: mixed key attack (reassembling fragments encrypted under different keys)
CVE-2020-24586
: fragment cache attack (not clearing fragments from memory when (re)connecting to a network)
Implementation
vulnerabilities allowing the injection of plaintext frames:
CVE-2020-26145
: Accepting plaintext broadcast fragments as full frames (in an encrypted network)
CVE-2020-26144
: Accepting plaintext A-MSDU frames that start with an RFC1042 header with EtherType EAPOL (in an encrypted
network)
CVE-2020-26140
: Accepting plaintext data frames in a protected network
CVE-2020-26143
: Accepting fragmented plaintext data frames in a protected network
Other implementation
flaws:
CVE-2020-26139
: Forwarding EAPOL frames even though the sender is not yet authenticated (should only affect APs)
CVE-2020-26146
: Reassembling encrypted fragments with non-consecutive packet numbers
CVE-2020-26147
: Reassembling mixed encrypted/plaintext fragments
CVE-2020-26142
: Processing fragmented frames as full frames
CVE-2020-26141
: Not verifying the TKIP MIC of fragmented frames
The most effective way to mitigate the threat posed by FragAttacks is to
install all available updates that fix the vulnerabilities. Users will have to do this on each vulnerable computer, router, or
other Internet-of-things device. It's likely that a huge number of affected devices will never receive a patch.
The next-best mitigation is to ensure that websites are always using HTTPS
connections. That's because the encryption HTTPS provides greatly reduces the damage that can be done when a malicious DNS server
directs a victim to a fake website.
Sites that use HTTP Strict Transport Security will always use this protection,
but Vanhoef said that only about 20 percent of the web does this. Browser extensions like
HTTPS
everywhere
were already a good idea, and the mitigation they provide against FragAttacks makes them even more worthwhile.
As noted earlier, FragAttacks aren't likely to be exploited against the vast
majority of Wi-Fi users, since the exploits require a high degree of skill as well as proximity -- meaning within 100 feet to a
half-mile, depending on the equipment used -- to the target. The vulnerabilities pose a higher threat to networks used by high-value
targets such as retail chains, embassies, or corporate networks where security is key, and then most likely only in concert with
other exploits.
When updates become available, by all means install them, but unless you're in
this latter group, remember that drive-by downloads and other more mundane types of attacks will probably pose a bigger threat.
Promoted Comments
When I'm networking I always assume the network I'm connected to is completely compromised, so all my devices use these things
and are properly firewalled in which case these attacks are pretty much worthless.
While only new versions of Android support DoT out of the box on the system level, Google has recently added the support for
DoH to Chrome, so in case your device is running an older version of Android you might want to enable DoH in Chrome to feel
safe.
And as for Firefox it's had the support for DoH for years. I've gone as far as to set network.trr.mode to 2 in about:config to
be extra safe. 3 is even better:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver
178 posts | register
Dominion said in a statement to news outlets on Thursday that it would comply with the
audit, but Cyber Ninjas, the firm hired by the Arizona Senate to conduct it along with three
other companies, is not accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
" Releasing Dominion's intellectual property to an unaccredited, biased, and plainly
unreliable actor such as Cyber Ninjas would be reckless, causing irreparable damage to the
commercial interests of the company and the election security interests of the country ,"
Dominion said. "No company should be compelled to participate in such an irresponsible
act."
Cyber Ninjas did not respond to a request for comment.
Maricopa County officials previously said that they did not have passwords to access
administrative functions on Dominion Voting Systems machines that were used to scan ballots
during the election, according to the Senate's audit liaison, former Republican Secretary of
State Ken Bennett.
"They've told us that they don't have that second password, or that they've given us all the
passwords they have," Bennett told One America News at the site of the audit in Phoenix last
week.
Both routers or router images and access to election machines were part of the materials the
state Senate subpoenaed late last year. A judge in February ruled that the subpoenas were valid
and should be obeyed.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican,
recently threatened to subpoena county officials if they didn't stop their noncompliance
with the subpoenas, but
backed off the threat in a letter on May 12.
Instead, she asked Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, also a
Republican, to cooperate voluntarily by attending an upcoming meeting at the state Capitol to
go over the audit issues.
Fann said auditors have found discrepancies in the ballot count, including one batch that
was supposed to be 200 but only numbered 165. She also said the audit teams found an entire
database directory from an election machine had been deleted, and that the main database for
the election management system software was not located anywhere on the machine, suggesting
that the main database for all data related to the 2020 election had been removed.
Sellers on Thursday indicated he would not attend the meeting and disputed the
allegations.
Deleting files off the server "would be a crime -- and it is not true," he said.
"After reviewing the letter with County election and IT experts, I can say that the
allegations are false and ill-informed. Moreover, the claim that our employees deleted election
files and destroyed evidence is outrageous, completely baseless, and beneath the dignity of the
Arizona Senate," he added, calling for an immediate retraction of statements senators and their
liaison team made on social media and to the press.
The Board of Supervisors, which held a closed-door emergency meeting on Friday, plans on
holding a public meeting on Monday to address the matter.
Fann, an Arizona Senate Republican Caucus spokeswoman, and the liaison team did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.
Auditors, meanwhile, began packing up on Thursday evening because the audit will take a
break due to scheduling conflicts.
The audit has been taking place at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum on the state fairgrounds
in Phoenix. High school graduations are scheduled to take place at the building beginning May
15.
Hand counting stopped at 7 p.m. on Thursday and workers began collapsing tables and
preparing to move ballots to another location.
About 500,000 of the nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County in the 2020 election
have been counted in the audit, according to Bennett.
The Arizona Senate signed an extension to their original agreement that allows auditors to
store materials in the Wesley Bolin Building, which is also on the state fairgrounds, from May
12 to May 23.
The approximately 19,000-square foot building has a large open floor plan and two large
roll-up doors, according to the Arizona State Fair website.
"Due to temperatures during the summer months, this building is not recommended for use
between May through September," the site states.
Bennett told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that the materials will be secure and
that the site at which they'll be stored can be tracked online via 24-hour streaming, just like
the audit itself.
" There's no deadline for the audit ," Bennett said. " The goal is not speed; the goal is
accuracy and completeness. "
The audit teams can resume occupancy of the coliseum on May 23 and use it until June 30,
according to a copy of the extended agreement obtained
by The Epoch Times .
The original scope of work document from Cyber Ninjas said reviewing voter registration and
votes case would take approximately 20 days and that work would be conducted remotely. The vote
counting phase would take about 20 more days, it said, while the electronic voting system phase
would take some 35 days.
But all three of those phases could be carried out simultaneously, according to the firm. An
additional week was said to be required after completing everything else to finalize
reporting.
High profile attorney means possible troubles for Dominion and its lobbyists. such layers ten
not leave a single stone unturned, which is not in Dominion best interest. Emails will definitely
be subpoenaed and judging from the behaviour of one Dominion executive they were not too
careful.
I kel the joke "Are their lawyers also going to argue that no reasonable person would believe
Fox news?"
Fox News has hired two high-profile defense attorneys to combat a $1.6 billion lawsuit filed
against it by voting technology company Dominion.
The media outlet disclosed in a court filing that it had Charles Babcock and Scott Keller
for its defense. Fox News confirmed the hirings to The Hill.
... ... ...
Fox News Media told The Hill after Dominion filed its suit that it is "proud of our 2020
election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will
vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court."
And yet discovery will be very interesting, and Fox News is now pitted against Dominion,
and their best way to defend themselves is to show that the criticisms were legitimate...
Fox can now subpoena anything relevant from Dominion, and Dominion has to comply or be
criminally prosecuted...
There is not much to discover with Dominion. It mainly functions like a windows 10
computer. so it is hackable. It is very easy to install fraudulent software on these
machines
See Harryi Hursti KILL CHAIN: THE CYBERWAR ON AMERICA'S ELECTIONS and look at his
affidavit See "Investigators for Attorney DePernoReportedly Discover Modem Chips Embedded in
Michigan Voting System Computer Motherboards" via today on theGatewayPundit
When testifying before the MI legislature, the Dominion CEO recommended that a full
forensic audit be ordered if voters suspect that these machines were connected to the
internet.
On Dec 1 election officials deleted the electronic voting data in violation of state
la
Sidney Powell lit a fuse. She woke the Republicans and others who want election integrity,
so the Democrats won't be able to steal any more. At least not with the same tactics
Lou Dobbs might have gotten confused once. I believe he said that an affidavit that
criticized Smartmatic had instead criticized Dominion. However, there are so many problems
with Dominion, I would consider it to be an immaterial mistake. After all these machines
appear to be unusable:
[Vote counting machines] "presents serious system security vulnerability and
operational issues that may place plaintiffs and other voters at risk of
deprivation of their fundamental right to cast an effective vote that is
accurately counted," U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg wrote in a Oct 2020
Electionic vote counting machines were banned in France, Ireland and the in
the Netherlands via Gateway Pundit because they were unreliable.
The Gateway pundit could be sued if they make false statements.
via Twitter:
Elections Canada @ElectionsCan_E
· Nov 16
Elections Canada does not use Dominion Voting Systems. We use paper ballots counted by
hand in front of scrutineers and have never used voting machines or electronic tabulators to
count votes in our
100-year history. #CdnPoli
It is very easy to install fraudulent software on these machines See Harryi Hursti on
seeKILL CHAIN: THE CYBERWAR ON AMERICA'S
ELECTIONS and look at his affidavit
The actual claim is here (400+ pages):
www DOT documentcloud DOT org/documents/20527880-dominion-v-fox-news-complaint
These lawyers have their work cut out for them. As explained in the claim, Dominion
contacted Fox multiple times after the first accusations. They provided Fox with independent
assessments and other evidence that their systems were sound. Fox ignored it, never mentioned
this and continued presenting that Dominion systems were fraudulent (and stated that as a
fact, not as an opinion).
Once again, FOX News will likely claim that they are an entertainment network, not a
news agency ... and therefore they should not be expected to propagate facts on their
broadcasts.
Dominion fights as its image was damaged and it has deep pockets. But how valid are their
claim is for the court to decide. In no way they are as clean as they pretend. Their connection
Dem party operatives is probably provable beyond reasonable doubt. The whole story with Dominion
replacing Diebold on this business is murky to the extreme.
Roger Parloff · Contributor Tue, April
13, 2021, 5:06 AM · 22 min read
... "Instantly," said Steven
Bellovin , a professor of computer science at Columbia University with almost 40 years of
experience in computer networking and security. That's how long it took him to realize, he said
in an interview, that a certain purported spreadsheet that I showed him was "not just fake, but
a badly generated fake by someone who didn't know what they were doing."
The spreadsheet, together with an animated film that was said to illustrate its data, formed
the crux of a nearly two-hour "docu-movie," called "Absolute Proof," which aired at least 13
times last February on the One America News Network. The movie, presented in a news magazine
format, was hosted, co-produced, and relentlessly flacked by Mike Lindell, the irrepressible
CEO of MyPillow, Inc. It purported to furnish absolute proof that the 2020 presidential
election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump in an international cyberattack exploiting
vulnerabilities in voting-machine software that had been intentionally designed to rig
elections.
Dominion Voting Systems, which makes voting technology, filed a $1.3 billion defamation suit
against Lindell and his company in late February -- the third of four massive cases it has
filed since the election -- in part because of "Absolute Proof," which referenced Dominion more
than 40 times. (An in-depth analysis of Dominion's suits over bogus election-fraud claims, as
well as one brought by a rival voting-device company, Smartmatic, is provided in an earlier
story I wrote
here .)
The column is extremely week and fragments are republished here for the sole purpose to
critique/
I think Dean Baker is very superficial here. Dominion is a corporation business model of
which is based on lobbying Congress and states. It is definitely closely connected to the
Democratic Party apparatchiks. This is a very questionable model. So now it tried to present
being White Knight defending itself again absurd claims like Hugo Chaves claim. This does not
change the nature of their business. In reality this is two dirty persons struggling in a mud
peat.
Also the key question remains unanswered: are Dominion machines do any good to the USA voting
system? If yes, then defending itself makes some positive sense. If not, why bother?
...Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela who has been dead for eight years, figures
prominently in many of the stories. Nonetheless, many Fox News viewers believe them.
For a voting machine manufacturer, the claim that your machines are rigged is pretty much a
textbook definition of a damaging statement. Therefore, Dominion should have a pretty solid
case.
Sullivan doesn't dispute any of this, instead, she points out that libel or defamation suits
can also be used against news outlets doing serious reporting. She highlights the case of
Reveal, a nonprofit news outfit that is dedicated to investigative reporting. Reveal was nearly
forced out of business due to the cost of defending itself against a charity that it exposed as
being run by a cult. Sullivan's takeaway is that defamation lawsuits can be used as a weapon
against legitimate news organizations doing serious reporting.
Sullivan is right on this point, but wrong in understanding the implications. Every
civil course of action can be abused by those with money to harm people without substantial
resources. There are tens of thousands of frivolous tort cases filed every year, but would
anyone argue that we should deny people the right to sue a contractor that mistakenly sets
their customer's house on fire? The same applies to suits for breach of contract. If I pay
someone $10,000 in advance to paint my house and they don't do it, should I not be able to sue
to get my money back?
... ... ...
The reality is that our legal system can be abused by the powerful to harm those with
less power. That is the result of the enormous disparities of income and power in this country,
and the inadequate shields against abuse in the legal system...
On Dec. 22, Coomer filed a
defamation suit in Denver state court , seeking unspecified damages, against Oltmann and 14
others, including the Trump Campaign; Giuliani; Powell; the One America News Network (OAN); OAN
chief White House correspondent Chanel Rion; Newsmax Media; Newsmax contributor Michelle
Malkin; The Gateway Pundit website; and radio and podcast host Eric Metaxas.
When
people are denied public records they routinely reach out to us for assistance and more often than not, we are able to request
the same records and we get them. When this happens it is an indicator of a problem because if we are able to get those
records, so too should others.
The
DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek and her Chief Deputy Scott Mackay signed a contract with Dominion Voting Systems Inc. on
January 24, 2020. After a copy of that contract was requested by an individual and denied, we were asked to assist in getting
the same records. Our Freedom of Information Act request was granted and we find the Dominion Voting Systems encouragements to
avoid transparency very troubling.
8. Customer
shall
take any and all action necessary or appropriate to assert
all applicable
or
potentially applicable exemptions from disclosure
under the FOIA Statute and
take
all other legally permissible steps to resist disclosure of the Information
including, without limitation,
commencement or defense of any legal actions related to such disclosure.
In
the event Customer receives a request for Information under the FOIA Statute, Customer shall inform Dominion of such
request within ten (10) days of Customer's knowledge or such shorter period as necessary under the FOIA Statute to avoid
prejudice to Dominion's ability to oppose disclosure
, Dominion shall use its best efforts to assist and support
Customer's exercise of any statutory exemption in denying a records request under the Freedom of Information Act (5 ILCS
140/1 et seq.). In the event that Customer becomes subject to fines, costs or fees pursuant to Section 11 of the Freedom of
Information Act (5 ICLS 140/11) relying upon Dominion's claim that the information requested is exempt,
Dominion
shall indemnify Customer for those fines, fees and costs, notwithstanding any other provisions In this agreement.
In
the event Customer is required by court order to disclose any of the Information, Customer shall give written notice to
Dominion at the earlier as soon as reasonably practical after tile imposition of such an order.
There are exemptions under FOIA regarding trade secrets and we
understand such exemptions and their applicability to certain information. However, the language in this contract focuses on
encouraging, in fact, instructing the County that they "
shall
"
take any and all action necessary or appropriate to assert "
potentially
applicable exemptions from disclosure
" and to take all other legally permissible steps to resist disclosure of
the information.
Looks like Dominion now can capitalize on Jan 6 events...
Notable quotes:
"... The lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court in Washington, DC on Monday. The massive 107-page document lists over 50 statements from Giuliani which he made on Twitter, his podcast, in the media, and during legislative hearings about Dominion – one of the largest companies selling voting machines used in the US. ..."
"... To illustrate the damage presumably done by Giuliani, the lawsuit provides a long list of screenshots from assorted internet uses, primarily from Twitter, fuming at Dominion and accusing it of facilitating the election "steal." The voting machines and sharp spikes in vote counts in favor of Joe Biden, widely attributed to the system, have been among the centerpieces of conspiracy theories for the pro-Trump crowd in the aftermath of the turbulent election. ..."
"... The lawsuit also highlights Giuliani's role in the January 6 Capitol Hill riot, accusing him of stirring up the violence. The document quotes Giuliani's address at the pro-Trump rally shortly before the violence, when he urged supporters to engage in "trial by combat." ..."
Donald
Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems over claims of fraud
during the 2020 US presidential election. The company is seeking $1.3 billion in compensatory
and punitive damages.
The lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court in Washington, DC on Monday. The massive
107-page document lists over 50 statements from Giuliani which he made on Twitter, his podcast,
in the media, and during legislative hearings about Dominion – one of the largest
companies selling voting machines used in the US.
Giuliani, like many other prominent supporters of former President Donald Trump, has
repeatedly pointed the finger at the company as one of the main culprits behind Trump's
election loss. Dominion has been accused of being part of an alleged plot to fix the election
in favor of the Democrats, which, alongside mass mail-in voting, allegedly facilitated the
"steal" of Trump's presumed 'victory'.
Dominion has accused Giuliani of waging a "viral disinformation campaign" and
repeatedly producing "defamatory falsehoods" about it. It also claimed the allegedly
false statements from Trump's lawyer have stirred up a storm of death threats against its
employees.
To illustrate the damage presumably done by Giuliani, the lawsuit provides a long list of
screenshots from assorted internet uses, primarily from Twitter, fuming at Dominion and
accusing it of facilitating the election "steal." The voting machines and sharp spikes
in vote counts in favor of Joe Biden, widely attributed to the system, have been among the
centerpieces of conspiracy theories for the pro-Trump crowd in the aftermath of the turbulent
election.
The lawsuit also highlights Giuliani's role in the January 6 Capitol Hill riot, accusing him
of stirring up the violence. The document quotes Giuliani's address at the pro-Trump rally
shortly before the violence, when he urged supporters to engage in "trial by
combat."
The company is seeking at least $1.3 billion in compensatory and punitive damages from
Giuliani, demanding a trial by jury, according to the court documents.
The lawsuit against Giuliani largely resembles the one against another pro-Trump lawyer,
Sidney Powell, filed by the company earlier this month. Powell has been accused of waging a
"viral disinformation campaign" as well, with Dominion seeking the same eye-watering sum
of 1.3 billion in damages from her.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
"Election results in a county in Michigan had to be corrected to show that President Trump
won by nearly 2,000 votes after voting software gave 6,000 of his votes to Biden ." Which
probably never would have been check if Antrim County wasn't such a Red county. Hard to find
fraud when you refuse to look for it.
LeRuscino2 Sue Brown 11 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 11:08 AM
Exactly - Scream & shout 1st like MH-17 & when it's settled & Guiliani wins
nobody will know or even remember.
Banalucki 3 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 07:46 PM
so classic americana - the business that created an electronic voting "process" that
eliminates chain of custody protection, signatures and voter ID is suing Rudy for "fraud"...
Thomas51 2 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 08:26 PM
Political actions of any lawyer should bear consequences
VonnDuff1 2 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 08:01 PM
SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Policy) and nothing more. Unless you throw in
Kangaroo Courts with Monkey Judges.
Trekker 8 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 02:36 PM
Good to put Giuliani away once and for all for all the damage he has caused.
GottaBeMe Skeptic076 7 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 03:39 PM
They'll have to audit the computer code finally. And they'll have to do it using machines in
swing states that haven't been touched since November. Otherwise it's them saying one thing,
Giuliani saying something else.
Pete Wagner 7 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 03:11 PM
I guess that means they've destroyed all the damning evidence and have their judge briefed,
paid off, and ready to rule.
Sue Brown 12 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 10:53 AM
Typical USA style, don't defend yourself . . . when wronged = SUE!!!!
Enki14 9 hours ago 25 Jan, 2021 01:54 PM
Methinks this is a publicity stunt as they would not want a jury of Powell's peers to see the
evidence Patrick Byrne PH.D. has amassed and the hundreds of witnesses that would be called
to testify on Powell's behalf. Methinks they managed to destroy the evidence on their hard
drives and thus feel the evidence would be viewed as circumstantial. However the pathways are
real, were tracked and saved.
Sites and people who posted Hugo Chavez nonsense should pay the price. Which is good.
Also capabilities to produce weighted votes does not mean that it was deployed. But if it is
present it serve as a Damocles sword over the integtiry of election, as you never can be sure
whther is was somehow activated or not. And so far there is no convincing facts that it was
deployed. Looks like most common method was staffing of mail-in ballots by corrupt staff.
But Dominion tabulators do create concentration of ballots in one place, which automatically,
completely by the fact of creating the "critical mass" of ballots in one place facilitates larger
scale fraud . From this point of view they can be regarded as catalysts. That' is
undisputable.
The way sysadmin roles were assigned by Dominion, how such activity is controlled, and what
people are selected is open to review as those people automatically become powerful players in
the election process and are outside usual safeguards, which were developed for traditional
systems. In no way they can be controlled by election observers. That's the fact.
In case the machines were internet connected all Dominion employees with access to them also
become election players. As well as all interested intelligence agencies.
Conservative
blog American Thinker has issued an apology in response to Dominion Voting Systems' lawyers
accusing them and others of defamation for pushing claims their technology helped rig the
presidential election.
In a Friday statement written by editor
and publisher Thomas Lifson, American Thinker admitted their stories on conspiracy theories
surrounding Dominion machines being rigged in Joe Biden's favor were based on "discredited
sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion's supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud
on Dominion's machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes, and other
claims falsely stating that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted
fraudulently."
Lifson called the statements "completely false" and added that "Industry experts
and public officials alike have confirmed that Dominion conducted itself
appropriately."
The company went on to apologize for any "harm" their stories caused the company
and their employees.
"We also apologize to our readers for abandoning 9 journalistic principles and
misrepresenting Dominion's track record and its limited role in tabulating votes for the
November 2020 election. We regret this grave error," they added.
The apology also names Andrea Widburg, R.D. Wedge, Brian Tomlinson, and Peggy Ryan as
specific contributors who have covered conspiracy theories surrounding Dominion.
On the same day as the apology, the conservative blog also shut down its comment section,
but provided no solid reason as to why.
Pieces published by American Thinker presented theories that the machines deleted
pro-Trump votes and that it was tied to outside foreign and political groups, common theories
that have been pushed by President Trump, his legal team, and supporters.
Dominion has taken more aggressive action recently against accusations against them, even
suing Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for defamation to the tune of $1.3 billion.
The company's legal team has also targeted other right-wing media, warning Fox News
recently that action is "imminent" in response to numerous statements made on the
network by anchors and guests like Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani. They also sent letters to
individual anchors for Fox and Newsmax demanding they "cease and desist" making
defamatory statements about the company and its alleged role in rigging the presidential
election, an act they say has no proof to back it up.
In response to the threatened litigation, Fox News aired a segment multiple times shooting
down voter fraud claims linked to Dominion.
Newsmax, meanwhile, released a statement clarifying many conspiracy theories linked to
Dominion and Smartmatic, another vote counting system threatening legal action.
"I don't know or care anything about Dominion voting machines"
Why not? Take a look at Patrick Byrne's summary of evidence for massive election fraud
involving the Dominion machines, on his blog over at DeepCapture.
It will explain how a man who sheltered in his house, did not campaign, drew no more than
six or seven or twenty-five people to his events, got seven million more votes than a man who
drew up to thirty thousand people at his rallies.
...An expert witness in Georgia was able to hack into Dominion in front of the legislative
committee in less than a minute. "We're in." In Dominion, and on the internet.
Dominion machines can do anything! They can assign a weight of 1.5 per single vote to
one candidate, and .75 per vote to the other, and can adjust as necessary. They can assign
batches of "adjudicated" ballots to the candidate of your choice. They can just switch votes
from one candidate to the other in increments of several thousand, let's subtract 29,000
votes from candidate a and add them to b's column. They can allow access by a third party to
the administrator's identity and password so the third party can enter and participate
directly in tabulation of the votes.
And more. If your disfavored candidate is winning by a landslide and your 1.5/.75 ratio
isn't working, you can put in a USB card and adjust accordingly.
If you're desperate you can upload tens of thousands of votes in a single drop which all,
every one, go to your preferred candidate. And you can do it in one hour on a machine which
can only handle a few thousand votes per hour, fed in manually.
There is nothing special about Dominion. The key question is whether computer based voting
machines have the right to exist or not. Do they do any good or they are just unnessery and ripe
with potential of new forms of fraud overhead, driven by unscrupulous lobbists? That is the
question.
The ides of using consumer (or small business office, if you wish) class software and
hardware in those machines is also open to review. Military class Sever have special OS (Trusted
Solaris, OpenBSD, etc), special mechanism to prevent manipulation of binaries (md5 checksums,
mirroring on non violate media, etc), special means to prevent abuse by rogue sysadmins (dual
sysadmin mode necessary to become root, special access rules excluding areas that should not be
manipulated (AppArmor), etc. Windows based servers an, desktops and tables are consumer class
devices that can't be secured on public network to say nothing about election network where
multiple powerful actors (including intelligence agencies; both foreign and domestic ) have
strong stimulus to interfere. This is a struggle for power and it is typically dirty.
Venezuela is a weak point for Powell. As for "there was no widespread fraud in the election"
your mileage may vary. Mail-in fraud almost certainly was "widespread" as in practiced in many
battleground states. Weakening mail-in voting laws was a part of the scheme. What role direct
manipulation of votes by appointed administrators (several at each precept and counting center
(centralize counting is ripe area for fraud, especially good, old injection of votes, just due to
total amount of votes processed), If they can act along without and external control this created
several interesting questions, which needs to be answered by relevant tech investigations.
Ability to scan the same batch of ballots several times, as several election observers
complained, also needs to be blocked, and this is not an easy thing to do.
I have impression that when invalid ballot is adjudicated by the administrator a new ballot
is printed. It looks like adjudication does not leave any paper trial or set of images to
compare. That means that recount will not detect any manipulation. If true, that opens a wide
field for manipulation of votes by rogue administrators including setting scanner to jekect more
votes then nessesary creaing a pool of votes to manipulate. .
She has claimed that the company was created in Venezuela to rig elections for the late
leader Hugo Chavez and that it has the ability to switch votes.
There was no widespread fraud in the election, which a range of election officials across
the country including Trump's former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed. Republican
governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states crucial to Biden's victory, also
vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges
from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme
Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices.
The company said there "there are mountains of direct evidence that conclusively disprove
Powell's vote manipulation claims against Dominion -- namely, the millions of paper ballots
that were audited and recounted by bipartisan officials and volunteers in Georgia and other
swing states, which confirmed that Dominion accurately counted votes on paper ballots."
Dominion said that when it formally told Powell her claims were false and asked her to
retract them, she "doubled down," using her Twitter account with more than 1 million followers
to amplify the claims.
Maarten "merethan" , Jan 8, 2021 11:43 AM Reply to
Leo Washington
Election fraud is more of a tradition than incident. Remember how we used to joke about
"This presidency is brought to you by Diebold"? That was around the 2000's referring to Bush
Jr., and Diebold is the vote machine manufacturer. That's just 20 years ago mate.
Calling election fraud a hilarious idea shows a good lack of historical perspective.
Yeah, fair enough. Can we see some proof of this election fraud, then? And by 'proof', I
don't mean 'someone said'. Because I can't help thinking that if there had been any proof,
then every single 'lawsuit' would not have been laughed out of court. Or are the judges
involved in this massive left-wing conspiracy, too? Jan 8, 2021 7:27 PM Reply to
Leo Washington
Proof is all the problem: There's no proof of a fair election either. The current system
was, in the old days, the only way to ensure votes were anonymous which is a requirement for
having everyone express their true beliefs and allegiances, absent of any group pressure.
I'm all for enhancing this with cryptographic signatures and a public ledger. Such that
everyone can validate their own vote and totals but not the one made by their spouse or
neighbor specifically.
That would bring us a lot closer to the proof you are asking for, because right now we got
none in either direction. Other than the media saying so and twitter banning you for daring
to post any questions.
Two trailing democract candidates brought to the lead at the same time and in the same
proprtion by mail-in votes that are 100% democrat – what are the odds? (~0% in a
straight election, ~100% in a bent election).
I would have the same view if the R and D attributions were reversed. The election was
fixed.
The main point is that the fraud is so evident. Multiple witnesses. Examination of two
machines. Not just a smoking gun with no witnesses. The government is too afraid to confront
it out of fear of backlash. The backlash from not doing anything will be worse. Democrats
keep wanting to unify now that Trump is out. They have done nothing but hinder him and our
country because of lies being levied against him. No doubt the man has flaws but that is not
justification for what they did during his presidency. And now the evidence of the steal.
Combine that with trying to remove him to keep him from running again The shit just keeps
getting deeper and deeper while they beg for unity. All of the sudden mayors across the
country are vowing to bring back law and order now that Trump is out. I could go on and on. I
cannot express how deeply the anger goes and it is not getting any better as Democratic
leaders continue with derogatory statements all of which are lies. This is classic bullying
and kicking someone who is down. It is truly a recipe for disaster.
A lawyer for Dominion held a press conference on Friday claiming that claims that the
allegations against them are "false."
"These false allegations have caused catastrophic damage to this company. They have
branded Dominion, a voting company, as perpetrating a massive fraud," Tom Clare, the attorney
representing Dominion, said in a press conference over Zoom. "Those allegations triggered a
media firestorm that promoted those same false claims to a global audience. They've made the
company radioactive and destroyed the value of its once thriving business and has put
Dominion's multiyear contracts in jeopardy."
Smartmatic has also said that they will be filing lawsuits against people who questioned
their technology and the "media outlets that gave them a platform."
To win the lawsuit, Dominion must prove that Powell was acting in "actual malice," and not
sincere belief that they helped to rig the election against the president.
I read the filing and THIS looks like read trouble for Powell. Unlike her incoherent
filings, Dominion methodically rips apart Powell's false claims and more importantly
establishes a timeline showing malicious intent which is the key in defamation. They show how
she knowingly repeated falsehoods when it would benefit her financially.
"... A Twitter user named Joe Oltmann had tweeted a few screenshots of a Facebook user posting Antifa manifestos and songs about killing police. The Facebook account belonged to Eric Coomer, and Oltmann claimed it was the same Eric Coomer who is the Director of Product Strategy and Security for Dominion Voting Systems. Within hours of Oltmann posting the information, however, the Facebook page of Eric Coomer was taken down, so I was unable to verify that Antifa Coomer and Dominion Coomer were the same person. By the end of the day, Joe Oltmann's Twitter account was suspended as well. I had followed his feed throughout the day. I can say with certainty that he posted nothing remotely offensive or provocative. I have no doubt whatsoever that Twitter suspended him for posting the screenshots of Coomer's Facebook page. Interesting. ..."
"... Of course none of this proves any fraud took place, but we deserve some answers ..."
"... Having potentially tens of millions of people doubting results in a half-dozen different states thanks to the same company running machines in all of them is an unprecedentedly serious problem, whether or not their doubts are well-founded. ..."
"... platforms like Twitter and WordPress would do well to consider that censorship of people discussing Dominion and its employees is likely to have the opposite effect that they think it will ..."
"... in Georgia the voter signature validation was usurped for mail in ballots, allowing anyone with a mail in ballot to vote. ..."
"... There are ample undercover videos of union postal workers selling mail in ballots. ..."
"... The secretary of state usurped the law in Georgia, telling polling places to ignore the requirement to verify signatures of mail in ballots. The signatures are compared to the drivers license database. The democrats (Stacey Abrams) worked with the secretary of state to have such voting controls removed so the system could be easily frauded. ..."
"... if you think the cost of recounts is high, wait till you get a load of the cost of the electorate's lack of confidence in the election process. That cost will be measured in human lives. ..."
"... But the Russians! Not my President. Resistance. Years of investigations into gossip columnist Steele's paid report to the Democrats. ..."
Whether or not the company's machines were misused, it poses structural risks, and
suppressing criticism will make Trump supporters even more dubious
t is unlikely that many of the 73 million people who cast ballots for Donald Trump in 2020
will ever accept the legitimacy of his loss. Who could convince them? If the media sources
demanding Trump's concession held any sway with Trump's voters, they would not have been his
voters. They do not know for sure that the election was stolen, but they do know with apodictic
certainty that the media would lie to them if it was. So if Donald Trump says the election was
stolen, that's good enough for the Deplorables.
Yet even the President's most faithful must have flinched at his recent tweet accusing a
leading manufacturer of voting machines of committing election fraud on a mass scale.
It is hard to overstate the irresponsibility of broadcasting such a serious accusation
without proof. It shocked me, and my startle response has become pretty desensitized over the
last four years. Sure, it turned out Trump was right when he accused the Obama administration
of spying on his 2016 campaign, but this is different. Dominion Voting Systems is not staffed
with Obama appointees, after all. I decided to poke around a bit to see what, if anything,
could possibly be behind Trump's wild accusation.
A Twitter user named Joe Oltmann had tweeted a few screenshots of a Facebook user posting
Antifa manifestos and songs about killing police. The Facebook account belonged to Eric Coomer,
and Oltmann claimed it was the same Eric Coomer who is the Director of Product Strategy and
Security for Dominion Voting Systems. Within hours of Oltmann posting the information, however,
the Facebook page of Eric Coomer was taken down, so I was unable to verify that Antifa Coomer
and Dominion Coomer were the same person. By the end of the day, Joe Oltmann's Twitter account
was suspended as well. I had followed his feed throughout the day. I can say with certainty
that he posted nothing remotely offensive or provocative. I have no doubt whatsoever that
Twitter suspended him for posting the screenshots of Coomer's Facebook page. Interesting.
Searching around some more, I found that Dominion Coomer is an avid climber who used to post
frequently on climbing message boards under his own name. He confirmed it himself in a post
where he mentioned getting his nuclear physics Ph.D from Berkeley in 1997. Dominion's Eric
Coomer received his nuclear physics Ph.D from Berkeley in 1997. In another post on the same
message board, Coomer gave out his email address. It was his old campus address from the
Berkeley nuclear physics department. I plugged that email address into the Google machine, and
things got weird.
I found Eric Coomer had a long history of posting on websites for skinheads. He was a heavy
user of a Google Group for skinheads, and seems to have possibly been a content moderator for
papaskin.com. Only these aren't the neo-Nazis our mothers warned us about. These skinheads call
themselves SHARPs, or Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Think of them as a sort of punk rock
Antifa. In 2012, roughly 18 SHARPs attacked a smaller group of suspected racists in a Chicago
restaurant with bats and batons. That same year, three neo-Nazis were charged for the 1998
double murder of two SHARPs in Nevada.
Given that Dominion's Director of Security and Strategy, Eric Coomer, was an enthusiast of a
street fighting anti-racist skinhead culture going back at least into the 1990s, it seems very
likely that Joe Oltmann was correct in identifying him as the Facebook user recently endorsing
Antifa and posting anti-police rhetoric. I shared this information on a few message boards to
let other people run with it. Within hours, Papa Skin, a skinhead website which had been up for
over 20 years, was taken offline. (Whoever took it down missed the FAQ page, you can find it
here http://www.papaskin.com/faq/faqs.html ).
Of course none of this proves any fraud took place, but we deserve some answers. One need
only imagine if it was Joe Biden contesting the election results, and the Director for Strategy
& Security at a major voting machine provider turned out to be a Proud Boy with decades of
involvement in extremist, even violent, right wing political groups. Democrats would rightly
point out that this person endorses engaging in illegal behavior to achieve political goals.
They would ask how such a person ended up in such an important position of public trust, and
what it might say about the procedures in place to ensure Dominion's responsibilities are
handled in good faith.
Another reality of the Dominion fiasco, whether or not there was any fraud using its
machines, is the structural risk created by having the same company run machines in more than
two dozen states. If there were glitchy machines causing a dispute in one state, like
Democrats' claims about Diebold machines in Ohio in 2004, and even if that dispute led to
competing slates of electors, that is something the American political system has seen and
withstood before. Having potentially tens of millions of people doubting results in a
half-dozen different states thanks to the same company running machines in all of them is an
unprecedentedly serious problem, whether or not their doubts are well-founded.
Moreover, platforms like Twitter and WordPress would do well to consider that censorship of
people discussing Dominion and its employees is likely to have the opposite effect that they
think it will: Twitter bans, site removals, and wiping of bios from websites are only going to
make Trump's hardcore supporters think Dominion has something to hide. You can't make
disagreements go away by banning one side and pretending there is unanimity.
Darryl Cooper is the host of the MartyrMade podcast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
You may have to work on your awareness. And a full audit of the whole process is definitely a
lot more than some random spot.
The list you just linked showed that most states conduct routine audits of races.
The only states that don't seem to are deep red ones.
Spot audits are a valid way of discovering errors. If every state had to do full recounts for
every single race, the cost to taxpayers would be enormous and wasteful.
...Places like Georgia where Ds destroyed the system by actually eliminating audit... they just
run exactly the same fake ballots through they ran the first time... & they had a
'signature verification' & they didn't even turn the machine on.
There are three obvious methods of election fraud occurring in 2020
1) canvasing, where those canvasing voters holding mail in ballots are convincing them to
change their vote from republican to democrat, then paying them with what amounts to
trinkets. (flash light, pocket knife, tee shirt, those sorts of things)
2) Voting machine weighted votes, which occurs in republican heavy precincts using the Banzhaf Power Index. This system counts votes in decimals less than and greater than one for
each vote. An example would be weighting republican votes where each republican vote would
count 0.75, meaning 4 voters are necessary to achieve a vote of 3. (1.5 + 1.5 = 3), the
weighted scale increases as the number of votes increase. This is known as vote
redistribution. In essence a system such as this cold require(at 0.25) 200k republican votes
to equal 50k democrat votes
3) Mail in ballots which are rife with fraud of many types
That's not reality for SCOTUS. They don't make those kinds of rulings. What I would expect
from a majority opinion if they believed there was substantive fraud that was sufficient to
overturn the election results, would go like this: "Based upon the quantity and quality of
indicia for illegal ballots being counted, it is the opinion of the court that states X,Y,Z,
etc., cannot certify their election results based upon the election held on 3 NOV 20.
Accordingly, this case is remanded to the respective state legislatures for cure."
So what can the state legislatures do in accordance with Article II and the 12th
Amendment? They can try to do a revote, but that is nearly impossible given the time
constraints required by law. They can in many of these states appoint electors independently
of the vote held on 3 NOV 20. Keep in mind, not every state permits such a role for the
legislature. I don't see that happening, since the **perception** will be that they
disenfranchised all of the state's voters. The only logical outcome is all of those
respective states will not be able to certify their elections. As such, the 12th Amendment is
instructive here. At that point, Congress will decide who becomes president. This also
happened in the 1801 and 1825. Each state delegation gets exactly **one** vote. Since
republicans control 26 of the 50 state delegations, you can guess how that vote might
tilt.
Isn't that preciously what your radical Dem brothers and sisters are up to hoping to snag
the Senate via Georgia on Jan 4th so that a one party America exists indefinitely? You are
"projecting" what your ilk is actually hoping to accomplish. 'Jeepers', yeah jeepers is
right. Nice try though.
You may want to read the complaint and resulting law suit filed by Lin Wood related to
Georgia mail in ballots. It eliminates your assumptions with fact. Yes, in Georgia the voter
signature validation was usurped for mail in ballots, allowing anyone with a mail in ballot
to vote.There are ample undercover videos of union postal workers selling mail in ballots.
Further there are many cases where mail in ballots were requested then the voter showed up at
the polls to physically vote. The voter indicating they had never requested a mail in ballot.
Plenty of documented cases, all you need do is look past you keyboard and tater chip
bag...
The secretary of state usurped the law in Georgia, telling polling places to ignore the
requirement to verify signatures of mail in ballots. The signatures are compared to the
drivers license database. The democrats (Stacey Abrams) worked with the secretary of state to
have such voting controls removed so the system could be easily frauded.
Audits will work if cross auditing is randomly performed and auditors have the authority
to either close the polls or invalidate the poll count based upon their discoveries.
Austin Texas = Kelly Reagan Brunner who was working at a Supported Living Center for
senior citizens has been arrested and charged with more than 100 counts of voter fraud. (She
was canvassing and changing votes).
Erie county elections, Poll worker posts on twitter about him throwing out Trump
votes.
7 Wards in Milwaukee report more votes than actual registered voters
Republican poll watchers prevented from entering Detroit poll counting center. official
states COVID 19 as their reason.
MIT scientists find objective evidence of vote tallies being forced negatively away for
the statistical mean by vote software. This was discovered in several states.
And on and on and on .........a landslide of objective evidence.
I'll tell you what Prof., if you think the cost of recounts is high, wait till you get a
load of the cost of the electorate's lack of confidence in the election process. That cost
will be measured in human lives.
But the Russians! Not my President. Resistance. Years of investigations into gossip
columnist Steele's paid report to the Democrats.
How could anybody with a brain in their head have ever taken Steele seriously? OK, he did
speak to a Yank who was once a Russian.
There was also a news aggregator run by Russians just as there are others run by other
humans. Only racists think that free speech should be restricted to Yanks.
[email protected]
Have you not been paying attention? The Dems states threw all election safeguards/checks
and balances in the garbage like the USPS workers did, and some claim poll workers did. Experts have done audits of the voting in swing states/counties and found highly
improbable vote counts......So.......
Is Mitch McConnell a shadow lobbyist for Dominion?
Notable quotes:
"... In July, McConnell blocked two bills, one that would provide $775 million to "bolster election security," along with requiring a physical paper trail of every single ballot cast in the country, and a second that would mandate political candidates, their staff members, and their families, to notify the FBI if any foreign government offered to assist them. ..."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) quashed two election integrity bills in July
last year after receiving thousands in donations from Dominion lobbyists.
In July, McConnell blocked two bills, one that would provide $775 million to "bolster
election security," along with requiring a physical paper trail of every single ballot cast in
the country, and a second that would mandate political candidates, their staff members, and
their families, to notify the FBI if any foreign government offered to assist them.
On Wednesday during a
hearing in front of Georgia State Senators, inventor Jovan Pulitzer testified that his team
found a polling location in Fulton County, GA, that was connected to the internet so they were
able to hack into the Dominion Voting machines system and take over the poll pad and establish
a two way communication of sending and receiving data. All this was happening in real-time
while Mr. Pulitzer was testifying.
Poll locations are not supposed to have internet access. The polling site in question is
being used for the current Georgia Senate runoff elections so this confirms that the runoff is
connected to the internet. It appears that the Georgia Senate runoff elections are rigged just
like the 2020 election. Are you okay with this? Stay tuned!
The problem with the indisputable evidence isn't that it's being disputed. It's being
blatantly ignored. We are losing our country, our middle class and our freedom because truly
evil people are not being forced to follow the laws.
"Most secure election ever" unless there is a smart thermostat in the room... or any
wireless device... oh and the USB slots on the side of the machines... and then there is the
free downloadable version of the code we used to program the machines... and the instructions
on how to hack our machines on numerous websites... But other than that this is the most
secure election ever.
There was a guy that testified a while back about the claim that these machines are not
connected to the internet. I don't remember his name, which state, or anything like that.
Just that he was on via a zoom call. Anyhow, this guy said that on election night there was a
machine that wasn't working properly because it was coded to the wrong location or precinct.
The poll Supervisor called support which i believe he said was in Colorado. They were able to
remote into the computer & fix it. An internet connection must be present for remote
support. The guy even had a print out record of the call.
Less than a month before the election, a Swiss bank that is 75 percent owned by communist
China
forked over $400 million in cash to Staple Street Capital, the parent company of Dominion
Voting Systems.
Dominion, which operates electronic voting machines in 28 states, has been the
subject of election fraud inquiries and lawsuits alleging that the machines and their
software switched, altered and deleted votes on behalf of Joe Biden.
As first reported by
Infowars , an SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filing from Oct. 8 shows that
Staple Street Capital received $400 million "with the Sales Compensation Recipient identified
as UBS Securities." Back in Dec. 2014, $200 million was received by Staple Street Capital from
the same source.
... ... ...
In other words, UBS Securities is a 100 percent Chinese-owned corporation, and it gave
nearly half a billion dollars to a company that runs most of America's elections, just days
before the most contested and obviously fraudulent election in American history.
1. As a Graphic Designer with a degree, I didn't understand why so many ballots were spit
out as unreadable by the voting machines on November 3rd. But after watching Jovan Pulitzers
testimony today in Georgia I now completely understand. Let me explain..
2. As a graphic designer all elements/layers of my design must line up in order to print
on the paper properly. Otherwise it can put out blurred images on the final product at the
printing shop. The printing machines follow something put on my art/documents
3. called "Registration Marks". Every student in Graphic Designer in college is stressed
that these are never to be off or you are wasting the printers time and the clients time.
Which is very bad, graphic designers get fired for this.
4. Back in the old days when we did this work by hand it was easy to make these mistakes,
before the computers I'm dating myself here because that's when I started before computers.
Now I design everything on computers that go to a printer.
5. On computer software, say photoshop for example, we no longer make these mistakes
because the software sets all registration marks electronically every time in every layer of
our art/document. In Mr. Pulitzers testimony he points out that
6. the Registration Marks (he called bullseye/target) are not lined up in the
predominantly Republican areas voters voting papers. And he shows you that the Democratic
areas voters voting papers are perfectly accurate Registration Marks. See below
7. You can see the Republican areas voter documents were off on the Registration Marks.
Very off. Because these are documents meant to be scanned by a counter, those bad
Registration Marks will toss the document out as uncountable.
8. Why was this print run allowed to proceed? Any print manager would have seen this in
the printers proof and rejected the print run. How did the Registration Marks get
misaligned?
9. Who printed these ballots? I have more that a few questions for them, like who designed
these Republican areas ballots? Why weren't they corrected? Why are the missing barcodes on
the Democrat ballots? I can think of many more questions. I bet you can too.
10. I bet I'm not the only Graphic Designer out there today to make this connection
finally to the tabulation machines rejection rates now.
11. Jovan Pulitzer's testimony today if you want to watch.
Looks like Sidney Powell overplayed her hand with her Hugo Chavez claims and might pay the
price... They also attack her penchant for self-promotion.
This is a solid legal document that attack exaggerations and false claims and as such it puts
Sydney Power on the defensive. But at the same time it opens the possibility to analyze Dominion
machines and see to what extent votes can be manipulated, for example by lowest sensitivity of
the scanner for mail-in ballots and then manually assigning votes to desirable candidate. This
avenue is not excluded.
It also does not address the claim of inherent vulnerabilities of any Windows based computer
used in election, irrespective whether they were produced by Dominion or any other company due to
the known vulnerability of windows OS especially to the intelligence agencies attacks. As
well as the most fundamental question: whether the use of computers in election represents step
forward or the step back in election security? Especially Internet connected voting machines and
centralized tabulation centers deployed in 2020 elections.
So the success here depends whether they can narrow the scope tot ht claims made and avid
discovery of the voting machines themselves.
The weak point is that the letter references the testimony of Chris Krebs, who is a former
Microsoft employee and as such has a conflict of interests in accessing the security of Windows
based election machines produced by Dominion and other companies. Moreover he is now a computer
science processional but a lawyer, who does not has any independent opinion on the subject matter
due to the absence of fundamental CS knowledge required.
Notable quotes:
"... For example, you falsely claimed that Dominion and its software were created in Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections for the now-deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, that Dominion paid kickbacks to Georgia officials in return for a "no-bid" contract to use Dominion systems in the 2020 election, and that Dominion rigged the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election by manipulating votes, shifting votes, installing and using an algorithm to modify or "weight" votes such that a vote for Biden counted more than a vote for Trump, trashing Trump votes, adding Biden votes, and training election workers to dispose of Trump votes and to add Biden votes. ..."
"... Fifth, you had a financial incentive in making the defamatory accusations. Your own conduct and statements at the press conference, media tour, and on your websites make it clear that you were publicizing your wild accusations as part of a fundraising scheme and in order to drum up additional business and notoriety for yourself. ..."
Sidney Powell Defending the Republic 10130 Northlake Blvd. #214342 West Palm Beach, Florida
34412
Re: Defamatory Falsehoods About Dominion
Dear Ms. Powell:
We represent US Dominion Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiaries, Dominion Voting Systems,
Inc. and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (collectively, "Dominion"). We write regarding
your wild, knowingly baseless, and false accusations about Dominion, which you made on behalf
of the Trump Campaign as part of a coordinated media circus and fundraising scheme featuring
your November 19 press conference in Washington, D.C. and including your "Stop the Steal" rally
and numerous television and radio appearances on -- and statements to -- Fox News, Fox
Business, Newsmax, and the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show, among others.
... ... ...
I. Your reckless disinformation campaign is predicated on lies that have endangered
Dominion's business and the lives of its employees.
Given the sheer volume and ever-expanding set of lies that you have told and are continuing
to tell about Dominion as part of your multi-media disinformation "Kraken" fundraising
campaign, it would be impractical to address every one of your falsehoods in this letter.
Without conceding the truth of any of your claims about Dominion, we write to demand that you
retract your most serious false accusations, which have put Dominion's employees' lives at risk
and caused enormous harm to the company.
For example, you falsely claimed that Dominion and its software were created in
Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections for the now-deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo
Chavez, that Dominion paid kickbacks to Georgia officials in return for a "no-bid" contract to
use Dominion systems in the 2020 election, and that Dominion rigged the 2020 U.S. Presidential
Election by manipulating votes, shifting votes, installing and using an algorithm to modify or
"weight" votes such that a vote for Biden counted more than a vote for Trump, trashing Trump
votes, adding Biden votes, and training election workers to dispose of Trump votes and to add
Biden votes.
By way of example only, just last week, you made the following false assertions about
Dominion to Jan Jekielek at The Epoch Times:'
Effectively what they did with the machine fraud was to, they did everything from
injecting massive quantities of votes into the system that they just made up, to running
counterfeit ballots through multiple times in multiple batches to create the appearance of
votes that weren't really there. They trashed votes.
These statements are just the tip of the iceberg, which includes similar and other false
claims you made at your Washington, D.C. press conference and to other media outlets with
global internet audiences. Your outlandish accusations are demonstrably fake. While soliciting
people to send you "millions of dollars"2 and holding yourself out as a beacon of truth, you
have purposefully avoided naming Dominion as a defendant in your sham litigations-effectively
denying Dominion the opportunity to disprove your false accusations in court. Dominion values
freedom of speech and respects the right of all Americans-of all political persuasions -- to
exercise their First Amendment rights and to disagree with each other. But while you are
entitled to your own opinions, Ms. Powell, you are not entitled to your own facts. Defamatory
falsehoods are actionable in court and the U.S.
Supreme Court has made clear that "there is no constitutional value in false statements of
fact." Gertz v. Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 340 (1974). Dominion welcomes transparency and a
full investigation of the relevant facts in a court of law, where it is confident the truth
will prevail. Here are the facts:
1. Dominion's vote counts have been repeatedly verified by paper ballot recounts and
independent audits.
Dominion is a non-partisan company that has proudly partnered with public officials from
both parties in accurately tabulating the votes of the American people in both "red" and "blue"
states and counties. Far from being created to rig elections for a now-deceased Venezuelan
dictator, Dominion's voting systems are certified under standards promulgated by the U.S.
Election Assistance Commission ("EAC"), reviewed and tested by independent testing laboratories
accredited by the EAC, and were designed to be auditable and include a paper ballot backup to
verify results. Indeed, paper ballot recounts and independent audits have repeatedly and
conclusively debunked your election-rigging claims, and on November 12, 2020, the Elections
Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector
Coordinating Executive Committees released a joint statement confirming that there is "no
evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way
compromised" and that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.3 The Joint
Statement was signed and endorsed by, among others, the National Association of State Election
Directors, National Association of Secretaries of State, and the U.S. Cybersecurity &
Infrastructure Security Agency ("CISA") -- then led by a Trump appointee, Chris Krebs.
In addition, your false accusation that Dominion rigged the 2020 election is based on a
demonstrably false premise that wildly overstates Dominion's very limited role in elections.
Dominion provides tools such as voting machines that accurately tabulate votes for the
bipartisan poll workers, poll watchers, and local election officials who work tirelessly to run
elections and ensure accurate results. Dominion's machines count votes from county-verified
voters using a durable paper ballot. Those paper ballots are the hard evidence proving the
accuracy of the vote counts from Dominion's machines. If Dominion had manipulated the votes,
the paper ballots would not match the machine totals. In fact, they do match. Recounts and
audits have proven that Dominion did what it was designed and hired to do: accurately tabulate
votes.
2. Dominion has no connection to Hugo Chavez. Venezuela, or China.
As you are well aware from documents in the public domain and attached to your court
filings, Hugo Chavez's elections were not handled by Dominion, but by an entirely different
company -- Smartmatic. This is a critical fact because you have premised your defamatory
falsehoods on your intentionally false claim that Dominion and Smartmatic are the same company
even though you know that they are entirely separate companies who compete with each other.
Dominion was not created in or for Venezuela, has never been located there, and is not owned by
Smartmatic or Venezuelan or Chinese investors. Dominion has never provided machines or any of
its software or technology to Venezuela, nor has it ever participated in any elections in
Venezuela. It did not receive $400 million from the Chinese in the weeks before the 2020
election or otherwise. It has no ties to the Chinese government, the Venezuelan government,
Hugo Chavez, Malloch Brown, George Soros, Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster. Dominion does not
use Smartmatic's software or machines, and there was no Smartmatic technology in any of
Dominion's voting machines in the 2020 election.
3. You falsely claimed that Dominion's founder admitted he "can change a million votes,
no problem at all" and that you would "tweet out the video later''-- but you never did so
because no such video exists.
During at least one of your many media appearances, you promised to "tweet out [a] video" of
Dominion's founder admitting that he "can change a million votes, no problem at all." Your
assertion -- to a global internet audience -- that you had such damning video evidence
bolstered your false accusations that Dominion had rigged the election. Yet you have never
produced that video because, as you know, it does not exist. Dominion's founder never made such
a claim because Dominion cannot change votes. Its machines simply tabulate the paper ballots
that remain the custody of the local election officials -- nothing more, nothing less. 4. You
falsely claimed that you have a Dominion employee "on tape" saving he "rigged the election for
Biden''-- but you know that no such tape exists. In peddling your defamatory accusations, you
also falsely told a national audience that you had a Dominion employee "on tape" saying that
"he rigged the election for Biden." Your own court filings prove that no such tape exists. In
them, you cited an interview of Joe Oltmann, a Twitter- banned "political activist" who -- far
from claiming he had that shocking alleged confession "on tape"-claimed he took "notes" during
a conference call he supposedly joined after "infiltrating Antifa." This is a facially
ludicrous claim for a number of reasons, including the fact that he lives in Colorado, where it
would have been perfectly legal to record such a call if it had actually happened. As a result
of your false accusations, that Dominion employee received death threats.
II. Because there is no reliable evidence supporting your defamatory falsehoods, you
actively manufactured and misrepresented evidence to support them.
Despite repeatedly touting the overwhelming "evidence" of your assertions during your media
campaign, every court to which you submitted that socalled "evidence" has dismissed each of
your sham litigations, and even Trump appointees and supporters have acknowledged -- including
after you filed your "evidence" in court, posted it on your fundraising website, and touted it
in the media -- that there is no evidence that actually supports your assertions about
Dominion. Indeed:
One federal judge observed that you submitted "nothing but speculation and conjecture
that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice
President Biden." Op. & Order Den. Pl.'s Emer. Motion, for Deck, Emer., and Inj. Relief
at 34, Whitmer v. City of Detroit, No. 20-cv-12134 (E.D. Mich. Dec. 7, 2020) [Dkt. 62].
Another federal judge commented that the attachments to your complaint were "only
impressive for their volume," are "largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and
irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections," and include "expert reports" that "reach
implausible conclusions, often because they are derived from wholly unreliable sources."
Order at 24-25, Bowyerv. Ducey, No. 2-20-cv-02321 (D. Ariz. Dec. 9, 2020) [Dkt. 84].
Despite your claim that you have so much "evidence" that it feels as if you are drinking
from a "fire hose," when asked by your interviewers and other media outlets to provide that
evidence, you have failed to do so each and every time. Conservative television host Tucker
Carlson even called you out for failing to provide any evidence to support your
assertions.4
After you put the purported "evidence" in your court filings, Trump loyalist and U.S.
Attorney General Bill Barr stated, "There's been one assertion that would be systemic fraud
and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election
results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven't seen anything to
substantiate that."
... ... ...
Fifth, you had a financial incentive in making the defamatory accusations. Your own
conduct and statements at the press conference, media tour, and on your websites make it clear
that you were publicizing your wild accusations as part of a fundraising scheme and in order to
drum up additional business and notoriety for yourself. Your financial incentive and
motive to make the defamatory accusations is further evidence of actual malice. See Brown v.
Petrolite Corp., 965 F.2d 38, 47 (5th Cir. 1992); Enigma Software Grp. USA, LLC v. Bleeping
Computer LLC, 194 F. Supp. 3d 263, 288 (S.D.N.Y. 2016).
Sixth, you cannot simply claim ignorance of the facts. As a licensed attorney, you were
obligated to investigate the factual basis for your claims before making them in court.
31 There is no factual basis for your defamatory accusations against Dominion and
numerous reliable sources and documents in the public domain have repeatedly debunked your
accusations. As such, you either conducted the inquiry required of you as a licensed attorney
and violated your ethical obligations by knowingly making false assertions rebutted by the
information you found, or you violated your ethical obligations by purposefully avoiding
undertaking the reasonable inquiry required of you as a member of the bar. Either is additional
evidence of actual malice.
Taken together, your deliberate misrepresentation and manufacturing of evidence, the
inherent improbability of your accusations, your reliance on facially unreliable sources, your
intentional disregard of reliable sources, your preconceived storyline, your financial
incentive, and your ethical violations are clear and convincing evidence of actual malice. See
Eramo v. Rolling Stone, 209 F. Supp. 3d 862,872 (W.D. Va. 2016) (denying defendant's motion for
summary judgment and finding "[ajlthough failure to adequately investigate, a departure from
journalistic standards, or ill
A security director at Dominion Voting Systems , the company
charged by many of playing a role in 'rigging' the US election via voting machines, is suing
the Trump campaign and several conservative news outlets.
Eric Coomer has filed
suit , claiming he has received death threats stemming from the accusations that Dominion
helped sway the election in Joe Biden's favour.
The defamation suit identifies the Trump campaign, as well as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell,
and the conservative news organisations Gateway Pundit, Newsmax, and One America News Network
(OANN).
The suit also personally targets conservative talking heads Michelle Malkin and Joseph
Oltmann.
Mr Coomer has been identified as the individual referred to by Oltmann as "Eric from
Dominion" in
statements made to OAN and other conservative outlets regarding alleged bragging to Antifa
activists about making sure Trump wasn't going to get re-elected:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/qZ_ks_sNITg
The lawsuit states that Mr Coomer has been made "the face of false claims" in relation to
Dominion's alleged influence over the election.
The suit further states that photos of Coomer, as well as his home address and personal
family details have been made public by some pro-Trump websites.
Mr Coomer has stated that "I've worked in international elections in all sorts of
post-conflict countries where election violence is real and people are getting killed over it.
And I feel that we're on the verge of that."
In an
op-ed posted by the Denver Post , Coomer declared that he has "no connection to the Antifa
movement" and "did not 'rig,' or influence the election."
The lawsuit comes on the
heels of a similar threat of legal action by voting machine company Smartmatic, which has
issued legal notices to Fox News, OAN and Newsmax, accusing the networks of a "campaign [that]
was designed to defame Smartmatic and undermine a legitimately conducted elections."
The legal notice is also said to have specifically named Fox News hosts Lou Dobbs, Jesse
Watters, and Maria Bartiromo, and indicates that Smartmatic could pursue legal action against
them personally.
Dominion itself has not yet issued any legal notices to media outlets. It has, however,
sent a letter to Sidney Powell , demanding she retract some "wild and reckless" allegations
she has made about them. 43,247 272 NEVER MISS
GoldHermit PREMIUM 9 hours ago
Can't wait for the discovery phase
BaNNeD oN THe RuN 8 hours ago
Exactly, it is very unlikely that the cheating occured at the machine stage since a manual
recount would prove the machine's error.
Cheating was done at the ballot level. The data clearly suggests it happened.
Trump supposedly got 11 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016.
Clinton 2016 - 65,853,677
Biden 2020 - 81,284,778 (+15.4mm)
Total Votes 2016 - 137,143,218
Total Votes 2020 - 158,537,765 (+21.4mm)
The data strongly suggests that both teams cheated and that the Democrats were simply the
better cheaters this time.
That is a meritocracy of sorts, right?
Gerrilea 7 hours ago
NO, the ballots AND the machines. The "recounts" have not happened...not legitimately.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN 7 hours ago
A manual recount happened in Georgia and confirmed the machine result
All the reports of the cheating in Georgia involve mail in ballots or boxes of ballots
counted after the R scrutineers had left.
WedgeMan 7 hours ago remove link
Liar. They did a count using a sample of the ballots and got different number from the two
machines because the software had been replaced with the cheating software.
MoreFreedom 8 hours ago
That's why he'll drop the suit. Imagine if people filed lawsuits against Democrats because
their affidavit of election fraud caused people to make death threats against them. They
claim such suits are without merit.
Just read the Antrim Country Forensics Report on Dominion Voting System. It's just a
computer with software, that can be changed during an election (and was in at least one
documented case) over the internet by anyone in the world with administrative access to the
machines or servers.
HowdyDoody 5 hours ago (Edited) remove link
2017 - Voting machines are easily hacked - CNN report
It should be interesting to see how the systems were secured during those 3 years.
Edit:
" The legal notice is also said to have specifically named Fox News hosts Lou Dobbs, Jesse
Watters, and Maria Bartiromo, and indicates that Smartmatic could pursue legal action against
them personally. "
This smacks of lawfare. Interestingly (((The Only Democracy In The Middle East))) excels
at that (via Shurat HaDin) - partly in response to attempts to hold it to account. From wiki
(yeah, I know)
"The NGO Forum of the 2001 Durban Conference (31 August 2001 - 8 September 2001) called
for the "establishment of a war crimes tribunal" against Israel."
For some reason, that appears to have gone nowhere.
As for Croomer, there is very little background. He says "I've worked in international
elections in all sorts of post-conflict countries where election violence is real and people
are getting killed over it." - That sounds straight out of CIA/USAID organised US regime
change ops.
MoreFreedom 8 hours ago (Edited) remove link
I agree, but it would be great if it does go to court.
Mr Coomer has stated that "I've worked in international elections in all sorts of
post-conflict countries where election violence is real and people are getting killed over
it. And I feel that we're on the verge of that."
Looks like Dominion is a favorite of "post-conflict countries were election violence is
real and people are getting killed". Note the contradiction between "post-conflict" and
"people are getting killed". Croomer wants to say his machines are the favorite of
"post-conflict" law abiding countries but it seems his machines go to where political
violence occurs as a result of crooked elections of despots, or leads to it. Quite an
endorsement for election fraud IMHO.
Just read the Antrim County Forensics Report on Dominion Voting System. As an IT guy, my
reading is that Croomer will lose his lawsuit, which is why he'll drop it later. You may not
have even read in the MSM, that Antrim county did 3 counts of the electronic ballots on 3
different days, and got 3 different results. And no one may have made it clear to you, that
68% of these ballots filled out on electronic screens were flagged as needing to be
adjudicated, and they were adjudicated and likely changed by someone with sufficient
authority (an administrative user on the system) but the logs have been removed so we don't
even know who did it. Did you hear the Dominion voting systems were connected to the
internet? Did you know that some Dominion employee changed voting software via the internet
during the elections? The MSM wants to keep it quiet. FEC guidelines are that no more than
0.008% (1 of 250,000) should require any adjudication. And did you read the Antrim county, a
reliably GOP country, initially had Biden winning on the first count, but in actuality it
went to Trump?
I'd like to see Dominion defending against Trump's lawyers and explain how their systems
work (which they don't, claiming it's a closed system) and how fraud is prevented. The report
states:
We conclude that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed
with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.
Max21c 8 hours ago (Edited)
Vote out any voting machine company that is not open source and does not make it's code
available well in advance of the election... and do it worldwide... (fawk the CIA and British
Gestapo)... let the bums in the secret police pick better behaved puppets and make the CIA
puppets better govern...
As long as the voting machines are not open source then they are an enigma machine and
it's the jeopardy of Pandora's box being opened in numerous elections afterwards over charges
and suspicions of election fraud...
Open source for the kernel... open source for all the kernel modules... open source for
all the firmware on all the chips, ic's and boards... open source for the higher level
applications... et cetera... all the board changes and firmware changes recorded and posted
publicly per notice of the change and available for scrutiny and all the "software patches
and upgrades" also recorded and posted publicly per notice of the change.. make the changelog
available...
source code + the compiler and linker and all the compiled code and all the libraries,
header files, and other files... turned over in advance... and any changes thereafter also
turned over...the whole shabang... nothing concealed and nothing held back...
donkey_shot 8 hours ago (Edited)
eric "from dominion" coomer who bragged openly about "taking care of the elections" is
suing fox, oan and newsmax?
these people know no shame...and are obviously as dumb as rocks, too.
can`t wait for sidney powell and/or lin wood to take up the case and rip this guy
another.
NAV 8 hours ago remove link
To trust that justice will be done via America's stacked judicial system is like a Russian
trusting in Stalin's judicial system. That is why Coomer is suing; he's been assured the
DeepState has his back. All that stands now between American patriots and freedom is their
guns.
Other than President Trump, no one cares enough about America to protect it . So why are
we spending $1,000 billion annually to defend ourselves from alleged foreign threats when
there is no defense against our country's theft by the ruling Establishment and woke Democrat
identity politics ideologues? Why vote Republican when the party does not defend us?
The journalist Katerina Blinova writing in Sputnik International captured the meaning of
the stolen presidential election. Democrats are turning America into a "
one-party system ".
If the Democrats succeed in stealing the Georgia senatorial seats as well, which is likely
given the absence of protection against electoral fraud, they will rapidly move to
consolidate one-party dictatorship.
... ... ...
Trident5000 5 hours ago remove link
Fact: Nobody has even audited Dominion code because they claim IP protection.
JosephJohnson 9 hours ago
It is very good that Dominion is suing! --For the legal "facts discovery" process and
accompanying legal investigations involving such a lawsuit will be awesome to have revealed
in court! The defense will surely bring out some very interesting facts concerning voter
fraud with the Dominion machines. Let the lawsuits begin.
propaganda4u 9 hours ago
Not to mention all payments to and from politicians and Dominion.
Sinophile 9 hours ago remove link
" Mr Coomer has stated that "I've worked in international elections in all sorts of
post-conflict countries where election violence is real and people are getting killed over
it. And I feel that we're on the verge of that."
This guy is unbelievable.
skippy dinner 4 hours ago remove link
You have missed a step.
If A merely alleges that B cheats on his taxes, nothing happens.
But if B sues for defamation , then that puts the onus on B to prove he is squeaky clean.
*Then* A gets the powers of discovery on B's tax filings.
Suing for defamation is a dangerous game. Rich and famous people have done time for
perjury - e.g. famous novelist and politician Geoffrey Archer.
Hail Spode 8 hours ago
Notice that Dominion as a company did not file the suit, only an employee of the company.
And not over the issue of whether their machines and software can, by design, be used to rig
an election. Only over the issue of what he said on a particular occasion.
IOW Dominion is still acting guilty and this still would not open the door to
discovery.
Freddie 7 hours ago remove link
The new thing I saw online was the Dominion machines have a wireless card built in that
can connect to the Internet via wi fi to the thermostat in an office building. No need to
have a Cat 5 cable plugged into a router. It goes Wi Fi to the building thermostat that is wi
fi.
So Dominion is claiming that they have no relationship at any time and in any way
what-so-ever with the CIA or any other intelligence agency or secret police agency of any
country? And they have no ties to any political party and are so super squeaky clean they
should be selling soap? Matter of fact they're so super squeaky clean Proctor & Gamble is
afraid of them and may have to pay consideration to Dominion to keep them out of the consumer
and industrial soap markets.
2banana 9 hours ago
They are trying to keep this lawsuit very narrow with the Antifa focus.
Lawsuits have wide discovery data requests with pretty severe consequences for not
delivering the requested data.
Dominion's top engineer assured Antifa activists that he had "made f**king sure" that
President Donald Trump wouldn't win the presidential race, according to reports.
Dominion Voting Systems' Vice President of U.S. Engineering Eric Coomer allegedly spoke
with Antifa members on conference calls and reportedly assured the other participants by
saying:
"Don't worry about the election, Trump's not gonna win. I made f**king sure of that!"
Dominion Voting Systems is one of the largest voting technology companies in the United
States.
Eric Coomer's profile as director at Dominion Voting Systems was recently scrubbed from
their website...
Hopefully for him he was honest with his attorneys so they could give him the best
possible advice. It would be a shame for him to get blindsided in the discovery process.
snatchpounder PREMIUM 9 hours ago
Excellent, dominion just opened the door and the *** ******* they're going to get will be
hilarious.
jayman21 PREMIUM 9 hours ago
Hope you are right. We need a functioning gov't more than ever. Doubt they will get what
they deserved until the sheep start to wake up en mass ~40% would due the trick.
FakeScience PREMIUM 8 hours ago
In a fair justice system maybe. I'd bet money that it goes before a Soros funded judge who
doesn't allow any discovery by the defendant and only accepts evidence by Dominion.
snatchpounder PREMIUM 8 hours ago
Yes the court system is thoroughly corrupt so it's going to be hard to find a judge who
isn't a bought and paid for Soros hack.
Cactus52 9 hours ago
Time for Discovery. They do realize the defendant is allowed to do this
Jung 10 hours ago
So why can they do this, while the MSM is hardly ever sued for their malicious, defamatory
fake news? Are they really afraid of the owners of the MSM? It would be one of the ways to
get rid of the endless propaganda and censorship.
Here's what Coomer had to say to his "friends" on Facebook on July 21, 2016, who are Trump
supporters (language editted):
Facebook friend land- open call-
If you are planning to vote for the autocratic, narcissistic, fascists, a$$-hat blowhard
and his Christian jihadist VP pic, UNFRIEND ME NOW!
No, I'm not joking.
I'm all for reasoned political discourse and healthy debate- I'm looking at you ( 3
names of friends).
I disagree with you three on many philosophical grounds but respect your opinions.
Only and absolute F**KING IDIOT could ever vote for that wind-bag f**k-tard FASCIST
RACIST F**K!
No bulls**t, I don't give a damn if you're friend, family, or random acquaintance, pull
the lever, mark an oval, touch a screen for that carnival barker -- UNFRIEND ME NOW.
I have no desire whatsoever to ever interact with you.
You are beyond hope, beyond reason. you are controlled by fear, reaction, and bulls**t.
Get your s**t together.
Oh, it that doesn't persuade you, F**K YOU! Seriously, this f**king a$$-clown stands
against everything that makes this country awesome!
You want in on that? You deserve nothing but contempt.
ableman28 6 hours ago
Just because people who don't like trump have facts on their side, boo hoo. We have belief
and that is much stronger than reality. Let those courts hear the suit and if Sydney loses
big deal. What are they going to do, disbar her and seize her assets to pay the other sides
legal fees and judgement.
"Yes, my son, that is exactly what is going to happen."`
naro 6 hours ago
Why doesn't the Trump reelection office announce a $10 million reward and a full pardon
for any Dominion insider who can provide evidence of rigging of the machines to favor
Democrats?
Decimus Lunius Luvenalis 10 hours ago
Personally, I thought the voting systems fraud were pretty big with little, if any, direct
evidence. Powell claimed to know the algorithm but we never saw it. That said, truth is an
affirmative defense to a defamation claim, and discovery goes both ways.
Itchy and Scratchy 10 hours ago remove link
The software is probably long since erased and the audit trails destroyed. They will find
nothing.
Constitutional Attorney Matthew DePerno is an American hero. Two weeks ago, Michigan 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin A Elsenheimer
agreed to allow Mr. DePerno's client, William Bailey, and a highly skilled team of IT experts to perform a forensic examination
on 16 of the Dominion voting machines in Antrim County, MI. On Monday, Judge Elsenheimer agreed to allow the results of the
forensic examination to be released to the public. The results were damning.
After the forensic examination of 16 Dominion Voting machines in Antrim, Co., MI, Allied Security Operations Group has concluded
that the Dominion Voting machines were assigned a 68.05% error rate. DePerno explained that when ballots are put through the
machine, a whopping 68.05% error rate means that 68.05% of the ballots are sent for bulk adjudication, which means they collect
the ballots in a folder. "The ballots are sent somewhere where people in another location can change the vote," DePerno
explained. The allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission guidelines is 1 in 250,000 ballots or
.0008%.
Based on the Allied Security Operations report, Constitutional Attorney Matthew DePerno states: "we conclude that The Dominion
Voting System should not be used in Michigan. We further conclude that the results of Antrim County should not have been
certified.
The stunning report was widely criticized by the Democrat Party mainstream media and by the dishonest Secretary of State Jocelyn
Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel
Yesterday, The Detroit News announced that AG Nessel is planning to seek sanctions against lawyers "who pushed to overturn
Michigan's election results."
Sanctions sought against lawyers who pushed to overturn Michigan's election
Attorney General Dana Nessel said she plans to seek sanctions against lawyers who filed lawsuits against the sta
"It is unfathomable that licensed attorneys would deliberately file false and misleading affidavits and pleadings with the Court
in an effort to disenfranchise millions of Michigan residents," Davis said. "Not only should these individuals and their
attorneys be assessed financial sanctions, but they also should be barred from practicing in the federal courts in the Eastern
District of Michigan."
While Nessel didn't mention the names of lawyers she may pursue sanctions against, she indicated that those who filed later,
after the initial allegations had been assessed and denied immediate relief, were more culpable.
She said she could file against a lawyer associated with a case challenging Antrim County results and false statements he made on
Newsmax and OANN. Matthew DePerno filed the case in Antrim County on behalf of resident William Bailey.
"I think we need to go back to a time where you can trust an attorney is making an accurate and truthful representation to the
court because if they don't, then they won't be able to practice law anymore," Nessel said.
DePerno responded to MSNBC's far-left producer Kyle Griffin who tweeted the article by the Detroit News, that DePerno refers to
as a "hit piece." In his response to Griffin, DePerno wrote: "Thanks Kyle for showing us what fascism and state run media look
like. #Fascism #totalitarianism
Earlier today, Mr. DePerno appeared on the popular Frank Beckmann radio show on WJR (760 AM) where he explained how his law
license is now being threatened by Michigan's far-left AG Dana Nessel.
DePerno called on MI Democrat AG Dana Nessel to "resign," saying she violated her oath of office with these threats. He called
her out for "thuggery" and told the WJR host that in "his opinion" she is "acting like a fascist." DePerno also calls out Nessel
for threatening MI lawmakers with criminal prosecution who dared to challenge the validity of the election results in MI.
Nessel, who is anything but warm and fuzzy, shared a videotaped public service announcement in which she appears wearing an
elf-like costume while wearing a witch-like hat on her head. For many in Michigan who are disgusted by her totalitarian tactics
and threats against those with whom she disagrees, the witch hat is the perfect choice for their overreaching AG.
President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani tells Newsmax TV his team can prove their allegations of voter
fraud, but the governors of the contested states won't allow access to their voting
machines.
Appearing Monday on "Spicer & Co.," Giuliani, career
prosecutor and onetime mayor of New York City, told host Sean Spicer that the Trump team needs
to prove only 10,000 contested votes in Arizona.
"Don't you think it's going to be pretty easy to show 10,000 noncitizens voted in Arizona?"
he said. "Give me the names of the people who voted and run them against a Lexis-Nexis" search,
he said. "I'll come up with 40,000 noncitizens."
"Nor will they let us look at the machines," he said. "If they didn't cheat, Sean, why won't
they let us examine the machines? Why does the governor of Georgia continue to hold onto the
machine the city paid $110 million for, and he refuses to let us examine them?
If President-elect Joe Biden doesn't want a cloud on his presidency, he should encourage an
examination of the machines, Giuliani said.
"There's no reason to go beyond anything that this election was a theft. It could be
proven," Giuliani said. "I can tell you one simple thing that would prove it make the American
people feel really good. Five or six of these crooked governors could let us have access to the
machines. In fact, if they did, maybe I would have to apologize for saying they're
crooked."
Did this pressitute ever heard about Stixnet and Flame ? About Vault7 and who developed it? From Wikipedia
"WikiLeaks said on 19 March 2017 on Twitter that the "CIA was secretly exploiting" a
vulnerability in a huge range of Cisco router models discovered thanks to the Vault 7
documents.[93][94] The CIA had learned more than a year ago how to exploit flaws in Cisco's
widely used internet switches, which direct electronic traffic, to enable eavesdropping. Cisco
quickly reassigned staff from other projects to turn their focus solely on analyzing the attack
and to figure out how the CIA hacking worked, so they could help customers patch their systems
and prevent criminal hackers or spies from using similar methods.[95] On 20 March, Cisco
researchers confirmed that their study of the Vault 7 documents showed the CIA had developed
malware which could exploit a flaw found in 318 of Cisco's switch models and alter or take
control of the network.[96] Cisco issued a warning on security risks, patches were not available,
but Cisco provided mitigation advice.[94]
...On 8 April 2017, Cindy Cohn, executive director of the international non-profit digital
rights group based in San Francisco Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: "If the C.I.A. was
walking past your front door and saw that your lock was broken, they should at least tell you and
maybe even help you get it fixed." "And worse, they then lost track of the information they had
kept from you so that now criminals and hostile foreign governments know about your broken lock."
[109] Furthermore, she stated that the CIA had "failed to accurately assess the risk of not
disclosing vulnerabilities. Even spy agencies like the CIA have a responsibility to protect the
security and privacy of Americans."[110] "The freedom to have a private conversation – free
from the worry that a hostile government, a rogue government agent or a competitor or a criminal
are listening – is central to a free society". While not as strict as privacy laws in
Europe, the Fourth Amendment to the US constitution does guarantee the right to be free from
unreasonable searches and seizures.[111]
The more we learn about the recent hack into dozens of America's most critical computer
networks -- widely attributed to Russia -- the more it becomes clear that it is massive,
unprecedented and crippling. Tom Bossert, who served as homeland security adviser to President
Trump, writes ,
"It will take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they
just occupy." (We do know they
successfully penetrated the Department of Homeland Security's systems as well as those of
Treasury, Commerce and others.) Stanford's Alex Stamos
describes it as "one of the most important hacking campaigns in history."
The New York Times' David E. Sanger, who has written several books on cyberweapons, co-wrote
an article
calling the breach "among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times."
Vladimir Putin's Russia has significantly expanded its hybrid warfare, using new methods to
spread chaos among its adversaries. The United States will have to fortify its digital
infrastructure and respond more robustly to the Kremlin's mounting cyberattacks. But what about
the perhaps more insidious Russian efforts at disinformation, which have helped to reshape the
information environment worldwide?
Gateway Pundit staff was first told by Michigan witness Senator Patrick Colbeck in early
November that the routers and WiFi connectors were used throughout the TCF Center during the
ballot counting on election night.
Crash
GIVE THEM NOTHING @CrashPatriot ·
Dec 16, 2020 What a joke @BlessUSA45 "Most Secure Elections In US HISTORY" and then when
pressed HE ADMITS - I was not referring to FRAUD !!!!
Troy @LibertyTroy Dems said vote machines were never on the Internet. BOOM Senator
Johnson: "...but those tabulators are connected on Election Day 'cause that's how they transmit
the data to the counties and also into the official -- uhm --" Krebs: "In some cases, yes,
sir."
The Dominion Voting Systems website has
removed the link and reference for SolarWinds from their platform .
It seems that the Dominion Voting Machines are trying to hide their relationship with
SolarWinds. SolarWinds has been the center of conspiracy since the past few days after the big
hack. The Dominion Voting Systems are being criticized for using a technology
firm that was hacked. These voting systems assist voting in 28 states, therefore being
attached to a technology firm that was hacked is not good for its name.
Dominion Voting
Systems website removes SolarWinds link
Previously, SolarWinds did not mention Dominion on its partial customer listing. However,
SolarWinds
maintained that their products and services are used all over the globe by approximately
300,000 customers. This customer base also includes all five arms of the United States
Military. Reports also indicate that 425 of the customers happen to be United States Fortune
500 companies.
The loophole in the security system of SolarWinds software paved the way for hackers to gain
access to the U.S. Commerce Department as well as the Treasury Department. The Department of
Homeland Security's Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency (CISA) stated that the Orion
products owned by SolarWinds were exploited by malicious hackers who managed to secure access.
The method employed by hackers also allowed them to gain access to the network traffic
management systems.
In the last few weeks, Dominion has attracted attention due to how widespread its systems
and machines are in the United States. Dominion machines are used in major states of the United
States. A number of witnesses have come forward to claim that Dominion products were connected
to
the Internet during the recent presidential election, raising doubts about security
mechanisms.
The reason why Dominion Voting Systems removed the link and reference of SolarWinds from
their website is unknown. However, if one connects the dot the reason is obvious. Dominion did
not want to be associated with a technology firm that was hacked
when it is already facing accusations regarding its security systems. Disclose.tv today
tweeted , "NEW –
Dominion Voting Systems deleted the link and reference to @solarwinds from its website."
Crucial Logs Missing From Some Michigan Dominion Voting Machines: Forensics Report BY
TYLER DURDEN MONDAY, DEC 14, 2020 - 12:44
Update (1225ET) :
The Epoch Times' Ivan Pentchokov reports that crucial security and adjudication logs are
missing from Dominion
Voting Systems machines from Michigan's Antrim County, according to a forensics report (
pdf )
released on Dec. 14 in compliance with a court order.
"Significantly, the computer system shows vote adjudication logs for prior years; but all
adjudication log entries for the 2020 election cycle are missing. The adjudication process is
the simplest way to manually manipulate votes. The lack of records prevents any form of audit
accountability, and their conspicuous absence is extremely suspicious since the files exist
for previous years using the same software," the report, authored by Russell Ramsland,
states.
"We must conclude that the 2020 election cycle records have been manually removed."
The absence of the adjudication logs is particularly alarming because the forensic exam
found that the voting machines rejected an extraordinary number of ballots for adjudication, a
manual process in which election workers determine the ultimate outcome for each ballot.
The office of Michigan's Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Dominion, and a
spokesman for Antrim County didn't respond to requests for comment.
* * *
As Sara Carter of SaraACarter.com detailed earlier, a Michigan
judge ordered the public release Monday of a report submitted by lawyers supporting
President Donald Trump and the election fraud allegations they say will reveal serious
concerns that the computer machines used in the voting in Antrim County were compromised. The
forensic report allegedly contains data that will reveal that the computer systems used to vote
in the county were not secure and had foreign components that made them susceptible to
manipulation and or fraud , according to those directly familiar with the case.
Michigan's Assistant Attorney General Erik Grill, representing
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, immediately shot back against the release of
the report, which President Donald Trump supporters say raises significant questions of voter
fraud and implications to the U.S. national security.
He suggested that the report being released is "inaccurate, incomplete and misleading,"
according to the
Detroit News.
"There's no reason to hide," said Grill, during a virtual court hearing Monday
morning.
"There is nothing to hide."
However, lawyers and computer experts working to expose what they say is a serious threat to
U.S. security and infrastructure say the report will reveal the irregularities in the data and
external foreign interference in the system.
The legal team "submitted the forensics report to the Judge (Sunday) at 8:30 a.m. per the
Judge's request," stated a source familiar with the report.
According to sources, who spoke to me this weekend the forensic
report of the computer system reveals that there are serious national security implications
to the evidence discovered because "the election system is categorized as critical
infrastructure, this is a threat to, it is a national security concern."
The lawsuit was initiated by Antrim County resident William Bailey. Circuit Judge Kevin
Elsenheimer, a former Republican lawmaker, allowed Allied Securities Operation Group and Bailey
to take forensic images of the county's 22 tabulators and review other election-related
material to ensure election integrity.
The forensic analysis has been under protective order. It could not be released prior to the
Judge's decision Monday, when Elsenheimer ordered the release with some redactions.
Antrim County has roughly 23,000 residents and the discovery that roughly 6,000 votes cast
using the Dominion Voting Systems that should have gone to President Donald Trump went to Joe
Biden without explanation triggered the ongoing investigation by Trump supporters.
The bizarre explanation that a failure to update voting software led to Joe Biden initially
receiving those thousands of votes ahead of Trump in the Republican-leaning county wasn't
accepted by the majority of Trump supporters, nor many of the Michigan GOP>
If the forensic report is accurate on the irregularities, as well as other issues of alleged
fraud regarding the Dominion Voting Systems used in XX states across the country, it may
snowball to other state legislatures requesting audits of their systems as well.
"when ballots are put through the machine, a whopping 68.05% error rate means that 68.05% of
the ballots are sent for bulk adjudication,...the ballots are sent somewhere where people in
another location can change the vote"
In his lawsuit, Matthew DePerno claims that based on the evidence they have provided to the
court that Dominion Voting Systems "committed material fraud or error in this election so that
the outcome of the election was affected."
At 5:30 PM on Friday, December 4, 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin A. Elsenheimer granted
permission to William Bailey and his team of IT experts to conduct a forensic study of the 16
Dominion voting machines, tabulators, thumb drives, related software, and the Clerk's "master
tabulator." In his court order, Bailey was also granted the ability to conduct an independent
investigation of the images they obtained in their examination. According to DePerno, it would
take approximately 6 to 8 hours to obtain the forensic copies, and it made sense to do the work
on the weekend when most government employees and residents would not be in the building.
Matthew DePerno was able to quickly assemble a team of seven highly trained forensic IT
experts who agreed to arrive the next day (Saturday) to conduct the forensic examination.
Following Judge Elsenheimer's order for the forensic examination of the Dominion Voting
machines, the unelected Township Administrator Peter Garwood informed Mr. Bailey that he would
not allow the machines to be accessed until Monday at 11:00 am. DePerno explained that Garwood
also contacted Dominion officials and suggested they come to the Antrim County building where
the court-ordered examination was to take place. As a result, DePerno and his client, William
Bailey, were tasked with ensuring that the Dominion equipment inside the Antrim County building
wouldn't be tampered with before the team's arrival. According to DePerno, Garwood was told by
several elected county commissioners to stand down and allow the examination to take place over
the weekend. A group of patriots from northern Michigan answered Mr. Bailey's call for help.
For two days and nights, in freezing cold weather, the group of brave, volunteer patriots stood
ready and willing to protect the precious sanctity of our vote. On Sunday morning, the
seven-people IT forensic team arrived; Mr. Bailey and his attorney Matt DePerno were given
access to the county building and started gathering the forensic evidence. Shortly after the
collection began, Antrim County Administrator Peter Garwood began to take photos of the seven
IT experts. When one of the IT team members saw him taking photos of them, they demanded
Garwood delete them from his phone. According to DePerno, Garwood reluctantly deleted them.
While he couldn't say for certain, DePerno believes Garwood was attempting to dox the
highly-skilled IT forensic experts. Several photos of Mr. DePerno's vehicle were taken by
outside protesters as well.
Here's the first fornesic proof of Dominion Voting algorythmic voter manipulation. It
doesn't look like much (37 vote switch in Georgia's smallest county) but since nobody is
getting access to the machines or software, and state voting commissions are hurrying to
erase existing data - it's the first proof the Powell/Wood allegations.
Maricopa County GOP
chairwoman Linda Brickman on Nov. 30 testified before members of the Arizona State Legislature that she personally
observed votes for President Donald Trump being tallied as votes for
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden when input into Dominion
machines.
Brickman, the GOP head of one of the country's largest counties and a veteran county
elections worker, submitted her testimony in a sworn affidavit under penalty of perjury. She
testified that she and her Democratic partner witnessed "more than once" Trump votes default
and shift to Biden when they were entering votes into Dominion machines from ballots that
couldn't be read by machines.
She alleged that she was later threatened by election supervisors at the Maricopa County
Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) for speaking out about what she had witnessed.
" I observed, with my Democratic partner, the preparation of a new ballot, since the
original one was soiled, or wouldn't go through the tabulators. I read her a Trump Republican
ballot, and as soon as she entered it into the system, the ballot defaulted on the screen to a
Biden Democratic ballot, " Brickman told GOP Arizona State legislators on Monday.
She remarked that when she reported the issue to election supervisors, others in the room
also commented that they had "witnessed the same manipulation."
"We were never told what, if any corrective action was taken," Brickman continued. " All I
know is the next day, I was called outside the room that I was working in for signature
verification by a supervisor who said, 'I understand you caused some problems this week and you
thought our machines were not working correctly.'
"I was told at that point in time that I could not discuss anything or talk about what was
going on.
" Many people were threatened ," Brickman told the hearing. "They were told that their
voices would be suppressed, they would have to leave the room and not work there again. I'm
here because I think this is our duty to speak the truth."
The 57-year-old multimillionaire also appeared on several podcasts, including a November
23 appearance in which he said: "I'm a free agent, and I'm self-funded, and I'm funding this
army of various odd people," according to the
Daily Beast .
"It's really going to make a great movie someday," he added.
Byrne claims he's funding teams of "hackers and crackers" who realized all the way back
in August that Dominion voting machines could be used to steal the election from Trump .
Since the election, those voting machines have figured prominently in Trump supporters'
allegations of fraud, despite the company's repeated denials and any actual proof the
voting tallies were changed. -
Daily Beast
Byrne says he's been communicating with former Trump attorney Sidney Powell for weeks -
who last week
filed two lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia alleging massive schemes to rig the election
for Joe Biden.
According to Powell's Georgia lawsuit: "Old-fashioned ballot-stuffing" has been "
amplified and rendered virtually invisible by computer software created and run by domestic
and foreign actors for that very purpose," adding that "Mathematical and statistical
anomalies rising to the level of impossibilities, as shown by affidavits of multiple
witnesses, documentation, and expert testimony evince this scheme across the state of
Georgia."
In Michigan, Powell claims that "hundreds of thousands of illegal, ineligible, duplicate,
or purely fictitious ballots" enabled by "massive election fraud" facilitated Biden's win in
the state.
The suit claimed that election software and hardware from Dominion Voting Systems used by
the Michigan Board of State Canvassers helped facilitate the fraud.
Speaking to Christopher McDonald of The McFiles in a recent interview, the former head
of a $200 billion e-commerce company that has never once gotten hacked revealed that
Dominion Voting Systems were used to perform a "Drop and Roll" technique of voter fraud
that slyly padded the vote for Biden in at least five key swing areas of the country.
Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix) were
all rigged prior to election day to strip President Trump of his rightful win in each of
these states. Byrne also mentioned Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas) as another election
fraud locale, though this one was more secondary.
According to Byrne, who is not a supporter of President Trump but rather a "small l"
libertarian, these five (or six if you include Clark County) areas are where a bulk of the
election fraud took place. It did not have to be widespread because these were the key
swing areas that Biden needed to "win" in order to steal the election.
" By cheating those five counties, you flip five key states, you flip the electoral
college, " Byrne says. " In places where Trump lost by 10,000, there may be 300,000 fake,
illegal votes for Biden. So this isn't even close. "
He further contends that the election systems that govern elections in America "are a
joke," especially those run by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic software.
* * *
Is Byrne's 'army' Sidney Powell's research team?
play_arrow
MadameDeficit , 4 hours ago
Do you really believe she was a Russian guns rights activist?
Doom Porn Star , 2 hours ago
Does it matter what I think about Butina? What matters is what I think about Byrne.
WHY did the FBI / DOJ need Byrne to spy for them?
What did Byrne get out of it? We may not know who Butina was working for; but, we sure
do know who Byrne said he was working for.
Trump did NOT get money for speeches in Russia. -Bill Clinton did.
Trump did NOT get money from the wife of the Mayor of Moscow. -Hunter Biden did.
Trump did NOT sell off Uranium assets in the USA to Russian businessmen. -Hillary
Clinton did.
Trump Jr. did NOT get a high paying no show gig @ Bursima. -Hunter Biden did.
"In a strange, post-Mueller twist, the conviction of Maria Butina , the redheaded gun
nerd and
unregistered Russian agent , has led to the resignation of a prominent e-commerce
executive. On Thursday, Overstock.com
CEO Patrick Byrne announced
that he would step down from the company he founded, days after
releasing a bizarre statement describing his involvement with Butina, the "Deep State,"
"Men in Black," and Russian-linked "political espionage" campaigns against Hillary Clinton
and Donald Trump. In a
letter to shareholders, Byrne lamented that his continued presence at the company "may
affect and complicate all manner of business relationships."
"While I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good
of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock, both as CEO
and board member," Byrne
said in the statement. The company's stock price had plummeted
more than 40% in the days after Byrne first revealed his participation, earlier this
month, in what he called a "political espionage" case involving Russia. Following his
resignation, the company's market capitalization soared
more than 8% .
It was an ignominious end for Byrne, a celebrity in Libertarian circles, whose
labyrinthine involvement in the Russia scandal is difficult to verify. In an
interview with journalist and Fox News contributor Sara Carter published last month,
Byrne said he had been approached by Butina at FreedomFest in 2015, and came to suspect
that she might be a Russian agent. Byrne reached out to the FBI to share his concerns, but,
he said, was told to carry on with the relationship and report back. Over the next three
years, he and Butina had a sporadic intimate relationship.
The story gets weirder from there. Byrne said he came to have doubts about his
"nonstandard" relationship with the FBI and the intelligence community. He told Carter that
he believed he "was being used in some sort of soft coup" against Trump. (Butina's lawyer
confirmed the two had a relationship, while the Department of Justice said it could not
comment.)
It wasn't until Byrne appeared on Fox Business
Network, about two weeks later, that investors got spooked. Byrne claimed to have turned
over evidence of a conspiracy involving Clinton and Trump. "I think we're about to see the
biggest scandal in American history," Byrne told host David Asman. "Everything you think
you know about Russia and Clinton investigations is a lie.... it was all political
espionage. I think [Attorney General William Barr ] has gotten to the bottom of it."
"
SO, Patrick Byrne the Deep State tool is back with another bombshell?
What happened to the last bombshell?
ALL Byrne has done so far is get in bed with the FBI / DOJ Russiagate team and get a
Russian woman he was ckufing sent to prison and deported.
MadameDeficit , 2 hours ago
It's definitely a strange situation and relevant in terms of Byrne's potential
motivation, but who she was working for is the most important question.
The whole thing reeks of Deep State entrapment so...I'll give him the benefit of the
doubt for now.
Misesmissesme , 7 hours ago
So sad, that with all this evidence, a private citizen has to go to these lengths
because Barr and Wray are so far in the pockets of the deep state.
"There are many questions that are currently unanswered but there is one fact:
IF military personnel were killed by the CIA,
THEN the civil war between the people, the Deep State (and by extension, Russia, China
& Iran) has started."
Doom Porn Star , 7 hours ago
Patrick Byrne wasn't a free agent when he helped the FBI send Russian guns rights
activist Maria Butina to prison as part of the RussiaGate hysteria that was initiated by
Hillary Clinton to discredit and villainize Trump.
littlewing , 7 hours ago
Barr is a Bushie.
Go watch the Bush Sr. funeral again and the cards they got during.
Watch Biden get a card too, because the Bush Dynasty was both parties.
Clinton, Obama were also part of it.
Carter wondering why he didn't get one, turns to his wife and she didn't get one.
Notice Pence gets a card too, he is part of it.
Notice **** Cheney very aware of what is happening.
Dave Janda who worked in GHW Bush admin said he was a really bad guy and was involved in
human trafficking too.
Sick Monkey , 6 hours ago
The boards on these machines are quite simple like a phone. They were reset asap along
with any server data.
Nothing to see here unless operators are complete idiots. You need one of the boards to
check for wireless device maybe but I doubt it.
One of Gulliani's witnesses said he witnessed usb dives inserted 24 times without proper
chain of custody.
That's about as close as anyone will get to anything useful on the hardware.
Son of Loki , 7 hours ago
Dominion execs testified in Congress twice their machines could easily be hacked. Given
the data we have so far, there is zero probability that Biden won with legal votes.
Someone Else , 6 hours ago
This is all catching on like wild fire for many people. Sadly not for many others. If
you watch MSM (if you must) they still preface everything with "without evidence" and
"baseless". We know that simply isn't the case but a lot of people who hear this enough
believe it.
This is sewing discord between us who know and those kept in the dark. And its going to
get real ugly. It's a crime what the MSM is doing. Almost like programming mindless
soldiers with the WRONG program.
Doom Porn Star , 7 hours ago
Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com , is an FBI stooge. He set up Maria Butina as
part of the RussiaGate disinfo campaign.
Leftsmasher , 6 hours ago
570,000 Pennsylvania votes For Biden in two hours in the early morning is not "slyly"
when the machines count 3000 per hour.
Ceickets feom Barr, busy getting ready for his next gig.
ze_vodka , 4 hours ago
At this point, we all need to realize that the election was entirely fake... and that
they are never going to let the fraud be pulled back.
There are two choices left:
1. Accept their dystopian future for us Deplorables (across the globe, not just the
USA)
2. Start doing something about it... start small and locally.
Onthebeach6 , 7 hours ago
The IT evidence is now overwhelming and I imagine it will be explained in detail to each
of the Legislatures.
If Biden stood down now it might save the Democrats but I doubt Xi would contemplate the
suggestion.
johnny two shoes , 7 hours ago
Of course that daily beast article frames it differently-
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick
Byrne left behind a cloud of confusion when he
resigned in 2019 from the internet retailer he'd founded after panicking investors with
his bizarre claims that he had romanced a Russian agent at the behest of "Men in Black"
working for the United States government.
Now he's back...
but it's noteworthy that the narrative has been breached at the daily beast- that Trump
might be able to prove fraud.
philipat , 6 hours ago
It's a bit late for hackers isn't it? The machines are already off-line and probably
already wiped in most cases ('in compliance with standard operating procedures").
MAYBE, the CIA machines seized in the DOD raids in Frankfurt and Barcelona might confirm
"intervention" but we're running out of time. We'll see. Very soon.
philipat , 6 hours ago
He's also dodgier than a 3 Dollar Bill and has a VERY chequered past with allegations of
CIA involvement. It should be of concern that he is involved/
SurfingUSA , 7 hours ago
You know who could SERIOUSLY use a donation, since Matt Braynard also seems well-funded,
as well as Sidney Powell. Is Right Side Broadcasting, the ONLY outfit that is covering the
PA & AZ Legislative hearings.
We need an accurate, trustworthy voting system, no matter whether both "major" parties
are a fake uniparty and both candidates suck.
ReadyForHillary , 7 hours ago
And all results must be open to full audit by independent parties. Otherwise, no
deal.
Machines, code, ballots, signatures, everything. Individuals should be able to go online
and check that their vote (or lack thereof) is accurate.
B52Minot , 7 hours ago
I am surprised as others about the silence of Barr....and Durham....two folks who should
be all over this sorted and corrupt elections in which the Dem-China folks STOLE the
election....and the evidence is THERE yet the Feds are so SO silent......makes no
sense...and even Trump is wonder where they are when these folks work for HIM. Either Trump
is play acting and the Barr/Durham folks are presenting something HUGE or their sense of
defending our Republic and Constitution from these thieves is beyond distorted...it would
be so SO un-Patriotic and un-American......Either they are silent doing God's work to
defend this Country(and will show it soon) or they truly have lost their faith in this
Great Nation.
Doom Porn Star , 35 minutes ago
I'm quite familiar with DeepCapture.
Byrne has been kvetching about Overstock being being the target of naked short selling
and such for years. Old news. He's supposed to have plenty of money. I guess they didn't
short his stack or he figured out how to hedge his position.
IMO, the guy is limited hangout or diversion/disinfo.
He quarterbacks for the swamp. Then he doesn't?
Known for running a successful honeypot trap for the Deep State.
Walking around with almost as much money as Jeffery Epstein?
Note how he bypassed the problem of local administrators ( according to some data 2-6 for
each site ) manipulating votes. He also does not explain strange pause in countering of votes in
major battleground states. And the fact of deploying Dominion and other voting machines was at
attempt to control voters and voting.
Yes there are some heuristically arguments on the contrary. For example why Florida was
unaffected. But that does not change the fact that voting machines are evil and that they was
corruption during their acquisition.
It is unclear how with strait face he can claim that systems based on Microsoft windows and
connected to Internet can be secure. Or systems with Dominion technician having administrative
access and implementing patches on their own schedules.
Chris Krebs, a lifelong Republican, was put in charge of the agency handling election
security by President Trump two years ago. When Krebs said the 2020 election was the country's
most secure ever, Mr. Trump fired him. Now, Krebs speaks to Scott Pelley.
https://cbsn.ws/3o6JayT
I actually do not know what actually happened, but your defense of Dominion is pure
technical nonsense and/or incompetence. This is a small office class system with consumer
hardware, consumer OS and consumer hardware (on top of which there is some proprietary
software) which is a dream for any intelligence agency to work with.
Petrel, "Condolences to the families of 3 - letter contractors and DoD patriots who died
in the Frankfurt confrontation. Congratulations to General Flynn retuned to the fight of
suppressing enemies foreign & domestic."
Could you please provide a source for this information? Thanks.
NancyK, The 2020 election is not yet over. I remember when the 2016 election was over,
there were no sour grapes from the Dems as I understand you have said. But what were those
tens of thousands of women wearing some sort of genital hat the day after, what was that
about? Why were they cheering a washed up entertainer named "Madonna" who was screaming and
threatening to burn down the White House. Another women, a not so funny one, carrying around
a severed Trump look alike head, did you laugh or just wish it were true? I distinctly
remember antifa destroying cars, business windows, etc, just some kids having fun, no?
I learned of a Japanese Admiral who said, "I'm afraid we're about to waken a sleeping
giant." I have to wonder if Biden isn't thinking the same thing.
It's a beautiful day in the Free State of Florida.
As Krebs discussed, on 60 Minutes: 92% of ballots were paper or backed by paper. All
the machine and hand recounts of paper ballots validated previous results. The machines were
accurate (enough) before, during and after the election and produced that same
results.
I think we are all being spun by both sides so the truth is a little difficult. One has to
follow the actual court filings.
Actually a full recount has not yet happened in Georgia. They went through a canvass and a
post-election audit which all the news organizations are calling a full recount. A canvass is
looking for missing ballots, memory sticks, and the like. A post election audit takes a small
sample is not a full recount.
Monday, they will be wiping voting machines to actually scan all the ballots hence
more lawsuits to stop them from wiping the machines data so it can be preserved for
analysis.
Since the actual action is not being reported in the main we have to look for it and I am
not 100% sure I am following it correctly myself. I am 100% sure not to believe much of
anything the MSM puts out.
So the second order nullifies the first order to preserve data. The machines will be wiped
30 November 2020 and the ballots will be fed to perform a full recount. Naturally no human
being wants to plow through his crap but as a former voter who gave up long ago I am
collecting evidence and understanding for my county election board.
It is quite a stretch for Trump but it is interesting to see these allegations which have
stretch back to at least 2006 in Congress.
What I remember happening is that at the end of the machine voting Trump had huge leads in
the 5 swing states prior to the counting of the mail in ballots. Counting was allegedly
stopped at around 11PM eastern time in the 5 swing states in question and then at 4am EST his
lead evaporated. The MSM was telling us for weeks Trump would win the machine voting but lose
the mail in. The pump was primed.
I think the fight is over were these votes injected from overseas through the Scytle
server, were 100% of the mail in ballots legitimate, and was it fair to keep the observers
from actually observing? They are also arguing the equal protection clause as used in
2001.
Granted Giuliani is a joke but Powell is no lightweight. Neither was Giuliani back in his
pre-depends days. Hopefully we will obtain some sanity in our voting systems next go around.
Somehow I doubt it.
"... The $107 million contract awarded by Georgia for Dominion Voting Systems should be thoroughly investigated for potential "benefits being paid to family members of those who signed the contract," according to former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell on Newsmax TV. ..."
"... "I think there are multiple people in the Secretary of State's office and other that should be investigated in Georgia for what benefits they might have received for giving Dominion the $100-million, no-bid contract," Powell said. ..."
"... The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported in 2019, however, Georgia did receive three bids for the new voting systems, with Dominion winning on being "the lowest-cost system among three companies that submitted bids." ..."
"... That contract was pursued by the state after Stacey Abrams never conceded to Gov. Brian Kemp in the 2018 midterm elections, claiming the Secretary of State and Kemp unlawfully ''suppressed'' votes by voiding registrations found to be illegitimate. ..."
The
$107 million contract awarded by Georgia for Dominion Voting Systems should be thoroughly
investigated for potential "benefits being paid to family members of those who signed the
contract," according to former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell on Newsmax TV.
"There should be an investigation, a thorough criminal investigation, frankly, of everyone
involved in acquiring the Dominion [Voting] System for the state of Georgia," Powell told
Saturday's "The Count" hosted by Tom Basile and Mark Halperin.
"And frankly for every other state, giving how appalling the system is and the fact it was
designed to manipulate the votes and destroy the real votes of American citizens who were
casting legal votes."
Powell's investigation is turning up potential criminal allegations, including "money or
benefits being paid to family members of those who signed the contract for Georgia."
"I think there are multiple people in the Secretary of State's office and other that should
be investigated in Georgia for what benefits they might have received for giving Dominion the
$100-million, no-bid contract," Powell said.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported in 2019, however, Georgia did receive three bids
for the new voting systems, with Dominion winning on being "the lowest-cost system among three
companies that submitted bids."
That contract was pursued by the state after Stacey Abrams never conceded to Gov. Brian Kemp
in the 2018 midterm elections, claiming the Secretary of State and Kemp unlawfully
''suppressed'' votes by voiding registrations found to be illegitimate.
24/Let's start with the relief requested (inside out, this is the quick way to read motions
since the relief requested dictates the relevance of everything else). They want impoundment
of voting machines, suggesting overall strategy (see above) of gathering discovery globally.
"In early October, 2020, a federal district judge in this same district (Northern District
of Georgia) ruled after several years of litigation that the Dominion software used to monitor
this election has substantial issues and it will affect an election.
The Plaintiffs were
Democrats who filed suit in response to the 2016 election. They sought an order forcing Georgia
to use different software.
They conducted discovery and hearings over years, including 3 days
of expert testimony about how these very voting machines work. The court ultimately denied the
request because it was simply too late to change the voting machines since the election at that
time was roughly a month away."
So this judge ruled that the Dominion software could improperly affect an election but said it
was OK to use it in the November 2020 Presidential election "because it was simply too late to
change the voting machines since the election at that time was roughly a month away."
I'm a former litigator in Illinois...Obama "won" his first election against a popular
incumbent who was a civil rights pioneer by claiming fraud in her nominating petition
signatures, which is seldom successful...But Obama had friends...
In general, I agree that courts
are reluctant to overturn elections for vote fraud, despite the theoretically low standard of
proof, but that is more for personal, political and societal reasons than legal reasons...
Courage is not common anywhere in our society, and certainly not on the
bench...
Unfortunately, that has protected the politically connected fraudsters to the extent
that vote fraud has completely destroyed the two party system in Illinois, with Democrats
running everything and the State being bankrupt....
The same would happen if Democrats prevail
in this election.
Smoking Gun: “Barron replied
that using large amounts of technology lends itself to problems, but the new equipment enabled them to log in to the poll
pads and fix problems remotely.” Remotely can only mean connected to Internet! A Major No No.
Are You Not Entertained?
@SheriHerman10,
Sidney Powell is so fierce she made Dominion shut down their offices, scrub their website, not show up for an important press
conference in PA today, lawyer up and have employees all fly the coup. She has all the evidence she needs.
in 2010 Eric Coomer joined Dominion as Vice President of U.S. Engineering. According to
his bio, Coomer graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Nuclear
Physics. Eric Coomer was later promoted to Voting Systems Officer of Strategy and Security
although Coomer has since been removed from the Dominion page of directors. Dominion altered
its website after
Colorado resident Joe Oltmann disclosed that as a reporter he infiltrated ANTIFA, a
domestic terrorist organization where he recorded Eric Coomer representing: "Don't worry.
Trump won't win the election, we fixed that." – as well as social media posts with
violence threatened against President Trump.
Pretty educational video that touches several aspect of Dominion. 2-6 people
training in using Dominion are essentially administrators who have tremendous level of control
over the system. Essentially election are decided by those 2-6 administrators. Those people need
to be investigated in countries that experience anomalies.
Also tough anti-Trump sentiments within top executive on Dominions, especially Eric Coomer .
In Coomer case he was in the position to materialize his threats. This looks like another Peter
Strzok "he is not going to win" insurance.
I am a Canadian, amazing job Chanel . Dominion is in Toronto Canada sharing office space
with George S funded foundation , or at lest they were a week ago.. glad to see your on it
.
The Voter Fraud, and the Facts are all there making it a Crime scene. All Fake Ballots
need to have a Forensic test of the PAPER used, to determine it's Source of where the Fake
Ballots came from. It's obvious they're not legitimate.
Although all we know is true: dominion fraud etc. Democrats have covered everything, will
not be caught, and so results will not change. The world will have to live with the nonsense
of Biden & his corrupt Democrats. I'm Indian, feel sad to see America suffer this.
@Ron
Rathbone You are absolutely right. The machine wouldn't take mine and three people in
front of me. We had to leave them in a box in the back of the ballot machine.
New DemoNKracy: People of the government, by the government, and for the government - Jot
Kennedie - Don't think it will do any for the people, but the people should obey the new god
- Government of George Orwell prophecy.
If anyone believes that any software related voting machine cannot be altered I have a
bridge for sale. We need to go back to paper ballots and USA citizenship I'd cards to get the
ballot. Wake up people, the dems may have stole this one but don't forget Republicans can
cheat also.
So who in the Hell gave the ok to use this machine? Any Governor that allowed this in
their state should be removed from office as well as the Secretary of State.
There should an audit in all swing states, there needs to be sound respect, for the
integrity of our elections. The election does have irregularities and fraud, over 13k sworn
affidavits saying there was. This is 1 election, but if people don't have trust in the
election, we will be divided and the stability of our nation is in doubt.
I can follow him on the IT security. I and a couple of my friends with a couple flash
drives and using googledocs could easily compromise the Dominion machines and rig the
election results the way we want. Pretty damning report
I fear we do not fully understand the future consequences of just accepting this stolen
election. We will never have a say in who represents us if we allow this. The will of the
people will mean nothing going forward. We are entering a technological enslavement from
which there will be no way out. Speak now while other are around to speak up with you.
Tim, look at the Patrick Bryne story. He is the founder of
Overstock.com . He claims, with Sydney Powell, that he has the evidence, See the
interview with the BLACK CONSERVATIVE PATRIOT.
That's kind of funny that ANTIFA would be involved in this considering when you went to
www ANTIFA com it took you directly to Biden's website! What a f'n crook!
A guy who EVERYONE hates, can hardly talk, lives in his basement and can't draw flies on a
campaign stop wins the presidency with the most votes ever. DIDN'T HAPPEN.
The Dominion machines and software should be enough to officially make the 2020 election
illegitimate. Why is the Democratic Party the only party that is endorsing these voting
machines?
I want to believe this theory, but the Georgia recount were fairly consistent with the
initial count. Had absolutely no reason to think that Dominion switched the votes. Georgia is
ALL Dominion!
Dominion software company shares a office with George soros and the ceo is best friends
with Justin Castro-Trudeau. Trudeau also gave one hundred and twenty four million taxpayers
dollars to the Clinton foundation to rigg the American election. The dominion of canada,
dominion software company anyone see and realize that this company is keeping the plandemic
reset going.
Experts on both sides of the political divide concede that both voter fraud and election
fraud occur with considerable frequency since the advent of electronic voting machines. In
addition to Dominion and ES&S, only five other companies dominate this space: Tenex,
SGO/Smartmatic, Hart InterCivic, Demtech, and Premier (formerly Diebold).
Virtually all have been accused of vote count manipulation or other irregularities
associated with their systems. Hart, for instance, was accused of vote flipping
(the practice of switching the votes from one candidate to their opponent) in Texas. Dominion
also ran into issues in the Lone Star state when its systems failed
certification over accessibility problems.
"Much of the equipment being used to record and count votes," explains Jonathan Simon, "is
either modem-equipped, which leaves it highly vulnerable to remote interference, or programmed
with the use of other computers than are internet-connected, allowing the alteration of memory
cards and code running in either precinct-level machines (like BMDs, DREs, or Optical Scanners)
or central tabulators."
Examples of these dangerous weaknesses were explored in a recent video published by a self-styled
national security professional, L. Todd Wood , where
conservative elections security expert, Russ Ramsland, breaks down his findings from a forensic
analysis of a 1000+ page voter log taken out of Dallas County's central tabulation center in
the aftermath of the 2018 midterm elections.
https://cdn.iframe.ly/M7DMJcB?v=1&app=1
Ramsland identified instances of votes being replaced in 96 precincts, an inordinate number
of database "updates" and other serious irregularities that point to vote-count manipulation
and amount to election fraud. His most explosive allegation centered around claims of real-time
vote-swapping in the 2019 gubernatorial election in Kentucky, where Ramsland asserts that
thousands of votes originally given for the Republican candidate were swapped live on a CNN
broadcast and added to the tally of the Democratic candidate, Andy Beshear, who would end up
winning the election.
Ramsland also alleged that the election data of that race was being stored in a server in
Frankfurt, Germany before being cycled through the central tabulation database, which syncs
automatically with the numbers shown to television viewers. This server has been pounced on by
Trump supporters in recent days and repeated by Rudy Giuliani in his podcast on Friday when
he also purported to have direct evidence of election fraud.
While it is practically impossible for the layman to unravel the complexities underlying the
encryption and cloud technologies underlying the present-day election system in the United
States, few can doubt that moving towards a digital voting system removes whatever last
vestiges of control the regular American citizen had in a once participatory exercise of
democracy.
Asked if democracy can even exist under such conditions, Simon refers to a prediction he
made in "CODE RED," in which he augurs "an inexorable progression to where we are now: public
trust eroded, the losers making wild allegations, no one able to prove anything, [and] everyone
kind of waking up to the realization that our concealed computerized vote-counting process does
not yield evidence-based results."
It's critical that the legal team nail down the machine manipulation using SMOTE
(Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique) written by Aleksandar Lazarevic. Trail leads to
Belgrade, Serbia and Dominion Voting Systems with chips made in China.
Unfortunately IMHO, the Kraken was either a careless misspeak or a bluff to shake the
trees to see if a whistleblower would fall out. If the later, it failed. If the former, I am
inclined to give Sidney a break. She has done yeoman's work for Flynn. And so the Kraken
seems destined to remain a creature of Scandinavian lore and Hollywood movies. I wish it were
not so. The Dominion software apparently is easily hacked and allows votes to be directly
manipulated without a trace. Hard to make a case without an audit trail. I wonder whether the
outcry from MAGA supporters will be sufficient to encourage states to choose a more secure
vendor or will Dominion still be in widespread use during the midterms? Kemp, Raffensberger
and company should be ridden out of GA on a rail after a good tar and feathering. Other
states have their own corrupt actors who should receive the same consideration. They all have
sold us out -- if the Dems take the Senate, even to slavery under socialism -- for 30 pieces
of silver. As for Kemp and Raffensberger, in a different age I might have suggested an
appointment with a high, sturdy branch in one of GA's many 100 plus years old live oaks.
As I listened to Lin's interview today I tho't that there must be something in the
Southern water. Both he and Sidney have that Southern drawl. Very genteel, polished and
extremely intelligent.
I am a very brave soul, but I don't think I would want to go up against either of them in
a court of law. 🙂
I forget who it was, either Lou or Tucker, that ended their interview telling Sidney half
jokingly to remember to lock her doors at night.
Please remember to PRAY God's protection for this wonderful woman!
When are they going to lay out the case? Lin Wood and Sidney have been making serious
statements. They have reputations beyond reproach. I believe them when they say they have the
goods. It's like they have to get the election called for Trump or they will surely be
political prisoners.
IF you watch the movie "Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections"* you will see
that a steal was supposed to happen in Florida that day and it got thwarted, before it got
started,
PLUS, they didn't have the mail in ballot scheme in place yet to back up their theft back
then. China Virus was their plandemic to make that happen, and to get the cash from the Care$
Act to get machines for everyone.
*"(2020)From voter registration to counting ballots, data security expert Harri Hursti
examines how hackers can influence and disrupt the U.S. election system."
Love Sidney Powell but that interview did not give me a lot of confidence. I sure hope she
has some solid evidence. Doesn't sound like she has much though. Don't have much time
left.
Biggest heist in the history of the US and nothing can be done about it is sickening. Barr
and Wray should be ashamed of themselves for letting something like this happen on their
watch. They did nothing. Thanks to them the constitution is now worth nothing. The rights are
gone. Law and order is gone. We are on our own.
How do Barr and Wray even look at themselves in the mirror?
Finally, I found out from this interview where I could send money to support this legal
effort. I'm tired of the RNC doing nothing. Sidney Powell will get my direct support now.
DefendingtheRepublic.org – is the right place.
This is still a hypothesis not a proven fact. Proven fact is that nobody investigates why
votes counting was stopped and why unmarked vans arrives ar some station in the middle of the
night with additional mail-in ballots.
Philadelphia used also other types of voting machines
so this is not exclusively Dominion voting machines. . Philadelphia used also other types of
voting machines so this is not exclusively Dominion voting machines. .
But as for Dominion an interesting question is: why over 100 employees of the controversial
voting machine company Dominion have deleted their LinkedIn profiles. On November 6th, the
LinkedIn page for Dominion showed 243 employees on the site and by November 16th, only 140
remained
A fellow by the name of
Edward Solomon has done yeoman's work in digging into the Pennsylvania voting data and
showing conclusively, in my view, how the Democrats, with the help of Dominion, rigged the
vote. What was done in Pennsylvania, specifically Philadelphia, reveals how the Dominion
software magically created votes for Joe Biden to swamp the actual number of votes Donald Trump
was ringing up.
I will embed the video below. It last about 40 minutes. It is worth your time. But let me
give you the Reader's Digest version. When the early vote numbers rolled in, it was clear that
Donald Trump was on his way to a major win. The task for Dominion was to manufacture votes for
Biden without making it obvious. They tried, but failed.
Mr. Solomon takes the raw vote data that was being streamed by the NY Times and downloaded
it into a spreadsheet. That data allows him to look at vote totals by precinct and how they
changed over time. He found that a variety of ratios were used in different sets of precincts.
For example, his Exhibit 1 shows a group of precincts where the votes were being recorded at
the following ratio–1 vote for Trump and 48 for Biden.
The diabolical system employed by Dominion started with needing to generate a total vote
total for Joe Biden. Rather than employ a single computer calculation, Dominion used a number
of algorithm's. Mr. Solomon identifies at least 9 different calculations used to create these
votes.
Exhibit 1 Ratio of 1 to 48
Exhibit 2 Ratio of 1 to 18
Exhibit 3 Ratio of 4 to 65
Exhibit 4 Ratio of 3 to 48
Exhibit 5 Ratio 4 to 63
Exhibit 6 Ratio of 5 to 31
Exhibit 7 Ratio of 1 to 5
Exhibit 8 Ratio of 1 to 4
Exhibit 9 Ration of 1 to 6
The data examined by Mr. Solomon is only one part of the proof of the voter fraud. Data
from other parts of Pennsylvania will need to be examined to determine if there is a similar
pattern or if the data from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are outliers.
The next evidentiary question to be asked, and answered, is whether there are actually
ballots that back up the numbers reported on the computer. If there are ballots for Biden but
no ballots for Trump, that is conclusive evidence of the fraud.
There are multiple sworn affidavits from witnesses of truck loads of ballots being
off-loaded at the center in Philadelphia. Those ballots must be examined. If the ballots only
show Joe Biden's name and there are no ballots matching the numbers reported for Trump, that
means one thing. Fraud.
Make voting so complicated and easily overwhelemed by processes and short timelines, it
loses all ability to be fair and accurate. Then beat up anyone who protests these new
layers of complexity as wanting to undermine the right to vote.
Voting is a right and a duty. People do have to sacrifice this one day out of 365 days
and show up in person, ID in hand, and exercise their duty to be an informed voter, filling
out a trackable paper ballot. Exceptions based on need are the exception; not common
place.
Europe prohibits "electronic voting" for good reason. Democrats have slowly and
systematically undermined out entire election process.
Just take a look at California. Networks did not wait even one second after the polls
closed to "declare" Biden won in California, before a single vote was counted. They knew
the obvious outcome of a state now long corrupted by a Democrat super-majority guaranteed
election system. No other outcome was possible in this state.
Term limits was the final coffin nail in this state. Never think term limits will solve
anything. Voters must dislodge the bums; not some arbitrary election rule. Nature abhors a
vacuum. Term limits created a power vacuum.
The highly organized and disciplined public sector union swooped into this power vacuum
and now cannot be dislodged. The spent the past 20 years rigging the system entirely in
their favor. A big piece of this take-over was passed always as "election reform".
Micael Levin weighs in on the proof of fraud, the quantity of fraud and the quality of
fraud, Democrats have moved their argument away from no fraud, to not enough fraud to
matter. Sure.
It is convincing. The fact the ratios were repeatedly exact copies is proof of the fix.
This never happens in real life and it shows that this was probably a last minute fix to
account for a bigger Trump lead than they expected, since with more time, they could
probably develop an algorithm that varied the numbers more. Since these are civil actions,
this should be enough right there if it were a fair system, but overwhelming political
pressure from the permanent regime is, unfortunately, another factor to be considered.
I believe the argument of machine fraud goes beyond just Dominion to others, so we can
discount that Philadelphia used another system.
He has done a good job highlighting anomalies, I just think it lacks the context to
judge, you can't look at it in isolation, you need to compare more to what looks clean.
I believe the argument of machine fraud goes beyond just Dominion to others, so we can
discount that Philadelphia used another system.
He has done a good job highlighting anomalies, I just think it lacks the context to
judge, you can't look at it in isolation, you need to compare more to what looks clean.
PBS Newshour had a 'white hat hacker' named Harri Hursti inspect the system and he said
"they have set up a complicated system which is centralized; it doesn't seem to have any
safeguards."
They described the system as having a lot of moving parts, saying "it's an assortment of
laptops, iPads, magnetic cards, touch screens, printers and scanners."
PBS says the devices replaced touchscreens in 2019 which didn't created a paper ballot, but
one of the women responsible for bringing about this change isn't terribly happy with the new
system either. And election experts have found several troubling problems with the new system,
especially the Q.R. codes it creates for tabulation:
Alex Halderman looked closely at the Q.R. codes where the votes are encoded for the
scanner. "By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that
there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would
count the same as the original barcode."
And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers
found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens
during the review phase. Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch.
Halderman caution: "I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to
the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended
consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day."
Hirsti expressed concern that the system was being rushed out with the proper testing:
You never want to rush something which is mission-critical, and this is mission-critical,
into production without proper time for testing.
That's really one of the ways bad actors are finding the vulnerabilities to exploit is
looking for honest vulnerabilities and finding out if they can be weaponized, if they can be
exploited.
The actual segment goes on for 7 minutes and you can watch it below:
Face it, politicians in general are lazy, incompetent, power-hungry, greedy and worthless.
Very few actually care about the American people or want to work for us. They keep getting
re-elected over and over because of promises made and NOT kept. They get in a back room and
make deals to NOT do their jobs and draw straws on who will take the blame. When election
time rolls around again, the people continue to believe their propaganda and vote them in
again...and the cycle continues. Look at Biden, 47 years in public office. The man has NO
skills...he can't do anything else. Same for most politicians. Never vote for someone that
has not worked in the real world...and don't vote for lawyers (they always find the loophole
in every law and use it to keep themselves living a lifestyle we only dream about).
All of the Dominion Voting machines should be impounded; the States to be reimbursed and
each machine checked by the Federal Government to see if software is corrupted or
preprogramed to favor one party or the other. Then the Federal Government should order new
unbiased machines-all should be checked and be calibrated in time for the next election.
These should be stored under lock and key in a Federal Facility and guarded by Federal
Marshals during the voting. It should be a Federal Crime to impede the will of the peoples
vote. Next Subpoena Soros to testify in front of the Senate to explore his tactics and
recommend Federal Prosecution for any violation of Federal or State Law in the United
States.
Everything connected to the internet is hackable. Why don't we just go back to paper
ballots, photo ID and same day in person voting? I think it really is that simple.
I Georgia there are paper ballots, after choosing the candidates you want you review the
screen then push print. A paper ballot with the selections are on the paper with the QR code.
The ballot is then scanned into a machine where it is also collected in an internal box.
Voters are encouraged to make sure their selections shown on the paper are correct before
feeding the ballot into the machine. I voted in Georgia, but I did not know there were all of
the problems with the security of the machines.
The corrupt politician/attorney leading CISA (@CISAgov IT sec agency within DHS) is
Christopher Krebs (@CISAKrebs). He only has 3 years experience in IT sec, much of that on
non-IT related infrastructure security. He has no IT or IT sec background. His bachelor
degree is "environmental sciences" and then he earned a JD. The schmuck is a lawyer who
brownnosed his way into DHS 3 years ago and was handed IT/infrastructure security with zero
experience.
Now, he says:
- 2020 was most secure election ever
>> bogus, unprovable claim: secure in what sense? Based on what, % of voter fraud, how
would he know that for any previous, let alone current election.
- 2020 had highest voter turnout in since 1908, based on that alone, even if fraud % were
steady with previous cycles, this election would have the most fraudulent votes cast ever,
and as turnout goes up, fraud exploits do to.
- 2020 saw a huge % increase in mail-in and early votes, which are most subject to fraud; we
would expect a higher % of fraudulent/illegal votes based on that alone - there is no metric
upon which to base his claim
- he claimed there was no evidence of fraud
>> demonstrably untrue - the Texas SOS office recommended denial of Dominion software
precisely because it lacked safeguards and was unsecure. As per reports above, Georgia had
issues with software during primary. We also know of issue in Antrim County, Michigan. Krebs
is lying.
- he told voters with questions about irregularities to "turn to your trusted election
officials" - the same ones committing the irregularities...that's like asking the Nigerian
Prince email scammer if he's real, do you expect them to be honest?
Krebs should not only be fired, he should be barred from working for the federal
government ever again.
I've worked IT security for two decades. We wouldn't hire this joker to work frontline
helpdesk.
Dominion voting systems got an "upgrade" before the election. But the powers that be don't
care.
They won. They won because of it. Future historians will write about it, but by then, it
won't matter.
With a paper ballot, even if the machine screws up, and there is a recount, they recount
the ORIGINAL PAPER BALLOT, and do so by hand.
With electronic votes, if they screw up vote assignment, you can't tell. If they lose
votes, the counts don't match, but you've still lost the original vote. In both cases, it's
IMPOSSIBLE to do a proper recount.
PBS Newshour had a 'white hat hacker' named Harri Hursti inspect the system and he said "they
have set up a complicated system which is centralized; it doesn't seem to have any
safeguards."
Alex Halderman looked closely at the Q.R. codes where the votes are encoded for the scanner.
"By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing
that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the
original barcode."
Halderman caution: "I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the
737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended
consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day."
A Denver businessman said he has received death threats after exposing a Dominion Voting
Systems employee who boasted about being able to rig the 2020 election against President
Donald Trump, a report said.
In an
interview with the Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft on Sunday, Denver businessman Joe Oltmann
said he was able to infiltrate Antifa and during a Sept. 27 conversation with Antifa members
discovered "Eric from Dominion".
Oltmann told the Gateway Pundit that "Eric" was telling Antifa members they needed to
"keep up the pressure." When one of the caller's on a September group call asked, "Who's
Eric?" someone answered, "Eric, he's the Dominion guy."
As the conversation continued, Oltmann said someone asked: "What are we gonna do if
F*cking Trump wins?" Oltmann paraphrased how Eric (the Dominion guy) responded, "Don't worry
about the election, Trump's not gonna win. I made f*cking sure of that!"
Oltmann identified the "Dominion guy" as Eric Coomer. In 2010, Coomer joined Dominion as
vice president of U.S. engineering, the report said. According to his biography, Coomer
graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics.
Coomer was later promoted to voting systems officer of strategy and security at Dominion.
He has since been removed from the Dominion page of directors.
Oltmann said he was banned from Twitter after exposing Coomer.
Oltmann also told the Gateway Pundit that Coomer's profile is in fact being completely
"scrubbed from the Internet."
There are those who always vote, those who never vote and those who may or may not vote.
Maximizing voter turnout in the third group is the holy grail of the electoral
official."
It is a holy grail of a leftist agitator. The US law recognizes a citizen's freedom not to vote as equal to the voting for
a candidate of his or her choosing. Some people do not vote because they do not care, some
because they do not know which candidate to choose, and some because they are angry at the
society. Abstractly speaking, reluctant voters are not helpful to democratic process, just like
reluctant jurors are not helpful for court proceedings. Practically, voter mobilization (from
the word 'mob' ) is a tactic of the Left. People who do not care, or lack knowledge, or
are angry, can be easily convinced to vote for the Left. Continue reading Dominion Voting
Systems Corp →
Dominion Voting Systems' Democracy Suite has features that allow for election results
manipulation. The back-end software has an elections results editor, called Results Tally
and Reporting ( RTR ). Its users are election officials. RTR is an equivalent of
Microsoft Excel, but for election results. The software allows its users to enter "election
results" from removable memory cards, local file system, and network. It allows you to merge
multiple election results files. It allows the users to manually edit election result files. It
allows users to reject election results files. In other words, it allows arbitrary change of
results.
RTR runs not on a voting machine, but on an ordinary Windows laptop, which can be connected
to the Internet, and even controlled remotely.
The voting software developers can easily insert code, changing numbers in favor of or
against one candidate. No hacking is necessary. The malicious code can be designed to pass
tests and to be triggered only at the time of a real election, automatically or manually. Both
case are possible even the the machine is disconnected from the internet and has no ordinary
I/O devices. The malicious code can be activated manually in real time by inserting a ballot or
another paper with a pre-defined QR or image code. An audit of the source code is necessary,
but not sufficient. Dominion software runs on Windows, and the malicious code can be hidden in
any part of the operating system. Malicious code can be hidden in the firmware, too.
If a state wants to take risks and to rely on testing and the source code audit, they should
be conducted with the participation of technically competent representatives of both parties.
If the system passes testing and auditing, the machine image must be securely stored. All
supplied machines must have exactly the same hardware and the software as the audited
system.
As far as I know, thorough tests and source code audits are conducted very rarely, if at
all. Further, the vendors are not required to use only the audited image, and are allowed to
update the software almost at will. That means that election commissions are forced to blindly
trust the vendors. Blind trust is always wrong and invites abuse. But even "trust but verify"
is applicable only to trustworthy vendors. Dominion Voting is the opposite of trustworthy.
The only real solution to the vulnerability of EVS is not to use them at all. Manual ballot
counting has no software vulnerabilities, and is much cheaper. Virginia appears to be the only
state that decided to use only manual ballots.
... ... ...
In August 2009 (corrected), the rough breakdown of the EVS market in the US was (per
Brad Friedman ):
Less than a year later, after the "antitrust" actions of Obama's DOJ, it became:
50% Dominion
40% ES&S (restricted in competing against Dominion)
10% Hart Intercivic
Thus, the DOJ's actions did the exact opposite of its words.
An elections system vendor should be non-partisan, in a demonstrable way. Dominion is not
just partisan, but hyper-partisan in favor of the Democrat party, or even its pocket
vendor.
Dominion has many more ties to the Democrat party and its prominent supporters in the US and
abroad, which are not covered in this article.
Software Development in Serbia
Dominion develops much of its software in Belgrade, Serbia. Russia is a close friend to
Serbia, if not its only one. If anybody sincerely thought that Putin wanted to hack American
elections, their first location of interest would be the offices of Dominion Voting in
Belgrade, rather than the Trump Tower in New York.
By the way, Serbian and Russian languages use the Cyrillic alphabet. Most letters have the
same Unicode encoding in Serbian and Russian (the Basic Multilingual Plane, range 0410-04FF ). If any election officials found Cyrillic
text on a Dominion voting machine in 2016, it was probably left by its developers in
Serbia.
Remarks
This is the Agreement between
Michigan & Dominion , including specs of many Dominion products (PDF, 161 pages). Wi-Fi
connection and even a dial up modem are offered as an option.
Some of the companies referenced here as foreign based or foreign originating re-registered
in the US.
Dominion Voting Systems Series Part I
Part II (this) Part
III
Just few thougts
Dominion develops much of its software in Belgrade, Serbia. Russia is a close friend to
Serbia
At the time when ten SW was developing, Serbia had long beenin the hands of Germany and the EU.
Which is the same as writing in the hands of Soros and his NGO. Written Serbian is more similar
to neighboring Greek than Russian, and this also applies to Cyrillic.
A previous head of Dominions software was one Eric Coomer. He is a member or avid
supporter of Antifa, depending on how you view the group.
The same Eric Coomer was previously a skinhead when he was at Berkeley, based on ok'd
message board posts.
Google Eric Coomer Skinhead and view some of what comes up online.
From skinhead to Antifa? He is now apparently nowhere to be found. Seems to me at least,
that there may be a chance he may be CIA and that this may have been a domestic op to get rid
of Trump.
Here's an analogy : imagine the blues and reds both agree that I am a notorious thief,
even if it's only a false narrative. Then they hire me as a security guard. That would be
willfully, knowingly hiring a criminal, which would be criminal, not because of the facts,
but because of the logic.
A couple of thoughts about the Venzuela gambit. Evidently Tucker Carson wanted Sydney to
tell him all about the "Dominion" vote flipping in a public interview. Which would have been
tantamount to giving away all the potential Republican case, and given the Democrats prior
knowledge of what to expect. A no-go. Mentioning "Venezuela-Cuba" could have the effect of
heading off a direct civil war if the US Dems and Repubs have a" common enemy" to blame. (Too
late for Russia, China too touchy, not many other major targets). Note that Venezuela has a
paper trail created at the same time as the electronic vote...
Also, some counties in Michigan use Dominion but most of them do not I believe.
Only about half the state. Of the top fifteen counties, Wayne, Kent, Ingham, Saginaw, St
Clair, Jackson, and Berrien use Dominion. Oakland, Macomb, Genesee, Washtenaw, Ottawa,
Livingston and Muskegon use Hart InterCivic, and Kalamazoo uses ES&S.
O'Connor pushed her about her claims that computer software used in the election,
particularly Dominion Voting Systems, has been tainted, and he wondered how she would prove it.
For starters, Powell said that her legal team has pictures of votes being manipulated in
real-time.
"It is terrifying, and it is a huge national security issue," Powell said. "Why the
Department of Justice and FBI have not done something, Dominion is closing its offices and
moving. No doubt they're shredding documents. God only knows what else. More than 100 Dominion
people have wiped any connection with Dominion off the internet."
She also claims that they have testimony from witnesses opening military ballots and
trashing them if they were for Trump, and substitute ballots were put in for Biden.
"I'm essentially staking my personal and professional reputation on these allegations, and I
have no hesitation from what I've seen in doing so," she noted. "In fact, I think it would be
irresponsible if not criminal of me not to come forward with it."
She also says she would LOVE for Dominion to sue her over her allegations so she can conduct
civil discovery. Powell also reacted to Fox News host Tucker Carlson's criticism of her on his
program on Thursday night.
The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
(CISA) issued a statement last week defending the integrity of the 2020 election. The problem,
however, is two of the main election software companies that have been called into question
– Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic – sit on CISA. And that information was
never disclosed, the
Epoch Times reported.
Below is the the joint statement put out by the Executive Committee of the Election
Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) and the Election Infrastructure Sector
Coordinating Council (SCC):
"The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the
country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process
prior to finalizing the result.
"When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close
results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability
to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and
resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or
errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or
was in any way compromised.
"Other security measures like pre-election testing, state certification of voting
equipment, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's (EAC) certification of voting
equipment help to build additional confidence in the voting systems used in 2020.
"While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about
the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security
and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to
elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections."
The two election software companies are members of the GCC's Sector Coordinating
Council:
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Arrikan, Inc./Chaves Consulting, Inc.
Associated Press (AP) Elections
BPro, Inc.
Clear Ballot Group
Crosscheck
DemTech Voting Solutions
Democracy Live
Democracy Works
DMF Associates
Dominion Voting Systems
Election Systems & Software (ES&S)
Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC)
Freeman, Craft, McGregor Group
Hart InterCivic
KNOWInk
Microsoft
Microvote General Corp.
NTS Data Services
PCC Technology Inc.
Pro V&V
Runbeck Election Services
SCYTL
SLI Compliance
Smartmatic
Tenex Software Solutions
The Canton Group
Unisyn Voting Solutions
Voatz
VOTEC
Votem
Voting Works
VR Systems
According to the Election Infrastructure Subsector Coordinating Council
Charter , the goal of the group is to "advance the physical security, cyber security, and
emergency preparedness of the nation's election infrastructure, in accordance with existing
U.S. law" and "serve as the primary liaison between the election subsector and federal,
state, and local agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), concerning
private election subsector security and emergency preparedness issues."
CISA's goal , on the
other hand, is to work "collaboratively with those on the front lines of elections -- state
and local governments, election officials, federal partners, and vendors -- to manage risks
to the Nation's election infrastructure
State and local election officials decide what voting software and programs to use and
CISA has no control over that.
Interestingly enough, I received an email tonight from Dominion about "setting the record
straight." They cited the above statement as reason to trust them but failed to disclose
their CISA connection.
Here's some of the bigger points made in their email:
Dominion Voting Systems categorically denies false assertions about vote switching and
software issues with our voting systems.
According to a
Joint Statement by the federal government agency that oversees U.S. election security,
the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity, & Infrastructure Security Agency
(CISA): "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes,
or was in any way compromised." The government & private sector councils that support
this mission called the 2020 election "
the most secure in American history ."
...
3) Dominion is a nonpartisan U.S. company
Dominion has no ownership relationships with the Pelosi family, Feinstein family,
Clinton Global Initiative, Smartmatic, Scytl, or any ties to Venezuela. Dominion works with
all U.S. political parties; our customer base and our government outreach practices reflect
this nonpartisan approach.
As reported by the
Associated Press , "Dominion made a one-time philanthropic commitment at a Clinton
Global Initiative meeting in 2014, but the Clinton Foundation has no stake or involvement
in Dominion's operations, the nonprofit has confirmed." The meeting included bipartisan
attendees focused on international democracy-building.
There have been no "raids" of Dominion servers by the U.S. military or otherwise, and
Dominion does not have servers in Germany.
...
7) Assertions of voter fraud conspiracies are 100% false
All U.S. voting systems must provide assurance that they work accurately and reliably as
intended under federal
U.S. EAC and state certification and testing requirements. Election safeguards -- from
testing and certification of voting systems, to canvassing and auditing -- prevent
malicious actors from tampering with vote counts and ensure that final vote tallies are
accurate. Read more from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency .
This isn't the first time Dominion's software has been called into question. Democrats
voiced concern over the software last December. The Denver Post
warned about their election security earlier this year. The Michigan GOP
said a software glitch caused 6,000 votes to flip from Trump to Biden, although the
Michigan Secretary of State
said that wasn't the case. It's
one of the reasons Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said the legal process needs to play out in the
courts.
Trump campaign counsel repeatedly accused Dominion and its officers of criminal conduct and
business improprieties. Those are categories of "per se defamation" under the common law. No
special damages must be shown in such per se cases. Individual officers could bring defamation
claims and the company itself could bring a business disparagement action.
Businesses can be defamed like individuals if the false statement injures the business
character of the corporation or its prestige and standing in the industry. In Dun &
Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc ., 472 U.S. 749 (1985) the Supreme Court allowed a
business to sue a credit reporting agency for defamation where the agency mistakenly reported
that the business had filed for bankruptcy.
Restatement Second § 561 Defamation of Corporations states:
"One who publishes defamatory matter concerning a corporation is subject to liability to
it
(a) if the corporation is one for profit, and the matter tends to prejudice it in the
conduct of its business or to deter others from dealing with it, or
(b) if, although not for profit, it depends upon financial support from the public, and
the matter tends to interfere with its activities by prejudicing it in public
estimation."
There could be lawsuits in Colorado or the place of the alleged defamation. The lawsuit
would likely be filed under state law but moved to federal court under diversity jurisdiction
arguments.
The press conference was an explosion of potentially defamatory claims by individuals or
companies. The only clear defense is truth. The team insists that it can prove these
allegations. It may have to do so. Not only can the individual lawyers face such lawsuits but
the Trump campaign itself could be liable under the principle of respondeat superior, where an
employer is liable for the conduct of his employees when they are acting within the scope of
their employment. Ironically, the Latin term means "let the master speak." The President or his
campaign could be forced to speak in a defamation case if they have not spoken in the promised
court filings.
" The maintenance of Americans' constitutional rights should not depend on the good
graces and sketchy ethics of a handful of well-connected corporations who have stonewalled
Congress, lied to Congress, and have questionable judgment when it comes to security
"
-Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore)
Barely two weeks ago allegations that the 2020 US Presidential election had been rigged on
behalf of DNC presidential spawn Joe Biden were met with almost universal scepticism. This past
week may have changed that.
In the
article of Monday, Nov 9 the author examined the problems with the mail-in ballot totals in
the five key swing states and the legal and legislative challenges to them including re-counts
and the SCOTUS intervention of the PA Supreme Court.
The subject of alleged DNC election fraud has now shifted to an examination of the machines
that count each ballot and render the results. The voter is supposed to believe that Joe Biden
defeated Trump and at the same time lost seats in the US House and state legislatures. This is
possible but highly improbable.
Today, Nov 17, in preparation for a multi-state legal challenge to results created by these
voting machines, lead Trump attorney and former Assistant US Attorney Sidney Powell, said:
"They need to investigate the likelihood that 3% of the vote total was changed in the
pre-election voting ballots that were collected digitally by using the Hammer program and the
software program called Scorecard. That would have amounted to a massive change in the
vote."
Here, begins that examination. As shown, there is reason for concern.
Numbers don't lie. Mounting evidence to date suggests that voting machines do, particularly
the ones sold by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. As the third part of this chronology begins it
has now become obvious that Trump's campaign operatives expected election fraud. They have
since very quickly brought legal challenges to bear in AZ, GA, MI, PA, WI, and NV. However,
most of this news first circled around only the mail-in ballots.
From Trump's perspective, as of this writing, 87,804 (WI-20,540; GA-14,045; PA- 53,219) are
needed to flip the election. MI is the toughest and shows Biden up by a reported 146,123
votes.
Interestingly, regarding the numbers in each state- and AZ- the Dominion voting machine's
results are in dispute in all. Whereas, the proceedings regarding the mail-in ballots
may provide a switch of perhaps thousands of votes, issues with the Dominion machines,
if proven, could be in the 100's of Thousands. Or More.
This past week, evidence is surfacing.
Before 2020:Warning Signs
Days before the 2020 election important news was buried. On September 30 a report in the
Philadelphia Inquirerdetailed that"a laptop and several memory
sticks" used to program Dominion voting machines in Philadelphia had mysteriously
vanished.
But concerns about Dominion had begun far earlier.
The U.S. Constitution leaves election management up to state and local officials, so voting
systems and protocols vary across thousands of jurisdictions. Partly for this reason, a 2019
investigation was launched by senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron
Wyden (D-Ore.), and other Democratic lawmakers into the three largest suppliers of US digital
voting machines, Dominion Voting Systems, Election Systems & Software, and Hart InterCivic.
Together they hold over 92% of all US distribution of voting machines.
"(W)e have concerns about the spread and effect of private equity investment including the
election technology industry -- an integral part of our nation's democratic process These
problems threaten the integrity of our elections and demonstrate the importance of election
systems that are strong, durable, and not vulnerable to attack."
The Committee revealed that the Dominion machines were vulnerable to internal and internet
hacking. Because all these machines interface their ballot totals via wireless digital modem
external interference is all too possible. Further concerns were
provided by NBC news in very early 2020.
In the State of
Texas , well before the 2020 election Dominion Voting Systems and their proprietary
"Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5 " was rejected three times. From the summary:
"The reports identified multiple hardware and software issues that preclude the Office of
the Texas Secretary of State from determining that the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system satisfies
each of the voting-system requirements Specifically, [if] the system is suitable for its
intended purpose; operates efficiently and accurately; and is safe from fraudulent or
unauthorized manipulation."
Previously, Federal regulation attempts on voting machines in 2018 were fruitless since this
was opposed by some state election officials and the White House on the grounds that it would
impose on states' rights.
A prudent measure that had some bipartisan support ( S. 2593 in the 115th Congress )
ended up going nowhere. Introduced by Sen. James Lankford
(R-Okla.) this bill would have required voting machines to produce a printout to let election
officials confirm electronic votes. Lankford and Wyden had said that they intended to
reintroduce paper-trail bills. They did not.
The Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative published
a report that explored their attempts to look into Dominion and other voting companies:
"Part of the challenge is that it is difficult to compile even basic facts about it. The
industry earns an estimated $300 million in revenue annually is dominated by three firms [and
is] limiting the amount of information available in the public domain about their operations
and financial performance."
Nonetheless, Republicans and Democrats agreed in a 2018 omnibus bill ( Public Law 115-141 ) to
divide among the states $380 million for voting system upgrades. Georgia's legislature also
approved a plan to spend as much as $150 million on equipment that cybersecurity researchers
say is still
hackable . Most of that equipment was supplied by Dominion.
According to Business Insider , Georgia "became the only state in the country last year
to overhaul its entire election system, paying Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems $106
million for new voting machines, printers and scanners."
The NY Times reported that some Democrats in the Georgia Legislature opposed
purchasing the Dominion system and there is "some evidence that heavy lobbying and sales
tactics have played a role in their adoption in Georgia and elsewhere."
In hotly contested Georgia, during 2019's test run a
now-deleted Atlanta Journal Constitution article detailed "a glitch" that surfaced
when six counties tested the Dominion system. The problem occurred in at least four of the six
counties where the
new voting system was being
tested before being used statewide during the March 24 presidential primary. The problems
weren't rectified by primary date, which was moved to June due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the New York
Times :
"Georgia's statewide primary elections on Tuesday were overwhelmed by a full-scale
meltdown of new voting systems Scores of new state-ordered voting machines were reported to
be missing or malfunctioning, and hours-long lines materialized at polling places across
Georgia. Some people gave up and left before casting a ballot Predominantly black areas
experienced some of the worst problems.
Who is Dominion?
Dominion Voting Systems is a company from Toronto, Canada , that has headquarters in Denver, Colorado, and is
one of the three major firms providing voting machines in U.S. elections. The others are
Election Systems & Software, and Hart InterCivic with ES&C in the top spot and Dominion
at number two.
A
2014 form filed with the State of California says Dominion was founded in 2003 in Canada
and in 2009 moved to the U.S. Its principal officers were listed as John Poulos, CEO; Ian
MacVicar, CFO; and James Hoover, vice president of product line management. Dominion Voting Systems , claims to work with 1300
voting jurisdictions including nine of the 20 largest counties in the nation.
Dominion produced the software used in MI , GA and all the remaining states in question.
Like many corporations, Dominion purchased influence in congress. Bloomberg reported in
April of last year that Dominion hired lobbying firm, Brownstein Farber Hyatt & Schreck.
House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi's former chief of staff, Nadeam Elshami, is one of the lobbyists
for that firm.
At the state level, Dominion employs eight registered lobbyists in GA alone. They include
Lewis Abit Massey ,
a former Democratic Georgia Secretary of State, and Jared Thomas, former chief of staff for
Republican Governor Brian Kemp.
ES&S also has its own lobbying effort recently adding Peck Madigan Jones to the
lobbying firm Vectre Corp. ES&S paid Vectre $80,000 during the last three months of
2018 alone. According to the Washington Post, Dominion also reported donating in between
$25,001-$50,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Why the Clinton Foundation?
Locations of US
voting machines: Dominion is shown in Orange; ES&S in Blue. (Source: Penn Warton)
The news site, Truthout, reported that Dominion "was recently acquired by New York-based hedge
fund Staple Street Capital." An executive board member of Staple Street Capital, William Earl Kennard , is a
former ambassador to the EU who was appointed to that
position by Barack Obama. In 2018,
Dominion publicly announced it had been acquired by its management team and Staple Street
Capital.
Interestingly, on November 6, Deadline reported that
Kennard was named to the board of WarnerMedia parent company to AT&T, which owns CNN .
Long ago, Dominion earned $44 million in 2012. It listed its addresses for manufacturing and
development as Toronto; Belgrade, Serbia; Denver; Plano, Texas; and Baldwin Park, California. A
2020 filing lists their registered agent as
Cogency Global in Florida. Its directors were listed as Hootan Yaghoobzadeh of Staple Street
Capital, Stephen Owens , also
of Staple Street, and Benjamin Humphreys. Yaghoobzadeh and Owens both have past ties to the
Carlyle Group investment firm. In 2015, Carlyle was the world's largest private equity
firm.
" Glitches."
Beyond the reports of problems with the mail-in ballots, in the aftermath of the election
two weeks ago, the independent reports of voting machine irregularities have in combination
developed serious concerns about Dominion and their software that they feature as "Democracy
Suite 5.5." All of these problems favored Biden, never Trump.
First, on Tuesday, in the wee hours of the morning Dominion machines
erroneously gave Democratic candidate Joe Biden a 3,000 plus vote advantage in Antrim
County, MI. After a manual recount of the votes, officials posted updated results showing
President Trump won the county with 9,783 votes making up 56.46% of ballots cast. Joe Biden
earned 7,289 votes or 42.07%. CNN "went blue" for Biden before the error was
discovered.
With the machine results being utterly mathematically disconnected to the hand-count tally
Antrim County officials have blamed the county's election software saying totals counted did
not match tabulator tapes.
In Oakland County, Michigan, according to the Royal Oak Tribune another glitch in a
completely different ballot counting system, Hart Intercivic, switched over 1,200 Republican
votes to Democrat. The switch initially caused County Commissioner Adam Kochenderfer to lose.
Once the glitch was found, and the votes were properly attributed, Kochenderfer went from
losing by 100 votes to winning by over 1,100. Hart uses its proprietary system called Verity.
Eleven Michigan counties use Hart's systems
Back in GA, voters were unable to cast machine ballots for a couple of hours in Morgan and
Spalding counties after the electronic devices crashed, state officials said. In response to
the delays, Superior Court Judge W. Fletcher Sams extended voting until 11 p.m.
The companies "uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a
glitch," said Marcia Ridley, elections supervisor at Spalding County Board of Elections.
Ridley said that a representative from Dominion called her after poll workers began having
problems with the equipment Tuesday morning and said the problem was due to an upload to the
machines by one of their technicians overnight. Said Ridley,
"That is something that they don't ever do. I've never seen them update anything the day
before the election."
There is a reason for Ridley's observation. By GA law the machines are supposed to be
certified for accurate use by the state before the election day. How was this possible with
Dominion uploading data unknown during that night?
This matter may be far from over in GA. Trump has already filed for an injunction, per state
statute, which cites, "These vote tabulator failures are a mechanical malfunction that,
under MCL 168.831-168.839, requires a "special election" in the precincts affected." The
keyword here is precincts. Plural.
In Oakland County Michigan, Dominion machine errors resulted in a Democrat being wrongly
declared the winner of a commissioner's race by 104 votes – only to have their seat flip
back to the rightful Republican candidate after the error was caught.
More importantly, Wisconsin reports came in that showed that the vote totals for Rock County
appeared to be switched between President Trump and Joe Biden. 9,516 votes were eliminated from
President Trump and moved to Joe Biden. If this one report is proved true, then the 19,032-vote
shift would nearly wipe-out, of its own, Biden's reported 20,540 vote lead in Wisconsin and his
electoral votes.
Pennsylvania and its twenty electoral votes are also hotly in contention. Dominion machines
are being used in Armstrong, Carbon, Clarion, Crawford, Dauphin, Delaware, Erie, Fayette,
Fulton, Luzerne, Montgomery, Pike, Warren, York counties.
State Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-York, says she started getting calls shortly after the
polls opened Tuesday morning that the machines were jamming and causing delays.
Phillips also highlighted another problem. "If that ballot is rejected, for example, if
they over-voted for county commissioner, and that ballot is rejected, then that person has no
way of knowing that their vote has been invalidated. That's not acceptable," she said.
Due to Dominion machine delays, PA election officials admitted that if ballots could not be
immediately scanned by the machines, those ballots were instead stored so they could be counted
later in "emergency holding boxes will be scanned at the polling places."
Those "stored" ballots were not always scanned. The Pennsylvania GOP had to
bring a lawsuit to ensure that all York County ballots were counted. These had been placed
in suitcases quickly purchased by Dominion and none were scanned.
AZ is also reporting problems. Boasts Dominion's website: "Arizona: "Serving 2.2 million
Maricopa County voters with Democracy Suite 5.5 "
Yep. Maricopa County. The contested county where this week, Arizona GOP Chair Rae Chorenky
was been forced to resign after failing to sign the required Certificate of Accuracy for the
Dominion voting machines.
Concerns Mount.
The key difficulty in examining potential election fraud by Dominion and possibly their
counterparts is in going beyond isolated incidents and establishing a systemic fraud. One
safety mechanism Dominion and other providers tout is that while voters might make their
choices on a touchscreen machine, a paper ballot with a bar code is printed out where the voter
can confirm their choices before inputting the paper ballot into a machine. Here's the problem,
according to a US News story :
"[The machines] register votes in bar codes that the human eye cannot decipher. That's a
problem, researchers say: Voters could end up with printouts that accurately spell out the
names of the candidates they picked, but, because of a hack, the bar codes do not reflect
those choices. Because the bar codes are what's tabulated, voters would never know that their
ballots benefited another candidate."
These bar codes are vitally important to the subject of election fraud. They are also of
great interest to Ray Lutz of California based Citizen's Oversight.
For those unfamiliar with Lutz and Citizen's, his organization has garnered great
respect across the state for, among other examples, championing the successful closure of the
San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS) and next the exposure of demonstrative election
fraud in the 2016 California primary that tipped the scales for Hillary Clinton rather than
Bernie Sanders. Lutz is no stranger to using the courts effectively for the public good.
To this end, Lutz just a month before the election announced the launch of Citizen's new
ballot checking software called AuditEngine . In reply to an inquiry for data,
Lutz said,
"We are still gathering information at this time. We may have a lawsuit in NC to get poll
tapes data. Also, we will be seriously looking at PA."
In a press release this week Lutz forewarned:
"Ballot images can thwart changes to paper ballots, magically losing or finding new
ballots in the recount. Citizens' Oversight today sent a request to keep the images By
preserving the ballot images, we can make sure the paper ballots recounted in Georgia match
ballot images that were made on election night, and are not modified by any unscrupulous
campaign operatives."
As Citizen's takes a closer look at GA and possibly PA while others examine the swing
states, the likely hood of this showing a massive shift towards Trump in every state is a
difficult proposition. However, in the era of the citizen investigator, the work of one
anonymous source is picking up traction, so much so that many alternative media sources are
quoting it, as is the Trump campaign.
The methodology of this investigation is thorough but needs corroboration by experts.
However, the person releasing this analysis obtained the same data as was
captured by the New York Times on election night from Edison Research. It is the same data
that was used for election coverage by ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News. The report
provides a careful and plausible methodology and a state-by-state list of votes switched from
Trump to Biden and of votes simply erased by
Dominion machines. His results show discrepancies- some very large- in every state and
particularly in GA and PA where, if proven, those states would flip for Trump.
Following the Dots Down the Rabbit Hole?
For the reader who cares to look beyond "Plausible Deniability" and connect the dots
of possibility, days before the election of Nov 3 Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (Ret.) cast his own
suspicions that were in keeping with the charges levelled today by Sidney Powell.
McInerney stated he was warned in 2018 by Admiral James Aloysius "Ace" Lyons Jr., just
before his death, that a plot to fix the 2020 election was in the works. Lyons served as
Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet from 1985 to 1987. He also wrote a column about Seth Rich
being the one who leaked the 2016 DNC email tranche that blew HRC out of the water and which
The Washington Times deleted.
McInerney, although previously discredited for his backing of the 2002 Iraq "weapons of
mass destruction" claims, thus described the two US/ CIA covert operations called
"Hammer" and "Scorecard." Both were designed for the CIA in the aftermath of
9/11.
The author has verified the existence of both programs.
" The Hammer" is a counter-intelligence surveillance program used to spy on
activities carried out through protected networks (like voting machines) without detection.
"Scorecard" is a vote-manipulation application that changes votes during data transfer.
Adding credence to the allegations of both men is a previous report by Alan Jones and Mary
Fanning of the American Report that was published on March 17, 2017 . The claims in that report
mirror those of Lyons and McInerney and refer to the information provided by the man who
designed both Hammer and Scorecard, Dennis Montgomery, who has turned whistleblower.
Montgomery states that Hammer and Scorecard were designed by him under the supervision of
the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and then CIA director John Brennan.
In a subsequent article, The American Report connects the dots from Brennan and Clapper to
Christopher Krebs, currently the head of the DHS's Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency
(CISA). It should be noticed that it is Krebs who has in recent days been the DHS point man for
denying any and all allegations of election fraud as an MSM spokesperson on the matter.
[Breaking News: Moments ago, Trump fired Christopher Krebs effective immediately]
John Brennan, James Clapper and Krebs are all DNC disciples and have been vociferous in
their public disdain for Trump over the past four years. With this and the week's
aforementioned national news in mind, next came the news yesterday, that Sidney Powell
considered the reports about Hammer and Scorecard credible, saying on Fox News, that,
" it explains a lot of what we're seeing All of those districts need to be checked for the
software glitch that would change the vote for Michigan dramatically. The same thing is
happening in other states. We've had hundreds of thousands of ballots appear for solely Mr
Biden which is statistically impossible as a matter of mathematics. It can all be documented
it is being put in files that we will file in federal court."
As if this all were not enough to create bi-partisan concern for the 2020 election, just
moments ago it was revealed that a memory card was found during the audit in Fayette county GA
with 2,755 votes, most of them for Trump. The news comes one day after
2,600 uncounted ballots were found on another memory card in Floyd County, GA – which
were also mostly cast for President Trump.
The new margin total statewide in GA is now a 12,929 lead for Biden.
Observers might notice that there does not appear to be any sense of panic by the Trump
campaign, nor their lawyers and that all have so far moved methodically via the courts and in
announcing the steady stream of reported violations.
Certainly, Trump has lost in some court proceedings so far, but the big cases, such as the
SCOTUS intervention with the rulings of the lower PA Supreme Court are still in play as are the
states final vote certification, the results of which preclude further legal action.
[Breaking News: Officials in Wayne County, Michigan – home to the city of
Detroit, have refused to certify the results of the Nov. 3 election.]
As suggested in the first article in this series, "Trump's (64Day) Election
End Game" Trump continues to play the long game at least until the Jan 6 meeting of the
Electoral College in Wash. DC. Since the time of that article, the subject of the Electoral
College has been examined across the nation's news media and transformed from skepticism to
probability.
What should become most important, if these many allegations come together as substantial
truth, is that the issue of 2020 Election fraud must become a bi-partisan issue and
quickly.
As was suggested in the previous article, "Of
Color Revolutions, Foreign and Domestic," the advent of America's own color revolution
may be at hand and become the most significant threat to America since the civil war. To view
this only as an indictment of one party allows those loyal to that party to ignore
consideration of facts. This will only split the country further.
To prevent a US color revolution, the one the Dems are already calling, "Purple,"
there must be a bi-partisan investigation by both sides of the aisle that transcends party
loyalty to that of the priority of saving the country. Not Joe Biden. Not Donald Trump.
Criminal charges and indictments must be brought against one and all proved to be involved in
the attempt to circumvent the American election process.
That indictment: Treason.
About the Author: Brett Redmayne-Titley has authored and published over 180
in-depth articles over the past twelve years. Many have been translated and republished
worldwide. He can be reached at: live-on-scene ((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at
his archive:www.watchingromeburn.uk
Dominion Voting Systems has denied several times to media outlets that its software and
devices are not secure or that they were used to switch votes.
"Dominion Voting Systems categorically denies false assertions about vote switching issues
with our voting systems," the company said in a statement . "Vote deletion/switching assertions
are completely false."
"No credible reports or evidence of any software issues exist," the company stated, adding,
"Human errors related to reporting tabulated results have arisen in a few counties, including
some using Dominion equipment, but appropriate procedural actions were made by the county to
address these errors were made prior to the canvass process."
A national coalition that includes the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Association of State Election Directors
said there is a lack of evidence supporting the claim that voting software deleted or switched
votes in the election.
"There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in
any way compromised," a
joint statement from the coalition said, and called the 2020 election "the most secure in
American history."
Dominion Voting Systems
is a member of CISA's Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, one of two
entities that authored the statement put out by CISA.
Trainor, in earlier remarks to Newsmax, said he believes locations where poll watchers were
not allowed "meaningful access" to observe vote tabulation could be involved in voter
fraud.
"I do believe that there is voter fraud taking place in these places," Trainor
told the outlet . "Otherwise they would allow the observers to go in."
The official referred to a case in Pennsylvania, where a court ordered them to allow the
Trump campaign to have poll observers watch from six feet away, but the order was defied.
"They have not been allowed that meaningful access," Trainor said, adding that if the law
was broken in this regard, the election was "illegitimate."
This election has ripped the band-aid off the ridiculous claims from the Left that voting
fraud is non-existent. Quote Tweet Heather Mullins - Real America's Voice (RAV-TV) @TalkMullins
· 4h BREAKING! Floyd County, GA: Nearly 2600 votes discovered in hand count that weren't
counted on election night. Most for Trump.
Election officials are working with Dominion Voting
Systems to determine what happened.
@GaSecofState is sending an investigator tomorrow.
Something fishy here. Usually voting machines are a CIA/NSA home playing field. Why Chavez wanted to play on other side field,
wher he has huge disadvanrtage, in not very clear.
Another interesting question is why poor countries buy this expensive crap. Why they need voting machines at all?
Notable quotes:
"... "I was witness to the creation and operation of a sophisticated electronic voting system that permitted the leaders of the Venezuelan government to manipulate the tabulation of votes for national and local elections and select the winner of those elections in order to gain and maintain their power," the affidavit states. ..."
WASHINGTON -- Trump campaign lawyer and former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell released an
affidavit on Nov. 16, from an alleged whistleblower who claims to have witnessed how election
software secretly manipulates votes without leaving a trace.
The whistleblower -- who says his or her background is with the Venezuelan military,
including the national security guard detail of the Venezuelan president -- outlines an alleged
conspiracy between Smartmatic software executives, former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, and
that country's election officials, to ensure Chavez won reelections and retained power for
years. The whistleblower said he was present at multiple meetings.
The Epoch Times was not able to independently verify the claims.
"I was witness to the creation and operation of a sophisticated electronic voting system
that permitted the leaders of the Venezuelan government to manipulate the tabulation of votes
for national and local elections and select the winner of those elections in order to gain and
maintain their power," the affidavit states.
"From that point on, Chavez never lost any election. In fact, he was able to ensure wins for
himself, his party, Congress persons and mayors from townships."
The whistleblower claimed the "software and fundamental design of the electronic electoral
system and software of Dominion and other election tabulating companies relies upon software
that is a descendant of the Smartmatic Electoral Management System."
"In short, the Smartmatic software is in the DNA of every vote tabulating company's software
and system, "the whistleblower said.
The affidavit alleges that Dominion is one of three major companies that tabulates votes in
the United States. Powell said in
a Nov. 15 interview, "We're getting ready to overturn election results in multiple states." She
claimed that the U.S. election software switched "millions of votes" from Trump to Biden.
The whistleblower claims that Smartmatic created a system that anonymized the voters'
choices inside the machine and then spat out the desired outcome by the end of the election
day. No vote could be traced back to an individual voter.
In the April 2013 Venezuelan election, the affidavit states, the conspirators had to take
the internet down for two hours to reset the machines, as Nicolás Maduro was losing by
too many votes to Henrique Capriles Radonski.
The whistleblower alleged that Chavez eventually exported the software to Bolivia,
Nicaragua, Argentina, Ecuador, and Chile.
A Dominion Voting Systems
spokesperson said on Nov. 12 that the company "categorically denies any claims about any
vote switching or alleged software issues with our voting systems."
"Our systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state and local election
authorities have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process," the spokesperson said in a
statement to the Denver
Post .
This article and headline was revised at 10 p.m. on Nov. 16 to remove a section pending
further verification.
@themarketswork 3)
What the agency failed to disclose, however, is that Dominion Voting Systems, along with
Smartmatic, is a member of CISA's Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council - one
of the two entities that authored the statement put out by CISA.
8) On Nov. 13, Dominion sent us an email titled "SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT" which cited the
joint statement published by GCC and SCC. Dominion cited the CISA statement as exoneration
but failed to disclose that the statement was written by a Council of which it was part.
9) Additionally, while it remains unclear whether CISA and the GCC/SCC have evaluated
concerns raised in the Georgia lawsuit, their public statements categorically deny any
problems with the systems. 5 320 1K
10) On Oct 11, Judge Totenberg wrote that the case presented "serious system security
vulnerability and operational issues that may place Plaintiffs and other voters at risk of
deprivation of their fundamental right to cast an effective vote that is accurately counted."
11 493 1.3K
Pre-Election Concerns Over Dominion Voting Systems Highlighted in Georgia Lawsuit
Cyber security expert raised concerns over integrity of system, including external
vulnerabilities, in sworn statement BY JEFF CARLSON November 12, 2020 Updated:
November 12, 2020 Print
Software and equipment from Dominion Voting Systems, used in this month's presidential
election, has been the source of ongoing controversy, with one legal declaration made by a poll
observer of Georgia 's
statewide primary earlier this year highlighting multiple problems.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the state's purchase of a
$106 million election system from Dominion Voting Systems in July 2019. In a lawsuit, which
originated in
2017, critics
contend that the new system was subject to many of the same security vulnerabilities as the
one it was replacing.
In an Oct. 11 order ,
just weeks prior to the presidential election, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg agreed with
the concerns associated with the new Dominion voting system, writing that
the case presented "serious system security vulnerability and operational issues that may place
Plaintiffs and other voters at risk of deprivation of their fundamental right to cast an
effective vote that is accurately counted."
"The Court's Order has delved deep into the true risks posed by the new BMD voting system as
well as its manner of implementation. These risks are neither hypothetical nor remote under the
current circumstances," Judge Totenberg wrote in her order.
Despite the court's misgivings, Totenberg ruled against replacing the Dominion system right
before the presidential election, noting that
"Implementation of such a sudden systemic change under these circumstances cannot but cause
voter confusion and some real measure of electoral disruption."
Concerns Over Election
Systems
In an Aug. 24 declaration
from Harri Hursti, an acknowledged expert on electronic voting
security , provided a first-hand description of problems he observed during the June 9
statewide primary election in Georgia and the runoff elections on Aug. 11.
Hursti had been "authorized as an expert inspecting and observing under the Coalition for
Good Governance's Rule 34 Inspection request in certain polling places and the Fulton County
Election Preparation Center."
Hursti summarized his findings as follows:
"The scanner and tabulation software settings being employed to determine which votes to
count on hand marked paper ballots are likely causing clearly intentioned votes not to be
counted"
"The voting system is being operated in Fulton County in a manner that escalates the
security risk to an extreme level."
"Voters are not reviewing their BMD [Ballot Marking Devices] printed ballots, which
causes BMD generated results to be un-auditable due to the untrustworthy audit trail."
During observation at Peachtree Christian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Hursti noted that the
"scanner would vary in the amount of time that it took to accept or reject a ballot."
Hursti stated that a dedicated system should not experience variable delays and noted that
"we are always suspicious about any unexpected variable delays, as those are common telltale
signs of many issues, including a possibility of unauthorized code being executed."
Hursti observed varying processing times at different locations, further raising concerns as
identical physical devices "should not behave differently while performing the identical task
of scanning a ballot."
Hursti stated in his sworn statement that his presence was requested by two poll watchers at
the Fanplex polling location who were observing certain unexplained anomalies. Upon arriving,
Hursti observed that for "reasons unknown, on multiple machines, while voters were attempting
to vote, the ballot marking devices sometimes printed 'test' ballots."
As Hursti noted, "during the election day, the ballot marking device should not be
processing or printing any ballot other than the one the voter is voting." Hursti stated that
this was indicative of a "wrong configuration" given to the Ballot Marking Device.
The issue also raised other questions in his mind:
"Why didn't the device print only test ballots?"
"How can the device change its behavior in the middle of the election day?"
"Is the incorrect configuration originating from the Electronic Pollbook System?"
"What are the implications for the reliability of the printed ballot and the QR code
being counted?"
Wholesale Outsourcing of Operation
During the runoff elections, on the night of Aug. 11, 2020, Hursti was present at the Fulton
County Election Preparation Center to observe the "upload of the memory devices coming in from
the precincts to the Dominion Election Management System [EMS] server." During this
observation, Hursti noted that "system problems were recurring and the Dominion technicians
operating the system were struggling with the upload process."
Hursti also noted that it appeared that Dominion personnel were the only ones with knowledge
of, and access to, the Dominion server. As Hursti stated in his declaration, "In my
conversations with Derrick Gilstrap and other Fulton County Elections Department EPC personnel,
they professed to have limited knowledge of or control over the EMS server and its
operations."
Hursti noted that this wholesale outsourcing of the operation of voting equipment to the
vendor's personnel was "highly unusual in my experience and of grave concern from a security
and conflict of interest perspective." Hursti referred to Dominion's onsite operation and
access as "an elevated risk factor."
Hursti also noted that the Dell computers running the Dominion server appeared not to have
been "hardened" -- the process of "securing a system by reducing its surface of vulnerability."
Hursti said that he found it "unacceptable for an EMS server not to have been hardened prior to
installation."
A 'Major Deficiency'
In addition to the hardening problems, Hursti observed that computers used in Georgia's
system for vote processing appeared to have "home/small business companion software packages"
on them. This raised areas of significant concern for Hursti as he noted:
"[O]ne of the first procedures of hardening is removal of all unwanted software, and removal
of those game icons and the associated games and installers alongside with all other software
which is not absolutely needed in the computer for election processing purposes would be one of
the first and most basic steps in the hardening process. In my professional opinion,
independent inquiry should be promptly made of all 159 counties to determine if the Dominion
systems statewide share this major deficiency."
In addition to the software packages noted above, Hursti discovered that one of the
computers had an icon for a 2017 computer game called "Homescapes" which Hursti noted called
into question whether "all Georgia Dominion system computers have the same operating system
version, or how the game has come to be having a presence in Fulton's Dominion voting
system."
Hursti also found a troubling blend of old and new equipment which carried additional
security risks due to a lack of patch updates:
"Although this Dominion voting system is new to Georgia, the Windows 10 operating system of
at least the 'main' computer in the rack has not been updated for 4 years and carries a wide
range of well-known and publicly disclosed vulnerabilities."
Hursti noted that the lack of "hardening" created security risks even for computers that
were not connected to the internet. He observed that when flash drives were connected to the
server, the "media was automounted by the operating system. When the operating system is
automounting a storage media, the operating system starts automatically to interact with the
device."
Hursti noted that the management of Fulton County's EMS server appeared to be an "ad hoc
operation with no formalized process." This seemed particularly apparent in relation to the
process of storage media coming in from various precincts throughout the night:
"This kind of operation i[s] naturally prone to human errors. I observed personnel calling
on the floor asking if all vote carrying compact flash cards had been delivered from the early
voting machines for processing, followed by later finding additional cards which had been
overlooked in apparent human error. Later, I heard again one technician calling on the floor
asking if all vote carrying compact flashes had been delivered. This clearly demonstrates lack
of inventory management which should be in place to ensure, among other things, that no rogue
storage devices would be inserted into the computer. In response, 3 more compact flash cards
were hand-delivered. Less than 5 minutes later, I heard one of the county workers say that
additional card was found and was delivered for processing. All these devices were trusted by
printed label only and no comparison to an inventory list of any kind was performed."
Hursti also observed that "operations were repeatedly performed directly on the operating
system." The election software has no visibility into the operations of the operating system,
which creates additional auditing problems, and as Hursti noted, "Unless the system is
configured properly to collect file system auditing data is not complete. As the system appears
not to be hardened, it is unlikely that the operating system has been configured to collect
auditing data."
Raising even greater concerns was the apparent "complete access" that Dominion personnel
appeared to have into the computer system. Hursti observed Dominion technicians troubleshooting
error messages with a "trial-and-error" approach which included access into the "Computer
Management" application, indicating complete access in Hursti's opinion.
As he stated in his declaration, "This means there are no meaningful access separation and
privileges and roles controls protecting the county's primary election servers. This also
greatly amplifies the risk of catastrophic human error and malicious program execution."
During these attempts to resolve the various issues that were occurring in real-time, Hursti
noted that it appeared as though Dominion staff shifted from on-site attempts at remediation to
off-site troubleshooting:
"The Dominion staff member walked behind the server rack and made manual manipulations which
could not be observed from my vantage point. After that they moved with their personal laptops
to a table physically farther away from the election system and stopped trying different ways
to work around the issue in front of the server, and no longer talked continuously with their
remote help over phone.
In the follow-up-calls I overheard them ask people on the other end of the call to check
different things, and they only went to a computer and appeared to test something and
subsequently take a picture of the computer screen with a mobile phone and apparently send it
to a remote location."
Hursti stated that this "created a strong mental impression that the troubleshooting effort
was being done remotely over remote access to key parts of the system."
Hursti also noted that a "new wireless access point with a hidden SSID access point name
appeared in the active Wi-Fi stations list" that he was monitoring.
All of this raised material alarms for Hursti, who noted that "If in fact remote access was
arranged and granted to the server, this has gravely serious implications for the security of
the new Dominion system. Remote access, regardless how it is protected and organized is always
a security risk, but furthermore it is transfer of control out of the physical perimeters and
deny any ability to observe the activities."
Recount
On Nov. 11, 2020, Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
announced that there will be a full recount and audit of all ballots cast in the
presidential election.
"With the margin being so close, it will require a full, by-hand recount in each county.
This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount and a recanvass all at once,"
Raffensperger said.
Dominion Voting Systems did not respond to a request for comment.
The worst think about Dominion software is that the fraud might be bipartisan and
preapproved. Implemented along with the introduction of voting machine for specific purpose of
controlling the results of the elections.
Otherwise it is "highly unlikely" that this Window based machines would be allowed by
intelligence agencies to tally votes in national elections. S voting machines are about the
control of population, not about counting votes.
Former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , a Trump campaign lawyer, suggested
in a Sunday interview that there is still more evidence coming out in President Donald Trump's
claims of voter fraud and irregularities.
"We're getting ready to overturn election results in multiple states," Powell said, saying
that she has enough evidence of election fraud to launch a widespread criminal
investigation.
"I don't make comments without having the evidence to back it up," she added, saying that
elections software switched "millions of votes" from Trump to Democratic nominee Joe
Biden.
Powell notably provided legal counsel to Gen. Michael Flynn in 2019. She was named to
Trump's legal team in the past several days.
Powell said a whistleblower came forward and said the elections software was designed to
"rig elections," saying that "he saw it happen in other countries," referring to voting systems
Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, or perhaps other software and machines.
"We have so much evidence, I feel like it's coming in through a fire hose," Powell said,
while noting that she won't reveal the evidence that she has.
"They can stick a thumb drive in the [voting] machine, they can upload software to it even
from the Internet from Germany or Venezuela even," she said, adding that operations "can
watch votes in real-time" and "can shift votes in real-time," or alleged bad actors can
"remote access anything."
"We've identified mathematically the exact algorithm they've used -- and planned to use
from the beginning" that allegedly switched votes to Biden, Powell remarked.
Powell also made reference to a 2019 investigation from Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.),
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), as well as other Democratic lawmakers into
Dominion Voting Systems, Election Systems & Software, and Hart InterCivic. The senators had
expressed concerns about the security of the voting systems.
"(W)e have concerns about the spread and effect of private equity investment in many
sectors of the economy, including the election technology industry -- an integral part of our
nation's democratic process,"
wrote the lawmakers in their letters to the firms about a year ago.
"These problems threaten the integrity of our elections and demonstrate the importance of
election systems that are strong, durable, and not vulnerable to attack."
Later in the Sunday morning interview, Powell said that her team has "detected voting
irregularities that are inexplicable" in states where officials believe they have valid
systems.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, left, and President Donald Trump in file
photographs. (Getty Images; Reuters)
During the election, Republicans in the House were able to flip at least 11 seats while the
GOP is poised to maintain control of the Senate. Some conservatives have questioned how such a
voting pattern is possible for Biden to win the presidential election, let alone receive more
votes than any other presidential candidate in American history, including President Barack
Obama's victory in 2008.
Companies Respond
The Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity agency issued a statement on Thursday
calling the 2020 general election the "most secure in American history," despite multiple legal
challenges alleging a variety of alleged voting irregularities across a number of battleground
states.
"The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the
country, election officials are reviewing and double-checking the entire election process
prior to finalizing the result," read the statement released by the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Smartmatic, in a statement on Saturday, said that it has no ties with Dominion Voting
Systems. Powell suggested that Smartmatic is operated by Dominion in the interview.
Dominion, over the past several weeks, has repeatedly denied its systems were compromised in
some way.
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"In the aftermath of the 2020 general election, there has been a great deal of
misinformation being circulated about Smartmatic and other companies that provide election
technology to voting jurisdictions in the US. We would like to dispel these incorrect
statements with facts," the firm wrote, adding that it "has never owned any shares or had any
financial stake in Dominion Voting Systems."
Dominion also refuted allegations that its machines changed votes from Trump to Biden on
Election Day and beyond.
"Dominion Voting Systems categorically denies any claims about any vote switching or alleged
software issues with our voting systems," a company spokesperson said in a statement
to The Denver Post. "Our systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state
and local election authorities have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process."
...as an aside, I'm willing to bet this will be memory holed very soon by
Gawgle...however, the presentation has been copied and preserved for posterity.
Any takers? ;-)
Colonel Lingus , 2 hours ago
Used to be Globalist BS with the Diebol equipment before Dominion (had a backdoor bigger
and nastier than a Kartrashian). Here's how you fix voting. Take it away from the States.
Capital punishment if one even thinks about having anything like the "hanging chad" nonsense
ever. Publicize the quick and brutal speedy trial, and burning at the stake for the
perps...(Lots of libturd Dem's wouldn't be home for Christmas too bad)
skizex , 23 minutes ago
at least 28-30 states use the software.
philipat , 2 hours ago
IF (and that's a big if) electronic systems are to be used for elections, the software
should be open-source and the systems should not be open to the internet. Given the
importance of elections to our "democracy", the Federal Government should be capable of
developing and publishing such software. If not, BUY a Company and do the same.Personally, I
still believe that paper ballots, which can be checked and recounted at will, remain the best
and least suspect method.
nmewn , 2 hours ago
"Personally, I still believe that paper ballots, which can be checked and recounted at
will, remain the best and least suspect method."
Correct and agreed.
Also, the great thing about paper ballots is we can "see" which ballots only have one mark
on them...that being...for President (which is another statistical anomaly).
I mean, what "real live legal voter" only votes for a Presidential candidate and nothing
else on the down ballot selections? Like, who do you prefer being your Senator, your
Representative?
There is a historical representation from past elections to compare that to in this one
;-)
Ms. Erable , 1 hour ago
Dunno why fed.gov hasn't used The Big .Gov
Stick via the Federal Elections Commision to dictate the standards required of states to
paticipate in a federal election. Your state doesn't meet the standards? Your results for any
and all federal offices are null and void - possibly resulting in your state having zero
representation at the federal level.
teutonicate , 3 hours ago
Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell: "We're Getting Ready To Overturn Election Results In Multiple
States"
Once it becomes apparent that this scandal is busting wide open, expect a lot more
"evidence" from rats jumping the corrupt ship - rather than being caught when the music
stops.
Powell already says that she has evidence coming at her "like a fire hose". I bet, there
has to be a lot of rats out their looking for an exit!
According to Gateway Pundit the head of security for Dominion posted a pro-antifa
manifesto.
MadameDeficit , 1 hour ago
Yup, Eric Coomer.
Oltman alleged that "Eric" was telling the Antifa members they needed to "keep up the
pressure." When Oltman asked, "Who's Eric?" someone answered, "Eric, he's the Dominion
guy." Oltman said that as the conversation continued, someone asked, "What are we gonna do
if F*cking Trump wins?" Oltman paraphrased how Eric (the Dominion guy) responded, "Don't
worry about the election, Trump's not gonna win. I made f*cking sure of that!"
As part of our attempts to investigate Antifa in Colorado, I have been logging onto
Antifa "conference calls" (for lack of a better word). A few weeks ago, I was on one of
those calls and heard a man named Eric Coomer, an executive at Dominion Voting Systems,
reassure other leftists on the call that Trump could not win because he 'made sure of it.'
As we investigated Coomer further, we found that he was rabidly anti-Trump and emphatically
pro-Antifa. Not only was he rooting for Trump to lose, but he also wanted it to be by a
huge margin so there would be "no recounts."
In the computer quality control business we used to have a term for the process (first
used on the Space Shuttle Transportation System Computers). It's called the "Forklift
Upgrade". When there is any doubt, replace and remove the whole damned machine. The military
and law enforcement use this technique on life critical systems. You got a glitch, you
replace the whole damn machine. That's why we have modularization.
No fixing, no sudden arrivals of repair people in the middle of the night. You only
replace with another sealed certified machine. After replacement, you have the poll managers
run THEIR audit and visible to all parties that want to see it, maybe even post the audit on
the wall so all voters can see it.
Poll managers make decision and they can actually do it themselves. No techies allowed on
site except to vote.
Those companies rely on lobbying and are in the pocket of politicians. They depend on contracts and they spent a lot of money on
lobbying. 2020 Election Security - C-SPAN.org
Whether or not the company's machines were misused, it poses structural risks, and suppressing criticism will make Trump supporters
even more dubious WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 09: (L-R) President and CEO of Election Systems & Software Tom Burt, President and CEO
of Dominion Voting Systems John Poulos, President and CEO of Hart InterCivic Julie Mathis testify during a hearing before
the House Administration Committee January
9, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
It is unlikely that many of the 73 million people who cast ballots for Donald Trump in 2020 will ever accept the legitimacy of
his loss. Who could convince them? If the media sources demanding Trump's concession held any sway with Trump's voters, they would
not have been his voters. They do not know for sure that the election was stolen, but they do know with apodictic certainty that
the media would lie to them if it was. So if Donald Trump says the election was stolen, that's good enough for the Deplorables.
Yet even the President's most faithful must have flinched at his recent tweet accusing a leading manufacturer of voting machines
of committing election fraud on a mass scale.
It is hard to overstate the irresponsibility of broadcasting such a serious accusation without proof. It shocked me, and my startle
response has become pretty desensitized over the last four years. Sure, it turned out Trump was right when he accused the Obama administration
of spying on his 2016 campaign, but this is different. Dominion Voting Systems is not staffed with Obama appointees, after all. I
decided to poke around a bit to see what, if anything, could possibly be behind Trump's wild accusation.
A Twitter user named Joe Oltmann had tweeted a few screenshots of a Facebook user posting Antifa manifestos and songs about killing
police. The Facebook account belonged to Eric Coomer, and Oltmann claimed it was the same Eric Coomer who is the Director of Product
Strategy and Security for Dominion Voting Systems. Within hours of Oltmann posting the information, however, the Facebook page of
Eric Coomer was taken down, so I was unable to verify that Antifa Coomer and Dominion Coomer were the same person. By the end of
the day, Joe Oltmann's Twitter account was suspended as well. I had followed his feed throughout the day. I can say with certainty
that he posted nothing remotely offensive or provocative. I have no doubt whatsoever that Twitter suspended him for posting the screenshots
of Coomer's Facebook page. Interesting.
Searching around some more, I found that Dominion Coomer is an avid climber who used to post frequently on climbing message boards
under his own name. He confirmed it himself in a post where he mentioned getting his nuclear physics Ph.D from Berkeley in 1997.
Dominion's Eric Coomer received his nuclear physics Ph.D from Berkeley in 1997. In another post on the same message board, Coomer
gave out his email address. It was his old campus address from the Berkeley nuclear physics department. I plugged that email address
into the Google machine, and things got weird.
I found Eric Coomer had a long history of posting on websites for skinheads. He was a heavy user of a Google Group for skinheads,
and seems to have possibly been a content moderator for papaskin.com. Only these aren't the neo-Nazis our mothers warned us about.
These skinheads call themselves SHARPs, or Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Think of them as a sort of punk rock Antifa. In 2012,
roughly 18 SHARPs attacked a smaller group of suspected racists in a Chicago restaurant with bats and batons. That same year, three
neo-Nazis were charged for the 1998 double murder of two SHARPs in Nevada.
Given that Dominion's Director of Security and Strategy, Eric Coomer, was an enthusiast of a street fighting anti-racist skinhead
culture going back at least into the 1990s, it seems very likely that Joe Oltmann was correct in identifying him as the Facebook
user recently endorsing Antifa and posting anti-police rhetoric. I shared this information on a few message boards to let other people
run with it. Within hours, Papa Skin, a skinhead website which had been up for over 20 years, was taken offline. (Whoever took it
down missed the FAQ page, you can find it here http://www.papaskin.com/faq/faqs.html
).
Of course none of this proves any fraud took place, but we deserve some answers. One need only imagine if it was Joe Biden contesting
the election results, and the Director for Strategy & Security at a major voting machine provider turned out to be a Proud Boy with
decades of involvement in extremist, even violent, right wing political groups. Democrats would rightly point out that this person
endorses engaging in illegal behavior to achieve political goals. They would ask how such a person ended up in such an important
position of public trust, and what it might say about the procedures in place to ensure Dominion's responsibilities are handled in
good faith.
Another reality of the Dominion fiasco, whether or not there was any fraud using its machines, is the structural risk created
by having the same company run machines in more than two dozen states. If there were glitchy machines causing a dispute in one state,
like Democrats' claims about Diebold machines in Ohio in 2004, and even if that dispute led to competing slates of electors, that
is something the American political system has seen and withstood before. Having potentially tens of millions of people doubting
results in a half-dozen different states thanks to the same company running machines in all of them is an unprecedentedly serious
problem, whether or not their doubts are well-founded.
Moreover, platforms like Twitter and WordPress would do well to consider that censorship of people discussing Dominion and its
employees is likely to have the opposite effect that they think it will: Twitter bans, site removals, and wiping of bios from websites
are only going to make Trump's hardcore supporters think Dominion has something to hide. You can't make disagreements go away by
banning one side and pretending there is unanimity.
Darryl Cooper is the host of the MartyrMade podcast.
Good summary of one of the pools, run by the Associated Press.
"How do news organizations count the vote returns on election night?
Votes are tabulated county by county by the Associated Press, a non-profit news agency which uses its national network of more
than 4,000 reporters on election night to record the vote tallies from county clerks and other local officials. The AP also gathers
information from state websites that post election returns. Reporters feed that information back to AP's vote counting operation,
where analysts make decisions about which races are ready to be called.
What do reporters do with the local tallies?
AP reporters across the country phone the results to data entry people in specially set up election centers where they are
entered into an electronic system. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the election centers are virtual in 2020. All vote counts
are subject to a series of checks and verifications, including computer programs that set off alerts if there are inconsistencies
with the vote count because of previous voting history or other data."
Link provided is much appreciated. Gathering data from state websites is what I expected. Such website scraping is probably
fully automated simply to be able to keep up. Keep in mind that State/county/precinct results in a truly enormous volumes of data.
Of course AP is advertising its effort, but having that amount of data transferred through a human chain would result in far too
many errors.
Nobody types data into JSON files. They are exported from databases.
If data was being corrupted by human error, the errors would be random and would benefit both sides.
Yeah, Muller didn't even know who GPS was during his presentation.and his two year waste of money and 400 page report was a
big dud. Didn't even interview Assange.
Recently the Director of National Intelligence revealed that mid 2016 Obama was briefed that Clinton instigated the Russiagate
hoax. Still Obama not even let that run but requested Comey during the meeting 5th January 2017 to put the "right people" on it.
Actually there is only Obamagate weaponizing of the intelligence services against the Trump campaign. Oh yeah do not overlook
the kickback scheme with Ukraine and China of Biden so there is a Bidengate too.
"It is hard to overstate the irresponsibility of broadcasting such a serious accusation without proof."
Actually this demonstrates the total lack intellectual curiosity and of really wanting to know what is going on.
You may note that the chairman of Smartmatic Peter Neffenger now has joined the Biden transition team. So he will be in charge
of covering up this election fraud mess?
yea, so it's not at all surprising that a high ranking military deep stater should be in a director's role at both warmonger
Biden's transition team & a widely used automated voting system. Smartmatic's software was found to be faulty in elections in
2010 & 2013 in the Philippines & has been rejected three different times by the state of Texas for security problems. Smartmatic
- which has had a working relationship with Dominion - also has been providing electoral services to Venezuela since 2004; & in
2017 was forced to admit that the results of the 2017 legislative election had been tampered with.Given that the Democratic(sic)
Party here also aims for a socialist govt., that somehow seems alarmingly appropriate.
As another European, I have no problem believing that Dominion Voting Systems is attempting to steal the election for Biden.
After all, DVS has acquired the voting machines division of Diebold, which we all know stole the 2000 and 2004 elections for W.
Bush. The whole current mess just proves that DVS has been thoroughly infected by the Diebold virus, and cannot help but to tamper
with election results. I believe that the software itself is designed to divine the political leanings of the company's executives,
and alter the voting results accordingly.
This also explains the weird House and Senate results, as no matter how leftist the DVS bosses are, they like their Trump tax
cuts too much to have them reversed by the unified legislative and executive branches the polls had predicted.
All this is so transparant even a bag of Deplorables can see it, and Trump, unlike those losers Gore and Kerry, is absolutely
right to go golfing every day fight this electoral travesty in the most Rudyly way possible.
Somewhat ironic indeed that the color revolution is now coming home to the US. However given the amount of chaos the US is
able to impose on the rest of the world I prefer Trump over a repeat of the Obama/Biden starting open and covert wars all over
the globe. At least Trump never started any wars but only got tricked by the Pentagon/State Department in wrongful and misplaced
"retaliations" which he then steadfastly refused to escalate into wars.
For those wondering what the actual source of this controversy is about--as opposed to the wild ad hominem tangent the
author went on--sharp-eyed viewers on Election Night noted that literally between one minute and the next (from 10:07 to 10:08
PM CST) Trump's displayed vote total in Pennsylvania went from 1,690,589 to 1,670,631, while Biden's went from 1,252,537 to 1,272,495--a
shift of exactly 19,958 votes in each direction.
From there, a blogger at Gateway Pundit (Yes. I said it. I'm also including the source they were using, so get over yourselves
and do your own legwork--don't be a news snob, like the current top-rated comment on this post) analyzed what s/he claims is
Dominion's Pennsylvania election data , from the New York Times (by way of Edison Research, which serves as a distributor
for Dominion's election data to various media outlets). I have included the link here, for anyone who is interested in looking
at the data for themselves.
S/he found the vote "switch" in question, and others besides--220,883 votes "switched" from Trump to Biden in Pennsylvania,
as well as 941,248 "lost" votes--places where the total number of votes decreased during the counting. Analysis of other states
using Dominion were claimed to have found similar results, though none so dramatic--the next-largest states with vote shifts were
New Jersey (with 80,242) and Florida (21,422) neither of which were in doubt. The largest "lost vote" totals after PA were in
Virginia (789,023) and Minnesota (195,650).
The total number of "lost votes" was roughly 2.7 million, which is where Trump gets his "deleted votes" claim from--the problem
being that he erroneously assumes all the lost votes were for him, which I do not believe is backed up by the data.
The major problem with the story, assuming you accept the source, is that there is no analysis of whether votes were also shifted
from Biden to Trump. It seems likely that there would be, which would make this merely an example of machine sloppiness rather
than malicious vote-rigging.
However, even if the vote shifting did go both ways, you still have Dominion, for unknown reasons, shifting clumps of votes
between the two candidates and deleting other clumps of votes altogether.
Even if there's a valid explanation for it--which there probably is--it's a very bad look. Dominion's people need to explain
what their systems were doing, and why, ASAP.
"Moreover, platforms like Twitter and WordPress would do well to consider that censorship of people discussing Dominion and
its employees is likely to have the opposite effect that they think it will: Twitter bans, site removals, and wiping of bios from
websites are only going to make Trump's hardcore supporters think Dominion has something to hide. You can't make disagreements
go away by banning one side and pretending there is unanimity."
This entire episode stinks to high heaven. In the early morning of November 4th Trump had a huge lead in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
Michigan and Georgia. Instead of continuing to count votes Milwaukee, Detroit, Philly an Atlanta for some strange reason stopped
counting. Atlanta told the media water pipe busted and flooded the counting area. Completely false. Republican poll watchers were
kicked out and magically hundreds of thousands of votes were discovered for Biden
Of particular interest to me was something that Baris spotted as he compared former Vice President Joe Biden's performance
with Hillary Clinton's in 2016. Baris noted that Clinton outperformed Biden in every U.S. city except for the following four:
Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
Baris wrote, "Trump won the largest non-white vote share for a Republican presidential candidate in 60 years. Biden underperformed
Hillary Clinton in every major metro area around the country, save for Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia."
If you dig into the actual source material for the article you posted, what you find is a rather unremarkable statement by
Democratic senators that EVERY vendor of voting machines had potential risks that they should be aware of and guard against. The
dishonest Washington Examiner, however, pulled out only Dominion.
That's strange. In Michigan for example a very red county that Trump carried big in 2016 strangely went Biden in 2020. Republican
county officials investigated and found that over six thousand votes had been switched from Trump to Biden. They blamed it on
a glitch with the software.
The only kind of machines that should be allowed are the "stupid" ones that can't do anything except count results from paper
ballots. They're both cheaper and easier to audit.
It has to be almost 15 years now that computer security people have been crying for open-source software and hardware for electronic
voting, and have been criticizing closed, proprietary systems as the greatest threat to our democracy. And, here we are. None
of us can act surprised.
Preventing GOP observers which was done at the election count, and the recount, is alone enough, with a competent and fair
judge, to win the election for Trump. Add to that the mail in fraud, 10's of thousands of people on the voter lists who have been
verified as dead, off shore processing and data manipulation - its a shoe in. But lets not forget, even if all this fails, its
GOP legislators who choose the electors, so Trump's return is practically certain. But lets assume a miracle happens and none
of this take place, no results are returned, the EC is asked to vote, USC gives each state a vote, GOP controls most states -
Trump is still returned. Its really is over, bar the shouting. Trump is just taunting his haters now, for fun, via tweets.
lay_arrow
teutonicate 3 hours ago (Edited) removelink
Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell: "We're Getting Ready To Overturn Election Results In Multiple
States"
Once it becomes apparent that this scandal is busting wide open, expect a lot more
"evidence" from rats jumping the corrupt ship - rather than being caught when the music
stops.
Powell already says that she has evidence coming at her "like a fire hose". I bet, there has
to be a lot of rats out their looking for an exit!
Bryan S. Ware serves as the Assistant Director for Cybersecurity for the Department of
Homeland Security's (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). In this
role, Ware leads CISA's mission of protecting and strengthening the nation's critical
infrastructure against cyber threats.
Senior DHS cybersecurity official Bryan Ware to step down
crudflow , 44 minutes ago
I willing to bet Ware is up to his eyeballs in this fraud. He is trying to cover it up,
and he is running for the hills. Sounds pretty suspicious to me.....
...as an aside, I'm willing to bet this will be memory holed very soon by
Gawgle...however, the presentation has been copied and preserved for posterity.
Any takers? ;-)
SurfingUSA , 3 hours ago
If you haven't already read "Licensed to Lie" by Sidney Powell. She figured out all the
wheels within wheels of both corporate fraud, those set up to take the fall for Enron /
Andersen, and fed gov skullduggery starting with Andrew Weissmann, who connects dots between
Enron & Mueller. This 2020 election is kind of cakewalk in comparison.
, you might want to look into this issue. If the Dominion machines used in Maricopa County
never published technical reviews then they might have been BLACK BOX VOTING MACHINES! What are
they hiding by not publishing? Is it legal to not publish?
Quote Tweet
Merissa Hamilton
@merissahamilton
· Nov 11
#THREAD CONCERNING Neither @SecretaryHobbs nor @maricopacounty published technical reviews
of the Dominion Voting Systems software Vendor driven sales demos conducted Oct 29 '19 &
Jan 28' 20 were considered sufficient for cert by Hobbs' Equipment Cert Advisory Committee #Sad
twitter.com/brahmresnik/st
Thursday on Fox News Channel's "Hannity," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was critical of how votes
were counted in last week's presidential election.
Gaetz pointed to the unlikely demographic of recently registered voters and
potential flaws in voting systems manufactured by Dominion to bolster his claim.
"Here's what we know: The chairman of the Federal Election Commission said there was fraud
in this election, and when you take the mail-in ballots and balance them against the registry
of people who changed their addresses, you see there are tens of thousands of people, 17,000
alone in Georgia who actually moved and then voted in the state that that they moved from," he
said. "You know, Reince mentioned these nursing home mystery votes coming in, and the state of
Pennsylvania, more people over the age of 90, registered to vote in 2020 than in like the prior
four years combined. I call it the Dorothy effect, this notion that there was an immediate
interest and surge of voters over the age of 90 during a pandemic. We have yet to find one
nursing home where these Democratic registrations were occurring in mass that seems to suggest
that those ballots may have been turned in by someone other than the person they were addressed
to."
"Now, this isn't impossible to fix. In Florida, we have a standard that requires a review of
those mail-in ballots before Election Day. That way, you're able to give them greater scrutiny
and ensure a proper scrutiny. But here's one thing I know, Sean, those Dominion software
systems, they changed more votes than Vladimir Putin ever did, and we spent four years and tens
of millions of dollars over this fiction of Russian collusion with a Trump campaign. I'd say a
few more weeks ensuring we had a fair election in 2020 is worth this great nation's time."
When you add up all the various methods of fraud used to sway this election towards Biden we
are not talking just a few dead people voting, we are talking millions of votes either taken
from Trump and given to Biden or just outright deleted from Trump.
There is no way Biden received enough legal votes to beat Trump. It's just not possible
under the circumstances.
How a Stolen Election has been set aside inside just one week:
A Judge rules that PA Secretary of State, Kathy Bookvar, lacked statutory authority to issue
the guidance she did on November 1, which resulted in all Republican observers being excluded
from counts. This rules out hundreds of thousands of fake votes and the case moves to SCOTUS.
TRUMP WINS.
The investigation of the Dominion foreign owned machines led by Pelosi former chief of
staff, Nadeam Elshami continues. Smartmatic owns Dominion was number 2 or 33 in Soros's Change
the World Fake Charity.
The servers for these machines are owned in Canada or Spain - they won't allow inspection. Thus
it will end up with full audit of all these states, no matter how long that may take. Only then
will the complete depth of this heist be realised. For now, it is enough to win the election
for TRUMP but it cannot stop there. In Michigan, Philadelphia, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia,
Wisconsin... 30 states in all used this system. A complete audit is required (is already
happening in Georgia). Eventually as many as 30 million votes may have been tampered with. As
many as 10 million may have been destroyed for TRUMP alone !!! They didn't know that there were
eyes watching this scam, all prepared. Millions of votes being driven in, from out of state, to
shore up their losing counts ??? Never before in history have they sunk so low.
Even now another attempted cheat: the USPS has ordered that all TRUMP /Republican will be
suppressed whilst all mailings will be delivered for Biden...
See Rudy here:
https://mobile.twitter.com/...
Biden will never be President - instead he will be an inmate !!! Lin Wood, lawyer
He may even share a cell with someone called Murdoch !!!
Looks like the Pretend PresElect and his blackmailing co-conspirators are making their
pressure count: Porter Day pulls out of PA and now this:
Newsmax is reporting that Benjamin Hovland, who chairs the U.S. Election Assistance
Commission,
and Bob Kolasky, the assistant director of the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland
Security along with 10 others are reporting that this election is "the most secure in US
history".
WTF? Those threats about shunning apparently involve more than just cocktail parties.
The swamp's Soviet style bureaucratic apparatus is every bit as toxic to those that fall out
of line as found in every totalitarian state in the history of the planet.
I think they're more Maoist but maybe that really doesn't matter? For some reason the
Chinese seem more brutal and single minded. They have definitely run God out of their culture
in ways the Soviets never did
The Obammunists with the weight in the Dem Party are indeed Maoist or some close
variation.
Valerie Jarrett was told that new-hire Van Jones was a 'former' communist. She only asked
"What kind?"
When the answer was "Maoist", she replied with one word: "Good".
I looked for myself county by county. Repub. Votes for president, house and senate were
about the same in almost every county. But biden got 100,000 more than his fellow dems. Not
possible. Especially with 2 senate seats.
Local sources are often more complete, but national news is hiding a lot. And one-horse
operations like BB don't have the posse needed to track everything down.
Biden won't sit a day in prison. He'll keel over first. His son is another story. Anyone
higher up the "food chain" (Obama -Hillary etc.) will never serve time either. They're
"untouchable" because of the politicians in this country wouldn't want to start a trend.!
But if we manage to save law and Constitution, then let's follow them. Twenty years in
prison would give us a chance to send them postcards from all the places they wish they
were.
Of course, if we can't save the Constitution, then there are no rules at all, and all kinds of
things would happen, for a state of "nature, red in tooth and claw" would prevail.
I don't think they will pull this off. The threats they are throwing around are a way of
saying "Don't you dare check the vote!"
It shows they know the fraud is massive, and think it will be caught if our agents don't
give up.
The course for us is to keep up the pressure on the people who do the checking, and soon
enough, the prosecuting and judging.
And then get busy making sure they cannot try again.
We still have to fight and not give an inch. You are right, though. We shall win. Even if
you don't live in Georgia, you are perfectly entitled to write to the authorities in Georgia
and insist they stop limiting Republican observers to one every 10 tables. Secretary of State
Brad Raffensperger awarded a $107m contract to them to provide their technology. Elections
security is my top priority , he said at the time. My suspicion is that he took a
commission from them (or their associates) as well so has a deep conflict of interest. He needs
to be audited financially.
😆 🤣 😂 keep telling yourself that 🤡. You're so delusional
just like the rest of the beta cucks on breitbart. Can't wait to see you eat your asinine post
come January when Biden is sworn in... you'll be crying the blues while the world moves on.
Actually, that is not my criterion. I'm sure you could do an online search (for yourself) on
how to "spot" a troll. Heck, there are even sometimes folks that look like conservative
"trolls" of a sort, and there are also accounts that are used for other purposes -- like giving
upvotes to others. Thing is, folks who come here to spew insults without giving anyone any
thought-oriented viewpoints or reactions to articles are typically trolls.
Folks who get too emotionally charged in the insults -- much the same --
Screen names also have histories and are recognizable.
Here's one pattern:
New guy + insults + nonsense = troll
"nonsense" often indicates an automated mechanism is being employed for posts.
We need a new academic field: Troll Studies.
Some (not all) of those who pretend to be 'friendlies' can be called 'concern trolls'. That
term has been around for a while. I contrast them with 'nuisance trolls'.
People who actually attempt to persuade the audience without dishonesty I don't classify as
trolls at all.
God help us all if that happens but at least we will get a smidgen of satisfaction watching
them go "what? But we were on your side. Why do we have to eat dirt and lose freedom
too?Waaaaa!!"
Words of a puffy eyed "alpha"poll puffer, been crying for four ? or is it five years
now.
LMFAO
What you gonna burn down if this attempted theft get righted?
Make sure it's not your two moms basement🤣
Honestly, can't you people even come up with your OWN insults? I'm sick to death even of
CONSERVATIVES using "beta cuck", "snowflake", "soy boy" and "Mama's basement."
Top Democrats Raised Concerns About Dominion Voting Technology in 2019
774
Steven
Senne/AP Photo
ASHLEY OLIVER
13 Nov 2020
450
4:00
Democrat leaders, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Amy Klobuchar (MN), and Ron Wyden (OR), wrote a letter in December
2019 to the private equity firms controlling the United States' three leading voting technology companies, expressing concern
in the letter about the voting technology industry's "vulnerabilities" and "lack of transparency."
The
letter
was
sent on December 6, 2019, to three private equity firms, taking issue with "vulnerabilities and a lack of transparency in the
election technology industry and the poor condition of voting machines and other election technology equipment," Warren's
office
said
of
the letter. The letter sought information about what role the firms had in perpetuating the technology issues.
H.I.G. Capital, investing in Hart InterCivic
McCarthy Group, investing in Election Systems & Software
Staple Street Capital, investing in Dominion Voting Systems
At the time, those three voting technology companies facilitated 90 percent of voters, the letter noted, citing the Wharton
School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Today, Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems facilitate more than three-quarters of voters, while Hart
InterCivic was "quietly sold" by its owner, H.I.G. Capital, in April of this year, according to an October 28, 2020,
report
from
the
Wall
Street Journal
, which also cited Wharton School.
Dominion entered the spotlight in the days following the election after unofficial results were reported erroneously in Antrim
County, Michigan -- one of many locations that utilizes Dominion's software for its elections. The results attracted attention
late on election night after showing presidential candidate Joe Biden (D) leading President Donald Trump in the heavily red
county. A statement from Michigan's secretary of state
explained
the
error was an "isolated user error" and not a software error.
Gwinnett County, Georgia, which also utilizes Dominion's software, experienced a delay in vote counting because of an unknown
issue with the software. The county
reported
that
Dominion technicians had resolved the issue by November 8 and that the county was able to count its remaining ballots that
day.
Trump's campaign and many Republican pundits have sounded alarms over the voting technology, but the letter from leading
Democrats in 2019 indicates concerns may be bipartisan.
The Democrats' letter identified a multitude of issues, at one point referencing a Vice report, saying, "In 2018 alone 'voters
in South Carolina [were] reporting machines that switched their votes after they'd inputted them, scanners [were] rejecting
paper ballots in Missouri, and busted machines [were] causing long lines in Indiana.'"
The letter also noted that around 20 election technology vendors had competed in that market in the early 2000s but that the
vendors have since consolidated to where only a few control the "vast majority of the market."
Warren told the
Journal
in
an email, "Private-equity firms 'have taken over nearly all of the nation's election technology -- and how they do business is
clouded in secrecy.'" Staple Street Capital, which purchased Dominion in 2018, reportedly partially responded to the
Democrats' letter at the time, while the other two firms did not respond.
Dominion
issued
a
vehement statement Friday fully rejecting various accusations that have been circulating about the company since the election.
Dominion said that it "categorically denies false assertions about vote switching issues with our voting systems," that the
company is nonpartisan, and that "assertions of voter fraud conspiracies are 100% false."
This just in. Sidney Powell says she has evidence of Dominion and that is was used on
November third. She also says that she has evidence the governors were involved. Release the
Kraken!
It's an interview of Sidney Powell by Lou Dobbs. At the 1:14 mark Sidney says that they
are also looking into which governors and Secretary of state's were INVESTED in Dominion.
Apparently we have these idiots also caught trying to make money off of voter fraud.
Wasn't Brian Kemp, the GOP governor of GA, the SOS of GA before becoming Governor? Isn't
he the guy who won't call on the legislature to address these voting irregularities? Is he
the guy in charge of this fake recount?
Is it possible this guy is also a Trojan horse, never Trumper? This recount is a sham, the
Governor is GOP, looks like to me that another traitor has been uncovered!
Of course, the mainstream media is working overtime to cover up this story.
However, even the
New
York Times
has confirmed that Rudy Giuliani is saying that Dominion whistleblowers are coming forward:
Many of those
people have said, contrary to evidence, that Dominion software was used to switch votes. Some people even suggested that the
company was doing the bidding of the Clintons, a conspiracy theory that was shared on Twitter by President Trump. On
Wednesday, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president's lawyer, said he was in contact with "whistle-blowers" from Dominion, though he
did not provide evidence.
Dominion,
originally a Canadian company that now has its effective headquarters in Denver, makes machines for voters to cast ballots and
for poll workers to count them, as well as software that helps government officials organize and keep track of election
results.
Georgia spent
$107 million on 30,000 of the company's machines last year. In some cases, they proved to be headaches in the state's primary
elections in June, though officials largely attributed the problems to a lack of training for election workers.
Dominion did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Antrim
County, Mich., unofficial results initially showed President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. beating Mr. Trump by roughly 3,000
votes. But that didn't seem right in the Republican stronghold, so election workers checked again.
It turned out
that they had configured the Dominion ballot scanners and reporting software with slightly different versions of the ballot,
which meant that the votes were counted correctly but that they were reported incorrectly, state officials said. The correct
tallies showed Mr. Trump beat Mr. Biden by roughly 2,500 votes in the county.
In Oakland
County, Mich., election officials also spotted an error after they first reported the unofficial counts. They realized they
had mistakenly counted votes from the city of Rochester Hills, Mich., twice, according to the Michigan Department of State.
The revised
tallies showed that an incumbent Republican county commissioner had kept his seat, not lost it. Oakland County used software
from a company called Hart InterCivic, not Dominion, though the software was not at fault.
Both errors,
which appeared to go against Republicans, spurred conspiracy theories in conservative corners of the internet. That drew a
response from Tina Barton, the Republican clerk in Rochester Hills, Mich., the city that had its votes briefly counted twice.
Democrats investigated Russia for four years.
Why won't they commit to a few weeks to verify the integrity of our election?
We need transparency in our election process!
But Democrats appears to be fighting against that transparency that voters desire!
Trump's latest lawsuit could potentially flip the battleground state of Michigan.
It is requesting that 1.2 million incorrectly filled out ballots be tossed.
Four voters
filed a federal lawsuit seeking to exclude presidential election results from three Michigan counties due to allegations of
fraud, echoing several other legal challenges brought forward since President Donald Trump refused to concede defeat.
Trump earned
147,000 fewer votes than Democrat Joe Biden in Michigan, according to unofficial election results that are being certified
this month by county canvassing boards. The new lawsuit seeks to eliminate ballots cast in Wayne, Washtenaw and Ingham
counties, which would amount to 1.2 million votes, giving Trump the lead in Michigan.
Birmingham
attorney Maxwell Goss and Indiana attorney James Bopp Jr. are representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Bopp serves as a
campaign adviser to Trump. He was an Indiana delegate for Trump in 2016 and served as a legal adviser for George W. Bush and
Mitt Romney.
The lawsuit,
filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, cites an assortment of allegations made by the Trump
campaign, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, right-wing media organizations and ongoing lawsuits filed since
the election.
Plaintiffs also
cite ongoing investigations launched by the Michigan Legislature and a variety of other claims that have been debunked. The
allegations include charges of Republican ballot challengers being harassed and illegal tampering with ballots.
Plaintiffs
conclude that "this evidence suffices to place in doubt the November 3 presidential election results in identified counties
and/or the state as a whole." However, the group of voters also claims to have additional evidence of illegal ballots being
included in unofficial results, based on "expert reports" and data analysis.
"Upon
information and belief, the expert report will identify persons who cast votes illegally by casting multiple ballots, were
deceased, had moved, or were otherwise not qualified to vote in the November 3 presidential election, along with evidence of
illegal ballot stuffing, ballot harvesting, and other illegal voting," the lawsuit states.
At least one of
several other Michigan lawsuits making similar allegations has been thrown out for lack of evidence and other flaws.
Oakland County
residents Lena Bally and Gavriel Grossbard, Eaton County resident Carol Hatch and Jackson County resident Steven Butler are
listed as plaintiffs in the new federal lawsuit. Grossbard was a Republican candidate for Michigan's 9th Congressional
District, but lost in the August primary.
The lawsuit
names as defendants Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and members of the Michigan State Board of Canvassers, Wayne County Board of
Canvassers, Washtenaw County Board of Canvassers and Ingham County Board of Canvassers.
Plaintiffs are
seeking to exclude votes from Wayne, Washtenaw and Ingham counties. They argue that including results from counties "where
sufficient illegal ballots were included" would unconstitutionally cause legal votes to be "diluted."
Dominion Voting Systems rebuked claims that the company has a financial relationship with the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein
and that the company manipulated the results of the 2020 election.
"The company has no
financial relationship with Mr. Blum ," Kay Stimson, Dominion's vice president of government affairs, told the Dispatch
. "This is a false claim spread on social media."
Trump legal adviser Sidney Powell said Democrats, including Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, invested in the voting system company
to "steal" elections not only from Republicans but from other Democrats.
Fox News's Maria Bartiromo said that she had seen reports that Blum was a "significant shareholder" in Dominion and that a former
chief of staff for Nancy Pelosi is a "key executive."
"They have invested in it for their own reasons and are using it to commit this fraud to steal votes," Powell told Bartiromo during
an interview. "I think they've even stolen them from other Democrats in their own party, who should be outraged about this also."
Powell said that Democrats "had this all planned" and that they inserted ballots filled out only for apparent President-elect
Joe Biden when President Trump's vote tally went too high.
Apart from sworn affidavits, at least
one of which has been recanted , no evidence of widespread voter fraud has yet been found.
Claims of Democrats being involved in Dominion are misleading, the Dispatch reported. It confirmed that Nadeam Elshami,
Pelosi's former chief of staff, is a lobbyist for Dominion and reported that Bartiromo "fails to mention that a number of Republican
staffers are as well."
There is also no evidence to suggest that Blum ever had a financial stake in Dominion. At one point, Blum Capital Partners, a
firm chaired by Blum, held a 16.7% stake in Avid Technology, which viral posts alleged developed voting software that was used in
Michigan.
Those claims are also false, according to a spokesman who told the Dispatch that Avid produces software "to produce music,
movies, TV news, and shows," not voting software. The representative also said that Blum Capital Partners "has no holdings in Avid
today."
Avid is also not connected to Dominion.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Dominion for further comment.
"... a) detected the DNC server hack, but failed to stop it b) falsely accused the Russians of hacking Ukrainian artillery c) failed to prevent the NRCC from being hacked, even though that was why they were hired ..."
"... In other words, Crowdstrike is really bad at their job. In addition, Crowdstrike is really bad at business too. CrowdStrike recorded a net loss last year of $140 million on revenue of $249.8 million, and negative free cash flow of roughly $59 million. ..."
a) detected the DNC server hack, but failed to stop it
b) falsely
accused the Russians of hacking Ukrainian artillery
c) failed to prevent the NRCC from being hacked, even though that was why they were
hired
In other words, Crowdstrike is really bad at their job. In addition, Crowdstrike is
really bad at business
too. CrowdStrike recorded a net loss last year of $140 million on revenue of $249.8 million,
and negative free cash flow of roughly $59 million.
So what does a cybersecurity company that is hemorrhaging money and can't protect it's
clients do? It does an IPO
.
It just goes to show that "getting it right" is not the same thing as "doing a good job." If
you tell the right people what they want to hear, the money will take care of itself.
It just goes to show that "getting it right" is not the same thing as "doing a good
job."
If you tell the right people what they want to hear, the money will take care of
itself.
It's all about making the people at the top feel smart for having hired you and assuring
them they don't need to waste their beautiful minds trying to understand what it is you do.
Whoops, you got hacked? Gee, nothing we could have done. More money please!
"... ...What else did you expect other than the MIC/Intelligence Agencies/Pentagon/embedded war mongers handling this stuff? ..."
"... Gen. Buck Turgidson is most certainly going rogue. ..."
"... That's really the bigger story here. It has become a mainstream idea that it is a GOOD thing that an elected President is a figurehead with no real power. ..."
...That's really the bigger story here. It has become a mainstream idea that it is a GOOD thing that an elected President is
a figurehead with no real power.
Of course it's been true for a long time, but it's a fairly recent phenomenon that a large number
of Americans like it. Russiagate is another example.
Huge portions of America were cheering for the unseating of an elected President
by unelected police state apparatus because they don't like him.
"... What is the significance of this story, apart from what it tells us about the graver dangers of the new US-Russian Cold War, which now includes, we are informed, a uniquely fraught "digital Cold War"? Not so long ago, mainstream liberal Democrats, and the Times itself, would have been outraged by revelations that defense and intelligence officials were making such existential policy behind the back of a president. No longer, it seems. There have been no liberal, Democratic, or for the most part any other, mainstream protests, but instead a lawyerly apologia justifying the intelligence-defense operation without the president's knowledge. ..."
"... As I have often emphasized, the long historical struggle for American-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) détente, or broad cooperation, has featured many acts of attempted sabotage on both sides, though most often by US intelligence and defense agencies. ..."
"... Now the sabotaging of détente appears be happening again. As the Times article makes clear, Washington's war party, or perhaps zealous Cold War party, referred to euphemistically by Sanger and Perlroth as "advocates of the more aggressive strategy," is on the move. ..."
"... Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world. No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia's electric grid -- to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight. ..."
Occasionally, a revelatory, and profoundly alarming,
article passes almost unnoticed, even when published on the front page of The New York
Times . Such was the case with
reporting by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth , bearing the Strangelovian title "U.S.
Buries Digital Land Mines to Menace Russia's Power Grid," which appeared in the print edition
on June 16. The article contained two revelations.
First, according to Sanger and Perlroth, with my ellipses duly noted, "The United States is
stepping up digital incursions into Russia's electric power grid. Advocates of the more
aggressive strategy said it was long overdue " The operation "carries significant risk of
escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow." Though under way at least
since 2012, "now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense with the placement of
potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness
that had never been tried before." At this point, the Times reporters add an Orwellian
touch. The head of the U.S. Cyber Command characterizes the assault on Russia's grid, which
affects everything from the country's water supply, medical services, and transportation to
control over its nuclear weapons, as "the need to 'defend forward,'" because "they don't fear
us."
Nowhere do Sanger and Perlroth seem alarmed by the implicit risks of this "defend forward"
attack on the infrastructure of the other nuclear superpower. Indeed, they wonder "whether it
would be possible to plunge Russia into darkness." And toward the end, they quote an American
lawyer and former Obama official, whose expertise on the matter is unclear, to assure readers
sanguinely, "We might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response.
Sometimes you have to take a bloody nose to not take a bullet in the head down the road." The
"broken bones," "bloody nose," and "bullet" are, of course, metaphorical references to the
potential consequences of nuclear war.
The second revelation comes midway in the Times story: "[President] Trump had not
been briefed in any detail about the steps to place 'implants' inside the Russian grid" because
"he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials." (Indeed, Trump issued an
angry tweet when he saw the Times report, though leaving unclear which part of it
most aroused his anger.)
What is the significance of this story, apart from what it tells us about the graver dangers
of the new US-Russian Cold War, which now includes, we are informed, a uniquely fraught
"digital Cold War"? Not so long ago, mainstream liberal Democrats, and the Times itself,
would have been outraged by revelations that defense and intelligence officials were making
such existential policy behind the back of a president. No longer, it seems. There have been no
liberal, Democratic, or for the most part any other, mainstream protests, but instead a
lawyerly apologia justifying the intelligence-defense operation without the president's
knowledge.
The political significance, however, seems clear enough. The leak to the Times and
the paper's publication of the article come in the run-up to a scheduled meeting between
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 meeting in Japan on June
28–29. Both leaders had recently expressed hope for improved US-Russian relations. On May
4, Trump again
tweeted his longstanding aspiration for a "good/great relationship with Russia"; and this
month Putin lamented that relations "
are getting worse and worse " but hoped that he and Trump could move their countries beyond
"the games played by intelligence services."
As I have often emphasized, the long historical struggle for American-Russian (Soviet and
post-Soviet) détente, or broad cooperation, has featured many acts of attempted sabotage
on both sides, though most often by US intelligence and defense agencies. Readers may recall
the Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit meeting that was to take place in Paris in 1960, but which was
aborted by the Soviet shoot-down of a US spy plane over the Soviet Union, an intrusive flight
apparently not authorized by President Eisenhower. And more recently,
the 2016 plan by then-President Obama and Putin for US-Russian cooperation in Syria, which
was aborted by a Department of Defense attack on Russian-backed Syrian troops.
Now the sabotaging of détente appears be happening again. As the Times article
makes clear, Washington's war party, or perhaps zealous Cold War party, referred to
euphemistically by Sanger and Perlroth as "advocates of the more aggressive strategy," is on
the move. Certainly, Trump has been repeatedly thwarted in his previous détente
attempts, primarily by discredited Russiagate allegations that continue to be promoted by the
war party even though they still lack any evidential basis. (It may also be recalled that his
previous summit meeting with Putin was widely and shamefully assailed as "treason" by
influential segments of the US political-media establishment.)
Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit,
but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world. No American president
can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks.
What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on
Russia's electric grid -- to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not
unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national
security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes
before midnight.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the
host of The John Batchelor Show
. Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at TheNation.com . Ad Policy Stephen F. Cohen is a
professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton
University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin
& Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook
edition.
"... Sections of the Chinese regime responded belligerently to the accusations. An editorial in the state-owned Global Times ..."
"... The editorial asked: "Assuming China is so powerful that it has stolen technological information for over a decade that is supposedly worth over a trillion in intellectual property, as the US has indicated, then how is it that China still lags behind the US in so many fields, from chips to electric vehicles, and even aviation engines?" ..."
Further escalating its economic and strategic offensive to block China from ever
challenging its post-World War II hegemony, the US government yesterday unveiled its fifth
set of economic espionage charges against Chinese individuals since September.
As part of an internationally-coordinated operation, the US Justice Department on Thursday
published indictments of two Chinese men who had allegedly accessed confidential commercial
data from US government agencies and corporate computers in 12 countries for more than a
decade.
The announcement represents a major intensification of the US ruling class's confrontation
against China, amid a constant build-up of unsubstantiated allegations against Beijing by
both the Republican and Democrat wings of Washington's political establishment.
Via salacious allegations of "hacking" on a "vast scale," every effort is being made by
the ruling elite and its media mouthpieces to whip up anti-China hysteria.
The indictment's release was clearly politically timed. It was accompanied by a global
campaign by the US and its allies, accusing the Chinese government of an illegal cyber theft
operation to damage their economies and supplant the US as the world's "leading
superpower."
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen
immediately issued a statement accusing China of directing "a very real threat to the
economic competitiveness of companies in the United States and around the globe."
Within hours, US allies around the world put out matching statements, joined by
declarations of confected alarm by their own cyber-warfare and hacking agencies.
The Washington Post called it "an unprecedented mass effort to call out China for
its alleged malign acts." The coordination "represents a growing consensus that Beijing is
flouting international norms in its bid to become the world's predominant economic and
technological power."
The Australian government, the closest ally of the US in the Indo-Pacific region, was in
the forefront. Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton
explicitly accused the Chinese government and its Ministry of State Security (MSS) of being
responsible for "a global campaign of cyber-enabled commercial intellectual property
theft."
Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, called the Chinese
cyber campaign "shocking and outrageous." Such pronouncements, quickly emblazoned in media
headlines around the world, destroy any possibility of anything resembling a fair trial if
the two men, named as Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, are ever detained by US agencies and brought
before a court.
The charges themselves are vaguely defined. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan accused the
men of conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Zhu and Zhang acted "in association with" the MSS, as part of a hacking squad supposedly
named "APT1o" or "Stone Panda," the indictment said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray called a news conference to issue another inflammatory
statement against China. Pointing to the real motivations behind the indictments, he
declared: "China's goal, simply put, is to replace the US as the world's leading superpower,
and they're using illegal methods to get there."
Coming from the head of the US internal intelligence agency, this further indicates the
kinds of discussions and planning underway within the highest echelons of the US political
and military-intelligence apparatus to prepare the country, ideologically and militarily, for
war against China.
Washington is determined to block President Xi Jinping's "Made in China 2025" program that
aims to ensure China is globally competitive in hi-tech sectors such as robotics and chip
manufacture, as well as Beijing's massive infrastructure plans, known as the Belt and Road
Initiative, to link China with Europe across Eurasia.
The US ruling class regards these Chinese ambitions as existential threats because, if
successful, they would undermine the strategic position of US imperialism globally, and the
economic dominance of key American corporations.
Yesterday's announcement seemed timed to fuel tensions between Washington and Beijing,
after the unprecedented December 1 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, in Canada at the request of the US.
Last weekend, US Vice President Mike Pence again accused China of "intellectual property
theft." These provocations came just weeks after the US and Chinese administrations agreed to
talks aimed at resolving the tariff and trade war launched by US President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration is demanding structural changes to China's state-led economic
model, greater Chinese purchases of American farm and industrial products and a halt to
"coercive" joint-venture licensing terms. These demands would severely undermine the "Made in
China 2025" program.
Since September, US authorities have brought forward five sets of espionage allegations.
In late October, the Justice Department unsealed charges against 10 alleged Chinese spies
accused of conspiring to steal sensitive commercial secrets from US and European
companies.
Earlier in October, the US government disclosed another unprecedented operation, designed
to produce a show trial in America. It revealed that a Chinese citizen, accused of being an
intelligence official, had been arrested in Belgium and extradited on charges of
conspiring to commit "economic espionage" and steal trade secrets.
The extradition was announced days after the Pentagon released a 146-page document, titled
"Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain
Resiliency of the United States," which made clear Washington is preparing for a total war
effort against both China and Russia.
Trump, Pence and Wray then all declared China to be the greatest threat to America's
economic and military security. Trump accused China of interfering in the US mid-term
elections in a bid to remove him from office. In a speech, Pence said Beijing was directing
"its bureaucrats and businesses to obtain American intellectual property -- the foundation of
our economic leadership -- by any means necessary."
Whatever the truth of the spying allegations against Chinese citizens -- and that cannot
be assumed -- any such operations would hardly compare with the massive global intrigue,
hacking, regime-change and military operations directed by the US agencies, including the
National Security Agency (NSA) and its "Five Eyes" partners.
These have been exposed thoroughly by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange. Leaked documents published by
WikiLeaks revealed that the CIA has developed "more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans,
viruses and other 'weaponized' malware," allowing it to seize control of devices, including
Apple iPhones, Google's Android operating system, devices running Microsoft Windows, smart
TVs and possibly the control of cars and trucks.
In an attempt to broaden its offensive against China, the US government said that along
with the US and its Five Eyes partners, such as Britain, Canada and Australia, the countries
targeted by the alleged Chinese plot included France, Germany, Japan, Sweden and
Switzerland.
Chinese hackers allegedly penetrated managed services providers (MSPs) that provide
cybersecurity and information technology services to government agencies and major firms.
Finance, telecommunications, consumer electronics and medical companies were among those said
to be targeted, along with military and US National Aeronautics and Space Administration
laboratories.
Sections of the Chinese regime responded belligerently to the accusations. An editorial in
the state-owned Global Times branded them "hysterical" and a warning sign of a
"comprehensive" US attack on China.
The editorial asked: "Assuming China is so powerful that it has stolen technological
information for over a decade that is supposedly worth over a trillion in intellectual
property, as the US has indicated, then how is it that China still lags behind the US in so
many fields, from chips to electric vehicles, and even aviation engines?"
The Global Times declared that "instead of adhering to a low-profile strategy,
China must face these provocations and do more to safeguard national interests."
The promotion of Chinese economic and militarist nationalism by a mouthpiece of the
Beijing regime is just as reactionary as the nationalist xenophobia being stoked by the
ruling elite of American imperialism and its allies. The answer to the evermore open danger
of war is a unified struggle by the international working class to end the outmoded
capitalist profit system and nation-state divisions and establish a socialist society.
ANY rational person would think : a nation like USA TODAY which can name a different ENEMY
every other week is clearly SICK, led by sociopaths. China ? Russia, Iran, North Korea ?
Venezuela ? ( all fail to live up to the high moral standards of " OUR democracy " ?)
How are any of these countries a greater threat to YOU than the local Democratic or
Republican party hacks ?
If YOU think that so many people hate you , would it not make sense to ask if there is
perhaps something wrong with YOU ?
"... Rosbalt said that when Anikeyev's business reached national levels, he started using new techniques. For example, Anikeyev would go to restaurants and cafes popular among officials, and with the help of sophisticated equipment he created fake Wi-Fi and mobile phone connections. ..."
"... Unsuspecting officials would connect to the network through the channel created by the hacker and he would have access to the information on their devices. ..."
"... Through the Looking Glass, ..."
"... The Anonymous International website was opened in 2013 and content stolen from the phones and emails of Russian politicians immediately started appearing on it. According to Life News , only the correspondence of the public officials and businessmen who refused to pay was published. At the same time members of Shaltai-Boltai positioned themselves as people with an active civil stance. ..."
"... Mikhailov tracked down Anonymous International at the beginning of 2016 and decided to take it under his control, as well as make some money from blackmail along the way. According to Life News , there is another theory - that Mikhailov had been managing the Shaltai-Boltai business from the start. ..."
"... Whatever the truth, Mikhailov and Dokuchayev have now been charged with treason. Anikeyev and Stoyanov will be prosecuted under a different charge - "unauthorized access to computer information." According to Rosbalt , the treason charges against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev are to do with Anonymous International's involvement in leaking to Ukraine the private correspondence of presidential aide Vladislav Surkov. ..."
"... Shaltai-Boltai's website has not been updated since Nov. 26 and its Twitter account since Dec. 12. The group's remaining members, who are believed to live in Thailand and the Baltic States, have been put on an FSB wanted list. ..."
The alleged leader of the Anonymous International hacker group, also known as
Shaltai-Boltai, has been arrested along with important officials in the security services who
collaborated with the group. For several years Shaltai-Boltai terrorized state officials,
businessmen and media figures by hacking their emails and telephones, and threatening to post
their private information online unless blackmail payments were made. "The price tag for our
work starts at several tens of thousands of dollars, and I am not going to talk about the upper
limit," said a man who calls himself Lewis during an interview with the news website,
Meduza ,
in January 2015.
Lewis, whose name pays hommage to the author Lewis Carroll, is the leader of Anonymous
International, the hacker group specializing in hacking the accounts of officials and
businessmen. Another name for Anonymous International is
Shaltai-Boltai, Russian for "Humpty-Dumpty."
Several years ago Lewis and his colleagues prospered thanks to extortion. They offered their
victims the chance to pay a handsome price to buy back their personal information that had been
stolen. Otherwise their information would be sold to third persons and even posted online. In
the end, Russian law-enforcement tracked down Lewis, and in November he was arrested and
now awaits trial . His real
name is Vladimir Anikeyev.
Shaltai-Boltai's founding father
"One's own success is good but other people's failure is not bad either," said the profile
quote on Vladimir Anikeyev's page on VKontakte , Russia's most popular social network.
Vladimir Anikeyev / Photo: anikeevv/vk.com
Rosbalt news website said that in the 1990s Lewis worked as a journalist in St. Petersburg
and specialized in collecting information through various methods, including dubious ones. "He
could go for a drink with someone or have an affair with someone's secretary or bribe people,"
Rosbalt's
source said.
In the 2000s Anikeyev switched to collecting kompromat (compromising material).
Using his connections, he would find the personal email addresses of officials and
entrepreneurs and break into them using hackers in St. Petersburg, and then blackmail the
victims. They had to pay to prevent their personal information from ending up on the
Internet.
Fake Wi-Fi
Rosbalt said that when Anikeyev's business reached national levels, he started using new
techniques. For example, Anikeyev would go to restaurants and cafes popular among officials,
and with the help of sophisticated equipment he created fake Wi-Fi and mobile phone
connections.
Unsuspecting officials would connect to the network through the channel created by the
hacker and he would have access to the information on their devices.
In the beginning Anikeyev was personally involved in the theft of information but later he
created a network of agents.
The business grew quickly; enormous amounts of information were at Anikeyev's disposal that
had to be sorted and selected for suitability as material for blackmail. In the end, according
to Rosbalt, Anonymous International arose as a handy tool for downloading the obtained
information.
Trying to change the world
The second name of the group refers to the works of Lewis Carroll, according to Shaltai-Boltai members. The crazy world of
Through the Looking Glass, with its inverted logic, is the most apt metaphor for
Russian political life. Apart from Lewis Anikeyev, the team has several other members: Alice;
Shaltai, Boltai (these two acted as press secretaries, and as a result of a mix-up, the media
started calling the whole project, Shaltai-Boltai); and several others, including
"technicians," or specialist hackers.
The Anonymous International website was opened in 2013 and content stolen from the
phones and emails of Russian politicians immediately started appearing on it. According to
Life News , only the correspondence of the public officials and businessmen who refused to
pay was published. At the same time members of Shaltai-Boltai positioned themselves as people
with an active civil stance.
"We can be called campaigners. We are trying to change the world. To change it for the
better," Shaltai told the Apparat website. In interviews members of the group
repeatedly complained about Russian officials who restricted Internet freedom, the country's
foreign policy and barriers to participation in elections.
Hacker exploits
Shaltai-Boltai's most notorious hack was of an explicitly political nature and not about
making money. It hacked Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter account. On Aug. 14,
2014 tweets were
posted on the account saying that Medvedev was resigning because he was ashamed of the
government's actions. The `prime minister' also had time to write that Putin was wrong, that
the government had problems with common sense, and that the authorities were taking the
country back to the past.
On the same day Anonymous International posted part of the prime minister's
stolen archive, admitting that, "there is nothing particularly interesting in it."
"The posted material was provided by a certain highly-placed reptilian of our acquaintance,"
the hackers joked
.
Medvedev is far from being Shaltai-Boltai's only victim. The hackers published the private
correspondence of officials in the presidential administration: Yevgeny Prigozhin, a
businessman close to Vladimir Putin; Aram Gabrelyanov, head of the pro-Kremlin News Media
holding company; and of Igor Strelkov, one of the leaders of the uprising in east Ukraine.
Lewis, however, insisted that only material that had failed to sell ended up on the
Internet.
Law-enforcement links
Anikeyev was detained in November, and the following month Sergei Mikhailov, head of the 2nd
operations directorate of the FSB Information Security Center, was also arrested. According to
Kommersant , Mikhailov was a
major figure in the security services who, "was essentially overseeing the country's entire
internet business."
Mikhailov's aide, FSB Major Dmitry Dokuchayev, and a former hacker known as Forb, was also
arrested. Shortly after, Ruslan Stoyanov, head of the department for investigating cybercrime
at the antivirus software company Kaspersky Lab, was also detained. Stoyanov also worked
closely with the secret services.
According to Rosbalt , Anikeyev revealed
information about the FSB officers and the Kaspersky Lab computer expert and their close
involvement with Shaltai-Boltai.
Mikhailov tracked down Anonymous International at the beginning of 2016 and decided to
take it under his control, as well as make some money from blackmail along the way. According
to
Life News , there is another theory - that Mikhailov had been managing the Shaltai-Boltai
business from the start.
Shaltai-Boltai had a big fall
Whatever the truth, Mikhailov and Dokuchayev have now been charged with treason.
Anikeyev and Stoyanov will be prosecuted under a different charge - "unauthorized access to
computer information." According to Rosbalt , the treason charges
against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev are to do with Anonymous International's involvement in
leaking to Ukraine the private correspondence of presidential aide Vladislav
Surkov.
Shaltai-Boltai's website has not been updated since Nov. 26 and its Twitter account
since Dec. 12. The group's remaining members, who are believed to live in Thailand and the
Baltic States, have been put on an FSB wanted
list.
Anyway, Shaltai-Boltai anticipated this outcome. "What awaits us if we are uncovered?
Criminal charges and most likely a prison sentence. Each member of the team is aware of the
risks," they said dispassionately in the interview with Apparat in 2015.
"... Anikeev immediately began to cooperate with the investigation and provide detailed evidence, which repeatedly mentioned Mikhailov as being associated with the Shaltai-Boltai's team," said the source of Rosbalt. And in December 2016, Mikhailov and his "right hand," another official of the Information Security Center, Dmitry Dokuchaev, were arrested. The Court took a decision on their arrest. Another ISC official was also detained, but after questioning, no preventive measures involving deprivation of liberty were applied to him. ..."
"... After the summer, Shaltai-Boltai began to work exclusively with the content given to it by the curator. ..."
"... later it switched to civil servants' email that contained information that could bring serious trouble. When it became known that Surkov's correspondence "leaked" to Ukraine, it broke the camel's back. "Mikhailov's a magnificent expert. Best in his business. One can say that the ISC is Mikhailov.. But he crossed all possible borders," told a source of Rosbalt. ..."
The story around the arrest of a high-ranking ISC official, Sergey Mikhailov, is
becoming an actual thriller.
The creator of Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty Dumpty) website, which containted the correspondence
of officials, journalist Vladimir Anikeev, better known in some circles as Lewis, was arrested
on arrival from Ukraine, where he is supposed to have been involved in the publishing on a
local site of presidential aide Vladislav Surkov's correspondence. In his testimony, Lewis said
about the employee of the Information Security Center, Mikhailov.
As a source familiar with the situation told Rosbalt, Vladimir Anikeev was detained by the
FSB officers at the end of October 2016, when he arrived in St. Petersburg from Ukraine. "The
operation was the result of a long work. There was a complicated operative combination with the
aim to lure Lewis from Ukraine, which he didn't indend to leave," said the source to the news
agency. Anikeev was taken to Moscow, where the Investigation department of the FSB charged him
under Article 272 of the Criminal Code (Illegal access to computer information).
First and foremost the counterintelligence was interested in the situation with the
"leakage" of Vladislav Surkov's correspondence: by the time it was known that it was in the
hands of the Shaltai-Boltai's team. Since it was e-mail with from the .gov domain, the
situation caused great concern in theFSO. As a result of this, the correspondence was published
on the website of a Ukrainian association of hackers called Cyber-Junta. In reality, it is
suspected that Anikeev was involved in that affair. He'd been constantly visiting this country,
his girlfriend lived there, and, according to available data, he was not going to return to
Russia. Lewis was also asked about other officials' correspondence, which already appeared on
the Shaltai-Boltai website.
" Anikeev immediately began to cooperate with the investigation and provide detailed
evidence, which repeatedly mentioned Mikhailov as being associated with the Shaltai-Boltai's
team," said the source of Rosbalt. And in December 2016, Mikhailov and his "right hand,"
another official of the Information Security Center, Dmitry Dokuchaev, were arrested. The Court
took a decision on their arrest. Another ISC official was also detained, but after questioning,
no preventive measures involving deprivation of liberty were applied to him.
According to the version of the agency's source, the situation developed as follows. At the
beginning of 2016, the department headed by Mikhailov received an order to "work" with
Shaltai-Boltai's website, which published the correspondence of civil servants. The immediate
executor was Dokuchaev. Officers of the ISC were able to find out the team of Shaltai-Boltai,
which participants nicknamed themselves after Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland": Alice, the
March Hare, etc. The website creator and organizer, Anikeev, was nicknamed Lewis. In the summer
there were searching raids in St. Petersburg, although formally for other reasons.
According to the Rosbalt's source, just after the summer attack the team of Shaltai-Boltai
appeared to have the owner, or, to be exact, the curator. According to the source, it could be
Sergey Mikhailov. As the result, the working methods of the Lewis's team also changed, just as
the objects whose correspondence was being published for public access. Previously, Lewis's
people figured out objects in places where mobile phone was used. They were given access to the
phone contents by means of a false cell (when it came to mobile internet) or using a
false-Wi-FI (if the person was connected to Wi-FI). Then the downloaded content was sent to
member of the Lewis's team, residing in Estonia. He analyzed to to select what's to be put in
the open access and what's to be sold for Bitcoins. The whole financial part of the
Shaltai-Boltai involved a few people living in Thailand. These Bitcoins were cashed in Ukraine.
Occasionally the Lewis published emails previously stolen by other hackers.
After the summer, Shaltai-Boltai began to work exclusively with the content given to it
by the curator. Earlier, it published correspondence of rather an "entertaining"
character, as well as officials whose "secrets" would do no special harm; but later it
switched to civil servants' email that contained information that could bring serious trouble.
When it became known that Surkov's correspondence "leaked" to Ukraine, it broke the camel's
back. "Mikhailov's a magnificent expert. Best in his business. One can say that the ISC is
Mikhailov.. But he crossed all possible borders," told a source of Rosbalt.
At the time of their arrests in December, Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev were
officers with the FSB's Center for Information Security, a leading unit within the FSB involved
in cyberactivities.
Pavlov confirmed to RFE/RL the arrest of Mikhailov and Dokuchayev, along with Ruslan
Stoyanov, a former employee of the Interior Ministry who had worked for Kaspersky Labs, a
well-known private cyber-research company, which announced Stoyanov's arrest last month.
The newspaper Kommersant reported that Mikhailov was arrested at a meeting of FSB officers
and was taken from the meeting after a sack was put on his head.
The independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, meanwhile, said that a total of six suspects --
including Mikhailov, Dokuchayev, and Stoyanov -- had been arrested. The state news agency TASS
reported on February 1 that two men associated with a well-known hacking group had also been
arrested in November, but it wasn't immediately clear if those arrests were related to the FSB
case.
There has been no public detail as to the nature of the treason charges against Mikhailov,
Dokuchayev, and Stoyanov. The Interfax news agency on January 31 quoted "sources familiar with
the situation" as saying that Mikhailov and Dokuchayev were suspected of relaying confidential
information to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Pavlov told RFE/RL the individuals were suspected of passing on classified information to
U.S. intelligence, but not necessarily the CIA.
"... Mikhailov tracked down Anonymous International at the beginning of 2016 and decided to take it under his control, as well as make some money from blackmail along the way. According to Life News , there is another theory - that Mikhailov had been managing the Shaltai-Boltai business from the start. ..."
"... Whatever the truth, Mikhailov and Dokuchayev have now been charged with treason. Anikeyev and Stoyanov will be prosecuted under a different charge - "unauthorized access to computer information." According to Rosbalt , the treason charges against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev are to do with Anonymous International's involvement in leaking to Ukraine the private correspondence of presidential aide Vladislav Surkov. ..."
"... Shaltai-Boltai's website has not been updated since Nov. 26 and its Twitter account since Dec. 12. The group's remaining members, who are believed to live in Thailand and the Baltic States, have been put on an FSB wanted list. ..."
The alleged leader of the Anonymous International hacker group, also known as
Shaltai-Boltai, has been arrested along with important officials in the security services who
collaborated with the group. For several years Shaltai-Boltai terrorized state officials,
businessmen and media figures by hacking their emails and telephones, and threatening to post
their private information online unless blackmail payments were made. "The price tag for our
work starts at several tens of thousands of dollars, and I am not going to talk about the upper
limit," said a man who calls himself Lewis during an interview with the news website,
Meduza ,
in January 2015.
Lewis, whose name pays hommage to the author Lewis Carroll, is the leader of Anonymous
International, the hacker group specializing in hacking the accounts of officials and
businessmen. Another name for Anonymous International is
Shaltai-Boltai, Russian for "Humpty-Dumpty."
Several years ago Lewis and his colleagues prospered thanks to extortion. They offered their
victims the chance to pay a handsome price to buy back their personal information that had been
stolen. Otherwise their information would be sold to third persons and even posted online. In
the end, Russian law-enforcement tracked down Lewis, and in November he was arrested and
now awaits trial . His real
name is Vladimir Anikeyev.
Shaltai-Boltai's founding father
"One's own success is good but other people's failure is not bad either," said the profile
quote on Vladimir Anikeyev's page on VKontakte , Russia's most popular social network.
Vladimir Anikeyev /
Photo: anikeevv/vk.com
Rosbalt news website said that in the 1990s Lewis worked as a journalist in St. Petersburg
and specialized in collecting information through various methods, including dubious ones. "He
could go for a drink with someone or have an affair with someone's secretary or bribe people,"
Rosbalt's
source said.
In the 2000s Anikeyev switched to collecting kompromat (compromising material).
Using his connections, he would find the personal email addresses of officials and
entrepreneurs and break into them using hackers in St. Petersburg, and then blackmail the
victims. They had to pay to prevent their personal information from ending up on the
Internet.
Fake Wi-Fi
Rosbalt said that when Anikeyev's business reached national levels, he started using new
techniques. For example, Anikeyev would go to restaurants and cafes popular among officials,
and with the help of sophisticated equipment he created fake Wi-Fi and mobile phone
connections.
Unsuspecting officials would connect to the network through the channel created by the
hacker and he would have access to the information on their devices.
In the beginning Anikeyev was personally involved in the theft of information but later he
created a network of agents.
The business grew quickly; enormous amounts of information were at Anikeyev's disposal that
had to be sorted and selected for suitability as material for blackmail. In the end, according
to Rosbalt, Anonymous International arose as a handy tool for downloading the obtained
information.
Trying to change the world
The second name of the group refers to the works of Lewis Carroll, according to Shaltai-Boltai members. The crazy world of
Through the Looking Glass, with its inverted logic, is the most apt metaphor for
Russian political life. Apart from Lewis Anikeyev, the team has several other members: Alice;
Shaltai, Boltai (these two acted as press secretaries, and as a result of a mix-up, the media
started calling the whole project, Shaltai-Boltai); and several others, including
"technicians," or specialist hackers.
The Anonymous International website was opened in 2013 and content stolen from the phones
and emails of Russian politicians immediately started appearing on it. According to
Life News , only the correspondence of the public officials and businessmen who refused to
pay was published. At the same time members of Shaltai-Boltai positioned themselves as people
with an active civil stance.
"We can be called campaigners. We are trying to change the world. To change it for the
better," Shaltai told the Apparat website. In interviews members of the group
repeatedly complained about Russian officials who restricted Internet freedom, the country's
foreign policy and barriers to participation in elections.
Hacker exploits
Shaltai-Boltai's most notorious hack was of an explicitly political nature and not about
making money. It hacked Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter account. On Aug. 14,
2014 tweets were
posted on the account saying that Medvedev was resigning because he was ashamed of the
government's actions. The `prime minister' also had time to write that Putin was wrong, that
the government had problems with common sense, and that the authorities were taking the
country back to the past.
On the same day Anonymous International posted part of the prime minister's
stolen archive, admitting that, "there is nothing particularly interesting in it."
"The posted material was provided by a certain highly-placed reptilian of our acquaintance,"
the hackers joked
.
Medvedev is far from being Shaltai-Boltai's only victim. The hackers published the private
correspondence of officials in the presidential administration: Yevgeny Prigozhin, a
businessman close to Vladimir Putin; Aram Gabrelyanov, head of the pro-Kremlin News Media
holding company; and of Igor Strelkov, one of the leaders of the uprising in east Ukraine.
Lewis, however, insisted that only material that had failed to sell ended up on the
Internet.
Law-enforcement links
Anikeyev was detained in November, and the following month Sergei Mikhailov, head of the 2nd
operations directorate of the FSB Information Security Center, was also arrested. According to
Kommersant , Mikhailov was a
major figure in the security services who, "was essentially overseeing the country's entire
internet business."
Mikhailov's aide, FSB Major Dmitry Dokuchayev, and a former hacker known as Forb, was also
arrested. Shortly after, Ruslan Stoyanov, head of the department for investigating cybercrime
at the antivirus software company Kaspersky Lab, was also detained. Stoyanov also worked
closely with the secret services.
According to Rosbalt , Anikeyev revealed
information about the FSB officers and the Kaspersky Lab computer expert and their close
involvement with Shaltai-Boltai.
Mikhailov tracked down Anonymous International at the beginning of 2016 and decided to
take it under his control, as well as make some money from blackmail along the way. According
to
Life News , there is another theory - that Mikhailov had been managing the Shaltai-Boltai
business from the start.
Shaltai-Boltai had a big fall
Whatever the truth, Mikhailov and Dokuchayev have now been charged with treason.
Anikeyev and Stoyanov will be prosecuted under a different charge - "unauthorized access to
computer information." According to Rosbalt , the treason charges
against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev are to do with Anonymous International's involvement in
leaking to Ukraine the private correspondence of presidential aide Vladislav
Surkov.
Shaltai-Boltai's website has not been updated since Nov. 26 and its Twitter account
since Dec. 12. The group's remaining members, who are believed to live in Thailand and the
Baltic States, have been put on an FSB wanted
list.
Anyway, Shaltai-Boltai anticipated this outcome. "What awaits us if we are uncovered?
Criminal charges and most likely a prison sentence. Each member of the team is aware of the
risks," they said dispassionately in the interview with Apparat in 2015.
"... A Moscow court has sentenced two Russian hackers to three years in prison each for breaking into the e-mail accounts of top Russian officials and leaking them. ..."
"... The 2016 arrests of the Shaltai-Boltai hackers became known only after Russian media reported that two officials of the Federal Security Service's cybercrime unit had been arrested on treason charges. ..."
A Moscow court has sentenced two Russian hackers to three years in prison each for breaking
into the e-mail accounts of top Russian officials and leaking them.
Konstantin Teplyakov and Aleksandr Filinov were members of the Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty Dumpty
in Russian) collective believed to be behind the hacking of high-profile accounts, including
the Twitter account of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The two were found guilty of illegally accessing computer data in collusion with a criminal
group.
Earlier in July, Shaltai-Boltai leader Vladimir Anikeyev was handed a two-year sentence
after striking a plea bargain and agreeing to cooperate with the authorities.
The 2016 arrests of the Shaltai-Boltai hackers became known only after Russian media
reported that two officials of the Federal Security Service's cybercrime unit had been arrested
on treason charges.
Russian media reports suggested the officials had connections to the hacker group or had
tried to control it.
A notorious Russian hacker whose exploits and later arrest gave glimpses into the
intersection of computer crime and Russian law enforcement has been sentenced to two years in
prison.
The Moscow City Court issued its ruling July 6 against Vladimir Anikeyev in a decision made
behind closed doors, one indication of the sensitivity of his case.
"... The stories implicating Mikhailov gained credence when Russian businessman Pavel Vrublevsky made similar accusations. He asserted that Mikhailov leaked details of Russian hacking capabilities to U.S. intelligence agencies. ..."
In January, the Kremlin-linked media outlet Kommersant suggested that the heads of Russia's
Information Security Center (TsIB) were under investigation and would soon leave their posts.
The TsIB is a shadowy unit that manages computer security investigations for the Interior
Ministry and the FSB. It is thought to be Russia's largest inspectorate when it comes to
domestic and foreign cyber capabilities, including hacking. It oversees security matters
related to credit theft, financial information, personal data, social networks and reportedly
election data -- or as some have claimed in the Russian media, "election rigging." Beyond its
investigative role, it is presumed that the TsIB is fully capable of planning and directing
cyber operations. A week after the initial Kommersant report surfaced, Andrei Gerasimov, the
longtime TsIB director, resigned.
Not long after Gerasimov's resignation at the end of January, reports emerged from numerous
Kremlin-linked media outlets in what appeared to be a coordinated flood of information and
disinformation about the arrests of senior TsIB officers. One of the cyber unit's operational
directors, Sergei Mikhailov, was arrested toward the end of last year along with his deputy,
Dmitri Dokuchaev, and charged with treason. Also arrested around the same time was Ruslan
Stoyanov, the chief investigator for Kaspersky Lab, which is the primary cybersecurity
contractor for the TsIB. There is much conjecture, but Mikhailov was apparently forcibly
removed from a meeting with fellow FSB officers -- escorted out with a bag over his head, so
the story goes -- and arrested. This is thought to have taken place some time around Dec. 5.
His deputy, a well-respected computer hacker recruited by the FSB, was reportedly last seen in
November. Kaspersky Lab's Stoyanov was a career cybersecurity professional, previously working
for the Indrik computer crime investigation firm and the Interior Ministry's computer crime
unit. Novaya Gazeta, a Kremlin-linked media outlet, reported that two other unnamed FSB
computer security officers were also detained. Theories, Accusations and Rumors
Since the initial reports surfaced, Russian media have been flooded with conflicting
theories about the arrests; about Mikhailov, Dokuchaev and Stoyanov; and about the accusations
levied against them. Because the charges are treason, the case is considered "classified" by
the state, meaning no official explanation or evidence will be released. An ultranationalist
news network called Tsargrad TV reported that Mikhailov had tipped U.S. intelligence to the
King Servers firm, which the FBI has accused of being the nexus of FSB hacking and intelligence
operations in the United States. (It should be noted that Tsargrad TV tends toward
sensationalism and has been used as a conduit for propaganda in the past.) The media outlet
also claimed that the Russian officer's cooperation is what enabled the United States to
publicly
accuse Moscow of sponsoring election-related hacking with "high confidence."
The stories implicating Mikhailov gained credence when Russian businessman Pavel
Vrublevsky made similar accusations. He asserted that Mikhailov leaked details of Russian
hacking capabilities to U.S. intelligence agencies. Vrublevsky, however, had previously
been the target of hacking accusations leveled by Mikhailov and his team, so it is possible
that he has a personal ax to grind. To further complicate matters, a business partner of
Vrublevsky, Vladimir Fomenko, runs King Servers, which the United States shut down in the wake
of the hacking scandal.
This article is almost a year old but contains interesting information about possible involvement of Shaltai Boltai in
framing Russia in interference in the USA elections.
Notable quotes:
"... Also called Anonymous International, Shaltai-Boltai was responsible for leaking early copies of Putin's New Year speech and for selling off "lots" of emails stolen from Russian officials such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ..."
"... Later media reports said that the group's leader, Vladimir Anikeyev, had recently been arrested by the FSB and had informed on Mikhailov, Dokuchaev and Stoyanov. ..."
The FBI just indicted a Russian official for hacking. But why did Russia charge him with treason? - The Washington Post
But what is less clear is why one of the men has been arrested and
charged with treason in Russia. Dmitry Dokuchaev, an agent for the cyberinvestigative arm of the FSB, was arrested in
Moscow in December. He's accused by the FBI of "handling" the hackers, paying "bounties" for breaking into email
accounts held by Russian officials, opposition politicians and journalists, as well as foreign officials and business
executives. The Russian targets included an Interior Ministry officer and physical trainer in a regional Ministry of
Sports. (The full text of the indictment, which has a full list of the targets and some curious typos, is
here
.)
Reading this hackers indictment. I'm pretty sure there is no such position as the "deputy
chairman of the Russian Federation"
pic.twitter.com/DOWXYNoWjZ
Dokuchaev's case is part of a larger and mysterious spate of arrests of Russian cyber officials and experts. His
superior, Sergei Mikhailov, deputy chief of the FSB's Center for Information Security, was also arrested in December and
charged with treason. According to Russian reports, the arrest came during a plenum of FSB officers, where Mikhailov had
a bag placed over his head and was taken in handcuffs from the room. Ruslan Stoyanov, a manager at the Russian
cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, was also arrested that month. Stoyanov helped coordinate investigations between the
company and law enforcement, a person who used to work at the company said.
Below are some of the theories behind the Russian arrests. Lawyers for some of the accused have told The Washington
Post that they can't reveal details of the case and, because of the secrecy afforded to treason cases, they don't have
access to all the documents.
None of the theories below has been confirmed, nor are they mutually exclusive.
1. Links to U.S. election hacking
: With attention focused on the hacking attacks against the U.S.
Democratic National Committee allegedly ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, some Russian and U.S. media
suggested that Dokuchaev and Mikhailov leaked information implicating Russia in the hack to the United States. The
Russian Interfax news agency, which regularly cites government officials as sources, reported that "Sergei Mikhailov and
his deputy, Dmitry Dokuchaev, are accused of betraying their oath and working with the CIA." Novaya Gazeta, a liberal,
respected Russian publication, citing sources, wrote that Mikhailov had tipped off U.S. intelligence about King Servers,
the hosting service used to support hacking attacks on targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona in
June. That had followed reports in the New York Times, citing one current and one former government official, that
"human sources in Russia did play a crucial role in proving who was responsible for the hacking."
Nakashima wrote yesterday that "the [FBI] charges are unrelated to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee
and the FBI's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the move reflects the U.S.
government's increasing desire to hold foreign governments accountable for malicious acts in cyberspace."
2. A shadowy hacking collective called Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty-Dumpty)
:
Also called
Anonymous International, Shaltai-Boltai was responsible for leaking early copies of Putin's New Year speech and for
selling off "lots" of emails stolen from Russian officials such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. In a theory first
reported by the pro-Kremlin, conservative Orthodox media company Tsargrad, Mikhailov had taken control
of Shaltai-Boltai, "curating and supervising" the group in selecting hacking targets. Later media reports said that the
group's leader, Vladimir Anikeyev, had recently been arrested by the FSB and had informed on Mikhailov, Dokuchaev and
Stoyanov. A member of the group who fled to Estonia told the Russian media agency Fontanka that they had recently
acquired an FSB "coordinator," although he could not say whether it was Mikhailov. None of the hacks mentioned in the
FBI indictment could immediately be confirmed as those carried out by Shaltai-Boltai.
Lawyers contacted by The Post said that in documents they had seen, there was no link to Shaltai-Boltai in the case.
3.
A grudge with a cybercriminal
: A Russian businessman who had specialized in spam and malware had
claimed for years that Mikhailov was trading information on cybercriminals with the West. Mikhailov had reportedly
testified in the case of Pavel Vrublevsky, the former head of the payment services company Chronopay, who was imprisoned
in 2013 for ordering a denial of service attack on the website of Aeroflot, the Russian national airline. Vrublevsky
claimed then that Mikhailov began exchanging information about Russian cybercriminals with Western intelligence
agencies, including documents about Chronopay. Brian Krebs, an American journalist who investigates cybercrime and
received access to Vrublevsky's emails,
wrote in January
: "Based on
how long Vrublevsky has been
trying
to sell this narrative
, it seems he may have
finally found a buyer
."
4.
Infighting at the FSB:
The Russian government is not monolithic, and infighting between and
within the powerful law enforcement agencies is common. The Russian business publication RBC had written that Mikhailov
and Dokuchaev's Center for Information Security had been in conflict with another department with similar
responsibilities, the FSB's Center for Information Protection and Special Communications. The conflict may have led to
the initiation of a criminal case, the paper's sources said.
As Leonid Bershidsky, founding editor of the Russian business daily publication Vedomosti,
wrote in January, the dramatic arrests of two high-level FSB officers -- Sergei Mikhailov , the deputy head of the FSB's
Information Security Center, and Major Dmitry
Dokuchaev , a highly skilled hacker who had been recruited by the FSB -- on treason charges
in December offers a glimpse into "how security agencies generally operate in Putin's
Russia."
At the time of their arrest, Dokuchaev (who was one of the Russian officials indicted for
the Yahoo breach) and Mikhailov had been trying to cultivate a Russian hacking group known as
"Shaltai Boltai" -- or "Humpty Dumpty" -- that had been publishing stolen emails from Russian
officials' inboxes, according to Russian media reports.
"The FSB team reportedly uncovered the identities of the group's members -- but, instead of
arresting and indicting them, Mikhailov's team tried to run the group, apparently for profit or
political gain," Bershidsky wrote. Shaltai Boltai complied, Bershidsky wrote, because it wanted
to stay afloat, and didn't mind taking orders from "government structures."
"We get orders from government structures and from private individuals," Shaltai Boltai's
alleged leader said in a 2015
interview. "But we say we are an independent team. It's just that often it's impossible to
tell who the client is. Sometimes we get information for intermediaries, without knowing who
the end client is."
It appears that Dokuchaev and Mikhailov got caught running this side project with Shaltai
Boltai -- which was still targeting high-level Russian officials -- when the FSB began
surveilling Mikhailov. Officials targeted Mikhailov after receiving a tip that he might have
been leaking information about Russian cyber activities to the FBI, according to the
Novaya Gazeta.
Short of working against Russian interests, hackers "can pursue whatever projects they want,
as long as their targets are outside of Russia and they follow orders from the top when
needed," said Bremmer, of Eurasia Group. The same goes for FSB officers, who are tactically
allowed to "run private security operations involving blackmail and protection," according to
Bershidsky.
US intelligence agencies have concluded that the hack on the Democratic National Committee
during the 2016 election was likely one such "order from the top" -- a directive issued by
Russian President Vladimir Putin and carried out by hackers hired by the GRU and the FSB.
It is still unclear if the Yahoo breach was directed by FSB officials at the instruction of
the Kremlin, like the DNC hack, or if it was one of those "private security operations"
Bershidsky alluded to that some Russian intelligence officers do on the side.
Bremmer said that it's possible the Yahoo breach was not done for state ends, especially
given the involvement of Dokuchaev, who was already caught up in Shaltai Baltai's operations to
steal and sell information for personal financial gain.
Russia became a standard punch ball in the US political games. As in "Russia dog eat my homework."
Notable quotes:
"... This article is very important and outlines the destructive effort being done to Russia by the USA. It should be noted and clearly displayed by the psychopathic nature of USA meddling in Russian affairs. ..."
"... "With the current uproar about Russia interfering in the USA elections. It has to be noted that the Kremlin is very silent on this subject." ..."
"... It is extremely difficult and time consuming for an ordinary person to find the truth in the millions of pages on the Internet, the ordinary mushroom knowing that the MSM only serves you sh't and keeps you in the dark. ..."
"... Yea, just a common internet malpractice called spoofing, that any IT professional, especially one working in IT security, knows about. I suspected all along that most or all of this "Russian Hacking" and "Russians did it" was exactly that. ..."
With the current uproar about Russia interfering in the USA elections. It has to be noted that the Kremlin is very silent on this
subject. It is more important now than ever to bring forth information from Russia in exposing how serious the problem is from
the USA interfering in not only Russian affairs but how the intelligence community continues unabated in interfering in most countries.
This article is very important and outlines the destructive effort being done to Russia by the USA. It should be noted and
clearly displayed by the psychopathic nature of USA meddling in Russian affairs.
One has to wonder why people cannot see how the current government of the USA is totally out of control around the world.
Everything has its cycle of life and the USA is no exception to this theory. When humanity is controlled in such a fashion,
by that I mean that the USA is supported by the four pillars consisting of GREED, CORRUPTION, POWER and CONTROL. They are sitting
on the top of these structures and are desperately trying to maintain their grip over the world.
Perhaps the purpose is to "open Russia" to debunk those silly "Kremlin hacking" claims and give Empire more important information
inside Russia. E.g how to go deep through military security defense line.
Empire actually don't know what Russia don't know or do know. Is this chess where you have to sacrifice pawn or two or even
knight to secure queen and king? Or why to shoot fly with cannon?
"One has to wonder why people cannot see how the current government of the USA is totally out of control around the world." end
quote.
It is extremely difficult and time consuming for an ordinary person to find the truth in the millions of pages on the Internet,
the ordinary mushroom knowing that the MSM only serves you sh't and keeps you in the dark. The most reliable method (not
100 % though) is the "Follow the money" method, who has to gain by this or that development, but even that can lead to false conclusions.
Always count on that everyone has a hidden agenda, but watch out you are not gripped by paranoia.
Yea, just a common internet malpractice called spoofing, that any IT professional, especially one working in IT security,
knows about. I suspected all along that most or all of this "Russian Hacking" and "Russians did it" was exactly that.
What a pathetic waste of time. American society and government are really getting very low.
And, of course, reality is actually defined as "what you cannot change by speaking about it". You can change reality, a very
little bit at a time, by doing honest physical work.
"... Much later, in mid-2013, the idea of Shaltay-Boltay appeared. ..."
"... Anikeev had sources of information, the information itself, important and interesting one. Anikeev decided to leave the information and analytical structure for which he had been working, and start his own project. ..."
"... His role has been greatly exaggerated. He's just our mutual old friend. When we were getting significant numbers of files that had to be processed, we would ask Teplyakov to help, for a fee. We knew him and trusted him. ..."
"... Just then, I was beginning to get annoyed with the country, I decided to go to Thailand. When I started discussing this project with Anikeev, it seemed okay: you could engage in an interesting and promising business from home. What did I expect in financial terms? Definitely not the sale of arrays of information. I was rather thinking about advertising or administration fee. Lite-version. ..."
"... All the information came from Anikeev. I published the received information, perhaps, by illegal means, but I have nothing to do with how it was obtained. Yesterday, I sent a letter to the former President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves. I think by our actions, especially in 2014, when we were working on the idea, I deserved asylum in Estonia. So far no response was received. ..."
"... The Anonymous International published a lot of information from the correspondence of officials and businessmen between 2014 and 2016. Among the disclosed information was Dmitry Medvedev's hacked Twitter, and e-mail, Facebook, iPhone and iPad of owner of NewsMedia Holding Aram Gabrellyanov; e-mail and WhatsApp of TV host Dmitry Kiselev, official correspondence between the employees of "Prosecutor's Office" and the "Ministry of State Security" of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, and a lot of other, equally interesting information. ..."
"... Before Anikeev's detention, Shaltay-Boltay also obtained the correspondence of the presidential assistant Vladislav Surkov. ..."
St. Petersburg programmer Alexander Glazastikov, who was hiding under the mask of Shaltay-Boltay (Humpty Dumpty), hoping for a
political asylum reached out to the former President of Estonia. He is the only member of Anonymous International who remains at
large.
Fontanka has been chasing the last Shaltay-Boltay member for a week. One member of the mysterious hacker group, which has been
leaking e-mails of businessmen and officials for three years was found in Estonia, but shied away from a direct talk.
After the news came that Anonymous International members Vladimir Anikeev, Konstantin Teplyakov, and Filinov were arrested, it
was not difficult to single out their colleague Alexander Glazastikov. The 'scary hackers' themselves, as it turned out, were quite
unrestrained on social networks and left striking marks on the Internet.
Five days ago, Alexander Glazastikov gave an evasive answer to the straight question sent by Fontanka via e-mail. Three days ago,
he admitted to being one of the Anonymous International on condition of anonymity. Then, he agreed to an interview saying "Come to
Estonia".
When, on the arranged day, a Fontanka reporter arrived to Tartu, Alexander dropped a bombshell: "I'm on my way to Tallinn: already
twenty kilometers away from Tartu." He suggested: "I can wait at the gas station Valmaotsa. Drive up, let's go together." It was
the offer, from which one cannot refuse. A taxi was found quickly.
When the meeting took place, the Shaltay-Boltay member, who was easily recognizable due to the photos from the web, surprised
the journalist once again: he silently passed him the ignition keys from the SUV. After a question, he explained: "You will have
to drive, I was drinking beer while waiting." There wasn't much of a choice, and the correspondent of Fontanka drove the hackers
group member to Tallinn to meet with the crew of Dozhd TV-channel and Ksenia Sobchak. 180 kilometers and two hours of time was enough
to have a decent conversation.
- Alexander, you are probably the only member of the Anonymous International who managed to remain at large. You're in Estonia,
the Russian justice is far away, can I call you by your name and surname?
- Perhaps, you can. Anyway, tomorrow or the day after, I will officially reach out to the authorities for a political asylum.
The FSB already knows my name.
- They know the surname. And who are you in the Anonymous International: Shaltay or Boltay?
- Shaltay, Boltay ... what a mess. Initially, when starting this project, Shaltay-Boltay was supposed to be a spokesman for the
Anonymous International. Mainly, I was doing this job. Then, Anikeev started introducing himself to the reporters as Lewis and got
everyone confused.
- How many people initiated the Anonymous International?
- Me, Anikeev. Teplyakov helped with some things, but purely technical aspects.
- Who is Filinov, whose arrest was reported in connection with Shaltay-Boltay?
- I don't know the man. He was not involved in the creation of the Anonymous International. I think this is Anikeev's acquaintance,
who accidentally got under the press. I've heard his name for the first time, when the media wrote about his arrest.
- Have you known Anikeev and Teplyakov for a long time?
- For a long time... There was a resource called Damochka.ru. When basically no social networks existed, and VKontakte only began
to emerge, everyone was on this website, it was one of the most fun projects. In the real world, meetings of the website users were
held, some users just organized those parties – Dima Gryzlov, Nikolai Bondarik, and Anikeev. That's how we met. Much later, in
mid-2013, the idea of Shaltay-Boltay appeared.
- How? Did you just decide that you would steal e-mails of bad people?
- Anikeev had sources of information, the information itself, important and interesting one. Anikeev decided to leave the
information and analytical structure for which he had been working, and start his own project.
- Could this project be called a business?
- It depends It was assumed that the project will bring substantial financial result, but initially it was made partly out of
ideological considerations.
- But Anikeev is not a hacker at all, judging by the stories of his former colleagues.
- True. If he needed to install any software on the computer, he would usually ask me to do it.
- But Teplyakov is a programmer.
- His role has been greatly exaggerated. He's just our mutual old friend. When we were getting significant numbers of files
that had to be processed, we would ask Teplyakov to help, for a fee. We knew him and trusted him.
- And why did you join this project?
- Just then, I was beginning to get annoyed with the country, I decided to go to Thailand. When I started discussing this
project with Anikeev, it seemed okay: you could engage in an interesting and promising business from home. What did I expect in financial
terms? Definitely not the sale of arrays of information. I was rather thinking about advertising or administration fee. Lite-version.
- With a reference to the investigation, there was information that Shaltay-Boltay has a whole network of agents with special
equipment, who, at places popular among local officials, steal information by creating fake Wi-Fi connections. Do you have a network?
- Complete nonsense. There were discussions about getting to know technical possibilities like this. As far as I know, and I know
a lot, in fact, we didn't have it.
- Where did you get the information from, then?
- From specialized hacking sites, one can order hacking someone else's e-mail box for a few thousand rubles.
- It worked successfully. If you remember 2014 was the most fruitful year. Serious stories, serious figures, and no commerce.
Strelkov, Prigozhin...
- Out of the three years that the project existed, 2014 was the most significant. I am proud of that year.
- But, from 2015, the Anonymous International has become almost a purely commercial project. How much money did you manage
to earn?
- Only one or two million dollars.
- So, you are now a rich man?
- No. Most of the money was spent on operating expenses, so to speak. There were about fifty boxes in the work. Plus, there were
variants in which a transaction was made not via bitcoins, but with the help of Anikeev's friends; these intermediaries could ask
for two thirds of the whole amount.
- Was there anyone above you and Anikeev? For several years, people have been wondering who Shaltay-Boltay works for?
- Funny. Everyone is looking for conspiracy, but, in fact, it was a 'quick and dirty' project made by me and Anikeev. However,
at some point, in the summer or in the spring of 2016, Anikeev said that some person from the FSB found us, he knew our names. Allegedly,
military counterintelligence was looking for us, but the FSB found our meadow attractive and decided to take control of our petty
pranks. They, supposedly, were uninterested in the commercial part of the project: the scale was much bigger, but they wanted to
supervise the project and to have the veto right. Mikhailov's name was not voiced, in fact, no one's was. Nothing, actually, happened:
no one used the veto right and no one leaked any information. If these mysterious people existed at all. And who turned whom in:
they – Anikeev or Anikeev – them, or even third force got them all, I do not know.
- How quickly did you find out about Anikeev's arrest?
- The next morning. He sent me a selfie from Pulkovo Airport, wrote that he checked in and flies to Minsk. The next morning, it
was reported that he was arrested and transported to Moscow. Given the subsequent events, it could be the game of the FSB. Then,
he contacted me, convinced that he solved all the issues and now works under the control of the FSB, called in me to Russia, but
I didn't believe him for some reason.
- Did Teplyakov believe?
- Teplyakov, in the summer of 2016, moved from Thailand to Kiev. He had no permanent earnings, he depended on Anikeev. When the
game was on, and it was claimed that the project would continue, but he needs to come to Russia and work there under supervision,
for safety reasons, as well, Teplyakov didn't have much of a choice. He went to Russia.
- Is there somewhere a chest with Shaltay-Boltay's information?
- Good question. I need to think how to respond. Well no, not really. What was sold and purchased by the clients was deleted.
What was sold was fairly deleted and this information doesn't exist anymore. Perhaps, some of our customers are now concerned about
this question, but what was declared, was implemented. Some operative material that we had been working on, I also deleted. Maybe
a couple of screenshots were left in the trash bin, but nothing more.
- Alexander, you're going to submit a request for a political asylum. Aren't you afraid that Estonians will simply put you
in a cell? In this country, they are very sensitive to computer security, and the specificity of computer crimes lies in the fact
that, for committing them, one can be prosecuted in almost any country?
- My position is that I was not personally involved in the cracking of passwords and sending malicious links. To me all that information
was already delivered in an open form. Yes, it was, probably, stolen...
- So were you ordering its thefts or not?
- No.
- Who did, then?
- All the information came from Anikeev. I published the received information, perhaps, by illegal means, but I have nothing
to do with how it was obtained. Yesterday, I sent a letter to the former President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves. I think by our
actions, especially in 2014, when we were working on the idea, I deserved asylum in Estonia. So far no response was received.
We drove to Tallinn. More and more texts came to Alexander's telephonefrom Dozhd TV journalists, who were preparing
to shoot with Ksenia Sobchak. After leaving the car in the parking lot, we said goodbye. Alexander Glazastikov promised to inform
when he receives a reply from the Estonian government.
It is to be recalled that Glazastikov's colleagues from the Anonymous International are awaiting trial in a predetention center.
The law enforcement agencies arrested Vladimir Anikeev and his two probable accomplices: Konstantin Teplyakov and Alexander Filinov.
The latter two were arrested as early as November 2016, and, on February 1, the judge of the Lefortovo District Court of Moscow extended
their detention until April. The alleged leader of the Anonymous International, who was acting under the nickname Lewis, was arrested
on January 28 after a short time spent in the company of police officers; he confessed.
All three are charged with the crimes stipulated under part 3 of Art. 272 of the Russian Criminal Code (Illegal access to legally-protected
computer information, which caused a major damage or has been committed because of vested interest or committed by a group of persons
by previous concert through his/her official position).
Initially, the media associated their criminal case with the investigation on the FSB staff and the manager of the Kaspersky Lab,
who were accused of treason, but later, the lawyer of one of the defendants denied this information.
The Anonymous International published a lot of information from the correspondence of officials and businessmen between 2014
and 2016. Among the disclosed information was Dmitry Medvedev's hacked Twitter, and e-mail, Facebook, iPhone and iPad of owner of
NewsMedia Holding Aram Gabrellyanov; e-mail and WhatsApp of TV host Dmitry Kiselev, official correspondence between the employees
of "Prosecutor's Office" and the "Ministry of State Security" of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, and a lot of other,
equally interesting information.
Before Anikeev's detention, Shaltay-Boltay also obtained the correspondence of the presidential assistant Vladislav Surkov.
Two senior FSB officers and a high-level manager of Russia's leading cybersecurity firm
Kaspersky Lab are facing official charges of treason in the interests of the US, a lawyer
representing one of the defendants has confirmed to Interfax. Ruslan Stoyanov, head of
Kaspersky Lab's computer incidents investigations unit, Sergey Mikhailov, a senior Russian FSB
officer, and his deputy Dmitry Dokuchayev are accused of "treason in favor of the US,"
lawyer Ivan Pavlov said on Wednesday, as cited by Interfax. Read more 70mn cyberattacks,
mostly foreign, targeted Russia's critical infrastructure in 2016 – FSB
Pavlov chose not to disclose which of the defendants he represents, adding, however, that
his client denies all charges.
The charges against the defendants do not imply they were cooperating with the CIA, Pavlov
added. "There is no mention of the CIA at all. [The entity] in question is the US, not the
CIA," he stressed, according to TASS.
The lawyer maintained the court files included no mention of Vladimir Anikeev, an alleged
leader of 'Shaltai Boltai', a hacking group that previously leaked emails from top Russian
officials, including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The hacking group's name was in the news earlier in January, when Russian media reports
linked Mikhailov and Dokuchayev to 'Shaltai Boltai' . In an unsourced article last
Wednesday, Rosbalt newspaper claimed Mikhailov's unit was ordered in 2016 to work with the
group.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti on Wednesday the treason charges do not
relate to the US suspicions of Russia being behind the alleged cyberattacks on the 2016
presidential elections. He added that President Vladimir Putin is receiving regular updates on
the current investigation.
Russian media reports said Mikhailov was arrested during a conference of top FSB leadership.
He was reportedly escorted out of the room with a bag placed over his head. His deputy,
Dokuchayev, is said to be a well-known hacker who allegedly began cooperating with the FSB
several years ago. Kaspersky Lab manager Stoyanov was also placed under arrest several weeks
ago.
Stoyanov is still employed by Kaspersky Lab, the company told RIA Novosti later on
Wednesday, adding there were "no personnel changes" at this point.
Treason charges mean that the defendants could be handed a sentence of up to 20 years in
prison. The treason charges also mean any trial will not be public due to its sensitive
nature.
If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically
designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken.
If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits.
So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen
that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed
get a new more sinister life.
"... Disobedient Media outlines the DNC server cover-up evidenced in CrowdStrike malware infusion ..."
"... In the article, they claim to have just been working on eliminating the last of the hackers from the DNC's network during the past weekend (conveniently coinciding with Assange's statement and being an indirect admission that their Falcon software had failed to achieve it's stated capabilities at that time , assuming their statements were accurate) . ..."
"... To date, CrowdStrike has not been able to show how the malware had relayed any emails or accessed any mailboxes. They have also not responded to inquiries specifically asking for details about this. In fact, things have now been discovered that bring some of their malware discoveries into question. ..."
"... there is a reason to think Fancy Bear didn't start some of its activity until CrowdStrike had arrived at the DNC. CrowdStrike, in the indiciators of compromise they reported, identified three pieces of malware relating to Fancy Bear: ..."
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some (or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired – meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's
pathetic election defeat to Trump, and
CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this
entire DNC server hack an
"insurance policy."
"... Recent hearings by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees reflected the rising tide of Russian-election-hacking hysteria and contributed further to it. Both Democrats and Republicans on the two committees appeared to share the alarmist assumptions about Russian hacking, and the officials who testified did nothing to discourage the politicians. ..."
"... The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a record of spreading false stories about alleged Russian hacking into US infrastructure , such as the tale of a Russian intrusion into the Burlington, Vermont electrical utility in December 2016 that DHS later admitted was untrue. There was another bogus DHS story about Russia hacking into a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011. ..."
"... So, there's a pattern here. Plus, investigators, assessing the notion that Russia hacked into state electoral databases, rejected that suspicion as false months ago. Last September, Assistant Secretary of DHS for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment and state officials explained that the intrusions were not carried out by Russian intelligence but by criminal hackers seeking personal information to sell on the Internet. ..."
"... Illinois is the one state where hackers succeeded in breaking into a voter registration database last summer. The crucial fact about the Illinois hacking, however, was that the hackers extracted personal information on roughly 90,000 registered voters, and that none of the information was expunged or altered. ..."
"... "Any time you more carefully monitor a system you're going to see more bad guys poking and prodding at it," he observed, " because they're always poking and prodding." [Emphasis added] ..."
"... Reagan further revealed that she had learned from the FBI that hackers had gotten a user name and password for their electoral database, and that it was being sold on the "dark web" – an encrypted network used by cyber criminals to buy and sell their wares. In fact, she said, the FBI told her that the probe of Arizona's database was the work of a "known hacker" who had been closely monitored "frequently." ..."
"... The sequence of events indicates that the main person behind the narrative of Russian hacking state election databases from the beginning was former FBI Director James Comey. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 28, Comey suggested that the Russian government was behind efforts to penetrate voter databases, but never said so directly. ..."
"... The media then suddenly found unnamed sources ready to accuse Russia of hacking election data even while admitting that they lacked evidence. The day after Comey's testimony ABC headlined , "Russia Hacking Targeted Nearly Half of States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrating 4." The story itself revealed, however, that it was merely a suspicion held by "knowledgeable" sources. ..."
"... But that claim of a "likely" link between the hackers and Russia was not only speculative but highly suspect. The authors of the DHS-ODNI report claimed the link was "supported by technical indicators from the US intelligence community, DHS, FBI, the private sector and other entities." They cited a list of hundreds of I.P. addresses and other such "indicators" used by hackers they called "Grizzly Steppe" who were supposedly linked to Russian intelligence. ..."
"... But the highly classified NSA report made no reference to any evidence supporting such an attribution. The absence of any hint of signals intelligence supporting its conclusion makes it clear that the NSA report was based on nothing more than the same kind of inconclusive "indicators" that had been used to establish the original narrative of Russians hacking electoral databases. ..."
"... Russian intelligence certainly has an interest in acquiring intelligence related to the likely outcome of American elections, but it would make no sense for Russia's spies to acquire personal voting information about 90,000 registered voters in Illinois. ..."
Cyber-criminal efforts to hack into U.S. government databases are epidemic, but this ugly reality
is now being exploited to foist blame on Russia and fuel the New Cold War hysteria
Recent
hearings by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees reflected the rising tide of Russian-election-hacking
hysteria and contributed further to it. Both Democrats and Republicans on the two committees appeared
to share the alarmist assumptions about Russian hacking, and the officials who testified did nothing
to discourage the politicians.
On June 21, Samuel Liles, acting director of the Intelligence and Analysis Office's Cyber Division
at the Department of Homeland Security, and Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy under secretary for cyber-security
and communications, provided the main story line for the day in testimony before the Senate committee
- that efforts to hack into election databases had been found in 21 states.
Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap also endorsed
the narrative of Russian government responsibility for the intrusions on voter registration databases.
But none of those who testified offered any evidence to support this suspicion nor were they pushed
to do so. And beneath the seemingly unanimous embrace of that narrative lies a very different story.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a record of spreading false stories about alleged
Russian hacking into US infrastructure , such as the tale of a Russian intrusion into the Burlington,
Vermont electrical utility in December 2016 that DHS later admitted was untrue. There was another
bogus DHS story about Russia hacking into a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011.
So, there's a pattern here. Plus, investigators, assessing the notion that Russia hacked into
state electoral databases, rejected that suspicion as false months ago. Last September, Assistant
Secretary of DHS for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment and state officials explained that the intrusions
were not carried out by Russian intelligence but by criminal hackers seeking personal information
to sell on the Internet.
Both Ozment and state officials responsible for the state databases revealed that those databases
have been the object of attempted intrusions for years. The FBI provided information to at least
one state official indicating that the culprits in the hacking of the state's voter registration
database were cyber-criminals.
Illinois is the one state where hackers succeeded in breaking into a voter registration database
last summer. The crucial fact about the Illinois hacking, however, was that the hackers extracted
personal information on roughly 90,000 registered voters, and that none of the information was expunged
or altered.
The Actions of Cybercriminals
That was an obvious clue to the motive behind the hack. Assistant DHS Secretary Ozment testified
before the House Subcommittee on Information Technology on Sept. 28 ( at 01:02.30 of the video )
that the apparent interest of the hackers in copying the data suggested that the hacking was "possibly
for the purpose of selling personal information."
Ozment 's testimony provides the only credible motive for the large number of states found to
have experienced what the intelligence community has called "scanning and probing" of computers to
gain access to their electoral databases: the personal information involved – even e-mail addresses
– is commercially valuable to the cybercriminal underworld.
That same testimony also explains why so many more states reported evidence of attempts to hack
their electoral databases last summer and fall. After hackers had gone after the Illinois and Arizona
databases, Ozment said, DHS had provided assistance to many states in detecting attempts to hack
their voter registration and other databases.
"Any time you more carefully monitor a system you're going to see more bad guys poking and prodding
at it," he observed, " because they're always poking and prodding." [Emphasis added]
State election officials have confirmed Ozment's observation. Ken Menzel, the general counsel
for the Illinois Secretary of State, told this writer, "What's new about what happened last year
is not that someone tried to get into our system but that they finally succeeded in getting in."
Menzel said hackers "have been trying constantly to get into it since 2006."
And it's not just state voter registration databases that cybercriminals are after, according
to Menzel. "Every governmental data base – driver's licenses, health care, you name it – has people
trying to get into it," he said.
Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan told Mother Jones that her I.T. specialists had detected
193,000 distinct attempts to get into the state's website in September 2016 alone and 11,000 appeared
to be trying to "do harm."
Reagan further revealed that she had learned from the FBI that hackers had gotten a user name
and password for their electoral database, and that it was being sold on the "dark web" – an encrypted
network used by cyber criminals to buy and sell their wares. In fact, she said, the FBI told her
that the probe of Arizona's database was the work of a "known hacker" who had been closely monitored
"frequently."
James Comey's Role
The sequence of events indicates that the main person behind the narrative of Russian hacking
state election databases from the beginning was former FBI Director James Comey. In testimony to
the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 28, Comey suggested that the Russian government was behind
efforts to penetrate voter databases, but never said so directly.
Comey told the committee that FBI Counterintelligence was working to "understand just what mischief
Russia is up to with regard to our elections." Then he referred to "a variety of scanning activities"
and "attempted intrusions" into election-related computers "beyond what we knew about in July and
August," encouraging the inference that it had been done by Russian agents.
The media then suddenly found unnamed sources ready to accuse Russia of hacking election data
even while admitting that they lacked evidence. The day after Comey's testimony ABC headlined , "Russia
Hacking Targeted Nearly Half of States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrating 4."
The story itself revealed, however, that it was merely a suspicion held by "knowledgeable" sources.
Similarly, NBC News headline announced, "Russians Hacked Two US Voter Databases, Officials Say."
But those who actually read the story closely learned that in fact none of the unnamed sources it
cited were actually attributing the hacking to the Russians.
It didn't take long for Democrats to turn the Comey teaser - and these anonymously sourced stories
with misleading headlines about Russian database hacking - into an established fact. A few days later,
the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff declared that there was
"no doubt" Russia was behind the hacks on state electoral databases.
On Oct. 7, DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement
that they were "not in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian government." But only
a few weeks later, DHS participated with FBI in issuing a "Joint Analysis Report" on "Russian malicious
cyber activity" that did not refer directly to scanning and spearphishing aimed of state electoral
databases but attributed all hacks related to the election to "actors likely associated with RIS
[Russian Intelligence Services]."
Suspect Claims
But that claim of a "likely" link between the hackers and Russia was not only speculative but
highly suspect. The authors of the DHS-ODNI report claimed the link was "supported by technical indicators
from the US intelligence community, DHS, FBI, the private sector and other entities." They cited
a list of hundreds of I.P. addresses and other such "indicators" used by hackers they called "Grizzly
Steppe" who were supposedly linked to Russian intelligence.
But as I reported last January, the staff of Dragos Security, whose CEO Rob Lee, had been the
architect of a US government system for defense against cyber attack, pointed out that the vast majority
of those indicators would certainly have produced "false positives."
Then, on Jan. 6 came the "intelligence community assessment" – produced by selected analysts from
CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and devoted almost entirely to the hacking of e-mail of the
Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. But it included
a statement that "Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple state
or local election boards." Still, no evidence was evinced on this alleged link between the hackers
and Russian intelligence.
Over the following months, the narrative of hacked voter registration databases receded into the
background as the drumbeat of media accounts about contacts between figures associated with the Trump
campaign and Russians built to a crescendo, albeit without any actual evidence of collusion regarding
the e-mail disclosures.
But a June 5 story brought the voter-data story back into the headlines. The story, published
by The Intercept, accepted at face value an NSA report dated May 5, 2017 , that asserted Russia's
military intelligence agency, the GRU, had carried out a spear-phishing attack on a US company providing
election-related software and had sent e-mails with a malware-carrying word document to 122 addresses
believed to be local government organizations.
But the highly classified NSA report made no reference to any evidence supporting such an attribution.
The absence of any hint of signals intelligence supporting its conclusion makes it clear that the
NSA report was based on nothing more than the same kind of inconclusive "indicators" that had been
used to establish the original narrative of Russians hacking electoral databases.
A Checkered History
So, the history of the US government's claim that Russian intelligence hacked into election databases
reveals it to be a clear case of politically motivated analysis by the DHS and the Intelligence Community.
Not only was the claim based on nothing more than inherently inconclusive technical indicators but
no credible motive for Russian intelligence wanting personal information on registered voters was
ever suggested.
Russian intelligence certainly has an interest in acquiring intelligence related to the likely
outcome of American elections, but it would make no sense for Russia's spies to acquire personal
voting information about 90,000 registered voters in Illinois.
When FBI Counterintelligence chief Priestap was asked at the June 21 hearing how Moscow might
use such personal data, his tortured effort at an explanation clearly indicated that he was totally
unprepared to answer the question.
"They took the data to understand what it consisted of," said Priestap, "so they can affect better
understanding and plan accordingly in regards to possibly impacting future election by knowing what
is there and studying it."
In contrast to that befuddled non-explanation, there is highly credible evidence that the FBI
was well aware that the actual hackers in the cases of both Illinois and Arizona were motivated by
the hope of personal gain.
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security
policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war
in Afghanistan. His new book is
Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . He can be contacted at
[email protected]. Reprinted from
Consortium News with the author's permission.
This previously secret order involved having US intelligence design and implant a series of cyberweapons
into Russia's infrastructure systems, with officials saying they are meant to be activated remotely
to hit the most important networks in Russia and are designed to "
cause them pain and discomfort ."
The US has, of course, repeatedly threatened "retaliatory" cyberattacks against Russia, and promised
to knock out broad parts of their economy in doing so. These appear to be the first specific plans
to have actually infiltrate Russian networks and plant such weapons to do so.
Despite the long-standing nature of the threats, by the end of Obama's last term in office this
was all still in the "planning" phases. It's not totally clear where this effort has gone from there,
but officials say that the intelligence community, once given Obama's permission, did not need further
approval from Trump to continue on with it, and he'd have actually had to issue a countermanding
order, something they say he hasn't.
The details are actually pretty scant on how far along the effort is, but the goal is said to
be for the US to have the ability to retaliate at a moment's notice the next time they have a cyberattack
they intend to blame on Russia.
Unspoken in this lengthy report, which quotes unnamed former Obama Administration officials substantially,
advocating the effort, is that in having reported that such a program exists, they've tipped off
Russia about the threat.
This is, however, reflective of the priority of the former administration, which is to continuing
hyping allegations that Russia got President Trump elected, a priority that's high enough to sacrifice
what was supposed to be a highly secretive cyberattack operation.
DHS security honchos want to justify their existence. There is not greater danger to national
security then careerists in position of security professionals. Lying and exaggerating the
treats to get this dollars is is what many security professionals do for living. They are
essentially charlatans.
Notable quotes:
"... In the middle of a major domestic crisis over the U.S. charge that Russia had interfered with the US election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) triggered a brief national media hysteria by creating and spreading a bogus story of Russian hacking into US power infrastructure. ..."
"... Even more shocking, however, DHS had previously circulated a similar bogus story of Russian hacking of a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011. ..."
"... Beginning in late March 2016, DHS and FBI conducted a series of 12 unclassified briefings for electric power infrastructure companies in eight cities titled, "Ukraine Cyber Attack: implications for US stakeholders." The DHS declared publicly, "These events represent one of the first known physical impacts to critical infrastructure which resulted from cyber-attack." ..."
"... That statement conveniently avoided mentioning that the first cases of such destruction of national infrastructure from cyber-attacks were not against the United States, but were inflicted on Iran by the Obama administration and Israel in 2009 and 2012. ..."
"... Beginning in October 2016, the DHS emerged as one of the two most important players – along with the CIA-in the political drama over the alleged Russian effort to tilt the 2016 election toward Donald Trump. Then on Dec. 29, DHS and FBI distributed a "Joint Analysis Report" to US power utilities across the country with what it claimed were "indicators" of a Russian intelligence effort to penetrate and compromise US computer networks, including networks related to the presidential election, that it called "GRIZZLY STEPPE." ..."
"... according to Robert M. Lee, the founder and CEO of the cyber-security company Dragos, who had developed one of the earliest US government programs for defense against cyber-attacks on US infrastructure systems, the report was certain to mislead the recipients. ..."
"... "Anyone who uses it would think they were being impacted by Russian operations," said Lee. "We ran through the indicators in the report and found that a high percentage were false positives." ..."
"... The Intercept discovered, in fact, that 42 percent of the 876 IP addresses listed in the report as having been used by Russian hackers were exit nodes for the Tor Project, a system that allows bloggers, journalists and others – including some military entities – to keep their Internet communications private. ..."
"... Instead, a DHS official called The Washington Post and passed on word that one of the indicators of Russian hacking of the DNC had been found on the Burlington utility's computer network. The Post failed to follow the most basic rule of journalism, relying on its DHS source instead of checking with the Burlington Electric Department first. The result was the Post's sensational Dec. 30 story under the headline "Russian hackers penetrated US electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, US officials say." ..."
"... DHS official evidently had allowed the Post to infer that the Russians hack had penetrated the grid without actually saying so. The Post story said the Russians "had not actively used the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter," but then added, and that "the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability." ..."
"... The electric company quickly issued a firm denial that the computer in question was connected to the power grid. The Post was forced to retract, in effect, its claim that the electricity grid had been hacked by the Russians. But it stuck by its story that the utility had been the victim of a Russian hack for another three days before admitting that no such evidence of a hack existed. ..."
"... Only days later did the DHS reveal those crucial facts to the Post. And the DHS was still defending its joint report to the Post, according to Lee, who got part of the story from Post sources. The DHS official was arguing that it had "led to a discovery," he said. "The second is, 'See, this is encouraging people to run indicators.'" ..."
"... The false Burlington Electric hack scare is reminiscent of an earlier story of Russian hacking of a utility for which the DHS was responsible as well. In November 2011, it reported an "intrusion" into a Springfield, Illinois water district computer that similarly turned out to be a fabrication. ..."
"... The contractor whose name was on the log next to the IP address later told Wired magazine that one phone call to him would have laid the matter to rest. But the DHS, which was the lead in putting the report out, had not bothered to make even that one obvious phone call before opining that it must have been a Russian hack. ..."
The mainstream hysteria over Russia has led to dubious or downright false stories that have
deepened the New Cold War
In the middle of a major domestic crisis over the U.S. charge that Russia had interfered with
the US election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) triggered a brief national media hysteria
by creating and spreading a bogus story of Russian hacking into US power infrastructure.
DHS had initiated the now-discredited tale of a hacked computer at the Burlington, Vermont Electricity
Department by sending the utility's managers misleading and alarming information, then leaked a story
they certainly knew to be false and continued to put out a misleading line to the media.
Even more shocking, however, DHS had previously circulated a similar bogus story of Russian hacking
of a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011.
The story of how DHS twice circulated false stories of Russian efforts to sabotage US "critical
infrastructure" is a cautionary tale of how senior leaders in a bureaucracy-on-the-make take advantage
of every major political development to advance its own interests, with scant regard for the truth.
The DHS had carried out a major public campaign to focus on an alleged Russian threat to US power
infrastructure in early 2016. The campaign took advantage of a US accusation of a Russian cyber-attack
against the Ukrainian power infrastructure in December 2015 to promote one of the agency's major
functions - guarding against cyber-attacks on America's infrastructure.
Beginning in late March 2016, DHS and FBI conducted a series of 12 unclassified briefings for
electric power infrastructure companies in eight cities titled, "Ukraine Cyber Attack: implications
for US stakeholders." The DHS declared publicly, "These events represent one of the first known physical
impacts to critical infrastructure which resulted from cyber-attack."
That statement conveniently avoided mentioning that the first cases of such destruction of national
infrastructure from cyber-attacks were not against the United States, but were inflicted on Iran
by the Obama administration and Israel in 2009 and 2012.
Beginning in October 2016, the DHS emerged as one of the two most important players – along with
the CIA-in the political drama over the alleged Russian effort to tilt the 2016 election toward Donald
Trump. Then on Dec. 29, DHS and FBI distributed a "Joint Analysis Report" to US power utilities across
the country with what it claimed were "indicators" of a Russian intelligence effort to penetrate
and compromise US computer networks, including networks related to the presidential election, that
it called "GRIZZLY STEPPE."
The report clearly conveyed to the utilities that the "tools and infrastructure" it said had been
used by Russian intelligence agencies to affect the election were a direct threat to them as well.
However, according to Robert M. Lee, the founder and CEO of the cyber-security company Dragos, who
had developed one of the earliest US government programs for defense against cyber-attacks on US
infrastructure systems, the report was certain to mislead the recipients.
"Anyone who uses it would think they were being impacted by Russian operations," said Lee. "We
ran through the indicators in the report and found that a high percentage were false positives."
Lee and his staff found only two of a long list of malware files that could be linked to Russian
hackers without more specific data about timing. Similarly a large proportion of IP addresses listed
could be linked to "GRIZZLY STEPPE" only for certain specific dates, which were not provided.
The Intercept discovered, in fact, that 42 percent of the 876 IP addresses listed in the report
as having been used by Russian hackers were exit nodes for the Tor Project, a system that allows
bloggers, journalists and others – including some military entities – to keep their Internet communications
private.
Lee said the DHS staff that worked on the technical information in the report is highly competent,
but the document was rendered useless when officials classified and deleted some key parts of the
report and added other material that shouldn't have been in it. He believes the DHS issued the report
"for a political purpose," which was to "show that the DHS is protecting you."
Planting the Story, Keeping it Alive
Upon receiving the DHS-FBI report the Burlington Electric Company network security team immediately
ran searches of its computer logs using the lists of IP addresses it had been provided. When one
of IP addresses cited in the report as an indicator of Russian hacking was found on the logs, the
utility immediately called DHS to inform it as it had been instructed to do by DHS.
In fact, the IP address on the Burlington Electric Company's computer was simply the Yahoo e-mail
server, according to Lee, so it could not have been a legitimate indicator of an attempted cyber-intrusion.
That should have been the end of the story. But the utility did not track down the IP address before
reporting it to DHS. It did, however, expect DHS to treat the matter confidentially until it had
thoroughly investigated and resolved the issue.
"DHS wasn't supposed to release the details," said Lee. "Everybody was supposed to keep their
mouth shut."
Instead, a DHS official called The Washington Post and passed on word that one of the indicators
of Russian hacking of the DNC had been found on the Burlington utility's computer network. The Post
failed to follow the most basic rule of journalism, relying on its DHS source instead of checking
with the Burlington Electric Department first. The result was the Post's sensational Dec. 30 story
under the headline "Russian hackers penetrated US electricity grid through a utility in Vermont,
US officials say."
DHS official evidently had allowed the Post to infer that the Russians hack had penetrated the
grid without actually saying so. The Post story said the Russians "had not actively used the code
to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity
in order to discuss a security matter," but then added, and that "the penetration of the nation's
electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."
The electric company quickly issued a firm denial that the computer in question was connected
to the power grid. The Post was forced to retract, in effect, its claim that the electricity grid
had been hacked by the Russians. But it stuck by its story that the utility had been the victim of
a Russian hack for another three days before admitting that no such evidence of a hack existed.
The day after the story was published, the DHS leadership continued to imply, without saying so
explicitly, that the Burlington utility had been hacked by Russians. Assistant Secretary for Pubic
Affairs J. Todd Breasseale gave CNN a statement that the "indicators" from the malicious software
found on the computer at Burlington Electric were a "match" for those on the DNC computers.
As soon as DHS checked the IP address, however, it knew that it was a Yahoo cloud server and therefore
not an indicator that the same team that allegedly hacked the DNC had gotten into the Burlington
utility's laptop. DHS also learned from the utility that the laptop in question had been infected
by malware called "neutrino," which had never been used in "GRIZZLY STEPPE."
Only days later did the DHS reveal those crucial facts to the Post. And the DHS was still defending
its joint report to the Post, according to Lee, who got part of the story from Post sources. The
DHS official was arguing that it had "led to a discovery," he said. "The second is, 'See, this is
encouraging people to run indicators.'"
Original DHS False Hacking Story
The false Burlington Electric hack scare is reminiscent of an earlier story of Russian hacking
of a utility for which the DHS was responsible as well. In November 2011, it reported an "intrusion"
into a Springfield, Illinois water district computer that similarly turned out to be a fabrication.
Like the Burlington fiasco, the false report was preceded by a DHS claim that US infrastructure
systems were already under attack. In October 2011, acting DHS deputy undersecretary Greg Schaffer
was quoted by The Washington Post as warning that "our adversaries" are "knocking on the doors of
these systems." And Schaffer added, "In some cases, there have been intrusions." He did not specify
when, where or by whom, and no such prior intrusions have ever been documented.
On Nov. 8, 2011, a water pump belonging to the Curran-Gardner township water district near Springfield,
Illinois, burned out after sputtering several times in previous months. The repair team brought in
to fix it found a Russian IP address on its log from five months earlier. That IP address was actually
from a cell phone call from the contractor who had set up the control system for the pump and who
was vacationing in Russia with his family, so his name was in the log by the address.
Without investigating the IP address itself, the utility reported the IP address and the breakdown
of the water pump to the Environmental Protection Agency, which in turn passed it on to the Illinois
Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, also called a fusion center composed of Illinois State
Police and representatives from the FBI, DHS and other government agencies.
On Nov. 10 – just two days after the initial report to EPA – the fusion center produced a report
titled "Public Water District Cyber Intrusion" suggesting a Russian hacker had stolen the identity
of someone authorized to use the computer and had hacked into the control system causing the water
pump to fail.
The contractor whose name was on the log next to the IP address later told Wired magazine
that one phone call to him would have laid the matter to rest. But the DHS, which was the lead in
putting the report out, had not bothered to make even that one obvious phone call before opining
that it must have been a Russian hack.
The fusion center "intelligence report," circulated by DHS Office of Intelligence and Research,
was picked up by a cyber-security blogger, who called The Washington Post and read the item to a
reporter. Thus the Post published the first sensational story of a Russian hack into a US infrastructure
on Nov. 18, 2011.
After the real story came out, DHS disclaimed responsibility for the report, saying that it was
the fusion center's responsibility. But a Senate subcommittee investigation
revealed in
a report a year later that even after the initial report had been discredited, DHS had not issued
any retraction or correction to the report, nor had it notified the recipients about the truth.
DHS officials responsible for the false report told Senate investigators such reports weren't
intended to be "finished intelligence," implying that the bar for accuracy of the information didn't
have to be very high. They even claimed that report was a "success" because it had done what "what
it's supposed to do – generate interest."
Both the Burlington and Curran-Gardner episodes underline a central reality of the political game
of national security in the New Cold War era: major bureaucratic players like DHS have a huge political
stake in public perceptions of a Russian threat, and whenever the opportunity arises to do so, they
will exploit it.
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security
policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war
in Afghanistan. His new book is
Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . He can be contacted at
[email protected].
"... The message was accompanied by a parting gift...an apparently complete NSA backdoor kit targeting the Windows operating system. The kit is comprised of 61 malicious Windows executables, only one of which was previously known to antivirus vendors... ..."
"A
mysterious hacking group has been bedeviling the U.S. intelligence community for months, releasing a
tranche of secret National Security Agency hacking tools to the public while offering to sell even more
for the right price. Now with barely a week to go before Donald Trump's inauguration, the self-styled
"Shadow Brokers" on Thursday announced that they were packing it in.
"So long, farewell peoples. TheShadowBrokers is going dark, making exit," the group wrote on its
darknet site...
The message was accompanied by a parting gift...an apparently complete NSA backdoor
kit targeting the Windows operating system. The kit is comprised of 61 malicious Windows executables,
only one of which was previously known to antivirus vendors...
... ... ...
The Shadow Brokers emerged in August with the announcement that they'd stolen the hacking tools used
by a sophisticated computer-intrusion operation known as the Equation Group, and were putting them up
for sale to the highest bidder. It was a remarkable claim, because the Equation Group is generally understood
to be part of the NSA's elite Tailored Access Operations program and is virtually never detected, much
less penetrated.
... ... ...
Released along with the announcement was a huge cache of specialized malware, including dozens of
backdoor programs and 10 exploits, two of them targeting previously unknown security holes in Cisco
routers-a basic building block of the internet. While Cisco and other companies scrambled for a fix,
security experts pored over the Shadow Brokers tranche like it was the Rosetta Stone. "It was the first
time, as threat-intelligence professionals, that we've had access to what appears to be a relatively
complete toolkit of a nation-state attacker," says Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec. "It
was excitement in some circles, dismay in other circles, and panic and a rush to patch if you're running
vulnerable hardware."
As the Worm Turns!
For all those Amurican rubes out there who beleived that Homeland Security was protecting them
against foreign terrorists – ha hahahahahaha!
"... WikiLeaks series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of
the Clintons and was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother
Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank. ..."
"... if President Obama signs this terrible legislation that blatantly validates Bernie's entire campaign message about Wall Street
running our government, this will give Bernie a huge boost and 10,000 -20,000 outraged citizens (who WILL turn up because they will
be so angry at the President for preemption vt) will be marching on the Mall with Bernie as their keynote speaker. " ..."
"... But Hirshberg does not stop here. In order to persuade Podesta about the seriousness of the matter, he claims that " It will
be terrible to hand Sanders this advantage at such a fragile time when we really need to save our $$$ for the Trump fight. " ..."
WikiLeaks series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of the
Clintons and was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother
Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank.
Hirshberg writes to a familiar person, as he was mentioned at the time as a possible 2008 Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate,
requesting Obama should not pass the Roberts bill because " if President Obama signs this terrible legislation that blatantly
validates Bernie's entire campaign message about Wall Street running our government, this will give Bernie a huge boost and 10,000
-20,000 outraged citizens (who WILL turn up because they will be so angry at the President for preemption vt) will be marching on
the Mall with Bernie as their keynote speaker. "
But Hirshberg does not stop here. In order to persuade Podesta about the seriousness of the matter, he claims that " It will
be terrible to hand Sanders this advantage at such a fragile time when we really need to save our $$$ for the Trump fight. "
"... The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome
Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter
are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta. ..."
The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome
Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter
are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta. They
are last week's scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they
are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes
road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the
ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn't have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this
class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national
media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just
about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at
all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.
REPORTERS RSVP (28) 1. ABC – Liz Kreutz 2. AP – Julie Pace 3. AP - Ken Thomas 4. AP - Lisa Lerer 5. Bloomberg - Jennifer Epstein
6. Buzzfeed - Ruby Cramer 7. CBS – Steve Chagaris 8. CNBC - John Harwood 9. CNN - Dan Merica 10. Huffington Post - Amanda Terkel
11. LAT - Evan Handler 12. McClatchy - Anita Kumar 13. MSNBC - Alex Seitz-Wald 14. National Journal - Emily Schultheis 15. NBC
– Mark Murray 16. NPR - Mara Liassion 17. NPR – Tamara Keith 18. NYT - Amy Chozik 19. NYT - Maggie Haberman 20. Politico - Annie
Karni 21. Politico - Gabe Debenedetti 22. Politico - Glenn Thrush 23. Reuters - Amanda Becker 24. Washington Post - Anne Gearan
25. Washington Post – Phil Rucker 26. WSJ - Colleen McCain Nelson 27. WSJ - Laura Meckler 28. WSJ - Peter Nicholas
Pigeon •Nov 3, 2016 9:49 AM
It bothers me these stories are constantly prefaced with the idea that Wikileaks is saving Trump's bacon. Hillary wouldn't
even be close if the press weren't in the tank for her. How about Wikileaks evening the playing field with REAL STORIES AND
FACTS?
Briefly, it seems Podesta received an email "You need to change your password", asked for professional advice from his
staff if it was legit, was told "Yes, you DO need to change your password", but then clicked on the link in the original email,
which was sent him with malicious intent, as he suspected at first and then was inappropriately reassured about - rather than
on the link sent him by the IT staffer.
Result - the "phishing" email got his password info, and the world now gets to see all his emails.
Personally, my hope is that Huma and HRC will be pardoned for all their crimes, by Obama, before he leaves office.
Then I hope that Huma's divorce will go through, and that once Hillary is sworn in she will at last be courageous enough to
divorce Bill (who actually performed the Huma-Anthony Weiner nuptials - you don't have to make these things up).
Then it could happen that the first same-sex marriage will be performed in the White House, probably by the minister of DC's
Foundry United Methodist Church, which has a policy of LBGQT equality. Or maybe Hillary, cautious and middle-of-the-road as usual,
will go to Foundry UMC sanctuary for the ceremony, recognizing that some Americans' sensibilities would be offended by having
the rite in the White House.
As Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan wrote, "Love is all there is, it makes the world go round, love and only love, it can't be denied.
No matter what you think about it, you just can't live without it, take a tip from one who's tried."
Briefly, it seems Podesta received an email "You need to change your password", asked for professional advice from his
staff if it was legit, was told "Yes, you DO need to change your password", but then clicked on the link in the original email,
which was sent him with malicious intent, as he suspected at first and then was inappropriately reassured about - rather than
on the link sent him by the IT staffer.
Result - the "phishing" email got his password info, and the world now gets to see all his emails.
Personally, my hope is that Huma and HRC will be pardoned for all their crimes, by Obama, before he leaves office.
Then I hope that Huma's divorce will go through, and that once Hillary is sworn in she will at last be courageous enough to
divorce Bill (who actually performed the Huma-Anthony Weiner nuptials - you don't have to make these things up).
Then it could happen that the first same-sex marriage will be performed in the White House, probably by the minister of DC's
Foundry United Methodist Church, which has a policy of LBGQT equality. Or maybe Hillary, cautious and middle-of-the-road as usual,
will go to Foundry UMC sanctuary for the ceremony, recognizing that some Americans' sensibilities would be offended by having
the rite in the White House.
As Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan wrote, "Love is all there is, it makes the world go round, love and only love, it can't be denied.
No matter what you think about it, you just can't live without it, take a tip from one who's tried."
In the aftermath of one of the most memorable (c)october shocks in presidential campaign history, Wikileaks continues its ongoing
broadside attack against the Clinton campaign with the relentless Podesta dump, by unveiling another 596 emails in the latest Part
22 of its Podesta release, bringing the total emails released so far to exactly 36,190, leaving less than 30% of the total dump left
to go.
As usual we will go parse through the disclosure and bring you some of the more notable ones.
* * *
In a February 2012 email from Chelsea Clinton's
NYU alias, [email protected], to Podesta and Mills, Bill and Hillary's frustrated
daughter once again points out the "frustration and confusion" among Clinton Foundation clients in the aftermath of the previously
noted scandals plaguing the Clinton consultancy, Teneo:
Over the past few days a few people from the Foundation have reached out to me frustrated or upset about _____ (fill in the
blank largely derived meetings Friday or Monday). I've responded to all w/ essentially the following (ie disintermediating myself,
again, emphatically) below. I also called my Dad last night to tell him of my explicit non-involvement and pushing all back to
you both and to him as I think that is indeed the right answer. Thanks
Sample: Please share any and all concerns, with examples, without pulling punches, with John and Cheryl as appropriate and
also if you feel very strongly with my Dad directly. Transitions are always challenging and to get to the right answer its critical
that voices are heard and understood, and in the most direct way - ie to them without intermediation. Particularly in an effort
to move more toward a professionalism and efficiency at the Foundation and for my father - and they're the decision-makers, my
Dad most of all
I have moved all the sussman money from unity '09 to cap and am reviewing the others . I will assess it and keep you informed
Something else for the DOJ to look into after the elections, perhaps?
* * *
And then there is this email from August 2015
in which German politician Michael Werz advises John Podesta that Turkish president Erdogan "is making substantial investments in
U.S. to counter opposition (CHP, Kurds, Gulenists etc.) outreach to policymakers" and the US Government.
John, heard this second hand but more than once. Seems Erdogan faction is making substantial investments in U.S. to counter
opposition (CHP, Kurds, Gulenists etc.) outreach to policymakers and USG. Am told that the Erdogan crew also tries to make inroads
via donations to Democratic candidates, including yours. Two names that you should be aware of are *Mehmet Celebi* and *Ali Cinar*.
Happy to elaborate on the phone, provided you are not shopping at the liquor store.
This should perhaps explain why the US has so far done absolutely nothing to halt Erdogan's unprecedented crackdown on "coup plotters"
which has seen as many as 100,000 workers lose their jobs, be arrested, or otherwise removed from Erdogan's political opposition.
NATO hot-heads are playing with fire. What if other nations attack members for Stuxnet and
Flame ?..."James Lewis of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),
one of the country's top cyberwar experts, is somewhat skeptical about the new manual. He sees it
as "a push to lower the threshold for military action." For Lewis, responding to a "denial of service"
attack with military means is "really crazy." He says the Tallinn manual "shows is that you should never
let lawyers go off by themselves."
Arming for Virtual Battle: The Dangerous New Rules of Cyberwar
By Thomas Darnstaedt, Marcel Rosenbach and Gregor Peter Schmitz
Capt. Carrie Kessler/ U.S. Air Force
Now that wars are also being fought on digital battlefields, experts in international law have
established rules for cyberwar. But many questions remain unanswered. Will it be appropriate to respond
to a cyber attack with military means in the future?
The attack came via ordinary email, when selected South Korean companies received messages supposedly
containing credit card information in the middle of the week before last.
Recipients who opened the emails also opened the door to the enemy, because it was in fact an
attack from the Internet. Instead of the expected credit card information, the recipients actually
downloaded a time bomb onto their computers, which was programmed to ignite on Wednesday at 2 p.m.
Korean time.
At that moment, chaos erupted on more than 30,000 computers in South Korean television stations
and banks. The message "Please install an operating system on your hard disk" appeared on the screens
of affected computers, and cash machines ceased to operate. The malware, which experts have now dubbed
"DarkSeoul," deleted data from the hard disks, making it impossible to reboot the infected computers.
DarkSeoul was one of the most serious digital attacks in the world this year, but cyber defense
centers in Western capitals receive alerts almost weekly. The most serious attack to date originated
in the United States. In 2010, high-tech warriors, acting on orders from the US president, smuggled
the destructive "Stuxnet" computer worm into Iranian nuclear facilities.
The volume of cyber attacks is only likely to grow. Military leaders in the US and its European
NATO partners are outfitting new battalions for the impending data war. Meanwhile, international
law experts worldwide are arguing with politicians over the nature of the new threat. Is this already
war? Or are the attacks acts of sabotage and terrorism? And if a new type of war is indeed brewing,
can military means be used to respond to cyber attacks?
The War of the Future
A few days before the computer disaster in Seoul, a group led by NATO published a thin, blue booklet.
It provides dangerous responses to all of these questions. The "Tallinn Manual on the International
Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare" is probably no thicker than the American president's thumb. It is
not an official NATO document, and yet in the hands of President Barack Obama it has the potential
to change the world.
The rules that influential international law experts have compiled in the handbook could blur
the lines between war and peace and allow a serious data attack to rapidly escalate into a real war
with bombs and missiles. Military leaders could also interpret it as an invitation to launch a preventive
first strike in a cyberwar.
At the invitation of a NATO think tank in the Estonian capital Tallinn, and at a meeting presided
over by a US military lawyer with ties to the Pentagon, leading international law experts had discussed
the rules of the war of the future. International law is, for the most part, customary law. Experts
determine what is and can be considered customary law.
The resulting document, the "Tallinn Manual," is the first informal rulebook for the war of the
future. But it has no reassuring effect. On the contrary, it permits nations to respond to data attacks
with the weapons of real war.
Two years ago, the Pentagon clarified where this could lead, when it stated that anyone who attempted
to shut down the electric grid in the world's most powerful nation with a computer worm could expect
to see a missile in response.
A Private Digital Infrastructure
The risks of a cyberwar were invoked more clearly than ever in Washington in recent weeks. In
mid-March, Obama assembled 13 top US business leaders in the Situation Room in the White House basement,
the most secret of all secret conference rooms. The group included the heads of UPS, JPMorgan Chase
and ExxonMobil. There was only one topic: How can America win the war on the Internet?
The day before, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had characterized the cyber threat
as the "biggest peril currently facing the United States."
The White House was unwilling to reveal what exactly the business leaders and the president discussed
in the Situation Room. But it was mostly about making it clear to the companies how threatened they
are and strengthening their willingness to cooperate, says Rice University IT expert Christopher
Bronk.
The president urgently needs their cooperation, because the US has allowed the laws of the market
to govern its digital infrastructure. All networks are operated by private companies. If there is
a war on the Internet, both the battlefields and the weapons will be in private hands.
This is why the White House is spending so much time and effort to prepare for possible counterattacks.
The aim is to scare the country's enemies, says retired General James Cartwright, author of the Pentagon's
current cyber strategy.
Responsible for that strategy is the 900-employee Cyber Command at the Pentagon, established three
years ago and located in Fort Meade near the National Security Agency, the country's largest intelligence
agency. General Keith Alexander heads both organizations. The Cyber Command, which is expected
to have about 4,900 employees within a few years, will be divided into various defensive and offensive
"Cyber Mission Forces" in the future.
Wild West Online
It's probably no coincidence that the Tallinn manual is being published now. Developed under the
leadership of US military lawyer Michael Schmitt, NATO representatives describe the manual as the
"most important legal document of the cyber era."
In the past, Schmitt has examined the legality of the use of top-secret nuclear weapons systems
and the pros and cons of US drone attacks. Visitors to his office at the Naval War College in Rhode
Island, the world's oldest naval academy, must first pass through several security checkpoints.
"Let's be honest," says Schmitt. "Everyone has treated the Internet as a sort of Wild West, a
lawless zone. But international law has to be just as applicable to online weapons as conventional
weapons."
It's easier said than done, though. When does malware become a weapon? When does a hacker become
a warrior, and when does horseplay or espionage qualify as an "armed attack," as defined under international
law? The answers to such detailed questions can spell the difference between war and peace.
James Lewis of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), one
of the country's top cyberwar experts, is somewhat skeptical about the new manual. He sees it
as "a push to lower the threshold for military action." For Lewis, responding to a "denial of
service" attack with military means is "really crazy." He says the Tallinn manual "shows is that
you should never let lawyers go off by themselves."
Claus Kress, an international law expert and the director of the Institute for International Peace
and Security Law at the University of Cologne, sees the manual as "setting the course," with "consequences
for the entire law of the use of force." Important "legal thresholds," which in the past were intended
to protect the world against the military escalation of political conflicts or acts of terror, are
becoming "subject to renegotiation," he says.
According to Kress, the most critical issue is the "recognition of a national right of self-defense
against certain cyber attacks." This corresponds to a state of defense, as defined under Article
51 of the Charter of the United Nations, which grants any nation that becomes the victim of an "armed
attack" the right to defend itself by force of arms. The article gained new importance after Sept.
11, 2001, when the US declared the invasion of Afghanistan an act of self-defense against al-Qaida
and NATO proclaimed the application of its mutual defense clause to come to the aid of the superpower.
The question of how malicious malware must be to justify a counterattack can be critical when
it comes to preserving peace. Under the new doctrine, only those attacks that cause physical or personal
damage, but not virtual damage, are relevant in terms of international law. The malfunction of a
computer or the loss of data alone is not sufficient justification for an "armed attack."
But what if, as is often the case, computer breakdowns do not result in physical damage but lead
to substantial financial losses? A cyber attack on Wall Street, shutting down the market for several
days, was the casus belli among the experts in Tallinn. The US representatives wanted to recognize
it as a state of defense, while the Europeans preferred not to do so. But the US military lawyers
were adamant, arguing that economic damage establishes the right to launch a counterattack if it
is deemed "catastrophic."
Ultimately, it is left to each country to decide what amount of economic damage it considers sufficient
to venture into war. German expert Kress fears that such an approach could lead to a "dam failure"
for the prohibition of the use of force under international law.
So was it an armed attack that struck South Korea on March 20? The financial losses caused by
the failure of bank computers haven't been fully calculated yet. It will be up to politicians, not
lawyers, to decide whether they are "catastrophic."
Just how quickly the Internet can become a scene of massive conflicts became evident this month,
when suddenly two large providers came under constant digital attack that seemed to appear out of
nowhere.
The main target of the attack was the website Spamhaus.org, a project that has been hunting down
the largest distributors of spam on the Web since 1998. Its blacklists of known spammers enable other
providers to filter out junk email. By providing this service, the organization has made powerful
enemies and has been targeted in attacks several times. But the current wave of attacks overshadows
everything else. In addition to shutting down Spamhaus, it even temporarily affected the US company
CloudFlare, which was helping fend off the attack. Analysts estimate the strength of the attack at
300 gigabits per second, which is several times as high as the level at which the Estonian authorities
were "fired upon" in 2007. The attack even affected data traffic in the entire Internet. A group
called "Stophaus" claimed responsibility and justified its actions as retribution for the fact that
Spamhaus had meddled in the affairs of powerful Russian and Chinese Internet companies.
Civilian forces, motivated by economic interests, are playing cyberwar, and in doing so they are
upending all previous war logic.
A Question of When, Not If
A field experiment in the US shows how real the threat is. To flush out potential attackers, IT
firm Trend Micro built a virtual pumping station in a small American city, or at least it was supposed
to look like one to "visitors" from the Internet. They called it a "honeypot," designed to attract
potential attackers on the Web.
The trappers installed servers and industrial control systems used by public utilities of that
size. To make the experiment setup seem realistic, they even placed deceptively real-looking city
administration documents on the computers.
After only 18 hours, the analysts registered the first attempted attack. In the next four weeks,
there were 38 attacks from 14 countries. Most came from computers in China (35 percent), followed
by the US (19 percent) and Laos (12 percent).
Many attackers tried to insert espionage tools into the supposed water pumping station to probe
the facility for weaknesses. International law does not prohibit espionage. But some hackers went
further than that, trying to manipulate or even destroy the control devices.
"Some tried to increase the rotation speed of the water pumps to such a degree that they wouldn't
have survived in the real world," says Trend Micro employee Udo Schneider, who categorizes these
cases as "classic espionage."
"There is no question as to whether there will be a catastrophic cyber attack against America.
The only question is when," says Terry Benzel, the woman who is supposed to protect the country from
such an attack and make its computer networks safer. The computer specialist is the head of DeterLab
in California, a project that was established in 2003, partly with funding from the US Department
of Homeland Security, and offers a simulation platform for reactions to cyber attacks.
Benzel's voice doesn't falter when she describes a war scenario she calls "Cyber Pearl Harbor."
This is what it could look like: "Prolonged power outages, a collapse of the power grid and irreparable
disruptions in the Internet." Suddenly, food would not reach stores in time and cash machines would
stop dispensing money. "Everything depends on computers nowadays, even the delivery of rolls to the
baker around the corner," she says.
Benzel also describes other crisis scenarios. For example, she says, there are programs that open
and close gates on American dams that are potentially vulnerable. Benzel is worried that a clever
hacker could open America's dams at will.
Should Preemptive Strikes Be Allowed?
These and other cases are currently being tested in Cyber City, a virtual city US experts have
built on their computers in New Jersey to simulate the consequences of data attacks. Cyber City has
a water tower, a train station and 15,000 residents. Everything is connected in realistic ways, enabling
the experts to study the potentially devastating effects cyber attacks could have on residents.
In Europe, it is primarily intelligence agencies that are simulating digital war games. Germany's
foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), also has a unit that studies the
details of future wars. It is telling that the BND team doesn't just simulate defensive situations
but increasingly looks at offensive scenarios, as well, so as to be prepared for a sort of digital
second strike.
"Offensive Cyber Operations," or OCOs, are part of the strategy for future cyberwars in several
NATO countries. The Tallinn manual now establishes the legal basis for possible preemptive strikes,
which have been an issue in international law since former US President George W. Bush launched a
preemptive strike against Iraq in March 2003.
The most contentious issue during the meetings in Tallinn was the question of when an offensive
strike is permissible as an act of preventive self-defense against cyber attacks. According to the
current doctrine, an attack must be imminent to trigger the right to preventive self-defense. The
Tallinn manual is more generous in this respect, stating that even if a digital weapon is only likely
to unfold its sinister effects at a later date, a first strike can already be justified if it is
the last window of opportunity to meet the threat.
The danger inherent in the application of that standard becomes clear in the way that the international
law experts at Tallinn treated Stuxnet, the most devastating malware to date, which was apparently
smuggled into Iranian nuclear facilities on Obama's command. The data attack destroyed large numbers
of centrifuges used for uranium enrichment in the Natanz reprocessing plant. Under the criteria of
the Tallinn manual, this would be an act of war.
Could the US be the perpetrator in a war of aggression in violation of international law? Cologne
international law expert Kress believes that what the Tallinn manual says parenthetically about the
Stuxnet case amounts to a "handout for the Pentagon," namely that Obama's digital attack might be
seen as an "act of preventive self-defense" against the nuclear program of Iran's ayatollahs.
The Fog of Cyber War
According to the Tallinn interpretation, countless virtual espionage incidents of the sort that
affect all industrialized nations almost daily could act as accelerants. Pure cyber espionage, which
American politicians also define as an attack, is not seen an act of war, according to the Tallinn
rules. Nevertheless, the international law experts argue that such espionage attacks can be seen
as preparations for destructive attacks, so that it can be legitimate to launch a preventive attack
against the spy as a means of self-defense.
Some are especially concerned that the Tallinn proposals could also make it possible to expand
the rules of the "war on terror." The authors have incorporated the call of US geostrategic expert
Joseph Nye to take precautions against a "cyber 9/11" into their manual. This would mean that the
superpower could even declare war on organized hacker groups. Combat drones against hackers? Cologne
expert Kress cautions that the expansion of the combat zone to the laptops of an only loosely organized
group of individuals would constitute a "threat to human rights."
Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, is also voicing concerns over the expansion of digital warfare.
Karl Schreiner, a brigadier general with the Bundeswehr's leadership academy in Hamburg, is among
those who see the need for "ethical rules" for the Internet battlefield and believe that an international
canon for the use of digital weapons is required.
Military leaders must rethink the most important question relating to defense in cyberspace: Who
is the attacker? "In most cases," the Tallinn manual reads optimistically, it is possible to identify
the source of data attacks. But that doesn't coincide with the experiences of many IT security experts.
The typical fog of cyberwar was evident most recently in the example of South Korea. At first,
officials said that DarkSeoul was clearly an attack from the north, but then it was allegedly traced
to China, Europe and the United States. Some analysts now suspect patriotically motivated hackers
in North Korea, because of the relatively uncomplicated malware. That leaves the question of just
who South Korea should launch a counterattack against.
The South Korean case prompts Cologne international law expert Kress to conclude that lawyers
will soon have a "new unsolved problem" on their hands -- a "war on the basis of suspicion."
"... The simplest explanation is usually best. All the indicators, especially the support of the donor class, elites of all kinds
etc. points towards a Democratic victory, perhaps a very strong victory if the poll numbers last weekend translate into electoral college
numbers. ..."
I stopped by to check if my comment had cleared moderation. What follows is a more thorough examination (not my own, entirely)
on Corey's point 1, and some data that may point towards a much narrower race than we're led to believe.
The leaked emails from one Democratic super-pac, the over-sampling I cited at zerohedge (@13o) is part of a two-step process
involving over-sampling of Democrats in polls combined with high frequency polling. The point being to encourage media
to promote the idea that the race is already over. We saw quite a bit of this last weekend. Let's say the leaked emails are reliable.
This suggests to me two things: first – the obvious, the race is much closer than the polls indicated, certainly the poll cited
by Corey in the OP. Corey questioned the validity of this poll, at least obliquely. Second, at least one super-pac working with
the campaign sees the need to depress Trump turn-out. The first point is the clearest and the most important – the polls, some
at least, are intentionally tilted to support a 'Hillary wins easily' narrative. The second allows for some possibly useful speculation
regarding the Clinton campaigns confidence in their own GOTV success.
The simplest explanation is usually best. All the indicators, especially the support of the donor class, elites of all
kinds etc. points towards a Democratic victory, perhaps a very strong victory if the poll numbers last weekend translate into
electoral college numbers.
That's a big if. I suggest Hillary continues to lead but by much smaller margins in key states. It's also useful to
point out that Trump's support in traditionally GOP states may well be equally shaky.
And that really is it from me on this topic barring a double digit swing to Hillary in the LA Times poll that has the race
at dead even.
Layman 10.25.16 at 11:31 am
kidneystones:
"The leaked emails from one Democratic super-pac, the over-sampling I cited at zerohedge (@13o) is part of a two-step
process involving over-sampling of Democrats in polls combined with high frequency polling."
Excellent analysis, only the email in question is eight years old. And it refers to a request for internal polling done by
the campaign. And it suggests over-sampling of particular demographics so the campaign could better assess attitudes among those
demographics.
And this is a completely normal practice which has nothing to do with the polling carried out by independent third parties
(e.g. Gallup, Ipsos, etc) for the purposes of gauging and reporting to the public the state of the race.
And when pollsters to over-sample, the over-sampling is used for analysis but is not reflected in the top-line poll results.
"... Among the initial emails to stand out is this extensive exchange showing just how intimiately the narrative of Hillary's server
had been coached. The following September 2015 email exchange between Podesta and Nick Merrill, framed the "core language" to be used
in response to questions Clinton could be asked about her email server, and the decision to "bleach" emails from it. The emails contain
long and short versions of responses for Clinton. ..."
The daily dump continues. In the now traditional daily routine, one which forces the Clinton campaign to resort to ever more stark
sexual scandals involving Trump to provide a media distraction, moments ago Wikileaks released yet another 1,803 emails in Part 12
of its ongoing Podesta Email dump, which brings the total number of released emails to 18,953.
As a reminder among the most recent revelations we got further insights into Hillary's desire to see Obamacare "
unravel" , her contempt
for "doofus" Bernie Sanders, staff exchanges on handling media queries about Clinton "flip-flopping" on gay marriage, galvanizing
Latino support and locking down Clinton's healthcare policy. Just as notable has been the ongoing revelation of just how "captured"
the so-called independent press has been in its "off the record" discussions with John Podesta which got the head Politico correspondent,
Glenn Thrush, to admit he is a "hack" for allowing Podesta to dictate the content of his article.
The release comes on the day of the third and final presidential campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and as a result
we are confident it will be scrutinized especially carefully for any last minute clues that would allow Trump to lob a much needed
Hail Mary to boost his standing in the polls.
As there is a total of 50,000 emails, Wikileaks will keep the media busy over the next three weeks until the elections with another
30,000 emails still expected to be released.
* * *
Among the initial emails to stand out is this extensive exchange showing just how intimiately the narrative of Hillary's server
had been coached. The following September 2015 email
exchange between Podesta and Nick Merrill, framed the "core language" to be used in response to questions Clinton could be asked
about her email server, and the decision to "bleach" emails from it. The emails contain long and short versions of responses for
Clinton.
"Because the government already had everything that was work-related, and my personal emails were just that – personal – I
didn't see a reason to keep them so I asked that they be deleted, and that's what the company that managed my server did. And
we notified Congress of that back in March"
She was then presented with the following hypothetical scenario:
* "Why won't you say whether you wiped it?"
"After we went through the process to determine what was work related and what was not and provided the work related
emails to State, I decided not to keep the personal ones."
"We saved the work-related ones on a thumb drive that is now with the Department of Justice. And as I said in March, I chose
not to keep the personal ones. I asked that they be deleted, how that happened was up to the company that managed the server.
And they are cooperating fully with anyone that has questions."
* * *
Another notable email reveals the close
relationship between the Clinton Foundation and Ukraine billionaire Victor Pinchuk, a
prominent
donor to the Clinton Foundation , in which we see the latter's attempt to get a meeting with Bill Clinton to show support for
Ukraine:
From: Tina Flournoy < [email protected]>
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2015 9:58:55 AM
To: Amitabh Desai
Cc: Jon Davidson; Margaret Steenburg; Jake Sullivan; Dan Schwerin; Huma Abedin; John Podesta
Subject: Re: Victor Pinchuk
Team HRC - we'll get back to you on this
> On Mar 30, 2015, at 9:53 AM, Amitabh Desai < [email protected]> wrote:
>
> Victor Pinchuk is relentlessly following up (including this morning) about a meeting with WJC in London or anywhere in Europe.
Ideally he wants to bring together a few western leaders to show support for Ukraine, with WJC probably their most important participant.
If that's not palatable for us, then he'd like a bilat with WJC.
>
> If it's not next week, that's fine, but he wants a date. I keep saying we have no Europe plans, although we do have those events
in London in June. Are folks comfortable offering Victor a private meeting on one of those dates? At this point I get
the impression that although I keep saying WJC cares about Ukraine, Pinchuk feels like WJC hasn't taken enough action to demonstrate
that, particularly during this existential moment for the county and for him.
>
> I sense this is so important because Pinchuk is under Putin's heel right now, feeling a great degree of pressure and pain for
his many years of nurturing stronger ties with the West.
>
> I get all the downsides and share the concerns. I am happy to go back and say no. It would just be good to
know what WJC (and HRC and you all) would like to do, because this will likely impact the future of this relationship, and slow
walking our reply will only reinforce his growing angst.
>
> Thanks, and sorry for the glum note on a Monday morning...
Sure. Sorry for the delay I was on a plane.
On Apr 30, 2015 9:44 AM, "Glenn Thrush" < [email protected]> wrote:
> Can I send u a couple of grafs, OTR, to make sure I'm not fucking
> anything up?
* * *
Another notable moment emerges in the emails, involving Hillary Clinton's selective memory. Clinton's description of herself as
a moderate Democrat at a September 2015 event in Ohio caused an uproar amongst her team. In a
mail from Clinton advisor Neera Tanden to Podesta
in the days following the comment she asks why she said this.
"I pushed her on this on Sunday night. She claims she didn't remember saying it. Not sure I believe her," Podesta replies.
Tanden insists that the comment has made her job more difficult after "telling every reporter I know she's actually progressive".
" It worries me more that she doesn't seem to know what planet we are all living in at the moment ," she adds.
* * *
We also get additional insight into Clinton courting the Latino minority. A November 2008
email from Federico Peña , who was on the Obama-Biden
transition team, called for a "Latino media person" to be added to the list of staff to appeal to Latino voters. Federico de Jesus
or Vince Casillas are seen as ideal candidates, both of whom were working in the Chicago operations.
"More importantly, it would helpful (sic) to Barack to do pro-active outreach to Latino media across the country to get our
positive message out before people start spreading negative rumors," Peña writes.
* * *
Another email between Clinton's foreign policy adviser
Jake Sullivan and Tanden from March 2016 discussed how it was "REALLY dicey territory" for Clinton to comment on strengthening
"bribery laws to ensure that politicians don't change legislation for political donations." Tanden agrees with Sullivan:
" She may be so tainted she's really vulnerable - if so, maybe a message of I've seen how this sausage is
made, it needs to stop, I'm going to stop it will actually work."
* * *
One email suggested, sarcastically, to kneecap
bernie Sanders : Clinton's team issued advise regarding her tactics for the "make or break" Democratic presidential debate with
Sanders in Milwaukee on February 11, 2016. The mail to Podesta came from Philip Munger, a Democratic Party donor. He sent the mail
using an encrypted anonymous email service.
"She's going to have to kneecap him. She is going to have to take him down from his morally superior perch. She has done so
tentatively. She must go further," he says.
Clearly, the desire to get Sanders' supporters was a key imperative for the Clinton campaign. In a
September 2015 email to Podesta , Hill columnist
Brent Budowsky criticized the campaign for allegedly giving Clinton surrogates talking points to attack Bernie Sanders. "I cannot
think of anything more stupid and self-destructive for a campaign to do," he says. "Especially for a candidate who has dangerously
low levels of public trust," and in light of Sanders' campaign being based on "cleaning up politics."
Budowsky warns voters would be "disgusted" by attacks against Sanders and says he wouldn't discourage Podesta from sharing the
note with Clinton because "if she wants to become president she needs to understand the point I am making with crystal clarity."
"Make love to Bernie and his idealistic supporters, and co-opt as many of his progressive issues as possible."
Budowsky then adds that he was at a Washington university where " not one student gave enough of a damn for Hillary to
open a booth, or even wear a Hillary button. "
* * *
One email focused on how to address with the
topic of the TPP. National Policy Director for Hillary for America Amanda Renteria explains, "The goal here was to minimize our vulnerability
to the authenticity attack and not piss off the WH any more than necessary."
Democratic pollster Joel Benenson says, "the reality is HRC is more pro trade than anti and trying to turn her into something
she is not could reinforce our negative [sic] around authenticity. This is an agreement that she pushed for and largely advocated
for."
* * *
While claiming she is part of the people, an email exposes Hillary as being "
part of the system ." Clinton's team acknowledges
she is "part of the system" in an email regarding her strategies. As Stan Greenberg told Podesta:
" We are also going to test some messages that include acknowledgement of being part of the system, and know how much
has to change ,"
* * *
Some more on the topic of Hillary being extensively coached and all her words rehearsed, we find an email which reveals that
Clinton's words have to be tightly managed by her
team who are wary of what she might say. After the Iowa Democratic Party's presidential debate in November 2015 adviser Ron Klain
mails Podesta to say, "If she says something three times as an aside during practice (Wall Street supports me due to 9/11), we need
to assume she will say it in the debate, and tell her not to do so." Klain's mail reveals Sanders was their biggest fear in the debate.
"The only thing that would have been awful – a Sanders break out – didn't happen. So all in all, we were fine," he says.
The mail also reveals Klain's role in securing his daughter Hannah a position on Clinton's team. "I'm not asking anyone to make
a job, or put her in some place where she isn't wanted – it just needs a nudge over the finish line," Klain says. Hannah Klain worked
on Clinton's Surrogates team for nine months commencing in the month after her father's mail to Podesta, according to her Linkedin.
I love this...Assange is incommunicado, yet the data dumps keep coming!
Horse face looks like such a fool to the world as a result; & due to John Kerry's stupidity which is drawing major attention to
the whole matter; Americans are finally beginning to wake up & pay attention to this shit!
Looks like the Hitlery for Prez ship is starting to take on MASSIVE amounts of water!
I believe they are beyond the point where any more news of 'pussy grabbing' will save them from themselves (and Mr. Assange)!
The new lowered expectations federal government just expects to get lucre + bennies for sitting on their asses and holding
the door for gangsters. Traitors. Spies. Enemies foreign and domestic. Amphisbaegenic pot boiling.
With Creamer's tricks effective in Obama's re-election, it now makes sense why Obama was so confident when he said Trump would
never be president.
Trump is still ahead in the only poll I track. But i conduct my own personal poll on a daily basis and loads of Trump supporters
are in the closet and won't come out until they pull the lever for Trump on election day.
With his revelations exposing the extent of potential, and actual, pervasive NSA surveillance
over the American population, Edward Snowden has done a great service for the public by finally forcing
it to answer the question: is having Big Brother peek at every private communication and electronic
information, a fair exchange for the alleged benefit of the state's security. Alas, without
further action form a population that appears largely numb and apathetic to disclosures that until
recently would have sparked mass protests and toppled presidents, the best we can hope for within
a political regime that has hijacked the democratic process, is some intense introspection as to
what the concept of "America" truly means.
However, and more importantly, what Snowden's revelations have confirmed, is that behind the scenes,
America is now actively engaged in a new kind of war: an unprecedented cyber war, where collecting,
deciphering, intercepting, and abusing information is the only thing that matters and leads to unprecedented
power, and where enemies both foreign and domestic may be targeted without
due process based on a lowly analyst's "whim."
It has also put spotlight on the man, who until recently deep in the shadows, has been responsible
for building America's secret, absolutely massive cyber army, and which according to a
just released Wired profile is "capable of launching devastating cyberattacks. Now it's ready
to unleash hell."
Meet General Keith Alexander, "a man few even in Washington would likely recognize", which is
troubling because Alexander is now quite possibly the most powerful person in the world, that nobody
talks about. Which is just the way he likes it.
This is the partial and incomplete story of the man who may now be empowered with more unchecked
power than any person in the history of the US, or for that matter, the world. It comes once
again, courtesy of the man who over a year before the Guardian's Snowden bombshell broke the story
about the NSA's secret Utah data storage facility, James Bamford, and whose intimate knowledge
of the NSA's secrets comes by way of being a consultant for the defense team of one Thomas Drake,
one of the original NSA whistleblowers (as we learn from the full Wired article).
But first, by way of background, here is a glimpse of Alexander's ultra-secretive kingdom.
From Wired:
Inside Fort Meade, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through
more than 50 buildings-the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force.
But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified
fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion
detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals
from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and
the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.
This is the undisputed domain of General Keith Alexander, a man few even in
Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America's intelligence sphere come
close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule,
the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority
extends across three domains: He is director of the world's largest intelligence service,
the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber
Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy's 10th Fleet, the 24th
Air Force, and the Second Army.
Schematically, Alexander's empire consists of the following: virtually every piece in America's information intelligence arsenal.
As the Snowden scandal has unfurled, some glimpses into the "introspective" capabilities of the
NSA, and its sister organizations, have demonstrated just how powerful the full "intelligence" arsenal
of the US can be.
However, it is when it is facing outward - as it normally does - that things get really scary.
Because contrary to prevailing conventional wisdom, Alexander's intelligence and information-derived
power is far from simply defensive. In fact, it is when its offensive potential is exposed that the
full destructive power in Alexander's grasp is revealed:
In its tightly controlled public relations, the NSA has focused attention on the threat of
cyberattack against the US-the vulnerability of critical infrastructure like power plants and
water systems, the susceptibility of the military's command and control structure, the dependence
of the economy on the Internet's smooth functioning. Defense against these threats was the paramount
mission trumpeted by NSA brass at congressional hearings and hashed over at security conferences.
But there is a flip side to this equation that is rarely mentioned: The military has
for years been developing offensive capabilities, giving it the power not just to defend the US
but to assail its foes. Using so-called cyber-kinetic attacks, Alexander
and his forces now have the capability to physically destroy an adversary's equipment
and infrastructure, and potentially even to kill. Alexander-who declined to be interviewed
for this article-has concluded that such cyberweapons are as crucial to 21st-century warfare
as nuclear arms were in the 20th.
And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that
came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli
intelligence in the mid-2000s. The first known piece of malware designed to destroy physical equipment,
Stuxnet was aimed at Iran's nuclear facility in Natanz. By surreptitiously taking control of an
industrial control link known as a Scada (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, the
sophisticated worm was able to damage about a thousand centrifuges used to enrich nuclear material.
The success of this sabotage came to light only in June 2010, when the malware spread to outside
computers. It was spotted by independent security researchers, who identified telltale signs that
the worm was the work of thousands of hours of professional development. Despite headlines around
the globe, officials in Washington have never openly acknowledged that the US was behind the attack.
It wasn't until 2012 that anonymous sources within the Obama administration took credit for it
in interviews with The New York Times.
But Stuxnet is only the beginning. Alexander's agency has recruited thousands of computer experts,
hackers, and engineering PhDs to expand US offensive capabilities in the digital realm. The Pentagon
has requested $4.7 billion for "cyberspace operations," even as the budget of the CIA and other
intelligence agencies could fall by $4.4 billion. It is pouring millions into cyberdefense contractors.
And more attacks may be planned.
Alexander's background is equally impressive: a classmate of Petraeus and Dempsey, a favorite
of Rumsfeld, the General had supreme power written all over his career progression. If reaching the
top at all costs meant crushing the fourth amendment and lying to Congress in the process, so be
it:
Born in 1951, the third of five children, Alexander was raised in the small upstate New York
hamlet of Onondaga Hill, a suburb of Syracuse. He tossed papers for the Syracuse Post-Standard
and ran track at Westhill High School while his father, a former Marine private, was involved
in local Republican politics. It was 1970, Richard Nixon was president, and most of the country
had by then begun to see the war in Vietnam as a disaster. But Alexander had been accepted
at West Point, joining a class that included two other future four-star generals, David Petraeus
and Martin Dempsey. Alexander would never get the chance to serve in Vietnam. Just as
he stepped off the bus at West Point, the ground war finally began winding down.
In April 1974, just before graduation, he married his high school classmate Deborah Lynn Douglas,
who grew up two doors away in Onondaga Hill. The fighting in Vietnam was over, but the Cold War
was still bubbling, and Alexander focused his career on the solitary, rarefied world of signals
intelligence, bouncing from secret NSA base to secret NSA base, mostly in the US and Germany.
He proved a competent administrator, carrying out assignments and adapting to the rapidly changing
high tech environment. Along the way he picked up masters degrees in electronic warfare,
physics, national security strategy, and business administration. As a result, he quickly
rose up the military intelligence ranks, where expertise in advanced technology was at a premium.
In 2001, Alexander was a one-star general in charge of the Army Intelligence and Security Command,
the military's worldwide network of 10,700 spies and eavesdroppers. In March of that year he told
his hometown Syracuse newspaper that his job was to discover threats to the country. "We have
to stay out in front of our adversary," Alexander said. "It's a chess game, and you don't want
to lose this one." But just six months later, Alexander and the rest of the American intelligence
community suffered a devastating defeat when they were surprised by the attacks on 9/11.
Following the assault, he ordered his Army intercept operators to begin illegally monitoring
the phone calls and email of American citizens who had nothing to do with terrorism, including
intimate calls between journalists and their spouses. Congress later gave retroactive immunity
to the telecoms that assisted the government.
In 2003, Alexander, a favorite of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was named
the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, the service's most senior intelligence position.
Among the units under his command were the military intelligence teams involved in the human rights
abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Two years later, Rumsfeld appointed Alexander-now
a three-star general-director of the NSA, where he oversaw the illegal, warrantless wiretapping
program while deceiving members of the House Intelligence Committee. In a publicly released
letter to Alexander shortly after The New York Times exposed the program, US representative Rush
Holt, a member of the committee, angrily took him to task for not being forthcoming about the
wiretapping: "Your responses make a mockery of congressional oversight."
In short: Emperor Alexander.
Inside the government, the general is regarded with a mixture of respect and fear, not unlike
J. Edgar Hoover, another security figure whose tenure spanned multiple presidencies. "We
jokingly referred to him as Emperor Alexander-with good cause, because whatever Keith
wants, Keith gets," says one former senior CIA official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
"We would sit back literally in awe of what he was able to get from Congress, from the White House,
and at the expense of everybody else."
What happened next in Alexander's career some time in the mid 2000's, was Stuxnet: the story of
the crushing virus that nearly destroyed the Iranian nuclear program has been widely documented on
these pages and elsewhere, so we won't recount the Wired article's details. However, what was very
odd about the Stuxnet attack is that such a brilliantly conceived and delivered virus could ultimately
be uncovered and traced back to the NSA and Israel. It was almost too good. Still, what happened
after the revelation that Stuxnet could be traced to Fort Meade, is that the middle-east, supposedly,
promptly retaliated:
Sure enough, in August 2012 a devastating virus was unleashed on Saudi Aramco, the giant Saudi
state-owned energy company. The malware infected 30,000 computers, erasing three-quarters of the
company's stored data, destroying everything from documents to email to spreadsheets and leaving
in their place an image of a burning American flag, according to The New York Times. Just days
later, another large cyberattack hit RasGas, the giant Qatari natural gas company. Then a series
of denial-of-service attacks took America's largest financial institutions offline. Experts blamed
all of this activity on Iran, which had created its own cyber command in the wake of the US-led
attacks. James Clapper, US director of national intelligence, for the first time declared cyberthreats
the greatest danger facing the nation, bumping terrorism down to second place. In May, the Department
of Homeland Security's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team issued a vague
warning that US energy and infrastructure companies should be on the alert for cyberattacks. It
was widely reported that this warning came in response to Iranian cyberprobes of industrial control
systems. An Iranian diplomat denied any involvement.
The cat-and-mouse game could escalate. "It's a trajectory," says James Lewis, a cybersecurity
expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The general consensus is that a
cyber response alone is pretty worthless. And nobody wants a real war." Under international law,
Iran may have the right to self-defense when hit with destructive cyberattacks. William Lynn,
deputy secretary of defense, laid claim to the prerogative of self-defense when he outlined the
Pentagon's cyber operations strategy. "The United States reserves the right," he said, "under
the laws of armed conflict, to respond to serious cyberattacks with a proportional and justified
military response at the time and place of our choosing." Leon Panetta, the former CIA chief who
had helped launch the Stuxnet offensive, would later point to Iran's retaliation as a troubling
harbinger. "The collective result of these kinds of attacks could be a cyber Pearl Harbor," he
warned in October 2012, toward the end of his tenure as defense secretary, "an attack that would
cause physical destruction and the loss of life."
Almost too good... Because what the so-called hacker "retaliations" originating from
Iran, China, Russia, etc, led to such laughable outcomes as DDOS attacks against - to unprecedented
media fanfare - the portals of such firms as JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, and as Wired adds, "if Stuxnet
was the proof of concept, it also proved that one successful cyberattack begets another.
For Alexander, this offered the perfect justification for expanding his empire."
The expansion that took place next for Alexander and his men, all of it under the Obama regime,
was simply unprecedented (and that it steamrolled right through the "sequester" was perfectly expected):
[D]ominance has long been their watchword. Alexander's Navy calls itself the Information Dominance
Corps. In 2007, the then secretary of the Air Force pledged to "dominate cyberspace" just as "today,
we dominate air and space." And Alexander's Army warned, "It is in cyberspace that we must use
our strategic vision to dominate the information environment." The Army is reportedly treating
digital weapons as another form of offensive capability, providing frontline troops with the option
of requesting "cyber fire support" from Cyber Command in the same way they request air and artillery
support.
All these capabilities require a giant expansion of secret facilities. Thousands of hard-hatted
construction workers will soon begin erecting cranes, driving backhoes, and emptying cement trucks
as they expand the boundaries of NSA's secret city eastward, increasing its already enormous size
by a third. "You could tell that some of the seniors at NSA were truly concerned that cyber was
going to engulf them," says a former senior Cyber Command official, "and I think rightfully so."
In May, work began on a $3.2 billion facility housed at Fort Meade in Maryland. Known
as Site M, the 227-acre complex includes its own 150-megawatt power substation, 14 administrative
buildings, 10 parking garages, and chiller and boiler plants. The server building will have 90,000
square feet of raised floor-handy for supercomputers-yet hold only 50 people. Meanwhile, the 531,000-square-foot
operations center will house more than 1,300 people. In all, the buildings will have a footprint
of 1.8 million square feet. Even more ambitious plans, known as Phase II and III, are
on the drawing board. Stretching over the next 16 years, they would quadruple the footprint to
5.8 million square feet, enough for nearly 60 buildings and 40 parking garages, costing $5.2 billion
and accommodating 11,000 more cyberwarriors.
In short, despite the sequestration, layoffs, and furloughs in the federal government, it's
a boom time for Alexander. In April, as part of its 2014 budget request, the Pentagon
asked Congress for $4.7 billion for increased "cyberspace operations," nearly $1 billion more
than the 2013 allocation. At the same time, budgets for the CIA and other intelligence agencies
were cut by almost the same amount, $4.4 billion. A portion of the money going to Alexander
will be used to create 13 cyberattack teams.
In the New Normal, the CIA is no longer relevant: all that matters are Alexanders' armies
of hackers and computer geeks.
But not only has the public espionage sector been unleashed: the private sector is poised to reap
a killing (pardon the pun) too...
What's good for Alexander is good for the fortunes of the cyber-industrial complex, a burgeoning
sector made up of many of the same defense contractors who grew rich supplying the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. With those conflicts now mostly in the rearview mirror, they are looking
to Alexander as a kind of savior. After all, the US spends about $30 billion annually on cybersecurity
goods and services.
In the past few years, the contractors have embarked on their own cyber building binge parallel
to the construction boom at Fort Meade: General Dynamics opened a 28,000-square-foot facility
near the NSA; SAIC cut the ribbon on its new seven-story Cyber Innovation Center; the giant CSC
unveiled its Virtual Cyber Security Center. And at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton,
where former NSA director Mike McConnell was hired to lead the cyber effort, the company announced
a "cyber-solutions network" that linked together nine cyber-focused facilities. Not to
be outdone, Boeing built a new Cyber Engagement Center. Leaving nothing to chance, it also hired
retired Army major general Barbara Fast, an old friend of Alexander's, to run the operation. (She
has since moved on.)
Defense contractors have been eager to prove that they understand Alexander's worldview. "Our
Raytheon cyberwarriors play offense and defense," says one help-wanted site. Consulting and engineering
firms such as Invertix and Parsons are among dozens posting online want ads for "computer network
exploitation specialists." And many other companies, some unidentified, are seeking computer and
network attackers. "Firm is seeking computer network attack specialists for long-term government
contract in King George County, VA," one recent ad read. Another, from Sunera, a Tampa, Florida,
company, said it was hunting for "attack and penetration consultants."
It gets better: all those anti-virus programs you have on computer to "make it safe" from backdoors
and trojans? Guess what - they are the backdoors and trojans!
One of the most secretive of these contractors is Endgame Systems, a startup backed by VCs
including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Paladin Capital Group.
Established in Atlanta in 2008, Endgame is transparently antitransparent. "We've been
very careful not to have a public face on our company," former vice president John M. Farrell
wrote to a business associate in an email that appeared in a WikiLeaks dump. "We don't ever want
to see our name in a press release," added founder Christopher Rouland. True to form,
the company declined Wired's interview requests.
Perhaps for good reason: According to news reports, Endgame is developing ways to break
into Internet-connected devices through chinks in their antivirus armor. Like safecrackers
listening to the click of tumblers through a stethoscope, the "vulnerability researchers" use
an extensive array of digital tools to search for hidden weaknesses in commonly used programs
and systems, such as Windows and Internet Explorer. And since no one else has ever discovered
these unseen cracks, the manufacturers have never developed patches for them.
Thus, in the parlance of the trade, these vulnerabilities are known as "zero-day exploits,"
because it has been zero days since they have been uncovered and fixed. They are the
Achilles' heel of the security business, says a former senior intelligence official involved with
cyberwarfare. Those seeking to break into networks and computers are willing to pay millions
of dollars to obtain them.
Such as the US government. But if you thought PRISM was bad you ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Because tying it all together is Endgame's appropriately named "Bonesaw" - what
it is is practically The Matrix transplanted into the real cyber world.
According to Defense News' C4ISR Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek, Endgame also offers its
intelligence clients-agencies like Cyber Command, the NSA, the CIA, and British intelligence-a
unique map showing them exactly where their targets are located. Dubbed Bonesaw,
the map displays the geolocation and digital address of basically every device connected
to the Internet around the world, providing what's called network situational awareness.
The client locates a region on the password-protected web-based map, then picks a country
and city- say, Beijing, China. Next the client types in the name of the target organization, such
as the Ministry of Public Security's No. 3 Research Institute, which is responsible for computer
security-or simply enters its address, 6 Zhengyi Road. The map will then display what software
is running on the computers inside the facility, what types of malware some may contain, and a
menu of custom-designed exploits that can be used to secretly gain entry. It can also
pinpoint those devices infected with malware, such as the Conficker worm, as well as networks
turned into botnets and zombies- the equivalent of a back door left open.
Bonesaw also contains targeting data on US allies, and it is soon to be upgraded
with a new version codenamed Velocity, according to C4ISR Journal. It will allow Endgame's
clients to observe in real time as hardware and software connected to the Internet around the
world is added, removed, or changed.
Marketing documents say "the Bonesaw platform provides a complete environment for intelligence
analysts and mission planners to take a holistic approach to target discovery, reducing the time
to create actionable intelligence and operational plans from days to minutes."
"Bonesaw is the ability to map, basically every device connected to the Internet and
what hardware and software it is," says a company official who requested anonymity. The
official points out that the firm doesn't launch offensive cyber ops, it just helps.
Back to Wired:
[S]uch access doesn't come cheap. One leaked report indicated that annual subscriptions
could run as high as $2.5 million for 25 zero-day exploits.
That's ok though, the US government is happy to collect taxpayer money so it can pay these venture
capital-backed private firms for the best in espionage technology, allowing it to reach, hack and
manipulate every computer system foreign. And domestic.
How ironic: US citizens are funding Big Brother's own unprecedented spying program against
themselves!
Not only that, but by allowing the NSA to develop and utilize technology that is leaps ahead of
everyone else - utilize it against the US citizens themselves - America is
now effectively war against itself... Not to mention every other foreign country that is a intelligence
interest:
The buying and using of such a subscription by nation-states could be seen as an act of war.
"If you are engaged in reconnaissance on an adversary's systems, you are laying the electronic
battlefield and preparing to use it," wrote Mike Jacobs, a former NSA director for information
assurance, in a McAfee report on cyberwarfare. "In my opinion, these activities constitute acts
of war, or at least a prelude to future acts of war." The question is, who else is on the secretive
company's client list? Because there is as of yet no oversight or regulation of the cyberweapons
trade, companies in the cyber-industrial complex are free to sell to whomever they wish. "It should
be illegal," says the former senior intelligence official involved in cyberwarfare. "I
knew about Endgame when I was in intelligence. The intelligence community didn't like it, but
they're the largest consumer of that business."
And there you have it: US corporations happily cooperating with the US government's own espionage
services, however since the only thing that matters in the private sector is the bottom line, the
Endgames of the world will gladly sell the same ultra-secret services to everyone else who is willing
to pay top dollar: China, Russia, Iran...
in their willingness to pay top dollar for more and better zero-day exploits, the spy agencies
are helping drive a lucrative, dangerous, and unregulated cyber arms race, one that has developed
its own gray and black markets. The companies trading in this arena can sell their wares
to the highest bidder-be they frontmen for criminal hacking groups or terrorist organizations
or countries that bankroll terrorists, such as Iran. Ironically, having helped create
the market in zero-day exploits and then having launched the world into the era of cyberwar,
Alexander now says the possibility of zero-day exploits falling into the wrong hands is
his "greatest worry."
Does Alexander have reason to be worried? Oh yes.
In May, Alexander discovered that four months earlier someone, or some group or nation,
had secretly hacked into a restricted US government database known as the National Inventory
of Dams. Maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, it lists the vulnerabilities
for the nation's dams, including an estimate of the number of people who might be killed should
one of them fail. Meanwhile, the 2013 "Report Card for America's Infrastructure" gave
the US a D on its maintenance of dams. There are 13,991 dams in the US that are classified
as high-hazard, the report said. A high-hazard dam is defined as one whose failure would
cause loss of life. "That's our concern about what's coming in cyberspace-a destructive element.
It is a question of time," Alexander said in a talk to a group involved in information
operations and cyberwarfare, noting that estimates put the time frame of an attack within two
to five years. He made his comments in September 2011.
In other words, this massive cyberattack against the US predicted by "Emperor" Alexander, an attack
in which as Alexander himself has said cyberweapons represent the 21st century equivalent of nuclear
arms (and require in kind retaliation) whether false flag or real, is due... some time right
around now.
"TeamSpy" used digitally signed TeamViewer remote access tool to spy on victims.
Researchers have unearthed a decade-long espionage operation that
used the popular TeamViewer remote-access program and proprietary malware to target high-level political
and industrial figures in Eastern Europe.
TeamSpy, as the shadow group has been dubbed, collected encryption keys and documents marked as
"secret" from a variety of high-level targets, according to a
report published Wednesday by
Hungary-based CrySyS Lab.
Targets included a Russia-based Embassy for an undisclosed country belonging to both NATO and
the European Union, an industrial manufacturer also located in Russia, multiple research and educational
organizations in France and Belgium, and an electronics company located in Iran. CrySyS learned of
the attacks after Hungary's National Security Authority
disclosed intelligence that TeamSpy had hit an unnamed "Hungarian high-profile governmental victim."
Malware used in the attacks indicates that those responsible may have operated for years and may
have also targeted figures in a variety of countries throughout the world. Adding intrigue to the
discovery, techniques used in the attacks bear a striking resemblance to an online banking fraud
ring known as Sheldon, and a separate
analysis from researchers at Kaspersky Lab found similarities to the
Red October espionage campaign that the Russia-based security firm discovered earlier this year.
"Most likely the same attackers are behind the attacks that span for the last 10 years, as there
are clear connections between samples used in different years and campaigns," CrySyS researchers
wrote in their report. "Interestingly, the attacks began to gain new momentum in the second half
of 2012."
They added: "The attackers surely aim for important targets. This conclusion comes from a number
of different facts, including victim IPs, known activities on some targets, traceroute for probably
high-profile targets, file names used in information stealing activities, strange paramilitary language
of some structures, etc."
The attackers relied on a variety of methods, including the use of a digitally signed version
of TeamViewer that has been modified through
a technique known as "DLL hijacking" to spy on targets in real-time. Installation of the compromised
program also provides attackers with a backdoor to install updates and additional malware. Both the
TeamViewer technique and command servers used in the attack harken back to Sheldon. The TeamSpy operation
also relies on more traditional malware tools that were custom-built for the purpose of espionage
or bank fraud.
According to Kaspersky, the operators infected their victims through a series of "watering hole"
attacks that plant malware on websites frequented by the intended victims. When the targets visit
the booby-trapped sites, they also become infected. The attackers also injected malware into advertising
networks to blanket entire regions. In many cases, much of that attack code used to infect victims
was spawned from the
Eleonore exploit kit. Domains used to host command and control servers that communicated with
infected machines included politnews.org, bannetwork.org, planetanews.org, bulbanews.org, and r2bnetwork.org.
The discovery of TeamSpy is only the latest to reveal an international operation that uses malware
to siphon sensitive data from high-profile targets. The most well-known campaign was
dubbed Flame. Other surveillance campaigns include
Gauss and
Duqu, all three of which are believed to have been supported by a
well-resourced nation-state. Last year, researchers also uncovered an espionage campaign
dubbed
Mahdi.
Researchers have unearthed
a decade-long espionage operation that used the popular TeamViewer remote-access program and
proprietary malware to target high-level political and industrial figures in Eastern Europe. TeamSpy,
as the shadow group has been dubbed, collected encryption keys and documents marked as 'secret' from
a variety of high-level targets, according to a report published Wednesday by Hungary-based CrySyS
Lab. Targets included a Russia-based Embassy for an undisclosed country belonging to both NATO and
the European Union, an industrial manufacturer also located in Russia, multiple research and educational
organizations in France and Belgium, and an electronics company located in Iran. CrySyS learned of
the attacks after Hungary's National Security Authority disclosed intelligence that TeamSpy had hit
an unnamed 'Hungarian high-profile governmental victim.'
erroneus
Suspiscious based on what criteria?
We aren't allowed to use open source and so we have to "trust" every 'signed binary'
which executives and leaders want to use. If we could use open source, we could at least read
the source and even compile it to ensure the source we read was the binary which was compiled.
When the malware doesn't do "harm" to anything, the sympoms of malware are non-existant.
No pop-up ads, no unusual crashing (see note about being unable to use open source... the 'other'
operaitng system crashes often enough for inexplicable reasons that no one suspects malware
as the cause any longer) and when a commonly used utility program which performs remote access
is used, how can it be detected as malware?
Arguably, that it was proprietary and commercial software which was exploited is
pretty disturbing. But at the same time, that software makers (and other device and product makers,
and service providers too) frequently enter into deals with government to spy on people is unfortunately
very common. That the "white-hat" (heh, I accidentally typed "white-hate"... apropos?) nation
called the USA has compromised global communications with Echelon and more recently with the much
celebrated NSA wiretapping, does not help matters.
I think no one appreciates the value of trust. Once it's
lost, it's lost. What amount of trust in government... any government... may have existed, it
is gone for most of us.
The unenlightened? Well... they still watch MSM (mainstream media, I have come to
know these initials). What hope have they against that?
Anonymous Coward
Re:A strong push for open source in government (Score:1)
I suspect that as more malware and backdoors are discovered in systems used
by government, the penny will begin to drop more frequently. Closed source is incompatible
with security, by definition, since you cannot validly trust what you cannot see
Bullshit. Open or closed source has no direct bearing on the ability of an attacker
to infect a binary. Open source provides more eyes on a given bug or problem, but once compiled
and running its the exact same problem.
The article mentions use of a modified signed binary. So tell me how open source
is going to remedy that? Unless you're recompiling from scratch (your entire tool chain, plus
dependencies) on each launch, you're just as fucked as the next guy. Are you going to checksum
the binary in memory each time a method is called? Are you going to encrypt/decrypt on each call?
What's to stop an attacker from modifying your checksum code in the same manner as CD checks on
games are trivially broken?
The only thing open source is really going to do for you is ensure that if you compile
from source, the attack didn't originate from that source. So what?
Anonymous Coward
The fact it's open source IS (or can be) the pathway. If it's a small piece of software
that does a specific function that's not of use to many people, your million eyeballs shrink rapidly.
And what you're left with (IMO) is a handful of eyeballs thinking "I don't have the time/skills
for this, it's open source, I'm sure someone will have looked over it" while no one actually does.
Or someone auditing the code but not the stuff around it, or maybe the code as distributed
is clean and will compile into a clean and functioning binary, but the scripts around it actually
add some malicious steps if certain criteria are met.
The U.S. government is developing new computer weapons and driving a black market in "zero-day"
bugs. The result could be a more dangerous Web for everyone.
Every summer, computer security experts get together in Las Vegas for Black Hat and DEFCON, conferences
that have earned notoriety for presentations demonstrating critical security holes discovered in
widely used software. But while the conferences continue to draw big crowds, regular attendees say
the bugs unveiled haven't been quite so dramatic in recent years.
One reason is that a freshly discovered weakness in a popular piece of software, known in the
trade as a "zero-day" vulnerability, can be cashed in for much more than a reputation boost and some
free drinks at the bar. Information about such flaws can command prices
in the hundreds of thousands of dollars from defense contractors, security agencies and governments.
This trade in zero-day exploits is poorly documented, but it is perhaps
the most visible part of a new industry that in the years to come is likely to swallow growing portions
of the U.S. national defense budget, reshape international relations, and perhaps make the Web less
safe for everyone.
Zero-day exploits are valuable because they can be used to sneak software onto a computer system
without detection by conventional computer security measures, such as antivirus packages or firewalls.
Criminals might do that to intercept credit card numbers. An intelligence agency or military force
might steal diplomatic communications or even shut down a power plant.
It became clear that this type of assault would define a new era in warfare in 2010, when
security researchers discovered a piece of malicious software, or malware, known as Stuxnet.
Now widely believed to have been a project of U.S. and Israeli intelligence (U.S. officials have
yet to publicly acknowledge a role but have done so anonymously to the New York Times and
NPR), Stuxnet was carefully designed to infect multiple systems needed to access and control industrial
equipment used in Iran's nuclear program. The payload was clearly the work of a group with access
to government-scale resources and intelligence, but it was made possible by four zero-day exploits
for Windows that allowed it to silently infect target computers. That so many precious zero-days
were used at once was just one of Stuxnet's many striking features.
Since then, more Stuxnet-like malware has been uncovered, and it's involved even more complex
techniques (see "The
Antivirus Era Is Over"). It is likely that even more have been deployed
but escaped public notice. Meanwhile, governments and companies in the United States
and around the world have begun paying more and more for the exploits needed to make such weapons
work, says
Christopher Soghoian, a principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union.
"On the one hand the government is freaking out about cyber-security,
and on the other the U.S. is participating in a global market in vulnerabilities and pushing up the
prices," says Soghoian, who says he has spoken with people involved in the trade and
that prices range from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands. Even
civilian law-enforcement agencies pay for zero-days, Soghoian says, in order to sneak spy software
onto suspects' computers or mobile phones.
Exploits for mobile operating systems are particularly valued, says Soghoian, because unlike desktop
computers, mobile systems are rarely updated. Apple sends
updates to iPhone software a few times a year, meaning that a given flaw could be exploited for a
long time. Sometimes the discoverer of a zero day vulnerability
receives a monthly payment as long as a flaw remains undiscovered. "As long as Apple or Microsoft
has not fixed it you get paid," says Soghioan.
No law directly regulates the sale of zero-days in the United States
or elsewhere, so some traders pursue it quite openly. A Bangkok-based security researcher
who goes by the name The Grugq tweets about acting as a middleman and has spoken to the press about
negotiating deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with government buyers from the United States
and western Europe. In an argument on Twitter last month, he denied that his business is equivalent
to arms dealing, as critics within and outside the computer security community have charged. "An
exploit is a component of a toolchain,"
he tweeted.
"The team that produces & maintains the toolchain is the weapon."
Some small companies are similarly up-front about their involvement in the trade. The French security
company VUPEN states on its website that it
"provides government-grade exploits specifically designed for the Intelligence community
and national security agencies to help them achieve their offensive cyber security and lawful
intercept missions."
Last year, employees of the company publicly demonstrated a zero-day flaw that compromised Google's
Chrome browser, but they turned down Google's offer of a $60,000 reward if they would share how it
worked. What happened to the exploit is unknown.
No U.S. government agency has gone on the record as saying that it buys zero-days. But U.S. defense
agencies and companies have begun to publicly acknowledge that they intend to launch as well as defend
against cyberattacks, a stance that will require new ways to penetrate enemy computers.
General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of the U.S. Cyber
Command, told a symposium in Washington last October that the United States is prepared to do more
than just block computer attacks. "Part of our defense has to consider offensive measures," he said,
making him one of the most senior officials to admit that the government will make use of malware.
Earlier in 2012 the U.S. Air Force invited proposals for developing "Cyberspace Warfare Attack capabilities"
that could "destroy, deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive, corrupt, or usurp the adversaries [sic] ability
to use the cyberspace domain for his advantage." And in November, Regina Dugan, the head of the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, delivered another clear signal about the direction U.S. defense
technology is heading. "In the coming years we will focus an increasing portion of our cyber research
on the investigation of offensive capabilities to address military-specific needs," she said, announcing
that the agency expected to expand cyber-security research from 8 percent of its budget to 12 percent.
Defense analysts say one reason for the shift is that talking about offense introduces an element
of deterrence, an established strategy for nuclear and conventional conflicts. Up to now, U.S. politicians
and defense chiefs have talked mostly about the country's vulnerability to digital attacks. Last
fall, for example, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned frankly that U.S. infrastructure was being
targeted by overseas attackers and that a "digital Pearl Harbor" could result (see "U.S.
Power Grids, Water Plants a Hacking Target").
Major defense contractors are less forthcoming about their role in making software to attack enemies
of the U.S. government, but they are evidently rushing to embrace the opportunity. "It's a growing
area of the defense business at the same time that the rest of the defense business is shrinking,"
says Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution,
a Washington think tank. "They've identified two growth areas: drones and cyber."
Large contractors are hiring many people with computer security skills, and some job openings
make it clear there are opportunities to play more than just defense. Last year, Northrop Grumman
posted ads seeking people to "plan, execute and assess an Offensive Cyberspace Operation (OCO) mission,"
and many current positions at Northrop ask for "hands-on experience of offensive cyber operations."
Raytheon prefaces its ads for security-related jobs with language designed to appeal to stereotypical
computer hackers: "Surfboards, pirate flags, and DEFCON black badges decorate our offices, and our
Nerf collection dwarfs that of most toy stores. Our research and development projects cover the spectrum
of offensive and defensive security technologies."
The new focus of America's military and defense contractors may concern some taxpayers. As more
public dollars are spent researching new ways to attack computer systems, some of that money will
go to people like The Grugq to discover fresh zero-day vulnerabilities. And an escalating cycle of
competition between U.S and overseas government agencies and contractors could make the world more
dangerous for computer users everywhere.
"Every country makes weapons: unfortunately, cyberspace is like that too," says Sujeet Shenoi,
who leads the U.S.-government-sponsored Cyber Corps Program at the University of Tulsa. His program
trains students for government jobs defending against attacks, but he fears that defense contractors,
also eager to recruit these students, are pushing the idea of offense too hard. Developing powerful
malware introduces the dangerous temptation to use it, says Shenoi, who fears the consequences of
active strikes against infrastructure. "I think maybe the civilian courts ought to get together and
bar these kinds of attacks," he says.
The ease with which perpetrators of a computer attack can hide their tracks also raises the risk
that such weapons will be used, Shenoi points out. Worse, even if an attack using malware is unsuccessful,
there's a strong chance that a copy will remain somewhere on the victim's system-by accident or design-or
accidentally find its way onto computer systems not targeted at all, as Stuxnet did. Some security
firms have already identified criminal malware that uses methods first seen in Stuxnet (see "Stuxnet
Tricks Copied by Criminals").
"The parallel is dropping the atomic bomb but also leaflets with the design of it," says Singer.
He estimates that around 100 countries already have cyber-war units of some kind, and around 20
have formidable capabilities: "There's a lot of people playing this game."
Stuxnet is definitely a source of a large blowback. It also make the US or Israle or both the first
nations which deployed cyber weapon against other nation, without any declaration of war. "In taking
this step, the perpetrator not only demonstrated that control systems are vulnerable, but also legitimized
this kind of activity by a nation-state, he says."
Three years ago, when electric grid operators were starting to talk about the need to protect
critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, few utilities had even hired a chief information security
officer.
Then came Stuxnet.
In 2010, that malware, widely
reported to have been created by the U.S. and Israel, reportedly destroyed 1,000 centrifuges
that Iran was using to enrich uranium after taking over the computerized systems that operated the
centrifuges.
Gen. Michael Hayden, principal at security consultancy The Chertoff Group, was director of the
National Security Agency, and then the CIA, during the years leading up to the event. "I have to
be careful about this," he says,
"but in a time of peace, someone deployed a cyberweapon to destroy what another nation would
describe as its critical infrastructure."
In taking this step, the perpetrator not only demonstrated that control systems are vulnerable,
but also legitimized this kind of activity by a nation-state, he says.
The attack rattled the industry. "Stuxnet was a game-changer because
it opened people's eyes to the fact that a cyber event can actually result in physical damage," says
Mark Weatherford, deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity in the National Protection Programs Directorate
at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
In another development that raised awareness of the threat of cyberwar,
the U.S. government in October accused Iran of launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)
attacks against U.S. financial institutions. In a speech intended to build support for stalled
legislation known as the
Cybersecurity Act that would enable greater information sharing and improved cybersecurity standards,
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned that the nation faced the possibility of a "cyber Pearl
Harbor" unless action was taken to better protect critical infrastructure.
"Awareness of the problem has been the biggest change" since the release
of Stuxnet, says Tim Roxey, chief cybersecurity officer for the North American Electric Reliability
Corp. (NERC), a trade group serving electrical grid operators. He noted that job titles such as CISO
and cybersecurity officer are much more common than they once were,
new cybersecurity standards are now under development, and there's a greater emphasis on information
sharing, both within the industry and with the DHS through
sector-specific Information Sharing and Analysis
Centers. (Read our
timeline of critical infrastructure
attacks over the years.)
On the other hand, cybersecurity is still not among the top five reliability
concerns for most utilities, according to John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner. Says Roxey: "It's
clearly in the top 10." But then, so is vegetation management.
Compounding the challenge is the fact that regulated utilities tend to
have tight budgets. That's a big problem, says Paul Kurtz, managing director of international practice
at security engineering company CyberPoint International and former senior director for critical
infrastructure protection at the White House's Homeland Security Council. "We're not offering cost-effective,
measurable solutions," he says. "How do you do this without hemorrhaging cash?"
Should the U.S. Strike Back?
Most best practices on dealing with cyberattacks on critical infrastructure focus on defense:
patching vulnerabilities and managing risk. But should the U.S. conduct preemptive strikes against
suspected attackers -- or at least hit back?
Gen. Michael Hayden, principal at security consultancy The Chertoff Group, and former director
of the NSA and the CIA, says the cybersecurity problem can be understood through the classic risk
equation: Risk (R) = threat (T) x vulnerability (V) x consequences (C). "If I can drive any factor
down to zero, the risk goes down to zero," he says. So far, most efforts have focused on reducing
V, and there's been a shift toward C, with the goal of determining how to rapidly detect an attack,
contain the damage and stay online. "But we are only now beginning to wonder, how do I push T down?
How do I reduce the threat?" Hayden says. "Do I shoot back?"
The DOD is contemplating the merits of "cross-domain" responses, says James Lewis, senior fellow
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We might respond with a missile. That increases
the uncertainty for opponents."
Ultimately, countries that launch such attacks will pay a price, says Howard Schmidt,
former cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to the president.
--[Does this possibility includes the USA and Israel? -- NNB] The
U.S. response could involve economic sanctions -- or it could involve the use of military power.
Most experts agree that critical infrastructure providers have a long
way to go. Melissa Hathaway, president of Hathaway Global Strategies, was the Obama administration's
acting senior director for cyberspace in 2009. That year, she issued a
Cyberspace Policy Review report that included recommendations for better protecting critical
infrastructure, but there hasn't been much movement toward implementing those recommendations, she
says. A draft National Cyber Incident Response plan has been published, but a national-level exercise,
conducted in June, showed that the plan was insufficient to protect critical infrastructure.
"A lot of critical infrastructure is not even protected from basic hacking.
I don't think the industry has done enough to address the risk, and they're looking for the government
to somehow offset their costs," Hathaway says. There is, however, a broad recognition that critical
infrastructure is vulnerable and that something needs to be done about it.
The Department of Defense has a direct stake in the security of the country's
critical infrastructure because the military depends on it. "The Defense Science Board Task Force
did a review of DOD reliance on critical infrastructure and found that an astute opponent could attack
and harm the DOD's capabilities," says James Lewis, a senior fellow specializing in cybersecurity
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
At a forum in July, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander was asked to rate
the state of U.S. preparedness for an attack on critical infrastructure on a scale of 1 to 10. He
responded, "I would say around a 3." The reasons include the inability to rapidly detect and respond
to attacks, a lack of cybersecurity standards and a general unwillingness by both private companies
and government agencies to share detailed information about threats and attacks. The DOD and intelligence
agencies don't share information because they tend to overclassify it, says Hayden. And critical
infrastructure providers prefer to keep things to themselves because they don't want to expose customer
data and they're concerned about the liability issues that could arise and the damage their reputations
could suffer if news of an attack were widely reported.
"The rules of the game are a little fuzzy on what you can and cannot
share," says Edward Amoroso, chief security officer and a senior vice president at AT&T, noting that
his biggest concern is the
threat of a large-scale DDoS attack that could take down the Internet's backbone. "I need attorneys,
and I need to exercise real care when interacting with the government," he says.
In some cases, critical infrastructure providers are damned if they do
share information and damned if they don't. "If the government provides a signature to us, some policy
observers would say that we're operating on behalf of that government agency," he says. All parties
agree that, in a crisis, everyone should be able to share information in real time. "But talk to
five different people and you'll get five different opinions about what is OK," says Amoroso. Unfortunately,
government policy initiatives intended to resolve the issue, such as the Cybersecurity Act, have
failed to move forward.
"It was disappointing for us that this nonpartisan issue became so contentious,"
says Weatherford. The lack of progress by policymakers is a problem for the DHS and the effectiveness
of its National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC). The center, which is
open around the clock, was designed to be the nexus for information sharing between private-sector
critical infrastructure providers -- and the one place to call when there's a problem. "I want NCCIC
to be the '911' of cybersecurity," he says. "We may not have all the answers or all the right people,
but we know where they are."
Meanwhile, both the number of attacks and their level of sophistication
have been on the rise. Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer at security consultancy Mandiant,
says electric utilities and other businesses are under constant assault by foreign governments. "We
estimate that 30% to 40% of the Fortune 500 have an active Chinese or Russian intrusion problem right
now," he says. However, he adds, "I think the threat in that area is exaggerated," because the goal
of such attacks is to steal intellectual property, not destroy infrastructure. (Read our
timeline of critical infrastructure
attacks over the years.)
Others disagree. "We've seen a new expertise developing around industrial
control systems. We're seeing a ton of people and groups committed to the very technical aspects
of these systems," says Howard Schmidt, who served as cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant
to the president until last May and is now an independent consultant.
"People are too quick to dismiss the link between intellectual property
loss through cyber intrusions and attacks against infrastructure," says Kurtz. "Spear phishing events
can lead to the exfiltration of intellectual property, and that can have a spillover effect into
critical infrastructure control system environments."
Hacking on the Rise
Cyberattackers fall into three primary categories: criminal organizations interested in stealing
for monetary gain, hacktivists bent on furthering their own agendas, and foreign governments, or
their agents, aiming to steal information or lay the groundwork for later attacks.
The Chinese are the most persistent, with several tiers of groups participating, says Richard
Bejtlich, chief security officer at security consultancy Mandiant. Below official state-sponsored
attacks are breaches by state militias, quasi-military and quasi-government organizations, and what
he calls "patriotic hackers."
"It's almost a career path," says Bejtlich.
There's disagreement on which groups are the most sophisticated or dangerous, but that's not what
matters. What matters is that the universe of attackers is expanding and they have ready access to
an ever-growing wealth of knowledge about hacking, along with black hat tools helpful in launching
attacks. "Over the next five years, low-level actors will get more sophisticated and the Internet
[will expand] into areas of the Third World where the rule of law is weaker," says Gen. Michael Hayden,
principal at security consultancy The Chertoff Group. "The part of the world responsible for criminal
groups such as the Somali pirates is going to get wired."
Spear phishing attacks, sometimes called advanced targeted threats or advanced persistent threats,
are efforts to break into an organization's systems by targeting specific people and trying, for
example, to get them to open infected email messages that look like they were sent by friends. Such
attacks have been particularly difficult to defend against.
Then there's the issue of
zero-day attacks. While software and systems vendors have released thousands of vulnerability
patches over the past 10 years, Amoroso says, "I wouldn't be surprised if there are thousands of
zero-day vulnerabilities that go unreported." And while hacktivists may brag about uncovering vulnerabilities,
criminal organizations and foreign governments prefer to keep that information to themselves. "The
nation-state-sponsored attack includes not only the intellectual property piece but the ability to
pre-position something when you want to be disruptive during a conflict," Schmidt says.
Usually in espionage it's much easier to steal intelligence than it is to do physical harm. That's
not true in the cyber domain, says Hayden. "If you penetrate a network for espionage purposes, you've
already got everything you'll want for destruction," he says.
On the other hand, while it's impossible for a private company to defend itself from physical
warfare, that's not true when it comes to cyberattacks. Every attack exploits a weakness. "By closing
that vulnerability, you stop the teenage kid, the criminal and the cyberwarrior," says Pescatore.
Control Anxiety
Computerized control systems are a potential problem area because the same systems are in use
across many different types of critical infrastructure. "Where you used to turn dials or throw a
switch, all of that is done electronically now," Schmidt says.
In addition, many industrial control systems that used to be "air-gapped" from the Internet are
now connected to corporate networks for business reasons. "We've seen spreadsheets with thousands
of control system components that are directly connected to the Internet. Some of those components
contain known vulnerabilities that are readily exploitable without much sophistication," says Marty
Edwards, director of control systems security at the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response
Team (ICS-CERT) at the DHS. The organization, with a staff that's grown tenfold to 400 in the past
four years, offers
control system security standards, shares threat data with critical infrastructure providers
and has a rapid response team of "cyberninjas," high-level control systems engineers and cybersecurity
analysts who can be deployed at a moment's notice.
Last year, ICS-CERT issued 5,200 alerts and advisories to private industry and government. "[Edwards]
had teams fly out seven times last year to help businesses respond to events that either took them
offline or severely impacted operations," says Weatherford, who declined to provide details on the
nature of those events.
Control systems also suffer from another major weakness: They're usually relatively old and can't
easily be patched. "A lot of them were never designed to operate in a network environment, and they
aren't designed to take upgrades," Schmidt says. "Its firmware is soldered onto the device, and the
only way to fix it is to replace it." Since the systems were designed to last 10 to 20 years, organizations
need to build protections around them until they can be replaced. In other cases, updates can be
made, but operators have to wait for the service providers who maintain the equipment to do the patching.
So where should the industry go from here?
The place to start is with better standards and best practices, real-time detection and containment,
and faster and more detailed information sharing both among critical infrastructure providers and
with all branches of government.
Telecoms Deal With Escalating DDoS Threat
Electric grid operators worry about compromised computerized industrial control systems taking
them offline. Telecommunications companies worry that a large-scale distributed denial-of-service
(DDoS) attack will take out another type of critical infrastructure: the Internet.
Until 2009 or so, AT&T might have seen one major DDoS attack a year, says Edward Amoroso, chief
security officer and a senior vice president at the telecommunications giant. Today, Tier 1 Internet
service providers find themselves fending off a few dozen attacks at any given moment. "It used to
be two guys bailing out the ship. Now we have 40, 50 or 60 people dumping the water out all the time,"
he says. In fact, attacks have been scaling up to the point where Amoroso says he worries they could
potentially flood backbone networks, taking portions of the Internet offline.
It would take just 64,000 PCs infected with a virus similar to Conficker to spew out about 10Gbps
of traffic, he says. "Multiply that by four, and you've got 40Gbps, which is the size of most backbones,"
says Amoroso.
AT&T hasn't yet seen an attack generate enough traffic to flood a backbone, but it may just be
a matter of time. "So far no one has pushed that button," he says. "But we need to be prepared."
Telecommunications providers must constantly scramble and innovate to keep ahead. They devise
new defense techniques, then those techniques become popular and adversaries figure out new ways
to defeat them. "We're going to have to change the mechanisms we now use to stop DDoS [attacks],"
he says.
While some progress has been made with standards at both the DHS and industry
groups such as the NERC, some argue that government procurement policy could be used to drive higher
security standards from manufacturers of hardware and software used to operate critical infrastructure.
Today, no such policy exists across all government agencies.
"Government would be better off using its buying power to drive higher
levels of security than trying to legislate higher levels of security," argues Pescatore. But the
federal government doesn't require suppliers to meet a consistent set of security standards across
all agencies.
Even basic changes in contract terms would help, says Schmidt. "There's
a belief held by me and others in the West Wing that there's nothing to preclude one from writing
a contract today that says if you are providing IT services to the government you must have state-of-the-art
cybersecurity protections in place. You must have mechanisms in place to notify the government of
any intrusions, and you must have the ability to disconnect networks," he says.
But government procurement policy's influence on standards can go only
so far. "The government isn't buying turbines" and control systems for critical infrastructure, says
Lewis.
When it comes to shutting down attacks, faster reaction times are key,
says Bejtlich. "Attackers are always going to find a way in, so you need to have skilled people who
can conduct rapid and accurate detection and containment," he says. For high-end threats, he adds,
that's the only effective countermeasure. Analysts need high visibility into the host systems, Bejtlich
says, and the network and containment should be achieved within one hour of intrusion.
Opening the Kimono
Perhaps the toughest challenge will be creating the policies and fostering
the trust required to encourage government and private industry to share what they know more openly.
The government not only needs to pass legislation that provides the incentives and protections that
critical infrastructure businesses need to share information on cyberthreats, but it also needs to
push the law enforcement, military and intelligence communities to open up. For example, if the DOD
is planning a cyberattack abroad against a type of critical infrastructure that's also used in the
U.S., should information on the weakness being exploited be shared with U.S. companies so they can
defend against counterattacks?
"There is a need for American industry to be plugged into some of the
most secretive elements of the U.S. government -- people who can advise them in a realistic way of
what it is that they need to be concerned about," says Hayden. Risks must be taken on both sides
so everyone has a consistent view of the threats and what's going on out there.
One way to do that is to share some classified information with selected
representatives from private industry. The House of Representatives recently passed an intelligence
bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which would give security clearance to officials
of critical industry operators. But the bill has been
widely criticized by privacy groups, which say it's too broad. Given the current political climate,
Hayden says he expects the bill to die in the Senate.
Information sharing helps, and standards form a baseline for protection,
but ultimately, every critical infrastructure provider must customize and differentiate its security
strategy, Amoroso says. "Right now, every business has exactly the same cybersecurity defense, usually
dictated by some auditor," he says. But as in football, you can't win using just the standard defense.
A good offense will find a way around it. "You've got to mix it up," Amoroso says. "You don't tell
the other guys what you're doing."
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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Senator
Johnson: "...but those tabulators are connected on Election Day 'cause that's how they transmit
the data to the counties and also into the official -- uhm --" Krebs: "In some cases, yes,
sir."
teutonicate 3 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Cheryl Danver Squarepeg
Roundhole •
a day ago
Vladimir Anikeyev /
Photo: anikeevv/vk.com
Not long after Gerasimov's resignation at the end of January, reports emerged from numerous
Kremlin-linked media outlets in what appeared to be a coordinated flood of information and
disinformation about the arrests of senior TsIB officers. One of the cyber unit's operational
directors, Sergei Mikhailov, was arrested toward the end of last year along with his deputy,
Dmitri Dokuchaev, and charged with treason. Also arrested around the same time was Ruslan
Stoyanov, the chief investigator for Kaspersky Lab, which is the primary cybersecurity
contractor for the TsIB. There is much conjecture, but Mikhailov was apparently forcibly
removed from a meeting with fellow FSB officers -- escorted out with a bag over his head, so
the story goes -- and arrested. This is thought to have taken place some time around Dec. 5.
His deputy, a well-respected computer hacker recruited by the FSB, was reportedly last seen in
November. Kaspersky Lab's Stoyanov was a career cybersecurity professional, previously working
for the Indrik computer crime investigation firm and the Interior Ministry's computer crime
unit. Novaya Gazeta, a Kremlin-linked media outlet, reported that two other unnamed FSB
computer security officers were also detained. Theories, Accusations and Rumors
70mn cyberattacks,
mostly foreign, targeted Russia's critical infrastructure in 2016 – FSB
