Trump's official denouncement of former CISA director Chris Krebs (in the form of a "Presidential Memorandum") is chilling in substance and utterly Stalinesque in tone. By threatening anyone who hires him, it aims to render Krebs effectively unemployable.
I said it then, and I will repeat it now: There is simply no evidence that the 2020 election was "hacked". Krebs's forthright clarity about this in November, 2020 was a brave and important act of public service.
100% on all of this.
In addition, knowing that anyone who attempts to speak a cybersecurity truth that disagrees with the narrative being presented by the administration could be personally and professionally destroyed means that the only people willing to work in this space will be those who are willing to accept the narrative over those truths
This creates a situation where no narratives coming from government cybersecurity representatives can be trusted
What a frackin’ mess…
@mattblaze So weird to call yourself utterly disgusting for writing the thing you are writing
"... unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate. These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector ... to suppress ... dissenting voices and distort public opinion"
@mattblaze
Over on bluesky Judge Luttig wrote:
"The President’s unprecedented Executive Order yesterday targeting Messrs. Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor for nothing but the exercise of their First Amendment rights is the President’s most constitutionally corrupt Executive Order to date."
https://bsky.app/profile/judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lmhwiybck22k
He goes on to say, "The President obviously thinks the Supreme Court will ultimately side with him. It is just as obvious that it will not."
That last part seems optimistic
We are talking about 2020 election…
> you randomly select a sample of ballots (say, 10,000) and see if they agree with what the machines recorded.
That seems true, but is mistaken.
The machines do not record votes randomly, they are highly selective. By geography.
By carefully selecting which machines I use in the comparison I could prove anything
So you need to have a random selection of machines, too
I have done a lot of work in NZ on polling booths. Not random at all
@worik @mattblaze It is more complicated if you do *everything* by machine. It is simple if you use paper ballots to record the vote. Then you just have to make sure the tabulating machines are working reliably.
In California, we get paper ballots mailed to us. We can fill them out at home, mail them, leave them in a drop box, or go to a polling location. A ballot cannot be changed retroactively by some random guy with a computer and a network connection.
@mattblaze @worik I was giving a simple explanation of how you can validate a vote. The point was that the MAGA nonsense about rigged elections is just that - nonsense.
BTW, in California, we use paper ballots that are counted by machine. It is easy to manually check a small, random subset of those paper ballots and simply ask if what the machines recorded for each of the ballots in that subset matches the manual count.
We will soon move to the public self-criticism stage of this collective nightmare, a la China’s Cultural Revolution.
@mattblaze @xankarn If there is profit to be made from both they’ll do both.
He “joked” about a purge situation awhile back, except only the cops could purge.
@mattblaze Paul Krugman - an economist not a cybersecurity professional - raised concerns about the vulnerabilty of US electronic voting machines in a piece in the NYT, which I have in print if you want to read it (we have everything in print).
But nope, there's no evidence so far that the election was stolen in this manner.
Edit: I probably should have read the year in Matt's post. 😆
@ApostateEnglishman Yes, I am well aware that there are vulnerabilities in much of US election infrastructure, some of which could be exploited to alter an election outcome. That's a serious problem, and we should prioritize addressing it more than we have. I've personally testified before congress multiple times about this. There's no running away from this fact.
But there is no evidence any election outcome has been altered this way so far. We've been fortunate.
@ronnylam @AnnieG @mattblaze Which is why there's an edit to my post in this thread saying I should have checked the date!
But if the 2024 elections were rigged, Matt has the connections to have smelled the rat. No rat was smelled in his networks, so (for the time being at least) I'm gonna say there was no rat. 🤷♂️
@ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman @AnnieG While there are still vulnerabilities in much of US infrastructure (which is why we need risk limiting audits routinely done after every election), there's no evidence that the 2024 election outcome (or any other major US election outcome) has been altered this way.
That's not completely satisfying, but it's what we've got.
@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman Also, for the record, I don’t believe you are an actual authentic person. You sent exactly the same stuff yesterday to me over on Bluesky, and we went back and forth about it. And now you’re starting from scratch with the same thing here.
I’m only responding so that others won’t be taken in.
@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman As an academic who studies election security for a living, I would absolutely LOVE to find some real smoking gun in this data. It would be HUGE. I’d get fancy awards. They’d give me a slightly better office. I’d earn grudging, if fleeting, admiration from my peers.
But there’s just nothing there.
@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman And for the record, neither I nor anyone in the serious election security community has ever claimed that US elections are perfect or technically impenetrable. Quite the opposite. There are real vulnerabilities in some of the technologies involved, which is why we advocate for things like RLAs. It’s an important problem.
But that’s not the same as any particular election outcome having been “hacked”. Fortunately, there’s no evidence that’s happened.
@mattblaze @AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman oh wait I just reread the exchange and I think I missed the joke (“no PhD” students vs no “PhD students”). Unless it wasn't a joke but a misunderstanding (I was asking if you didn't have PhD students helping in your research).
EDIT: disregard this, I'm tired and confused.
@AnnieG @mattblaze @ronnylam One of Matt's endearing qualities is that he can get a tad grouchy when his (considerable) expertise is questioned, but having followed him for years, I can assure you there's not a bad bone in his body and he won't have intended any offense.
Quite the contrary, he invests a lot of time and energy into generously sharing his hard-won knowledge even when not being paid a dime for it.
A new audit of the November election won by President Donald Trump in swing-state Wisconsin has found that not a single vote was counted incorrectly, altered or missed by tabulating machines.
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The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉
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