Ballot Boxes 2020!
AZ Maricopa County Reports Are In!
If you have been following along or not following along with the AZ Maricopa county audit here are the reports. You will find that ElectionCrisis authors were indeed correct on some of there findings as the Official Audit reports confirmed. Please take a few min to read the reports found here:
Official Audit Reports
https://www.azsenaterepublicans.com/audit
We The People AZ Alliance Report
https://www.scribd.com/document/527239370/IGA-Report-by-We-The-People-AZ-Alliance
ElectionCrisis Past Reports
“For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever” - When your vote no longer matters. Ultimate power is evil opporating in the daylight.
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When policy enforcement is lax, the mice will play..
Will these two end up getting equal treatment?
Since many industrial systems are cut off from the internet, external devices like USB drives can provide hackers with a foothold into sensitive networks.
"Since many industrial systems are cut off from the internet, external devices like USB drives can provide hackers with a foothold into sensitive networks. USB drives have been known to carry infamous malware strains including Stuxnet and WannaCry."
Election systems with "closed networks?" No, no TOTALLY SECURE GUYS! MOST SECURE USB STICKS EVER! Did Chris Krebs say that?
With all the focus on Dominion, poll pads are escaping scrutiny.
Digital Poll Book Failures Slowed Voting in Several States
Technical issues with the electronic poll books used to check voters in forced at least one polling place to abandon the technology for a traditional paper record. The delays also meant extended voting hours at some polls.
Voters in parts of Georgia, Ohio and Texas all experienced various levels of system disruption with their ePollbooks provided by the vendor, KnowInk. In Nevada, voters in some Clark County precincts had to wait for their digital poll books to access their voter records before polls could open.
Hacked poll books or the networks they use can allow for infinite voting. One could theoretically make a day of voting or heck these days make a month of it. One could switch parties or mark voters as already voted suppressing opposition. Their network, when looked at using a tool called Virus Total, displays a long history of breaches.
Electronic Voting Machines: A great idea?
52% of U.S. Voters had concerns about the 2020 elections before November 3.
The time to secure America’s elections is now: a January 2020 survey found 41 percent of those surveyed believed the U.S. is not very prepared or not prepared at all to keep the upcoming election safe and secure; 37 percent stated it was likely or very likely that a foreign country would tamper with votes cast to change the results, 44 percent believed it was likely many votes would not be counted, and 52 percent believed it was likely there would be voter fraud.
Prior to the election in 2020 the Global Blockchain Business Council conducted a review of the current state of elections and the idea of remote voting.
It is imperative that cybersecurity protocols are the primary concern of election officials. Where these protocols can't be implemented due to budget constraints, it may not be wise to use these electronic voting systems with so much at stake.
Election Crisis
Why are elections in crisis? Election equipment is often vulnerable to a variety of attack vectors. Election equipment can be compromised from within known as insider threat and can be attacked from the outside by hacktivists or from nation-states. Often these systems are "protected" by a closed network. Closed networks often introduce new problems with vulnerabilities that go unpatched, a false sense of security, and poor adherence to policies.
Small counties rarely have a robust enough budget to secure networks of traditional municipal systems such as schools, fire departments, and law enforcement. Municipalities are often in the news as victims of some new ransom attack. These organizations face few if any repercussions for failure to protect these systems. These are usually not nation-state backed groups, but opportunists. Counties then face a larger threat against far more skilled attackers who may have the funding and skills to go undetected at election time. Local governments handling elections is like giving your drunk friend the keys to your brand new car.
When we add the extra layer of mail-in ballots that face little if any oversight, we have an election system that is in crisis. When politicians and partisans have complete control over voting they no longer have to listen to your voice. Regardless of your political views, you are under control of a deeply flawed system.
Maricopa County’s “Broken Windows”
The broken windows theory states that visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment encourage further disorder and misbehavior, leading to serious crimes. The principle was developed to explain the decay of neighborhoods, but it is often applied to work and educational environments. The “broken windows” metaphor applies to the Maricopa County Tabulation Center. Before we explore that, let’s better understand the “broken windows” theory.
The broken windows theory, defined in 1982, by social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling, drawing on earlier research by Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo, argues that no matter how rich or poor a neighborhood, one broken window would soon lead to many more windows being broken: “One unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.” Disorder increases levels of fear among citizens, which leads them to withdraw from the community and decrease participation in informal social control.
With regard to information technology (IT), when users are permitted to be lax with enforcement of policies and procedure a “broken window” scenario ensues. It communicates to staff that security is not taken seriously. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issues a baseline of policies that any government agency is tasked with complying. Maricopa County appears to have challenges adhering to NIST policies.
To illustrate with the Maricopa County Tabulation Center:
- Tabulation Center appears to be treated like a common area where mobile use is not discouraged.
- Doors are left open, and visitors freely walk in and out.
- Items in tabulation center are often left unattended and in plain sight.
- During the V&V audit a highly partisan group (League of Women Voters) was brought in to run the tabulation and accuracy test. A crowd of people was allowed around the systems with minimal oversight.
- Several instances were observed where individuals were left alone around equipment.
- USB flash drives were used with minimal safeguards.
- Maricopa County does not retain network traffic logs or archive server/system logs.
- Internet access on systems has been hidden from the public.
- Wireless cards were included with systems and are not identified and audited. In fact, no mention of these cards we had to pull serial numbers and match them to Dell’s warranty website.
- A camera monitoring the Maricopa County Tabulation Center is not a detective control unless motion in a certain area trips an alarm or systems monitored 24/7 by someone who knows and is prepared to enforce policy.
- Vulnerability tests were not performed with audits on the “closed network” and main networks.
- The auditors hired by Maricopa County conducted no tests on adherence to policies/procedures.
- Maricopa County kept the audit scope very limited and drew broad conclusions to create a public relations news cycle to infer the 2020 elections cycle was conducted securely.
- Maricopa County had a videographer film the audit teams following security policy guidelines to showcase to the public that they are seemingly complying with NIST-prescribed security guidelines.