Russians penetrated U.S. voter registration rolls in some states, says top U.S. official - Polidicks

[url]https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians-penetrated-u-s-voter-systems-says-top-u-s-n845721[/url] [quote]The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election. In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn't talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, "We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated." Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russian intrusions, said, "2016 was a wake-up call and now it's incumbent upon states and the Feds to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again."[/quote] I never really thought about this but this is a pretty unusual situation where the federal government is going to have to give highly classified foreign intelligence out to state governments to allow them to fix their systems [quote]Many of the states complained the federal government did not provide specific threat details, saying that information was classified and state officials did not have proper clearances. Manfra told us those clearances are now being processed Other states that NBC contacted said they were still waiting for cybersecurity help from the federal government. Manfra said there was no waiting list and that DHS will get to everyone.[/quote]

And I bet there's not a peep of this over at the_donald, or it's somehow Hillary's fault. I'm not even going to go look, I can already guess that the front page is probably dominated with shitposting about Pelosi's immigration fillibuster. If they penetrated electoral systems, that'd give them precise targets to select for, and specific swing districts if they penetrated them, for their targeted propaganda efforts. And if America leaves the door to its electoral records unlocked, they'll do it again this year and in 2020 and so on.

Was just about to post this. Prior to this revelation, it was thought that Russia had [B]not[/B] successfully gained access to voter rolls. This is significant, because if Russia [B]was[/B] able to penetrate the rolls, it [I]could[/I] have actually altered votes. This is not to say that votes [U]were[/U] altered, at least not on a significant enough scale to actually steal the election in and of itself, but it's something we need to be deeply concerned about both for the future of our democracy, and our current national security. Our president is refusing to enact sanctions on Russia for their attacks on our democracy, and we now know that their support of him as a candidate extended all the way up to, and including, attempts to directly changing votes. They are already launching attacks on the 2018 midterms, and Trump and the GOP are [U]allowing[/U] these attacks to continue because they find them politically beneficial.

[QUOTE=Dave_Parker;53115771]FBI texts between Strzok and Page being released* (no thread on Facepunch) [/QUOTE] So make a fuckin thread about it guy, this ain't t_d, you won't get banned for wrongthink.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;53115767]Was just about to post this. Prior to this revelation, it was thought that Russia had [B]not[/B] successfully gained access to voter rolls. This is significant, because if Russia [B]was[/B] able to penetrate the rolls, it [I]could[/I] have actually altered votes. This is not to say that votes [U]were[/U] altered, at least not on a significant enough scale to actually steal the election in and of itself, but it's something we need to be deeply concerned about both for the future of our democracy, and our current national security. Our president is refusing to enact sanctions on Russia for their attacks on our democracy, and we now know that their support of him as a candidate extended all the way up to, and including, attempts to directly changing votes. They are already launching attacks on the 2018 midterms, and Trump and the GOP are [U]allowing[/U] these attacks to continue because they find them politically beneficial.[/QUOTE] They might've had opportunity to change votes but I mean these are smart people. They have Cambridge Analytica's data. They know who is going to vote for what. They don't need to alter their vote -- all they have to do is just change some of their data. Typos; small changes to their address like an off-by-one house number or a different apartment unit. Their last name being mis-spelled slightly (Nicole becoming 'Neicole'), et cetera. These things are hard to call 'evidence of tampering' because they happen all the time -- and the parties don't want the federal government looking close at their databases anyway because they might see that the parties themselves might've been 'accidentally tampering' voter rolls themselves through 'innocent mistakes'. Votes being changed is hard to explain. Clerical errors that happen 'all the time' by parties that routinely cull huge numbers of voters across the country or 'mis-register them' can easily hide a few strategic changes here and there. With a roadmap for who they need to block from voting because they know their voter habits (thanks to Cambridge Analytica) all they need to do to change the outcome is to deregister a select few thousands of people in select parts of the country to 'gerrymander the election' from a popular win for Clinton into an electoral college win for Trump. If Russia did use that access to change the outcome of the election, they're smart enough to not touch the votes because they know hitting the registration rolls causes more chaos and would be much harder to track given how poorly those registration databases are curated and how often they're manipulated for political gain at the same time. Edit: More egregiously, if they used their database for their entire system's configuration there might not even [I]be[/I] records whenever a registration is changed and by whom. If they had direct database access they wouldn't necessarily leave the timestamps that going 'through the intended software' would even plausibly do. They could just change the last entry's update to be whatever they wanted to enter.

if only we had done something about ooh 18 months ago, too bad mid terms are already starting!

[QUOTE=Sableye;53115816]if only we had done something about ooh 18 months ago, too bad mid terms are already starting![/QUOTE] They'll be back, and in greater numbers

[QUOTE=Bob The Knob;53115826]They'll be back, and in greater numbers[/QUOTE] Why wouldn't they? What exactly were the consequences of them having done so? We certainly didn't punish them in any appreciable way. Or, well, we did and were going to until Trump decided that 'basically nothing was enough a punishment'.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;53115767] Our president is refusing to enact sanctions on Russia for their attacks on our democracy, and we now know that their support of him as a candidate extended all the way up to, and including, attempts to directly changing votes. They are already launching attacks on the 2018 midterms, and Trump and the GOP are [U]allowing[/U] these attacks to continue because they find them politically beneficial.[/QUOTE] Trump's Secretary of State and head of the CIA both agree Russia is planning to interfere in the midterms. These are two Trump appointees both saying this is a problem. Congress realized it was a problem when they authorized sanctions against Russia with 99% support. Why won't Trump enact them?

[QUOTE=Raidyr;53115848]Trump's Secretary of State and head of the CIA both agree Russia is planning to interfere in the midterms. These are two Trump appointees both saying this is a problem. Congress realized it was a problem when they authorized sanctions against Russia with 99% support. Why won't Trump enact them?[/QUOTE] Well, because Trump says that Russia never did anything. He keeps asking Putin and Putin keeps telling him he didn't do it. So that means Russia didn't do anything and if the President doesn't think Russia did anything then so goes the Congress. Why does Trump need to enact those sanctions when Russia did nothing wrong? (this is all sarcasm, except for the part where Trump says he asked Putin and Putin said he didn't do it and he trusts his opinion more than the intelligence community)

[QUOTE=Raidyr;53115848]Trump's Secretary of State and head of the CIA both agree Russia is planning to interfere in the midterms. These are two Trump appointees both saying this is a problem. Congress realized it was a problem when they authorized sanctions against Russia with 99% support. Why won't Trump enact them?[/QUOTE] It's a good question. Another good question is: why is congress, with 99% support for Russian sanctions from both parties for their attacks against our sovereignty, not demanding he enact them? Trump is not exercising any constitutional authority here -- he is acting in open and hostile opposition to Congress without the legal basis to do so. The Dems have been pretty straightforward about their disgust and outrage with this: why haven't the Republicans? Where is Paul Ryan's challenge of this? The GOP has been curiously silent on this matter. They are [I]allowing[/I] Trump to get away with this. They should not be.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;53115908]It's a good question. Another good question is: why is congress, with 99% support of both parties, not demanding he enact them? Trump is not exercising any constitutional authority here -- he is acting in open and hostile opposition to Congress. The Dems have been pretty straightforward about their disgust and outrage with this: why haven't the Republicans? Where is Paul Ryan's challenge of this? The GOP has been curiously silent on this matter. They are [I]allowing[/I] Trump to get away with this. They should not be.[/QUOTE] Because I doubt the gop base really follows them anymore but instead trump, all it takes is one tweet and the forces of the_donald and /pol/ will set out to call any gop congressman who goes against trump a "rino" and a traitor and un-american. The gop really has opened pandora's box in regards to trump, he is now probably the face of the party and future gop candidates will probably not galvanize the base as well has trump has.

[QUOTE=Dave_Parker;53115771]FBI texts between Strzok and Page being released* (no thread on Facepunch) [/QUOTE] Uhh you do know you could post a thread on it if you'd like instead of throwing around pseudo-whataboutism here in this thread? That's literally the core feature of this forum community, and more specifically the news subsections, we're all allowed to contribute to it so long as our sources/thread content aren't tabloid tier arse.

Regarding that, [URL="https://www.wsj.com/articles/texts-from-2016-show-fbi-employees-preparing-obama-briefing-on-russia-1518036629"]the WSJ is reporting that said "bombshell" Strzok/Page texts are about the Russia probe, not Clinton.[/URL] (paywall, rip, [URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/02/07/trumps-latest-peter-strzok-bombshell-is-just-as-dubious-as-its-predecessors/"]referenced in this analysis article by WaPo[/URL]) Fox/the alt-right's allegation is that a phrase saying that President Obama "wants to know everything we’re doing" referred to the Clinton email investigation, which would imply conflicts of interest and potential corruption. But it's about Russian attempts to interfere with US democracy and media, which is a very logical investigation for the President, Obama or not, to be interested in. Another swing and a miss - unless you live inside the echo chamber in which case it's the new forced meme for the next 1-14 days. Also, I don't think Dave_Parker was trying to argue with me in any capacity so much as inform me what the_donald is up to, since my post speculated on what was dominating their front page.

[QUOTE=Dave_Parker;53115771]FBI texts between Strzok and Page being released* (no thread on Facepunch)[/quote] So post a thread about it? The only reason nobody here posts it is because nobody gives a shit about the non-story of two FBI agents disliking Trump. [QUOTE=Dave_Parker;53115771]At least that's good. Governments in general should really be a LOT better with infosec.[/QUOTE] I honestly don't know if I believe them. First it was Russia didn't attack us, then Russia did attack us but didn't penetrate our systems, now it's they penetrated our systems but didn't change anything.. Says who? Remember election day, when people in a ton of states like Pennsylvania and Ohio showed up to vote and mysteriously were no longer registered? Here in Arizona it was huge news and I personally knew a ton of people who were affected by it. Something tells me this is just the government trying to downplay how badly Russia fucked us and refuse to admit that they [I]did[/I] alter voter rolls and directly influence the election, beyond just mass propaganda and leaks.