Moscow Mitch's refusal to act on election security leaves states vulnerable to scams

[reagansghost]

Earlier this week, a report from a purported security company called NormShield made big news. It asserted that it had examined all 50 states' elections systems and that more than half had received "a grade C or below." The alarm bells rang all over the national media. The problem is, ProPublica reveals, that the report was a scam. NormShield is capitalizing on the fear of another hacked election and the vacuum of action by government, thanks to Moscow Mitch McConnell's refusal to address election security.

In July, the company sent out a mass email to states, informing them of its pending public release of a "risk scorecard" it had compiled from an analysis of their internet-connected elections systems. It was offering states the opportunity to get their scorecards in advance for "a joint marketing and public service project." Some states ignored it as either a scam or a come-on marketing pitch. Others followed up and found out the company's "analysis" was useless, error-ridden, and sometimes not even related to elections. "In Idaho, for example, the company examined the security of the Department of Environmental Quality, but not the state’s online voter registration system," ProPublica reports. "In Oklahoma, of 200 IP addresses scanned, none were related to elections. In Vermont, the scan had been performed on a defunct domain."

Despite this—and these states and other groups gave this feedback to NormShield—the company released the scorecard and caused an uproar, which ultimately plays into exactly what Russia wanted to do with its interference: raise questions within the electorate about the integrity of our elections. And they're doing it for profit. "There is a lot of work to do to better secure election technology, and states are looking for help," David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, told ProPublica. "But profiteering only serves to further diminish voter confidence, which is exactly what our adversaries want."
The states are looking for help, and it could come from a $600 million boost to cybersecurity efforts passed by the House, which McConnell has blocked from coming to the floor. He says that we've already done enough to prevent Russian interference and that the fact that the money comes with some baseline cybersecurity requirements states would have to meet threatens states' autonomy in running elections. But those requirements would also crowd out scammers such as NormShield. As it is, "Election officials now need to spend time they don't have responding to these poorly vetted claims," said Ben Adida, the CEO of VotingWorks, a nonprofit building secure and affordable voting machines.

So NormShield is free to keep operating and absolutely intends to do so. It will be issuing more scorecards publicly, it tells ProPublica, and even though states now
know the company's work has been bogus, it’ll have to be addressed. Jim Condos, the Vermont secretary of state, who has contracted with real security companies to assess the state's system, says that the situation is ripe for this kind of exploitation, noting, "It appears to me to be an attempt to create hysteria in the public to sell their product."

All the while, Moscow Mitch is making sure states are vulnerable both to election hacking and to being scammed.


~ @joanmccarter on Twitter

[reagansghost]

and...………………….Air Force says Trump's border wall money grab will endanger national security


Donald Trump’s border wall money grab from military construction projects is endangering schools on military bases, a power substation in Puerto Rico, and national security. NBC News has obtained an Air Force report on the risks coming from delaying 51 projects around the world, and the details are scary.

Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska could be rendered completely unusable by a boiler failure that would force an evacuation and leave the base frozen and damaged.

Guam was supposed to get a facility to store more than $1 billion in munitions. Now those munitions won’t get their storage facility, which is … one way to disarm the U.S. military, I guess?

“If not funded,” the main gate at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, which indeed will not be funded thanks to Trump’s wall, “remains vulnerable to hostile penetration in the midst of contingency operations and an increased terrorist threat.”

This part is interesting, too: “One of the major areas affected were military construction projects supporting the European Defense Initiative (EDI), a program intended to increase U.S. military presence in Europe to deter Russian aggression. In some cases, without the construction projects, the bases identified as part of EDI cannot support the deployment of US airmen or assets.”.....................

Read more: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...ional-security

[reagansghost]

Trump's Acting National Security Adviser Said Nuclear War With USSR Was Winnable

…….acting national security adviser, former Reagan administration official Charles Kupperman, made an extraordinary and controversial claim in the early 1980s: nuclear conflict with the USSR was winnable and that “nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.”

Kupperman’s suggestion that the U.S. could triumph in a nuclear war went against dominant theories of mutually assured destruction and ignored the long-term destabilizing effects that such hostilities would have on the planet’s health and global politics.


Kupperman, appointed to his new post on Tuesday after Trump fired his John Bolton from the job, argued it was possible to win a nuclear war “in the classical sense,” and that the notion of total destruction stemming from such a superpower conflict was inaccurate. He said that in a scenario in which 20 million people died in the U.S. as opposed to 150 million, the nation could then emerge as the stronger side and prevail in its objectives.



Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/charl...b03b5fc88212fd


Trump only hires 'the best people' lol