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October 30, 2024 12:59 AM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 26 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.”

–Ulysses S. Grant

Comments

26 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread

  1. Will be interesting to see how ya’ll react to the latest dust-up in the CO Secretary of State’s office. In an interview broadcast last evening on 9News, Kyle Clark asked Sec. Griswold if she would resign. She said no, but also appeared to sidestep the issues. FWIW, I think the CO election system works well. But there are appearances to be considered as well as “unforced errors.”

      1. It was someone's oversight — the posted spreadsheet had hidden columns that could be revealed, including some passwords.  However, as explained in today's Denver Post, the affected systems, like our nuclear subs, require two independent passwords held by two different persons, both in physical proximity to the election equipment to allow access.

        Can't be hacked unless you possess both passwords and are next to the election equipment.

        Tina Peters tried it, and see where it got her.

        The news release stated that all election equipment has two unique passwords kept by separate individuals and the passwords can only be used with in-person access to the equipment. Under Colorado law, voting equipment must also be stored in secure rooms that require ID badges to access, and it is subject to 24/7 video surveillance.

        The news release also noted that all Colorado votes are cast on paper ballots, and a post-election audit of the ballots ensures they were cast appropriately.

    1. The story is basically "Key to car left overnight in car!… Could have been stolen!" Then body of the article "while the car was untouched according to ring video it's important to harp on it over and over to build contempt in your spouse." 

      There were fail-safes in place. This continues to prove Colorado has the safest and most trustworthy of election systems 

      1. sure, it continues to prove it. But what a major F-up, especially on the heels of the Tina Peters conviction and the claims that SoS employees made about the seriousness of revealing the passwords.

        1. Is it? You can audit all the machines just by running through a sample ballot set? Maybe it's an age thing after years of dealing with personal data breaches by corporate entities I'm better able to weight the dangers. I'm sure you'll mature over years of news articles screaming your social security number leaked. 

          1. OK no need for the personal attack; I've matured just fine, thank you. I think you are missing my point here. Whether or not you who have become numb to personal data breaches, this is profoundly bad optics, especially on the heels of the Tina Peters case, where quite a big deal was made about the release of these same passwords. 

            1. Oh no bad optics. Maybe after you crucified her your vision will clear up. There are plenty of safeguards except for panic nothing is safe when you panic. So we have a situation where you admit there is limited threat but still it’s a BIG deal because… PANIC. You’ll have plenty of time to scapegoat her.

              1. Jesus, man. Relax. Where did I try to crucify or scapegoat anyone? All I'm saying is that the timing and the subject of the issue is terrible given the emphasis on the value and import of these passwords expressed in the Peters trial. It's a big deal because it would be a whole lot better if we didn't have to explain away why it's totally fine that the same passwords that were a BIG DEAL a month ago are not a big deal now. 

                1. I don’t think if you ask 10 people off the street any one of them would bring up passwords to describe why Tina Peters is in prison. It’s not a big deal, there are safeguards in place, easily auditable. It’s big news because the threat is as dangerous as a fart but it’s close to the election and what a story “DEADLY FARTS!”. 

            2. Tina Peters’ crimes were discovered when the passwords were in a Powerpoint show & tell and were out on the ‘net. 

              The crimes charged explicitly did NOT rely on the password revelation — but on the methods of getting to the machines to take a complete image of a hard drive, including the proprietary software and some passwords used in the previous election. 

              If the less-than-secure list of passwords is a major issue, I suspect other computer hacks would also have become major issues.  Anyone here remember

              • Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing (HCPF) has suffered a MOVEit data breach impacting 4 million individuals. HCPF oversees Health First Colorado (Medicaid), Child Health Plan Plus (CHP ), and other state healthcare programs” … “Files containing names, Social Security numbers and medical information were accessed by an unauthorized actor in late May.”
              • 2023 /// On Aug. 4, the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) learned that an authorized actor had accessed its systems in a ransomware incident that took place between June 11 and 19. The unknown gang copied private and sensitive data including, but not limited to, names, Social Security numbers, and student identification numbers.
              • 2021 .. “The University of Colorado experienced a cyberattack on a vulnerability in software provided by third-party vendor Accellion, which alerted the university in late January. CU is one of many Accellion customers that were affected by the attack. We believe personally identifiable information from students, employees and others may have been compromised.”
              • September 10, 2024  “a county employee, allegedly repeatedly hacked into a multitude of county computers, installed sophisticated “mirroring” software on them, and accessed via the spyware and possibly other methods (including flash drives) unknown amounts of confidential and extremely sensitive Custer County data (including emails). It is alleged that this has been going on for years!”
    2. It is both serious and concerning.  But I don't think resignation is necessary or wise, particularly right now as the SOS needs to focus on the election at hand.  That said, there should be an external audit to shore up the system, reduncies, and security.  That should be an ongoing process regardless of errors.  I was disappointed that Kyle seemed to push on resignation.  It's more important to shore up the system and fix the problems than focus on the politcial consequences for the officeholder. 

      1. Is it concerning or did you just need a second word? Is it really concerning that a simple sample ballot set would verify any tampering. So since the threat is exceedingly low why is it concerning other than a panicky overreaction? 

  2. There is also the printing error that has rendered ballots from Moffat, Huerfano, and Las Animas counties unscannable. Griswold is not personally responsible, but to paraphrase Harry Truman: “the buck stops at her desk.” This is an example of an “unforced error” that makes the operation look bad; appearances; even if overall it works well.

        1. I'd say "Mean Girls" behavior.

          Thug is derived from the British Raj propaganda of a criminal cult worshipping Kali which would later serve as the basis of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. These people are more dramatic with out the colorfulness or flare expressed by Indian culture nor the subtle insidious nature of British colonizers. 

          The show and movie "Mean Girls" more appropriately mirror the behavior of the social preening and emotional bullying steming from insecurity that Republicans have been displaying. 

  3. So, it turns out Jeff Bezos is willing to become a Trump-whore because transactional relationships are the stuff of business and autocrats.  This from Dana Milbank:

    I get the anger, and I share it. I helped organize the statement Post columnists published calling Bezos’s action “an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love.” Most of my colleagues, I’m sure, agree with our revered former editor, Marty Baron, who called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” It’s certainly the owner’s prerogative to adopt a general no-endorsement policy, and it might well have been reasonable if it had been done outside of the political cycle (such endorsements long ago stopped swaying voters), but coming 11 days before the election, it gave the appearance of cowering before a wannabe dictator to protect Bezos’s business interests — particularly because Donald Trump met with executives from Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, the same day.

     

    1. Yep … weird enough that it triggered massive subscription cancellations.  Mine is among them … I will maintain access until my subscription is up in 2025, but unless there is (at least) a management apology and a reinforcement of the firewalls between business, editorial control, and news, my cancellation will hold. 

      I quit the LA Times long ago; the NY Times in 2016 as it played games with coverage of Clinton; Denver Post when it was acquired by Alden and laid off so many in the newsroom; 2024 the Washington Post.  I'm contemplating a subscription to The Guardian — anyone have other recommendations?

  4. it's worthwhile remembering what Griswold's predecessors in the office did. Wayne Williams, for example, uncritically turned over all of Colorado's publicly available data to a bogus Trump election commission. Many states did not fully turn over everything requested by the commission, but Williams did. 

    And of course, Scott Gessler tried really hard to disenfranchise 30,000 voters based on their being "inactive". This disproportionately targeted working class voters who moved a lot. Had Williams or Gessler had this password exposure error happen under their watches, my guess is that Williams would have done whatever he needed to do to placate his party’s right wing fanatics. Gessler would've lied about it, blamed immigrants, and tried to monetize it somehow.

    Gessler also was a terrible administrator, busting the budget and trying to eliminate fee funding for election operations. I didn't see David T8 clutching his pearls and demanding that the Governor replace either of Griswold's predecessors.

    Griswold is a gigantic upgrade from those two 

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