Server from Run Off Election in Georgia wiped after Lawsuit Filed Against the Secretary of State

[HawgGoneIt]

I'm sure there is no wrong doing here. Probably nothing at all to see here either. Georgia Secretaries of state have been dirty for quite a while now. Pretty sick of this shit actually. 

 

https://apnews.com/877ee1015f1c43f1965f63538b035d3f/APNewsBreak:-Georgia-election-server-wiped-after-suit-filed

 

APNewsBreak: Georgia election server wiped after suit filed

A computer server crucial to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials was quietly wiped clean by its custodians just after the suit was filed, The Associated Press has learned.

The server’s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state’s election system. The data wipe was revealed in an email sent last week from an assistant state attorney general to plaintiffs in the case that was later obtained by the AP. More emails obtained in a public records request confirmed the wipe.

The lawsuit, filed July 3 by a diverse group of election reform advocates, aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily criticized election technology. The server in question, which served as a statewide staging location for key election-related data, made national headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed six months after he reported it to election authorities.

WIPED OUT

It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.

The Kennesaw elections center answers to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, a Republican running for governor in 2018 and the suit’s main defendant. His spokeswoman issued a statement Thursday saying his office had neither involvement nor advanced warning of the decision. It blamed “the undeniable ineptitude” at the Kennesaw State elections center.

In a statement Thursday, Kennesaw State said that after the FBI investigated and returned the server, it was flagged to be repurposed in a hardware upgrade at the elections center. That’s when the drives were wiped.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, mostly Georgia voters, want to scrap the state’s 15-year-old vote-management system — particularly its 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting machines, hackable devices that don’t use paper ballots or keep hardcopy proof of voter intent. The plaintiffs were counting on an independent security review of the Kennesaw server, which held elections staging data for counties, to demonstrate the system’s unreliability.

Wiping the server “forestalls any forensic investigation at all,” said Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist following the case. “People who have nothing to hide don’t behave this way.”

STATE SECURITY

The server data could have revealed whether Georgia’s most recent elections were compromised by hackers. The plaintiffs contend results of both last November’s election and a special June 20 congressional runoff— won by Kemp’s predecessor, Karen Handel — cannot be trusted.

Possible Russian interference in U.S. politics, including attempts to penetrate voting systems, has been an acute national preoccupation since the Obama administration sounded the alarm more than a year ago.

Kemp and his GOP allies insist Georgia’s elections system is secure. But Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a plaintiff, believes server data was erased precisely because the system isn’t secure.

“I don’t think you could find a voting systems expert who would think the deletion of the server data was anything less than insidious and highly suspicious,” she said.

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T

It could still be possible to recover relevant information from the server.

The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole. The Oct. 18 email disclosing the server wipe said the state attorney general’s office was “reaching out to the FBI to determine whether they still have the image” and also disclosed that two backup servers were wiped clean Aug. 9, just as the lawsuit moved to federal court.

On Wednesday, the attorney general’s office notified the court of its intent to subpoena the FBI seeking the image.

Atlanta FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett would not say if that image still exists. Nor would he say whether agents examined it to determine whether the server’s files might have been altered by unauthorized users.

FAILING TO SERVICE THE SERVER

A 180-page collection of Kennesaw State emails, obtained Friday by the Coalition for Good Governments via an open records search, details the destruction of the data on all three servers and a partial and ultimately ineffective effort by Kennesaw State systems engineers to fix the main server’s security hole.

As a result of the failed effort, sensitive data on Georgia’s 6.7 million voters — including Social Security numbers, party affiliation and birthdates — as well as passwords used by county officials to access elections management files remained exposed for months.

The problem was first discovered by Atlanta security researcher Logan Lamb while doing online research in August 2016. He informed the election center’s director at the time, noting in an email “there is a strong possibility your site is already compromised.”

Based on his review of the emails, Lamb believes that electronic polling books could have been altered in Georgia’s biggest counties to add or drop voters or to scramble their data. Malicious hackers could have altered the templates of voting machine memory cards to skew results. An attacker could even have potentially modified “ballot-building” files to corrupt the outcome, said Lamb, who works at Atlanta-based security firm Bastille Networks.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Though striking, the wayward election server is seen as just part of a much larger problem.

The Department of Homeland Security says 21 states had elections systems scanned or penetrated by Russia-backed hackers last year, though there’s no evidence they altered voting outcomes.

But computer security experts say it’s possible Russians or other malicious actors have sown undetected booby traps in the highly decentralized U.S. voting landscape. In June, a leaked National Security Agency memo showed that 122 elections officials in various states were targeted with phishing emails crafted by Russian agents intent on stealing their passwords.

CALL TO INVESTIGATE

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr was urged Thursday to investigate. GOP state Rep. Scot Turner: “They should go and look at who did it and why they did it and see ... whether there was criminal intent.” Carr’s office declined comment.

Georgia U.S. Rep Hank Johnson, a Democrat, separately said the server wipe “appears to be a willful and premeditated destruction of evidence” by election officials, adding, “Georgia voters should be as outraged as I am.”

Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, noted Kemp has repeatedly denied involvement in the university’s decisions on voting machine security.

“Georgia is not creating a climate of voting integrity for our citizens by continuing to blame shift,” Henderson said via email.

[concha]

Hillary would be proud.

.

[NorCalRuss]

Did they use hammers and bleach?

[thc6795]

Although I understand the shots at Killiar this isn't funny or good at all. To think this is only happening in GA and by republicans is beyond ridiculous. This crap has to end man.

[HawgGoneIt]

1 hour ago, thc6795 said:

Although I understand the shots at Killiar this isn't funny or good at all. To think this is only happening in GA and by republicans is beyond ridiculous. This crap has to end man.

Our elections have become a farce. Idk for sure when it started but the Florida debacle with the recounts and hanging chads etc., set it on the course where we are now. Hackable, wipeable, cheatable. There is NO integrity left in the government on any level. Gerrymandering, stealing votes, disenfranchising voters, purging voter rolls etc.etc., has been going on heavily in Georgia for the last 20 years. 

I feel pretty certain it's not just here in Georgia, but it's definitely is happening here, and we already know and see the federal government bullshit daily. 

It's to the point where one wonders, why even vote? They'll steal it away, declare you ineligible for 100 different reasons, or you'll just get to the polling place and find out you were "accidentally" purged from the rolls and your vote will only be a provision ballot. Steal the votes, wipe the server and be done with it. This appears like one Republican secretary of state helped his predecessor get a congressional seat, and then when irregularities were noticed and people wanted to see more, his plans to run for governor looked to be in trouble, so magically the server is wiped and he claims to be not culpable. 

Fun and games aside... It's bullshit. All bullshit. 

[thc6795]

1 minute ago, HawgGoneIt said:

Our elections have become a farce. Idk for sure when it started but the Florida debacle with the recounts and hanging chads etc., set it on the course where we are now. Hackable, wipeable, cheatable. There is NO integrity left in the government on any level. Gerrymandering, stealing votes, disenfranchising voters, purging voter rolls etc.etc., has been going on heavily in Georgia for the last 20 years. 

I feel pretty certain it's not just here in Georgia, but it definitely is happening here, and we already know and see the federal government bullshit daily. 

It's to the point where one wonders, why even vote? They'll steal it away, declare you ineligible for 100 different reasons, or you'll just get to the polling place and find out you were "accidentally" purged from the rolls and your vote will only be a provision ballot. Steal the votes, wipe the server and be done with it. This appears like one Republican secretary of state helped his predecessor get a congressional seat, and then when irregularities were noticed and people wanted to see more, his plans to run for governor looked to be in trouble, so magically the server is wiped and he claims to be not culpable. 

Fun and games aside... It's bullshit. All bullshit. 

Agree 100% this is not just happening in GA it is nation wide. Doesn't matter what party is doing it and they all are by the way. It is complete bullshit. The elite rule the roost.

[TheMaximumHornetSting]

30 minutes ago, HawgGoneIt said:

Our elections have become a farce. Idk for sure when it started but the Florida debacle with the recounts and hanging chads etc., set it on the course where we are now. Hackable, wipeable, cheatable. There is NO integrity left in the government on any level. Gerrymandering, stealing votes, disenfranchising voters, purging voter rolls etc.etc., has been going on heavily in Georgia for the last 20 years. 

I feel pretty certain it's not just here in Georgia, but it's definitely is happening here, and we already know and see the federal government bullshit daily. 

It's to the point where one wonders, why even vote? They'll steal it away, declare you ineligible for 100 different reasons, or you'll just get to the polling place and find out you were "accidentally" purged from the rolls and your vote will only be a provision ballot. Steal the votes, wipe the server and be done with it. This appears like one Republican secretary of state helped his predecessor get a congressional seat, and then when irregularities were noticed and people wanted to see more, his plans to run for governor looked to be in trouble, so magically the server is wiped and he claims to be not culpable. 

Fun and games aside... It's bullshit. All bullshit. 

Georgia is a political Minefield in general....

Atlanta

Savannah 

Columbus and Augusta have become Liberal hotbeds... 

And Republicans are trying their damndest to keep control. 

Now lets get ine thing straight... I'm independent... I dont claim to a party... but both sides have some big unresolved issues... 

Theres alot of in fighting on the Right and they make moves without thinking. And the Left believes they're always right and try to move to fast....   

And even outside that spectrum... theres unaligned state issues in GA... 

 

[thc6795]

 

[ORabidOne]

On 10/26/2017 at 10:40 PM, HawgGoneIt said:

I'm sure there is no wrong doing here. Probably nothing at all to see here either. Georgia Secretaries of state have been dirty for quite a while now. Pretty sick of this shit actually. 

 

https://apnews.com/877ee1015f1c43f1965f63538b035d3f/APNewsBreak:-Georgia-election-server-wiped-after-suit-filed

 

APNewsBreak: Georgia election server wiped after suit filed

A computer server crucial to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials was quietly wiped clean by its custodians just after the suit was filed, The Associated Press has learned.

The server’s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state’s election system. The data wipe was revealed in an email sent last week from an assistant state attorney general to plaintiffs in the case that was later obtained by the AP. More emails obtained in a public records request confirmed the wipe.

The lawsuit, filed July 3 by a diverse group of election reform advocates, aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily criticized election technology. The server in question, which served as a statewide staging location for key election-related data, made national headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed six months after he reported it to election authorities.

WIPED OUT

It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.

The Kennesaw elections center answers to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, a Republican running for governor in 2018 and the suit’s main defendant. His spokeswoman issued a statement Thursday saying his office had neither involvement nor advanced warning of the decision. It blamed “the undeniable ineptitude” at the Kennesaw State elections center.

In a statement Thursday, Kennesaw State said that after the FBI investigated and returned the server, it was flagged to be repurposed in a hardware upgrade at the elections center. That’s when the drives were wiped.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, mostly Georgia voters, want to scrap the state’s 15-year-old vote-management system — particularly its 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting machines, hackable devices that don’t use paper ballots or keep hardcopy proof of voter intent. The plaintiffs were counting on an independent security review of the Kennesaw server, which held elections staging data for counties, to demonstrate the system’s unreliability.

Wiping the server “forestalls any forensic investigation at all,” said Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist following the case. “People who have nothing to hide don’t behave this way.”

STATE SECURITY

The server data could have revealed whether Georgia’s most recent elections were compromised by hackers. The plaintiffs contend results of both last November’s election and a special June 20 congressional runoff— won by Kemp’s predecessor, Karen Handel — cannot be trusted.

Possible Russian interference in U.S. politics, including attempts to penetrate voting systems, has been an acute national preoccupation since the Obama administration sounded the alarm more than a year ago.

Kemp and his GOP allies insist Georgia’s elections system is secure. But Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a plaintiff, believes server data was erased precisely because the system isn’t secure.

“I don’t think you could find a voting systems expert who would think the deletion of the server data was anything less than insidious and highly suspicious,” she said.

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T

It could still be possible to recover relevant information from the server.

The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole. The Oct. 18 email disclosing the server wipe said the state attorney general’s office was “reaching out to the FBI to determine whether they still have the image” and also disclosed that two backup servers were wiped clean Aug. 9, just as the lawsuit moved to federal court.

On Wednesday, the attorney general’s office notified the court of its intent to subpoena the FBI seeking the image.

Atlanta FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett would not say if that image still exists. Nor would he say whether agents examined it to determine whether the server’s files might have been altered by unauthorized users.

FAILING TO SERVICE THE SERVER

A 180-page collection of Kennesaw State emails, obtained Friday by the Coalition for Good Governments via an open records search, details the destruction of the data on all three servers and a partial and ultimately ineffective effort by Kennesaw State systems engineers to fix the main server’s security hole.

As a result of the failed effort, sensitive data on Georgia’s 6.7 million voters — including Social Security numbers, party affiliation and birthdates — as well as passwords used by county officials to access elections management files remained exposed for months.

The problem was first discovered by Atlanta security researcher Logan Lamb while doing online research in August 2016. He informed the election center’s director at the time, noting in an email “there is a strong possibility your site is already compromised.”

Based on his review of the emails, Lamb believes that electronic polling books could have been altered in Georgia’s biggest counties to add or drop voters or to scramble their data. Malicious hackers could have altered the templates of voting machine memory cards to skew results. An attacker could even have potentially modified “ballot-building” files to corrupt the outcome, said Lamb, who works at Atlanta-based security firm Bastille Networks.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Though striking, the wayward election server is seen as just part of a much larger problem.

The Department of Homeland Security says 21 states had elections systems scanned or penetrated by Russia-backed hackers last year, though there’s no evidence they altered voting outcomes.

But computer security experts say it’s possible Russians or other malicious actors have sown undetected booby traps in the highly decentralized U.S. voting landscape. In June, a leaked National Security Agency memo showed that 122 elections officials in various states were targeted with phishing emails crafted by Russian agents intent on stealing their passwords.

CALL TO INVESTIGATE

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr was urged Thursday to investigate. GOP state Rep. Scot Turner: “They should go and look at who did it and why they did it and see ... whether there was criminal intent.” Carr’s office declined comment.

Georgia U.S. Rep Hank Johnson, a Democrat, separately said the server wipe “appears to be a willful and premeditated destruction of evidence” by election officials, adding, “Georgia voters should be as outraged as I am.”

Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, noted Kemp has repeatedly denied involvement in the university’s decisions on voting machine security.

“Georgia is not creating a climate of voting integrity for our citizens by continuing to blame shift,” Henderson said via email.

Since there is NO apparent penalty for such activity,(please see HILLS email scandal regarding bleach wash) They decided to use the DEM playbook!

[HawgGoneIt]

4 hours ago, ORabidOne said:

Since there is NO apparent penalty for such activity,(please see HILLS email scandal regarding bleach wash) They decided to use the DEM playbook!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is about the very thing that makes our democracy what it is though. The right to vote and have that vote counted fairly. Georgia has been shuckin' and jivin' on this shit for sure since '08. I know that for a fact due to personal experience.

If our votes aren't fair and counted properly, openly for the people to see, then our democracy is gone. 

Laugh about that, dumb ass.