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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the retribution-can-be-petty dept.

The Guardian has a story detailing the firing of Christopher Krebs, who served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa)

President Trump made the announcement on Twitter on Tuesday, saying Krebs "has been terminated" and that his recent statement defending the security of the election was "highly inaccurate".

CISA last week released a statement refuting claims of widespread voter fraud. "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," the statement read. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

Krebs, is a former Microsoft executive, and was appointed by President Trump after allegations of Russian interference with the 2016 election.


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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:00PM (6 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:00PM (#1079401) Journal

    Trump's claims of voter fraud could be proven if the silly Republican judges would quit requiring there to be actual evidence of fraud.

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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:50AM (5 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday November 20 2020, @01:50AM (#1079537) Homepage Journal

    You can have perfect accountability or you can have perfect anonymity, you can't have both. We require anonymity, so we have no way whatsoever for a person to check if their vote was properly counted. If nobody can do that, the count is no more trustworthy than the people doing the counting. And they're the people who came out and said "I'd really like to be in charge of making sure other people's votes get recorded properly". In a nation that's astoundingly polarized and has lost all capacity for supporting the rule of law or even plain old fairness when it conflicts with their worldview.

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    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday November 20 2020, @09:54AM (3 children)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 20 2020, @09:54AM (#1079674) Journal

      You want to be careful making such absolute blanket statements. Perfect accountability or perfect anonymity? You sure those are mutually exclusive?

      One way hashes can provide both. You generate a cryptographic hash of your vote, and so do election workers. The personal info that connects you to your vote should already be hashed, before it is attached to the ballot. If your vote has been altered, the hash won't match. It's basically the same principles used in password authentication that allows system administrators to manage the system and the system to verify (or reject) a login, all without exposing the users' passwords.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:40AM (2 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:40AM (#1080320) Homepage Journal

        The key space is too small for hashes to be worth anything. You have less than 350 million possible values. It's the same reason we don't bother upgrading the hashing algorithm for IPv4 addresses here. A GPU could get you the hash for any person in the US in under a second.

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        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 22 2020, @04:09AM (1 child)

          by bzipitidoo (4388) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 22 2020, @04:09AM (#1080340) Journal

          > The key space is too small

          That's what salt is for.

          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @03:01PM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday November 22 2020, @03:01PM (#1080443) Homepage Journal

            Wouldn't help. Not even if every voter had their own salt. You don't need to build a rainbow table. If you have the salt you can compute all possible values of salt+value quicker than you can blink with that small a keyspace.

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            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 20 2020, @02:50PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 20 2020, @02:50PM (#1079742) Journal

      I accept the idea that there could be pockets of corruption and fraud here and there. But not on a massive scale. Like faking the moon landings. And be able to keep it a secret. And have no actual evidence (so far). Speculation is fine. But there needs to be some proof before we overturn the election on the conjecture that there might be a few corrupt vote counters somewhere.

      a nation that's astoundingly polarized and has lost all capacity for supporting the rule of law or even plain old fairness when it conflicts with their worldview.

      I would repeat that statement. Because it works both ways. Trust no one. That's why we have poll watchers at every voting place. And where votes are counted. The only complaint I've heard so far is that a few watchers somewhere were not located such that they could read the ballots as they were counted. Which is NOT their purpose.

      I would rewind to four years ago. I was highly disappointed with the outcome. I naturally had suspicions that something crooked might have happened. But when plenty of people on both sides said everything was in order, I was able to accept the disappointing outcome. I didn't have to like the result. But I accepted it as reality. I didn't conjure up conspiracy theories.

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