The Official World Politics Thread
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StringerBell
OG
Another racist hired by the Trump administration.. I’m sure it’s just a really strange coincidence that it keeps happening over and over again...
Huh....exactly what i was asking about
DMorgan
You niggas is EXCOMMUNICADO!!!
StringerBell
OG
NJ Official Says His Life ‘Would Be Complete’ If Rep. Tlaib Died
A New Jersey school board official is under fire after his hateful Facebook posts about Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Muslims in general were recently discovered.
talkingpointsmemo.com
NJ School Official Said His Life ‘Would Be Complete’ If Rep. Rashida Tlaib Died
A New Jersey school board official is under fire after his hateful Facebook posts about Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Muslims in general were recently discovered.
Daniel Leonard, an elected school board member of the Toms River Regional Schools district, posted a photo of Tlaib in April captioned with “my life would be complete if she/they die.”
Other posts included an image of “Sharia Barbie,” a doll wearing a hijab with bruises all over her face, and an article of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) labeling her a “terrorist…100%”
(Screenshots courtesy of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations)
CAIR-NJ executive director James Sues told TPM that the organization received the screenshots of Leonard’s posts anonymously on Tuesday.
Now CAIR is calling for Leonard’s ouster.
“The bigoted, hateful and threatening social media posts shared by this elected board of education official serve to disqualify him for any position that has responsibility for the safety, security and well-being of New Jersey’s diverse student body,” Sues said in a statement. “The bigoted views expressed by Mr. Leonard have no place in an educational system that seeks to celebrate diversity and encourage students of all faiths and backgrounds to excel scholastically and to make positive contributions to our society.”
Stephan Leone, the school board attorney, told the Asbury Park Press that Leonard’s “totally inappropriate” posts “do not reflect the board’s attitude or opinions.”
The board will “take appropriate action,” Leone said.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a fellow member of the four-person “Squad” of progressive congresswomen, has been targeted by similarly threatening Facebook posts by authority figures. Two Louisiana cops were firedthis week after one of them posted that Ocasio-Cortez “needs a round” while the other “liked” it.
StringerBell
OG
New Senate Intel Report Reveals Details On Russian Cyber Attacks On States
A Senate Intelligence Committee report released Thursday provided new details about what happened in 21 states said to have been cyber-targeted by Russians. The report labels only one of the 21 states…
talkingpointsmemo.com
New Senate Intel Report Reveals Details On Russian Cyber Attacks On States
A Senate Intelligence Committee report released Thursday provided new details about what happened in 21 states said to have been cyber-targeted by Russians.
The report labels only one of the 21 states that were alerted of the attempted Russian intrusions in 2017, meaning some mystery remains publicly as to what happened where.
The assessment backs up what state officials previously told TPM: that much of the activity were so-called “scans,” which have been equated to a thief looking for open doors and windows but not actually breaking in.
In one state, according to the report, cyber actors scanned the state’s entire IT infrastructure, include its website for election results.
“If the penetration had been successful, actors could have manipulated the unofficial display of the election tallies.” the report said. “State officials believed they would have caught any inconsistency quickly. State 6 became aware of this malicious activity and alerted partners.”
In addition to the scans, the state was targeted repeatedly by another type of intrusion known as a “SQL injection attack.”
“State 6 saw the highest number of SQL attempts of any state,” the report said.
Much of the report is redacted, but it appears that at least two other states were targeted by SQL injections. According to the report, Russian actors used other techniques, including spearfishing, in addition to the scan and SQL attempts.
The Senate Intelligence Committee said neither it nor DHS could discern a pattern in the known attempted intrusions, leading the federal government to believe that all 50 states may have been scanned.
“DHS acknowledged that the U.S. Government does not have perfect insight, and it is possible the IC missed some activity or that states did not notice intrusion attempts or report them,” the Intel Committee report said.
The Senate Intel report said that it was still unclear exactly why Russian hackers sought intrude on state election systems, but it offered a few theories:
Overall, the report said, the Intelligence Community believes that the activity was in line of Russia’s larger goal of “undermining the integrity of elections and American confidence in democracy.
As TPM previously reported, Russian hackers successfully infiltrated Illinois’ voter registration data base but the committee found no evidence that the hackers tampered with the voter registration data, even though they were in the position to.
The report later quotes Obama administration Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco explaining what kind of chaos would ensue if Russians had tampered with voter registration records.
Much of the report details tensions between state and federal officials as they scrambled to understand and deal with the attempted cyber-intrusions. The Obama administration held an August 2016 conference call with state officials to raise concerns about potential vulnerabilities.
The state officials did not react well to the Obama administration assertions on the call, per the report, and pushed back particularly when Obama’s DHS floated designating election systems as critical infrastructure. The administration ultimately pushed back the designation until early 2017 — in part due to the blowback from the states.
StringerBell
OG
Omar GOP Challenger Arrested For Allegedly Shoplifting At Target
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)’s Republican challenger’s apparently had a few run-ins with the law this year.
talkingpointsmemo.com
313 Wayz
Active Member
Judge will decide whether Georgia must stop using voting machines
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg heard about risks to Georgia elections as she considers whether to require hand-marked paper ballots.
Georgia’s electronic voting machines put on trial
A federal judge who is deciding whether to shut down Georgia’s 27,000 electronic voting machines heard testimony Thursday that they flipped votes, lost ballots and posed election security risks.
A packed courtroom listened as U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg considered a request that she immediately put the state’s 17-year-old voting machines out of service for this fall’s local elections, which include votes for the Atlanta school board, the Fulton County Commission and city councils across the state.
State officials are already preparing to announce a replacement voting system that would go into use statewide in the March 24 presidential primary.
But the concerned voters and election integrity advocates who sued say Georgia’s existing voting machines are fundamentally insecureand susceptible to hacking. They also plan to challenge the state’s incoming voting machines, which will still use touchscreens but with the added component of printed-out ballots that create a backup of electronic vote counts. The plaintiffs want voters to use paper ballots filled out with a pen.
Totenberg didn’t signal how she would rule, but she said last fall that Georgia’s direct-recording electronic voting machines create a “concrete risk,” and election officials “had buried their heads in the sand” about vulnerabilities. At the time, she declined to disqualify the state’s voting machines just weeks before November’s high-turnout election for governor.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said that Georgia’s voting machines are safe, and there’s no evidence they’ve been tampered with. But tech experts have testified that malware could be written so that it’s undetectable.
In court Thursday, the judge heard from voters and state election officials as attorneys for the plaintiffs pointed out problems with Georgia’s voting machines and voter registration system.
One voter, Teri Adams, said her voting machine in Bleckley County repeatedly changed her vote in the governor’s race from Democrat Stacey Abrams to Republican Brian Kemp.
When she first reviewed her ballot on the touchscreen, it showed she had selected Kemp, she said. Before casting her ballot, she started over, but again the voting machine showed she had picked Kemp. Only on her third try did the machine display her vote correctly.
“It changed my vote,” Adams said. “I went to verify it again, and it changed back.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs also questioned whether voters’ information was secure after it was left available for download from a state election server housed at Kennesaw State University in 2016.
In addition, they entered into evidence documents from a cybersecurity company hired by the Secretary of State’s Office that identified 22 risks in 2017 and 15 risks in 2018. The cybersecurity company was able to penetrate an elections system in 2017, obtaining administrator rights and system configurations.
Those potential vulnerabilities have been addressed, said Merritt Beaver, the chief information officer for the Secretary of State’s Office. The full list of risks hasn’t been released.
“I feel confident in Georgia’s elections system,” said Michael Barnes, the director of the state’s Center for Elections Systems, which creates ballots and distributes them.
Totenberg could rule anytime after the two-day hearing concludes Friday.
