Fogbow

bill_g wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 10:53 am Needs more cowbell.

The conspiracy theory film made at the Arizona audit
By Jerod MacDonald-Evoy -June 2, 2021
Last Updated: June 2, 2021 4:18 pm

A filmmaker known for a film that claims 9/11 was an alien conspiracy is directing a documentary promoting baseless election fraud claims — a movie that features people working for the Arizona Senate’s election audit, that was filmed at the audit site and is based on a book written by a man who is raising money from Trump supporters to fund the audit.

Former Overstock.com CEO and Trump ally Patrick Byrne is the main star in a film called “The Deep Rig,” which is based off a book Byrne wrote. Byrne is the founder of a Florida-based 501(c)(4) that is aiming to raise $2.8 million to fund the Arizona audit.

The trailer for the movie, which is set to be released later this month, portrays the Arizona audit as critical in proving the widely debunked fraud claims, and features several people involved in the Arizona audit.

Tiredretiredlawyer wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 10:51 am Volunteers...yep, that's who I'd want auditing a presidential election. SNL could do a great skit with that.

covfefe wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 1:17 pm The A-team is meeting:

AZ Audit War Room
@AuditWarRoom
The Pennsylvania Legislative Delegation is currently meeting with Members of the Arizona Legislature to discuss election integrity in the United States.

They're gonna set this country straight!

(And I'm sure they are all vaxxed, which is why they can go maskless indoors.)

After meeting with the Republicans of the Arizona Legislature, the Pennsylvania team will head next to Poland to meet with the Parliament of Poland, then on to meet with Turkey's Grand National Assembly of Turkey and final stop to meet with coup generals who overthrew the newly democratically elected government of Myanmar.

Audit the Vote PA, [03.06.21 00:10]
[Forwarded from Wendy Rogers]
Tour of AZ Audit with visiting PA delegation state senators Doug Mastriano, Col US Army (ret) and Cris Dush, MSgt USAF (ret) along with PA state rep Rob Kauffman (chair of PA House Judiciary Cte).

AZ legislators:
State senators Wendy Rogers R-Flagstaff, Sonny Borrelli R-Havasu
State reps Leo Biasiucci R-Havasu, Joe Chaplik R-Scottsdale, Jacqueline Parker R-Mesa

Cyber Ninjas is precisely what kind of firm to be able to lead this audit?
- They are an application security company, which has allowed a quick understanding on how election system applications work in detail.
- Their modus operandi is to perform Threat Modeling.
- That is: They figure out ways a system can be attacked.
- How to identify a threat and protect against it.
- They find what the artifacts are in order to prove activity did or didn't happen.
-This was used in designing the audit scope.

Steps to the AZ Audit
1. Phase 1 - Canvassing - Currently indefinitely delayed by the AZ Senate.
- Did you vote?
- Does it match?
- There have been innumerable reports of mismatch anomalies.
- Was the voter registration history changed?

2. Phase 2 - Physical ballots
- Actual ballot counting: Everyone can relate to the concept of counting paper ballots.
Maricopa volunteer counters must have voted in the Nov 2020 election. No determination whether the counter volunteer is a Republican or a Democrat.
If a count is off by more than 1 person per 50 ballots counted, then the ballots are recounted
- It takes approximately 8 seconds to count a ballot. There is no way to coordinate or sully this very precise process. "There is no speed without accuracy."
-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- Paper examination table uses digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras.
- 0% chance of damaging ballots
- Determines which oval was marked and if marked by a human.
- Analyzes fibers of ballot material and barely-detectable yellow-dot watermarks.
- Every last ballot should be able to be accounted for.

Bottom Line: Opposition pushback may be an indication of the more questionable areas to investigate.

3. Phase 3 – Electronic Voting Systems
- Digital capture of all voting systems provided is completed.
- CyFIR followed industry best practices with write-block devices that prevented any hard drive from being changed.
- Analysis of the data captured is ongoing.

4. Phase 4 – Results
- Numbers from various phases will be compared against the certified results.

Cyber Ninjas CEO overall observations:
1. Americans must be able to trust how one's vote is cast.
2. A judge's scope of expertise does not tend to include higher math or computer systems.
3. However, EVERY American understands how to count and for the counting to be done at the local community level.
4. We should go to paper only.
5. We should be counting at the precinct level.
6. We should declare voting day a national holiday, so everyone can vote and participate in the counting.
7. Even Canada's federal election is paper only.

What now could Pennsylvania (PA) do, if it wanted to pursue a comprehensive AZ-level audit?
In theory, the PA State Senate's "State Government Committee" can issue a subpoena on behalf of the PA State Senate to start an in-depth audit of a PA county.

Arizona welcomes ALL states to adopt this gold-standard of a process to ensure free and fair elections for 2022.

orlylicious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:57 pm

Arizona welcomes ALL states to adopt this gold-standard of a process to ensure free and fair elections for 2022.

"It's terrifying," Morrell said. "We've suddenly said it's OK to hand our ballots over to a third-party organization with political bias, with no experience, who get to make up the rules and then make a decision or a determination based on what they do on whether or not the outcome of the election was correct."

Chilidog wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:15 pm So how are the Cyber numbnutz and the senator Karens going to write the final report in a way that won't get them sued for defamation by the Maricopa County Recorder and other county board Supervisors?

Shizzle Popped wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 6:13 pm Whoever wired that equipment rack should be fired.

bob wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:32 pm

Chilidog wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:15 pm So how are the Cyber numbnutz and the senator Karens going to write the final report in a way that won't get them sued for defamation by the Maricopa County Recorder and other county board Supervisors?

"Actual malice."

Chilidog wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:14 pm

bob wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:32 pm

Chilidog wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:15 pm So how are the Cyber numbnutz and the senator Karens going to write the final report in a way that won't get them sued for defamation by the Maricopa County Recorder and other county board Supervisors?

"Actual malice."

Which will be quite adequately demonstrated by the buttheads issuing death threats when the report comes out.

woodworker wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:40 pm

Chilidog wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:14 pm Which will be quite adequately demonstrated by the buttheads issuing death threats when the report comes out.

That would be actual malice, not "actual malice."

Chilidog wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:15 pm So how are the Cyber numbnutz and the senator Karens going to write the final report in a way that won't get them sued for defamation by the Maricopa County Recorder and other county board Supervisors?

Maricopa County election data is in a 'secure lab' in Montana, or maybe a log cabin in the woods?

A contractor hired by the Arizona Senate is reviewing Maricopa County's 2020 election data from an undisclosed location in Montana, with no oversight from state or county officials.

Ben Cotton, founder of tech firm CyFIR, a Senate subcontractor, made copies of the county's election server and other election data and then drove the copies to a "secure lab" in Montana, according to Senate liaison Ken Bennett. The Senate was given county voters' private information, but Bennett said he doesn't know if Cotton has copies of that in Montana.

It appears that the "secure lab" might be a home owned by Cotton in the northern Montana wilderness. Bennett said he didn't know, and Cotton and Cyber Ninjas, the Senate's main contractors, refuse to answer questions.

► Show Spoiler

The fact that the county's election data is out of state isn't necessarily risky in itself, but if Cotton has copies of the underlying software in the county's vote-counting machines or voter data and hasn't officially agreed to terms that would keep it secure, that's where the risk comes in, said Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science and engineering professor who specializes in election security.

"An important question to be asking in Arizona is what protections are in place to make sure the software doesn’t say fall into the wrong hands and that vulnerabilities that the team discovers are responsibly reported," Halderman said.

It's unclear whether CyFIR has promised the Senate or Cyber Ninjas, the company overseeing the audit, specific security measures for how the data will be stored and accessed.

Bennett said Cotton is keeping the data secure, but he said he does not have any details on how that is happening. He said he doesn't know whether CyFIR will keep the copies of the data, or who has access in Montana. He said no one representing the Senate is overseeing the review of data in Montana.

Where is this data?
Bennett said the only thing he knew for sure was that Cotton had taken the data to a "secure lab" in Montana.

Cotton is not just the founder of CyFIR, which is based in Virginia, but also CEO of CyTech Services, the original company from which CyFIR emerged in 2018. CyTech Services lists a Montana address on its website.

That address belongs to a log cabin in a remote area of northwest Montana, about 20 miles south of Bigfork, a tiny tourist village, and 40 miles south of Kalispell. Property records show the cabin is owned by Cotton.

Cotton did not answer a call or email asking whether that is where he is examining the election data. It's unclear whether he, or his company, own or lease space elsewhere in Montana.

What data does Cotton have in Montana?
Maricopa County received subpoenas from the state Senate, and after a court ruling, provided the Senate with 8 terabytes of data, including tabulator event logs, voter registration data, digital images of ballots and early ballot affidavit signatures and election results files, said Megan Gilbertson, the county Elections Department spokesperson. That's in addition to all of the 2.1 million ballots, servers and vote-counting machines.

"As we don’t have any insight into the Senate’s audit processes and do not know if any of that data was cloned or altered, we wouldn’t be able to provide you with information about what was on the hard drives sent to Montana," Gilbertson said.

Under the original work plan released by Cyber Ninjas, the analysis of the county's vote-counting machines would be done by Cyber Ninjas, CyFIR and “a number of additional analysts, the identities and qualifications of whom shall be made available to (the Senate) upon request.”

► Show Spoiler

It's not clear how the contractors are examining the machines, or what exactly they are looking for beyond whether the machines were connected to the internet during the election, which a prior county audit showed was not the case.

Because the state Senate's contractors were given nearly unfettered and unmonitored access to the voting machines, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has said her office may not allow the county to use them again.

CyFIR's work already was scrutinized after they, or other contractors, told Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, that the county had deleted certain election directories from the server it provided.

Cotton told Senate Republican leaders later that he now has access to these files. He said he had initial trouble downloading the county's data because the county didn't provide directions to copying its multilayered hard drive.

Is there a risk to the county and its voters?
It's unclear what the state Senate's contractors have and don't have access to.

Fann has tried to get additional passwords and keys to the county's voting systems, while the county has said it does not have any additional passwords and the Senate would have to get anything further from the machine manufacturer, Dominion Voting Systems. These passwords may have provided easier access to the software components within the county's vote-counting machines, but that is not entirely clear.

The fact that the county's voting data is in Montana is only public knowledge because Ryan Macias, former acting director of testing and certification at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission who is observing the audit for the Arizona Secretary of State's Office, asked Bennett about it and the office posted his answer on its website.

Macias said he asked Bennett to confirm that data had been sent to Montana after hearing a rumor.

"He did not specify what security measures were in place," according to Macias' notes on the Secretary of State Office's website, "or what the lab in Montana will do with the data or how long it will be in possession of the copies."

Halderman said that if Cotton only has access to the county's election management software, that's not a huge risk. The risk comes in if the contractors have access to the firmware, share that information or share the vulnerabilities they find publicly.

"If it's shared inadvertently or stolen by people who want to attack election systems in the future, that could be a security risk," he said.

Halderman said there's no evidence that is happening here, but "that's a reason why you want the parties performing an audit to be trustworthy."

Bennett said CyFIR should be trusted because they do "top secret work for government agencies" and they would not be hired if they did not keep data secure.

The company received attention several years ago when it discovered a high-profile cyberattack on the U.S. government.

In 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cotton’s affiliated company, CyTech Services, discovered that a federal database was breached while it was performing a demonstration for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, which maintains employee records and background checks for the government.

When Cotton detected the malware, CyFIR, upon the federal government’s request, began “providing significant incident response and forensic support to OPM related to the 2015 incident,” according to a subsequent report on the events from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

In June 2018, CyTech Services spun out the CyFIR software and services business into its own entity, according to a company representative, who said CyTech Services remains fully operational and is a close partner with CyFIR.

When Maricopa County commissioned an independent audit of its election system in February, the county provided two private firms access to its vote-counting machines and underlying software. Some of the firms' work evaluating copies of the system was done off-site, Gilbertson said.

Those firms, though, Pro V&V and SLI Compliance, are accredited voting-system testing laboratories under the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

"These firms are held to the highest ethical standards, which is why the county trusted them to independently audit the county’s tabulation software and hardware," Gilbertson said.

The companies also did not have access to the county's ballots, digital images of ballots or voter information.

That audit came back clean, showing that the county's election equipment had not been hacked or connected to the internet during the November election.

Dominion Voting Systems believe it's "critically important" that only accredited firms have access to voting equipment, according to a spokesperson.

"There are real concerns about what unaccredited firms do with secure voting equipment. Voting systems are deemed critical infrastructure by the U.S. government and should be utilized, maintained, and protected as such," according to Dominion.

Chilidog wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:15 pm So how are the Cyber numbnutz and the senator Karens going to write the final report in a way that won't get them sued for defamation by the Maricopa County Recorder and other county board Supervisors?