Politico article about teen hacker/elections

[1yeartogo]

www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/21/i-just-hacked-a-state-election-17-not-a-good-hacker-219374

I think this article showcases why people in charge of elections data need to understand software/website engineering. If they don’t even understand how the tech works and how easy it is to hack how can they hope to protect it.

Also a national overhaul of all elections processing systems should be done with backups and multilevel safeguards.

[mrs.jacinthe]

Whoo boy. That's terrifying.

Also, I hate that there is a database somewhere with my actual voting history on it. I'm putting on my tinfoil hat a bit, but it seems if the wrong people came to power, that sort of database could be extremely problematic for those who disagree with them.

I never thought I'd miss paper ballots, but I think I might miss paper ballots.

[secretlyevil]

I can see why this thread ended up farther down the page given all that happened yesterday.

This is definitely worth paying attention to and downright scary. What bothers me is that voting is supposed to be sacred in this country and yet it is not safeguarded. In fact, politicians use voting as a chess piece. There is a ton of information in the article. For some reason this is sticking out to me: "No one wants to believe that—after waiting in a lengthy line, taking time off from work or finding a babysitter in order to vote—their ballot could be thrown away, or even worse, altered." Maybe it is because it speaks to the general sticking your head in the sand or sticking fingers in ears that this country seems to have. 

[Jalapeñomel]

It all reminds me of the opening sequence in Hackers.

[yaga]

Aug 21, 2018 8:38:57 GMT -5 mrs.jacinthe said:

Whoo boy. That's terrifying.

Also, I hate that there is a database somewhere with my actual voting history on it. I'm putting on my tinfoil hat a bit, but it seems if the wrong people came to power, that sort of database could be extremely problematic for those who disagree with them.

I never thought I'd miss paper ballots, but I think I might miss paper ballots.

But it's not like it has who you actually voted for in it. Obviously if you registered with a party, there's probably a good assumption they could make.

[mrs.jacinthe]

Aug 22, 2018 11:12:25 GMT -5 yaga said:

Aug 21, 2018 8:38:57 GMT -5 mrs.jacinthe said:

Whoo boy. That's terrifying.

Also, I hate that there is a database somewhere with my actual voting history on it. I'm putting on my tinfoil hat a bit, but it seems if the wrong people came to power, that sort of database could be extremely problematic for those who disagree with them.

I never thought I'd miss paper ballots, but I think I might miss paper ballots.

But it's not like it has who you actually voted for in it. Obviously if you registered with a party, there's probably a good assumption they could make.

I'm not saying it is happening now, but with the rise of electronic (and even online) voting, the potential for just adding a few fields to a database without anyone noticing (or just terrible database practices) seems like it gets more and more likely.  This is not a thing that would be difficult to pull off, at all, which is why it concerns me so much.