US Election - 2024

[crispy78]

www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/the-trump-voters-guide-to-coping-with-buyers-remorse-20241113252447

[mdgv2]

From then pages of Viz.

[herzlos]

Nov 13, 2024 4:33:50 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

Nov 13, 2024 3:35:33 GMT -5 herzlos said:

The hacking rumors are being fueled by claims that rural ballot numbers were reported back using Starlink and Musk apparently having an 'App' that allowed him to call the election 4 hours before it was official.

And the disparity in president vs. down ballot races where there are some weird voting patterns with people voting for Trump but then against the pro-Trump candidates for other offices. None of it is clear proof, but it's something that needs to be looked into.

Now I don't believe Musk is a good enough engineer to do it on his own, but it would be theoretically possible to intercept the transmissions to either read them to adjust the numbers slightly before sending them on to their target. Sufficient encryption should prevent that, but given Starlink's usage I'd be stunned if some world Government has been working to intercept it.

Musk himself? No. His technical abilities seem to be around the level of a fresh computer science graduate: enough to know what people are talking about in technical meetings, not enough to avoid saying and doing stupid things like using lines of code written as a metric for his employees. He's a marketing hype man who made some lucky investment choices and is good at self-promotion. But it doesn't take much competence to, say, have him sign off on hiring a Russian engineer for a key role.

As for the potential method a man in the middle attack would be theoretically possible. The encryption itself is unbreakable but it would be possible to make a social engineering attack where Starlink has "errors" with the SSL connection and hopefully overworked or tech-illiterate poll workers proceed without it and leave an opening for the man in the middle attack. The trouble with this theory is that it's too easy for local poll workers to compare their sent data with the reported results and immediately spot the error.

The other possibility is a hack on the voting machines themselves, but then you're definitely getting way beyond the scope of what Elmu can do and talking about a state-level operation.

I don't think it's Russia though or they wouldn't have told Musk to turn it off for Ukraine unless they were doing some kind of double bluff or wanted to keep their capacity quiet for longer.

If there was any kind of hack it would have to be Russia. We're talking about a scope and difficulty that pretty much requires a state intelligence agency, any private business or political group isn't going to have the operational security, blank check funding, and loyal staff to pull it off without leaks (or even pull it off at all). And you probably need the level of state support that makes a hacker look at their successful exploit sitting on a bank system with millions of dollars ready to be stolen, shrug, and wait patiently for it to reach its real target. Russia is the obvious suspect that has the resources to do it, the history of election interference attempts against the US, and the clearest incentive to do it.

Russia pressuring Elmu to deny services to Ukraine probably doesn't mean anything. Attacking something as heavily secured as the US election infrastructure very likely means burning zero-day exploits, using those exploits early just warns everyone they exist and starts the clock on them being fixed. If Elmu can be convinced by political or financial pressure to just hit the off switch that's far preferable.

What I'm curious about though is what happens if fraud is discovered? I assume if it's before the inauguration then it's suspended until sorted, but if the fraud only appears after inauguration, especially if Trump controls the whole stack, what happens? He won't be impeached or stand down.

We'd be in unprecedented territory and the outcome depends very much depends on exactly how things go with the investigation.

If there are accusations and suspicions without clear proof we just see a repeat of 2020 with one side angry about fraud (with or without justification) but otherwise unable to do anything but use it as a rallying cry in subsequent elections. The system won't take the unprecedented step of overturning the election without conclusive proof and even if there are strong suspicions it's enough plausible deniability that the republicans won't sacrifice their political advantages to turn on Trump.

If there is clear proof of fraud before Trump takes office it could go a couple ways depending on the timing. If the fraud is revealed before election results are certified by the states they could simply refuse to certify the fraudulent results, leaving time for disputes/recounts/etc is why the formal certification happens some time after election day. It would be awkward to try to untangle exactly what the legitimate votes were but most likely enough states would figure out a way to make Harris the winner to avoid further disaster. If the reveal happened between certification and the electoral college vote this is where the fact that electors are theoretically not bound to vote for the candidate who won their state. With clear proof of fraud there would almost certainly be enough who would defect to Harris and hand her the win.

If the proof doesn't appear until after Trump is officially selected as president the only option is impeachment. The desperate hope would be that enough republicans (along with all of the democrats obviously) feel that voting against impeaching a president who was elected by fraud is career suicide and act to protect their own interests. There are a whole lot of pleas of "we had no idea" and Trump is sacrificed to appease the angry mob, and in exchange for supporting impeachment democrats probably look the other way on prosecuting anyone outside of Trump's inner circle. Vance is tainted and impeached as well, and at that point the speaker of the house is next in line. That's a republican but deals are probably made behind the scenes to put in a moderate republican who keeps the seat warm takes no major policy actions without bipartisan support until 2028.

If there is conclusive proof and republicans say "sucks to be you, we're not giving up power" then we're completely beyond any precedent or rational analysis. That's the point where we see riots in DC, endless assassination attempts against every republican official, states openly defying federal law, etc. And who knows where it goes from there, it could be anything from apathetic resignation to someone in the military dropping a drone strike on the white house. But I think this is the least likely outcome. Too many people with too much power don't want that kind of chaos happening, if there is proof of fraud it's too easy to just dispose of Trump and find a new figurehead to replace him once things settle down.

Nov 13, 2024 4:25:54 GMT -5 dabbler said:

I dunno about all the opinions on manipulation, but I know the answer to what would happen if it was discovered:

Nothing.

The dems would put legal challenges forward, but they'd come to nothing and there would be no change to the result, either because Garland would refuse to act, or the many Republican judges put into place up to and including the SC would find every way to delay or reject it until it was too late and didn't matter. The time to do anything about Trump was in the aftermath of Jan 6. That didn't happen.

I think you're underestimating the sheer rage that would happen if there was proof of a rigged election and the cheater stayed in power. Trump's coup attempt was only forgiven because it failed and everyone assumed that was the end of him, he'd go retire to his golf course and rage about it on twitter but the crisis was averted without any damage to the system. If Trump had succeeded that's the kind of thing where being voted out in the next election is the least of their concerns, there's a high chance of justices and politicians being dragged out of their houses and murdered in the streets as a warning to others or the military launching a counter-coup to restore order.

All solid points. Sadly I don't think there'd be as much sheer rage against a fraudulent election as there would be against complaining about a fraudulent election - the MAGAs will believe it's fake and/or necessary so the only outcome would be civil war II?

I actually think you may be overestimating Musks technical ability. He hasn't written much code in decades and it was particularly good at the time. He talks with complete confidence but it's mostly nonsense. He also likes to brag about how smart he is, so I can't tell if there's anything to the 'app that predicted the results 4 hours ahead' or if it's a real thing he should have shut up about. Logically, that could only be intercepting the results via Starlink as he's not going to get meaningful enough information from Twitter.

If the encryption was good enough then it should be safe via any delivery mechanism, and I'd expect it to be followed up by some other method later. So even if the starlink reports were fudged towards Trump, I'd have thought a discrepancy would have become apparent once all the paperwork was completed.

[herzlos]

Jack Smith and team are apparently going to resign ahead of Trump re-entering the whitehouse, since Trump is almost certainly going to fire him anyway:

www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/special-counsel-jack-smith-team-resign-trump-takes-office-rcna179928

Interestingly, it sounds like there may be the possibility of having the investigation details published if it's wrapped up early enough:

The looming question in the weeks ahead is whether Smith's final report, detailing his charging decisions, will be made public before Inauguration Day. The special counsel's office is required under Justice Department regulations to provide a confidential report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who can choose to make it public.

So I'm hoping they do that. Not that it'll make much good. I still maintain that whilst filing charges against a sitting president is a bit of a tricky one, charges for something that happened whilst not president shouldn't be automatically dropped since he should only have immunity for official acts made whilst actively president. Securing a conviction against a sitting president would be a nightmare though.

[dabbler]

"Who can choose to make it public" being the problem there. No way he does, the guy is terrified of making any actual decisions that could have any impact on America when it comes to Trump, his cowardice has got a starring role in Trump getting back in

[Peregrine]

Nov 14, 2024 4:35:24 GMT -5 herzlos said:

All solid points. Sadly I don't think there'd be as much sheer rage against a fraudulent election as there would be against complaining about a fraudulent election - the MAGAs will believe it's fake and/or necessary so the only outcome would be civil war II?

In that scenario, yes, there is a high chance of civil war or at least Northern Ireland style low-level violence. If there is clearly proven fraud and MAGA insists on keeping what they stole by fraud that's a complete breakdown of rule of law and everyone knows the only remaining law is might makes right.

I actually think you may be overestimating Musks technical ability. He hasn't written much code in decades and it was particularly good at the time. He talks with complete confidence but it's mostly nonsense. He also likes to brag about how smart he is, so I can't tell if there's anything to the 'app that predicted the results 4 hours ahead' or if it's a real thing he should have shut up about. Logically, that could only be intercepting the results via Starlink as he's not going to get meaningful enough information from Twitter.

Not sure why you think I'm overestimating his technical ability? I said he's a marketing clown with minimal technical skills. That's why I don't think any plausible hack/fraud scenario involves Elmu himself doing the work. If he was involved it was only to provide funding, sign fraudulent work visas for Russian agents, etc.

If the encryption was good enough then it should be safe via any delivery mechanism, and I'd expect it to be followed up by some other method later. So even if the starlink reports were fudged towards Trump, I'd have thought a discrepancy would have become apparent once all the paperwork was completed.

Re: encryption: that's what I mean about a social engineering attack. The encrypted data is mathematically impossible to view or modify but there are ways around encryption. Let's say you're a poll worker at one of the precincts served by Starlink. Your internet keeps giving "SSL certificate invalid" errors, there's a line around the block waiting while you troubleshoot things, and people are starting to yell at you for being such an incompetent moron and wasting their whole afternoon. Do you follow the security rules and refuse to continue until a secure connection is restored? Do you click that button that says "proceed without SSL" and get things moving again? Do you even know what the error message means and why it's so important to never accept an unencrypted connection for anything important? If the social engineering attack works then suddenly all that data is moving through Starlink completely unencrypted and vulnerable to the man in the middle attack. And we know that even as weak a social engineering attack as leaving USB drives in the parking lot and seeing if anyone plugs them in can have a terrifyingly high success rate.

And yeah, there are theoretically checks against this kind of thing which is why I'm skeptical about that particular attack method. I think the more likely attack would be either the software on the voting machines themselves or mail fraud to intercept blue-leaning ballots or put in false red-leaning ballots. But the reality is that checks depend on fallible humans using them. If you're a Trump supporter and you see Trump win your precinct are you really looking at the numbers very carefully or are you going home to celebrate? Or, to really put on the tinfoil hat for a moment, if the goal is to cut Trump's margin of defeat and make his next four years of grifting donations over another "stolen election" more effective is anyone going to look at the numbers if Harris wins?

Finally, remember that even a failed attack can still be a win for Russia. Let's say tomorrow the fraud is revealed, all of Trump's swing state wins were 100% fraud, and Harris wins in a landslide. MAGA immediately riots, republicans go into maximum obstructionist mode, and the whole system is still thrown into chaos. And it's not like it costs Russia anything, we're already sanctioning them and doing just about everything we can without risking nuclear war. And tell me you'd be shocked if Elmu was dumb enough to be the sacrificial lamb for a Russian attack that was never expected to succeed at putting Trump into power.

Nov 14, 2024 5:23:56 GMT -5 dabbler said:

"Who can choose to make it public" being the problem there. No way he does, the guy is terrified of making any actual decisions that could have any impact on America when it comes to Trump, his cowardice has got a starring role in Trump getting back in

Best case scenario is Jack Smith decides he might as well go out in style and leaks the report without authorization.

[herzlos]

Nov 14, 2024 5:55:20 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

Re: encryption: that's what I mean about a social engineering attack. The encrypted data is mathematically impossible to view or modify but there are ways around encryption. Let's say you're a poll worker at one of the precincts served by Starlink. Your internet keeps giving "SSL certificate invalid" errors, there's a line around the block waiting while you troubleshoot things, and people are starting to yell at you for being such an incompetent moron and wasting their whole afternoon. Do you follow the security rules and refuse to continue until a secure connection is restored? Do you click that button that says "proceed without SSL" and get things moving again? Do you even know what the error message means and why it's so important to never accept an unencrypted connection for anything important? If the social engineering attack works then suddenly all that data is moving through Starlink completely unencrypted and vulnerable to the man in the middle attack. And we know that even as weak a social engineering attack as leaving USB drives in the parking lot and seeing if anyone plugs them in can have a terrifyingly high success rate.

I'd assumed the data itself was encrypted and then transmitted via an encrypted connection, but maybe I'm asking too much and plain-text data was sent over Skylink where it could be prone to the man-in-middle type attack where the authentication is done with an intermediate node and both ends think it's secure when it's not really.

I agree with you in that I don't think it's the likely way of doing it or something that could be hidden for long so the better way would be to interfere with the ballot recording / counting itself.

[dabbler]

Nov 14, 2024 5:55:20 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

that scenario, yes, there is a high chance of civil war or at least Northern Ireland style low-level violence. If there is clearly proven fraud and MAGA insists on keeping what they stole by fraud that's a complete breakdown of rule of law and everyone knows the only remaining law is might makes right.

You have more faith in the "left" wing of the US being willing to do something like that. While I could definitely see another movement like the weathermen forming with this as their driving force, I really doubt how likely the majority of the US would be to do anything about it. I mean, if everyone who has said they were going to do something had voted, she'd probably have won. And that's just voting. They couldn't even do that.

[Peregrine]

Nov 14, 2024 6:23:22 GMT -5 herzlos said:

I'd assumed the data itself was encrypted and then transmitted via an encrypted connection, but maybe I'm asking too much and plain-text data was sent over Skylink where it could be prone to the man-in-middle type attack where the authentication is done with an intermediate node and both ends think it's secure when it's not really.

It would depend on the details of the implementation. But an issue with encrypting outside of the connection is that then you have key management issues where you need to distribute the keys somehow outside of the connection (since if you trust the connection you don't need separate encryption). So yeah, your data is secure in transit but you emailed the keys to all the poll workers and now all the attacker has to do is compromise an email account to get access.

(Technically "encrypt before sending" is what SSL is doing every time you see that little https in your browser window but that's really getting into the specific details. The important thing is it's unbreakable by direct attack, the attacker would need a social engineering attack to persuade the user to get off the secure connection and send unencrypted data.)

Nov 14, 2024 6:40:42 GMT -5 dabbler said:

You have more faith in the "left" wing of the US being willing to do something like that. While I could definitely see another movement like the weathermen forming with this as their driving force, I really doubt how likely the majority of the US would be to do anything about it. I mean, if everyone who has said they were going to do something had voted, she'd probably have won. And that's just voting. They couldn't even do that.

I think there are a lot of people who favor Trump over Harris (or picked "none of the above" by staying home) who would not accept Trump seizing power through a fraudulent election. It wouldn't be just the left that would be outraged, it would be everyone outside the MAGA cult. It's not about Harris winning, it's about maintaining even the most minimal rule of law and not turning the US into a dictatorship.

[easye]

Deleted- Everyone seemed to be able to read Aduro's link afterall.....

[pacific]

Nov 13, 2024 5:20:47 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

Nov 13, 2024 5:02:46 GMT -5 herzlos said:

Musk is responsible for reducing Government inefficiency, because that went spectacularly well with Twitter.

I'm sure there's some cringy joke about Department Of Government Efficiency and Musks involvement in DOGE coin. Because why wouldn't he?

Tweeted by Elmu himself. Our country is an absolute circus right now.

There was a very brief moment in time when being a nerd was cool. Musk is going to take that away isn't he.. 

[crispy78]

Check this shit out...

www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/14/elon-musk-trump

"Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are asking Americans who are “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” and willing to work over 80 hours a week to join their new Department of Government Efficiency – at zero pay."

This will literally form The Avengers of arseholes.

[Haighus]

...so they want highly intelligent people willing to do 80+ hours of work per week... for free? I'm sure that they will absolutely get the high quality candidates they are looking for.

For reference, six twelve-hour shifts comes to 72 hours, so there are no off days and probably seven 12-hour shifts a week. Sounds incredibly appealing...



Edit: I was going to say "eat, sleep, work" but you need to be paid to eat..

[Disciple of Fate]

Ever trying to inch closer to his dream of literally chaining his staff to their desks.

[pacific]

I can't imagine what sort of people they hope to attract with that advert...

You'll end up with some sort of socio/psychopath (I can't decide which - perhaps both) attempting to make frenzied cuts to government institutions.

How is this department even going to be given any legal power?