Backdoor into U.S. voting machines revealed
The Treason Summit between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin made it more evident than ever that all future elections may be vulnerable to attacks and foreign interference. Despite Trump’s walk-back on Tuesday, saying he misspoke when saying he believed the Kremlin over American intelligence, every other statement made in Helsinki showed Trump is unwilling to admit that Russia helped him steal the 2016 election. After Congress allocated $120 million to the State Department to fight Russian interference, it was reported back in March that exactly zero was actually spent to secure future elections.
With Russian interference, voter suppression, and gerrymandering making it more difficult for Democrats to win elections, the last thing we need is to discover some voting machines may be prone to hacking. It was recently reported that the “nation’s top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them.”
While it was only between the years of 2000 and 2006 that Election Systems and Software “provided pcAnywhere remote connections software” to customers, it has not been determined if this allowed for hacking or cyber intrusions between then and the 2016 election. Because an attacker “would only have had to hack ES&S and then use its network to slip into a county’s election-management system when the two systems made a remote connection” the level of interference is currently unknown.
Just last week, a bipartisan bill in the House was passed by a 363-54 vote to authorize appropriations for intelligence activities for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. This bill would include funds to “fight against potential election interference, creates an Infrastructure Security Center within the Department of Energy to coordinate intelligence and increases pay for certain employees in an attempt to improve retention within agencies for ‘critical cyber missions.’” Now we play the waiting game to see if any of this money is actually used to protect the key to democracy in America.
I’m a ceramic engineer living in Central New York, avid sports fan but find myself more interested in politics lately.