Yearly Archives: 2019

Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that he was not familiar with the Senate’s bipartisan effort to enhance the security of election systems ahead of 2020. Barr had not yet returned to the Department of Justice when, last year, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee abruptly cancelled a markup of a bipartisan bill known as the Secure Elections Act. The legislation crafted by Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford and Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar seeks to require state election officials to conduct audits following elections, as well as to establish paper ballot backup systems. “The White House, just as we were on the verge of getting a markup in the Rules Committee, getting it to the floor where I think we would get the vast majority of senators, the White House made calls to stop this,” Klobuchar said at the hearing, recalling the events of August 2018. Klobuchar then asked Barr for a commitment to work on the legislation. “I will work with you to enhance the security of our election, and I’ll take a look at what you are proposing,” Barr said. “I’m not familiar with it.” Klobuchar responded to Barr by pointing out that the bill is the main bipartisan measure related to election security, noting support of Intelligence Chairman Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., as well as fellow Judiciary Committee members including Democrat Kamala Harris of California and Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican.

National: Here’s the one thing Republicans and Democrats could agree on during Barr hearing | The Washington Post

During a contentious and highly partisan hearing with Attorney General William Barr yesterday, senators did manage to find one bipartisan point of agreement: Pushing for improved election and campaign security before 2020. During the more than four-hour Judiciary Committee hearing, both Republicans and Democrats sought Barr’s support for legislation to require paper records for 2020 votes and efforts to harden election infrastructure and to combat digital misinformation. And they urged the Justice Department to help 2020 presidential campaigns ward off foreign interference. “The special counsel’s report is the end of the road when it comes to the question of the Trump administration’s intent,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said. “But it is just the beginning of the conversation on how we counter Russia and other foreign adversaries in their attempts to undermine our Republic.” It seemed to be the only point of political alignment at the hearing during which Democrats savaged Barr for allegedly misrepresenting findings in the report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and after which numerous Democratic senators called on the attorney general to resign. But it’s far from clear that Congress will be able to pass election security legislation in time for the 2020 contest.

National: 2020 campaigns grappling with how to manage cybersecurity | Associated Press

While candidates were focused on campaigning in 2016, Russians were carrying out a devastating cyber-operation that changed the landscape of American politics, with aftershocks continuing well into Donald Trump’s presidency. And it all started with the click of a tempting email and a typed-in password. Whether presidential campaigns have learned from the cyberattacks is a critical question ahead as the 2020 election approaches. Preventing the attacks won’t be easy or cheap. “If you are the Pentagon or the NSA, you have the most skilled adversaries in the world trying to get in but you also have some of the most skilled people working defense,” said Robby Mook, who ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. “Campaigns are facing similar adversaries, and they don’t have similar resources and virtually no expertise.” Traditionally, cybersecurity has been a lower priority for candidates, especially at the early stages of a campaign. They need to raise money, hire staff, pay office rents, lobby for endorsements and travel repeatedly to early voting states. Particularly during primary season, campaign managers face difficult spending decisions: Air a TV ad targeting a key voting demographic or invest in a more robust security system for computer networks?

California: Has Los Angeles County just reinvented voting? | NBC

The biggest voting district in the United States came up with an audacious answer to the growing national problem of aging, malfunctioning and hackable voting machines. It decided to build its own. Los Angeles County, which has more registered voters than 42 states, gave NBC News an exclusive national broadcast look at what may be the future of voting systems. The county’s 5.2 million registered voters will give the new system a test run in real time during California’s presidential primary next March. Built with open-source technology over 10 years for $100 million, and combined with a rethink of the voting process that lets locals cast ballots over 11 days instead of 13 hours, L.A. County officials believe their new machines will cut down on mechanical breakdowns and crowding and provide sophisticated protections against hacking. “We thought, ‘We can’t wait any longer,'” said the man in charge of the new system, L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan.

Florida: After hacking allegation in Mueller report, Florida officials call for briefings | ABC

“The FBI needs to brief the Florida delegation on exactly what Russia did and which counties were involved so we can protect our elections and the voters,” Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., said Thursday in a joint call for more information with his Democratic colleague Rep. Stephanie Murphy. The House members’ demand follows others made by Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., after the Mueller report’s publication last month. The FBI has reportedly agreed to those earlier requests for briefings. And during an otherwise contentious Senate hearing Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr said he would arrange for the full Senate to be briefed on the reported Russian hack, at the request of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. The concern grew out of a line in the Mueller report, which said the FBI suspected Russian military intelligence hackers were able to “gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government” through a spear-phishing campaign. Mueller said his investigators did not verify the suspicion, deferring to the FBI.

Georgia: Potential vulnerabilities of new Georgia voting machines evaluated | Atlanta Journal Constitution

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is gauging potential vulnerabilities of the type of voting machines that will soon be used in Georgia. The federal government will work with election officials to better understand the security and auditability of voting systems, said Scott McConnell, a spokesman for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security.“This includes helping to identify potential risks and vulnerabilities for deployed systems as well as informing the development of future systems,” McConnell said. Georgia is preparing to buy a $150 million statewide election system with voting machines called ballot-marking devices. Like the state’s current electronic voting machines, voters using the new ballot-marking devices will choose their candidates on touchscreens. Then printers will create paper ballots for voters to review and insert into scanning computers for tabulation.Federal scrutiny of voting technology comes after a study published last week pointed out weaknesses in ballot-marking devices.If ballot-marking devices are hacked or tampered with, they could print out falsified ballots, according to the study by three cybersecurity experts.

Editorials: Minnesotans last to agree on election security | The News Leaders

Minnesota usually shows up near the top, if not No. 1, in rankings of the states. But on the urgent issue of election security, Minnesota is dead last. Despite pledges of bipartisanship for this legislative session, Democrats and Republicans are deadlocked over how to spend a potential $6 million to improve election security. Minnesota is the only state that has yet to touch its share of the $380 million federal appropriations. Senators and representatives should agree to a plan from Secretary of State Steve Simon to use the money to upgrade the state’s 15-year-old voter system. “Election security shouldn’t be a partisan issue or a bargaining chip,” Gov. Tim Walz said. “It’s time we join every other state in the nation and protect our elections.” The Democrat-controlled house passed Simon’s plan while the Republican-led Senate only wants to spend $1.5 million. Both houses have appointed members to a conference committee to resolve the issue.

North Dakota: Legislature funds new election equipment | Bismarck Tribune

North Dakota’s chief elections official hopes to have new equipment at the polls for the 2020 contests after state lawmakers approved $12 million for the devices. Secretary of State Al Jaeger said Wednesday the money will be used to purchase new ballot scanners and electronic poll books, which serve as voter records at individual precincts, across the state. The $12 million approved by lawmakers includes $3 million of federal funding. Jaeger, a Republican, said North Dakotans will still mark a paper ballot but new equipment will be used to count their votes. County election officials have warned about equipment failures for several years, but the 2017 Legislature rejected funding while the state tightened its belt.

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia city controller says she will block payment for controversial new voting machines | Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart says she will not approve payment for new voting machines that will cost the city tens of millions of dollars. “I’m deeply concerned about the legality of this process,” she said in a statement Tuesday night, “and as city controller, I will not release $1 of payment while these questions go unanswered.” Until her office completes an investigation of the voting-machine selection process, including accusations that it was biased to favor electronic voting machines over paper ones that voters fill out manually, Rhynhart said she won’t sign off on payment. Her approval is one of several that are required along the way when the city purchases new equipment or services. “We need a pause to say, ‘What is going on here?’ ” Rhynhart said in an interview Wednesday morning. “And I’m not going to be releasing any payment until it’s very clear that all procurement rules and city processes were followed in this procurement, because right now I have doubts.” It’s unclear what would happen if Rhynhart refuses the payment after machines are delivered and implementation begins. Dozens have already arrived.

India: How the world’s largest democracy casts its ballots | The Conversation

About 600 million Indian citizens are expected to cast their votes over a period of 39 days ending May 19, in the ongoing election for their country’s parliament. There are roughly 900 million eligible voters, and the country has typically seen about two-thirds of them turn out to polling places. I have been working on the security of electronic voting systems for more than 15 years, and, along with other colleagues, have been interested in understanding how a nation can tally that many votes cast over such a long period. India uses a domestically designed and manufactured electronic voting machine – as many as 4 million of them at 1 million polling places, at least some in extremely remote locations. The first version of the Indian electronic voting machine debuted in the state election in Kerala in 1982. Now they’re used in elections throughout the country, which happen on different days in different areas. When a voter arrives at the polling place, she presents a photo ID and the poll officer checks that she is on the electoral roll. When it’s her turn to vote, a polling official uses an electronic voting machine’s control unit to unlock its balloting unit, ready to accept her vote. The balloting unit has a very simple user interface: a series of buttons with candidate names and symbols. To vote, the voter simply presses the button next to the candidate of her choice. After each button press, a printer prints out the voter’s choice on paper and displays it to the voter for a few seconds, so the person may verify that the vote was recorded correctly. Then the paper is dropped into a locked storage box. The whole system runs on a battery, so it does not need to be plugged in.

Editorials: Securing Electoral Infrastructure: How Alert is India’s Election Chowkidaar | Varsha Rao/MediaNama

With the publication of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s much-awaited report on Russian interference in the United States Presidential Elections of 2016, the threat of hacking and misinformation campaigns to influence elections is taking centre-stage yet again. Closer to home, the discussion has become more pertinent than ever before. In a democratic process of gigantic proportions, 900 million Indians across 543 constituencies are expected to cast their vote in 7 phases to elect a Government for the next five years. The gravity and significance of the ongoing General Elections to the Lok Sabha thus begs the question – how susceptible is the world’s largest democracy to cyber interference? Interfering in an election in the digital age involves a two-pronged attack – firstly, by influencing the political inclination of the electorate via misinformation campaigns on social media platforms, and secondly, by manipulating the electoral infrastructure itself. This article will focus on the latter, more specifically, the infrastructure and processes administered by the Election Commission of India. Unfettered access to voter registration databases arms malicious actors with the ability to alter or delete the information of registered voters, thereby impacting who casts a vote on polling day. Voter information can be deleted from the electoral rolls to accomplish en-masse voter suppression and disenfranchisement along communal and religious lines in an already polarized voting environment. The connectivity of voter databases to various networks for real-time inputs and updates make them highly susceptible to cyberattacks.

United Kingdom: E-voting by touch-screen trialled in local elections | BBC

Voters in Gateshead are being invited to vote twice in the local elections – via the traditional ballot box and on a touch-screen computer. Only their ballot paper vote will count, with the e-voting just a trial. E-voting could eventually transform elections, doing away with the need for an election count. Several countries have experimented with such systems but security fears have held deployment back. Anyone wanting to take part has to record their vote via a touch-screen computer at the polling booth by entering a passcode issued to them, selecting a candidate and then receiving a paper receipt. All encrypted votes are published on the election website, where anyone will be able to look at the tally for each candidate. The system will flag up if any e-vote has been illegitimately modified. What made it different from previous systems was that it could be verified “end to end”, said the team at Warwick University who developed it, with funding from the European Research Council and Innovate UK.

National: Mueller fails to break stalemate on election meddling crackdown | The Hill

Efforts to combat election meddling in the aftermath of the Mueller report are running into steep political headwinds on Capitol Hill. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling 448-page report detailed Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and sparked fresh calls for tougher sanctions against Moscow or new election security measures. But any initial boost of momentum is now hitting roadblocks with top GOP senators and stalemated partisan standoffs, underscoring the uphill battle for a legislative push leading up to the 2020 election. “I think there’s a lot we can do without passing new legislation,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of GOP leadership and the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The House has taken more of an attitude of: Don’t let a crisis go to waste.” Asked about the chances of passing sanctions or election security, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said, “We’ll see.” “Some of our members are talking about more sanctions. We’ll see where it goes,” he said. “On the election security stuff … I think we feel confident based on the fact that our elections in this country are basically local, that … it ensures a certain amount of accountability.”

National: Schumer presses for election security boost after Mueller report | Politico

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday called for swift action to boost election security in 2020 in the wake of the Mueller report. In a letter to his Senate Democratic colleagues, the New York Democrat blasted the Trump administration for “not forcefully and adequately responding to the attack on our democracy” described in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Schumer’s letter comes ahead of the caucus’ first meeting since the release of Mueller’s report and one day before Attorney General William Barr is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the investigation. Schumer wants a classified briefing from Trump administration officials about steps they are taking to protect the integrity of U.S. elections, including from the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and Cyber Command.

National: If Mueller Report Was ‘Tip Of The Iceberg,’ What More Is Lurking Unseen? | NPR

If the political interference documented in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was just the “tip of the iceberg,” what else is lurking out of sight beneath the surface? That was the question posed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a speech in New York City, one in which he defended his handling of the Russia investigation and suggested there could be much more to it beyond that contained in Mueller’s report. “The bottom line is, there was overwhelming evidence that Russian operatives hacked American computers and defrauded American citizens, and that is only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries,” Rosenstein said on Thursday. Mueller’s focus was on the two best-known aspects of Russia’s “active measures”: the theft and release of material embarrassing to political targets and the use of social media platforms to crank up agitation among an already divided populace. Some of the Russian schemes that Mueller left out of his report also are known. On Friday, for example, a federal judge sentenced a woman to 18 months in prison after she pleaded guilty to serving as an unregistered Russian agent from around 2015 until her arrest last summer.

National: Mueller Objected to Barr’s Description of Russia Investigation’s Findings on Trump | The New York Times

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, wrote a letter in late March to Attorney General William P. Barr objecting to his early description of the Russia investigation’s conclusions that appeared to clear President Trump on possible obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department and three people with direct knowledge of the communication between the two men. The letter adds to the growing evidence of a rift between them and is another sign of the anger among the special counsel’s investigators about Mr. Barr’s characterization of their findings, which allowed Mr. Trump to wrongly claim he had been vindicated. It was unclear what specific objections Mr. Mueller raised in his letter, though a Justice Department spokeswoman said on Tuesday evening that he “expressed a frustration over the lack of context” in Mr. Barr’s presentation of his findings on obstruction of justice. Mr. Barr defended his descriptions of the investigation’s conclusions in conversations with Mr. Mueller over the days after he sent the letter, according to two people with knowledge of their discussions. Mr. Barr, who was scheduled to testify on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation, has said publicly that he disagrees with some of the legal reasoning in the Mueller report. Senior Democratic lawmakers have invited Mr. Mueller to testify in the coming weeks but have been unable to secure a date for his testimony.

National: NSA’s Russian cyberthreat task force is now permanent | CyberScoop

The task force the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command created last year to thwart Russian influence and cyberattacks on the U.S. is now permanent, spokespeople from both agencies confirmed to CyberScoop. The “Russia Small Group” — whose existence NSA Director Paul Nakasone announced in July of last year, absent guidance from the White House on how to handle Russian cyberthreats — settles in as the White House, Congress and the Pentagon have taken steps to clarify how and when the military should conduct offensive operations in cyberspace. The NSA would not comment on the number of people on the task force, where it is based, or when the operation became permanent. One intelligence official told CyberScoop the group’s new permanent designation, under routine operations, likely marks a surge of incoming resources, just as in any military surge. “We intend to build on this foundation as we prepare with our interagency partners for a broader challenge in the upcoming 2020 election cycle,” a Cyber Command spokesperson told CyberScoop. The New York Times first reported that the task force had become permanent.

Editorials: Foreign operatives are trying to divide America. Let’s not do their work for them. | The Washington Post

“Kirkpatrick for Congress,” read the top of the page in a big, bold, red-and-blue font. “Donate,” read a similarly styled button at its bottom. But the website, which appeared ahead of the 2014 midterms, was not designed to support Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona. It was manufactured by the National Republican Congressional Committee to oppose her. The Federal Election Commission voted last week not to act on the five-year-old discovery that the NRCC had created more than 30 websites that looked at first blush like the pages of Democratic candidates but were really stuffed full of information attacking them. The pages, which led at least one unsuspecting American to donate mistakenly to the NRCC, appeared during the 2014 midterms — but the scandal feels distressingly current. Disinformation has become a defining factor in U.S. elections, though the field of play has evolved beyond just sleazy websites to include hack-and-leaks, troll farms, bots and doctored media. To counter the tide, national party organizations must act against deceptive tactics, not participate in them.

Florida: Elections Reform Effort Nears Final Votes Amid Democratic Opposition | WJCT

A key elections bill backed by the state’s supervisors heading for final votes. The measure is meant to address issues stemming from the 2018 election but Democrats say it doesn’t do enough. Last year local supervisors of elections found themselves trying to handle three statewide recounts in addition to local races. Bad ballot designs, mis-matched signatures, and questions around vote-by-mail and provisional ballots coupled with a tight turnaround deadline for certification made the process harder for some supervisors, especially those in South Florida. It also gave the state some unwanted attention. Reports from national Media outlets like CNN, USA Today and ABC News along with local coverage drew attention to the monumental task of recounts. Larger counties like Palm Beach and Broward missed the deadline to submit their recount totals. The ghosts of past elections loomed over 2018. Republican Representative and former state GOP Chairman Blaise Ingoglia has taken on the task of trying to clean up the process.

New York: After Backlash, Personal Voter Information Is Removed by New York City | The New York Times

Bowing to fierce criticism from elected officials and privacy advocates, the New York City Board of Elections has removed the voter enrollment books that it had posted online, which had included every registered voter’s full name, party affiliation and home address. The books, spanning thousands of pages in searchable PDF format, were quietly posted in February, the first time they had been available on the Board of Elections website. Officials said the online publication was necessary given changes to election law at the state level. But after a series of news reports regarding the decision, some election and privacy experts warned that it could make sensitive personal information too readily available. And officials including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, warned that the decision to publish the books could undermine public trust in the electoral process and jeopardize the security of voter information. By Tuesday, the voter rolls had been removed from the Board of Elections’ website. Michael Ryan, the board’s executive director, said the board had made the decision during a conference call on Monday, partly in response to public outrage following the media reports. “Up until a media inquiry into this matter, we had seen no complaints from anyone that this information was there,” Mr. Ryan said on Tuesday during a previously planned City Council hearing about election reform. But, he said, “Since people were getting upset, we took it down.”

Pennsylvania: Senate moves to slow down the replacement of voting machines | Associated Press

Pennsylvania’s Senate moved Tuesday to potentially delay the ability of the state’s governor to decertify voting machines in expectation of replacing them all by 2020′s presidential elections to boost public confidence and defenses against hacking. The Republican-controlled chamber approved the bill on a near party-line basis — one Democrat joined Republicans to pass it — in a vote that came a little over a year after Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf began pushing for new machines. Republican senators have complained that Pennsylvania is rushing to buy machines at considerable taxpayer expense when there’s logistical hurdles and no legitimate example of a voter irregularity in the state. In addition, Wolf is misusing his authority under the law, said Senate Majority Whip John Gordner, R-Columbia. “Never, never whether it’s been a Democratic governor or a Republican governor has there been circumstance where there has been a pronouncement made that every voting machine is going to be decertified, as was announced last February,” Gordner said during floor debate.

Texas: Senate Bill Is Meant To Improve Election Security But Will It Discourage Voting? | Texas Public Radio

When Texans head to the polls on Super Tuesday in 2020, the act of voting could be very different. Texas lawmakers are looking at bills to cut property taxes and boost school spending, and they’re also looking at ways to secure elections in the state, particularly with Senate Bill 9. Omar Escobar, the Starr County district attorney, said rigging elections is a business in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. “Elderly people, many of whom receive a food bank’s distributions are approached by workers,” he explained, “and being told, ‘hey, here’s the application for a ballot by mail. You need to sign this thing. And as soon as you get the ballot … we’re going to prepare it for you.’ So the practice as we have seen it was that they’d go in, and … as soon as that ballot came they swoop in and help them sort of vote ‘the right way.’ Escobar was testifying before the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs. He said the vote harvesters were paid to collect those ballots. He said voters who handed over their mail ballots to campaign workers had little awareness that their votes were altered and that they were victimized. “Our investigation showed that we had one person — just one person — assist 230 voters,” he said. “Now this is just [the] application of ballot by mail. On this other side, on the in-person voting, you have people who are going to assist, and, of course, the assistant is watching this voter vote and sometimes marking the ballot for them.”

Australia: Government’s $156M cybersecurity pledge a ‘drop in the bucket’: White hat hacker | ARN

The Morrison government’s election promise to spend $156 million to bolster Australia’s cyber defences is a start but more like a “drop in a bucket,” says Security in Depth’s Michael Connory. The “cyber resilience and workforce package” will include $50 million to hire more staff under a workforce expansion program; $40 million for a ‘countering foreign cyber criminals’ capacity within the existing Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC); and $26 million for ACSC to expand its assistance to the community. Michael Connory, security advisor at Security in Depth told CIO Australia the fund is “nowhere near adequate” to help deal with the cyber threats facing Australian businesses and citizens. “It’s significantly better than the other political parties are pledging, but it’s still not close to enough,” he said. “$40 million focused on placing 230+ new cyber experienced staff for military cyber operations – while this is absolutely necessary, the figure probably needs to be doubled.” Connory said at this time Australia “immediately” needs an additional 2,300 individuals to manage the $500 million cost of cybercrime that Australians lost last year.

Bulgaria: High court rejects appeal in voting machines tender | The Sofia Globe

Bulgaria’s Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) ruled on April 30 to deny the challenge lodged by one of losing bidders in the tender for the hire of 3000 voting machines for the country’s May 26 European Parliament elections. The plaintiff, which was disqualified by Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission (CEC) on the grounds that its offer did not meet the technical specifications set by the watchdog, argued that none of the three bidders could fully meet the technical requirements in the short time allocated for the tender. CEC spokesperson Alexander Andreev denied the allegations, saying that the electoral body met all the requirements set in the public procurement act and the technical requirements were met, as quoted by Bulgarian National Radio. Last week, CEC picked Ciela Norma as the winner in the tender. The company will have to deliver the voting machines by May 10, with software installation due to be completed by May 15, followed by 10 days for certification and audits. The voting machines would be then shipped to voting precincts on May 25.

Canada: Elections Canada to monitor misinformation about voting on social media | The Globe and Mail

Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer says Elections Canada will deploy teams to monitor social media for misinformation about the electoral process during this fall’s election. Stéphane Perrault told the Senate finance committee Tuesday morning that it is not Elections Canada’s role to monitor truth on the internet, but it does have a responsibility to ensure that information about the voting process is accurate. “We will have a dedicated team both to monitor and a team to respond to any inaccurate information, whether it’s disinformation or misinformation,” Mr. Perrault said. “We are acquiring tools to monitor social media in multiple languages and we’ll use key words and try to identify any information that relates to the electoral process. And if there is misinformation, we will quickly respond to that – that’s a key aspect of our role during this election.” In response to questions from senators about ways to crack down on misinformation, Mr. Perrault reiterated that Elections Canada’s focus will be on any misinformation relating to the voting process. But he did say that in the lead-up to the campaign, Elections Canada will launch a public-awareness initiative on social-media literacy to encourage people to determine the source of the information they’re receiving.

Venezuela: European Union says free, fair elections the solution for Venezuela | Associated Press

European countries urged restraint in Venezuela on Tuesday and called for new elections as a way to settle the political crisis in the South American country, but there wasn’t a unified voice immediately on whether to support or condemn the opposition’s move to oust President Nicolás Maduro. In a statement released late in the day, the European Union said it rejected any form of violence and would continue to push for “free and fair elections.” The president of the bloc’s Parliament, Antonio Tajani, came out as the strongest European voice in support of the opposition. In a tweet in Spanish, Tajani called the events “a historic moment for the return to democracy and freedom in Venezuela,” and described the release of activist Leopoldo López from house arrest as “great news.” “Let’s go Venezuela free!” wrote Tajani, a prominent conservative leader. All but four EU members endorsed the initial, Europe-wide call in February to back opposition leader Juan Guaidó when he appointed himself interim president. The four who did not join the other EU members were Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia.

National: F.B.I. Warns of Russian Interference in 2020 Race and Boosts Counterintelligence Operations | The New York Times

The F.B.I. director warned anew on Friday about Russia’s continued meddling in American elections, calling it a “significant counterintelligence threat.” The bureau has shifted additional agents and analysts to shore up defenses against foreign interference, according to a senior F.B.I. official. The Trump administration has come to see that Russia’s influence operations have morphed into…

New York: Amid Public Outrage, New York City Board Of Elections Pulls Private Voter Records From Internet | CBS

After massive public backlash, and the possibility for legal backlash as well, the New York City Board of Elections has quickly wiped the public’s private information from the internet. Voter rolls listing full names, home addresses that included apartment numbers, and party affiliations for all 4.6 million registered voters in New York City were dumped on the BOE’s website. On Tuesday, the board suddenly decided to remove that information from its site after beginning the information dump in February. Executive director Michael Ryan spoke to CBS2’s Marcia Kramer about the privacy scandal and admitted the media firestorm was responsible for the decision to end the short-sighted plan. “Yes we heard it. Yes we took it down. Do I think if someone was really looking to find somebody they’d go to the ad list books at the Boards of Elections? No I don’t quite frankly,” Ryan said defiantly.

National: FBI chief: Russia upping meddling efforts ahead of 2020, midterms a ‘dress rehearsal’ | The Hill

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Friday that the 2018 midterm elections served as a “dress rehearsal” for Russia’s election interference efforts slated to be aimed at the 2020 presidential election. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, the FBI director said that Russian operatives and other foreign agents are “adapting” to the efforts the U.S. intelligence community is taking to secure America’s election systems. “Well, I think — on the one hand I think enormous strides have been made since 2016 by all the different federal agencies, state and local election officials, the social media companies, etc.,” Wray said. “But I think we recognize that our adversaries are going to keep adapting and upping their game. And so we’re very much viewing 2018 as just kind of a dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020,” he added. One area Wray pointed to where the FBI has seen improvement is in cooperation with social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook, where Russian election meddling was centered in 2016.

National: As security officials prepare for Russian attack on 2020 presidential race, Trump and aides play down threat | The Washington Post