Argentina: Hackers Leaked Sensitive Government Data in Argentina—and Nobody Cares | Eugenia Lostri/Lawfare

On Monday, Aug. 12, hackers leaked 700 GB of data obtained from the government of Argentina, including confidential documents, wiretaps and biometric information from the Argentine Federal Police, along with the personal data of police officers. The Twitter account of the Argentine Naval Prefecture was hacked as well, and used not only to share links to the stolen information but also to spread fake news about a nonexistent British attack on Argentine ships. An operation combining the hacking of law enforcement agencies, an attempt to spread misinformation through social media and the leaking of large amounts of sensitive data on the “Deep Web” would seem to check all the boxes for a major news story. But you most likely have not heard about any of this.

Argentina: Santiago Maldonado’s death overshadows elections | Al Jazeera

One person’s shadow will loom large over Argentina’s legislative elections on Sunday. It isn’t Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s, the former two-term president running for a senatorial seat that could either propel her into a third presidential bid or potentially end her life-long political career. It isn’t that of Education Minister Esteban Bullrich, Fernandez’s main opponent. Instead, the name that will be at the forefront of voters minds will be Santiago Maldonado, a 28-year-old tattoo artist and indigenous rights activist from Veinticinco de Mayo, whose body was found on Thursday, nearly 80 days after his disappearance in a case that has captivated the attention and political discussions of the entire country.

Argentina: Macri Wins Big Endorsement in Midterm Elections | Bloomberg

Argentine President Mauricio Macri’s reform agenda received a critical boost on Sunday after his Cambiemos alliance gained ground in congressional mid-term elections. Preliminary results showed Cambiemos is set to win Argentina’s five largest electoral districts, including the key battleground of Buenos Aires province where his ally Esteban Bullrich defeated ex-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a fierce critic. With 99 percent of votes counted, Bullrich was on 41 percent with 37 percent for Fernandez, according to the National Electoral Directorate. At a national level, Cambiemos won in 12 out of 24 provinces and gained between 41 percent and 42 percent of the total vote, Cabinet Chief Marcos Pena said. “We are the generation that is changing history,” Macri told a crowd of supporters in Buenos Aires. “This is only just beginning.”

Argentina: Body Found in Argentine River Shakes Up Election | The New York Times

The recovery of a corpse this week in a river in Patagonia has shaken up Argentina in the final stretch of a high-stakes midterm election, amid widespread speculation that it is the body of Santiago Maldonado, an indigenous rights activist missing for more than two months. The remains were found on Tuesday less than 1,000 feet upriver from where Mr. Maldonado, 28, was reported last seen on Aug. 1 during an indigenous rights protest that was broken up by security forces. Mr. Maldonado’s ID was found on the body, his brother, Sergio Maldonado, said at a news conference Wednesday night, although relatives were awaiting the results of a forensic examination to confirm the identity. “Until I am 100 percent certain I will not confirm it,” Mr. Maldonado said hours before the body was flown to Buenos Aires for an autopsy, which was scheduled to begin Friday morning.

Argentina: The Debate Over Electronic Voting in Argentina | The Argentina Independent

On 24th November the opposition-controlled Argentine Senate blocked a vote on electoral reform that included the implementation of a new electronic voting system as proposed by President Mauricio Macri. The government-sponsored bill had already been approved by the lower house of Congress in October, but the delay in the Senate means it will not be sanctioned before the end of the legislative year, and therefore not applicable for the mid-term elections in October 2017. However, the government says it will continue to push for the reform, and the debate over the electronic voting system – known as the Single Electronic Ballot (BUE, in Spanish) – continues in Argentina, where it has already been deployed in the province of Salta and the city of Buenos Aires. Various forms of electronic voting are also currently present in countries such as Brazil, Canada, Estonia, India, the USA, and Switzerland, while other states such as Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands have abandoned it after a short period of use.

Argentina: Senate Blocks E-Voting Bill | PanAm Post

Argentina’s senate voted down an electoral reform proposal that included the implementation of single electronic ballots. Many are calling the decision a political defeat for Mauricio Macri, who backed the reform, and which was heavily opposed by the Kirchner bloc, known as the Front for Victory. Thursday, November 26, the political party made its majority status in the Senate known by holding off the initiative, based on the testimony of computer experts and their explanations regarding “the high vulnerability of some of the proposed methods” involved in the electronic voting ballots. The Peronists reportedly guaranteed their support for the reform, but decided yesterday to boycott it. Experts only seemed to be on board with an effort to “continue analyzing tools that will improve the electoral system.”

Argentina: Mauricio Macri wins presidential runoff as Argentina shifts to the right | The Guardian

After 12 years of leftist government, Argentina shifted towards the centre-right on Sunday by giving a presidential victory to Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri of the Cambiemos (Let’s Change) party. With 98.87% of the vote counted, the former chief executive of the Boca Juniors football club was on 51.44%, nearly three points ahead of his rival Daniel Scioli of the Peronist Victory Front who was on 48.56%. The result is likely to reverberate across Latin America.

Argentina: Voters Poised to Make History in Sunday Presidential Election | Bloomberg

Four weeks ago, it was widely expected that the next president of Argentina would be the candidate of the ruling party. But in a first-round election that stunned the nation, opposition leader Mauricio Macri stole the momentum, and as voters return to the polls on Sunday the presidency looks like his to lose. Macri is the more market-friendly candidate and global companies are lining up to invest, persuaded that the country will reopen for business since he is leading the ruling Peronist party’s Daniel Scioli by 6 to 8 percentage points. Up to a tenth of voters remain undecided, however, and polls were off a month ago, so there is room for surprise.

Argentina: What does Argentina’s election mean for South America? | BBC

In the future, books about Argentina’s economic history in the early 21st Century will have to come with a comprehensive glossary. South America’s second-largest economy has been through so many different economic policies and experiments in the past two decades that a whole new vocabulary has sprung up to explain day-to-day economic transactions. Buenos Aires’ main commercial street, Calle Florida, now has dozens of “little trees” (arbolitos), the name given to black-market traders who buy and sell dollars openly in the streets. They stand around like bushes holding up their green leaves (dollar bills). Some traders prefer to “make puree” (“hacer puré”), which is to buy dollars from the government and resell them to the “caves” (“cuevas”), the illegal exchange rate shops that deal with “blue” (black-market dollars).

Argentina: Was Argentina’s election stolen? Here’s how you can tell. | The Washington Post

Mauricio Macri’s surprisingly strong showing against Daniel Scioli in the Oct. 25 presidential election shook up Argentina’s political landscape. The main question before the election was whether Scioli, the candidate of president Cristina Fernández’s Front for Victory (FPV) alliance, could gain enough votes to avoid a runoff election. Since Scioli led many of the polls by more than 10 points over Macri, the front-runner and mayor of Buenos Aires, the concern was whether he could get either 45 percent of the vote or 40 percent and a 10-point advantage over the second place candidate — the conditions necessary to win in the first round without a runoff. Indeed, many pundits speculated that Macri would go the way of Mexico’s Andres Manuel López Obrador, claiming the election was stolen from him. None of this happened.

Argentina: Runoff needed to settle surprisingly close presidential race | Los Angeles Times

In a much closer first round of presidential voting than expected, Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri did well enough to force a Nov. 22 runoff with first-place finisher Daniel Scioli, the candidate of Argentina’s ruling party. With nearly all votes counted, Scioli, who is governor of Buenos Aires state and a former vice president, tallied 36.9% of the ballots cast. Macri was close behind with 34.3%. Scioli, the handpicked choice of outgoing President Cristina Fernandez, needed at least 40% and a 10-percentage-point advantage to avoid a second round of voting. When it became clear he would not win outright, Scioli emerged from his campaign headquarters in Buenos Aires on Sunday night to ask for independent voters’ support. Macri was more euphoric: “What happened today has changed the political history of the country.”

Argentina: Presidential election headed for second round after no clear winner | The Guardian

Argentina’s voters set the stage for a bruising presidential run-off next month after a surprise first round on Sunday in which Daniel Scioli – the candidate of the ruling Peronist coalition – was denied an outright victory. The centre-left candidate, who was endorsed by outgoing president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, was tipped by the exit polls to end the night with a comfortable lead. But preliminary results showed both he and the pro-business Buenos Aires mayor, Mauricio Macri, were neck and neck on 35% each.

Argentina: Opposition lawmakers to demand ‘transparency’ from the Electoral Court | MercoPress

While in the northern province of Tucumán, election results remains in the news due to a contentious vote for governor, currently led by the Victory Front’s Juan Manzur in the final recount, opposition politicians are scheduled to meet in the afternoon with Court authorities. … “Proposals for Electoral Transparency 2015” was presented in document form last week during a press conference in the Argentine Congress, according to a statement released by UCR caucus chief Negri.

Argentina: Court blocks proclamation of winner in provincial vote | EFE

An Argentine court on Tuesday ordered the electoral board of the northern province of Tucuman not to declare any winner in the Aug. 23 gubernatorial election until a move to have the ballot overturned is resolved. Election officials must “refrain from considering closed the process of definitive vote-counting which is under way and from declaring winners,” the administrative court ruled. The court also ordered all ballots and ballot boxes used in the elections to be protected.

Argentina: Opposition Candidates Unite in Call for Electronic Voting | PanAm Post

In response to allegations of electoral fraud in the northwestern province of Tucumán on Sunday, August 24, the presidential candidates representing Argentina’s opposition have proposed the country resume using electronic ballots in future elections. Argentineans have successfully used electronic ballots twice this year during the mayoral election in Buenos Aires in July. Opposition leaders made the call for changes in the voting system on Thursday, August 27, following accusations of fraud in the election for governor in Tucumán, which was marred by violent clashes between protesters and police and the burning of ballot boxes. “In light of the recent irregularities registered in local and national elections, this change is urgent, and aims to provide real transparency and efficiency to the most important act of all modern democracies: the elections,” said the Radical Civic Union (UCR) in a press release.

Argentina: The quality of the vote | Buenos Aires Herald

From television studios, solemn newspaper columns, websites written with the help of TV news, reports on foreign media and research papers that pretend to be academic an interpretation of what happened this week in Tucumán has emerged: in the north of the country, politics is determined by a patronage system in which unscrupulous politicians take advantage of the needs of the poorest Argentines. These humble members of society, the thinking goes, suddenly find themselves placed in a position between the immorality of selling their vote to those who give them a social welfare plan and lack thought or ability to compare options. So they end up giving their support to leaders who hurt them.
That thesis, generally uttered from a trendy Buenos Aires City neighbourhood, attributes humble Northern voters the same intellectual capacity of a machine. In contrast to this barbarianism, there is a sophisticated, well-informed citizenry which supports candidates based not only on self-interest but also principles. Opposition lawmaker Elisa Carrió has been saying it clearly: “The urban middle classes must save the country’s poor.”

Argentina: Riot police suppress protests calling for new elections in Tucumán | El País

Tucumán has become the center of the Argentinean election campaign after thousands of protestors gathered outside government headquarters in the provincial capital of Miguel de Tucumán to call for new elections amid reports of widespread fraud during Sunday’s gubernatorial vote. After several hours, Governor José Alperovich, who has been ruling the region with an iron fist for 12 years, decided to break up the growing crowd in Plaza de la Independencia. People ran, police on foot and on horseback charged against the crowd, tear gas and rubber bullets were fired and several injuries were reported.

Argentina: Finger pointing in Argentina after police break up protests over ballot burning | Associated PRess

In a sign of increasing tension ahead of October elections, the top presidential candidates in Argentina and other government officials exchanged accusations on Tuesday after protests over alleged vote fraud in a northern province were broken up with tear gas and rubber bullets. Cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez suggested that foreign elements from “up north” had organized the late Monday protests, which ended when police fired on people and forcefully removed them from the main square of San Miguel de Tucuman, about 807 miles (1,300 kilometers) north of Buenos Aires. Mauricio Macri, the leading opposition candidate for October’s presidential election, told reporters on Tuesday that it’s impossible to say Sunday’s gubernatorial election in Tucuman was clean when at least 40 ballot boxes had been burned. “We can’t say that this was a normal election,” said Macri, adding that having voting irregularities “in the 21st century is unacceptable.”

Argentina: Argentines vote in presidential, congressional primaries | Associated Press

Millions of voters in Argentina braved heavy rains on Sunday to weigh in on what the South American nation should look like after the departure of President Cristina Fernandez, a polarizing leader who spent heavily on programs for the poor but failed to solve myriad economic problems. Voters cast ballots in open primaries for presidential candidates who had all but sealed the nominations in their respective parties, making the exercise essentially a giant national poll ahead of the Oct. 25 elections. Because of the rains and flooding in some streets in the greater Buenos Aires area, several polling places were relocated during the day.

Argentina: Buenos Aires Censors and Raids the Technologists Fixing Its Flawed E-Voting System | EFF

Buenos Aires is currently in the middle of electing its mayor and city council. With a first round that took place on July 5th, and a second round due on July 19th, the election is the first time Argentina’s capital city has used an electronic voting system called Vot.ar, created by local company Magic Software Argentina (MSA). Like many e-voting systems before it, the security and accountability of MSA’s Vot.ar has long been questioned by local computer technicians, lawyers, human rights defenders and Internet users. But instead of addressing the flaws or postponing Vot.ar’s deployment, the Buenos Aires authorities have chosen instead to silence and intimidate critics of the system’s unfixed problems. A local judge demanded ISPs block web pages, and ordered a raid on the home of one technologist, Joaquín Sorianello, who disclosed to MSA a key insecurity in their deployed infrastructure. Even as the election continues with its troubled technology, online information on the problems is legally censored from online readers, and Sorianello’s property remains in limbo.

Argentina: Police raid programmer who reported flaw in Argentinian e-voting system | Ars Technica UK

Local police have raided the home of an Argentinian programmer who reported a flaw in an e-voting system that was used this weekend for local elections in Buenos Aires. The police took away all of his devices that could store data. According to a report in the newspaper La Nación, Joaquín Sorianello had told the company MSA, which makes the Vot.ar e-voting system, about the problem after he discovered information on the protected Twitter account @FraudeVotar. This revealed that the SSL certificates used to encrypt transmissions between the voting stations and the central election office could be easily downloaded, potentially allowing fraudulent figures to be sent. Sorianello told La Nación that he was only a programmer, not a hacker: “If I’d wanted to hack [the system], or do some damage, I wouldn’t have warned the company.” He also pointed out that it was the @FraudeVotar account that had published the information, not him. As a result of the police action, he said he was “really scared.”

Argentina: Police finds messenger to shoot after e-vote vulnerability allegations | The Register

Argentinian police have reportedly raided a programmer who went public with vulnerabilities in the electronic voting system used in Buenos Aires elections last June. Joaquín Sorianello has told La Nacion that police raided both his home and that of a friend, looking for computers and storage devices. Argentina’s e-voting system comprises a terminal that prints out a ballot (tagged with an RFID chip), and a separate communications terminal to send votes for counting. Security problems in the system have reached GitHub here (discussed here) and include poor security and the chance to cast multiple votes.

Argentina: Santa Fe Begins Recount After Vote Split Three Ways | Bloomberg

Argentina’s fourth biggest voting district will carry out a recount after the election for state governor was evenly split three ways on Sunday.Electoral authorities for Santa Fe province, which represents about 8 percent of the electorate, should complete the recount within 10 days, Cabinet Chief Anibal Fernandez said on Monday. With 95 percent of votes counted, Miguel Lifschitz of the Socialist Party alliance that currently holds the governorship had 30.69 percent of the total, against 30.58 percent for Miguel Del Sel of Mauricio Macri’s PRO alliance. Omar Perotti of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s Victory Front alliance had 29.5 percent of the votes.“There are many strange things,” Del Sel said in a press conference Monday. “The people and us want to know what the final result was because if not we will begin to lose our trust in democracy.”

Argentina: Designing an Operating System for Democracy | Michael Scaturro/The Atlantic

Pia Mancini is the photogenic leader of Argentina’s Net Party, which she co-founded in May 2012 and runs on her MacBook Air—from airplane lounges, conferences in Europe, government ministries, and sometimes an office that her group shares in a Buenos Aires district known for its television studios. As telenovela stars arrive in jeeps and crews unload props from double-parked trucks nearby, Mancini and her colleagues type away next to their officemates, a group of young architects. From this office, which could easily be in Berlin or Berkeley or Beijing, Mancini and co. have created DemocracyOS, an open-source platform for voting and political debate that political parties and governments can download, install, and repurpose much like WordPress blogging software. The platform, which is web-based but also works on smartphone browsers, was conceived as a tool to get young Argentines involved in city governance. But it has since spread as far as Tunisia, where activists turned to the software earlier this year after their own efforts to develop an online forum for debating a draft constitution had failed. “People in Tunisia just found DemocracyOS online,” Mancini explained. “We learned that they were using it through a Transparency International news article.”

Argentina: Will letting 16-year-olds vote change Argentina? | CSMonitor.com

Ignacio Cura, a floppy-haired high-school student, belongs to a new generation of voters that will cast some of its first ballots tomorrow in Argentina’s mid-term elections. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s ruling Peronist alliance, the Front for Victory, passed a controversial law last year that lowers the voting age from 18 to 16. More than half a million youngsters in this nation of 40 million people have since opted to join Mr. Cura on the electoral roll. Critics see the law as a blatant attempt by President Kirchner to harness extra votes in uncertain times for her leftist government, which is popularly believed to count young people among its most fervent supporters. But others say it is a tool for widening democracy and a political extension of Kirchner’s liberal social policies. “This started as a government plan to capture a new mass vote,” says Sergio Berensztein, a political analyst at Poliarquía, a Buenos Aires consultancy. “But that vote is not homogenous.”

Argentina: Argentina proposes giving noncitizens and 16-year-olds voting rights in national elections | The Washington Post

Argentina is rethinking what it means to be a citizen, proposing radical changes that would have both foreigners and 16-year-olds vote to determine who should run the country. President Cristina Fernandez’s legislative powerbrokers say the proposed electoral laws will enhance democracy and challenge the world to treat voting as a universal human right. Opponents call it a naked attempt to prolong the power of a decade-old government that has showered public money on migrants and young people. With approval likely in a Congress controlled by the president’s allies, the laws would expand Argentina’s electorate by 3 million voters, or roughly 10 percent, and make it among the world’s most permissive countries in terms of voting rights, allowing foreigners with two years of permanent residency to cast ballots.

Argentina: Cristina Fernandez celebrates landslide win | BBC News

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has won re-election in a landslide victory, on the back of strong economic growth in the country. Ms Fernandez secured nearly 54% of vote, with her closest challenger, socialist Hermes Binner on just 17%.

Ms Fernandez told jubilant supporters in Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo that she wanted to keep Argentina growing. She also made an emotional reference to her late husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, who died a year ago.

“Count on me to continue pursuing the project,” she said, watched by supporters on a huge TV screen. “All I want is to keep collaborating … to keep Argentina growing. I want to keep changing history.” Her critics say she has benefited from a weak and fragmented opposition in this election. But Ms Fernandez, 58, has presided over strong economic growth and pursued popular social policies.

Argentina: Soria leads by wide margin in Río Negro gubernatorial elections | BuenosAiresHerald.com

With only a 22.16 percent of the votes tallied, the preliminary recount in the Río Negro gubernatorial elections showed that Victory Front candidate Carlos Soria was beating his opponent César Barbeito by a wide margin, suggesting that he will become the province’s next governor.

With only a 22.16 percent of the votes recounted, Soria had obtained a 54.68 percent of the votes, while his main opponent had only obtained a 32.40 percent. Earlier, polls in the Río Negro province closed with no major incidents reported as the population cast their ballots in order to pick their next governor. The main contenders in the race are César Barbeito, a “Kirchnerite-Radical,” and FPV Carlos Soria.