National

If the leaks that doomed Michael Flynn were a signal from the intelligence community, perhaps the message they intended to carry was: You ain’t seen nothing yet. The national security adviser’s abrupt resignation Monday night, which the White House says was a firing, came after it became clear that Flynn had lied to the public and to Vice President Mike Pence, alleging he had not discussed sanctions against Russia’s ambassador to the United States. On Tuesday evening, The New York Times added a set of new, if in some cases merely suggestive, information about further contacts between the Trump team and the Russian government—some of it directly contradicting statements made by Trump aides. The newspaper reports that four current and former intelligence officers say that Trump political and business associates “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.” The contacts came in the context of Trump repeatedly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin on the trail, as well as what intelligence officials and the Obama administration say were Russian efforts to boost Trump’s presidential hopes with hacks targeting Hillary Clinton and her political allies.

National: The Inside Story of the Chaotic Trump-Clinton Recount | New Republic

Five days after Donald Trump was elected president, Alex Halderman was on a United Airlines flight from Newark to Los Angeles when he received an urgent email. A respected computer scientist and leading critic of security flaws in America’s voting machines, Halderman was anxious to determine whether there had been foul play during the election. Had machines in Wisconsin or Michigan been hacked? Could faulty software or malfunctioning equipment have skewed the results in Pennsylvania? “Before the election, I had been saying I really, really hope there’s not a hack and that it’s not close,” he says. “Afterwards, I thought, ‘Wait a minute, there’s enough reason here to be concerned.’ ” Now, wedged into a middle seat on the cross-country flight, Halderman stared in disbelief at the email from Barbara Simons, a fellow computer scientist and security expert. Working with Amy Rao, a Silicon Valley CEO and major Democratic fundraiser, Simons had arranged a conference call with John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, to make the case for taking a closer look at the election results. Could Halderman be on the call in 15 minutes? United’s wi-fi system didn’t allow for in-flight phone calls. But Halderman wasn’t fazed. “I’m blocked,” he emailed Simons, “but I can try.” Within minutes, Halderman had circumvented the wi-fi and established an interface with computers at the University of Michigan, where at 36 he is the youngest full professor in the history of the computer science department. He dialed in to the call but did not speak, afraid of drawing attention to the fact that he was violating the airline’s phone ban.

National: State election officials say DHS vague on rules for election aid | FCW

State election officials had more questions than answers after a Department of Homeland Security presentation explaining why election systems should be deemed critical U.S. infrastructure. Geoff Hale, DHS’ cybersecurity strategy and integration program manager, outlined the changes and benefits that the recent designation provides during a Feb. 14 Election Assistance Commission meeting. The primary benefits, Hale said, are added protections against nation-states, guaranteed priority in DHS assistance requests and greater access to information on vulnerabilities. “Without institutionalizing this through a designation of critical infrastructure, there’s no guarantee the services would be available,” he said. “Being critical infrastructure, there are a set of international norms that” prevent countries from attacking these networks, said Hale. “And potentially waiting nine months for a risk and vulnerability assessment may not work on a procurement timeline” for election officials. Hale also stressed that the “full threat information” available to states that opt in for DHS assistance is not subject to state sunshine laws or Freedom of Information Act requests.

National: Do voter identification laws suppress minority voting? Yes. We did the research. | The Washington Post

The Justice Department just got a new boss: Jeff Sessions. He is raising alarms in the civil rights community. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is concerned about his “record of hostility” toward the Voting Rights Act and the enforcement of civil rights. The NAACP-Legal Defense Fund lamented that it is “unimaginable that he could be entrusted to serve as the chief law enforcement officer for this nation’s civil rights laws.” No one knows for sure how Sessions will perform as attorney general — the former Republican senator from Alabama did, after all, once vote to renew the Voting Rights Act, in 2006 — but for many his record is deeply troubling. What we do know is that voter identification laws are spreading rapidly around the country. Before 2006, no state required photo identification to vote on Election Day. Today 10 states have this requirement. All told, a total of 33 states — representing more than half the nation’s population — have some version of voter identification rules on the books. As we detail below, our research shows that these laws lower minority turnout and benefit the Republican Party.

National: New Mac malware pinned on same Russian group blamed for election hacks | Ars Technica

APT28, the Russian hacking group tied to last year’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, has long been known for its advanced arsenal of tools for penetrating Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux devices. Now, researchers have uncovered an equally sophisticated malware package the group used to compromise Macs. Like its counterparts for other platforms, the Mac version of Xagent is a modular backdoor that can be customized to meet the objectives of a given intrusion, researchers from antivirus provider Bitdefender reported in a blog post published Tuesday. Capabilities include logging passwords, snapping pictures of screen displays, and stealing iOS backups stored on the compromised Mac. The discovery builds on the already considerable number of tools attributed to APT28, which other researchers call Sofacy, Sednit, Fancy Bear, and Pawn Storm. According to researchers at CrowdStrike and other security firms, APT28 has been operating since at least 2007 and is closely tied to the Russian government. An analysis Bitdefender published last year determined APT28 members spoke Russian, worked mostly during Russian business hours, and pursued targets located in Ukraine, Spain, Russia, Romania, the US, and Canada.

National: Senators from both parties pledge to deepen probe of Russia and the 2016 election | The Washington Post

Top Republican and Democratic senators pledged Tuesday to deepen their investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election in the wake of Michael Flynn’s resignation as President Trump’s national security adviser, opening a new and potentially uncomfortable chapter in the uneasy relationship between Trump and Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said such an investigation is “highly likely,” and the top two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), stood side by side Tuesday to announce that the committee’s ongoing probe must include an examination of any contacts between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government. Flynn resigned late Monday after revelations of potentially illegal contacts with Russia last year and misleading statements about the communication to senior Trump administration officials, including Vice President Pence. “We are aggressively going to continue the oversight responsibilities of the committee as it relates to not only the Russian involvement in the 2016 election, but again any contacts by any campaign individuals that might have happened with Russian government officials,” said Burr, the chairman of the intelligence panel.

National: Should Americans trust their voting tech? | FCW

February 14, 2017

Despite finding no signs of foul play during the 2016 elections’ actual ballot-casting, state officials told the Election Assistance Commission they are looking to shore up the cybersecurity of voting systems to ensure that Americans are confident in their election results. Director of the New Jersey State Department’s division of elections Bob Giles said at an EAC meeting Feb. 13 that although “cybersecurity wasn’t as big a concern” entering the 2016 election because his state’s voting machines were not connected to the internet, the attention garnered by Russia’s reported electoral influence has led to a rethinking of his agency’s cybersecurity protocols. Giles said cyber hygiene practices such as improving password strength and multifactor authentication will be included in the state’s plan to modernize its voter registration system.

National: The White House tells media to ask Kris Kobach to prove there’s voter fraud. They do. He doesn’t. | The Washington Post

February 14, 2017

Stephen Miller, senior policy adviser to President Trump, defended his boss’s continuing insistence on rampant voter fraud in the 2016 election Sunday by offering an expert witness. “I suggest you invite Kris Kobach onto your show,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “and he can walk you through some of the evidence of voter fraud in greater detail.” Kobach is Kansas’s secretary of state and is fighting the ACLU in federal court over his state’s recent voting restrictions. (A law passed in Kansas in 2011 was credited with disproportionately keeping young and black voters from the polls.) On Monday, three networks invited Kobach on. Two pressed the issue. Kobach offered zero proof. At question is not the existence of voter fraud at all. There are certainly instances in which people vote illegally, like the woman in Texas who cast ballots in 2012 and 2014 despite not being a citizen. The question is whether fraud occurs at a large enough scale to affect election results. A teenager stealing a candy bar from a convenience store every three weeks is different than armed men emptying its safe every night. Miller suggested that Kobach could prove the latter. He barely proved the former.

National: Not Okay: Professor Smeared After Advocating for Election Integrity | Electronic Frontier Foundation

February 14, 2017

Imagine if someone, after reading something you wrote online that they didn’t agree with, decided to forge racist and anti-Semitic emails under your name. This appears to be what happened to J. Alex Halderman, a computer security researcher and professor of computer science at the University of Michigan. Halderman is one of many election security experts—along with EFF, of course—who has advocated for auditing the results of the 2016 presidential election. The recent attempts to smear his name in retaliation for standing up for election integrity are a threat to online free speech. Halderman, who is a frequent collaborator and sometimes client of EFF, published a piece on Medium in November 2016 arguing that we should perform recounts in three states—Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—to ensure that the election had not been “hacked.” To be clear, despite a report in New York Magazine, Halderman never stated that there was hard evidence that the election results had in fact been electronically manipulated. He just stated that we should check to be sure:

The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

National: Election commissioner to Trump: Show evidence of voter fraud | The Hill

A commissioner on the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) called on President Trump to give proof of voter fraud, after he reportedly made further claims in a meeting with senators. Trump reportedly blamed voter fraud for why both he and former Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) lost in New Hampshire last November during a recent meeting with a bipartisan group of senators. “The scheme the President of the United States alleges would constitute thousands of felony criminal offenses under New Hampshire law,” Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said in a statement Friday. “The President has issued an extraordinarily serious and specific charge,” added Weintraub, who is a Democrat but was appointed by former President George W. Bush in 2002. “Allegations of this magnitude cannot be ignored.” “I therefore call upon President Trump to immediately share his evidence with the public and with the appropriate law-enforcement authorities so that his allegations may be investigated promptly and thoroughly.”

National: The Supreme Court will examine partisan gerrymandering in 2017. That could change the voting map. | The Washington Post

In 2017, the Supreme Court will take up the issue of partisan gerrymandering. Depending on how the court rules, its decisions could have far-reaching implications for the partisan balance in the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures — and for the future of redistricting across the country. Gerrymandering has helped give the Republican Party a significant advantage in Congress. Because Republicans had unified control of twice as many states as Democrats when the last congressional district maps were drawn, estimates suggest that gerrymandering before the 2012 elections cost Democrats between 20 and 41 seats in the House. Partisan gerrymandering has become the norm in U.S. politics because the Supreme Court has declined to declare it unconstitutional. For three decades, a majority of justices have failed to identify manageable standards to determine when a plan rises to the level of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

National: Veterans in US territories crowd fund the legal case for voting rights | McClatchy DC

A group of military veterans living in Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are crowd-funding their appeal to challenge federal voting laws that deny U.S. citizens living in the territories the ability to vote in presidential elections. Americans in the U.S. territories follow the same federal laws, pay billions in taxes and have some of the highest rates of enlistment in the U.S. military, but they say their equal protection rights are being violated based on where they live. People born in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are all U.S. citizens. “I don’t feel that I am a complete person as an American,” said Rodney Cruz, a disabled veteran who served multiple tours in Iraq before his injury in 2008. “I went over, I took a bullet, I did everything that was required of me, but when it comes to electing our commander in chief every four years I’m told, ‘You can’t because you’re a nonvoting citizen.’ ” A native of Guam, Cruz is the sixth generation in his family to serve in the U.S. military. The nonprofit he founded to help veterans with mental health issues – Iraq, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Veterans of the Pacific – is a plaintiff in the case. Every election year while Cruz was deployed, he said, he felt frustrated watching fellow soldiers cast their absentee ballots.

National: Trump’s voter fraud claims are absurd, yet another analysis shows | VICE News

Just under 3 million Americans are registered to vote in two places, but the overwhelming majority of them don’t vote twice, according to a new analysis by TargetSmart, the data firm used by the Democratic National Committee for its national voter file. These findings, discussed in an interview with VICE News, discredit recent assertions by President Donald Trump that there is an epidemic of double-voting and voter fraud. Since it became clear that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in November’s presidential election, Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that he came up 2.9 million ballots short because 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally. (There are 200 million registered voters in the U.S.) Five days into his presidency, Trump called for a “major investigation” into that alleged fraud but then later scaled back his effort to a “commission” led by Vice President Mike Pence to study the problem.

National: House committee votes to close Election Assistance Commission | USA Today

While President Trump is promising to launch an investigation into his belief that millions of illegal ballots were cast in 2016, the Republican-led House Administration Committee voted Tuesday to shut down the federal agency set up to help states improve their election systems. Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., chairman of the House Administration Committee, said the Election Assistance Commission has “outlived” his usefulness. … “This is the time when we should be focusing on strengthening” the EAC, said Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, the top Democrat on the committee. Brady argued the EAC helps states run fair, accurate and efficient elections. He said the agency provided key support to states in the last election.

National: New administration will uphold election system’s designation as critical infrastructure | Reuters

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Tuesday said he backed a decision in the Obama administration’s final days to designate elections systems as critical infrastructure in order to boost their cyber defenses, after the government concluded Russian hackers tried to influence the 2016 presidential race. Some conservative states, such as Georgia, had expressed concerns that the Obama administration move amounted to a federal takeover of elections traditionally run by state and local governments. The designation means voting machines, voter registration systems, polling places and other assets important to holding elections are eligible for priority cyber-security assistance from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “I believe we should help all of the states … to make sure that their systems are protected in future elections,” Kelly told the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Homeland Security in response to a question from Democratic U.S. Representative Cedric Richmond. “I would argue that, yes, we should keep that in place.”

National: Federal Agency Tasked with Protecting Election Integrity is on the Cutting Block | Campaign Legal Center

The 2016 elections were dogged by questions about the integrity of our electoral system – from false claims that millions of people voted illegally – to legitimate concerns about the first election in fifty years without the protections of the Voting Rights Act. Also, there have been new worries about foreign actors interfering in our political process. During the primary season and in the general election, voters raised concerns about purged voter registration lists and long lines. In addition to the hacking of emails by Russian actors, there is also evidence that hackers attempted to penetrate state voter registration systems across the country. With plenty of challenges in election administration to address, why did a House Committee vote yesterday to eliminate the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) – an agency tasked with evaluating and improving the efficiency and security of federal elections?

National: Russian election hacks exploited legal grey zone: lawyers | AFP

Russia’s alleged computer hacking to interfere in US elections was no act of war, but exploited a legal grey zone that makes justifying retaliation hard, international lawyers specializing in cyber issues said Wednesday. Moscow’s interference in the presidential campaign last year by hacking Democratic Party computers and leaking embarrassing communications was an act of espionage — legal under international law — and at worst a slight violation of US sovereignty, the lawyers said. But it was definitely no act of war, as some American politicians have suggested, US lawyer Michael Schmitt said, adding that calling it such “is very destabilizing.” Speaking at the launch of a new manual on cyber attacks and international law, he said the reaction to the Russia-US hacking case heightens the need for accepted international standards for countries to assess and counter cyber attacks proportionately.

National: Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Election Hacking Sanctions Before Trump Took Office | The New York Times

Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials. Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said. The accounts of the conversations raise the prospect that Mr. Flynn violated a law against private citizens’ engaging in diplomacy, and directly contradict statements made by Trump advisers. They have said that Mr. Flynn spoke to Mr. Kislyak a few days after Christmas merely to arrange a phone call between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Trump after the inauguration. But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

National: GOP lawmakers around the US push for restrictions on voting | The Republic

As President Donald Trump hurls unfounded allegations of colossal fraud in last fall’s election, lawmakers in at least 20 mostly Republican-led states are pushing to make it harder to register or to vote. Efforts are underway in places such as Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Nebraska and Indiana to adopt or tighten requirements that voters show photo ID at the polls. There is a move in Iowa and New Hampshire to eliminate Election Day registration. New Hampshire may also make it difficult for college students to vote. And Texas could shorten the early voting period by several days. Supporters say the measures are necessary to combat voter fraud and increase public confidence in elections. But research has shown that in-person fraud at the polls is extremely rare, and critics of these restrictions warn that they will hurt mostly poor people, minorities and students — all of whom tend to vote Democratic — as well as the elderly. They fear, too, that the U.S. Justice Department, under newly confirmed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, will do little to intervene to protect voters.

National: Trump official: Election infrastructure should be protected | The Hill

President Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security indicated Tuesday that he would keep in place the Obama administration’s designation of election infrastructure as “critical.” “I believe we should help all of the states to make sure their systems are protected, so I would argue we should keep that in place,” Secretary John Kelly said during testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee in response to questioning from Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.). The Obama administration designated the U.S. election infrastructure as “critical” in January, just two weeks before Trump’s inauguration. The move extended to storage facilities, polling places and centralized vote tabulation locations supporting the election process, as well as information and communications technology such as voter registration databases and voting machines. The decision resulted in these systems being subject to federal protections.

National: New administration will keep ‘critical’ label on election systems | Cyberscoop

The new Homeland Security Secretary said Tuesday his department will not overturn the last-minute decision by previous leadership to designate the U.S. election system as “critical national infrastructure,” despite calls from some state officials to reverse the designation. “I would argue that yes, we should keep that in place,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told the House Homeland Security Committee during his first time testifying as a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet. Last month, just days before leaving office, outgoing leadership at DHS blindsided state and local officials by designating the election systems as “critical national infrastructure.” At the stroke of a pen, the property of 8,000 election jurisdictions across the country was added to a special DHS list of 16 “sectors” of vital U.S. national industry, ranging from banking and telephones to water and sewage systems.

National: Study Examines Modernizing Voter Registration | WAMC

There has been plenty of talk in recent weeks, much of it emanating from the White House, about voter fraud. Now, a new study released by the Brennan Center For Justice, entitled “Election Integrity: A Pro-Voter Agenda,” confirms in-person voter fraud is a rarity. The paper argues that the integrity of elections can be strengthened without discouraging eligible voters. On January 25th, President Donald Trump Tweeted “I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD…” Trump claimed millions voted illegally in the election: “You have people registered in two states. They’re registered in New York and New Jersey, they vote twice.” Without any evidence, the president has also claimed “3-5 million illegal votes” cost him a popular vote victory. This all comes after years of battles in the states over voting laws that some say make it harder for many citizens to participate in elections. Most people expect American elections are secure and free of misconduct, but some are doubtful. “I will say this. Of those votes cast, none of ’em come to me. None of ’em come to me,” moaned Trump.

National: House committee votes to eliminate Election Assistance Commission | The Guardian

A Republican-led House committee voted on Tuesday to eliminate an independent election commission charged with helping states improve their voting systems as Donald Trump erroneously claims widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote. The party-line vote came less than two days after the US president vowed to set up a White House commission helmed by the vice-president, Mike Pence, to pursue his accusations of election fraud. … The bill was opposed by committee Democrats and voting rights groups, who argued that the federal agency played a vital role in protecting elections from hacking and other types of interference. “At a time when the vast majority of the country’s voting machines are outdated and in need of replacement, and after an election in which foreign criminals already tried to hack state voter registration systems, eliminating the EAC poses a risky and irresponsible threat to our election infrastructure,” said Wendy Weiser, the democracy program director at the Brennan Center for Justice.

National: Republicans vote to scrap Election Assistance Commission | International Business Times

In spite of President Donald Trump’s unverified claims that millions of people voted illegally in the US election, a House committee has voted to eliminate an independent election commission. The Republican-led House Administration Committee voted 6-3 along party lines to scrap the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on Tuesday (7 February) – the only federal body aimed at ensuring voting machines cannot be hacked. Though Trump’s assertions have been widely discredited, public advocacy groups have raised serious concerns about the decision because of the body’s importance. It was created in the aftermath of the 2000 election and the Florida recount controversy which decided the race between George W Bush and Al Gore. Since then, the EAC has grown to even greater significance as many of the country’s voting machines have become outdated, with the Brennan Center for Justice saying the situation is an “impending crisis”. They were one of 38 bodies to denounce the vote to scrap the EAC, stating it puts America’s democracy at risk.

National: As Trump fears fraud, GOP votes to kill Election Assistance Commission | Associated Press

A House committee voted on Tuesday to eliminate an independent election commission charged with helping states improve their voting systems as President Donald Trump erroneously claims widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote. The party-line vote came less than two days after Trump vowed to set up a White House commission helmed by Vice President Mike Pence to pursue his accusations of election fraud. “We’re going to look at it very, very carefully,” Trump said of voter fraud in an interview with Fox News that aired Sunday. “It has to do with the registration, and when you look at the registration and you see dead people that have voted.” Reports that Trump told congressional leaders in a meeting last month that 3 to 5 million ballots were cast illegally during the 2016 race were met with discomfort on Capitol Hill. While top Republicans have refused to disavow his charges of election fraud, they haven’t pushed for action on the issue, which remains a low priority for congressional leadership.

National: Former Democratic Senate candidate launches voting rights group | The Hill