[HN Gopher] Fox News Is Sued by Election Technology Company for ...
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Fox News Is Sued by Election Technology Company for over $2.7B
Author : nwotnagrom
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-02-04 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| ibejoeb wrote:
| > Smartmatic accused Rupert Murdoch's network of promoting a
| false narrative about the 2020 election
|
| I can't wait to see the evidence. That'll prove that the devices
| are auditable. They are, right?
|
| If anyone in government really wants to have a notable legacy,
| here's how: petition the USDS to create an integrated open-source
| election system, and get people like Matt Blaze and Harri Hursti
| to run a red team against it.
|
| Enough with the foreign companies creating and operating black
| boxes. Enough with the smears against people who call for
| entirely reasonable verification while we have absolute top-tier
| experts regularly showing us that these systems are deeply
| flawed. Make elections trustworthy.
| justaguyonline wrote:
| The most incredible factoid for me: These machines, the
| Smartmatic machines, weren't even really used in the election.
|
| >Smartmatic technology was used only in Los Angeles County,
| California in the 2020 election. The system we provided to LA
| County does not count, tabulate or store votes.[1]
|
| A single county in the whole of the United States used them.
| Verifiable or not, there's nothing this company could of done
| to change a national election outcome.
|
| Someone somewhere started repeating that Smartmatic currently
| owned Dominion when their only connection was that they had
| sold off Sequoia Voting Systems----which Dominion currently
| owns, more than a decade ago.[2][3] Once that false factoid got
| in the system it was a convenient enough fact for some
| political factions that it got repeated everywhere.
|
| [1] https://www.smartmatic.com/us/smartmatic-fact-checked/ [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartmatic#Sale_of_Sequoia_Vot...
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems
| rspeele wrote:
| Yeah, one of the things you are expected to accept right off
| the bat going into the conspiracy "evidence" is that all of
| these companies are essentially the same entity: Diebold,
| Dominion, Sequoia, SmartMatic, and Edison Research. Once you
| buy that, you'll also buy that they're all owned by communist
| China.
| devwastaken wrote:
| I agree with the anti black boxes, but it won't solve the
| disinformation. Once the code is available someone who is
| either ignorant or intentionally lying will make up some story
| about how it's vulnerable - and the lay people will eat it up
| because they want to believe it, and will believe they have
| proof.
| jVinc wrote:
| That seemed to have happened even though the code wasn't
| available. So yes, you are absolutely correct, people will
| lie, willfully or ignorantly.
| mikestew wrote:
| _I can 't wait to see the evidence. That'll prove that the
| devices are auditable. They are, right?_
|
| When Fox talking heads are claiming Hugo Chavez had a hand in
| the design, and "The Smartmatic software is in the DNA of every
| vote-tabulating company's software and systems", I don't think
| the ability to audit the machines will come into play. What
| will come into play is whether or not any of Fox's
| unsubstantiated shit-talking can be taken to be true. IANAL,
| and I have might have a particular dislike for all parties
| involved, but I don't think we'll get the evidence we'd like to
| see.
| rspeele wrote:
| Can you give an example of what you would characterize as
| "smears against people who call for entirely reasonable
| verification"? And while you're at it, who you consider a "top-
| tier expert"?
|
| It seems to me that the people getting served with lawsuits
| weren't just concerned about vulnerabilities and calling for
| verification, they were outright claiming that the election
| _was_ stolen. And stating made-up ideas about how it was done
| as facts, at that. Like Sidney Powell saying Dominion machines
| were designed to count Biden votes as 1.26 and Trump votes as
| 0.74.
|
| If all they wanted was verification, well, Georgia recounted
| all the paper ballots by hand and compared the results to what
| the machines scanned. So did Antrim county in Michigan. So did
| Dane and Milwaukee counties in Wisconsin -- which Trump's
| campaign paid $3M to recount. Those recounts didn't show a
| problem with the machines.
|
| If you believe it was stolen, you have to believe they faked
| the recounts too, or that they recounted fake paper ballots
| fabricated to back up the original numbers. But at that point,
| is it really about the voting machines? You could take the
| machines out of the picture completely, have an all-paper
| election, counted by hand starting on Nov 3, and have the exact
| same allegations that you don't trust the count.
| xxpor wrote:
| What makes you think people will accept The One True Machine
| from the feds is any better?
| easton wrote:
| Source code. If they don't like it, they can audit it
| themselves.
| Traster wrote:
| Or, you know, they can do what they always do - take a
| piece of totally benign information (in this case source
| code), confidently and wrongly contend that it's a back
| door for the socialists and scream about it on fox news.
| triceratops wrote:
| You vastly underestimate the imaginations of conspiracy
| theorists. And the gullibility of those who follow them.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| How will they know the source code they're reading is
| what's on the machines?
|
| An important part of elections is for people to understand
| and trust the process. Paper is easy to understand; you and
| a bunch of your neighbors counting paper votes is easy to
| trust. Maybe mix in a machine to speed up the process that
| is also verified by hand.
|
| Yet I can't help but think nothing will convince those who
| so easily believe in a vast conspiracy to alter election
| results spanning multiple states with different political
| leanings and cultures.
| Errsher wrote:
| You can use homomorphic encryption that allows the vote
| (after-the-fact) to be auditable but secure and allows
| individuals to validate that their vote was counted
| accurately.
|
| Microsoft has a project that seems to work in this
| direction:
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/electionguard
| vlang1dot0 wrote:
| Ah yes, the average citizen will definitely trust that
| "homomorphic encryption" isn't just some nonsense made up
| so the election can be rigged.
| Errsher wrote:
| The difference is that with something like ElectionGuard
| - as long as the encrypted result is publicly available -
| you would remove an entire class of complaints that
| people have with the current system - individuals would
| be able to validate that their personal vote was counted
| appropriately, and you would be able to audit the
| authenticity of every vote without disclosing/revealing
| who individuals vote for. Unlike the current system which
| allows opportunity for fraud and is not always auditable
| (at least not immediately), the actual voting
| infrastructure and procedures do not matter as much if we
| can independently verify the authenticity of the
| _outcome_.
| ouid wrote:
| The thing that really keeps elections secure,
| practically, is adversarial observers. If you want people
| to have faith in the election, this is the system to
| explain, and demonstrate. You can even go be an observer
| if you like.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| Source code, binaries, and a reproducible binary build
| system. If you don't modify your compiler to enable
| reproducible binaries, YOU'RE AGAINST DEMOCRACY.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| > Smartmatic, which provided services for the 2020 election in
| only one county
|
| > Smartmatic's complaint takes into account not only the
| reputational and financial damage the company said it had
| suffered, but also the harm done to the United States by the
| claims promoted by Mr. Trump's allies and the Murdoch-controlled
| networks he had long favored.
|
| It appears that they are also trying to add the United States of
| America as defendants after Fox News slandered them with lies
| during the post-election period.
|
| In other words, this lawsuit is going to be laughed out of court.
| I agree that Fox News lied a lot, maybe even more than usual and
| is at least partially responsible for the riots on the capitol,
| but these guys are nuts I don't want them representing me against
| a giant media empire.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| It's suspected that the CCP bought Dominion/Smartmatic the summer
| before the 2020 election for $400 million. That would make these
| lawsuits "lawfare", a CCP non-kinetic warfare strategy. The
| various holding companies all deleted the names of Chinese
| directors when the ownership started to be investigated shortly
| after that.
|
| (The State of Texas dropped Dominion after the ownership was
| unclear, but 29 states kept using it.)
|
| You'll notice the NY Times article uses the leftist keyword
| narrative word "debunked" about ownership questions, without, you
| know, naming the owners. (The other keyword narrative words and
| phrases you see used in a coordinated fashion across news
| channels are "insurrection" and "no widespread voter fraud.")
|
| The CCP also used a front organization in the US in some of the
| recent banned app defense lawsuits.
| [deleted]
| jimjimjim wrote:
| There must be repercussions for lies. There must be. It's not a
| free speech issue.
| jandrese wrote:
| This has come up before for Fox News in the courts. They won.
| Because they are not a news channel and only air opinion pieces
| they aren't subject to the Fairness Doctrine.
|
| Also, Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine so it doesn't really
| matter. Basically Fox is free to lie as much as they like and
| it's perfectly legal because some politicians found it to be
| beneficial.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-...
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-host-shepard-smith-opinion...
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-the-whole-newspa...
|
| Any time a Fox News host is pressed about their lies they fall
| back to the "nobody would believe these obvious lies" defense,
| and it works. Accountability is dead.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Ah, so glad that only one side lies. So nice of the other
| side to keep telling us constantly. Wonderful how we can
| trust big brother on everything.
| jandrese wrote:
| The whatabboutism sure came quick.
|
| Dude, you messed up the playbook. Deny first _then_
| deflect. Or were there too many sources posted and you
| thought the denial would look silly?
|
| Also, put up or shut up. Find a legal case where an NBC,
| ABC, PBS, Washington Post, NYT, etc... reporter uses the "I
| only broadcast opinions so the truth doesn't matter"
| defense. I'm waiting.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| It's questionable whether the Fairness Doctrine was ever an
| issue. It was originally established because the government
| owned the airwaves and leased them to broadcasters -- like a
| landlord, they could have standards.
|
| But the doctrine never applied to print publishers because
| the government didn't have a similar stake in that medium.
| Given that cable companies and the wires they use are all
| private, it seems unlikely they could be restricted under a
| revised Fairness Doctrine without running into 1A issues.
| triceratops wrote:
| > There must be repercussions for lies
|
| Nah that's cancel culture. /s
| treeman79 wrote:
| When government decides a group must be punished then bad
| things happen.
|
| Genocide, civil war, etc.
|
| http://www.projetaladin.org/holocaust/en/history-of-the-holo...
| [deleted]
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Traditionally, the repercussion for lying was loss of
| reputation/business/relationships. It didn't always work that
| way, of course, but it was a moderately effective dynamic
| overall.
|
| What's new now is that everyone's ability to create a network
| (and leverage network effects) via social media is tremendously
| amplified. That means both a reward system for embracing lies
| as long as the lies agree with in-group beliefs, and a greatly
| increased ability to spread them.
|
| Congress can't legislate that media (or Karen on Twitter for
| that matter) has to tell the truth -- that's a pretty well
| established point of law and you'd likely need to amend the
| Constitution if you wanted wholesale, mandated change. Against
| the backdrop of that not-gonna-happen-in-our-lifetime heavy
| lift, the boomlet in deplatforming is actually a pretty good
| (although I personally dislike it) and organic solution.
| Private-sector actors are doing what Congress and the Court
| cannot.
|
| Now, does it solve for the dopamine drip and self-reinforcing
| vitriol that caused our current problem? No. But it does, at
| least partially, quarantine it.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That populist soundbyte has been spreading like a virus but I
| have yet to see any elaboration let alone a coherent plan. What
| consequences, and how would it be remotely constitutional?
| Boycott those who advertise on Fox News? Sure - that is well
| within your rights of freedom of association. Libel to the
| typical standards of actual malice for public figures sure.
| Outlawing "lies"? There are so many things wrong with that.
| Forget the zeitgeist and imagine what your worst enemies or
| worst people in history could do with such tools and deciding
| what counts as a lie. 'Fake news' punishments for pointing out
| the lack of evidence of hydroxychloroquine as effective for
| COVID-19.
| spaceisballer wrote:
| I don't think this is going to go anywhere, probably just handing
| out lawsuits. I do believe they may be able to win their case
| against Giuliani. Read a long article going into depth about it
| and seems like a strong case that he was very negligent. I mean
| there are court records of him saying they have no evidence for
| his claims yet he continued to spew them in public.
| ashneo76 wrote:
| To all the naysayers, is there any other way to hold fox
| accountable for all the propaganda and division that they have
| down for that 5 years at least? And to hold rupert murdoch
| accountable?
| blablablerg wrote:
| And still are doing! It's disgusting how selective their
| reporting is.
| glial wrote:
| Not just 5 years. They were lead cheerleaders for the 2003 Iraq
| War.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| And Murdoch's media in UK were cheerleaders for Brexit, and
| in Australia for climate change denial.
|
| At least Rupert Murdoch's son James has split from the family
| media interests and spoken out:
|
| * https://www.ft.com/content/9eab68e1-7afb-4282-95fa-3149bd09
| 1... [paywall]
|
| * https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/15/media/james-murdoch-
| elect...
| glial wrote:
| If someone had enough money, would it be possible to buy a
| controlling share in NewsCorp?
| jacob2484 wrote:
| Only if the same can be done to CNN & MSNBC with the leftwing
| propaganda and divisiveness.
| anemoiac wrote:
| Perhaps this may come off sounding a little too "no true
| Scotsman"-y for HN, but I have to shake my head and chuckle
| quietly to myself whenever I hear about a "left wing" multi
| billion dollar corporation.
|
| Additionally, divisiveness is not inherently bad - or, at
| least, it's often better than the alternative. The American
| Civil Rights Movement was extremely divisive, for example.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Cancel culture means only once view point is allowed.
|
| Anyone that disagrees is automatically attacked and given
| many horrible labels.
|
| Want to move the tax rate up or down? Your a racist if you
| pick wrong.
| ihumanable wrote:
| We want structural change with laws and government
| regulation!
|
| No, you can't have that, the market must decide, it's most
| efficient!
|
| Ok, then when people do things we don't like, we will
| boycott them since we can only use market based solutions.
|
| No, that's cancel culture!
|
| Hmm.... seems like these two ideas together is basically
| just a long way of saying that those with power should be
| immune from society at large.
| fungiblecog wrote:
| It would be funny if it wasn't so depressing the way that
| right-wing extreme selfishness is so often justified by
| trying to make a false equivalence with unselfish left-wing
| ideas.
|
| Wanting people to be less shit to each other - and to the
| rest of nature - is not the same as advocating for the right
| of the rich to shit on everyone else.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| CNN as well?
|
| Some CNN lies:
|
| 1. "When President Trump met with Japanese Prime Minister
| Shinzo Abe last November, the pair took part in a koi fish
| feeding ceremony. A video posted by CNN appeared to show Trump
| dumping his entire box of food into the koi pond unprompted.
|
| An unedited video revealed that Trump was simply following the
| lead of Abe, who emptied his box of food first."
|
| 2."CNN claimed that only Democratic members of Congress
| gathered to pray before the 2017 Congressional Baseball Game --
| the first game after House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot
| and nearly killed."
|
| 3. "After a May shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, CNN
| reporters immediately began claiming that there were 22 school
| shootings on the year.
|
| However, CNN wildly exaggerates the number of school shootings
| by using methodology that includes accidental firearm
| discharges on school property, domestic disputes, and other
| non-active shooter events."
|
| 4. "Multiple CNN reporters speculated about the whereabouts of
| Melania Trump after a scheduled kidney surgery and then denied
| responsibility for any conspiracy theories about the first
| lady.
|
| Media reporter Brian Stelter led his "Reliable Sources"
| newsletter on June 3rd with the headline "Melania M.I.A," and
| insisted the first lady's whereabouts were a "mystery" because
| she had not been seen in public since May 10."
|
| 5. "CNN fakes internet meme to smear alt-right. CNN told their
| viewers that this racist meme was going viral in alt-right
| circles. However it was revealed that the network actually
| created the image themselves in an attempt to smear Trump
| supporters as white supremacists. The internet did not exist on
| the internet at all."
|
| There is so much more fake news from CNN than these few
| examples.
| Craighead wrote:
| This is such an obnoxiously bad take to draw a false parallel
| between CNN and Fox. Please go back to Parler or 8chan with
| this nonsense.
| SR2Z wrote:
| There's a massive difference between "Trump dumped a box of
| fish food into a fish pond!" and "The election was rigged and
| the government of the most powerful nation on earth is
| illegitimate!"
|
| You KNOW that these two are totally incomparable. None of
| your examples are any better.
| isbadawi wrote:
| What are these quotes from?
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