[HN Gopher] Head of election worker management company arrested ...
___________________________________________________________________
Head of election worker management company arrested for theft of
personal data
Author : happyopossum
Score : 136 points
Date : 2022-10-05 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (da.lacounty.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (da.lacounty.gov)
| petsormeat wrote:
| In some counties, this could lead to physical harm to those poll
| workers: https://archive.ph/fGn0r
| Wistar wrote:
| Including, ever more likely, the U.S.
| sva_ wrote:
| Ah yeah, counties like the US.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| It endangered poll workers in America.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33050320
|
| https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/230000-policing-expan...
| md2020 wrote:
| Just a note to you and the other commenter with a similar
| comment, they said "counties", not "countries" and linked to
| a piece about a county in the US.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I just signed up to be a poll worker in the East Lansing area.
|
| This is going to be fun...
| carom wrote:
| Yet my voter records are public with my name, address, and phone
| number. Curious. Also the DMV sells my information. Also the post
| office forwards my information to companies who have my previous
| address when I file a change of address form. Also my property
| records are public.
|
| I would love if the government gave me the ability to opt out (or
| better, opt in) to these practices. They are a huge source of
| data leaks.
| advisedwang wrote:
| 35 states do have some kind of program for protecting addresses
| if you are at risk of stalking, DV etc. See
| https://www.sos.wa.gov/acp/about.aspx for an example and the 35
| state number.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| those USA records are huge sources for local law enforcement,
| credit card companies, anyone in consumer credit, private
| detectives, insurance industry and more.. anyone with property
| is being tracked since the 1960s at least. You just didnt get
| the memo.
| uoaei wrote:
| The USPS sent my phone number to scammers as soon as I signed
| up for SMS package notifications. I'm hoping the FTC cares
| enough to investigate my report...
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| The DAY after the NYT called it a "right wing conspiracy theory".
| tootie wrote:
| This is absolutely unrelated to the right wing conspiracy
| theory which is 100% a propaganda campaign.
| ejb999 wrote:
| The 'right wing conspiracy theory' that you say this is
| unrelated to was this:
|
| * _Using threadbare evidence, or none at all, the group
| suggested that a small American election software company,
| Konnech, had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and
| had given the Chinese government backdoor access to personal
| data about two million poll workers in the United States,
| according to online accounts from several people at the
| conference.*_
|
| which is _exactly_ what happened, and thus the arrest - so in
| this case, the 'theory' was spot on.
|
| Tell us again how this is unrelated?
| smallerfish wrote:
| Where's your evidence that they had secret ties to the
| Chinese Communist Party and/or gave them backdoor access,
| as opposed to, say, hiring a dev team in China on Upwork
| because they were cheap, and had a poor understanding of
| compliant data handling?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I'm sorry but this is actually kind of funny.
|
| You're saying, basically: where are the secret ties? The
| ties are right there in the open!
|
| (Well now they are at least)
|
| "Hey they got caught. They're not being so secretive
| anymore" is not really evidence suggesting that there was
| nothing nefarious occurring.
| smallerfish wrote:
| The article says: "District Attorney investigators found
| that in contradiction to the contract, information was
| stored on servers in the People's Republic of China."
|
| It doesn't say the communist party breached those
| servers, that there were deliberate ties, etc. There
| could well be. I'm just not seeing it in the article
| we're discussing, hence my question to you.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| There's no evidence presented in this arrest warrant that
| CCCP had access to this data or was even aware of its
| existence.
|
| The only charge is storing the data on servers in China.
|
| Slow your roll.
| adolph wrote:
| _Under its $2.9 million, five-year contract with the county,
| Konnech was supposed to securely maintain the data and that only
| United States citizens and permanent residents have access to
| it._
|
| _District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction to
| the contract, information was stored on servers in the People's
| Republic of China._
|
| Maybe there are additional facts not claimed in the press
| release, but at face value the two above statements are not
| mutually exclusive. If the PRC wanted access and the company was
| willing, it is hardly necessary for the data to reside in any
| geographic location.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| > In this case, the alleged conduct had no impact on the
| tabulation of votes and did not alter election results
|
| Would be curious how they asserted that. A contractor in the last
| election dumped ballots in garbage in Pennsylvania. Justice
| department maintained it didn't alter election integrity.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/temporary-contractor-threw-t...
| tootie wrote:
| Read it. The alleged crime was related to PII of election
| workers. Not voters. The assertion is that nothing in their
| investigation indicated trouble with votes which isn't the same
| as guaranteeing nothing happened.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > A contractor in the last election dumped ballots in garbage
| in Pennsylvania. Justice department maintained it didn't alter
| election integrity.
|
| Given that it was _nine_ ballots, that seems rational.
| eej71 wrote:
| The NYT might need to update their article from yesterday.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/technology/konnech-electi...
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >Using threadbare evidence, or none at all, the group suggested
| that a small American election software company, Konnech, had
| secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the
| Chinese government backdoor access to personal data about two
| million poll workers in the United States, according to online
| accounts from several people at the conference.
|
| Unreal that they published this.
| tootie wrote:
| > In the ensuing weeks, the conspiracy theory grew as it shot
| around the internet. To believers, the claims showed how
| China had gained near complete control of America's
| elections.
|
| That part is still valid. And really we don't actually know
| what evidence the DA has or if the scope of the arrest
| warrant matches the theory. All they've said is that some
| data was stored in China.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They did.
|
| > Update, Oct. 5: After this article was published, the chief
| executive of Konnech was arrested on suspicion of theft of
| personal information about poll workers.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That is the most bullshit "update" I have ever seen. NYT
| shouldn't just "update" that article, they should issue a
| retraction and a major apology, and fire people involved with
| the story. Maybe if the update had said this I'd be OK with
| it:
|
| > Update, Oct. 5: After this article was published, the chief
| executive of Konnech was arrested on suspicion of theft of
| personal information about poll workers. Prosecutors asserted
| that the chief executive had poll worker information stored
| on servers in the People's Republic of China, which in our
| original article we disparaged as an "unfounded conspiracy
| theory", and the statement in our article, "It said that all
| the data for its American customers were stored on servers in
| the United States and that it had no ties to the Chinese
| government." is likely totally false.
| adamrezich wrote:
| retractions and major apologies have not been a thing in
| mainstream journalism for some time now.
|
| "journal of record" my fucking ass
| pnf wrote:
| Why would they fire anyone? These aren't mistakes.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| What does the theft of personal data have to do with claims
| of widespread voter fraud?
| anon291 wrote:
| In the article, the right-leaning groups (that the Times
| called 'election deniers', despite not offering evidence)
| claimed the company stored data in China. That is likely
| true. Or at least it's true enough that a judge issued a
| warrant.
|
| Nothing in the article says these groups are claiming
| this company participated in fraud. Only that they are
| stealing american data.
|
| The article lays out exactly what True the Vote claimed:
|
| > Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips claimed at the
| conference and in livestreams that they investigated
| Konnech in early 2021. Eventually, they said, the group's
| team gained access to Konnech's database by guessing the
| password, which was "password," according to the online
| accounts from people who attended the conference. Once
| inside, they told attendees, the team downloaded personal
| information on about 1.8 million poll workers.
|
| Based on the case notes, I think this allegation is
| merited and not a conspiracy theory at all.
| [deleted]
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Ouch. I take a perverse pleasure when journalists screw up, but
| this is bad.
| anon291 wrote:
| I fully support this action, but I also think county bureaucrats
| and elected officials who allowed this software to be used
| despite clearly having no ability to audit it, should also be
| held accountable.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Even if this was a case of incompetence, it's highly unusual to
| store sensitive government data on an offshore server.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _incompetence_
|
| _Oopsie, I accidentally provisioned a server in communist
| China._
|
| Yeah right.
| ironchief wrote:
| I thought your comment was a joke until I read the link. Wow
|
| "District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction
| to the contract, information was stored on servers in the
| People's Republic of China."
| mikeyouse wrote:
| They had a software development subsidiary with a testing
| server / database in China that apparently received some
| actual poll-worker PII.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Why did a company with 20 employees have a subsidiary
| with a server in China?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Because they're spies.
| rglover wrote:
| The incredibly important punchline:
|
| > District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction to
| the contract, information was stored on servers in the People's
| Republic of China.
|
| It's shocking how effective the CCP has been at infiltrating
| Western governments and institutions.
|
| My favorite turn to date has to be Charles Lieber from Harvard
| [1]. He's got some fun patents [2] floating around.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/harvard-university-
| profes...
|
| [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2015199784A2/en
| woodruffw wrote:
| There is no evidence of "infiltration" here. The reality is
| that, in its march to privatize everything it can, the US
| government has incentivized a race to the bottom. If Chinese
| companies provide the cheapest services, then American data is
| going to end up on Chinese servers until the incentives are
| fixed.
|
| Is this good? No. But it also isn't CCP infiltration; it's the
| logical consequence of trying to channel public money into
| private economies, public money that is meant to fund our most
| basic civic activity.
| rglover wrote:
| > it's the logical consequence of trying to channel public
| money into private economies, public money that is meant to
| fund our most basic civic activity.
|
| Yes, and that logical consequence is being exploited by
| foreign governments. By "infiltrate" I mean "taking advantage
| of our shortsightedness," similar to how we ignorantly
| offshored pharmaceutical sourcing/production to China [1].
|
| There's plenty [2] of loose threads that warrant my "only the
| paranoid survive" POV on stuff like this.
|
| Hell, there's even a book that goes into detail about the
| strategy [3]:
|
| > "If one party is at war with another, and the other party
| does not realize it is at war, the party who knows it is at
| war almost always has the advantage and usually wins." And
| this is the strategy set forth in Unrestricted Warfare:
| waging a war on an adversary with methods so covert at first
| and seemingly so benign that the party being attacked does
| not realize it's being attacked." - Qiao Liang
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/u-s-officials-
| wor...
|
| [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/china-houston-consulate-
| docu...
|
| [3] https://www.amazon.com/Unrestricted-Warfare-Chinas-
| Destroy-A...
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is quibbling, but I don't think that's "infiltration."
| We don't get to pawn out incompetencies off on other
| countries; they don't owe us anything in particular.
|
| More to the point: there's no evidence that China _actually
| did_ anything here, other than provide a service and get
| some overeager DA to interpret that in the worst possible
| light. Which, if you're China, is a win-win: you didn't
| have to do anything at all besides provide a quality
| product to get the Americans to doubt their election!
| rglover wrote:
| Not to be rude but this exact response is why this
| strategy has been and will continue to be successful.
|
| Americans cannot believe that a foreign government who's
| fundamental values are counter to theirs would take
| advantage of their naivety for both financial and
| geopolitical gain.
|
| I mean they say it overtly: make it subtle so they don't
| realize it's happening.
| woodruffw wrote:
| No, I believe it. I just refuse to call it "infiltration"
| when it's not evidenced as such.
| rglover wrote:
| I clarified my usage of the term above.
| shubb wrote:
| To be fair, this is probably a guy going to jail because he
| used a text message sending API that used tencent cloud
| somewhere in their backend or something...
| rglover wrote:
| I wish that were true but considering his ties, expertise,
| and the general theme of his patents I'd say that's a naive
| interpretation. That said I certainly hope you're right and I
| only say "naive" to discourage people shrugging it off as a
| nothing burger.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| This has white hat "tip" fingerprints all over it. Local and
| state will have no way to effectively police this sort of
| contract breach.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| Wow. We actually found a crime that Gascon thinks is worth
| prosecuting!
| jimcavel888 wrote:
| tristor wrote:
| Literally the day after the NY Times accused people talking about
| this issue of being right-wing conspiracy theorists. Why does
| that not surprise me?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/technology/konnech-electi...
| usernomdeguerre wrote:
| Are they vindicated if "Selling/Improperly Storing poll worker
| data" and "Forcing poll workers to change election outcomes"
| are two wildly separate claims? Or does the former prove the
| latter in your mind?
| ummonk wrote:
| That update is glorious. Doesn't seem like the conspiracy
| theorists had any actual reason for suspicion of this
| particular firm other than xenophobia though. I wonder if they
| caught this guy because the firm conducted an audit in response
| to the conspiracy theories.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's a bit ridiculous that the county would even outsource this
| function specifically. What's so difficult about payroll for a
| transient workforce, above and beyond the complexities that a
| jurisdiction of 10 million people already faces?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It (http://www.pollchief.com/) appears to do quite a bit more
| than just payroll, quite a bit of it fairly specialized.
| rdxm wrote:
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Konnech distributes and sells its proprietary PollChief
| software, which is an election worker management system that was
| utilized by the county in the last California election. The
| software assists with poll worker assignments, communications and
| payroll. PollChief requires that workers submit personal
| identifying information, which is retained by the Konnech.
|
| I'm so very tired of proprietary software made by tiny little
| outfits being critical to elections.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Elections are too important to be left up to an entity as
| incompetent as the federal government. I'm not sure if that's
| sarcasm, but I did think it.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Fortunately, elections are managed by the states.
| Unfortunately, the Federal Government is trying to take them
| over.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-
| bill/274...
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-
| bill/1/te...
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| If those bills pass, elections would still be run by state
| and local governments. There would simply be additional
| restrictions on how they choose to run elections.
| usernomdeguerre wrote:
| These seem to be altering rules around federal elections in
| particular. Can you detail where state elections are being
| 'taken over'?
| batch12 wrote:
| Some federal elections, like presidential elections are
| run by the states. With the current system, one doesn't
| vote directly for president, but instead who they would
| like their state (via the electoral college) to cast a
| vote for. As such they are state-run federal elections.
| Some people don't like this system. Not sure if this was
| where you were going with your comment. If not, my
| apologies.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. No elections are run by
| the Federal Government. They are all run by the states,
| per the US Constitution. The bills referenced above are
| "altering rules" as you put it, and that is a form of
| control.
| usernomdeguerre wrote:
| How does your statement align with the Constitution's
| Article 1 Section 4 which seems to explicitly allow for
| congress to alter federal rules at the federal level?
|
| "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for
| Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each
| State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at
| any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as
| to the Places of chusing Senators."
| caycep wrote:
| railing against the federal government in a response to an
| article saying a private company was at fault?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| They aren't run by the federal government. They are run by
| states and counties.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| The feds are good at taxing and weapons. Anything else they
| screw up. Turns out you only need to be good at those two
| things anyway.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| They're not very good at taxing.
| bushbaba wrote:
| National security wise better to avoid the risk of nation
| wide vote hacking by having many separate systems. Yes it
| increases the likelihood of a successful hacking event, but
| it decreases expected damage.
| bscphil wrote:
| If that was a concern, surely the only reasonable thing to
| do would be to move to a popular vote as soon as possible.
| As things stand, an entity that could reliably hack 2 or 3
| states would have a better than even chance of controlling
| the election outcome.
| ejb999 wrote:
| that doesn't help at all, and in fact makes it worse -
| with a popular vote you can just hack one or two
| communities with very large populations (i.e. LA and
| NYC), and change or cast enough votes to cancel out about
| 30 other states in total.
| vkou wrote:
| This particular role of the software doesn't sound particularly
| critical, in the sense that if it caught fire tomorrow,
| elections would still happen in the same way, maybe with more
| human labour involved on the planning side.
|
| But sure, I agree that it's stupid to have every municipality
| and polity, down to the five mud farmers living in
| unincorporated East Mudsville, Nowhere figuring out how to do
| their elections in their own special way. Perhaps it would be
| good to look into how Elections Canada[1] does things?
|
| [1] It has the unfortunate side effect of providing federal
| oversight over elections, which is not something that
| republicans seem to be interested in this year.
| danielodievich wrote:
| in my previous/previous/previous career I was heavily involved
| with various states election systems (juicily enough starting
| in hanging chads Florida). The field is full of tiny little
| outfits AND huge consultancies (Accenture in my personal
| example) doing stuff. The quality varies tremendously from
| amazing to amazingly atrocious. When I did all this work the
| cloud was not yet a big thing so no servers were provisioned in
| anything other than well known data centers, but it's you get
| what you pay for. Since it's secretaries of state paying for
| some, and then tons of random counties paying for some others,
| these are not incredibly lucrative contracts, and it does
| attract just random small software firms.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Is "the cloud" really a good idea for high integrity
| software?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I wonder what an ideal solution might look like. I kind of
| envision the Federal government funding a small organization
| overseeing an open source "election software" system, which
| would be run on some sort of well-defined stock hardware. The
| government would periodically pay for the hardware and software
| combination to be audited against a variety of attacks. The
| machines would produce standardized audit logs, published as
| openly as possible (someone smarter than me should figure out
| whether it's safe or good to publish the times or votes or the
| votes themselves. I'm leaning towards yes to both, but I'm
| concerned that you could figure out someone's vote if you knew
| the timestamps of the individual votes). Security researchers
| could purchase the hardware, install the software on it, and
| analyze it on their own. Then you'd do the same thing for the
| vote tabulators or whatever hardware and software exists asides
| from the voting machines themselves.
|
| Then I think about what might look like a nice halfway point.
| Voting machine software is still written by companies, but we
| require that all software running on a voting machine be
| published and hermetically reproducible. They don't have to
| take pull requests, they still own it, but we should be able to
| open one up and be 100% sure that the software running on it is
| exactly what they've documented.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I'm just tired of the rhetoric that 100% of such software is
| 100% unassailable and 100% utilized by 100% honest actors with
| 100% honest motives, 100% of the time, and anything else is a
| "conspiracy theory."
| zuminator wrote:
| Can you point to a single person who has asserted even one
| prong of that supposed rhetoric? All anyone reasonable is
| saying, is if there's widespread or systemic wrongdoing,
| where's the evidence?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >widespread systemic
|
| I am so frustrated that the discussion space is so often
| forced around this topic.
|
| The claim is not that there was "widespread systemic"
| wrongdoing, the claim is that it would only take a very
| _tiny_ amount of weight to push an election in direction
| that benefits the one doing the pushing.
| ajross wrote:
| That's sort of a specious point, though. In two party
| systems, elections are always close more or less by
| definition. If you want to show wrongdoing, you need to
| show actual wrongdoing and not just that it's possible.
| I'd argue that the fact that no single
| group/party/cabal/whatever has managed to
| disproportionately cheat stands are very good evidence
| that this is not, in fact, happening.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Okay fine, but that is a different argument.
|
| This obsession with the phrase "widespread systemic" is a
| distraction that prevents people from actually talking to
| one another.
| ajross wrote:
| I submit that a still bigger problem preventing people
| from actually talking to one another about this is the
| lack of evidence of an actual stolen election.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| https://hereistheevidence.com/
| ajross wrote:
| And of course I got trolled into engaging. But fine:
|
| https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/here-is-the-evidence/ http
| s://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/B.
| ..
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/technology/a-website-
| fund... https://www.hoover.org/research/no-evidence-
| voter-fraud-guid...
|
| All that stuff is just junk, you realize. And you can
| tell because none of it makes sense! It's got a bunch of
| numbers and a long list of links to click on that makes
| you feel like there must be evience (which is the whole
| point), but when you actually drill down... there's
| nothing there. It's all argumentation of the form "Why
| would X be true if we know Y?", leading you to suspect
| that the "real" reason must be "Z" without saying it.
| That's not argument, it's a gish gallop. And it's fooled
| you.
|
| I mean, just to make a point using the same logic[1]: if
| elections were this easy to cheat, then why aren't the
| cheaters winning all the time? Why do both sides share
| power at all? How does it not devolve into a single party
| illuminati running everything? I submit that it doesn't
| because elections aren't being stolen.
|
| [1] But in favor of bland conservatism about "stuff works
| normally" and not a particular criminal conspiracy.
| narrator wrote:
| Since you asked: http://www.hereistheevidence.com
|
| Yup, this exact talking point has been made so many times
| in so many ways on so many forums that somebody made a site
| just to rebut it.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Much like lengthen-your-manhood.info, the domain name is
| not a seal of quality.
|
| In this case, the index appears to be a mash of
| conspiracy Twitter accounts, fringe blogs, and links to
| itself. Ho hum.
| batch12 wrote:
| ~ $ whois lengthen-your-manhood.info
|
| Domain not found.
|
| YC23 anyone?
| usernomdeguerre wrote:
| Really unfortunate that these are disorganized and don't
| make clear statements as to what was improper. Two years
| on I would have hoped for more clarity from detractors.
| ajross wrote:
| This is a kind of strawman fallacy. You're starting with an
| argument (of the form "this particular idea about election
| software is a conspiracy theory"), and then pretending that
| it was actually an argument for the maximal refutation of the
| original, which you then show to be "wrong". But that's not
| an argument in favor of the original contention!
|
| No one serious argues that election management systems are
| bug free or that their operators can't possibly make
| mistakes. We're just saying that nothing has broken yet.
| vkou wrote:
| Oh, I agree that elections are not 100% unassailable. In
| fact, I strongly believe that they _are_ being assailed.
| Mostly through voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
|
| A good example of this is when the state tells you that you
| can vote, and then arrests you and charges you with voter
| fraud, because you actually can't. [1]
|
| Or, alternatively, when the state bars you from voting until
| you pay all outstanding court fees and fines, but also
| refuses to tell you whether or not you actually owe any
| outstanding court fees or fines.
|
| You can't have a free and fair election when you secretly
| disqualify people from voting, but refuse to tell them that
| until _after_ they vote.
|
| [1] https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/08/27/2-peop
| le-...
| woodruffw wrote:
| Nobody believes this: there's a reason why DEF CON has had a
| voting village for years.
|
| What people believe is that, _in spite_ of numerous flaws in
| voting software, the integrity of the vote is not seriously
| in question. And there are good reasons for believing this:
| physical backups, consistency with exit polling and, well,
| the fact that no party in this godforsaken country has been
| able to hold onto the presidency for more than 2 terms in
| nearly 30 years.
| [deleted]
| rmason wrote:
| I am from the East Lansing area and went to high school in
| Okemos. I know both communities very well. I've spent 30 years in
| developer and founder circles and never knew a single person from
| this company. The company's original headquarters is near my old
| high school in what was once a lumber yard. They were getting
| ready to move into an old department store that is owned by the
| city of East Lansing.
|
| This company was exceedingly good at getting money from both the
| local economic development people as well as the state. Told
| someone today that I felt like I was in the middle of a spy novel
| ;<).
|
| It is also the first time to my knowledge the little village of
| Okemos was ever mentioned in the old grey lady (aka NYT).
|
| Here's how local media covered the story:
| https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2022/10/05/ea...
| willcipriano wrote:
| "We fortified the election boss, it's now behind the great wall."
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| aschearer wrote:
| I'm confused why you're bringing up regicide in the 21st
| century, about a country that's never had a king, on a site for
| technologists.
|
| Anyway, let's throw the book at the perpetrator.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Because that penalty is fitting.
| Alupis wrote:
| I think you're likely better served by using the word and
| punishment for treason. Although I admit that word has been
| casually tossed around for cheap political gain recently
| and has lost it's severe connotation for many.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| jjulius wrote:
| >Treason cannot apply due to the way it is narrowly
| defined by the US Constitution.
|
| So, you _don 't_ want to punish them for treason because
| of how narrowly it's defined under the US Constitution,
| but you _do_ want to punish them for regicide, which...
| isn 't even a law in the US?
| ejb999 wrote:
| Read the post again, the OP said:
|
| "should be _comparable_ to the traditional penalty for
| regicide. "
| adamrezich wrote:
| yet nobody read that because they were hung up on
| "regicide", and now all of his posts are [flagged] [dead]
| even though he has a completely 100% valid point.
| jjulius wrote:
| Well, yeah. This is a perfect example of how a valid
| point can be completely undermined by how you communicate
| it. Those are [flagged][dead] because of the rhetoric
| used within. There was no attempt to have a nuanced
| discussion on their part.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Alupis wrote:
| I think the point the parent was making was there is no
| current law that affords death as a punishment for this
| crime - but there should be. Or at least that is my take.
| aschearer wrote:
| I 100% agree the crime is serious and the perpetrator
| should meet swift justice -- as should anyone interfering
| with our elections. Including those who accessed voting
| machines in Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and
| Georgia.[1][2]
|
| That said I sincerely hope we have not regressed as a
| civilizatoin that public execution is making a comeback.
|
| [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/0
| 8/15/sid... [2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-
| work/analysis-opinion/ille...
| Alupis wrote:
| Your overall point is solid, but your last statement and
| links are up for severe political debate. It's not as
| much of a solid fact yet as some might believe or want to
| believe, with a lot of hand-waving in both articles. I
| think you're better served by removing them.
| klyrs wrote:
| I think you've missed the point: isn't the American
| tradition to _celebrate_ regicide?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no it is not a tradition in the USA to celebrate regicide
| labster wrote:
| I don't know if I'd be quite so barbaric. How about civil
| forfeiture of all of their assets? I'm sure his home was used
| in the commission of a crime, right?
|
| Though a day in the stocks sure seems attractive too.
| munk-a wrote:
| The good news about civil forfeiture is that it doesn't even
| matter if their home was used in the commission of a crime -
| you can just seize it now and sort out all those pesky
| details later!
| naillo wrote:
| That penalty seems a bit excessive
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| jjulius wrote:
| >They should be charged with espionage and executed like
| the Rosenbergs.
|
| Ah, cool, jumping to conclusions and wishing death upon
| people instead of waiting to see how this plays out. Don't
| confuse this with me saying that espionage isn't possible
| here, I'm just saying - cool your jets and breathe before
| pulling any triggers. Yikes.
| adamrezich wrote:
| is Democracy and the integrity thereof _not_ the single
| most sacred and important thing everyone cares about with
| regards to government in the West? that 's what everyone
| says all the time, "we're not a constitutional republic,
| or if we are I don't really like care or whatever--what
| matters is, we're a Democracy, Democracy is what matters,
| Democracy is all that matters."
|
| well okay then, if it's so damn important, what the hell
| is this complete unwillingness to do everything humanly
| possible to protect it? you can't have it both ways, if
| you don't ruthlessly defend the institutions that are
| supposed to be the cornerstone of contemporary Western
| society, what do you expect will happen?
|
| foreign powers are all too happy to ruthlessly exploit
| what we delude ourselves into believing isn't worth
| defending.
| jjulius wrote:
| >well okay then, if it's so damn important, what the hell
| is this complete unwillingness to do everything humanly
| possible to protect it?
|
| For having chastised people in another post for focusing
| too much on "regicide" and not on OP's "completely 100%
| valid point", I am a bit surprised that you're ignoring
| my own comments, such as:
|
| >Don't confuse this with me saying that espionage isn't
| possible here
|
| I'm saying, hold the fucking phone before you call for
| someone's murder, especially before you abdicate for
| their public dismemberment. Let's see what the facts of
| the case are before we determine how far to go with
| punishment (and I say this as someone being fully open to
| this being an act against the US that should be punished
| accordingly). At _no point_ have I suggested we take on a
| "complete unwillingness to do everything humanly possible
| to protect it".
|
| Is nuance dead? Must things be all or nothing? "KILL THEM
| NOW, and if you dare disagree with that sentiment then
| surely you are unwilling to defend the US at all"?
| Seriously?
| adamrezich wrote:
| > I'm saying, hold the fucking phone before you call for
| someone's murder
|
| what is a trial
|
| EDIT: where are you from where people get executed for
| crimes without a trial, why would anyone need to
| explicitly state that? I'm breathing fine thanks
| jjulius wrote:
| Something you didn't mention in your posts, nor asked me
| if I was in favor of doing, prior to you demanding that I
| defend the US and implying that I'm unwilling to do so.
|
| I think you need to go outside and take a few deep
| breathes.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Ah, cool, jumping to conclusions_
|
| I never suggested denying them a trial. I want them tried
| and executed for espionage. Preferably in a public and
| awful manner.
| jjulius wrote:
| >I never suggested denying them a trial.
|
| This is the first time I've seen you suggest it, every
| other post was essentially, "Kill them". Even the post
| I'm replying to suggests that your mind is made up and
| you want them dead or - at the very least - miserable as
| all hell, whatever the reality of the details of the case
| may be.
| Alupis wrote:
| While I agree death is a bit extreme, we do need to craft a
| system where knowingly providing data on American Citizens to
| enemies of this nation carries severe and unfair
| consequences. The punishment does need to be oversized, to
| serve as a deterrent.
|
| Do we know if this was deliberate or accidental? If the
| contract was explicit, and this individual knowingly violated
| it, then the intent is pretty clear even if the goal was not
| to aid China but rather to save money or similar.
|
| We see how pitiful punishments are for malfeasant corporate
| executives - and we see how often they recid or are copied by
| others cleaver enough to calculate the punishment does not
| outweigh the crime.
|
| The consequences for giving sensitive citizen data to China,
| Russia or any other nation should be severe enough to make
| folks think very hard before trying it.
|
| Our election meddling problem will only grow worse in the
| future as our adversaries grow more and more sophisticated...
| best we don't help them along.
| esoterica wrote:
| If you think provisioning a server in the wrong country is
| grounds for the death penalty then I think you might be
| unsuited to living in a first world country. Have you
| considered Saudi Arabia or North Korea? You might find those
| places a better cultural fit for you.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Maybe you would feel differently if it was your PII that made
| it into the hands of the CCP. Unfortunately this has already
| happened to me.
|
| The CCP now has all of my employment history, education
| history, banking information, and all contact info for my
| friends and family.
|
| https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-incidents/
| [deleted]
| shubb wrote:
| So what, they have a zoom info subscription?
|
| I'm deeply worried about CPP + Tiktok, because it's
| potentially a huge database of people doing things that
| they can be blackmailed for. Your resume content is
| basically public information at this point.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| My PII is not public information in the USA, and it
| should not be in the hands of the CCP. Although it's not
| the case in my situation, many completed SF86 forms
| contain information that could be used to blackmail the
| applicant, such as DUI convictions, mental breakdowns,
| credit problems, bankruptcy, drug use, etc. The USG
| collects the information to "protect" the applicant from
| being exploited by the enemy, but such information could
| still be embarrassing if publicly disclosed.
|
| Aside from the problems that publicizing information can
| cause, there's also the risk of a bad actor using the
| information to fraudulently obtain credit. The SF86
| contains everything that anyone would need to obtain
| credit using somebody else's identity. At a minimum, the
| information could be used as a form of harassment.
|
| A worst-case real-world example of how such information
| could cost lives is what the Mossad has been doing with
| Iranian nuclear scientists over the past two decades.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nu
| cle...
| Whatboard wrote:
| "Konnech was required to keep the data in the United States and
| only provide access to citizens and permanent residents but
| instead stored it on servers in the People's Republic of China."
|
| I think we'll soon learn that his ties to China run far deeper
| than simply storing data.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| And wouldn't be surprised if China used or continue to use
| these covet tactics to alter election results.
| V-eHGsd_ wrote:
| alter?
| [deleted]
| barbazoo wrote:
| Maybe Hanlon's razor applies here and hopefully someone simply
| created a cloud resource in the wrong region.
| jameshart wrote:
| You can't just accidentally create resources in one of AWS's
| mainland China regions. ap-east-1 in Hong Kong, maybe, but
| the AWS china Beijing and Ningxia regions are not just a
| misclick away.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I've noticed this! The China regions are really their own
| thing.
|
| They have much better documentation.
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