Most electronic voting isn't secure, CIA expert says

GREG GORDON - MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

MARCH 24, 2009 03:53 PM, UPDATED MARCH 24, 2009 03:27 PM

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article24530650.html

WASHINGTON — The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries' use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines' vulnerability to tampering.

Appearing last month before a U.S. Election Assistance Commission field hearing in Orlando, Fla., a CIA cybersecurity expert suggested that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his allies fixed a 2004 election recount, an assertion that could further roil U.S. relations with the Latin leader.

In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now.

Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results.

"You heard the old adage 'follow the money,' " Stigall said, according to a transcript of his hour-long presentation that McClatchy obtained. "I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that's an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to . . . make bad things happen."

Stigall said that voting equipment connected to the Internet could be hacked, and machines that weren't connected could be compromised wirelessly. Eleven U.S. states have banned or limited wireless capability in voting equipment, but Stigall said that election officials didn't always know it when wireless cards were embedded in their machines.

While Stigall said that he wasn't speaking for the CIA and wouldn't address U.S. voting systems, his presentation appeared to undercut calls by some U.S. politicians to shift to Internet balloting, at least for military personnel and other American citizens living overseas. Stigall said that most Web-based ballot systems had proved to be insecure.

The commission has been criticized for giving states more than $1 billion to buy electronic equipment without first setting performance standards. Numerous computer-security experts have concluded that U.S. systems can be hacked, and allegations of tampering in Ohio, Florida and other swing states have triggered a campaign to require all voting machines to produce paper audit trails.

The CIA got interested in electronic systems a few years ago, Stigall said, after concluding that foreigners might try to hack U.S. election systems. He said he couldn't elaborate "in an open, unclassified forum," but that any concerns would be relayed to U.S. election officials.

Stigall, who's studied electronic systems in about three dozen countries, said that most countries' machines produced paper receipts that voters then dropped into boxes. However, even that doesn't prevent corruption, he said.

Turning to Venezuela, he said that Chavez controlled all of the country's voting equipment before he won a 2004 nationwide recall vote that had threatened to end his rule.

When Chavez won, Venezuelan mathematicians challenged results that showed him to be consistently strong in parts of the country where he had weak support. The mathematicians found "a very subtle algorithm" that appeared to adjust the vote in Chavez's favor, Stigall said.

Calls for a recount left Chavez facing a dilemma, because the voting machines produced paper ballots, Stigall said.

>>11642955

(contd)

"How do you defeat the paper ballots the machines spit out?" Stigall asked. "Those numbers must agree, must they not, with the electronic voting-machine count? . . . In this case, he simply took a gamble."

Stigall said that Chavez agreed to allow 100 of 19,000 voting machines to be audited.

"It is my understanding that the computer software program that generated the random number list of voting machines that were being randomly audited, that program was provided by Chavez," Stigall said. "That's my understanding. It generated a list of computers that could be audited, and they audited those computers.

"You know. No pattern of fraud there."

A Venezuelan Embassy representative in Washington declined immediate comment.

The disclosure of Stigall's remarks comes amid recent hostile rhetoric between President Barack Obama and Chavez. On Sunday, Chavez was quoted as reacting hotly to Obama's assertion that he's been "exporting terrorism," referring to the new U.S. president as a "poor ignorant person."

Questions about Venezuela's voting equipment caused a stir in the United States long before Obama became president, because Smartmatic, a voting machine company that partnered with a firm hired by Chavez's government, owned U.S.-based Sequoia Voting Systems until 2007. Sequoia machines were in use in 16 states and the District of Columbia at the time.

Reacting to complaints that the arrangement was a national security concern, the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States launched an investigation. Smartmatic then announced in November 2007 that it had sold Sequoia to a group of investors led by Sequoia's U.S.-based management team, thus ending the inquiry.

In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Stigall said, hackers took resurrecting the dead to "a new art form" by adding the names of people who'd died in the 18th century to computerized voter-registration lists. Macedonia was accused of "voter genocide" because the names of so many Albanians living in the country were eradicated from the computerized lists, Stigall said.

He said that elections also could be manipulated when votes were cast, when ballots were moved or transmitted to central collection points, when official results were tabulated and when the totals were posted on the Internet.

In Ukraine, Stigall said, opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko lost a 2004 presidential election runoff because supporters of Russian-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych "introduced an unauthorized computer into the Ukraine election committee national headquarters. They snuck it in.

"The implication is that these people were . . . making subtle adjustments to the vote. In other words, intercepting the votes before it goes to the official computer for tabulation."

Taped cell-phone calls of the ensuing cover-up led to nationwide protests and a second runoff, which Yushchenko won.

Election Assistance Commission officials didn't trumpet Stigall's appearance Feb. 27, and he began by saying that he didn't wish to be identified. However, the election agency had posted his name and biography on its Web site before his appearance.

Electronic voting systems have been controversial in advanced countries, too. Germany's constitutional court banned computerized machines this month on the grounds that they don't allow voters to check their choices.

Stigall said that some countries had taken novel steps that improved security.

For example, he said, Internet systems that encrypt vote results so they're unrecognizable during transmission "greatly complicates malicious corruption." Switzerland, he noted, has had success in securing Internet voting by mailing every registered citizen scratch cards that contain unique identification numbers for signing on to the Internet. Then the voters must answer personal security questions, such as naming their mothers' birthplaces.

Stigall commended Russia for transmitting vote totals over classified communication lines and inviting hackers to test its electronic voting system for vulnerabilities. He said that Russia now hoped to enable its citizens to vote via cell phones by next year.

"As Russia moves to a one-party state," he said, "they're trying to make their elections available . . . so everyone can vote for the one party. That's the irony."

After reviewing Stigall's remarks, Susannah Goodman, the director of election reform for the citizens' lobby Common Cause, said they showed that "we can no longer ignore the fact that all of these risks are present right here at home . . . and must secure our election system by requiring every voter to have his or her vote recorded on a paper ballot."

Good thread on voting systems, if any one wants to delve into it and understands this kind of thing….

Smartmatic Dominion etc.

https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/updated-attachment-states-have-bought-voting-machines-from-vendors-controlled-and-funded-by-nation-6597e4dd3e70

Experts will debate about Democracy in Athens From 2015

https://elections.smartmatic.com/experts-debate-democracy-in-athens/

The Athens Democracy Forum, organized by The International New York Times and the United Nations Democracy Fund, will take place in Athens from September 13 to 15. During this event, a group of diplomats, students, executives, politicians, leading thinkers and journalists will gather to debate on the state of democracy and the challenges it faces today.

The forum will have a full agenda that includes talks which will address electoral and political matters, and current trends to strengthen democracy.

For the activities of September 15th, Smartmatic CEO and founder Antonio Mugica is scheduled to take part in a panel accompanied by Nikos Konstandaras (@Nkonstan), journalist and chief editor of Greek newspaper + website Kathimerini, and by former CIA agent Valérie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame). Alison Smale, The New York Times Berlin bureau chief, will be the discussion moderator, where relevant subjects such as the digital age, cybersecurity and data privacy will be covered.

The panel aims at providing answers to key questions asked by people on a daily basis. Where is the line between privacy and cybersecurity? Who decides how much access should governments have to our data? Who owns our personal information which will stay in public domain forever?

The Athens Democracy Forum will be held to commemorate the International Day of Democracy, a date celebrated every September 15th since 2007, and promoted by the United Nations (UN).

The theme chosen by the UN for this year will be “Space for Civil Society”, and how democracy contributes to enable societies to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems through participation.

HE MOTHER OF ALL SCANDALS? Drug Pilot, Election Exec Killed on CIA Plane

By Daniel Hopsicker -May 7, 20080618

https://www.madcowprod.com/2008/05/07/the-mother-of-all-scandals-drug-pilot-election-exec-killed-on-cia-plane/

One week after the crash outside Caracas, Venezuela of a twin-engine Piper Navajo (N6463L), an air of intrigue surrounds almost everything about the flight, including the plane's ownership, passengers, and pilot.

Woven into one small story about a plane crash in Venezuela that killed seven people are visible threads from two perennial American cover-ups: one surrounding vote fraud, and one covering-up the CIA's role in drug trafficking.

For anyone interested in the news that gets left out of the newspaper, its’ a Perfect Storm. The Mother of All Scandals.

The downed plane's relevance to the ongoing story of vote fraud in America involves the identity of it's passenger, Jose Alfredo Anzola, a 34-year old founder of Smartmatic, a Venezuela-based election company whose American subsidiary counted one in every three votes in the 2004 Presidential election, while engaged the whole time in heated controversy over allegations the firm counting America's votes had hidden ties to—of all people— Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

The connection between last week's plane crash and the ongoing saga of CIA Drug trafficking begins with 43-year old Mario Donadi Gafaro, the veteran drug pilot at the controls of the twin engine plane.

Donadi boasts a 1999 drug trafficking conviction in the U.S., where he served three years.

Then, even more recently, he was convicted of the same offense in Venezuela, and sentenced to an eight-year stretch at Venezuela’s Big House.

When he crashed and burned last week, reporters noted with surprise, he still had six years to serve. Donadi was supposed to be in prison.

But he apparently has friends in high places.

Seven die in crash

acesuoThe plane crashed atop a six-story roof near Caracas while attempting to return to the international airport at Maiquetía after both engines quit just minutes after take-off.

Seven people died in the accident, three from the plane and four people living in the apartment house where the aircraft crashed. Two were children, girls 8 and 9 years old.

Crash pictures show the plane's tail, decorated with four aces because it was used to ferry gamblers to Curacao's casinos, sitting upright on a rooftop.

Several aviation observers, citing the rare failure of both engines at once on twin-engine planes, have told the MadCowMorningNews they thought the crash appeared suspicious.

in the drink2“Charter People,” the Venezuelan company operating the stricken plane when it crashed, has something of a checkered aviation history.

The company owned a Beach King Air 90 that last December ditched in the Caribbean 35 miles short of the Dominican Republic.

Seven people got out through an emergency hatch. 81 year-old Alicia Emmerich Fargie did not. She sank with the plane.

The Dominican Institute of Civil Aviation later issued a statement saying one of their priorities remained locating her body.

"Maybe he was just slippery."

N6463LAircraft registered in another country must have a permit to conduct charter flights in Venezuela. But that was the least of the irregularities which red-faced Venezuelan officials were left trying to explain away.

There were unanswered questions about why pilot Mario Donadi Gafaro's eight-year stretch for drug trafficking had had such little apparent effect on the pilot's freedom of movement.

>>11643300

(contd)

Aviation officials in Venezuela predictably preferred to dwell on why U.S. authorities should be investigating how convicted felon Donadi got a pilot’s license in the U.S. from the FAA.

Local Venezuelan reporters asked, "How it was possible that Donadi, instead of lifting weights in a prison yard, was able to jet off to international destinations like the flight's announced destination of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles?"

One went so far as to write that it was a "Ripley's Believe it or not Moment."

We recalled what we'd been told while reporting the story of 23 missing helicopters at the Charlotte County Airport (later discovered to have been exported overseas by the CIA.)

The choppers weren't actually missing, said one wag at the airport. They'd just released themselves on their own recognizance.

Maybe that's what Donadi had done, too.

'Sheep-dipped' in Houston?

connie1What's the connection between last week's plane crash and the ongoing saga of CIA Drug trafficking? If you guessed "the plane's tangled ownership," you've obviously been paying attention.

The mystery of who owns the downed American-registered aircraft is, as per usual, an enduring one, perhaps even to law enforcement.

Like other well-publicized recent American planes downed in Central and South America, as more became known about the incident, the identification of the plane’s owners became progressively less certain.

“According to the Federal Aviation Agency in the United States, the aircraft is owned by Aircraft Guaranty & Trust of Houston,” The Miami Herald reported.

Well, not exactly. The downed plane was merely registered to Aircraft Guaranty, which reportedly regularly disguises, or "sheep-dips," CIA aircraft into the unsuspecting world of general aviation.

Who actually owns the plane is anybody's guess. And therein lies a tale.

Over America: Six Hundred Ghost Planes

agThe doomed flight’s owner, or owners, are deliberately shrouded in the mystery of an Offshore Aviation Trust.

The scheme is the brainchild of Connie Wood, a former senior FAA official who owns Aircraft Guaranty, the company to whom the downed plane was registered. Despite its tiny size, more than six hundred American aircraft are registered to the firm.

It’s “a boon for well heeled U.S. owners seeking personal liability protection and ownership anonymity,” Wood told the Mooney Pilot.

The aviation magazine reported, “He predicts soon full FAA-approved and legal Off-Shore (as in the Cayman Islands) Aviation Trusts will be THE way most liability conscious and financially established owner/pilots will opt to take title to their aircraft… It promises to be far better than a typical corporate entity in protecting the beneficiary from personal liability exposure.”

Wood is a former U.S. Lt. Colonel who one aviation magazine (Mooney Pilot) stated is “the original Foreign Pilot Examiner for the FAA, where he personally served as prototype in the FAA’s Foreign Pilot Examiner test bed program.”

“Wood is the only such FAA Foreign Pilot Examiner Designee licensed to operate outside the U.S.,” the magazine reported.

“Uniquely, this allows Wood to issue FAA Licenses to non-residents outside the U.S. without the applicant ever entering the U.S.”

Wood’s FAA connections would seem to make him ideally suited for providing “cover” and plausible deniability to airplanes which have become infamous in planespotter circles for flying CIA “extraordinary renditions.”

The emergence of the famous 'planespotters,' who have identified, or "outed," several dozen airplanes apparently belonging to the CIA for use in "extraordinary renditions," may be responsible for some of Wood's success.

We called Wood for comment, but the only answer at the company's number was a voice mail message. At least they have a phone.

"Takes the checkered flag for checkered pasts."

handsacrossthewaterNor is Aircraft Guaranty’s reputation for serving as a "nominee" or "front" for ownership of planes by foreign nationals and spooks undeserved. Examples abound. Some Aircraft Guaranty highlights (or lowlights:)

Aircraft Guaranty “owned” a plane (N11ZD) discovered sitting unattended at the Portland Airport on September 11, 2001. It had been left there by Khalid Alzeedi, a shadowy Saudi who owned Zidi Aviation, who was wanted for questioning by the FBI.

”FBI agents have been looking into whether associates of Osama bin Laden may traveled to Middle Tennessee this past summer in search of aircraft that could be used for training pilots, NewsChannel 5 has learned,” reported Brian Mosely of NewsChannel5 (WTVF – Nashville) on Oct. 7, 2001.

>>11643337

(contd) last

“The name of one man who spent some time here has made it onto an official list of some 370 possible suspects inadvertently released by Finnish banking authorities."

"Z-Man, We Hardly Knew Ye."

eddieHis name was Khalid Alzeedi. A year after the attack (fall 2002) the FBI announced they were no longer looking for him.

Others weren’t so sure…

“One night, Alzeedi was inside Eddie George's Grill at the Hilton Suites, just across from Nashville's arena,” Mosely reported in the evening newscast.

“Someone apparently stepped on his foot. Hotel workers say Alzeedi then identified himself as an Iranian diplomat, and demanded that the hotel compensate him.”

“(Later) the hotel locked Alzeedi and his party out of their rooms because of an unpaid bill of approximately $2,500. Inside the rooms, hotel workers found satellite navigation equipment and wet suits.”

Those kinky Saudis.

The "return" of Wally Hilliard

N35NKAircraft Guaranty even owns a plane which was used by and registered to terror flight school owner Wally Hilliard.

Hilliard’s Plane 1 Leasing owned a Lear Jet (N35NK), used for frequent flights to Rum Cay in the Bahamas, a sleepy little isle which began suddenly experiencing the wonders of big-time cocaine shipments.

The plane was later sold to Aircraft Guaranty, where it made flights to Guantanamo, as well as numerous other dubious Caribbean hot spots, and had its picture taken during a rendition flight in Portugal.

Yet it also still flew, and regularly, to known drug transfer points: Venice, Florida, Treasure Cay San Salvador, and Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas, the Netherlands Antilles, St. Maarten, and even Toluca, Mexico (where the DC9 with 5.5 tons of coke was supposed to offload.)

The sister ship to the DC9 'Cocaine One'

SIGN1Aircraft Guaranty today owns a DC 9 (N120NE) which was the sister ship of the DC-9 (N900SA) caught carrying 5.5 tons of pure cocaine in April of 2006, which set off a chain of events that eventually led law enforcement authorities in Mexico to identify 100 American planes purchased with laundered money from Mexico’s dominant Sinaloa Cartel.

Both DC9’s belonged to company insiders at SkyWay Aircraft, itself a company whose dubious existence cannot pass close scrutiny. There are two separate Skyway Aircraft’s, their owners insist, two business entities located at two separate small airports, with nothing in common but the same name.

The 5.5. ton bust was a depth charge dropped beneath into hitherto unexplored depths of an American drug trafficking empire which may be larger than any known object in the Universe.

Mexico’s legitimate trade with the U.S., for example, is big enough to send $4 billion north annually into U.S. banks.

Yet Mexico banks $16 billion in the U.S. annually. The other $12 billion, as any banker can tell you, is drug money, which the banks are happy to have.

All this intrigue, its hard to believe, is occurring in a sleepy city on Florida’s Gulf Coast filled with amiable retirees, a good number of whom do, indeed, play shuffleboard, St Petersburg FL., the most unlikely place imaginable for to find the American Drug Lords.