Scytl: Voter Fraud Facts and Fiction

By Michelle Malkin - May 9, 2012

FACT: Scytl is a Spain-based business that specializes in "electoral security technology" and electronic voting applications. Its cryptographic research initially was funded by the Spanish government's Ministry of Science and Technology and later was spun off as a private-sector e-voting venture.

FACT: In January 2012, Scytl acquired U.S.-based SOE Software. SOE writes "election management" programs that assist officials with everything from "Internet voting to election night reporting and online poll worker training."

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FACT: The security risks of e-voting are still a legitimate concern. University of California at Berkeley computer science professor David Wagner wrote a critical report for the Pentagon about the privacy and accuracy shortcomings of Scytl's military voting program in 2004 – which prompted the feds to cancel the initial program, according to PBS.

In October 2010, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics encouraged outside parties to try to find security holes in their online balloting infrastructure operated by Scytl. A group of University of Michigan students successfully hacked into the system, commandeered passwords, doctored ballots and programmed audio of the school's fight song to play whenever an e-ballot was submitted.

Hackers from Iran and China also came close to breaking in. "After the hack," according to AOLNews.com, "(D.C.) administrators decided to relaunch under a download-only format, allowing users to access ballots but forcing them to fax or mail them rather than cast a vote online." The D.C. official who oversaw the system, Paul Stenbjorn, now works for Scytl.

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FACT: Over the past five months,investigative journalist James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas team have exposed systemic lapses at precincts in New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont and Washington, D.C. The ballots of famous public figures have been forked over to complete strangers; disenfranchisement of legitimate voters is routine. While Minnesota and New Hampshire legislators have passed new voter integrity/identification laws, O'Keefe now has been targeted for investigation and possible prosecution for blowing the whistle. And Attorney General Eric Holder is striking his usual see-no-evil, shoot-the-messenger, play-the-race-card pose.

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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/09/scytl_voter_fraud_facts_and_fiction_114085.html

https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/scytl-odbp.pdf

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/david-wagner

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/us/the-2004-campaign-voting-online-ballots-canceled-for-americans-overseas.html

>>11850894

The Looming Threats to Voting Rights: Online Voting and the US Intelligence Community

May 9, 2013 John Lasker

"The threat of Internet voting fraud, adds Harris, is further amplified when you mull over who is “strongly behind” this intense push to vote online: the US Intelligence and defense community. “I hate to discuss this sometimes because it makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist,” she says, “but there is no denying you have these national security types with their fingers in these companies.”

For instance, the former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (who is also an ex-CIA chief) once sat on the board of VoteHere, which lobbied hard for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the 2002 law that put electronic voting and online voting on steroids, says Harris. Another major supporter of HAVA was one of America’s mega-defense contractors, General Electric, Harris told Toward Freedom.

In addition, current Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel once held part ownership of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), now the largest e-voting machine company in the US. Hagel hid his ownership during his 1996 and 2002 election victories for Senator of Nebraska, cictories the Washington Post referred to as “stunning upsets.” What no one knew at the time was that Election Systems and Software (ES&S) counted the votes for both elections.

More recently, ES&S entered into a partnership with Scytl, an e-voting company based in Spain which is currently researching “mobile phone voting apps” so Americans can vote from cell phones. Other Scytl e-voting ventures include the purchase of SOE software. The company’s software is currently installed on e-voting machines across 19 US states.

In a recent article about Scytl for the Ohio-based Free Press, Bello wrote that Scytl is “a company that is based in Barcelona, owned by one British and two Spanish private banks, one of which has an office in New York, has a subsidiary in Tampa, but otherwise exists alternately in a private residence in suburban Virginia or in a desk drawer in Baltimore’s inner harbor.”

Bello discovered Scytl’s start-up was partially-funded by the European venture capital firm Nauta Capital, whose head of American operations is Dominic Endicott. Endicott used to work for the American defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, majority-owned by the Carlyle Group, a global asset management firm with close ties to the Bush family.

Booz Allen Hamilton is notorious for developing spyware programs such as TrailBlazer and PioneeGroundbreaks used by the National Security Agency to monitor US citizens, says Bello.

What’s more, Scytl has a sister company, Carrier IQ, which was also financed by Nauta Capital. Bello says Carrier IQ and its software, which was pre-installed on tens-of-millions of cell phones, was chastised by computer security experts as being too much like “spyware.”

“Carrier IQ’s software is a key-stroke logger,” says Bello, “it logs every key stroke that you put in and transmits it. Scytl has the technology that will allow you to vote over the phone. And their sister company (Carrier IQ) offers spyware for your phone. This is a conflict of interest.”"

https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/americas/the-looming-threats-to-voting-rights-online-voting-and-the-us-intelligence-community/

Election software company Scytl on the run from the Free Press, from one fake address to the next

OCTOBER 22, 2012

https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4755

"…On September 28th, the day after the Free Press published the address and photo of Scytl headquarters, their vice president for media relations and governmental affairs, Michelle Shafer (See Why are legal scholars dismissing election fraud?: Manufactured skepticism and exit polls) of Austin Texas, filed an official change of address form with the United States Election Assistance Commission. In just 24 hours, in the middle of a presidential election, Scytl USA miraculously relocated to Baltimore, Maryland.

Scytl's new address is a virtual office at 400 Pratt Street in Baltimore, purchased cheap. A quick web search determined more than a dozen other companies, including three law offices, a parking garage company and a web marketing firm are all crammed into the same suite at that location, making it perhaps a more cramped facility than Hugh Gallagher's basement. Our investigators determined this on a visit there where they found no-one willing to talk about Scytl at that location, nor willing to discuss the kind of virtual office services offered. Perhaps the staff necessary for counting the votes of America's 2.6 million servicemen and women had not had a chance to relocate from Hugh Gallagher's couch (maybe they were in his garage?) to Baltimore.

Scytl is also going through with its plans to promote internet voting and has additional plans to allow voting from smartphones.

Were the centerpiece of American democracy not involved, this whole episode would be farcical. Since certain federal laws are involved, both the first fake location and its subsequent movement may constitute fraud. Election law requires that companies manufacturing election products list their address with the EAC, which is why Michelle Shafer seemed to be in such a hurry to cover their tracks. In moving themselves officially from one virtual office to another, she may have covered one alleged fraud with another.

Scytl, through SOE software has an office in Tampa. Why the Gallagher residence, rather than SOE's existing facility, was selected as Scytl's main United State's office is somewhat unclear to us. A visit there by our investigators found them on the 5th floor of an office building with 17 other companies. Although they appear to actually have an actual office, it is unclear to us how all their employees could work there. It is also unclear why this location was not listed as Scytl's national headquarters in the first place or why the sudden change of address they undertook after our scrutiny did not take place to their Tampa location where they actually do have an office and employees as opposed to Baltimore, where it seems they do not.

Scytl is not the only phantom voting company the Free Press has investigated physically. In future articles we will detail the obscure locations, low employee head counts, improbable square footage and oppressive security designed to ward off public scrutiny we have found at every location.

During this election, the people serving overseas in America's armed forces will cast virtual absentee ballots. These ballots will be processed by a company that is based in Barcelona, owned by one British and two Spanish private banks (one of which has an office in New York), has a subsidiary in Tampa, but otherwise exists alternately in a private residence in suburban Virginia or in a desk drawer in Baltimore's inner harbor. This is virtual faith based voting taken to a new level of refinement."