Florida Governor says the FBI told him how the Russians hacked Florida voting machines, but swore him to secrecy

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/16/you-dont-need-to-know-2.html

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thisisfine.jpeg

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I asked Putin and he said everything is good, no need to investigate further. So…all set.

/s

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This is how you undermine confidence in our election system, which was exactly Russia’s goal. What purpose can this secrecy serve?

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DeSantis is a tRump University grad, likely.

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That’s my question as well. Investigative techniques, tools, and methods are not something want to share but what is the possible purpose of keeping the county names secret? And the machines? Really?
Maybe the thought is that someone will try to enter a previously hacked machine again and then they can try to determine the source of the attack. The problem of course is that the FBI knows about the election hacking and so does everyone else, using those previously compromised machines would be really dumb. Besides, that means the machines are still in use instead of retired. So the FBI is willfully placing our elections at risk by not naming the machines and the manufacturer of those machines a security risk which should be barred from use in future elections.

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Is there any circumstance in which the FBI can hold a citizen to legally binding promise of secrecy, let alone an elected official? That sounds suspect at best.

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I think that I need to find and read the FBI Pinky Swear Protocol.

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This is too easy! Answers:

Broward and/or Miami-Dade

Every.damn.time.

No. Also DeSantis is violating state law with this shit.

Interesting that Nelson was warning about this before the election, Governor Gollum (now Senator Gollum) was all “lol no the Democrats are totally trying to commit voter fraud! The Russian Hacker thing is just more nonsense from the looney left!” and yet here we are…again, living through this fucking farce.

Easily the most corrupt state govt in the whole US.

Sorry about the cussing; I’ve actually toned it down a great deal.

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A reminder: one doesn’t need to actually change votes to alter the election outcome - simply removing people from voter rolls (or altering their information slightly, so it throws up a flag) that prevents them from voting has the same effect. And since Republicans in many states were already doing that, Russian interference could easily get lost in the chaos. (But it would explain all the stories of people showing up to vote and finding out they’d been removed as “inactive,” despite voting in all the previous elections…)

Seems like there are only two possible purposes: Not wanting the Russians to know how much they know, to prevent disrupting ongoing investigations, and not wanting Americans to know how much the election results were actually altered. I’m not sure which (or either) of those is correct…

From what I’ve read, Florida public records laws means that any NDA signed by a public official (which is supposedly what happened here) isn’t valid.

Copious swearing seems the only appropriate response to this shitfuckery.

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Right. Also I picked those two counties because they always have problems with chaos, incompetent Supervisors of Elections, large turnouts, and a large amount of Democrats. It’s the perfect blend of fucked up enough to slip in amongst the chaos.

Also makes it incredibly easy to “lose” whole boxes of ballots, “accidentally” delete voters from the rolls (after some convenient data analysis), and have “malfunctions” with the voting machines (oops, how did that get unplugged?).

The Russians probably just did the electronic equivalent of strolling on in.

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It drives me crazy when people claim that, “there’s no evidence that the Russians altered the (tabulated) vote counts, therefore they didn’t affect the election,” when that’s probably the highest-effort means of having the same effect as all those other actions, which could have been done with the level of access we know they had. (Plus, given the disturbing lack of information about what all the Russians did, they could very well have altered vote counts without us hearing about it.)

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I’m sure they would have found it extra funny to target those two specific counties, too, just because of the history of problems there.

But really…certain persons within the Republican Party were probably glad that they didn’t have to go the extra mile to fix the election this time around.

Now they get the added bonus of public handwringing and crying about how they are the real victims here, too, and hope that takes the focus off them. Which will probably work, sadly.

If it’s not totally obvious, I live in FL.

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Where the hell is the Bugs Bunny takes a saw to Florida .gif?? Disappoint.

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Best get out before your feet and ankles get wet. Did you know that Florida is the flatest state? The vast majority of it is barely above sea level. So far.

Thanks for the heads up, I was wondering where all that water was coming from lately.

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