That’s not a main-stream media headline, that’s the title of a Public Service Announcement made on September 28, 2020 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Now that I’ve got your attention, this article is a result of my recent presentation at the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce’s J-Biz Expo at Blue Claws Stadium earlier this week.
In that presentation I had a couple of slides that showed how the election results could be manipulated through the information pathways, from voting booth, scanning, tabulation and calculating results. The systems that were used in the 2020 election allowed numerous unsecured vectors to influence any one of these activities.
With everything that has been reported since the day of the election, and especially this past week, I didn’t know where to start this article. The flood of information, dis-information, conspiracy theories, accusations, lawsuits, witnesses, investigations, rumors and the facts that manage to get through is absolutely dizzying. So I picked the words of the very agencies that are mandated to safeguard the elections. Quite frankly, in my opinion, it could easily be a CNN headline; and I am not surprised in the least. You see, I am a seasoned and more than somewhat jaded by three decades of investigating waste, fraud and corruption working with many law enforcement agencies and the process of proving a case beyond a shadow of a doubt.
For me, I am happy that Rudy Giuliani is at the forefront of this investigation. It was Mayor Rudy Giuliani who brought me into the NYC government with the power to transform a sleepy bureaucratic mess of entitlement, waste, fraud and corruption in 110 city agencies by essentially rebuilding the entire city’s infrastructure, converting every process and procedure into a digital technology that could connect, monitor and audit internal and external private and public access systems. In under two years we did it. From traffic lights to bank transactions; email to an award winning website with public access from obtaining tennis permits, birth and death certificates to paying parking and traffic summonses. In August of 2001 Rudy sent me a memo that read, “Thanks for bringing the capitol of the world into the 21st century”. Exactly a month later 9/11 happened and we had to rebuild much of it. Rudy Giuliani is the most trustworthy, honest and, the best boss, guide and mentor I ever had. I have never met anyone who was so devoted to fighting waste fraud and corruption and I was privileged to work hand in hand with him to use every digital tool to fight these crimes and bring the city up to the level of the highest private sector standards.
So, there two things at play here which can be summed up with the cliché, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Eventually the crooks learn to game the evolving systems. The government begins to fail again and even worse, partner with the gamers. They are easy prey and have easy access. They become the enablers of corruption, greed and self-interest under the guise of the public interest and shape the narrative accordingly. I don’t envy the positions they often find themselves in. To be a politician or involved in any policy or legal procedures in government you must have a soldier’s will; to literally die for the oath you swore to this nation because there will likely come a day when you will have to make that choice.
So the FBI and CISA come out with this, and I quote:
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are issuing this announcement to raise awareness of the potential threat posed by attempts to spread disinformation regarding cyberattacks on U.S. voter registration databases or voting systems.
During the 2020 election season, foreign actors and cyber criminals are spreading false and inconsistent information through various online platforms in an attempt to manipulate public opinion, sow discord, discredit the electoral process, and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions. These malicious actors could use these forums to also spread disinformation suggesting successful cyber operations have compromised election infrastructure and facilitated the “hacking” and “leaking” of U.S. voter registration data.
In reality, much U.S. voter information can be purchased or acquired through publicly available sources. While cyber actors have in recent years obtained voter registration information, the acquisition of this data did not impact the voting process or election results. In addition, the FBI and CISA have no information suggesting any cyberattack on U.S. election infrastructure has prevented an election from occurring, prevented a registered voter from casting a ballot, compromised the accuracy of voter registration information, or compromised the integrity of any ballots cast.
Recommendations:
- Seek out information from trustworthy sources, verify who produced the content, and consider their intent.
- Rely on state and local election officials for information about voter registration databases and voting systems.
- View early, unverified claims with a healthy dose of skepticism.
- Verify through multiple reliable sources any reports about compromises of voter information or voting systems and consider searching for other reliable sources before sharing such information via social media or other avenues.
- Report potential election crimes—such as disinformation about the manner, time, or place of voting—to the FBI.
- If appropriate, make use of in-platform tools offered by social media companies for reporting suspicious posts that appear to be spreading false or inconsistent information about voter information or voting systems.
The FBI and CISA coordinate closely with federal, state, and local election partners and provide services and information to safeguard U.S. voting processes and maintain the integrity of U.S. elections. Both organizations urge the American public to critically evaluate the sources of the information they consume and to seek out reliable and verified information.
The FBI is responsible for investigating malign foreign influence operations and malicious cyber activity targeting election infrastructure and other U.S. democratic institutions. CISA is responsible for protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure from physical and cyber threats and has provided voluntary guidance, training, exercises, and other resources to help state and local election officials secure their voter registration systems and data.”
This is all very nice talk. It seems to me that the “recommendations” place all the responsibility to follow up on us! The hard truth is that the FBI and CISA has been nowhere to be seen doing anything to prevent false information or to enforce their own mandate to assure a free and secure, accurate election. Phone calls have been left unanswered, letters and affidavits ignored. There are numerous allegations of such responses and proof that requests were made with no reaction. These agencies are not only to react immediately but be intensely pro-active so fraud can be prevented in the first place. In fact, that’s the whole reasoning behind the creation of CISA, as the cyber-force inside the DHS in 2018 was in coordination with the Executive Order from President Trump, that was implemented on September 12, 2018: Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election where the mandate is clear:
“Not later than 30 days following the date of this order, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence shall develop a framework for the process that will be used to carry out their respective responsibilities pursuant to this order. The framework, which may be classified in whole or in part, shall focus on ensuring that agencies fulfill their responsibilities pursuant to this order in a manner that maintains methodological consistency; protects law enforcement or other sensitive information and intelligence sources and methods; maintains an appropriate separation between intelligence functions and policy and legal judgments; ensures that efforts to protect electoral processes and institutions are insulated from political bias; and respects the principles of free speech and open debate.”
You can read the entire order here.
If you ask me, was this Executive Order from 2018 written for today? With all the information coming out this week, I would have to say, unequivocally, “YES”.
Well the order addresses foreign interference. But was there foreign interference? Not apparently. No activity has been found. But consider this:
The Dominion software used in many states for this election was originally designed and built in Venezuela to specifically give the victory to Hugo Chavez. The origin of Dominion’s source code, by a company called “Smartmatic” is problematic, to say the least given that Smartmatic was “adopted” by Hugo Chavez in 2004, subsidized, trained to build vote machines and code, then used to rig an election. Subsequently, in 2005 Smartmatic acquired Sequoia in 2005, using it to evolve their software until selling it to Dominion in 2007. Smartmatic even went to court to preserve their right to use the code they developed. Everything that was developed by Smartmatic and Sequoia, including the software allowing ballot fraud in Hugo Chavez’ failed recall, was passed onto Dominion. Was the 1 million “ghost” ballot dump by Smartmatic in Venezuela’s 2017 election an accident, or was it voting fraud? I’m not going to discuss the fact that hardware components were manufactured in China, but it is something to for strong consideration. What is clear to me is that If the engineers who run Dominion wanted to commit massive ballot fraud against a US candidate, based on everything we know – nothing could have stopped them. Except, of course, our guardians at the FBI and CISA who do not follow their own published policies and procedures. It is no wonder why FBI Director James Comey, and most recently CISA Director Christopher Krebs were summarily fired. Krebs was fired after releasing a “JOINT STATEMENT FROM ELECTIONS INFRASTRUCTURE GOVERNMENT COORDINATING COUNCIL & THE ELECTION INFRASTRUCTURE SECTOR COORDINATING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEES” that decidedly concludes:
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.
“When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors.
There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.
“Other security measures like pre-election testing, state certification of voting equipment, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) certification of voting equipment help to build additional confidence in the voting systems used in 2020.
“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”
This was published on November 12. It is now November 21. Is there anyone in their right mind that believes this? Maybe Hugo Chavez who died in June of 2011 and all the other corpses that we know for sure voted.
Consider the Dominion Corporate Logo (whose owners, board of directors, employees and location remarkably disappeared into thin air):
I would say it’s rather revealing.
Let’s take a look at some of the states that used the system and the output data. Note the New Jersey results.
The data speaks for itself.
Here’s proof that the people that secure the Election process admit that there are vulnerabilities on July 31, contrary to what they said on November 12.
The Dominion System is totally unsecured.
Here are some more slides from the OJC presentation:
The 2020 Election was totally mismanaged at best and completely hijacked at worst:
Despite their own policies, nothing was done:
On October 29th, CISA changed the rules:
A map of the overall Dominion System Architecture showing the vulnerabilities:
How is this possible?
How to do it right. In a couple of hours you can get a vulnerability picture (with permission of course, and the right tools), but no picture was ever released let alone acted upon:
Problems? Fix them! Fast.
Here’s how long it would take me to find them and see exactly what needs to be done. It’s called standard Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), albeit in this case, very fast, as would be needed in a zero-day cyber-terrorist attack. When it comes to something as important as an election (or even your business) you use the best tools possible. CISA is the commercial equivalent of market-hype and snake oil. It should be a Military Grade tool.
I’m not getting into the politics or my political views. It’s easy to see how this can be used in any scenario with any agenda. My focus is on the technology in play.
In my opinion, it is plain as day that the current system is just plain broken and easy to take advantage of. I hope I have shown this to you. I believe that the guardians of the Election process should be handed over to the Military, as a cyber special operations unit because I think it’s easy to see this is nothing short of a national security issue. I have a feeling this will happen as the Military brass gets shaken up also. As far as the true election winner, that will ultimately have to be decided by the courts or the senate.
Ron Benvenisti
FEMA Certified – NIST Counter Terrorism Licensed – Patented DHS SaaS Cybersecurity Assessment, Remediation and Management
GSA Listed – DOD MURI ID – Ocean County Committee District 4 – Lakewood District 26
