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Cyber-Security Experts Warn in Open Letter to Harris Election Was Hacked; Elon Musk is "guilty as fuck"
(www.planetcritical.com)
This article spreads strong claims about a possible election conspiracy, yet seems to have little interest in verifying any of it and just runs with what they agree with.
The first part “The Data” discusses several statistical oddities, it then ends with the following statement:
One data scientist crunched the numbers: “It’s north of a 35 billion to 1 probability that you could win seven out of seven outside of recount range with less than 50% of the vote.”
It doesn't mention who that “data scientist” is.
The next part "Election Software Compromised" starts off with telling that activists broke into election polling booths and downloaded copies of the software used to count the votes, then states those were hired by the Trump's lawyers. Then it suggests that the source code could be used to create malicious versions of the software. It fails to mention how these would be installed en masse and by whom and just decided the voting machine software is compromised now. They're technically not saying the software on the voting machines was comprised, but they were heavily implying it, and most reader who don't develop software themselves will probably read it as such.
Then we continue “The Hack” (we're just throwing the could haves out of the window now?). It starts with this fantastic quote:
“I think he’s guilty as fuck,” said Spoonamore.
This part kind of sums up the entire article, all claims are based off the writings of Stephen Spoonamore (“hacking and counter-hacking expert, cyber-security adviser, and government contractor" who's apparently so good at cybersecurity that nothing about him can be found except for election interference claims).
Starlink was used to connect the election services to the internet in certain counties. Spoonamore also claims that Musk supplied all seven of the swing states with free Starlink service to make their ePollbooks work faster.
So? We've had HTTPS since 2000, this alone doesn't make it insecure, but it's yet another part that prepares for the following finale:
However, this hack could be deployed using any network connection. With the ePollbooks connected to the internet, it would have been possible to hack into the system and, using voter profiles of each registered voter who had been checked into a polling station, determine which candidate was gaining in each state. In the final hours, it would have then been possible, using the secondary pollbook created by the $1 million sweepstake, to determine which Trump voters had not shown up and mark enough of them on the ePollbook as having voted. These become the bullet ballots. Only 400,000 of them were necessary to tip this election—at one point Musk tweeted that millions had signed up to his pledge.
Spoonamore explains that with the ePollbook data updated to reflect the desired result, votes would then need to be added to the tabulation machines to match the ePollbook. The machines could have been “digitally stuffed” either over a network connection (facilitated by the compromised software on these machines) or via physical access to the tabulation machine. A second possibility involves the same compromise as above plus “human ballot stuffing”. He notes this could be the reason bullet ballots fall heavily in just a few counties.
“It's actually a pretty standard hack,” he said.
The article covers itself quite well with all the could've would've been possible's, but it still presents this scenario as very likely despite the mountain of assumptions leading up to it.
The final ~~disclaimer~~ part, starts with this:
Is this just “BlueAnon”?
Is this just the Left’s version of right-wing conspiracy theories that have played an outsize role in destabilising our institutions? Perhaps. But...
Then it's not very responsible to just spread it wildly in the first ¾ of the article, is it?