I was working on something else related to GOP obstruction of voting rights across the nation when this Reuters article came across: Georgia’s Kemp probes Democrats over alleged voter systems hack
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate in Tuesday’s hotly contested gubernatorial election, has opened a probe of the state Democratic Party over what his office alleged on Sunday was a failed attempt to hack voter registration systems.
Kemp’s office said in a statement on Sunday it opened the investigation late on Saturday and that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI were notified. In 2016, Kemp alleged that a federal agency had tried to breach the state’s voter system.
“While we cannot comment on the specifics of an ongoing investigation, I can confirm that the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cyber crimes,” said Candice Broce, spokeswoman for Kemp’s office.
Ok, let’s go over a little background on this race. There have been complaints about irregularities with voting machines not recording votes or recording the wrong votes. There have been issues with voter registration roll purges ahead of the election. There have been issues with new registrations not being accepted because of supposed mismatches between the registration and other state data bases. There have been issues with absentee ballots being held back because the signatures didn’t match precisely.
And the biggest complaint has been that Secretary of State Brian Kemp is in charge of running elections in Georgia while actually running to be Governor of Georgia against Democrat Stacey Abrams.
So first thing…Mr. Kemp should have recused himself from overseeing this election and/or taken a leave of absence from his office as Secretary of State in Georgia.
(and btw):The FBI’s election security task force and the Justice Department’s computer crimes unit are best positioned to investigate any hack, Stamos added.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and former Georgia governor, has called on Kemp to step down from the secretary of state position because of what Carter said was a conflict of interest.
But there is apparently no indication that there has been an attempted breach nor that an alleged attacker has actually been identified. And it is unlikely that Mr Kemp’s office would have the necessary expertise to even know who/what/when/where/how anyway.
Kemp’s latest claims were met with skepticism from cyber security experts, who noted that the process of identifying who is behind a particular hack is lengthy, time-consuming and extremely difficult.
“Does the Georgia Secretary of State have the forensics capability and expertise necessary to investigate their own potential breach?” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former security chief, asked on Twitter.
Just like President Trump’s run for the border…or Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s calling up the National Guard cybersecurity group…this seems like another desperate stunt by a clueless Republican.
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