Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day • Hacker News Board

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#131

Post by pseudalopex » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

mikejholly wrote: post #121

slg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are thinking of this as a person who already has a government issued ID. If you don't drive and don't travel internationally there isn't much in life that would require you go acquire a government issued ID. If the only reason you need the ID is to vote, many people who don't already have an ID won't vote.

This argument seems like grasping me to. How would one function in society at all without an ID? Opening a bank account, cashing a check, driving a car, visiting a doctor, taking a train or plane, going to court. These are all activities which require ID. Sure, there is a tiny fraction of people who can't engage in those activities. But how likely is it that those folks are going to be voting, anyhow? I found this vi…

7% of US households don't have a bank account.[1] Many people live in walkable areas, carpool, or rely on transit. Visiting a doctor doesn't require ID. Taking a train or plane (or a bus) is easier with ID but possible without.

[1] https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#132

Post by squirrelicus » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

kodablah wrote: post #125

squirrelicus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be reasonable to create a national ID card system and fund it through taxes. It could replace driver licenses and social security cards. I do not know why it would be unreasonable to require such a card for voting. It could also serve as a PKI system with the govt acting as a CA (i.e. manage issuance and revocation). There are non zero benefits. And this doesn't have to operate like a poll tax. I don…

> I don't understand why this isn't already a thing. Seems obvious. Because people don't want yet another mandatory way to be tracked by the government. It is especially opposed by those here illegally, their supporters, and others historically disenfranchised by more and more centralized requirements. Not everyone has driver's licenses or ssn cards. There are non-zero problems so what should be obvious is why some o…

I've heard, mostly from libertarian small government types, that I should fear government tracking. I'm not sure exactly why. I'm already tracked by IP and cell towers and using my credit card. And I'm not sure what the government is going to nail me with.

I'm not even making an argument about "I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should I fear the machine?" I have assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition purchased with my credit card. There's a non zero risk that the disarmament Inquisition might use my credit card to seize my property or worse. But the risk is... Quite vanishingly small. And I think it's not unreasonable to suggest the risk is vanishingly smaller for ID cards.

Additionally, I'm completely uninterested in warping our legal code around illegal immigrants. They are irrelevant to the conversation. We make laws for the benefit of citizens. Not the other 95% of the globe that aren't American citizens.

I'm additionally not sure how giving, let's say black trans women, a free national ID card and requiring her to show it for purchasing cigs, alcohol, driving and voting is a problem. It's non-onerous.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#133

Post by zaroth » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

bschilke wrote: post #72

jlmorton wrote: post #16

If there is no online voting, why is the system even connected to the Internet? What exactly are the attacks against? The voter registration site? The election results site?

From what I understand the greatest vulnerability is modification of voter registration data. If you show up to vote and they don't have you in that district's voter rolls because your address was changed to another state, your vote has just been taken away.

There’s such a thing as a provisional ballot.

For all the studies that show voter fraud is not prevalent and a complete non-issue, we can say even more certainly that “election hacking” is an even more egregious smoke screen.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#134

Post by hueving » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

erentz wrote: post #28

jadedhacker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is a good idea, but the second is not. Voter ID cards are historically used to make it harder to vote and thus compromise elections. In person fraud is very uncommon, and it would be very difficult for a foreign government to pull off a large scale interference without being detected. After all, we struggle to get people to show up to vote once already! The idea of mass ballot fraud seems difficult to count…

Right. The hysteria around double or fraudulent voting is crazy. You’d need thousands of people doing it in most districts to have any impact, and that would get obvious really bloody quickly. I think this is a pretty good example of what I find to be the typical of an American practice of cutting off their own nose to spite their face. [1] Americans absolutely hate the idea of freeloaders or someone getting somethin…

Double-voting is only one thing people are paranoid about. The other is the 12 million possible votes from undocumented (a.k.a illegal) immigrants.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#135

Post by mikejholly » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #114

mikejholly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need to wear clothes and shoes into the polling station. Are those expenses considered poll taxes as well? Straw man, but requiring ID is not really a direct poll tax. I certainly don't feel like I'm being unreasonably taxed when I vote with my ID.

You've conflated your feelings with the government's propensity to provide protection for all Americans. Voting is a right, unlike driving an automobile, which is a privilege. Rights have no prerequisites to enjoy them, unlike privileges. We all agree that many people do have the means to acquire government IDs. Just like all goods and services, the amount of money required to purchase an ID might be a pittance to yo…

Let me rephrase: the majority of people in my society would _agree_ that requiring an ID card to vote is reasonable. That is true based on an observation of the status quo. Voting is also a right in Canada. In the US, being an imprisoned felon erases your right to vote. Hence, voting is not a God given grant as you claim.

You're also making an ignorant generalization about my background. I was brought up by a single, disabled mother. We lived below the poverty line for the majority of my childhood. You'd do well to discard your arrogant approach.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#136

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #114

mikejholly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need to wear clothes and shoes into the polling station. Are those expenses considered poll taxes as well? Straw man, but requiring ID is not really a direct poll tax. I certainly don't feel like I'm being unreasonably taxed when I vote with my ID.

You've conflated your feelings with the government's propensity to provide protection for all Americans. Voting is a right, unlike driving an automobile, which is a privilege. Rights have no prerequisites to enjoy them, unlike privileges. We all agree that many people do have the means to acquire government IDs. Just like all goods and services, the amount of money required to purchase an ID might be a pittance to yo…

[deleted]

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#137

Post by Avshalom » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

propman wrote: post #21

Paper ballots, no machines and especially no machines connected to the internet...if we were able to get that crazy bug into Iranian nuclear reactors without direct transfer from Internet, then you can bet North Korea, Russia, Israel, and China will pour billions to do the same thing. Voting ID cards too, though I admit I don’t know enough about that. Even if it costs billions to get it done, confidence in fair and f…

step one: universal ID cards

step two: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/us/drivers-license-tennes... take them away from poor people.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#138

Post by hueving » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:45 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #40

lihaciudaniel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Drupal would be better for government websites.

I think the point was that you get attempts on /wp-admin.php even if you're not running wordpress at all. I mean, my personal blog is a static collection of HTML pages and I still see /wp-admin.php in logs. In fact, I've long wondered whether this isn't a great opportunity; I'd like to make a script that went through logs and got every IP trying to access such a path, and adds those IPs to a blacklist that gets dropp…

Careful, because of nat that's also a way to ban potential legit users.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#139

Post by 2stop » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #114

mikejholly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need to wear clothes and shoes into the polling station. Are those expenses considered poll taxes as well? Straw man, but requiring ID is not really a direct poll tax. I certainly don't feel like I'm being unreasonably taxed when I vote with my ID.

You've conflated your feelings with the government's propensity to provide protection for all Americans. Voting is a right, unlike driving an automobile, which is a privilege. Rights have no prerequisites to enjoy them, unlike privileges. We all agree that many people do have the means to acquire government IDs. Just like all goods and services, the amount of money required to purchase an ID might be a pittance to yo…

Australia does it, you can use your driver's licence, your passport, or your birth certificate and a recent bill. Or Medicare card.

There is no cost to requiring ID... It is you conflating the cost of acquiring an id with the cost of requiring one. As Australia shows, it can be done with a zero cost (birth certificates and Medicare cards are free)

Australia acheives a 90+% voter turn out. (Compulsory voting through fines) even our poorest are able to vote, that remaining 8% who don't vote are overseas, or missing.

US is lucky if it gets to 60%

The US system has serious problems that completely undermine a democracy... But hey, let's forget the forest and focus on this one tree right here.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#140

Post by mikejholly » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #131

mikejholly wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument seems like grasping me to. How would one function in society at all without an ID? Opening a bank account, cashing a check, driving a car, visiting a doctor, taking a train or plane, going to court. These are all activities which require ID. Sure, there is a tiny fraction of people who can't engage in those activities. But how likely is it that those folks are going to be voting, anyhow? I found this vi…

7% of US households don't have a bank account.[1] Many people live in walkable areas, carpool, or rely on transit. Visiting a doctor doesn't require ID. Taking a train or plane (or a bus) is easier with ID but possible without. [1] https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/

That's surprisingly high! Although I'd assume the total number of people have IDs is greater than the count of those who have bank accounts since there are multiple activities which require IDs (only one being opening a bank account).