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United States Government

To Deter Foreign Hackers, Some States May Also Be Deterring Voters (npr.org) 164

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
A number of states are blocking web traffic from foreign countries to their voter registration websites, making the process harder for some U.S. citizens who live overseas to vote, despite the practice providing no real security benefits. From a report: On its face, the "geo-targeting" of foreign countries may seem like a solid plan: election officials around the country are concerned about foreign interference after Russia's efforts leading up to the 2016 election, so blocking traffic to election websites from outside the United States might seem like an obvious defense starting point. But cybersecurity experts and voting rights advocates say it's an ineffective solution that any hacker could easily sidestep using a virtual private network, or VPN, a commonly-used and easily-available service. Such networks allow for a computer user to use the Internet and appear in a different location than they actually are.
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To Deter Foreign Hackers, Some States May Also Be Deterring Voters More

To Deter Foreign Hackers, Some States May Also Be Deterring Voters

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  • Won't hackers just use a VPN? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cshark ( 673578 ) on Friday October 12, 2018 @09:42AM (#57467016)

    Seems like the only thing something like this would do is deter voters. Hackers know better. This is a perfect case and point as to why people who don't understand computers, networks, or the internet shouldn't be making rules that govern it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It probably does a good job of preventing deployed military from registering and voting, which is probably the real intention.

      • Exactly. This may be dressed up as some incompetent attempt to deter foreign interference but one needs only to look at polls.. like this image [armytimes.com] to understand the real motivation.

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Deployed military are on the DoD net and have .mil addresses, they dont use local ISPs, you dune kune.

      • if the ones putting this into effect are liberal, I would agree. Our military votes republican most often.

        https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2016/05/09/military-times-survey-troops-prefer-trump-to-clinton-by-a-huge-margin/

    • Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday October 12, 2018 @10:03AM (#57467168)
      once again, this is just good 'ole fashion voter suppression.

      For my money I want to see voting made mandatory, like Jury Duty. That would be the best way to end voter suppression. Also move voting to Saturday or Sunday and/or make it a national holiday with mandatory pay. Oh, and I don't care if you're convicted of a crime or even currently in prison. _Everyone_ gets to vote. If America has so many Ax Murders and child molesters they can swing an election maybe we should fix that first before worrying about who gets to vote...

      Of course, our ruling class isn't going to allow that. Sad thing is there's a portion of Americans who really believe we should stop the "wrong" people from voting. I get the racists and why they feel that way, I even get the nutters who want to repeal the 19th amendment. But then you get regular folk who just have some vague notion of who the "wrong" people are that they can't put it in words that I can't explain. Maybe they get it from right wing talk radio, I don't know. Either way it's messed up.
      • I like that. I'm emailing my representative with these ideas.

      • Re:Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner (Score:4, Interesting)

        by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Friday October 12, 2018 @10:44AM (#57467386) Journal

        For my money I want to see voting made mandatory, like Jury Duty.

        Nothing says freedom like compulsion! Have you ever considered that many people who don't vote do so consciously because they don't like any of the available choices? Or that they don't believe in government in the first place (i.e. anarchists, Amish, some pacifists)? Or how about sortitionists [wikipedia.org], who don't even believe in elections?

        Then there's Jury Duty. I think jury duty would be better if they allowed people to voluntarily sign up. There's probably no shortage of retirees and unemployed that wouldn't mind making a few extra bucks.

        • Have you ever considered that many people who don't vote do so consciously because they don't like any of the available choices?

          Yeppers. I decided about 40 years ago to never vote AGAINST a candidate. I will vote FOR someone, but I won't do the "lesser of two evils" thing. The Lesser of Two Evils is still evil.

          Which is why I didn't, in the last Presidential Election, vote for either candidate....

          • Have you ever considered that many people who don't vote do so consciously because they don't like any of the available choices?

            Yeppers. I decided about 40 years ago to never vote AGAINST a candidate. I will vote FOR someone, but I won't do the "lesser of two evils" thing. The Lesser of Two Evils is still evil.

            Which is why I didn't, in the last Presidential Election, vote for either candidate....

            Either candidate?? as if there was only two, you tool..

          • It's a good reason to not vote. I do remember that I used to vote for a candidate, but it's been so long that I can't remember who it was.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DeVilla ( 4563 )

            I stopped the lesser of evils thing too. But I still go to the polls and write in a name to do my part to push the post one half a vote.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          There's no need to make voting mandatory, only to make showing up at the polls on election day mandatory like in Australia. Then the Electoral College would no longer be needed to avoid regional factions from having too much voting power (see Federalist No. 10). If you want to abolish the Electoral College, it helps to remove its advantages.

          But of course the party of voter suppression would never go for mandatory voting so this idea is dead in the water for the moment.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • If people don't like the options, they can turn in a blank ballot. Which would register as "consciously voting for nothing" as opposed to "being lazy".

        • We already have enough wackos on juries who assume anyone who gets arrested is automatically guilty otherwise the police wouldn't have wasted time on them. We really don't need a bunch of volunteer bozos showing up hoping to hang someone.

        • Nothing says freedom like compulsion! Have you ever considered that many people who don't vote do so consciously because they don't like any of the available choices?

          I wish ballots had an option of 'no confidence' for every position. And if it gets some sizable portion of the population, both candidates are tossed and new ones have to be presented. In the case of the Presidential election, I would propose those electoral votes become available to no one but they still have to get 270 EV. If neither candidate can get 270, then a new election occurs nationally with new candidates.

      • Re:Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Friday October 12, 2018 @10:53AM (#57467426) Homepage Journal

        For my money I want to see voting made mandatory, like Jury Duty.

        Well, Jury duty isn't truly mandatory....

        If you don't register to vote, then you are not put into the pool of possible jurors.

        I"m not sure I like mandatory.

        I understand your feelings behind it, and I would applaud more people participating in general, HOWEVER, I don't like a free country forcing the citizens to do something...maybe they don't like any of the choices, you know?

        And also...if someone isn't interested enough in utilizing their right as a citizen to vote, to go register, and show up at the polling place, etc...I'm guessing they are likely also too un-interested to be an INFORMED voter.

        If someone is un-informed, then I would posit they are likely to be more readily swayed by foreign propaganda as we have seen the Russians do, and I"m sure other state actors do (surely this isn't first attempt by foreign states)....

        So, while I agree with your intentions on that, I disagree in that it might not be the best idea.

        I'd rather have few voters that were better informed on what and who they are voting for, rather than a larger voter pool filled with many or most who don't know the issues or the candidates.

        The uninformed are much easier to be swayed by exteral forces that might not have the US's best interest in mind.

        At least those are some of my thoughts on it...

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 )

          >Well, Jury duty isn't truly mandatory....
          >If you don't register to vote, then you are not put into the pool of possible jurors.

          Bullshit. I'm not a US citizen and I certainly haven't registered to vote (since it would be a crime) but I've been selected for jury duty 4 times. Each time I get to fill in a post card and tick the "I'm not a citizen" excuse box.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          Something to keep in mind : often people fail to vote not because of disinterest but because of difficulty accessing the system. That is why there has been so much effort to require new types of IDs, closing poling places, and making hours shorter in some regions. Moving something from 'minor inconvenience' to 'significant personal hardship' is often enough to stop people who would want to vote from doing so, while making it as convenient as possible for other groups increases the chances that even not

        • Your problem is that engaged doesn't seem to correlate at all with informed. I mean, I'd say that people who are engaged are more likely to watch, and agree with, Fox News or MSNBC. So, whichever you disagree with is the counterexample.

        • Not Registering to vote does not prevent you [thoughtco.com] from being called to Jury duty. In some states (notably Red ones) it does increase the likelihood you will be called. This is on purpose. It is another form of voter suppression.

          To be clear I don't think you're the one lying, but rather you're the one being lied to.

          The benefits from eliminating voter suppression outweigh the occasional ill informed voter. the ruling class will mobilize ill informed voters. I remember a commercial against net metering (the

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by antdude ( 79039 )

          Not true. Non-registered voters still get summoned for jury duties. :(

      • For my money I want to see voting made mandatory,

        I understand the "it's not really the people's will if only half the people vote" philosophy.

        However, a part of me feels like if voting was mandatory there would be a lot of people voting for the first name on the ballot, or the name that sounds the most familiar- or more just straight-party voting without knowing anything about the candidates involved.

        I know a lot of this goes on already; but I feel like, if you don't know anything about the candidates, you're doing more of a disservice by voting than you

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • FWIW I would also get rid of primaries. I can see people being horrified by the idea that local parties would pick their own candidates,

            Primaries are how the parties pick their candidates. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Why are you so horrified of parties picking their own candidates that you'd eliminate the method they use to do that?

            Now, of course, the system isn't perfect. We have people in this area who are quite proud of the fact that they lie when they register to vote and claim to be Republican, just so they can vote in the Republican primaries and "help" them pick "better candidates". I'm not surprised that Democrats w

          • I would like to get rid of primaries too as they tend to polarize the parties and get the worst* overall candidate nominated from each party. Actually, I think George Washington had the right idea- he wanted political parties to play no part in American democracy. Votes should be about an individual's ideas- not a party's ideas.

            * Worst from a neutral's perspective or the other parties perspective- best from that party's hardliners normally.

            I like the French system personally, where you cast two votes, and

            • I would like to get rid of primaries too as they tend to polarize the parties and get the worst* overall candidate nominated from each party. ... * Worst from a neutral's perspective or the other parties perspective- best from that party's hardliners normally.

              Who cares what the other party's members think about the candidate? Isn't it almost a "by definition" that one party will think the candidate that wins their primary is better than the one that wins the other party's?

              The purpose of a primary is not to make the other parties happy. It's to nominate someone who can BEAT the other party's, which will, of course, make them UNHAPPY. In fact, the more that the other parties whine about the candidate I've help select for mine, the better I know mine is.

              if you pick the lesser of the two main evils for your second pick- your vote still counts rather than being "wasted" on a third party.

              So you ess

              • Who cares what the other party's members think about the candidate? Isn't it almost a "by definition" that one party will think the candidate that wins their primary is better than the one that wins the other party's?

                The purpose of a primary is not to make the other parties happy. It's to nominate someone who can BEAT the other party's, which will, of course, make them UNHAPPY. In fact, the more that the other parties whine about the candidate I've help select for mine, the better I know mine is.

                Clearly Trump wasn't the most electable republican- and Hillary wasn't the most electable democrat as almost no one voted FOR a candidate but rather AGAINST a rival. All projections showed that there was a lost stronger support for almost every other republican candidate compare in a 1v1 against Hillary- and clearly Hillary was not very popular either even amongst democrats but got through because of the democrats' shady primary process.

                As happens usually- you end up with extremists that only a handful of

                • Clearly Trump wasn't the most electable republican- and Hillary wasn't the most electable democrat

                  So what? Who said that was the purpose of the primary?

                  You get to vote for who you really want to get elected rather than the best of the worst, the person you think is more likely to "beat the worst".

                  And then when THAT person loses, you've gotten to vote for someone else, too. Two votes. This is compatible with "one person one vote" exactly how?

                  There would be a lot more spread of votes in America if we weren't forced into a polarized binary system.

                  Nobody is forced into a two party system. In fact, do you know how you get completely away from a two party system? PEOPLE VOTE FOR WHO THEY WANT INSTEAD OF WHO THEY THINK WILL BE ELECTED. If 40% of the people voted Green Party, guess what? We'd have at least a three party system. Whose fault is it that we do

                  • So what? Who said that was the purpose of the primary?

                    So you agree the system is broken?

                    And then when THAT person loses, you've gotten to vote for someone else, too. Two votes. This is compatible with "one person one vote" exactly how?

                    That's no more than with a primary. And... who cares? So what? You let people vote who they want to vote for instead of one of two people they don't. That is inherently a better system.

                    Nobody is forced into a two party system. In fact, do you know how you get completely away from a two party system?

                    Actually they are, because the two parties primaries are funded by the state but no one else's is. The system is inherently rigged to be difficult to third parties and the parties have changed very few times over the life of the US.

                    Voting and how people are elected is easily one of the m

      • Personally, I prefer for decisions to be made by people who have at least *some* interest or knowledge of the subject.

        The majority of Americans don't have enough interest in civics to even know who the current vice president is. That's fine, it doesn't mean they are stupid; they just prefer to spend their time on attention on other things.

        If someone is interested in botany and knows all about which plants grow well here, I want them to help decide what to plant. If they don't even know who their current sen

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Make voting mandatory and I doubt you would actually stop voter suppression, you would just be adding a layer of fines on top of it. So poor people would not only have trouble voting but end up locked into the never ending for profit 'fine' system.

      • Do you want to do these things before or after the following:
        -Removing the Electoral College
        -Abolishing ICE
        -Stacking the court with non-partisan Leftists
        -Impeaching the President and/or Vice-President and/or Bart O'Kavanaugh

        U got to have ur priorities

      • Sad thing is there's a portion of Americans who really believe we should stop the "wrong" people from voting. I get the racists and why they feel that way,

        Oh, knock this silly shit off. It is NOT racist to want only those people who are citizens to be able to vote. "Not a citizen" is "wrong people", and "not a citizen" has nothing at all to do with race. Another "wrong people" is "people who don't care enough to vote". People who don't care enough to vote should not vote. You keep misrepresenting people you don't understand, and it only makes you look foolish.

        For my money I want to see voting made mandatory,

        You keep saying this silly thing, too. Forcing people to vote will not improve the results, it will

      • some vague notion of who the "wrong" people are that they can't put it in words that I can't explain

        The wrong people are the ones who vote for different things than me.

      • Also move voting to Saturday or Sunday and/or make it a national holiday with mandatory

        Good luck getting service businesses to allow their employees off for this. Or if you did, I'm sure we'd have plenty of people shrieking about how they are going to die if they can't buy McDonalds at every second of the day.

    • Seems like the only thing something like this would do is deter voters. Hackers know better.

      Apparently not. I get tons of hacking attempts direct out of Chinese IP space (for those I've looked up), and probably other IP spaces that I haven't looked up. Blocking non-US IP addresses would be much more than just "deter voters", it would block a lot of hacking.

      This is not something that is highly real-time dependent. You don't have to register "right this second". If you've waited so long that it truly is the end of registration time and you need to do it "right this second" using some web site, that

    • Well, no true red blooded American would know that other countries even exist, so it's only detering those bleeding edge librals who are pretending to be in different countries.

  • It isn't what but how. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday October 12, 2018 @09:54AM (#57467108)

    Yes we want to be sure people who are allowed to vote should be able to vote. We don't want people who are not allowed to vote to be able to vote.
    However the current trend of interference in the election isn't hacking the system and casting fake votes. But from foreign groups working hard to make us distrust our neighbor, who happens to have a different view of politics. And Radicalize you and them to prevent consensus to actually move forward.

    If you are left of center, anyone right of you are racist bible thumping bigots who will avoid all science, and would let the world die just as long the GDP stays positive.
    If you are right of center, anyone left of you are spoiled brats who just want freebees without contributing to society. Who would let society collapse just to save a tree.

    We should know that both depictions isn't true for either group, while they may have some people who may go to those levels. However most people will be more reasonable when faced with the actual issues. But the media combined with other groups trying to egg on these differences really cause people to take sides, once they take sides, they will move from near the center and more firmly into the stupid Territory of their particular political leanings.
     

    • But the media combined with other groups trying to egg on these differences really cause people to take sides, once they take sides, they will move from near the center and more firmly into the stupid Territory of their particular political leanings.

      Yes, other groups such as Russia. This is how we wound up with Trump.

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 12, 2018 @10:41AM (#57467364)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 )

        Yes, other groups such as Russia. This is how we wound up with Trump.

        The whole Russia false narrative is getting really old, and I can't believe how many people have fallen for it. Hot off the press: Obama Had a Secret Plan in Case Trump Rejected 2016 Election Results [nymag.com] It's pretty easy to see that when Trump won instead of lost, they decided to go forward with the false narrative anyway, and their useful idiot friends in the media helped to perpetuate it.

    • That's true but it's a cop-out to place the majority of the blame on foreign actors. We have a rot in our collective soul. It's unfortunate, it has potentially horrifying consequences, but it wasn't put there by the Russians or the Chinese or international socialists, or Islamists, or the Nazis who escaped to Argentina in the 40s and snuck across the Mexican border in the 90s. I was and is exploited by our enemies, but that's true with everything that falls in the same bin as "The CIA invented AIDS to kill

  • Paper (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Go back to paper and skip all this electronic nonsense which has auditing and outside influence trouble. Short of providing a PDF on a state voting site someone can download and fill out there really isn't a solid solution to keep electronic voting secure and frankly it sounds like there never will be.

  • Do you want a secure election or not? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday October 12, 2018 @10:03AM (#57467164)

    All this bitching about needing ID's to vote is insane, no other country in the world is stupid enough to relax the voting requirements as much as some states do...

    It's a great reason to have the state system the U.S. does, so the stupidity of one states voting system can only spread so far.

    Before we can even talk about different kinds of elections in the U.S., we really need to firm up voting security across the board.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      All this bitching about needing ID's to vote is insane, no other country in the world is stupid enough to relax the voting requirements as much as some states do...

      No ID required: Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland)

      ID required only when identity in doubt: Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden

      Multiple non-photo IDs accepted: India, Canada

      Photo ID required, but easy to obtain: Spain, France, Malta, Belgium, Mexico

      You were saying?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No ID required: Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland)

        That's not true. As a Dane, I have to show ID when voting and know my date of birth. On top of that I have to hand in a "voting card", which on top of containing some data for me (like name and address), it has a barcode and a serial number. The barcode is scanned and everything has to match to be allowed to vote. Also it blocks the serial number from voting again, ensuring one person can only vote once in each election. Before the barcode approach, I had to go to a specific table at the polling station bec

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GbrDead ( 702506 )

          > I also believe the politicians and police would want to know how that could be possible.

          As a citizen and resident of Bulgaria I find your faith in your politicians and police quite strange, if not disturbing. Maybe they deserve it, I don't know... Ours certainly do not.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      In other nations you also get those IDs by default. In the US it can cost thousands of dollars to get the needed documentation if you do not already have it, and a lot of people do not already have it. If the state handled this process for them instead of depending on churches or private attornies it would be another matter.

  • Oh C'MON (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    DER RUSSIANS HACK'D DUH ELECSHUNS IN 2016 AND GAVE US DRUMPF.
    So the government registration websites block Russian IPs.
    DEH EVIL-RETHUGLICANS IS TRYING TO STOP PEEPLES FROM VOTIN'
    If the Russians (and other state actors) are going to go through that much effort to hack facebook (as is claimed) to throw an election - don't you think they'd go through greater effort to hack it *at it's source*?!

  • Poor skilled security experts. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by will_die ( 586523 ) on Friday October 12, 2018 @10:07AM (#57467202) Homepage
    How do you know you have security experts who have not kept up their skills and craft? They agree with the above report.
    As has been shown in many reports and presentation in security conferences that yes it is easy to get around but it is one of the best way of dropping the number of scans, script kiddies, basic attack attempts, etc done against a system. That small cost is still a barrier, it will not stop some state run APT but it stop a large amount of those people running armitage against you and fillin up your logs and requiring some time to deal with. It also has no negative consequences if you are not doing business to those countries.

  • Hackers all have acces to VPN and things like that to look like their are from somewhere else....
    Thats sooooo pathetic seriously.... who gave the go on this stupid idea...

  • Is this a thing? My state has no online voter registration. To register I needed to visit the town clerk in person and fill out the registration form. This is a one-time activity.

    I found that 38 states have online voter registration. https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voter-registration-modernization-states [brennancenter.org] I would support the automatic voter registration referred in this link, however that is unlikely to happen where I live for some time given the various databases are unlinked.

  • ... but most of them don't.

    Blocking foreign IPs objectively reduces the amount of incoming attacks, hugely.

  • Interfering? (Score:3)

    by flajann ( 658201 ) <fred@mitchell.gmx@de> on Friday October 12, 2018 @10:47AM (#57467400) Homepage Journal
    By "interefering", do they mean crackers breaking into online voter servers? Or just posting opinions and the like in social media?

    If the latter, that hardly "interfering". Just voicing opinions. Double-plus good oh my brother!

  • It's almost like they need to hire competent security staff and then follow expert recommendations instead of their "common sense" ideas.

  • So, if the states listed are blocking foreign IP addys from their online registration, that does not prevent them from voting.

    First off, you don't vote in a state, rather a county. Second, there are zero counties in the US that allow internet voting at the moment. (Yes, military and overseas voters can use a fax and some use email, but it is still a scanned document, which is printed and then tabulated.)

    If the military and overseas peeps want to re-register, there are are ways without going through the secr

  • I have returned from a decade of living in China. In the city where I lived, to fax my ballot would have required for me to do that from the main police station and a copy of my "political activity" would have been placed in my foreign resident file. Frankly, that was a lot of work.

    The solution was easy. I visited the county clerk and signed a document that had three purposes, the first was to provide notice that I understood that the method offered no privacy. The second purpose was to have a copy of my si

  • Because a state-level hacker is an idiot who can't route to a secret intelligence service with a proper IP somewhere.

  • Remember just two years ago when everybody was accusing Russia of hacking the election? Hell, it was still a thing up to a few months ago. So now you want to let somebody outside the US register fake voters so they can vote over the Internet and/or cellphones (another stupid idea for another article) and definitely influence the elections?

    Hell, we have enough problems as it is with both parties stacking the deck with dead people voting. When will people realize that the Internet only makes things more

  • Michigan (Score:3)

    by Ark42 ( 522144 ) <slashdot@morpheu s s o f t w a r e . net> on Friday October 12, 2018 @07:08PM (#57469854) Homepage

    I constantly have this problem with Michigan, while living in Japan.

    Pay my quarterly estimated taxes? Website blocked
    Pay my business LLC fee? Website blocked
    Register for an absentee ballot? Website blocked

    It's a constant battle to call people late at night when it's early morning there. And there answer is just to clear my cache or try a different browser.
    After long battles, I managed to reach the right IT people in some of the departments and get some of the access enabled. But it seems like each department has a different IT contact and I wasn't able to get the business department people to understand the problem still. I'm pretty sure they're still firewalling all non-US IPs for "security"

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