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Cloud United States Government Security

Would You Trust Amazon To Run Free and Fair Elections? (reuters.com) 80

Posted by EditorDavid from the cloudy-future dept.
More than 40 of America's 50 states now use Amazon's technology infrastructure for their elections, according to this Reuters article shared by joeblog. And so do both of America's political parties:

While it does not handle voting on election day, AWS -- along with a broad network of partners -- now runs state and county election websites, stores voter registration rolls and ballot data, facilitates overseas voting by military personnel and helps provide live election-night results, according to company documents and interviews... Amazon pitches itself as a low-cost provider of secure election technology at a time when local officials and political campaigns are under intense pressure to prevent a repeat of 2016 presidential elections, which saw cyber-attacks on voting systems and election infrastructure....

Most security experts Reuters spoke to said that while Amazon's cloud is likely much harder to hack than systems it is replacing, putting data from many jurisdictions on a single system raises the prospect that a single major breach could prove damaging. "It makes Amazon a bigger target" for hackers, "and also increases the challenge of dealing with an insider attack," said Chris Vickery, director of cyber risk research at cybersecurity startup Upguard. A recent hack into Capital One Financial Corp's data stored on Amazon's cloud service was perpetrated by a former Amazon employee. The breach affected more than 100 million customers, underscoring how rogue employees or untrained workers can create security risks even if the underlying systems are secure...

Vickery uncovered at least three instances where voter data on Amazon's cloud servers was exposed to the internet, which have been reported previously. For example, in 2017, he found a Republican contractor's database for nearly every registered American voter hosted on AWS exposed on the internet for 12 days. In 2016, he found Mexico's entire voter database on AWS servers was leaked. Amazon said the breaches were caused by customer errors, adding that while AWS secures the cloud infrastructure, customers are responsible for security of what goes in the cloud.
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Would You Trust Amazon To Run Free and Fair Elections? More

Would You Trust Amazon To Run Free and Fair Elections?

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  • If Amazon ran elections (Score:4, Funny)

    by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @11:37AM (#59324980)

    Then I'd find myself voting for one person and then on inauguration day realize that the person I had voted for had been substituted for an inferior copy.

  • No. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @11:37AM (#59324982)

    No.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @11:45AM (#59324990)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • One good reason is they're partisan, they're currently promoting negative tweets about Elizabeth Warren [twitter.com] for example. It's not hard to see them wanting to impose their will in an environment where, from accusations of monopolistic behavior, to very real and unapologetic abusive behavior towards employees, politicians are more and more likely to take an interest in how they do things.

      The corporations and individuals who are lining up to denounce Elizabeth Warren are actually making the very best

    • Did you read the tweet thread you linked to?
      The guy replied to his own thread with:

      To be clear
      @AlxThomp
      checked and found itâ(TM)s CNN running ads against Elizabeth Warren.

      And AlxThomp's tweet said:

      Fwiw: I asked Twitter about this and a spox said that CNN and Amazon had an advertising partnership on Twitter around the democratic debate....This was a prearranged ad deal before the debate and CNN had complete editorial control over the content

      While you might have issues with Amazon, this is the w

    • One good reason is they're partisan, they're currently promoting negative tweets about Elizabeth Warren for example.

      Though not specifically an Amazon issue, I do think it's a scream that, after working so hard for the Democrats, the major tech vendors find pretty much the whole Democratic presidential primary field flaming their companies, talking about the need to break them up, and confiscating the assets and/or income of all the billionaires to feed their social-leveling programs.

  • I'd only trust them if Donald Trump was part owner and Rudy Giuliani was overseeing the whole operation using a secret intelligence organization that nobody could question. The results would be made public via Tweeter, of course. /s

  • Absolutely not (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @11:47AM (#59324996)
    We have governments to handle things like elections, that absolutely, positively can not and should not be run by any private organizations or individuals. Out local, state, and federal governments should be handling elections.

    • Well to be fair, the current government probably has the most skin in the game and the most reason to be biased/corrupt in the matter of who replaces them.

      • The real problem is that voting in the USA is left to the local despots who would rather ignore federal law than hold a fair election.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        Well to be fair, the current government probably has the most skin in the game and the most reason to be biased/corrupt in the matter of who replaces them.

        Governments are accountable to all of the people. Corporations are only accountable to their owners.

        • To an extent. That is the entire point of this discussion, they are accountable if they decide to hold fair elections, or their is an armed uprising. This same uprising would be even easier to pull off against a Corporation, and in general all it takes is declining to purchase things from them to destroy them utterly.

  • One more nail in the coffin of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @11:49AM (#59325002) Homepage
    Voting machines can be made secure if they produce a paper ballot that's both human and machine readable and you do regular manual audits of the count. Online voting systems can't be audited in any trusted way, and should never be trusted with any vote more substantial that American Idol. What happens if one candidate wants to do something that Amazon doesn't like?

    • Oh but what a waste of paper! Think of the trees! /s

      • .,. behind your sarcasm tag.

        Or what do you call a theater, where millions of people "get to" pick which one of the interchangeable corporate traitors the others found less shit on to make you believe are relevant to their conduct, using a sheet of paper?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      Sorry your tweet violated our Terms of Service, therefore we removed you from the ballot. Your party has been banned for 20 years.

      • Trump's opponents are calling for his Twitter account to be shutdown lately, still no response on that from Twitter.

        • Trump's opponents are calling for his Twitter account to be shutdown lately, still no response on that from Twitter.

          The reason for that is obvious: if Twitter gave Trump the boot, some other microblogging platform would become the beneficiary of Trump’s horde of followers.

          Why any private company gets the personal blessing of the president (and yes, I’m aware Obama was on Twitter before Trump) is beyond me. The president shouldn’t be using any privately-owned social media accounts while holding office. If being able to microblog at 2AM is now considered an essential part of our democracy, the governmen

  • Sure (Score:3)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @11:51AM (#59325010)

    Amazon's product ratings are like little elections, and the resulting rankings are obviously beyond reproach. If they ran our elections, they could even decorate some of the ballots with a "Verified Citizen" icon.

    • Amazon like any sales-driven team puts positive ratings first, but it's a key way of getting bad products removed. Not enough good reviews and it's shipped to Yucca Mountain.

  • It's kind of a broken question. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @11:55AM (#59325020) Homepage Journal

    Trustworthiness is a *system* property; you can't build a trustworthy system just by using trustworthy components; nor is it a good idea to rely on any party involved in services being absolutely trustworthy.

    If a system relies on Amazon cloud services to be unhackable, I'd say that's not a good design. However it is possible to use Amazon without trusting the company or assuming the information is inherently immune from unauthorized access or tampering.

  • OMG!!! Did you know... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bferrell ( 253291 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @12:01PM (#59325034) Homepage Journal

    Nearly one hundred percent of all election sites run on Intel hardware?

    Do you trust Intel to run all of those elections?!!!

    Gimme a break

    • Hilarious, that of all the entities, you mention Intel...

      The reality comforting field really is strong in this one... I bet you barely can hold yourself back with calling everyone and his mother a conspiracy theorist. ^^

  • same answer.
  • Our elections are being set up to be easily stolen. Is this okay with you? The only safe way to vote is by PAPER ballot, but we'll probably never see that again. Electronic machinery and digital balloting is so damned easy to bamboozle that politicians will never go back to paper. Our elections belong to the crooks. Does that make you feel good?

    • Our elections are being set up to be easily stolen. Is this okay with you?

      No.

      Because elections are about preventing civil war. Once the losers think they don't predict they'd also lose the war, so they CAN get away with overturning their results by violence or chicanery, expect them to try it.

      Holding an at-least-close-to-honest election is actually in the politicians' interest. The easiest way for an election to LOOK honest is for it to BE at least mostly honest, and finding out you'd be torched-and-pitch

  • Just stick to paper (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @12:17PM (#59325060) Journal
    If no layman (or a large group of them) can independently verify that no large-scale tampering has taken place during of after the election, then your voting system is flawed. That's the good thing about paper ballots: you can tamper with those, but if you want to affect the outcome by a large degree, the required effort as well as the necessary circle of co-conspirators will grow quickly, and with that the likelihood of discovery.

    It's important that people trust the outcome of an election, especially if it's a close call. If independent observers or interested citizens take part in the election oversight, and report no widespread incidents, then people can be pretty certain that no widespread tampering has taken place. Electronic voting or tallying? That's the same as telling the voters: "Hand me your ballots, I'll go into the next room, count them, burn them, then tell you what the outcome is".

    • ... if you want to affect the outcome by a large degree, the required effort as well as the necessary circle of co-conspirators will grow quickly, and with that the likelihood of discovery.

      That's also one of the benefits of the Electoral College: It's a firewall against corrupt regimes.

      Without it, one corrupt state (or large city) regime could fake enough votes to swing a presidential election. With it, they can only get their state's share of the electors (which they probably had anyhow if they were in a

    • How many ballots does it require for you to consider it "large-scale"?

      Recently, there was a woman charged with tampering with absentee votes. She was charged with altering several hundred votes, while it is possible she tampered with several thousand more.
      It took multiple elections, and her own carelessness, for someone to notice.

      The NC vote harvesting operating accounted for thousands of ballots, and so far has no "proof", just circumstantial evidence.

      The Chicago Machine regularly dumped out 100,000 or mo

    • That seems to be far from the most prominent issues. If the Jill Stein recount attempt proved beyond a doubt two things.
      Its not really possible to do a recount, you might get past the legal hurtles for a few districts but the vast majority is locked behind legislature, and no one cares. Americans are unwilling to believe that election tampering can exist in America, nothing will get them to believe otherwise.

      We found that something like 1/3 of the votes that were allowed to be recounted could not even be ve

  • than trusting politicians to run honest elections.

    • Politicians?

      No, the Electoral Commission, public servants, where I am, Australia.

      And it's paper.

  • I might trust Amazon to distribute paper ballots, insofar as they could be gauranteed not to be tampered with...

    But any electronic system? You cannot trust anyone, because either there may be security holes not found or you simply get a bad actor inside the system with a lot of access.

    • I might trust Amazon to distribute paper ballots, insofar as they could be gauranteed not to be tampered with...

      Yeah, that would make them good for something, but send a US Marshall along with 'em.

      With all the black box voting we have now, out elections cannot be trusted. Something has to be wrong when the ruling Party always gets around 95% of the vote while all this chronic corruption is going on. Independents are being shut out. It's time to look into it.

  • Not really, but more than I'd trust Republicans (Score:3)

    by darthsilun ( 3993753 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @12:27PM (#59325072)
    Kinda a sad state of affairs if you ask me.

    • I thought "Republicans", "Democats" and "Corporations" were all interchangeable terms.

      Are we talking about the same country?

      • Stupid sexy typo...!

  • More than 40 of America's 50 states now use Amazon's technology infrastructure for their elections

    Back when AT&T held the official monopoly on long-distance telephone in the US [howstuffworks.com], you could ask them same question about "trusting AT&T" to "run" elections.

    Because, obviously, all of the results would be tallied via AT&T's cables, and almost all of the campaign-coordination — as well as news-reporting — had to use them too.

    The question would've been bogus then, and it is bogus now. Someone

  • Is that a joke question? (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Saturday October 19, 2019 @12:36PM (#59325078)

    Do pray tell?

    What is their one and ONLY objective as an organization?
    To uphold a democracy?
    To further the advsncement and well-being of humanity?
    To adhere to moral and decent human being standards?

    NO!

    Their one and ONLY goal is to make *profit*!
    As much as physically possible without going to prison!
    That literally means that if theire is a dime to be made on murdering grandmas and puppies and raping babies, the ONLY question they concern themselves with, is "Can we get away with it?". NEVER "Is it the right thing to do?". Or "Will it improve humanity?".
    Nah. That would get you hanged on planet Bezos. ;)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

      Their one and ONLY goal is to make *profit* for the CEO!

      Fixed that for you by bringing it up to date with modern times. Plenty of corporations have been ridden into the ground as their CEOs leap off with hundred million dollar golden parachutes.

    • Their one and ONLY goal is to make *profit*!
      As much as physically possible without going to prison!
      That literally means that if theire is a dime to be made on murdering grandmas and puppies and raping babies, the ONLY question they concern themselves with, is "Can we get away with it?". NEVER "Is it the right thing to do?". Or "Will it improve humanity?".

      Except some corporations' execs have figured out that you can make MORE money by doing good stuff and getting a lot more customers (or donors for charities

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Oversight is OUR duty! You can let them use their little gizmos to count the votes for tabloids, but don't ever trust them. You better better get a second opinion to make it offical.

    And we still have to demand paper ballots. That is the most important part. You can't verify anything without it.

  • Sure, like I'd trust Jerry Sandusky to babysit my 9 year old son.

  • ... deliver my packages properly. Why would I trust them with my democracy?

  • I would never trust any corporation to run an election. But the key is, Amazon is not running an election, they are providing the infrastructure for the government to run an election. Where I work we use Dell servers for almost everything, but no one would say Dell runs our business. The fact there have been breaches in election data on AWS is no different than having breaches on physical servers. The whole premise of this is wrong.

  • The second I get a SD card from Amazon, I go to the manufacturer's website and register the warranty by serial number, just to make sure that it's authentic. I've literally never had a name brand flash product go back on me except my OCZ ATV waterproof flash stick — no, I didn't even get it wet. They disco'd it because it was a POS and they sent me a Rally2 as a replacement, which I've been using for many years since. And as a rule, I never register for warranties, because it's not actually required.

  • Would You Trust Amazon To Run Free and Fair Elections?

    Sure, so long as I could return the result if I didn't like it.

    Though I do like the idea of giving politicians a "star" rating, not just a vote.

  • The question shouldn't be do you trust Amazon, the question should be who do you trust?

  • I mean , what if they are Republicans or even worse trumpians.

  • I've actually run for state level offices.

    HELL NO.

    Keep it local, keep it paper based, and try to keep corporations out of it

    Citizens United be damned.

  • No. (Score:2)

    by Chas ( 5144 )

    Not
    A
    Fucking
    Chance
    In
    Hell

  • Not to worry, if Amazon did something wrong, you could always file a grievance before an arbitrator, bought and paid for by Amazon.

  • Absolutely (Score:3)

    by russotto ( 537200 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @12:00AM (#59326652) Journal

    I am sure Amazon would properly record my vote for President Bezos.

  • Nothing a corporation does is ever "fair" or "just" or anything else that is a term from the domain of ethics.

    A corporation is an artificial entity with a specific purpose: Profit. If it did anything not related to its purpose, it would violate a basic principle of its existence.

    That's not to say such things don't happen - after all, survival is a basic principle in living things and yet suicide is a thing - but these are the exception, not the rule, and unreliable. So yes, sometimes corporations do good th

  • âoeRedeem your amazon vote here, valued democracy participant. Prime voters, remember to use the high speed luxury booth to redeem both of your votes.â

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