Thread by @blmohr

1/ [thread]
Diebold deals, Scytl cryptography, Russian investments raise questions about Roskam win

2/ On Nov. 7, 2006, Peter Roskam beat Tammy Duckworth by 4,810 votes.

3/ According to polls leading up to the race, the two were tied or Duckworth lead through the middle of October. Then it teetered toward Roskam for a few weeks until it went back to Duckworth. A month before the race, the Zogby/Reuters poll had Duckworth at +14.

4/ The campaigns were fairly typical for IL politics. References were made about Duckworth’s (a war veteran and amputee) “cut-and-run” military strategy. There were visits by George and Laura Bush, John McCain, Michael J. Fox, Rosie O’Donnell and Barbra Streisand.

5/ Million$ were funneled in through outside PACs. Roskam was accused of unleashing 180,000 GOP robocalls in one week.
trib.in/2z7IcxK

6/ In the end, Roskam squeaked by and Duckworth conceded victory that night. Roskam’s been re-elected to the seat five more times.

7/ Four months after the election, however, serious questions were raised regarding the validity of Roskam’s win.
bit.ly/2J3g9iS

8/ According to poll watchers and election judges at more than 50 polling locations on election night, Diebold TSx voting machines and 25 memory cards (with voter data) were left unsecured overnight at various polling places. One memory card was missing and one couldn’t be read.

9/ Overall, there appeared to be no chain of custody in place for properly securing and storing the TSx machines and memory cards.
bit.ly/2JefXSV

10/ Various voting machines malfunctioned. Some did not become fully operational until hours after the 6 a.m. opening of polls. Others failed to work at all. There were issues with printer cartridges and printers that sometimes “mutilated” voters’ ballots and poll tape printouts.

11/ All testing of the voting machines leading up to the election was done by contractors paid by Diebold.
bit.ly/2t3KpE2

12/ DuPage County had 3 authorized Independent Testing Authorities for testing of the Diebold machines. But the vendors chose to use a series of comps: Nichols, PSInet, Metamore & Ciber who passed the work between 1 another until handing it off to Shawn Southworth & Jim Dearman.

13/ The 2 developers, who were paid by the vendors, worked to review the source code and user interface. According to Southworth, “the labs don’t like to write anything negative in the reports because the vendors don’t like it…and they’re paying for it.”
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14/ In the reports final estimation: “…there is little basis for confidence in the results of the November 7, 2006 election held in DuPage County.”
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15/ For decades, the DuPage County Election Commission has failed to seek state permission before destroying election data. The commission has maintained for years that it has the right to destroy any ballots and other election materials it wants.
trib.in/2LbD90g

16/ From 2003–2006, the DuPage County government offices requested the disposal of records 568 times. In comparison, the Chicago Board of Elections filed 36 certificates requesting permission to destroy records since Jan. 1, 2003.

17/ Robert Saar was the commission’s exec dir from 1997–2017. In the mid 2000s, while working on the commission, he also sold elections products and worked for a company that received funding from elections industry vendors. He retired in 2017.
bit.ly/2JdTrpb

18/ Earlier this year, Cathy Ficker Terrill, the commission’s new director, offered to resign because of election night issues last March.
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19/ After the polls closed, election officials discovered the “ender cards” were too thick to run through the voting machines that read paper ballots. So the results were delayed and it took the commission more than eight hours to count the ballots.

20/ Terrill said she was shocked when she found out the faulty cards were provided by Liberty Systems. “The specs haven’t changed. It’s just this particular vendor — unbeknown to us — did not follow the specs.”

21/ Liberty Systems had been awarded a $500K contract by commissioner J.P. “Rick” Carney to print the election ballots. Carney was the chairman of the DuPage Board of Election Commissioners from 2006–2012.
bit.ly/2J8qlXT

22/ Liberty Systems is owned by William Barrett, the former VP of Sales for Fidlar Doubleday. Fidlar Doubleday has been the “premier dealer” for Diebold Election Systems since 2003. In 2005, it signed a 20-year contract with Carney to supply election equipment in DuPage County.

23/ Fidlar Doubleday contributed $3,500 to Carney’s political campaigns in 2003 and 2004. He’d been the DuPage County Recorder from 1984–2004. When he retired from that position, Fidlar Doubleday paid $9,000 for his retirement party.
bit.ly/2kKfs4d

24/ In December 2005, before voting for a $4 million purchase of 732 Diebold electronic touch-screen voting machines, Carney accepted $12,500 in campaign contributions from Fidlar Doubleday.

25/ Most of the voting machines being used in IL are the Premier/Diebold (Dominion) AccuVote TS & TSx. They date back to 2005 when they were bought with Help America Vote Act funds. HAVA stems from the questionable vote counts decided by Bush v. Gore.
bit.ly/2MXvGD7

26/

https://twitter.com/blmohr/status/932367600553807883

27/ Carney was the commission’s chairman until he was forced to resign six years ago after a report was released by an outside agency that concluded “improvements must be made to the commission’s credit card, ethics and procurement policies.”

28/ In an effort to address the report as well as other recurring voting machine and printer issues, the county turned to Scytl.
bit.ly/2HfRkz5

29/ Scytl was founded by Carles Rovira and Andreu Riera in June 2001 as a spin-off from a research group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Riera was a pioneer academic researcher in e-voting security at the university.

30/ Scytl has an “election-specific cryptographic security technology” that has at least 40 international patents and patent applications. It also has a suite of election software: online voting, auditing, and training government/poll officials.
bit.ly/2m16sYT

31/ The company has teams in Dubai, Hong Kong, London, Ukraine and Bogota. It’s U.S. group is registered in Virginia and has offices in Tampa, FL and Oklahoma City.
craft.co/scytl

32/ Scytl’s online voting process:

33/ It downloads the votes from each precinct where its devices are used and then stores the data on its own servers. It then consolidates and decrypts the votes using its “verifiable mix-net and secret sharing scheme.”

34/ Scytl’s software is used in at least 900 U.S. jurisdictions and in more than 35 countries.

35/ The official DuPage County online election results are published on dupageresults.com , a public website that is “Powered by SCYTL.” Scytl’s system has also been used in Illinois’ Lake and Will counties.
bit.ly/2KsLdhr

36/ Scytl’s client list is large and international. Some of its more notable clients include:

37 - Yopolis: Russia’s first online “participation” platform. Scytl’s cryptographic security technology powers the “main social network for local eDemocracy in Russia.”
bit.ly/2tvZSxI

38/ - Ukraine Electoral Commission (OSCE) uses Scytl's permanent online Election Training platform.
- The European Union used its services for its eRepresentative tool to develop a “virtual platform” to facilitate the remote collaborative work of members of parliaments.

39/ - In 2008, the City of Chicago signed a $500K, 5-year contract with Syctl to implement its elections training platform and content. In 2015, Syctl provided “online election staff training platform and custom training content” for city election staff.
bit.ly/2KcgGV6

40/ - Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington, D.C., West Virginia all use various software and training programs run by Scytl.
bit.ly/2MstyCT

41/ Since 2010, the DOD has used Scytl for online ballot delivery and for overseas military and civilian voters in 9 of the 20 States that agreed to participate in the program (NY, WA, MO, NE, KS, NM, SC, MS and IN). It's used by the most states of any U.S. vendor.

42/ In January 2012, Scytl announced it had acquired 100% of SOE Software, the leading software provider of election management solutions in the United States. This made Scytl the largest provider of election software solutions in the industry.
bit.ly/2lV2FMV

43/ The March 2015 election in New South Wales, Australia was the world's largest deployment of online voting to that date. More than 280,000 votes were returned through iVote, the online voting system built by Scytl. Prior to the vote, election officials said the vote was...

44/ "...completely secret. It's fully encrypted and safeguarded, it can't be tampered with."
ab.co/2lVDnhJ

45/ Independent researches performed a security analysis of public portions of the iVote system. They found tracking code hosted to an outside server that could be used by hackers to perform a man-in-the-middle attack whereby the attacker could intercept connections...

46/ from the voter's browser to the server hosting the tracking code. They could then replace the tracking code with malicious JavaScript and thereby change the operation of the iVote web app. Malware could then be used to steal the voter's PIN and actually change their vote.

47/ By the time some of the vulnerabilities were fixed, 66,000 iVotes had already been cast.
bit.ly/2u7meVS

48/ Scytl trained more than 11K poll workers for the 2016 Brexit referendum vote & the 2017 Parliamentary Election. The 2016 U.S. Pres. Election used Scytl for election night reporting, poll worker management, election training, electronic pollbook and electronic ballot delivery.

49/ In the March 2018 U.S. elections, Scytl's Election Night Reporting software was used state-wide by AR, GA, KY, & WV & 53 counties to inform more than 20M registered voters. Its Online Election Worker Training was used by Chicago to train more than 7K temp election workers.

50/ Scytl's list of investors have varying degrees of ties to Russian financial entities. Scytl has eight venture capital funds as shareholders:

51/ - Vulcan Capital is the pers. investment fund owned by Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. Allen invested $40 million in Syctl in 2014. Scytl has partnered with Microsoft to "digitally transform elections." The two have collaborated to build the Scytl ePollBook.

52/ It uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM on a Microsoft SQL Server using standard Windows tablets to prevent "Election Day headaches by expediting voter check-in and verification."
bit.ly/2ILtXyj

53/ - London-based Balderton Capital invested $9.2 million w/ Nauta Capital in Scytl. Balderton also lead a $6.5 million investment in Revolut, an international IT startup in the fintech sector.

54/ Revolut.com is an online financial services company that offers a pre-paid debit card, currency exchange, cryptocurrency exchange and peer-to-peer payments. Its banking services are used by almost 2M people and more than 30,000 companies.
bit.ly/2HtUwra

55/ This year, Revolut will launch in India, Ru, USA, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong. It said in June it was partnering w/ QIWI Bank to offer Ru citizens financial services. Digital Sky Technologies (DST) Global, run by Yuri Milner, has invested $250M in Revolut.

56/ - Vy Capital is a Dubai-based investment firm that's run by frmr Goldman Sachs Banker Alexander Tamas, a frmr partner at DST. Tamas was Milner's 'top dealmaker' working on its Alibaba, Airbnb, Facebook, Groupon, Spotify and Twitter investments.
for.tn/2gNBlLQ

57/ - Nauta Capital, a Spanish VC firm, has invested at least $20M in Scytl. Carles Ferrer Roqueta, a General Partner at Nauta, is a Scytl board director. In 2011, Nauta Capital was the initial investor ($1 million) in Yuilop, a mobile messaging app.
bit.ly/2zfypWw

58/ In 2012, Russia's Bright Capital invested $4.5 million in Yuilop. Bright Capital is a venture capital firm based in Moscow. It's run by Boris Ryabov and Mikhail Chuchkevich. Ryabov is the former Deputy General Director of RU-COM, a Russian industrial conglomerate.

59/ Bright Capital is the venture arm of the RU-COM Corporation. Along with Allen's Vulcan Capital's cooperation, it invested $30 million in Siluria Technologies, a biofuel company that's developed a process to convert methane into liquid fuels like gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.

60/ Spinnaker Invest, along with WebCapital, invested $1 million in Scytl in 2001.
bit.ly/2KRWMOC

61/ Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures) invested $20 million in Scytl in 2014. Then, with five of the other investors, another $13 million in 2017. SAP, Europe's biggest software maker, provides the financial backing for Sapphire.
bit.ly/2MsmGFA

62/ - Industry Ventures has invested more than $50M in Scytl. Its also invested million$ in Planet Labs, a builder of mini satellites that take images of the entire planet. Milner and DST have helped raise nearly $200 million for Planet. Peter Thiel is also an investor in Planet.

63/ - Adams Street Partners is a Chicago-based private equity firm that got caught up in Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration awarding pension investment contracts to preferred campaign donors.

64/ Adams Street, which received $70M in new commitments from the pension system in 2013 & 2014, invested most of the pension funds with Madison Dearborn Partners. As of 2016, Madison Dearborn employees have donated more than $400,000 to Rahm's campaigns.
bit.ly/19c0L2m

65/ Adams Street has also donated $40,850 to Roskam's campaigns since 2006. Both DuPage County and the City of Chicago have signed numerous contracts with Scytl.
bit.ly/2KZIoRn

66/ On April 18, Scytl announced it was joining the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security council on election security.

67/ Scytl, Diebold, Facebook and Yandex also share various employees. Former Scytl developers and engineers now work at Facebook. There are former Yandex engineers at Facebook.

68/ One person who had previously been the head of News at Yandex, also helped w/ the "integration with Scytl platform for secure polls" at Yopolis, the RU community portal Scytl contracted w/ Ru to build.

69/ Bob Urosevich was named managing director of Scytl's Americas division in 2006. Bob, along with his brother Todd, created Diebold (ES&S).
bit.ly/2NslfZ6

70/ There is no real incentive for either company to improve the numerous security flaws in their voting machines and software. The incentive is for election vendors like ES&S and Scytl to have its voting technology in front of as many voters as possible.

71/ That gets done by "befriending" the local officials who decide the voting machine contracts.

72/ In 2005, Larry Mandel, who was the President of the Elections Division for Fidlar, donated $1,000 to Roskam's campaign. Roskam accepts funding from a number of well-known GOP investors who have spent millions to affect the outcomes of elections.
bit.ly/2LPSkNY

73/ Roskam received $4,950 from the NRA for his 2006 race. Four months before the election, Roskam was the featured guest at an NRA rally in Addison, IL. Since 1997, he's received nearly $20,500 from the NRA.
wapo.st/2NxHGfE

74/ He has a 93% rating from the NRA and 100% rating from the registered IL arm of the NRA, The Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA). Roskam's received nearly $70,000 from Koch Industries since 2008.
bit.ly/2kK2YJS

75/ Roskam is a member of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. In 2013, he was investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics for accepting a $25,000 trip to Taiwan sponsored by Chinese Culture University but paid for by the Taiwanese government.
bit.ly/2sDIXIh

76/ As a politician, Roskam apparently has an interest in Ukraine & Israel. He's the Repub Chairman of the House Democracy Partnership (HDP). The group's purpose is "effective government and strengthen democratic institutions by assisting legislatures in emerging democracies."

77/ He traveled to Turkey to monitor the 2014 Ukraine elections. The following year, Roskam traveled with HDP to Ukraine and Georgia, where they met with parliamentarians, heads of state, and civil society organizations.
trib.in/1NRKj6n

78/ Last year, he traveled with HDP to some of Russia's neighboring countries to discuss possible Russian aggression.
bit.ly/2yB1J9I

79/ Diebold has offices in Russia. Its office in Russia was registered in 1998 and in 2003, it established a subsidiary, "Diebold Self-Service."
bit.ly/2J4syYx

80/ Diebold also builds ATMs and the software they run on. It bought Wincor Nixdorf, a German firm that builds ATMs, in April 2016 for $1.8 billion. It renamed itself Diebold Nixdorf.
bit.ly/2M2xN8Z

81/ In 2017, Diebold Nixdorf signed a deal with Russia's Post Bank. "The strategy will allow for the discontinuation of traditional cashier stations, and enable consumers to perform all cash transactions..."
bit.ly/2srtRGN

82/ Diebold was sued by the SEC in 2013 for paying bribes to Russian officials. It paid $25.2 million in penalties for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
bit.ly/2sSQ5S2

83/ "Diebold, through its Russian subsidiary, paid bribes in connection with the sale of ATMs to private banks in Russia. It falsified records in Russia in order to obtain and retain contracts to provide ATMs to state-owned and private banks in Russia, China and Indonesia...

84/ It made nearly $3 million in illicit payments to them."
bit.ly/2J7wbgk

85/ Diebold Nixdorf controls nearly 35% of the global ATM market. It's currently the largest provider of ATMs in the United States.
reut.rs/2l3Buik

86/ Earlier this year, the FBI warned financial institutions that jackpotting attacks were on the rise in the U.S.
wapo.st/2KFR4Qp

87/ Thieves are using ATM malware like Ploutus-D to infect Diebold-specific ATMs. Researchers believe hackers first used Ploutus in Mexico in 2013. Hackers can connect to the ATM via SMS or manually with a keyboard and dispense unlimited cash.
bit.ly/2ixKtK0

88/ In January, two men were charged with bank fraud stemming from a jackpotting scheme. The individuals were dressed in "Diebold technician uniforms."
bit.ly/2JvKJpz