I've got an op-ed in today's @washingtonpost, about the legal threats that ES&S - the litigious, private-equity-backed voting machine monopolist - sent to SMART Elections, a citizen group that criticized ES&S products to NY election officials.

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…

1/
I blogged the story in Jan, after reading Princeton's Andrew Appel's defense of SMART; Appel has done important, careful, peer-reviewed research on defects in ES&S's Expressvote XL, and he defended the claims that ES&S was threatening to sue over.

pluralistic.net/2021/01/11/see…

2/
The point that Appel made, that really struck home with me, was that the timing and character of ES&S's claims echoed the claims of Dominion Voting Systems against trumpland's most unhinged conspiratorialists, like Rudy Giuliani.

freedom-to-tinker.com/2021/01/11/ess…

3/
Dominion was the target of baseless conspiracy claims that were part of a plot to overthrow American democracy. ES&S's threats made it sound like anyone who criticized voting machines was part of the same movement.

4/
This is a cynical ploy straight out of the Trump playbook, as when he took the term "fake news" (coined to describe fraudulent anti-Clinton stories) and used it to dismiss all media criticism of his regime.

5/
The conclusion Trump wanted us to draw from the fact that some political scandals are ginned-up hoaxes is that ALL political scandals are frauds.

Likewise, I read ES&S's as saying that anyone who criticizes voting machines is pulling a Giuliani.

6/
It's a devastating attack on the truth itself, a challenge to our ability to ever know anything. And it's especially grave to wield this weapon against voting-machine critics, because voting machines are, in fact, garbage (including ES&S's).

7/
For that matter, DOMINION'S machines are ALSO trash, just not for the idiotic reasons that Giuliani and co came up with. Appel followed up his post on the Expressvote XL with an equally damning post about Dominion's devices.

freedom-to-tinker.com/2021/02/01/geo…

8/
The takeaway here isn't that Giuliani made baseless accusations against Dominion, therefore Dominion (and its competitors) are great. Indeed, the fact that Giuliani didn't even bother to base his (lying) accusations on the REAL defects in Dominion just proves he's an idiot.

9/
ES&S's gambit reminds me of the "tankies" who deny the Chinese Uyghur genocide. After publishing on @intercepted's primary source docs on the human rights atrocities yesterday, I was inundated with accusations of aiding US imperialism.

pluralistic.net/2021/02/03/nev…

10/
The argument goes, "The US has historically ginned up cases against its economic adversaries by inventing or exaggerating their flaws (Syria, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, etc), AND the US right wants a new cold war with China, THEREFORE anything bad you hear about China is an op."

11/
As one source put it to me, our media is about affect, "picking what you believe is correct or not based on if it makes you feel good."

12/
Once you arrive at the (actually correct) shortcut belief that US state claims about human rights abuses overseas are pretexts for aggression, then it's easy to fall into the trap of defending anyone the US criticizes as blameless or at least not as bad as they seem.

13/
But your enemy's enemy is not your friend. The reason the US is able to sell claims about its adversaries' bad human rights records is that...they have bad human rights records.

14/
The issue isn't that the US fails to identify human rights abusers - it's that it only takes action to defend human rights when it serves its political interests, and the rest of the time, it's happy to collaborate on the abuses.

15/
Likewise, the reason that Giuliani and co were able to sell their unhinged conspiracy about Dominion's voting machines is that voting machines are and always have been garbage, and the companies that make them are profiteering bullies who use the law to silence critics.

16/
The problem with Giuliani's conspiracy theory isn't that voting machines aren't garbage - it's that he's wrong about how they're garbage, and what that means for election integrity.

17/
Giuliani's targeting of voting machines isn't a signal that they're good because he's an idiot who's wrong about everything - it's that he's so wrong that he's even wrong about the things that he's wrong about.

18/
Meanwhile, ES&S gets to look like an aggrieved target of Trumpist election interference - rather than as the monopolists who have sold their unsound products up and down the country.

19/
If you'd like to read or share this essay as a blog-post, here's a permalink on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free site: pluralistic.net/2021/02/04/vot…

eof/

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @doctorow

6 Feb
Back in January, I got a very odd call from an FBI Special Agent, who wanted to discuss a blog post I'd written summarizing a Popular Mechanics article on the physics of monument toppling, having received a complaint about it.

pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoo…

1/ Image
Thankfully, I have access to some of the very best civil liberties lawyers in the nation, namely my colleagues at @EFF. Andrew Mackey, an EFF lawyer who specializes in this kind of thing, had a talk with the agent, who agreed that I'd broken no laws and dropped the matter.

2/
Aaron did one better. He helped me draft a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI along with a demand that my record there be expunged, as is my right under settled precedent.

pluralistic.net/2021/01/20/dam…

3/
Read 7 tweets
6 Feb
I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t sure whether it was real or not. But I am sure now. It is real. There’s a man out there.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (The Twilight Zone, TV Series, 1963)

atomic-chronoscaph.tumblr.com/post/642390928…
I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t sure whether it was real or not. But I am sure now. It is real. There’s a man out there.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (The Twilight Zone, TV Series, 1963)

atomic-chronoscaph.tumblr.com/post/642390928…
I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t sure whether it was real or not. But I am sure now. It is real. There’s a man out there.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (The Twilight Zone, TV Series, 1963)

atomic-chronoscaph.tumblr.com/post/642390928…
Read 5 tweets
6 Feb
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Klobuchar wants to bust her some fuckin' trusts; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/02/06/cal…

#Pluralistic

1/ Image
Next Tuesday, I'm helping Ed Snowden launch the young readers' version of his spectacular memoir "Permanent Record." Join us for a livestream event with Copperfield Books on Feb 9 at 19h Pacific.

eventbrite.com/e/edward-snowd…

2/ Image
Klobuchar wants to bust her some fuckin' trusts: CALERA is A Big Fucking Deal.



3/ Image
Read 14 tweets
6 Feb
Tonight I got invited to a virtual premiere of #BlissMovie from @PrimeVideo and they asked me to post about the movie afterwards.

It was...good. Weird. Good. Phildickian, ambiguous and very plague-escapist, a good and weird thing for a moment of great anxiety and hope.

1/
Parts of it triggered my, "Sorry, this isn't sf, it's just a cool eyeball kick" complaint, but then again, there was Selma Hayek putting in a genuinely spectacular performance, and Owen Wilson being a lot less goofy (modulo the nose!) than we've come to expect.

2/
Phildickian is not entirely complementary. I love PK Dick, but he didn't always make a hell of a lot of sense. Some of his most haunting stuff was his least coherent, but as David St Hubbins reminded us, "There's such a fine line between clever and stupid."

3/
Read 6 tweets
6 Feb
America has passed four major antitrust bills since the Sherman Act of 1890. Each bill makes it clear that monopolism is a problem in and of itself - that allowing power to be concentrated into few, unaccountable hands perverts public policy and undermines the nation.

1/ Image
For generations, American regulators fought monopolies because they were monopolies. But in the early 1980s, a disgraced Nixonite criminal named Robert Bork became Ronald Reagan's court sorcerer, backed by a coalition of ultra-wealthy plutes.

2/
Bork claimed that if you stared at the Sherman Act and its successors long enough, eventually you would have a holy revelation and learn that the lawmakers who crafted these bills - and spoke explicitly about their distrust of monopolies - actually really LIKED monopolies.

3/
Read 18 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!