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Last talk about Securing Democracy at #enigma2021: @jackhcable speaking about "THE FULL STACK PROBLEM OF ELECTION

 Let's imagine that elections use all the security measures security people have been advocating: risk-limiting audits, paper ballots, etc. Would people trust the elections more?
Jack would argue no. Most people don't understand this stuff and most of the claims people are making can't be disproven. And are massively bogus already.

Georgia did a full recount on paper ballots and it very much didn't stop people from doubting the election!
Are election security results in vain? The point of election security is to convince the loser they lost.

No! Have to focus on the whole stack, from election infrastructure to campaigns to people and mis/dis-informaton
One takeaway from the talk: the parts of the stack must work in tandem. Can't fight misinformation in a vacuum, but must build on other election security measures.
The voting process
* significant advances in recent years (e.g. paper ballots, risk-limiting audits, end-to-end verifiability)
* research needed in integrating these technologies
* expanding to mail-in voting?
But there's also internet voting
* we can't do it securely today [oh no voatz reference]
* we have to combat malware, authentication etc.
* if we could solve them, that would be great. But in the meantime voting has to be successful for everyone
* can improve accessibility through things like getting ballot online, filling it out, then returning through the mail
Election support systems
* less researched. Probably because they look boring
* Voter registration databases aren't working. Russians breached at least 2 states, targeted all 50 states
* little to no public scrutiny of these systems
* election night reporting -- this is a picture of one where there was a bug in reporting. [It was fixed but freaked a lot of people out]
A lot of the trouble with the security of election support systems is not that we don't know how to do it -- it's that we have to do it
Campaign security
* biggest unknown (see Sunny Consolvo's talk!)
* we must view campaign security as non-partisan and increase resources and services available
Public confidence
* major damage from domestic actors
* widespread mis/dis-information
* technical election security measures helps to debunk rumours floating around
Misinformation-fighting supply measures:
* platforms: downranking and deplatforming
* trusted institutions
* debunking & fact checks
Misinformation-fighting demand measures:
* media literacy
* increased civics education

[ Also note that @katestarbird will be giving a talk on misinformation don't miss it: https://t.co/a0PutRnHaI]
Let's fix election support systems!
* Much of this is applying security things we already know
[ Note: a lot of organizations have this problem 😭 ]
* engage in public research. Have a vuln disclosure policy so people can confidently help
Election security is a problem that can only be solved by working together: elections officials, security people, everyone

[end of talk]

More from Lea Kissner

Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Last up in Privacy Tech for #enigma2021, @xchatty speaking about "IMPLEMENTING DIFFERENTIAL PRIVACY FOR THE 2020

Differential privacy was invented in 2006. Seems like a long time but it's not a long time since a fundamental scientific invention. It took longer than that between the invention of public key cryptography and even the first version of SSL.


But even in 2020, we still can't meet user expectations.
* Data users expect consistent data releases
* Some people call synthetic data "fake data" like
"fake news"
* It's not clear what "quality assurance" and "data exploration" means in a DP framework


We just did the 2020 US census
* required to collect it by the constitution
* but required to maintain privacy by law

But that's hard! What if there were 10 people on the block and all the same sex and age? If you posted something like that, then you would know what everyone's sex and age was on the block.
TECH , TEACH
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Next up in Privacy Technology at #enigma2021, Kelly Huang from @ethyca speaking about "GONE, BUT NOT "FORGOTTEN"—TECHNICAL & PRACTICAL CHALLENGES IN OPERATIONALIZING MODERN PRIVACY

Just imagine there's a global pandemic forcing everyone to stay home and buy their stuff over the internet. And you've been working on your sanitization-on-demand startup. You've got more users than you can count! ... literally, because your data's all over.

Now you're a multi-national international country with privacy issues because your information is all over the place.

Now a user writes to request you delete their data. Where is it? How do you do that? Who's responsible for privacy in your business.

How do you operationalize privacy rights?

Primary stakeholders:
* Legal
* Business
* Engineering

We spend a lot of time on Twitter analyzing the legal rulings, but it's harder where the "rubber meets the code" 🥁
TECH
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Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Next up at #enigma2021, Sanghyun Hong will be speaking about "A SOUND MIND IN A VULNERABLE BODY: PRACTICAL HARDWARE ATTACKS ON DEEP LEARNING"

(Hint: speaker is on the

In recent years ML models have worked from research labs to production, which makes ML security important. Adversarial ML research studies how to mess with ML

For example by messing with the training data (c.f. Tay which became super-racist super-fast) or by foiling ML models by changing inputs in ways humans can't see.


Prior work considers ML models in a standalone, mathematical way
* looks at the robustness in an isolated manner
* doesn't look at the whole ecosystem and how the model is used -- ML models are running in real hardware with real software which has real vulns!


This talk focuses on hardware-level vulnerabilities. This is particularly interesting because these can break cryptographic guarantees (because those are outside of their threat models)
e.g. fault injection attacks, side-channel attacks
SCIENCE
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
In more Securing Democracy at #enigma2021, @ChrFolini talking about "THE ADVENTUROUS TALE OF ONLINE VOTING IN

Switzerland is a direct democracy where citizens get to vote at least 4x/year, with a lot of mail-in voting. We have a long history of online voting.

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT SWEDEN.

[I get the picture that @ChrFolini has had to explain the difference several times.]


Process around mail-in ballots.

[tl;dr it's very complicated and wasn't threat-modeled until recently]


But the in-person ballots are complicated, too!


Most security folks don't think that we can't make a secure online voting system.

@ChrFolini says this is because of encryption
[Note: this is not the main reason that a lot of people cite -- we're more worried about things like malware but it's complicated]
WORLD
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
We're kicking off the Privacy Tech session at #enigma2021 with Mitch Negus speaking about "NO DATA, NO PROBLEM—GIVING NUCLEAR INSPECTORS BETTER TOOLS WITHOUT REVEALING STATE

A nuclear catastrophe hasn't occurred... yet. So we need to stay vigilant. Nuclear inspectors go in according to treaties to check what's going on and check compliance with treaty rules.

But as sophisticated analytics become more common, states will only want to share the minimum amount of information necessary under the treaty.

But perhaps we can use MPC -- secure multi-party computation

Yao's garbled circuits were first demonstrated on the millionaire's problem -- figuring out who's richer without revealing actual amounts.

Used for other things like cryptocurrency these days.

Can we use this for nuclear inspection?

MPC can be used to compute anything computed by a computer [but it's expensive!]
TECH

More from Politics

Washington Pundit \xa9
Washington Pundit ©
@TWPundit
THREAD (WOW!)

1) If you want to watch a Coordinated Media Disinformation Campaign play out (just like the Trump-Russia Collision Hoax), there's one playing out right now in real

2) @TWPundit Exclusively Reported 10/13

"expect to see multiple...stories related to Turkey which will...be tied together by a massive “bombshell” piece in the @nytimes ...near election day in a well-coordinated smear campaign"
Yep, the piece just

3) The Turkey Disinformation Campaign is following the exact same playbook as the 2016 Trump-Russia Collision Hoax, and with all the same

4) In 2016, there were 3 separate stories related to Russia’s connection to @realDonaldTrump that dropped on Oct 31st.

Article #1 from Soros-funded @MotherJones by @DavidCornDC about @carterwpage alleging he was a secret Russian operative. Fake

5) Article #2 from @FinancialTimes about @SergeiMillian and his connection to Trump Tower projects
POLITICS
John Hayward
John Hayward
@Doc_0
Funny, before the election I recall lefties muttering the caravan must have been a Trump setup because it made the open borders crowd look so bad. Why would the pro-migrant crowd engineer a crisis that played into Trump's hands? THIS is why. THESE are the "optics" they wanted.


This media manipulation effort was inspired by the success of the "kids in cages" freakout, a 100% Stalinist propaganda drive that required people to forget about Obama putting migrant children in cells. It worked, so now they want pics of Trump "gassing children on the border."

There's a heavy air of Pallywood around the whole thing as well. If the Palestinians can stage huge theatrical performances of victimhood with the willing cooperation of Western media, why shouldn't the migrant caravan organizers expect the same?

It's business as usual for Anarchy, Inc. - the worldwide shredding of national sovereignty to increase the power of transnational organizations and left-wing ideology. Many in the media are true believers. Others just cannot resist the narrative of "change" and "social justice."

The product sold by Anarchy, Inc. is victimhood. It always boils down to the same formula: once the existing order can be painted as oppressors and children as their victims, chaos wins and order loses. Look at the lefties shrieking in unison about "Trump gassing children" today.
POLITICS
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Larry Schweikart
Larry Schweikart
@LarrySchweikart
1) FL absentees, early voting:

*Dems as expected ("souls to the polls Sunday") had a good day and FINALLY take the early walk-in vote lead by 6,100 votes.

Rs total: 1,151,593
Ds total: 1,092,547

Rs +59,046 combined lead. This is very good for this point in the campaign.

2) At this point in 2016, Rs only led by 40,000. I could be mistaken but I think yesterday was the last day polls were open on Sunday, so the final "souls to the polls" Sunday.

3) As of yesterday, four red counties were yet to report. That would likely boost the lead back to 70k

4) I don't think the FL Rs in their wildest dreams expected to lead this late in the campaign.

5) Likewise in NV:
Clark (with its union "encouragement" for members turned out big yesterday and added net 6,000 voters.

However---big however---neither Washoe nor the rurals . . .

(5) contd. . . were open yesterday. My guesstimate is that would slice that number in half.

While this helped, the NV Ds are still looking at a significant--to potentially massive--shortfall from their 2016 numbers coming out of early voting.

6) Gotta make sure you compare days to days. Calendars and voting days differ.
POLITICS
Reed Hundt
Reed Hundt
@rehundt
1/Zach has the history right (again). I doubt the current political leadership read the book where Summers et al explained what they did, unless they look at borrowed copies. Here it is: https://t.co/4gyFiagaj3

2/ But the summary is that Summers, Geithner, Orszag, Emanuel agreed on telling Obama and Biden in December 2008 that about $800b was an adequate stimulus. Would lower unemployment just below 8% by late 2010. Romer thought $2.1T or $1.7T was needed to achieve full employment.

3/ They wouldn't let her make the case in writing for $1.2T because her number could leak. The reasons for $800b were: they wanted the bill passed by February, so they could move on to health care reform and cap and trade; they had no ways to spend more;

4/ spending more might kick off inflation or cause markets to fall for fear of inflation; that might lead to more bank runs; more bank runs might require a second TARP so they couldn't ask Congress for too much for recovery; Pelosi would give them whatever they asked

5/ for but they didn't think they could get the needed 1 or 2 R Senators quickly if they asked for more; they wanted 60 but had only 58 D Senators; popular "moonshots" or signature items in the package would take too long (Biden asked for that);
POLITICS
Cassandra of Troy
Cassandra of Troy
@BrynnTannehill
This letter is... something. But, it illustrates two points. First, most Americans don't realize that the majority of of the GOP base thinks this is a religious war for the soul of the nation. They're willing to abandon democracy FTW. 1/n


The other illuminating part is where they insist Trump is a Christian. I agree with @C_Stroop the "real" vs. "fake" Christian debate is unhelpful. However, if someone thinks religion is "b******t", they're not Christian regardless of how you define it 2/n

It always amazes me how strong the cult of personality is. They're completely willing to rearrange their beliefs to support Trump (grab 'em by the pussy). They're willing to ignore the evidence he regards them as rubes, suckers, and morons. 3/n

Of all the awful things he's done, bilking his followers with fake raffles somehow stuck with me as just about the sleaziest. He's already rich. Even Rand Paul, Hannity, Carlson, Cruz, Cotton, and Hawley don't stoop this low. 4/n

On February 26th last year, I predicted that the US would handle the pandemic poorly for a lot of reasons: poor scientific literacy, bad employers, poor laws against endangering employees, lack of hospital beds, lack of preparedness. But, I whiffed badly on one thing... 5/n
POLITICS

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2/ Jassa Singh was born in 1720/21 at a village called Ahlu in the Lahore District of Punjab.


3/ Jassa Singh was educated in Delhi, in Persian, Arabic & more, under the care & supervision of Mata Sundari Ji.

Mata Sundari Gurdwara in Delhi.


4/ In 1733, Jassa Singh's mama, Thag Singh (ਤਾਗ ਸਿੰਘ), requested Mata Sundari Ji's permission to take Jassa Singh back to Punjab.


5/ At first Mata Ji refused but eventually gave permission for Jassa Singh to go with his mama, giving Jassa Singh a blessing and weapons, informing him, it was now the right time to take up arms.
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MUST READ TILL END:
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" Received a hurtful post from an old friend and colleague. He was on my daily Broadcast list of WhatsApp. He requested that I do not send him any of my posts on 'political' issues. I gave him a long explaination
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on why I write and what I write. But he was not convinced.

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and that it establishes I am not rational and impartial anymore.
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Similarly, I have no views whether BJP is a better party than Congress or vice versa.
Even after 36 years in the IAS I have no MLA, MP or anyone involved in politics whom I can classify as my friend or even acquaintance.
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Laurie Voss
Laurie Voss
@seldo
The 2018 State of JavaScript survey is out. They got 20,000 responses and have some delicious, delicious data. I'mma thread in some highlights:

First up: JavaScript flavors. There's TypeScript at 47% adoption, a tad higher than npm's own survey results (which said 46%). npm's survey is coming up again soon and will ask about TypeScript in a lot more detail.


I really, *really* like SoJ's "would not use again" question, which lets people who've abandoned a tech self-identify. This is noticeable in the graph above with Flow users -- 41% of people who've used Flow say they wouldn't use it again.

Now JavaScript frameworks. It's been a full year since npm's survey, so these numbers differ from ours in the directions I expected:
React 65% (vs. 60%)
Vue 29% (vs. 24%)
Ember 5% (vs 4%, I was expecting a bigger rise)

But there's a shocker in here: Angular.


npm's survey had Angular at 40% last year and SoJ has it at either:
- 58% (if you include those who don't want to use it again)
- 24% (if you count only those who like it)
Since npm's question didn't ask if they intend to *continue* using it I think that might explain this.
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Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
One thing that goes unremarked about Wikipedia: the vast majority of the content was written over 12 years ago—which means (given turnover) that the editors dominant today were not directly involved in that creation.

Put another way, the editors who built the dominant nodes in this network...


...have little overlap with the ones who made this much more recent managerial flowchart.


Internet time runs at hundred-fold speed—the difference between the people who painted what's in the Uffizi, and the people in charge of keeping those paintings from deteriorating. Very different tasks, and (one presumes) very personalities as well. @PaulSkallas?
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katya adler
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@BBCkatyaadler
Again, at such a key moment in UK and at such high political levels, evidence of deep misunderstanding of EU: The PM is under pressure in some quarters to delay #Brexit vote to allow her first to “improve” deal in Brussels BUT EU is determined not to budge at this stage

2) All EU leaders watching tomorrow’s vote. Of course they want to avoid a no deal #Brexit BUT they feel the deal - so painfully negotiated between EU and UK - is too fresh to re-open. Clarifications, yes but fundamental renegotiations, no.

3) The EU’s international reputation as a tough deal-maker is at stake here too. If Brussels now suddenly “gives in” to U.K. on EU red lines (eg backstop) then that would weaken the EU’s reputation in future trade negotiations with other non EU countries

4) Also on backstop the EU is unlikely to cave in to favour a relationship with a leaving member state (UK) against the explicit wishes and ignoring the deep concerns of a continuing member: Ireland.

5) Both the EU and the PM signed up to a guarantee to protect the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. If either the U.K. or EU can leave the backstop unilaterally then this clearly is no longer a guarantee.
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