The DHS Hacks Multiply

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that more states have followed Georgia in finding DHS hacking attempts on their computers.

The two states to come forward now are West Virginia and Kentucky, plus Georgia. Attacks seem to have targeted voter registration sites. I wonder if this was part of an investigation to see whether Southern states were involved in voter suppression tactics. Would DHS run something like that?

2 comments:

Texan99 said...

That's sweet, the way you assume the purpose of the hacks was to uncover fraud. I do hope you're right. I daresay they were proceeding in a completely non-partisan way that included some efforts to uncover fraud of the sort that surfaced in Detroit during the failed recount effort, but we simply haven't detected those yet, because security was more competent.

I certainly wouldn't want to conclude that a weaponized federal agency was involved in putting its thumb on the election scale. I mean, that can happen, but only when the Russians do it. DHS could no more be drawn into such a thing than the IRS or the press. Let's all just step out of the fever swamp.

Grim said...

Georgia was 'supposed to be a swing state' this year according to some polls, but Kentucky and West Virginia never were. Nor was Georgia all that close: it was always the case that, even in polls that suggested it might be in play for Clinton, if she was doing well enough to win Georgia she was going to win the election very handily.

Unless it turns out that DHS was hacking more broadly than this, it's not very likely that they would be targeting these states for election fraud. Had it been Virginia instead of West Virginia, and North Carolina instead of Kentucky, that would be more plausible.

Of course, this story is still in an early stage. Maybe it was all of them, and we just don't know that yet.