Hacking Elections in Latin America

Long and interesting article about a fixer who hacked multiple elections in Latin America. This isn’t election hacking as in manipulate the voting machines or the vote counting, but hacking and social-media dirty tricks leading up to the election.

EDITED TO ADD: April Fool’s joke, it seems. Fooled me, probably because I read too fast. The ending is definitely suspicious.

EDITED TO ADD: Not an April Fool’s joke. I have gotten this from Bloomberg News itself. They spent a lot of time on this story—it’s 100% real. And this follow-on story is also worth reading.

This is definitely an April Fool’s joke.

Tags: , , ,

Posted on April 1, 2016 at 9:50 AM • 16 Comments

Comments

Crack Cyber-commandos • April 1, 2016 10:10 AM

Hey speaking of April fools, now we know who are the ‘state-sponsored actors’ sitting reading twitter: shithead cops looking for kiddy porn on tor relays. Somewhat unclear on the concept.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/03/30/23885710/police-go-on-fishing-expedition-search-the-home-of-seattle-privacy-activists-who-maintain-tor-network

This is why exposing institutionalized F.O.P. obstruction of justice is like taking candy from a baby – departments screen out people who are smart enough to know what a computer is for. Evidently judges are also subject to an IQ cap. One mongoloid actually signed this warrant.

Cops on Crack • April 1, 2016 10:36 AM

@Crack Cyber-commandos

The privacy conscious geeks targeted for running a Tor exit node look to be receiving payback.

Why?

Well, they dared to co-found an organization (Seattle Privacy Coalition) that has exposed the cops for their illegal use of Stingrays in 2014.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/08/28/seattle-police-deny-having-or-using-stingray-cell-phone-data-sucking-device

Did Tacoma police decide that the public deserves more transparency? Did they disclose their use of this technology voluntarily? Haha. Good one! No—instead, Phil Mocek, a co-founder of the Seattle Privacy Coalition, filed a slew of Freedom of Information Act requests and obtained documents earlier this month, some of which are redacted, showing that the department acquired the device in 2009 and has used it 179 times since then.

This is why they were researched thoroughly by the pigs and dragged out of bed naked at 6 in the morning. Petty abuse of power at the local level.

Plumbers' Crack • April 1, 2016 12:05 PM

@Martinez, Good for you, the early bird gets the worm! While surveiling the Internets at O-dark-thirty, you might find actionable intelligence here:

https://www.oathkeepers.org/about/

From actual intelligent person Stewart Rhodes, former US Army paratrooper with a Yale law degree.

Jacob • April 1, 2016 2:02 PM

I’m not sure it is an April Fool’s joke, since it’s dated march 31st.
I’ve never seen an April Fool’s joke not dated April 1st.

keiner • April 1, 2016 2:54 PM

…I only get nonsense trying to read out the QR code, maybe it’s just “01-April-Fun” or something…

12,000 a month for a whole team is cheap and the end of the story is obviously fishy.

Green Squirrel • April 5, 2016 3:22 AM

Its a shame that people are so quick to spot April Fool’s jokes that for 24 hours a year, they pounce on everything – even things published on other days.

Leave a comment

Login

Allowed HTML <a href="URL"> • <em> <cite> <i> • <strong> <b> • <sub> <sup> • <ul> <ol> <li> • <blockquote> <pre> Markdown Extra syntax via https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.