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Smartmatic to Shed U.S. Unit, End Probe Into Venezuelan Links https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116674617078557263 https://twitter.com/smartmatic/status/1327676396928462857
US Caracas Embassy: ‘Smartmatic is a riddle’ https://web.archive.org/web/20160522214251/http://www.manilatimes.net/us-caracas-embassy-smartmatic-is-a-riddle/232249/
What’s worrying is that a detailed investigation by the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela (which, one would presume, had inputs from its intelligence services), where the firm is purportedly based, concluded:
“Smartmatic is a riddle. The company came out of nowhere to snatch a multi-million dollar contract in an electoral process that ultimately reaffirmed Chavez’s mandate and all but destroyed his political opposition.
The perspective we have here, after several discussions with Smartmatic, is that the company is de facto Venezuelan and operated by Venezuelans. The identity of Smartmatic’s true owners remains a mystery. “
“Our best guess is that there are probably several well-known Venezuelan businessmen backing the company and who prefer anonymity either because of their political affiliation, or perhaps, because they manage the interests of senior Venezuelan government officials.”
U.S. Investigates Voting Machines’ Venezuela Ties https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/washington/29ballot.html
Election officials OK with probe https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2006-10-30-0610300235-story.html
The response follows weekend reports that the parent company of California-based Sequoia Voting Systems is under review for alleged ties to the leftist government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Sequoia denied any improper influence on American elections and said Sunday that it asked for the investigation along with Smartmatic Corp., which is owned by Venezuelans.
But the companies did not expect it to be reported just days before the election.
But the companies did not expect it to be reported just days before the election.
Never again! …to Smartmatic! https://www.manilatimes.net/2016/06/21/opinion/columnists/never-again-to-smartmatic/269238/
“By this time, only the truly uninformed would still find Smartmatic’s combination of PCOS/VCM (Precinct Count Optical Scan/Vote Counting Machine) and CCS (canvassing and consolidation system) an acceptable solution to the automation of Philippine elections.
We used this solution in the last three National and Local Elections (NLE) and in all three, we experienced “glitches” and lack of transparency that convinced us of the system’s unreliability and its vulnerability to tampering.”
Smartmatic admits using unofficial servers https://www.manilatimes.net/2016/07/22/news/top-stories/smartmatic-admits-using-unofficial-servers/275442/
“The camp of former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. was surprised to learn directly from Smartmatic that it used several servers apart from those sanctioned by the Commission on Elections during the May 2016 elections.”
Obama asked to investigate Smartmatic https://pressreader.com/article/283141424974812
Smartmatic faces probe
Change in code done without Comelec approval
Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/785566/smartmatic-faces-probe#ixzz6dsZqaXkQ
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Change in code done without Comelec approval
Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/785566/smartmatic-faces-probe#ixzz6dsZqaXkQ
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Defying the Supreme Court, the Comelec should resign en banc https://www.manilatimes.net/2016/10/16/opinion/editorial/defying-supreme-court-comelec-resign-en-banc/291628/
THE Commission on Elections, already at the center of almost innumerable controversies since its adoption of the Smartmatic-based system used in the Philippines since 2008, has gone a step too far with its latest move to quietly return 1,356 vote-counting machines to Smartmatic.
'Teddy Boy' blows top at Smartmatic official https://news.abs-cbn.com/nation/05/20/10/teddy-boy-blows-top-smartmatic-official
"You sons of bitches! You had us standing here guaranteeing to the public and the world that even if fraud is committed, we would be able to trace it. We never said that fraud could never be committed, but you said we could trace it.
But now, you tell me that at 10 in the evening, you could do it [cheat] and we would never know?" Locsin, chairman of the House committee on electoral reforms and suffrage, told Heider Garcia of Smartmatic.”
Graft raps filed vs ex-poll execs, Smartmatic https://www.google.com/amp/s/newsinfo.inquirer.net/424145/raps-filed-vs-ex-poll-execs-smartmatic/amp
Smartmatic, Comelec personnel ordered indicted for Halalan 2016 script alteration https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/06/07/17/smartmatic-comelec-personnel-ordered-indicted-for-halalan-2016-script-alteration
Bautista's 'receipt of fee for Smartmatic referral' casts doubt on 2016 polls https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2017/08/08/Comelec-Andy-Bautista-Smartmatic-unexplained-wealth.html
“Questions on the integrity of the 2016 national polls resurface amid allegations that Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Andres Bautista received commissions from a law firm for referring it to election technology supplier Smartmatic.”
A lawyer who had worked with Rodríguez, Moisés Maiónica, was allegedly employed by Smartmatic in order to provide legal and financial assistance to help with its selection for its 2004 elections.
Years after the election in December 2008, Maiónica pled guilty in the United States District Court for attempting to cover up Maletinazo scandal.
This was an incident where Hugo Chávez attempted to finance Cristina Kirchner's 2007 Argentine Presidential Election campaign to influence Argentina's presidential election, with Maiónica stating that he was working for Venezuela's spy agency.
Venezuelan Given 15 Months in Suitcase of Cash Scandal https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/world/americas/09suitcase.html?_r=0
Officials raised concerns for years about security of U.S. voting machines, software systems https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thecentersquare.com/national/officials-raised-concerns-for-years-about-security-of-u-s-voting-machines-software-systems/article_bec0fc86-2144-11eb-bc8c-bb85a60db758.amp.html
. @dominionvoting “got into trouble” with several subsidiaries it used over alleged cases of fraud. One subsidiary is Smartmatic, a company “that has played a significant role in the U.S. market over the last decade,” according to a report published by UK-based AccessWire.
Damning evidence against Smartmatic PCOS https://www.philstar.com/opinion/2012/11/10/864977/damning-evidence-against-smartmatic-pcos
“All the facts on just how the May 2010 were conducted is coming out now. It does not come from local computer experts or aggrieved losing candidates. It comes from the ongoing suit between Smartmatic and Dominion. AES Watch has a copy of the legal suit.
AES has issued the following statement:
“It appears that the US-based Dominion Voting Systems, which supplied the election technology to Smartmatic for the Philippine elections, terminated its 2009 license agreement with the latter on May 23, 2012.
“It appears that the US-based Dominion Voting Systems, which supplied the election technology to Smartmatic for the Philippine elections, terminated its 2009 license agreement with the latter on May 23, 2012.
As a result, the termination denies Smartmatic access to technical support and assistance as well as Dominion’s proprietary source code and other “escrowed materials” which are vital to correcting and “enhancing” the PCOS system upon request of Comelec in March this year.”
“Dominion is the real owner of the election technology — a fact Smartmatic hid during the 2010 elections.
With the contract terminated all claims of Smartmatic that they corrected the errors is untrue. It cannot correct the PCOS errors and defects that are causing erratic counting, among other problems.
It took a legal fight between Dominion and Smartmatic to get at the facts of just what happened in 2010.
Smartmatic has had to admit system errors of its technology in the compact flash card (CFC) fiasco during the May 3, 2010 final testing and sealing (FTS) or a week before the May 2010 elections in the Philippines.
It blamed Dominion’s software for failing to correctly read and record the paper ballots.
THE VENEZUELAN COMPANY accused Dominion of breaking the 2009 license agreement by failing to deliver “fully functional technology” for the 2010 Philippine elections, and failing to place in escrow the required source code, hardware design, and manufacturing data.
This is an explicit admission by Smartmatic of the “failure of its system to function fully, resulting in glaring errors, most of which were documented” by CenPEG and AES Watch in 2010, Dr. Pablo Manalastas, AES Watch co-convener and CenPEG Fellow for IT said.
“Does Dominion’s failure automatically imply Smartmatic’s failure to do the escrow required by the election law (RA 9369)?” Manalastas added.
“Do these actions by Smartmatic constitute a criminal intent to cheat, a criminal intent to avoid its contractual obligations with Comelec and with the Filipino people?” he asked.
A congressional committee should probe why Smartmatic has been saying its system was 100 percent perfect contrary to the scientific studies of Filipino IT experts and scholars.”
Los Angeles County’s risky voting experiment
The nation's most populous county is debuting new voting technology that has drawn scrutiny. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/03/03/los-angeles-county-voting-experiment-119157
The nation's most populous county is debuting new voting technology that has drawn scrutiny. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/03/03/los-angeles-county-voting-experiment-119157
“Instead, millions of county voters on Super Tuesday will cast ballots on a system in which numerous security flaws were found. This has prompted some election integrity experts to call for barring the system from elections until they’re fully resolved.
The issues include multiple digital and physical vulnerabilities, some of them identified in a recent assessment by California’s secretary of state and others identified by outside computer security experts.
Those security gaps, if left unfixed, could provide a gateway for a rogue election staffer or someone else with physical access to alter software on the voting machines or their back-end computer systems, possibly changing votes or otherwise disrupting the presidential race.
Even if an attacker can’t change vote totals, any disruption or technical glitches would raise questions about the integrity of the election in a highly contested primary contest.
Furthermore, critics have expressed concerns about the company that built the system, U.K.-based Smartmatic. The company was founded by three engineers from Venezuela and was at one time the subject of a Treasury Dept inquiry into its potential ties to the Venezuelan government.
It also came under scrutiny in the Philippines, where authorities charged three of its employees with illegally altering code on an election server during that country’s 2016 national election.
“[A]dditional mitigation measures — including software, hardware, and firmware changes — were taken before certification. These changes passed review and regression testing,” Sam Mahood, press secretary for Secretary of State Alex Padilla, wrote in an email.
“Our office believes that these measures and conditions of certification (including poll worker training and voter education) should mitigate potential issues and provide a voting experience that is consistent with state law and serves the needs of all voters ...”
But that’s not reassuring to the outside security experts, because the county and state acknowledge that other issues raised by the testers won’t be resolved until after Tuesday’s primary.
And critics point out that the system has other security problems, unmentioned in the state’s assessment, that could allow someone to alter ballots or render them unreadable. They say there’s no reason the state had to approve the system before it’s fully vetted and fixed.
"Some of the security flaws found in VSAP are staggering and should be disqualifying,” said Susan Greenhalgh, vice president for programs and policy at National Election Defense Coalition, an election integrity advocacy group.
Researchers Find Critical Backdoor in Swiss Online Voting System
Researchers have found a severe issue in the new Swiss internet voting system that they say would let someone alter votes undetected. https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmakk3/researchers-find-critical-backdoor-in-swiss-online-voting-system
Researchers have found a severe issue in the new Swiss internet voting system that they say would let someone alter votes undetected. https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmakk3/researchers-find-critical-backdoor-in-swiss-online-voting-system
The cryptographic backdoor exists in a part of the system that is supposed to verify that all of the ballots and votes counted in an election are the same ones that voters cast.
But the flaw could allow someone to swap out all of the legitimate ballots and replace them with fraudulent ones, all without detection.
“The vulnerability is astonishing,” said Matthew Green, who teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins University and did not do the research but read the researchers’ report.
“In normal elections, there is no single person who could undetectably defraud the entire election. But in this system they built, there is a party who could do that.”
The researchers provided their findings last week to Swiss Post, the country’s national postal service, which developed the system with the Barcelona-based company Scytl.
Swiss Post said in a statement the researchers provided Motherboard and that the Swiss Post plans to publish online on Tuesday, that the researchers were correct in their findings and that it had asked Scytl to fix the issue.
It also downplayed the vulnerability, however, saying that to exploit it, an attacker would need control over Swiss Post’s secured IT infrastructure “as well as help from several insiders with specialist knowledge of Swiss Post or the cantons.”
But this ignores the fact that Swiss Post and other insiders themselves could pull off the attack.
“Their response hides that they are the primary threat actor for this scenario,” said Sarah Jamie Lewis, a former computer scientist for England’s GCHQ intelligence agency who conducted the research with two academics.
“Swiss Post have ‘control over Swiss Post’s secured IT infrastructure’. No election system should have a backdoor that allows the people running the election the ability to undetectably modify the election outcome.”
Green and Lewis said the Swiss government should immediately halt the internet voting rollout as a result of the finding.
“If you’re building a voting system where the chief threat is somebody can hack into a server and replace votes, and if the primary mechanism for preventing that is implemented in a way that is wrong—
and not just wrong but wrong in a way that I think any experienced cryptographer should have known was wrong—then … it’s a disqualifying flaw in a system like this,” Green said.
Scytl Voter Education Receives Outstanding Scores in the Texas County Election Website Evaluation https://www.newswire.com/news/scytl-voter-education-receives-outstanding-scores-in-the-texas-county-election
As a result of The Texas County Election Website Evaluation released by the League of Women Voters of Texas which evaluated the 254 county election websites, 6 of the Texas county election websites supported by Scytl Voter Ed -
Bastrop, Dallas, Denton, Gregg, Jefferson and Lubbock - were given a perfect score of 5 out 5.
For its prestigious electronic voting project, Swiss Post is relying on tech provided by the Spanish company Scytl. But reporting shows that the e-voting market leader has misused EU funds, bungled elections & encountered security problems during voting https://www.republik.ch/2019/02/07/the-tricky-business-of-democracy
In 2014, Scytl bungled regional elections in Ecuador so badly that all the scanned election ballots had to be counted manually at the company’s Barcelona headquarters. According to Republik’s reporting, several Scytl managers were even temporarily arrested as a result.
The company withholds important information about the testing of its e-voting system or requires expensive licenses for those reviews to be carried out.
The company has also funneled Spanish public funds and EU research money into client acquisition instead of investing them into further development as stipulated. Meanwhile, there was also an incident involving flawed voting in Australia.
The story of Scytl is filled with successes – and slip-ups. The company, for which Switzerland has played a central role from an early stage of its existence, has reinvented itself multiple times.
Above all else, the story of Scytl shows how risky it can be to outsource a government task as important as electoral procedure to a private company.
