Epic fail! Democrats and their Crappy little apps
UPDATE
Acronym group that sabotaged Iowa caucus birthed by Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman who funded Alabama disinformation campaign.
Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman funded the creation of ACRONYM, the group that sabotaged the Iowa caucus results, after bankrolling voter manipulation campaigns including the notorious online “false flag operation” in Alabama’s 2017 senate race.
By Max Blumenthal
The billionaire founder of LinkedIn, Hoffman is a top funder of novel Democratic Party social media campaigns accused of manipulating voters through social media. He is assisted by Dmitri Mehlhorn, a corporate consultant who pushed school privatization before joining Hoffman’s political empire.
As Vanity Fair reported, “Hoffman and Mehlhorn, after all, are not just building a power base that could supplement traditional Democratic organizations, they are, potentially, laying the groundwork to usurp the D.N.C. entirely.”
App tied to Iowa caucus collapse linked to ex-Hillary Clinton veteran
Meet the billionaire-backers of Pete Buttigieg’s Iowa-Cheat-App…
The DNC says ‘incompetence’ caused Mayor Pete’s Iowa-Cheat but a billionaire-funded neo-liberal dark money group called Acronym created Shadow Inc. to super-charge Buttigieg’s challenge to Sanders, selecting x-Obama-staffer Tara McGowan to lead the app-fiasco in Iowa.
McGowan married then-Hillary Clinton campaign staffer and current Buttigeig strategist Michael Halle in 2015, according to a Providence Journal marriage announcement and Halle’s Twitter account.
McGowan, 34, is married to Michael Halle, a senior strategist for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, which records show has also paid Shadow Inc. $42,500 for software.
Business and tax records show ACRONYM and Shadow are registered at the same Washington, D.C., street address, which belongs to a WeWork co-working location. Shadow CEO Gerard Niemira previously served as the chief operating officer and chief technology officer at ACRONYM, according to an online resume. McGowan tweeted pictures from a birthday celebration that included her husband and Troy Price, the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party.
ACRONYM’s filings: “Lockwood Strategy,” a wholly owned “Related” taxable organization of ACRONYM, appears to have precisely 1 employee: one Ms. Tara McGowan.
RANTS
Iowa’s Democratic Party
– “No question about it, what people need to realize that the people in Iowa were disenfranchised,” Rev. Al Sharpton pronounced. “We talk about voter rights, they robbed people. we gotta have paper ballots everywhere. You want to rig a process, make sure there is no paper involved.”
– “The Iowa Democratic Party had refused to reveal details about the app, including the company behind it and what security measures were being taken to safeguard the results, arguing that it made the technology more vulnerable to hackers.”
– Who needs the Russians when elite arrogance, matched in magnitude by their incompetence
-Thank goodness the Iowa caucuses app blew up ~ Andy Oram | Editor
O’Reilly Media, Inc.
The failure of the electronic app in Iowa was actually one of the better possible outcomes. The failure was universally acknowledged and the results of the app were abandoned. That’s much more reassuring than many other possible outcomes that could have taken place. For instance, imagine if some people complained that results were incorrect, and it might have taken months to confirm or reject the claim. Or imagine if someone discovered a bug months after the caucuses, rendering the results uncertain or completely wrong. I’m not even considering all the types of malicious intrusion that could have occurred.
Computer experts have been warning against electronic voting for more than 30 years. I have been a member of two groups lobbying against electronic voting: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and the Technology Policy Council of the Association for Computing Machinery. Let’s hope that the embarrassment over Iowa teaches all proponents of electronic voting a lesson. #electronicVoting
SHADOW INC
The Shadow Inc. App That Failed, was founded by a former Hillary Clinton staffer, is part of a web of companies connected to the well-funded nonprofit Acronym
APP BUILT BY SHADOW INC
We are campaign and technology veterans who have built and implemented technology at Hillary for America, Obama for America, Google, Kiva, Apple, the AFL-CIO, and the DNC.
WHO IS SHADOWINC.IO
Registrant Organization: Megaweb LLC
Registrant State/Province: CA
Registrant Country: US
Registrar URL: http://www.key-systems.net
Megaweb Media, LLC is an Arkansas Limited-Liability Company filed on June 8, 2016. The company’s filing status is listed as Revoked and its File Number is 811105710.
Company Name: CROWD SPOT MEDIA, LLC
File Number: 811096060
The Registered Agent on file for this company is Andrew Somers
located at 759 Liberty Valley Rd, Bald Knob, AR 72010. The company has 2 principals on record. The principals are Andrew Somers and Sarah Somers.
Andrew Jackson Somers III
707 Pleasant Valley Dr
#28
Little Rock, AR 72227
July 17th Introducing Shadow Inc: Shining a Light on Political Data
he***@sh*******.io
Tara McGowan Washington, District Of Columbia @taraemcg
https://www.linkedin.com/in/taramcgowan
Founder + CEO ACRONYM Mar 2017 – Present 3 years
Lockwood Strategy Founder + CEO Lockwood Strategy Feb 2017 – Present
3 years 1 month
Priorities USA Action Director of Digital Strategy Priorities USA Action
ACRONYM @anotheracronym
Jan 8 Work in tech? Our friends at @ShadowIncHQ
are hiring a Client Success Representative, Front-End Engineer, and a WordPress Engineer.
Since we initially announced our acquisition by ACRONYM earlier this year, Shadow has been hard at work to publicly launch and bring you new tools to help progressive campaigns and causes win up and down the ballot. That’s why we’re excited to share two big announcements today:
afjactioncampaign.org | page 1501(c)(4) Reporting When are Donors Disclosed?
ACRONYM is a left-of-center political and advocacy organization designed to launch voter mobilization and digital advertising programs while also working on communications and organizing for left-progressive causes. [1] ACRONYM advances a left-of-center agenda at the local, state, and national levels. [2]
Though ACRONYM is a 501(c)(4) organization whose funds are required to be used for social welfare causes, ACRONYM has been described as the umbrella organization for numerous for-profit, left-wing organizations and has participated in numerous initiatives with the Democratic Party.
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/acronym/
$80,000/year for a Data Scientist
https://lockwoodstrategy.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=89
PACRONYM
Pacronym – It’s a Dark Money super pac.
https://www.pacronym.org/#about
Super PAC (Independent Expenditure-Only) ID: C00646877
https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00646877/
buying ads in Google and Facebook
https://www.fec.gov/data/independent-expenditures/?two_year_transaction_period=2020&data_type=processed&most_recent=true&committee_id=C00646877&cycle=2020&is_notice=true
David Plouffe, who helped lead both of former President Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, joined ACRONYM’s board of directors in September 2019.
David Plouffe, however, is on the board of PACRONYM and has been on cable news talking about the Iowa caucus. @davidplouffe Campaign Manager and White House Senior Adviser for Barack Obama.
9/05/2019 David Plouffe to join ACRONYM board of directors
“Four is Enough,” will focus initially on key swing states: Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Chris Hayes asks David Plouffe about Acronym/Shadow:
https://twitter.com/mattshuham/status/1224586341025034240
“Nevada Dem federal account paid Shadow $58k in August, Iowa Dems state account paid Shadow $63,183 in two payments over Nov & Dec, suggesting app wasn’t developed until just months ago? Both caucus states. Shadow is a spin-off from PACRONYM, a new Dem dark money/superPAC hybrid.”
is confirming that it was Shadow that created the app.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/iowa-caucus-app-shadow_n_5e390191c5b687dacc722824
State campaign finance records indicate the Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow, a tech company that joined with Acronym last year, more than $60,000 for “website development” over two installments in November and December of last year.
Nevada Dem federal account paid Shadow $58k in August, Iowa Dems state account paid Shadow $63,183 in two payments over Nov & Dec, suggesting app wasn't developed until just months ago? Both caucus states. Shadow is a spin-off from PACRONYM, a new Dem dark money/superPAC hybrid.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) February 4, 2020
Louder for the people in the back!https://t.co/3i1wgVxFPm@techgirl1908 pic.twitter.com/30Lx76hJZw
— Nicole Hollis (@BeautyTechy) February 4, 2020
Despite Election Security Fears, Iowa Caucuses Will Use New Smartphone App : NPR
WHO IS LOCKWOOD STRATEGY LABS
WASHINGTON, DC
https://lockwoodstrategy.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=89
LOCKWOOD STRATEGY, INC.
Colorado Secretary Of State Business Registration · Updated 7/23/2019
Lockwood Strategy, Inc. is a Colorado Foreign Corporation filed on April 16, 2018. The company’s filing status is listed as Good Standing and its File Number is 20181310942.
The Registered Agent on file for this company is The Corporation Company and is located at 7700 E Arapahoe Rd Ste 220, Centennial, CO 80112-1268. The company’s principal address is 1342 Florida Ave Nw, Washington, DC 20009.
DHS creates ‘tabletop in a box’ for local election security drills
Written by Benjamin Freed
Feb 3, 2020 | STATESCOOP
https://statescoop.com/dhs-creates-tabletop-in-a-box-local-election-security-drills/
For the past few years, the Department of Homeland Security has convened exercises for state election officials to test how they’d respond to a cyberattack against voting systems. At a National Association of Secretaries of State meeting in Washington last weekend, a DHS official introduced a new product that could make it easier for local officials to run those exercises.
The tabletop exercises, as the events are known, are designed to give secretaries of state, election directors, IT leaders and other officials a war game-like environment simulating the threats posed by foreign governments and other adversaries that might try to disrupt a real election. And while the exercises have included representatives of some local governments, one of the biggest challenges statewide election officials say they have is making sure new cybersecurity tools and procedures trickle down to even the smallest, most resource-strapped jurisdictions involved in the democratic process.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Friday published its “Elections Cyber Tabletop Exercise Package,” a 58-page guide for state and local officials to hold their own drills simulating ransomware, data breaches, disinformation campaigns and attempts to corrupt voting equipment. Matt Masterson, a senior adviser at CISA, described the document as a “tabletop in a box.”
“As we’ve gone out [to the states], one of the requests has been a resource to work with counties that’s customizable to our states,” Masterson said.
The guidebook lays out three scenarios, with the first being a phishing scheme seeking to gain access to a voter registration database ahead of a vote-by-mail election, and redirect mailings, alter voter files or deploy ransomware. The second simulates an effort by hackers to modify voter registration information and deface official websites on an election day. And the third asks participants to respond to hackers attempting to deploy “poisoned” software updates to voting equipment in an attempt to alter the vote count.
Each scenario comes with its own step-by-step series of challenges, testing participants’ ability to muster an incident response and figure out if they can resolve the situation internally, or if they need to call on assistance from their state government, the federal government or a vendor. The vote-by-mail exercise, for example, an alert from a security company warning of a hacking campaign against printers and other internet-connected devices. It escalates into alerts from CISA and the FBI, direct threats from a hacking group (called “Hippoponymous” in the manual) and eventually voters receiving incorrect ballots, followed by website defacements, a ransomware attack and media reports about a cyberattack against the election that creates public panic.
The exercise asks participants a series of questions aimed at helping craft a solid incident-response plan, such as “What systems would be prioritized for recovery efforts?” and “Would this be decided before an incident occurs?”
During his presentation at the NASS meeting, Masterson said many county governments need guidance on known who to call upon if and when they suffer a cyberattack.
“The most important thing is to get the local election officials to the people who can help them best address the issue,” he said. “Put together the contacts needed for each one of the systems. In some places you have 10 or more vendors. There ensues debate if it’s a voter registration problem or an e-pollbook problem.”
The goal of the tabletop in a box, he said, is to ensure that the more than 8,000 individual jurisdictions around the country that conduct elections can come up with robust playbooks they can turn to in the event of a real incident.