Re: Possible? Yes. Probable? No.
Well, excuuuuuse me, but...
wasn't it Mr. Buttigieg who decided on hiring that mysterious "Shadow, Inc" company for the
purpose of totaling up the caucus voting results?
Really, if it were up to me to plan such a thing I would
1) Prepare an exactly similar Excel spreadsheet for each county, that is to be used
to total up their results.
2) Provide a password to each county, via a secure channel, to be used to save that excel file in an encrypted form. Easily done, it takes 5 minutes to learn that. Do you know how to save a Word or Excel file with a password? Easy if you know how. Anything with less than 20 characters is easily cracked. Don't ya know?
What's a good password? For example: "Raccoon7Blunder9Squared$#&SillyWalks"
Long, irrational, yet possible to remember.
3) Next I would ask each county officer to sign up for the Swiss "Protonmail.com" system, which is the
only e-mail system in the world today that provides "End to End" encryption. Such that the transmissions are encrypted twice, once by you, and a second time by Protonmail.
Neither Google, MSFT, Apple or anyone else does anything like that. Not even Protonmail has the password. (if you are dumb enough to lose your password, then you are too dumb to work for a caucus, or dumber than a bag of hammers, whichever comes first.) I am not affiliated with Protonmail, or have any other insight into it.
I can of course not know whether Protonmail has some secret contract with the CIA, or any other countries. The story of about the US and German co-operation with swiss-based "Crypto AG", which enabled the US to look at other countries secret messages for decades, still makes it necessary to wonder about who indeed one is able to trust.
The one way to find out whether a Encryption has been cracked by someone else, is to run a secret message through it which makes the other party react, if they could decrypt it. If they show their hand, you know your own encryption is no good. You learn that by reading about wars, ciphers, spy movies, and the various tricks of spy trade-craft. Obvious!
4) Next, after decrypting the results at the "Central shop" (whatever you call it, I don't know), one will have in the meantime a simple script that totals up all the subtotals. And it's done!
5) The number of people in computing today, who make "mere Apps" instead of well thought out, both simple and sturdy software, are legion. To many idiots working that know nothing. That there is an "App" that is supposed to reliably and safely complete this task, seems suspicious to me.
Whether Mayor Pete was essentially "bamboozled" by a Republican attempt to interfere with this "Shadow, Inc" outfit, I do not know. Given Republican lack of conscience, anything is possible. Being careful is essential. There is not enough vetting of who is behind what. Say what you will, this makes me think way less of Pete Buttigieg, because it shows a certain naivety that does not make sense in a politician, or else it makes him suspicious as a counter-agent, witting or unwitting.
Overall, I am surprised at the willful ignorance among democratic political operators. It's shameful. Be naive, and you lose. But then again, since the whole US diplomatic corps is incapable to send messages in safe encryption, why is that even a surprise? Remember Manning? Why would a low level guy get access to unencrypted top secret stuff. Are the Keystone Cops in charge of security?
Numerous wikileaks revelations were indeed the fault of those who made it "totally easy to get to, by being careless."
Were do I stand? I am a foreigner, in the US, not voting there. In terms of bias, there are more sensible ideas on the democratic side, and more mean-spirited ones on the Republican side. The ignorance on both sides is appalling.
I rest my case, or, to be more exact, my case is in a coma, because the DNC appears to be in one as well.
DNC means Democratic National Committee, i.e. the folks who decide who should be the democratic candicate for Pretzeldent.
I hope that make the rest of you happy.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
