Bob Sullivan’s podcast projects

Internal Facebook documents seized by a member of British Parliament suggest Facebook was under siege from Russian hackers in late 2014.  I can tell you Russian hackers were busy that year (as were Chinese hackers, and North Korean hackers, etc..) I spent months researching the hack of Yahoo — history’s [Keep reading]

    Even after the vote is over, it’s not over.  A critical element of democracy is that the losing side accepts the results. Think back to step 1: If an enemy of democracy could foment enough disenchantment that a sizable set of the population refuses to accept the legitimacy [Keep reading]

Across America, some citizens are waiting patiently an hour or more to vote. Their voting machines aren’t working nearly as hard for them. America’s fragile voting infrastructure is showing its warts yet again this election day. In North Carolina, state officials announced that high humidity was causing some ballot scanners [Keep reading]

  It’s easy to overlook, but perhaps the prime election hacking opportunity might also be the easiest – skip the James-Bond-esque vote-flipping efforts, and just hack a secretary of state’s website to cause confusion. “We know that the Russians have hacked websites that announce election results in the past,” said [Keep reading]

We know every vote counts, but will your vote actually be counted? Or will it be hacked? I’ve spent the last several months reporting on election hacking for my podcast Breach, and I’ve learned a lot: Mostly that vote “hacking” is a much broader problem than people realize. While lots [Keep reading]

Once you leave the polling place, an intricate dance of technology takes place.  Perhaps the machine you used creates a local tally and prints out an end-of-day receipt, which is later added to tallies from other machines in that precinct, in that county, and that state. The counts themselves must [Keep reading]

 The worst mistake you can make is not voting. The second-worst is … accidentally voting for the wrong person. So read those voters pamphlets, and news stories about HOW you’ll be voting, and be prepared! Still, there are other ways your vote can be screwed with on election day. For [Keep reading]

Step 2: Voter registration Let’s say you press on past digital propaganda and decide you are going to vote. You register. That data has to live somewhere. And it has to remain accurate.  If a group wanted to engage in voter suppression, they could hack state registration databases and remove [Keep reading]

Yes, every vote counts. But will your vote be properly counted next week? Or will hackers mess with our election (again?)?  Also, voting seems so simple; Bush or Gore, yes or no…why is it so hard to get this right? These are essential questions, central questions at the heart of [Keep reading]