Despite challenges, Minnesota’s top election official is ‘an optimist’ heading into November

Steve Simon has served as Minnesota’s 22nd Secretary of State since 2015, overseeing elections across 87 counties and managing the state’s voter registration database. His tenure has spanned three presidential election cycles, including in 2016, when the Russian government waged a covert campaign to interfere with U.S. election infrastructure, and in 2020, when false claims […]

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Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ VP pick, has a notable record on cyber

The Democrat signed a cyber executive order for Minnesota, a data privacy law and more.

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Training days: How officials are using AI to prepare election workers for voting chaos

Election officials in Arizona and Minnesota are creating novel training exercises to combat AI-generated content this November. 

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The governor’s office says the NSA isn’t involved in the response to Minnesota’s protests. But here’s how it could be.

The office of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says the National Security Agency did not provide the state with signals intelligence as its law enforcement agencies responded to protests against the killing of George Floyd. For awhile this weekend, though, the governor stirred up some confusion about whether the intelligence agency could do so. “No NSA involvement,” a Walz spokesperson told CyberScoop. The Democratic governor was mistaken in suggesting Saturday during a press conference that the U.S. military had provided the state with signals intelligence collected by the NSA, the spokesperson said. CyberScoop could not independently verify the spokesman’s comment. The NSA deferred comment to the governor’s office. Generally speaking, the NSA, the Pentagon’s foreign signals intelligence agency, does not target U.S. citizens to collect electronic communications information. But there are specific times when it can. Walz’s comments — combined with speculation about how those legal circumstances might apply to the protests — were enough to fuel questions about the NSA’s involvement. Walz said Saturday that he had […]

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Anonymous, aiming for relevance, spins old data as new hacks

Anonymous, the once-formidable hacking collective, continued its transformation into a cohort of social media opportunists over the weekend by claiming to “leak” files and personal information that, in some cases, has been available for years. Anonymous said it retaliated against the Minneapolis police department for the May 25th killing of George Floyd by publishing email addresses and passwords apparently stolen from a police website. The information was previously taken in prior data breaches, then re-packaged to appear to be a new batch, according to Troy Hunt, owner of Have I Been Pwned, which tracks stolen credentials. Of the 798 email addresses included in the Anonymous database, 689 are unique, the rest being duplicates. Of that 689, 659 were already available in the Have I Been Pwned database, Hunt said in his analysis, and those email addresses were leaked an average of 5.5 times. Many seem to have originated in the […]

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Elite Canadian Wolves Airdropped Into Michigan to Kill Moose and Have Babies

The new arrivals bring the total wolf population of Isle Royale National Park to eight. Continue reading Elite Canadian Wolves Airdropped Into Michigan to Kill Moose and Have Babies

Here’s an Interactive Map That Shows How Climate Change Will Affect Your Town in 60 Years

If we do nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the weather in New York City will feel like Alabama and Los Angeles will be as hot as the tip of the Baja Peninsula. Continue reading Here’s an Interactive Map That Shows How Climate Change Will Affect Your Town in 60 Years