The chief of Homeland Security has announced that his office will be taking over US elections.
If you can’t see the coup in progress, you need to keep looking until the message comes through.
Read carefully—ABC News reports. Comments are in brackets:
“Citing increasingly sophisticated cyber bad actors and an election infrastructure that’s ‘vital to our national interests’, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Friday that he’s designating U.S. election systems critical infrastructure…”
[Also known as: “we’re taking over.”]
“’Given the vital role elections play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in law’,” Johnson said in a statement. He added: ‘Particularly in these times, this designation is simply the right and obvious thing to do’.”
[Also known as: “we’re taking over.”]
“Johnson said election infrastructure included storage facilities, polling places and vote tabulation locations, plus technology involved in the process, including voter registration databases, voting machines and other systems used to manage the election process and report and display results.”
[Also known as: “We’re taking over every significant aspect of the national election process.”]
“The designation [of US elections as critical infrastructure] allows for information to be withheld from the public when state, local and private partners meet to discuss election infrastructure security — potentially injecting secrecy into an election process that’s traditionally and expressly a transparent process. U.S. officials say such closed door conversations allow for frank discussion that would prevent bad actors from learning about vulnerabilities. DHS would also be able to grant security clearances when appropriate and provide more detailed threat information to states.”
[Also known as: “we can intercede in the election process and determine its outcome without any need to pretend we’re being transparent; only people we approve will know the details of how we run elections; secrecy works.”]
