The Doug Gold Reports

Christine was absolutely engulfed in tangible documentation. Finally she had hit upon statements of a suitably serious nature. Gerald wasn’t too interested in the technicalities, but keeping tabs on all the insinuations and legalities was close enough to accounting that he felt at home.

C: “It’s Windows”, she smiled, “the elections are running on Windows, hah!”

G: “There are many date-stamped log files. For reference, here’s the timeline of events:

2020 - Nov 03

Colorado Presidential Election held.

2021 - May 23

First forensic image made

2021 - May 26

EMS system upgraded

Second forensic image made”

Miranda instead focused on the human aspects and the subtexts. She read the reports and asked a lot of questions. To her surprise it was technical but also relatable. A computer program was really just a big factory where many small workers did their duties. These microscopic homunculi were shuffling goods unto small conveyor belts, putting stuff on shelves, keeping tally on the progress. Who cares that these robots were invented by humans. That in effect made them so much more human. Workers in a computer replicate the mentality of the human who invented them, be it laziness or efficiency, procrastination or promptness, sloppiness or meticulousness.

She understood that a if you take a snapshot of a factory, you could immediately learn a lot about the whereabouts of the goods in the factory.

M: “Am I perceiving this correctly? The reports show some sloppiness in security setup, and the update itself was probably too aggressive in cleaning up, but the computer did contain a lot of obsolete election data?”

C: “I think so, yes. My first reaction was that a big upgrade would likely remove a lot of junk. Internal log files after all should mostly just be of interest to the developers inside Dominion themselves.

But I’m confused… did they re-image the entire system with a clean one? The fact that partition tables had changed suggests that.. if an upgrade just copies files, the partition table wouldn’t have changed. But that sounds wrong given that the new system also had log files. Different ones arguably, but junk that could nevertheless only arise from considerable running time. The second forensic image was taken three days after. Why all the new junk?

Or was the upgrade some kind of script that could change both low level or high level ? If so, the final outcome could be the result of cleanup scripts that were somewhat selective. For instance they could selectively remove log files older than one year.”

M: “What do you think of the reports so far?”

C: “I’m having a good time! Doug Gold is laying things out as they are. The conclusions are for others to draw. You gain some understanding of the internal workings of the machine. I recognise the typical chaos that often arrises in computer systems. Leftover installations, legacy files next to recent inventions. And so on and so forth. The highlighted problems don’t have to be nefarious.”

G: “Originally, I think the strategy was to push for another election, ruling the first one out on a technicality. They should have stuck with that. Once they started to yell China, they lost everybody.”

M: “My main concern is overtones of awakening. Christine, I understood what you said about Doug Gold doing is job, but we have seen how the report was used later on by election-fraud proponents. You feel they are desperately grasping for straws. Anything that even smells like a chance to overturn the result is grasped with trembling hands.

My most salient feeling when I observe how the Democrats relentlessly squash that flickering hope is the sensation of cruelty. They answer desperation with cruelty.”

G: “When the republicans have power, are they any less cruel?

And be serious, won’t you? It’s a strategy, dammit. They force the media space to focus on the few scratches in the paint they could come up with.”

Christine looked up briefly with a strange look.

M: “That’s not how the psychology works. One person comes up with the strategy you just mentioned. Ten think to themselves »We’ll take that plan. What else do we have.« These are the strategist, the planners. They are emotional and rational at the same time. Their need to accomplish their goal is genuine.

Then comes along the next thousand. They are the ones for whom this project has become a religion. They need it to become real. For them, the pain of possible shipwreck is ample reason to throw themselves into the battle manically.”

G: “And around the zealots stand the hundred thousands who aren’t really too eager to roll up their sleeves and scrutinise the facts.

But what’s your point? That we should accept their version of reality blindly because otherwise they would suffer?”

M: “Certainly not. And look, I’m not even saying they are neither right nor wrong. But at least initially they deserve to be met with a serious demeanour. But in reality they experience that the entire popular media world simply shuts out everything they stand for. They see their viewpoints dragged through the mud. How is that helping?”

Christine stretched her aching back and sat up.

C: “Done with the first report!

Okay for context, there are two approaches to the matter:

1. Was the EMS system in question actually infiltrated and did it actually make wrong counts?
2. Was the EMS system safe enough that such infiltration could have happened?”

G: “Yes, I agree. Those are different questions:

If (1) is true, then election fraud did occur.

If (2) is true, election fraud may have taken place, but even if not, the situation is problematic. Unless you can prove that tampering did not occur, the result can be contested. However, a simple paper ballot recount will likely establish that matter.”

C: “Even a recount may not satisfy everybody. Should you accept a correct result arrived at using unacceptable equipment?

Also, don’t forget that an insecure system installed in a secure room is possibly not a problem at all. We must know the overall picture.”

Mesa Report #1

Main themes:

• System does not conform to VSS.

Findings:

• Windows Server 2016. The upgrade preserved parts of the previous file system, but many things changed. Peculiarly the partition table also changed (strange choice, but there’s not necessarily anything dubious about it).
• The update seems to have flushed the entire MSSQL database folder. Who decided that was a good idea? Does a backup already exist?
• Numerous log files deleted. Also what appears to be log files from Dominions own “Archive-EMS-System” program.
• A lot of the log files missing date from before the 2020, Nov 03 election. But some logs are from after the election and thus should not have been deleted.
• SQL server log files have gone too.
• DHCP server log files have vanished and new ones present.
• Windows event log files for both system and applications have been pruned or deleted.
• Doug notices that an iDRAC chip may be present on this server, i.e. a provision for remote controlling the machine with respect to upgrades. Very normal on servers on a farm.
• Doug would have liked missing log files for IIS and other web-server related files to see if the machine had exposed a web service to the outside world.

The law:

Colorado must live up to the federal VSS as well as their own state statutes on the matter.

VSS - Federal Electon Commission’s 2002 Voting System Standards

Events must be recorded and kept.

Consumer OS’s (here Windows Server) must undergo rigid hardening to avoid unauthorised access which is a danger on these systems.

Logging and preservation of all sorts of software-specific events. So this goes way beyond saving just the paper ballots. Logins, crashes, even just internal telemetry must be kept.

Extra demands on user access for Windows, macOS and other operating systems because these multi-user systems allowing remote access unless specifically blocked.

C: “I like this guy. His experience and routine shows.”

G: “So in essence, the Republicans should have insisted on throwing out the results. No proof of actual tampering yet, only the funny fact that auditing the machine would have been much harder.

I assume that since Tina Peters did make an image before the update, at least she can make a full audit?”

C: “I’m wondering the same thing. Had she not ensured a backup, some log files would certainly have been lost forever.”

M: “Can I raise the issue again about the public tone? What Christine tells me does not trigger such headlines as those we see. Tina Peters is an election denier, a fraudster, and the reports have been proven wrong, that is if we are to believe the headlines. Is that what we have just realised? Because if so, I think I need it all explained again!

No, I say. Just say no to labelling. Just say no.”

G: “The papers make their money on provocations and pandering to crass baseness.”

C: “But I don’t care about the public tone. We can afford the luxury of being serious.”

M: “And thank God for that. Pardon me for also taking the mythological layers into consideration.

Fact finders… that term is a strange one, isn’t it? They go forth into society, choose topics of their own volition …”

G: “… and by their choice (rather than random sampling) of what to address imbues the public knowledge with a bias of their choosing …”

M: “… unearths information that is relevant …”

G: “… but typically they select and prune that information too, and rarely do they establish broader historical contexts …”

M: “… presents this information as if it was fact, the whole fact and nothing but the fact.

And THEN they top it all with either a true or false label, which according to modern symbolism equates to either sincerity or deception. It takes two headlines like that before you become the target of constant smearing in all areas of society.

In other words, these »fact finders« use facts to generate and proliferate mythology.”

/ПРИЗРАК