American creating deepfakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show; The Washington Post, October 23, 2024

Catherine Belton , The Washington Post; American creating deepfakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show

"The more than 150 documents — which were shared with The Post to demonstrate the extent of Russian interference through Dougan and focus mostly on the period between March 2021 and August 2024 — for the first time expose some of the inner workings of a network that researchers and intelligence officials say has become the most potent source of fake news emanating from Russia and targeting American voters over the past year.

Disinformation researchers say Dougan’s network was probably behind a recent viral fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, which U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday was created by Russia. It received nearly 5 million views on X in less than 24 hours, Microsoft said.

Since September 2023, posts, articles and videos generated by Dougan and some of the Russians who work with him have garnered 64 million views, said McKenzie Sadeghi, who has closely followed Dougan’s sites and is a researcher at NewsGuard, a company that tracks disinformation online."

Judge denies demand for privacy assessment on Trump voter fraud data request; Politico, July 24, 2017

Josh Gerstein, Politico; Judge denies demand for privacy assessment on Trump voter fraud data request

"A federal judge has turned down a watchdog group's demand that President Donald Trump's controversial voter fraud commission be forced to conduct a privacy assessment before gathering data on millions of American voters.

In a 35-page opinion Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction the Electronic Privacy Information Center sought against the panel formally known as the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity."

GOP Firm Exposed U.S. Voters' Personal Data; The Atlantic, June 20, 2017

Aria Bendix, The Atlantic; GOP Firm Exposed U.S. Voters' Personal Data

"For two weeks in June, the personal information of nearly every U.S. voter was available on a publicly accessible Amazon cloud server after a marketing firm hired by the Republican National Committee (RNC) failed to password protect its data.

The BBC reports that the leak represents the largest breach of electoral data in the U.S. to date, leaving the information of nearly 200 million registered voters exposed. While the leaked files did not include voters’ Social Security or credit card information, they did include personal details, such as their birthdates, home addresses, and telephone numbers. In some cases, voters’ ethnicities, religions, and political views were also made available."