Hacker Arrested and Jailed After Exposing Flaws in Election WebsiteBy Claire Bernish Hacker, David Michael Levin, owner of Vanguard Cybersecurity, was arrested on Wednesday after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement received a referral from the Lee County Sheriffs Office after his apparently misguided attempt to help prevent election fraud by pointing out online vulnerabilities. After spending six hours in jail, where he was held on $15,000 bond, Levin now faces three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a computer, network, or electronic instrument despite the fact he had not only been doing his job, but also alerted the county to a potentially serious security concern. To hack the Lee County Elections Office and the Division of Elections in Tallahassee, Levin performed Structured Query Language (SQL) injection attacks which he documented on video and later uploaded to YouTube. According to the somewhat redacted police report, Levins associate, Daniel Sinclair, sent a security report about the SQL vulnerability including details of the security flaw and a screenshot to an employee within the Department of State, Division of Elections. That employee then forwarded all the information to Special Agent Christopher Tissot, and the investigation began. Though, superficially, the case appears to be one of an unwelcome security breach despite that it was attempted for otherwise laudable purposes. But some aspects of what led to Levins arrest deserve further consideration. Levins associate, Sinclair, is currently running against incumbent Sharon Harrington, Lee County Supervisor of Elections whose name and password were used in the SQL hack. In the YouTube video about the attack, Levin and Sinclair explain how they obtained data from the elections website, which wasnt even encrypted. The possibility Levin chose Harringtons account to perform the SQL injection as a publicity stunt to make Harringtons job performance appear untenable must be taken into consideration. That being said, Levins foray into the elections data had not been undertaken with the appropriate permission and because he didnt alert the authorities as soon as he discovered vulnerabilities, law enforcement is required to be blind to his good intent. However, in Levins defense, the privacy concerns of millions of voters and any other potential issues with unencrypted and unsecured information on the official Elections website should perhaps trump the strictures of law. Levin cooperated fully during a raid of his property during which electronics were confiscated and has in no way been deceitful regarding the hack. Considering the sheer volume of complaints so far during the 2016 election cycle, it would seem counterproductive for law enforcement to go after a credentialed individual who obviously has the voting publics best interests in mind. With rather overt fraud disenfranchising voters across the country, arresting the one hackerwho attempted to help secure elections seems oddly ironic. This article (Hacker Arrested and Jailed After Exposing Flaws in Election Website) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org. Since they want to play it that wayI think Id just win myself an election the easy way. the government purposely put those flaws there so that they could hack the system and rig the elections, they cant have people pointing them out.. off to the gulag with you! He needs ACLU or EPIC or large legal organization defending him media coverage. Counter charges should be filed against election commission machine manufacturers prosecuting for voting fraud [lying about the security of the machines]. Voting for president is a useless gesture, intended to give you a sense of democracy. If I was still a voting man, Id vote the way Richard Pryors character said to vote in Brewsters Millions: Vote for None of the Above! Poor Guy he thought he lived in a law abiding country Obongo the great friend of whistleblowers lol You dont help the government that way. You must show all voter machine problems to the press and to various groups that fight for clean elections! you must spread the disclosure around in a way that does not point back to you. You can do good works if you can confound the authorities. 