Democracy Now! on death of White House Rove's computer guru, Mike Connell

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, December 23, 2008 11:38 AM |
The December 22, 2008 edition of Democracy Now! has a segment about Mike Connell, the Republican IT Specialist who died in a plane crash last week.
A top Republican internet strategist who was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio has died in a plane crash. Michael Connell was the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove and created websites for the Bush and McCain electoral campaigns. Michael Connell was deposed one day before the election this year by attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis about his actions during the 2004 vote count in Ohio and his access to Karl Rove’s email files and how they went missing,

Guest: Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media culture and communication at New York University. He is the author of several books, including Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too.

Rove's computer guru, Mike Connell dies in plane crash

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#1 posted by IWood , December 23, 2008 11:50 AM

Ready...set...go!

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#3 posted by Clumpy Author Profile Page, December 23, 2008 12:05 PM

Man, this story makes me want to get all kinds of paranoid. It's probably just an accident.

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#4 posted by imipak , December 23, 2008 12:15 PM

Hmmm, I don't see anything new in this article?

WRT "Man in the middle" attacks -- it's a large and well-known class of attacks against security systems of all sorts. It's the reason you should always check the SSL cert when you do something "secure" online, not trust self-signed certificates for any situation where you care whether you're talking to the *real* (webmail app, bank website, etc) rather than a fake one.

It's a common security vulnerability in Internet-based systems that the designers only care about encrypting data in transit, and don't worry about the server authenticating the client (or vice versa) in a cryptographically "strong" manner. (When your bank cold-calls you to query a transaction or try to flog you life insurance, do they start by asking you for your 'security questions' - passphrase, DoB or whatever? How did you check that you were talking to the real bank before you gave the answers?) This glaring backdoor is present in a ubiquitous financial process, where I would be prepared to bet good money much, much more attention is paid to security than is the case with electronic voting systems.

(The truly committed should check out Dan Kaminsky's BlackHat presentation on his DNS vulnerability; the last 10 or so slides are pretty damn scary if you think about the implications for a while. Note this attack is still not properly fixed.)

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#5 posted by HeruRaHa , December 23, 2008 12:29 PM

Clearly the RNC is running out of ideas, they're dredging up old pages from the playbook...

http://oilempire.us/wellstone.html

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#6 posted by nuorder , December 23, 2008 12:35 PM

I WANT to believe, however, I am dubious of the fact that they "alleged" tried to kill him via "malfunction" of an aircraft. I know that the Bush Admin is not a brain trust of any sort, but don't you think they could have conspired a more intricate plot to "off" this man?

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#7 posted by Anonymous , December 23, 2008 12:40 PM

In a recent post from a blog based in Minnesota, towards the beginning of December, an author wrote that Amy Goodman and two coworkers perished in a chartered plane crash while flying back from New York. It was a second-hand story from an "inside source," but it, obviously, turned out to be entirely false.

There are some small similarities between these two stories; nothing big enough to write about, but which I find interesting, given recent events.

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#8 posted by kaosmonkey , December 23, 2008 12:57 PM

Beyond the plane crash, the best part about this broadcast is the recent story of Tim DeChristopher. A man with win running through his veins. If only his sort of sauce was more widespread.

By the time they get over the effects of the disruption, the White House will no longer be Bush's. Just that easy.

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#9 posted by WeightedCompanionCube , December 23, 2008 1:16 PM
Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media culture and communication at New York University. He is the author of several books, including Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too.

...and he's talking out some orifice about man-in-the-middle attacks? Claiming Obama had TWICE the votes we think he did? Wouldn't that have put him well over 100%???

The dude is a mass comm professor, not a political scientist, and not a security professional. Beware of experts outside their fields spouting theories... and selling books!

Also beware New York University. I lend very little credibility to their institution or faculty ever since a professor of theirs named Leonard Jeffries applauded the Challenger disaster for "stopping the white man from spreading his filth throughout the universe" ... and they allowed him to continue teaching.

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#10 posted by Mojave , December 23, 2008 1:32 PM

MICHAEL

My father's no different than any other powerful man --

(then, after Kay laughs)

-- Any man who's responsible for other people. Like a senator or a president.

KAY

You know how naive you sound?

MICHAEL

Why?

KAY

Senators and presidents don't have men killed...

MICHAEL

Oh -- who's being naïve, Kay?

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#11 posted by Anonymous , December 23, 2008 1:51 PM

WeightedCompanionCube - nice bit of extended ad hominem there - Miller can't be trusted because he teaches at the same university as Leonard Jeffries?

On the math: 122M of 168M registered voters, and maybe ~200M eligible to register - that number's harder to find - actually voted. Obama got slightly less than 66.9M votes, McCain 58.3M. If Obama actually got twice as many votes - ~133M (he didn't), it would mean that say the actual number of votes were 150M of 168M; 17M would be McCain's. What's more, if you assume that 22M registered but were not counted as registered, you could get McCain's number back up to 39M. It's an absurdity, I agree, but not technically "more than 100%."

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#12 posted by KReilly , December 23, 2008 6:05 PM

I actually saw the interview.
Mr. Miller said that Obama's official winning margin was half of the real(unaltered) margin. If those votes were reversed using a "man in the middle" set up the total number of votes does not change, the combined percentages don't exceed 100, right?
The circumstances surrounding the plane crash are a little strange, particularly if Connell was getting ready to start singing. I'm thinking that we're not going to hear very much more about it. Further, that anyone who thinks it might bear further scrutiny will be marginalized as a nut-case, conspiracy theory liberal.

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#13 posted by grimc , December 23, 2008 6:15 PM

The suspected vote fraud isn't just about flipping votes, it also involves suppression tactics like voter caging. When Miller talks about Obama getting more votes than were counted, he specifically raises the fact that huge numbers of people--particularly blacks and college students--were turned away from the polls, being told they weren't registered.

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#14 posted by derek_astro , December 23, 2008 8:15 PM

Re #10, you need to be aware that Leonard Jeffries was (and is) a professor at City College of New York (CCNY), and NOT at New York University (NYU). These are *very* different and unrelated institutions, and it's more than a little unreasonable to belittle the credibility of NYU based on something Jeffries did or said.

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#16 posted by Anonymous , December 24, 2008 12:26 PM

anybody else playing spot the spook with these news threads? It'd be a perfect blackout if the blogs weren't all tied in to the basic reports. Yahoo hasn't even put anything near the top of the pile with this one.

The Empire Never Died.....

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#24 posted by FoetusNail , January 2, 2009 3:54 AM

The comment at your last link struck me, "But, why the gear down if he was ascending for a go around?"

I am not a pilot, but have flown in small plans and read quite a bit about flying. Seems he was configured for an approach and landing. If he had gear down, he probably, may have, also set his flaps. He also, may have been descending. This all means his airspeed may have been reduced and throttle setting might have been lower than for level flight w/flaps extended and gear down. If he starts an ascending turn with flaps set and gear down, from a descent with reduced power and airspeed, he would need to increase throttle substantially and regain airspeed before attempting the maneuver. Either alone, turning or ascending, would require adding power to maintain airspeed, both together, depending on wind direction, and in a plane configured to land, could mean adding full throttle.

IMHO, going around to retry an approach would mean first adding power, then retracting the gear. Then after regaining airspeed and returning to level flight you start your turn and began to ascend. If he changed his mind close to the airport, he may have tried to do everything at once. Sounds like he may have put himself in the perfect configuration and attitude for a stall. Especially if he had reduced flaps, before retracting gear and increasing throttle. Obviously, he had enough hours to understand all of this, but did he pay enough attention to what he was doing at the time.

Again, IMHO, having the gear down is troubling if the flight path was anything but a normal approach. If he crashed after breaking off his approach and while attempting to ascend, as I describe above, then this *could be* another tragic case of pilot error. BTW, in the scenario I present, even the slightest amount of icing could be catastrophic.

So, assuming he was not experiencing a mechanical problem, these are the questions:

What was his airspeed?
What was his attitude before attempting to go around and ascend? (Was he flying level or descending?)
What were the throttle and flap settings?
Was he turning or attempting to ascend at the time of the crash?
Was there any icing at all?

He now waits for the real pilots to critique his comment. Just don't call me stupid, and I already know I'm somewhat ignorant.

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#25 posted by FoetusNail , January 2, 2009 4:05 AM

Also, why would they request he go to 3000 ft in those conditions? I'll assume they had a good reason, but it would be interesting to know what that reason was.

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