The Russians hacked electoral systems in 2 counties in Florida. But which ones?



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Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, said the authorities had decided to circumvent these concerns by sending a general warning to all countries that an intrusion had occurred.

"I think they should be named," said DeSantis.

The fact that the governor was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement to receive classified information is not unusual. The F.B.I. The same is true for police chiefs when discussing, for example, classified terrorist threats. Typically, the F.B.I. does not disclose the names of hacking victims for confidentiality reasons.

It is less understandable why information, the essential of which has already been made public in the Mueller report, would be considered too sensitive to be disclosed to the public. There was an immediate flow of questions on social media, many wondering how the public could be sure that the voters lists had not been tampered with and that the local election supervisors had taken the necessary steps to prevent such hacking in the future – without knowing which counties had been violated.

"It is not acceptable to keep secret attacks against the most public process of our political processes: our elections," said Ion Sancho, Democrat and former election supervisor of Leon County, which includes the capital, Tallahassee.

On September 30, 2016, while still in office, Mr. Sancho took part in a conference call between election supervisors in Florida, during which, he said, the F.B.I. told the local authorities that no Russian piracy had taken place. The F.B.I. had asked the election supervisors to keep the contents of the call confidential, but Mr. Sancho had spoken about it at the time.

"I am not a member of any law enforcement agency, I am a member of the electoral profession," he said on Tuesday. "I talked about it because it seemed to me that we needed that kind of momentum if we wanted to prepare and ensure the protection of our electoral system, which we still have not done. "

None of Florida's 67 counties has admitted to being one of the victims of piracy. The intrusion was made public for the first time last year by former Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, who was strongly criticized by his opponent for re-election, former Gov. Rick Scott, who rejected his request as being unfounded. The state, he said, had not been informed of Russian piracy. Mr. Nelson then stated that he had become aware of the information as a member of the Special Senate Committee on Intelligence – but, like Mr. DeSantis, he could not reveal more.

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