Scytl also has a strategic partnership with ES & S. Thus through only two executives and a strategic partnership, Scytl's management team has a relationship or an inner working knowledge of every major voting systems manufacturer active in the American market.
The Free Press's research into Scytl began with noting the ownership of Scytl by Nauta and Nauta's ownership of Carrier IQ, a cell phone spyware manufacturer. Carrier IQ is not the only mobile phone applications company that Nauta has invested in.
One of Nauta's a principals, Dominic Endicott, previously worked for Booz Allen Hamilton. Booz Allen is a major defense and intelligence contractor. They employed Edward Snowden and subcontracted him out to the NSA, for instance. Endicott's tenure at Booz Allen was in their mobile and wireless practice, interfacing with almost every major cellular manufacturer and service provider.
In addition to being Nauta's man on Carrier IQ board, Endicott is also Nauta's man on the board of Mobile Aware, another maker of cell phone applications. Mobile Aware's practice centers around customer care applications. These applications help a customer diagnose problems, contact technical support, pay their bills online, even give other subscribers minutes. The surveillance potential as well as the intrusion and spyware potential of such a set of applications is unparalleled in commercial products.
Nauta is also invested in GreatCall, which operates as Jitterbug. Jitterbug is a cell phone manufacturer specializing in making cell phones for Senior Citizens. The products feature louder speakers and larger buttons as well as improved customer diagnostics.
Scytl's technology is designed to allow a user to vote using a phone. Scytl's sister companies record the keystrokes made on the phone, provide customer care including billing and provide better access for seniors. These technologies together allow a persons' cellular usage habits as well their metadata to be kept, and thus build a predictive user profile.
People talk on the phone. A person's voice is unique. A person's voice can be recorded. One of Nauta's investments also can use a person's unique voice as identification. Nauta is invested in a voice recognition software company called AGNITiO. AGNITiO, like Scytl was founded by a former professor in Spain. Nauta has two of its principals on AGNITiO's board, Carles Ferrer and Al Sisto. Carles Ferrer is also on the board of Scytl. His previous places of employment include TRW, now owned by defense contractor Northrup Grumman. Al Sistos was formerly chief operating officer of RSA Data Security, a major encryption software manufacturer. Another Nauta's guy on AGNITiO's board is Francis C. Harvey. Harvey served as secretary of the Army from 2004 to 2007 at the height of the Iraq War and during the Abu-Gharrib scandal. According to his biography Harvey also served on the board of three companies owned by the Bush family friendly Carlyle Group and held a vice-chairmen position at two of them. The Carlyle group had an ownership interest in Booz Allen Hamilton, where Nauta principal Dominic Endicott formerly worked.
In addition to voice and mobile data, Nauta is invested in social media gaming. They are an investor in Social Point Gaming, the third largest maker of games for facebook. These games and interaction give a gaming administrator deep insight into the habits and personalities of the players through monitoring their interactions and the associated chats. An earlier key investor in Social Point, Greylock Capital Partners, has strong ties to the intelligence community. Greylock's chairman, Howard Cox, also sits on the board of In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is a non-profit venture capital firm run by the CIA. Greylock also invested in Nextdoor.com along with Benchmark Capital, the American sister firm of Scytl investor Balderton. Scytl investor Vulcan Capital is also invested in Nextdoor, which is a neighborhood based social networking platform.
Although Greylock is not invested in Scytl they do seem to have some interest in elections. During the most recent general election, a Greylock partner, Reid Hoffman, invested $500,000 in a State Assembly candidate David Chiu in San Francisco. This figure represents nearly $3 per voter in the district. The previous office holder in that district, Tom Ammiano, spent a little more than half as much in his entire previous campaign. Ammiano is not eligible to run again because of term limits.
Given all the data that Social Point, Carrier IQ, Nextdoor, Mobile Aware, AGNITO and Jitterbug could generate, a surveillance regime would need analysis tools. Fortuitously, Nauta is invested in BrandWatch. BrandWatch allows companies to follow their brand through multiple social media platforms to see what the public thinks about their products, what advertising and concepts resonate with the public, and who the opinion leaders are. The British television network SkyAtlantic uses Brandwatch to fine tune its marketing of Game of Thrones. Balderton Capital joined Nauta investing in Brandwatch and has a seat on its board.
Nauta is also invested in iJento, another marketing data analysis company that specializes in web analytics. Their web claims they provide "Multi-Channel Customer Intelligence." Nauta is represented on their board by both Carles Ferrer and Al Sistos.
Scytl and Brandwatch are not the only places that Balderton and Nauta cross paths. In order to store and process the data generated by the sundry tools products and services offered by Scytl's many sister companies, an organization would be almost forced to seek a solution through cloud computing. Nauta and Balderton together have made a strategic investment that would handle such a contingency. That investment is in the Spanish cloud computing company Abiquo, where Nauta is again represented by both Carles Ferrer and Al Sistos.
The complete package of Social Point, Carrier IQ, Nextdoor, Mobile Aware, AGNITO and Jitterbug, iJento, Brandwatch, and Abiquo would give a malicious actor all they need to rig an election that used Scytl and SOE's software packages. CarrierIQ and Mobile Aware provide backdoors through Scytl's security. The rest can be used to build a set of predictive profile voters which can be used in deciding which votes to change.
Ballot tampering is a part of election rigging. Voter suppression is another critical component. SOE has an app for that.
SOE's flagship product before its acquisition by Scytl was the Clarity ePollbook. The Clarity Pollbook is an electronic pollbook built on the Android tablet platform. Its nearest competitor, one built by ES & S, is also running on an Android tablet. The security vulnerabilities in the ES & S product were documented by the Free Press in a previous article. For brevity, these tablets can be attacked via SD card, USB thumb drive, bluetooth, cellular network, backup subversion, internet and the cloud they perform additional backups too.
Both companies would likely defend their product by claiming that the secure socket layer (SSL) encryption would protect them from eavesdropping and thus a man in the middle attack. It is not known what version of Android ES & S is using, but many of SOE's Clarity devices are using Android 4.1.
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