Welcome...
I'm a Seattle-based freelance writer/journalist originally from Fort Worth, Texas. I'm also a substitute teacher in public education. I write about anything and everything, but usually investigative journalism, philosophy tied to current events, science fiction and fantasy, radical mental health, technology, justice ... the list goes on.
As a journalist, prior to 2023, I was probably most known for three things. First, reporting on the legal cases of multiple federal defendants associated with the hacktivism/transparency movement. Their trials, what the activists revealed, their ideals. Second, turning emails hacked out of a private spy firm, Stratfor, into standalone stories. These articles centered on the memos themselves, not the hackers' hair-dos or hoodies. Third, I was an expert on said private spy files in the documentary film The Hacker Wars, which on rare occasion somebody recognizes me from, amusingly. However, in the end, many of the most valuable things I've ever written are simply sitting on my social media feeds and blog where autodidacts can read them, stroking their chins intellectually.
Since early 2023, my journalism has become more known for computerized election security topics, especially the MAGA-led Coffee County election office breach, which as of this writing (August 2024) is still compromising the statewide election software across the swing state of Georgia. And in August 2024, I accomplished my longstanding goal of explaining (alternate hyperlink) clearly and uncompromisingly, in a very high-level venue, the proposed global commons for public data collaboration, known as Getgee or G.
Aside from those labors and more, copywriting/content marketing pays some of my bills. If you want me to write for you in that capacity — or some other — email me and let's talk.
News
November 8, 2024: The Daily Dot, an Austin-based news outlet launched in 2011, published my new article The digital divide for Indian Country got better under Biden — will that progress go away? 'With Trump, I fear the only answer will be never.' How are tribes taking the digital divide into their own hands by creating their own internet service providers? A look at the latest Tribal Broadband Bootcamp, the home-rule, autonomy framework for Indian Country securing digital sovereignty, and what all this — against the backdrop of longstanding and ongoing injustices inflicted on Indigenous people — might mean for the grass-touching, community-oriented bootcamps meeting the selfie-driven, surveillance dystopia of today's internet. Quotes from philosopher Heather Marsh and from Tribal Broadband Bootcamps cofounder Matthew Rantanen.
October 26, 2024: I self-published a blog post embedding the DRM-free .MP4 of my 45-min solo talk at the fifteenth Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference this July 12 in Queens, NYC. I included a corrected English transcript and corrected English subtitles (.srt; .vtt). The subtitles greatly remediate editing errors and also gaps in my speech where I omitted transitions or didn't make certain logical connections fully explicit. You'll want to watch with them on. Don't forget the recommended resource list, a 14-page PDF. The video (with corrected subtitles) is also available on my youtube.
September 22, 2024: The Daily Dot published my article titled Election 2024: The future of TikTok and tech policy under Trump versus Harris. It's a carefully researched overview of where the two leading presidential candidates stand on various tech topics: TikTok, net neutrality, AI and deepfakes, the FCC, Section 230 immunities for social platforms, the digital divide, tech rivalry with China under the Chinese Communist Party, more. Plus a few surprises along the way, such as quotes from power-to-the-people NYC Mesh.
August 27, 2024: Foreign Policy, launched in 1970 and based in Washington D.C., published my new article titled Banning TikTok won't keep your data safe: Pompous billionaries, authoritarian regimes, and opaque oligarchs are hoarding our data. Only an alternative online ecosystem will stop them. That's the paywall-jumping gift hyperlink for sharing everywhere; if it doesn't work, try this one. The recommended online ecosystem is the proposed global commons for public data collaboration, known as Getgee or G. Foreign Policy has, according to their Aug. 27, 2024 stats, five million-plus monthly visitors from across 150-odd countries. Two-thirds work in a field pertinent to international relations, one in five work in government, and some 13% lead divisions or companies.
July 11, 2024: 14-page PDF I put together: a recommended resource list for my Hackers on Planet Earth XV conference talk, Survey and Scrutiny of Election Security, presented July 12, 2024. The resource list contains the following sections: Books and papers; Documentaries; Reality Winner and Kremlin cyberattacks on 2016 elections; BMD vulnerabilities, Coffee County, Georgia elections office breach, and ongoing statewide voting software compromise; Election activism; General deep politics and activism; Douglas Lucas.
June 2, 2024: Promo video and blog post announcing my solo talk Survey and Scrutiny of Election Security at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference, July 12-14, NYC.
January 4, 2024: I emailed a follow-up letter of sorts to officials, lawyers, and activists of Coffee County, Georgia highlighting some of the most important findings from my Daily Dot article and accompanying blog post, both from December 19 and detailed/linked in the item immediately below. Here's the 4-page PDF letter and a little new blog post about it.
December 19, 2023: The Daily Dot, launched in 2011, published my investigative article titled Exclusive: A missing laptop could be key to prosecuting Trump. This rural Georgia county only recently admitted that it exists with the standfirst The device may contain evidence about the infamous breach of Coffee County’s election system. Finding the silver laptop could impact not just the criminal trial of Trump and his 18 co-defendants, but also Curling v. Raffensperger, the long-running federal civil lawsuit wherein the plaintiffs seek to force Georgia to abandon mandatory electronic ballots and in most circumstances use hand-marked paper ones. I also self-published a blog post with important extra material. My blog post includes four surveillance images from Coffee County published for the first time.
July 5, 2023: The BradBlog.com, run for two decades and counting by Brad Friedman of the nationally syndicated AM/FM radio show the BradCast, published my investigative article entitled Exclusive: Georgia Secretary of State has failed to certify urgent, CISA-recommended voting software update; critics charge state laws block him from doing so, even if he wanted to. In short, Brad Raffensperger's office has not contracted with a certification agent to get a state-level examination done for Dominion Democracy Suite 5.17. Other evidence corroborates that, without a state certifying agent and possibly even with one, Raffensperger legally cannot move forward on upgrading to this latest version. According to University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman -- whose report on the matter was unsealed by a federal judge last month -- 5.17 purportedly addresses the flaws he'd uncovered in version 5.5-A. That older 5.5-A version is presumably what we'd find in place if we took out the voting computers presently stored in Georgia warehouses and closets and booted them up. It's the same defective version currently set for use on Election Day 2024, since Raffensperger says he won't update till at least 2025. Given the Coffee County breach (see below two items) and Halderman's unsealed report, the code of 5.5-A and its cybersecurity vulnerabilities are likely widespread among the shadows by now, putting a November 2024 bullseye on the swing state's election system unless the Peach State switches to, say, hand-marked paper ballots tabulated by scanners doublechecked through quality risk-limiting audits.
June 21, 2023: To accompany my article linked directly below, I was interviewed this day on the BradCast, a nationally syndicated Pacifica Radio AM/FM show called the BradCast. Here's the landing page for that particular radio episode, with links to various services carrying the show such as Apple Podcasts. The full show as a 58-minute MP3 may be downloaded directly here.
June 21, 2023: The BradBlog.com published my new in-depth investigative article A secret meeting within a secret meeting: Unspooling the Coffee County, Georgia voting system breach and continuing cover-up, subtitled Cracks emerge in wall of secrecy surrounding mysterious County meeting in small town conspiracy with national implications... In short, top Trumpers have been directing a multistate scheme with his knowledge, including in the battleground state of Georgia, to breach county elections offices and make off with copies of the voting systems software, presumably for hacks, rigs, and/or for sprinkling into their disinfo campaigns for enhanced pseudo-plausibility. Meanwhile, the Georgia elections chief Raffensperger recently told a federal judge his office will not apply Homeland Security CISA-recommended security patches related to the breach until after the 2024 general elections. Unfortunately for the conspirators, Georgia open meetings law mandates that Coffee County officials must provide transparency about a secretive February 2021 post-breach gathering of two county boards supposedly revolving around the resignation of the then-election supervisor and not the intrusions, then still a secret, that concluded not a month prior...
March 30, 2023: The Texas Observer published my new article, The voting vendor in Reality Winner's leak is coming to Texas. It's the first in a series on the theme of whistleblower Reality Winner. I interviewed a county information security officer, local elections administrators, and others about voting technology supplier VR Systems fairly recently gaining certifications to enter the Texas market — but I asked about this in the context of the 2016 Kremlin cyberattacks Winner disclosed. I also discuss polarization and historical context around various evidence, and various lack of evidence, for election meddling in the United States.
Contact
Email: DAL@RISEUP.NET (ask for pgp key or check keyservers if you want encryption)
Snailmail (United States Postal Service only): Douglas Lucas / PO Box 75656 / Seattle WA 98175 / United States
Snailmail (Private carriers such as UPS, Fedex, DHL, Amazon): Douglas Lucas / 11036 8th Ave NE #75656 / Seattle WA 98125 / United States
Note the single-character change in ZIP codes, between the address for USPS (98175) and the address for private carriers (98125), is not a typo.
Twitter: @DouglasLucas
Bluesky: @douglaslucas.bsky.social
Instagram: @DouglasLucas