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GQ correspondent Julia Ioffe raised eyebrows on Tuesday after she sounded the alarm that "Russian hackers" had successfully obtained information from Michigan voter data rolls.
Ioffe shared an article from a Russian outlet alleging that American voter information had shown up on a platform run by hackers,
"Russian journalists have discovered data from Michigan voter data rolls — including the personal info of 7.6 million Michigan voters — on a Russian hackers’ platform," Ioffe wrote with siren emojis. "It also includes voter info from other swing states, including Florida and NC."
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While those who were dedicated to the Russian collusion narrative shared Ioffe's alarming tweet, critics pointed out that such information is available to the public, meaning that no hacking -- by Russians or anyone else -- was necessary.
"This data is available publicly and there's no evidence of an actual hack," Wall Street Journal reporter Dustin Volz reacted. "The Russian 'hackers' platform' is a two-bit site for data sharing. We all need to do a better job — especially on social media — of not jumping on hyped, unverified claims about election hacking/interference."
"Um...*I* have access to this information," attorney and National Review podcast host Jeff Blehar noted. "Every elections datajourno (or interested amateur) can get access to this information too. Voter files are public records. It's not a conspiracy, it's a grift and easy-bait for the MSM who don't understand that there's no 'hacking' here."
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"1) This information is generally public and could have been taken from hundreds of customers of voter information brokers. 2) Dark web forums, especially ones in Russian, are chock full of free and paid data dumps like this with no immediate use," Stanford Internet Observatory researcher Alex Stamos tweeted. "We gotta be careful about jumping at shadows and legit reporters and experts should be careful about what credit we give our adversaries without them earning it. This kind of paranoia is one of the goals of Russia’s influence operations."
"People furiously hyping this nothingburger story this morning need to seriously consider how they themselves are baselessly undermining confidence in US elections," The Daily Beast reporter Lachlan Markey said.
Voice of America correspondent Jeff Seldin shared a statement from the Michigan Department of State, saying "Our system has not been hacked" and that "Public voter information in Michigan and elsewhere is accessible to anyone through a FOIA request."
The statement added, "We encourage all Michigan voters to be wary of attempts to ‘hack’ their minds."
The Moscow-born Ioffe has developed a reputation for spreading fears of Russian election on Twitter. Last year, she was mocked for pointing out what she thought was a "Russian quotation mark" on a newspaper's tweet linking to a report about Hunter Biden's lovechild.
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She later deleted her tweet and apologized.
"Deleted a couple tweets after being correctly corrected. Turns out the paper had used that symbol before. It had jumped out to me, a Russian speaker (and keyboard user) as a quotation mark and looked like other, sloppy attempts by Russian trolls to push stories," Ioffe wrote. "I apologize for the mistake, and am explaining it in the interests of full transparency. Thank you, everyone, for pointing it out!"
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