Domain: why-war.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to why-war.com.
Comments · 22
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In Korea, robots are given same rights as humansThat's probably true. See:
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Where's the right?
I see a lot of anti-Diebold stuff lately, like from Ruckus Society, Why war or indymedia, but they're all left-wing groups.
Isn't anyone on the right concerned about e-voting and what it could mean for election integrity? Is it just that the left is more concious of bad elections because of the 2000 elections? Or are conservatives just automatically pro-corporate? I would think that anyone who calls themselves 'conservative' would be against meddling with the voting process without good reason... -
Re:Yeah...
Fake security - real control. This is to keep people IN - not out.... "In Soviet America, Passport stamps You!"
The parent got modded funny for the Soviet Russia joke; but he should be getting modded Insightful for pointing out the real reason from these new passports.
Like me expand a bit on his insight: these biometric passports are the thin edge -- a proof of concept, if you will -- of mandatory National ID cards.
Indeed, Homeland Security will point out stories, like the one posted above about the 88 illegal immigrants taking a domestic flight from California to New Jersey and the general ability if illegals to bypass our borders, as evidence that we will need a "fool-proof" way of ascertaining identity not only at the borders but inside the United States.
And since the biometric passport will by then have been, however reluctantly, accepted, the government will apply the same technology to National ID cards.
Of course, a National ID card is only useful if it's checked, so expect to see uniformed men asking you to present it: "Your papers, Citizen!". This will also have the useful -- for the government -- side effect of getting the citizenry used to seeing and docilely taking orders from uniformed "security" officers; you can already see that happening in airports and government buildings, where we've all learned to shut-up and passively follow orders from any guy with three days of training and a badge, on penalty of delay, harassment or arrest.
(This acclimation to the presence of soldiers as quasi law-enforcement, incidentally, is one of the requirements Army War College grad Charles Dunlap posits for "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", co-winner in 1992 of the of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1991-92 Strategy Essay Competition -- in other words, it's not a fringe tin-foil hat screed.)
Expect also that the government will quickly thereafter require presentation of the National ID for transactions that "terra'ists use", like banking or buying plane and train tickets, similar to the "Know Your Customer" requirements of the "Patriot" Act. A little way down the road, expect that the government will expanded the "significant economic activity" to encompass all credit card purchases -- and perhaps using the fig leaf of "preventing (economic) identity theft", will require your National ID Card be presented for all credit card purchases.
At that point, you'll either have to present you National ID Card several times a day, or remove yourself from "the grid" entirely. I can think of few ways better to suppress dissent than letting anyone contemplating it know that their movements can be tracked with this sort of granularity: "why did you use the ATM machine a block from the People Against Surveillance meeting, Citizen? are you a member of this anti-Patriotic organization"?
Now, some will accuse me of wearing my tin-foil hat too tight: I'll refer them to the subpoenaing of protest groups' membership records (dropped only after unfavorable publicity), the CAPPS II Airline screening and the subpoenaing of women's medical records of their abortions (this link from BusinessWeek, of all places, the FBI investigation of Freedom of Information act requests, and the Federal prosecution -- even after state charges were thrown out of court -- of peaceful protestors against Bush. And there are, unfortunately, many many more examples of the current administration supressing dissent -- in fact, if you're reading this, please reply with links to more of these cases. -
Just watch out for Mr. Ozawa...
He scares me. although the rest of the article shows that they publicly disavow the use of nuclear weapons. this is also interesting
(as an aside, but slightly related) I hope people won't get the idea that I dislike Japan or the Japanese people, far from it. But I don't trust governments or corporations, be they American or Japanese, in fact, I might trust Japanese corporations more, once you have a job, you have it for life. And I've had mostly good experiances with individual Japanese, more per capita than I do with Americans. -
Re:robot warsSure there are; but many of the US robotic projects are focused on military applications because that's where the money is in the states.
For example, this DARPA initiative on Dynamic Mobility "--biologically inspired appendages to demonstrate multifunctional, dynamic, energy efficient and autonomous locomotion to enable revolutionary mobility capabilities such as running over multiple terrains, climbing (trees, cliffs, cave walls), jumping and leaping, and manipulating the world with an appendage in tasks such as grasping and digging. "
This is in contrast to Japan where I think more of the money is in consumer products. Not surprising to see the different focus in robotics.
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Electronic voting is bad news right now
This is truly horrible... apparently Florida has decided that since it is not possible to do a recount for electronic voting machines, it is not necessary to attempt anything of the sort. Realize that the next election might be hacked, support Rush Holt's Voter Confidence bill, and don't forget to get the Diebold memos from the SCDC.
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Re:Bound to happen...
Yes, it was. Secret warrants really are a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but the LEOs have been doing them for so long, they have been vetted in court by the case law. Weak.
You can read all about the FBI's plans in the Goverment Only document:
This document, marked "For Official Use Only", was written by the FBI to "provide guidance to Carrier-Grade Voice over Packet Service Providers and equipment manufacturers in the form of law enforcement's requirements for these electronic surveillance capabilities." Originally mirrored by Cryptome, this version allows copying and pasting.
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Official government documents...
For the past few weeks Cryptome has featured a link to an FBI document detailing the means by which such surveillance might take place. This is all just additional evidence that those wanting real security must implement (or at least verify) it themselves.
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And more mirrors
And if you kill the SCDC website, you can get a complete list of mirrors at papertrailpatriots.org and Why-War.
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Re:Well said Mr. Vidal.
So. Let's ask ourselves again. How did Bush "steal" the election? How did the Supremes "select" Bush? How was the Constituion thwarted? Just because the guy with the most votes lost does not mean that anything broke. The Consitution is not a democratic document.
First, you conveniently only reproduced the weird recount results that would have given "Bush wins." In true Fox News style, you left out the FACT that Gore would have won a total recount, regardless of the standard applied. Think about what that means. Even with the all the funny business pulled by Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris (see below), the intent of the Florida voters who were not wrongly denied their right to vote was that Gore should win. Only under bizarre partial recounts (that, ironically, the Democrats were requesting) would Bush have won. Read my whole post. Don't just stop at "Bush would have won the goofy partial recounts." The rest of my post shows that no matter what standard you apply, Gore would have won a complete recount.
The "funny business" I mentioned above includes the effort by Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris to remove tens of thousands of voters who were NOT felons, but were members of Democrat-leaning demographic groups, from the rolls, resulting in a swing of some 30,000 votes to Bush. I hope I don't need to tell you that's significant in an election decided by hundreds of votes. Add to that the intimidation of minority (Democrat-leaning) voters by the State Police, again, under orders from Jeb Bush, plus the Diebold machines that SUBTRACTED over 16,000 votes from Gore when the votes from a specific county were added, confirmed by Diebold employees in the incriminating Diebold memos, and you've got a very strong case for a stolen election. There is MUCH more to this than the fact that Gore won the national popular vote. He also won the Florida popular vote (even with the playing field slanted to help GWB by his brother the Governor and his campaign manager, who also happened to be Florida Secretary of State), but the Supreme Court stopped the recounts, giving as its reason that if the recounts were completed and the will of the voters determined, Bush might not win. Scary, but true. Read the decision.
One more thing to consider: most people think Bush would have won a recount because virtually every news outlet printed the results I cited in my previous post, clearly showing that even the Bush-limited set of Florida voters elected Gore, but the correct counting of their votes was thwarted by the Supreme Court. And yet the myth of "liberal media" persists. Even the New York Times, the Right's favorite example of a "liberal" media outlet, ran the story with a headline saying Bush would have won. Why? I think the timing has a lot to do with it-- the results of the NORC survey came out in September of 2001...
--Mark -
'good' virus?Would you consider a virus written to exploit a known security flaw (or perhaps a flaw that has been brought to a company's attention and ignored) a form of social protest/civil disobedience?
Social Examples:
The college student who placed various 'bad' things on two planes
perhaps the leaked diebold memo's
maybe human shields in iraq? -
Help Protect Democracy from Diebold!!
Diebold is using the DMCA to serve takedown notices to service providers. Mirror sites in the
.EDU domain are needed to keep Diebold's memo's online and availible to the world.
Go to why-war.com and find out how you can help.
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Re:Media trying to hide the Media's attempt to rig
Uhhhh... I'm guessing you get your news from a "fair and unbiased" source like Roger Ailes, Media Director for George HW Bush's campaigns and creator and producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show.
There are some FACTS that get in the way of your straight-from-the-GOP arguments. I figure it's probably a lost cause to try to convince you, but here they are...
(First, for the record, I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and am horrified at the increasing narrowness of the American political "spectrum" after having lived for 3 years in a thriving Democracy (Brazil), where there are more parties than anyone can name, and virtually all points of view are represented, with no one or two or even three parties able to dominate)
That said, on to the uncomfortable facts...
Yes, there was some serious rigging in the 2000 Florida election, but it looks like most of it was done by the Republicans. Besides the funny business that went on before the election (ordered by Jeb Bush) to remove tens of thousands of Democratic voters from the lists of registered Florida voters, and besides the numerous African-American (likely Democratic) Florida voters who were denied their right to vote, there is the matter of the leaked Diebold memos, which show that there was some election night hanky-panky with the 2000 Florida presidential vote totals (made possible by Diebold, a company whose top man has declared that it is his mission to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to George W Bush). Best of all, Diebold does not deny that these things happened; it is trying to use the DMCA to shut down any site hosting copies of the incriminating memos, alleging that these company memos are copyrighted material. IANAL, but that looks to me like a direct admission of ownership and verification of the authenticity of those shocking memos. If I had a site hosting those memos and I were to get a Cease and Desist from Diebold, I'd simply tell them "no way" and hope hope hope to get the chance to discuss the contents of those memos in front of a judge.
Bad as all this is, as they say on infomercials, "that's not all!" Recounts were stopped because the Supreme Court, loaded 6-3 with Republicans, including one major political activist (Scalia) and his apprentice (Thomas) basically said that if the recounts weren't stopped, George W Bush might not be President. Worse, they basically recognized the ridiculousness of their own arguments and said that this case could never be used as a precedent for a future case. Funny that... (in a distinctly non-humorous way, of course)
I'm guessing Ann Coulter didn't mention these things. I wouldn't be surprised if the presenters at Fox News forgot to mention them either...
Don't even get me started about the fact that exit polls unanimously showed Gore winning Florida... or on the recent election in Georgia, where every poll (exit polls, third-party pre-election polls, Democratic AND Republican internal tracking polls) showed the Democrat winning handily, but the Republican ended up winning with relative ease. Small but possibly important detail: an unverified patch was applied to the Diebold (that name again!) voting machines after they'd been certified by Georgia election officials.
What? Brit Hume didn't mention that? Color me shocked!
As for your comments about people engaged in shady activity loudly bla -
Re:That was a great quote to leave unchallenged:
You wanna see the crap these guys discuss privately?
http://www.why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.ht ml#excerpts
"Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/announce.w3archive/20011 0/msg00002.html ]
In response to a question about a presentation in El Paso County, Colorado: "For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro [sic] the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/support.w3archive/199903 /msg00098.html ]
"I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/announce.w3archive/20011 0/msg00001.html ]
"Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots. They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/rcr.w3archive/200202/msg 00051.html ] (emphasis added)
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Re:Why don't the idiots use the DMCA?http://www.why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.h
t ml#updateDay Eight, Oct. 28: Amherst and MIT have received cease-desist letters (copy of MIT cease-desist letter). New mirrors are now up at UNC, Duke, Berkeley, NCSU and U Penn.
Diebold has publicly admitted that leaked memos do not meet DMCA standards for copyright infringement. In the Associated Press article, a Diebold representative declares:
... the fact that the company sent the cease-and-desist letters does not mean the documents are authentic -- or give credence to advocates who claim lax Diebold security could allow hackers to rig machines.
Ernest Miller explains that the DMCA requires that documents be authentic; if the documents aren't authentic, it isn't copyright infringement. Our position is that even if the memos are authentic (which we believe they are, or Diebold would be pursuing a libel campaign), they are not copyright infringment as they are covered under DMCA fair use guidelines ."We're cautioning anyone from drawing wrong or incomplete conclusions about any of those documents or files purporting to be authentic," Jacobsen said.
Since some of you have been asking, yes, Swarthmore College is still enforcing its policy of cutting off network access to students who link to information about the memos (or the memos themselves). There have been many discussions of this absurd policy -- see, for instance, LawMeme's analysis -- and we appreciate the letters that are being sent to Dean Gross and The Phoenix (e.g. Seth Finkelstein's). We hope that by expanding to other colleges and universities we can broaden the campaign while minimizing the impact of our own institution's refusal to take a stand. (If other educational institutions encounter such policies, this script may be of help.)
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My favorite line from their files....
First off, I'd like to thank Wired News for linking me a couple of days back regarding this, and Why War? for providing a way for me to get at these files.
Now, then, from a January 2002 memo titled, Nearterm AVTS 4.x roadmap, discussing the classification of a major update as a bugfix:
What good are rules unless you can bend them now and again.
These are just the sort of people I want in charge of the machines that people vote on in my election. No, really. [/sarcasm]
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However..
If you examine what they're picking on, in many cases, the excepts shown on the site linked by slashdot are either partial texts made to appear out of context, or were not intended to be taken seriously by the reciever, such as the tagline which is attacked (the one that says 'if elections could change things, they would be illegal'). In part, there may be some truth to taking some of these seriously, but in the same token, a lot are blown out of proportion. It's also interesting to note that things which occured years ago (such as the resignation of Brian Clubb). That was two years ago, and there is no solid evidence that what he reported then is true now. Further, there is nothing (other than his word) to suggest that what he did was not based on little more than his opinion. This is a really bad site which was so selective with it's quotes it really looks like an attack rather than being informative to any real degree. We have a few scattered documents, and no real idea of the larger picture.
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Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall...
Who is the most corrupt corporation of them all?
Ok, I'll take back all the bad things I said about Germans over the whole Iraq thing just for this:
From this page at why-war.com: How to get the files: Note that the location of the documents may change, but this page will always have the current links. In case Diebold takes down this page, bookmark cultcom.com/mirror.html, a mirror being hosted in Germany of direct links to the memos.
Now, who wants to take bets as to how big of an election fraud it will take for the Feds to officailly knock the shit out of Diebold? I'm saying 2 Senator and 5 House elections in a single year. -
Re:Only way to impliment a national ID card
I love reading these stories about how everyone wants to make a national id card, Oracke wants to run the database, IBM wants to provide the hardware etc...
...and Diebold wants to make sure that your elected officials are really their elected officials (read: officials elected, quite literally, by Diebold), rather than the officials you voted for.
I'm not sure what scares me more: a national ID card, or the loss of my ability to vote against people who would support it.
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Re:Unfortunate.Mind you, there's no way the current system can be hacked at all. Just ask President Gore.
You might want to check the next story's article:
"a Diebold machine registered 16,022 negative votes for Al Gore in Precinct 216 in Florida in the 2000 presidential election."
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Re:Unfortunate.Mind you, there's no way the current system can be hacked at all. Just ask President Gore.
You might want to check the next story's article:
"a Diebold machine registered 16,022 negative votes for Al Gore in Precinct 216 in Florida in the 2000 presidential election."
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Thanks for keeping this
issue alive.
Looks like someone else has joined the fight
Why-War?