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Diebold Chases Links To Leaked Memos
bllfrnch writes "Mary Hodder, over at The Berkeley School of Journalism's bIPlog, reports that electronic voting bigwig Diebold has begun sending cease-and-desist letters to universities whose students are linking to hijacked internal company memos that elucidate the company's level of respect for citizens' right to vote. Particularly shocking is the line: "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.""
first post????
first post! Again.
Thank you, thank you. Yes, I know. I couldn't have done it without the help of my untrustworthy slow machine which forces me to wait while it starts up tomcat so i can test the site I'm working on.
poopies
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal
Of course voting can change things, for example I'm sure the people of Iraq would have loved to vote a new leader when Saddam Hussein was in power, but couldn't. People have died for the right to vote. I think that things like the above quote are very dangerous things to say.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
.. it only encourages them ;o)
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
VOTE LINUX!
I'm in love with a UT bot!!!!!!
only because it's true
The DMCA is quite clear in its provisions for allowing questionable material to stay up. BlackBoxVoting had no need to roll over in the first place. The simply needed to submit a DMCA counter notice.
Simply send a counter notice stating that the documents do not breach copyright, and put the website back up. This moves the obligation to Diebold to bring suit!
wow.. first comment?
As to the voting being iligal comment.. thats not THE website.. thats just... from Kerry, one of your standard hackers.
No matter whether it's a republican or democrat as president, they will be looking out for their corporate buddies.
paradoxically it seems to be the case that in places where voting COULD change things it IS illegal, and vice versa.
, and then he will change everything so that he can stay in power for the rest of his miserable life. ps. I got the first post! shouldn't have gone AC cos now you wont believe me.
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
> Particularly shocking is the line: "If voting could really change things,
> it would be illegal."
This is ridiculous. The guy was using this quote as a signature. Come on!
Be careful to not overanalyze that "illegal-votine" quote. It appears where a sig normally does (sans the '--'). It could just be cynacism... after all, if I took the quotes at the bottom of the /. main page this seriously I would probably stop reading the page! Good journalism is in part good history and anthropology.
Sam
Particularly shocking is the line: "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal."
.sig, why is this shocking ?
This line belongs to a
This is taken out of context.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
it's a sig line. not a statement of intent. it's not even new, look here
list of mirrors here
http://cultcom.com/mirror.html
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal
Exactly...so why vote? Why try to change things? Hopefully some nice, strong leader will just "take over" our country and tell us how things are going to be rather than let us have any input into our own futures. Wouldn't that be nice and easy. Then we don't have to think about issues, we will be told how to think. I think this idea is grand. If by some odd stretch someone does decide they don't like something our "leader" tells us, we can complain about how we can't change anything. At least we woulndn't have to worry about following issues and voting people into and out of office. Its easier not to have to think. Thinking for ourselves is bad. Plus, we know democracy just doesn't work.
Oh wait, that's called communism, socialism...that's what we want right?
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
Yes, the power of apt-get could be used to form a type of ad-hoc distributed network for the distribution of the Diebold memo, without fear of a single server being shutdown making the document disappear. What we did for the Fed was to create a set of apt.sources files which contained the addresses of a bunch of mirror servers which contained the documents of interest. When a user needed to find a document, they would simply issue an apt-get instyall Document command at their workstation, and apt-get would do the rest.
It gets better. When a new revision of the document was released, it was a simple task for the user to perform an apt-get upgrade Document, and the latest version was dragged across from what ever server happened to be available from their apt.sources file. We even spent a couple of weeks hacking dselect to launch OpenOffice when necessary to create a kind of crude distributed document management system. The users loved it! It's the UNIX way!
But anyway, back to the problem at hand. What is needed are a bunch of Debian servers to host the offending Diebold memo which has been leaked, and for people to start adding these to their apt.sources files. That way, Diebold won't be able to shut down any servers, and if they leak new information, it can easily be upgraded with apt-get upgrade Diebold! apt-get just continues to amaze me.
apt-get free speech!!!
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal
The actual link was to the following text:
>> Does anyone have the password for the TS Instructions from the ftp site?
>>
>>Thanks
>>Kerry
>>
>>If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
>>Revolution Books, New York, New York
It looks more like a joke sig than a corporate statement.
If you'd looked at Google before posting something like this, you'd have noticed that this is a quote that has been floating around for a while. So it's just part of the author's signature.
Apparently, people work add Diebold who like to make a bit of fun of themselves. Kind of surprising, huh?
And a fairly commonly used slogan, too. The guy who is now Mayor of London even paraphrased it for the title of his autobiography. Used in this contect, we can at least celebrate the fact that irony has finally come to the Americas...
Since the outcome of the last presidential elections in the states was kind of irrelevant, why should anyone bother with wether these machines are any good, wether the company that makes them is run by men, machines or marketing-droids?
If you don't need to score the most votes to become the president, why count them at all?
Heh... and several million /. readers...
yo.
This is going in my project mis-management slides for future courses on how not to do systems engineering! ".. lack of concern over the practice provide products which do not exist and then attempting to build these 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 to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations.
I stole this
What sort of qualifications does Diebold have to be making voting systems? If I as a customer saw these messages, bug rapports and horror stories, I wouldn't trust them to design a cup holder for my car, let alone for something as critical as a voting system.
Here's how you build a real voting system.
- You get the best brains to really think about the problem. Forget the Diebold cubicle workers, you get someone like Rivest and pals to design the system. They solve the problems of audit trails, accountability, how to trust the machine etc.
- You get a collaboration of the top research institutes and universities to implement the system. Implementation must be done completely in the open. Every party and faction will have a great interest in eyeballing the system, so that no other faction can exploit it. With enough eyes, every bug is shallow.
- You don't design 52 systems, you design one or two. A well designed system will be used and paid for by virtually all the states. Done right it might cost as much as 30 bad systems, but it'll be worth it.
- You maintain the system troughout the year, not just 2 months before each election. You reuse improved versions of the system with each election.
I'm sure the people of Iraq would have loved to vote a new leader when Saddam Hussein was in power
Saddam Hussein actually did a lot of good things for the Iraqi, such as nationalising the oil industry. And Hussein had a point about the fairness of tiny puppet states like Kuwait controlling an enormously disproportionate amount of oil reserves. Unfortunately, reality is not as simple as Fox News would have you believe.
But the question now is if and when the Iraqi people will get the right to vote. Since Afghanistan, which was invaded way back in `01, still hasn't had a single democratic election, Iraq's chances are slim. You see, the people of Iraq aren't exactly handing out flowers to the American invasion force (which indiscriminately slaughter opposition). In fact, most Iraqis would prefer independence, much as America's forefathers did. But the US occupation forces hardly want a government which might demand national autonomy and national control of the oil supply.
And guess what - the Baath party has been outlawed. What an auspicious beginning for American-style democracy.
By DMCAing people who host or link to these documents, they're implicity confirming their validity. I almost wonder if a "deny everything" policy might've worked better for them:
"Nope, never seen those before. Guess somebody thinks it's funny to try to discredit a reliable, trustworthy company like us."
Insead, they've chosen "arrgggh, give those back! You can't show people those - they're secret!". Hmm...
Imagine if somebody based their opinions about Slashdot based upon somebody's signature. It's stupid and hypocritical.
I think the guy just had a sense of humour. It's a shame to think that he must be getting hell for trying to lighten up his job.
This is House Resolution 2239 which requires a paper trail and bans the use of non-open software.
Here's a story about it: link
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
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.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
James Bruce
Vice President for Information Systems
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Room 10-219
Cambridge, MA 02139
XXXXXXXX@mit.edu
Re: Copyright Infringement
Dear Mr. Bruce:
We represent Diebold, Incorporated and its wholly owned subsidiaries Diebold Election Systems, Inc., and Diebold Election Systems ULC (collectively "Diebold").
Diebold is the owner of copyrights in certain correspondence and other material relating to its electronic voting machines, which were stolen from a Diebold computer ("Diebold Property").
It has recently come to our clients' attention that you appear to be hosting a web site that contains Diebold Property. The web site you are hosting infringes Diebold's copyrights because the Diebold Property was reproduced, placed on public display, and is being distributed from this web site without Diebold's consent.
The web site and Diebold Property are identified in a chart attached to this letter.
The purpose of this letter is to advise you of our clients' rights and to seek your agreement to the following: (1) to remove and destroy the Diebold Property contained at the web site identified in the attached chart and (2) to destroy any backup copies of the Diebold Property in your possession or under your control.
Please confirm, in writing, that you have complied with the above requests.
To the best of my knowledge and belief the information contained in this notification is accurate as of the time of compilation and, under penalty of perjury, I certify that I am authorized to act on behalf of Diebold.
Our clients reserve their position insofar as costs and damages caused by infringing activity with respect to the Diebold Property. Our clients also reserve their right to seek injunctive relief to prevent further unauthorized use of Diebold Property, including reproduction, distribution, public display, or the creation of derivative works, pending your response to this letter. We suggest you contact your legal advisors to obtain legal advice as to your position.
We await your response within 24 hours.
Very truly yours,
Ralph E. Jocke
INFRINGING MATERIALS POSTED ON:
XXXXXXXXX.net
Any volunteers for a high-profile arrest?
BTW, Newsweek carried a piece by Steven Levy about Diebold this week.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This is also called "the clambake twist", where the church of scientology caught their nuts in a blender when they sued Operation Clambake. By suing, they confirmed that the insane documents were indeed theirs.
Whilst I'm posting, my take on this whole thing: I still cannot understand why on earth the US moved away from the pencil-and-paper, put-an-X-in-the-box system used (AFAIK) by the rest of the world (certainly that's how it works here in the UK.) Simple, cheap, robust, reliable, transparent... why complicate a system that's already a model of simplicity and correctness? Can someone explain to me what the problem is that 'voting machines' (of any sort, including the mechanical punched-card type) are trying to solve, exactly?
I actually worked as a volunteer in a General Election back in 1987 - this included sitting outside the polling station politely asking voters how they voted as they were leaving, aka 'exit polls' done to give the parties an idea of how things are going. Of course people don't have to answer and many didn't. At the count, all the candidates and their agents, pluys local party workers, official observers etc can all stand around watching the ballot boxes coming in, being emptied out, counted & sorted. If there's a close result, the losing candidate has the right (which is often exercised) to call for a recount. Because the bits of paper are all still there it's easy to do this. Organised, mass tampering with ballots is for all practical purposes impossible in this system - there's too much oversight, checks & balances & transparency. Of course, the first-past-the-post electoral system itself sucks, and we should have proportional representation :), but the simple question of how many votes each candidate got is pretty much a solved problem. It's just, y'know, counting, really...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
This is not a critique on voting... just one on voting systems. Voting is illegal in many countries, perhaps because it could bring unwanted change? Thus it is fair to assume that voting DOES change things. QED.
/. has only latched onto one)
So this person's (perhaps random) e-mail fortune sig has much truth to it? (And dual meanings, on which
So why is voting legal in the States? Perhaps because people cannot change the really important things?
-ponder-
When last has voting really had a profound effect? When last have we voted about issues and not FOR parties? A total swing in the political rulers have not had any noticable effect on the country... hence the opinion that there had been no real need to vote.
More interesting reading HERE.
Seen on the back of car yesterday:
"Those who vote change nothing. Those who count the votes change everything."
Another article which describes this better.
I saw this story on kuro5hin the other day. Trhurler posted a comment that civil disobedience is not merely "breaking the law for a good reason" but a willingness to be subject to negative consequences. The students may be eager to see their day in court, hopefully to set a good precedent, but their ISPs may not. Even though the students sites sport INDIRECT links, which as far as I know have not previously been subject to takedowns.
More music, fewer hits
"I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb"." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/support.w3archive/200101 /msg00068.html ]
I am not pro-Gore or anti-Gore or Republician or Democrat. But the quote cracks me up...
No matter if he won or lost, quotes like this now make me understand why he at least wanted a recount.
Davak
If you've ever wondered why the Green Party never wins, check this.
LOL. I used the site search. You can have fun too looking for words like:
hide, investigator, coverup, suppress, alter, payoff, cleanup, forge, deny, lie, misinformation, etc.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Once someone puts it on Freenet, this discussion will be moot. It'll be available to anyone who wants it, and impossible to pull down.
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.
There is a lot of talk about Diebold - but what about the people who bought the machines off them? They were all I believe state governments and agencies. I'd say that they have been guilty of gross negligence in the buying process. And even now when the truth is coming out they are still not even holding an inquiry or even publicly demanding answers from Diebold. Surely there must be some laws that can be used to hold the state agencies responsible. I wonder if they could end up being sued by a losing candidate if he could prove that their negligence led to him losing? Generally I'm against law-suits but sometimes its the only thing that get institutions or companies to sit up and take notice.
Doesn't this fall under some sort of homeland security thing?
Such the exposure is the right and duty of real americans?
People seem to be taking these links as gospel truth. Do we have any proof that these documents have not been doctored before they were put on the web?
These quotes are amusing and energizing to be sure, but are they accurate?
Clear, Dark Skies
Ah how I like to spend my time re-inventing what others have done many times before but in an incompatible manner.
How to distribute documents across a whole organisation in an available manner? I could install Usenet News servers and have them do it, or I could waste weeks writing wrappers round apt-get, hacking dselect and tie myself directly to Debian, and spend time installing apt on hundreds of machines.
Or I could just post the document to a newsgroup... DOH!
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've read the paper on the security analysis of the Diebold voting machines. It was one big hole. What is Diebold pursuing now ? They can't just clean up their reputation by removing links from the web, it's riduculuos. On the other hand, since that report went public, some other state (or states) bought the same system. Nobody who is actually responsible for decision ever cared. Some stupid game of politics.
I like my outfit, it's inexpensive, but cool -- April Ryan
The documents are theirs, but they've been altered to increase the number of inflammatory statements, or to remove context.
I'm sorry, but I've purchased to much herbal viagra to believe everything I read on the Internet...
Clear, Dark Skies
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-1.pdf
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-2.pdf
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-3.pdf
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-4.pdf
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-5.pdf
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-6.pdf
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-7.pdf
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-8.pdf
Diebold_suppressing_bbv_chapter-9.pdf
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I think he made a typo and meant:
If voting would be illegal, it could really change things
I want my karma, and I want it now!
It's what we use here in the UK.
You go into a little booth with a ballot paper, where you will find a pencil. Mark an X in the box next to the candidate you want, fold up the paper and post it in the ballot box.
It's more auditable and even if the paper, pencils and boxes are manufactured by a company who make no secret of their support for one particular political party, it's difficult to see how it could make any difference.
I'm not trolling - if someone could explain, please do.
Aren't there some principals/ground rules about how voting should take place? It seems a pretty fundamental thing, after all. I mean something along the lines of "the process should be observable and observed by ordinary members of the general public".
When I went to vote in some local elections recently (in Europe), you post your vote into a transparent box. The people cross your name off the public electoral role with a pen. There are observers selected from the public at all stages of the process, both at the actual voting and the counting. It would be extremely difficult to rig such an election.
I like it this way. I can trust that system. Knowing what we do about computers and electronic systems, can we ever really trust an electronic vote? My main criticism is that it is not observable, i.e. you can't have a neutral observer who can say, "yes, that persons vote has definately been counted" because they can't actually observe the process.
Let's been voting manual.
This is actually pretty amazing.
.sig file, even if it does become kind of creepy in this context. Don't be distracted, Diebold is strangling democracy in a bathtub while we stand by and watch.
If Diebold is claiming copyright infringement, they are admitting that the memos are real!
I hope people don't focus so much on the
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I would like to point you in the direction of http://zetatalk.com/ . The information on this site is about as trustworthy as any and all leaked memos out there, regardless of their source.
Of course, Diebold has gone out and pulled a rabbit out of their hat by going out and trying to use the DMCA. Still, it could be caused by them not knowing what the DMCA really is, or a result of the DMCA being a convenient piece of legislation in this case.
"If voting could change things, it would be illegal. If not voting could change things, it would be illegal."
But I will be TANJed if I can remember who said it.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
How does copyright law apply to corporate documents like these? My understanding of current copyright law (post Berne Convention) is that just about anything is copyrighted when it is "fixed in a tangible form of expression". Since this isn't a registered copyright, a civil suit would only be able to ask for actual damages, not statutory damages. Since the commercial market for internal memoranda and emails is negligible, there are no actual damages.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Microsoft shoots the Windows Messenger
By John Leyden
Posted: 29/10/2003 at 12:16 GMT
Microsoft is to disable Windows Messenger and will activate Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) by default on XP boxes, in a move to better shield Windows PCs against hostile attack.
Windows Messenger, a function used to exchange data between computers unrelated to MSN Messenger, has become more trouble than its worth in recent months since spammers latched onto the service as a way of launching pop-up spam boxes on targeted PCs. The service was also subject to a security flaw this month which created a mechanism for crackers to commandeer vulnerable Windows boxes. Microsoft has issued a patch but even so, the problem is another black mark against a not terribly useful service.
So Microsoft has decided to turn off Messenger with Windows XP Service Pack 2, due in the first half of next year. Microsoft is yet to detail how it intends to disable the service on other versions of Windows. Windows Messenger is seldom used by consumers; and businesses, which might use it, have the expertise to turn the service back on.
Last week, AOL took the unilateral decision to kill off Windows Messenger for its subscribers.
Security Fence
Microsoft execs this week outlined various plans to improve Windows security at the firm's Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles.
IDG reports that Microsoft is developing a new API (application programming interface) for RPCs (remote procedure calls) to more tightly control the operation of the protocol in MS environments. The security shortcomings of Microsoft's implementation of RPC within its distributed component object model (DCOM) were highlighted by the devastating Blaster worm. Further Microsoft security alerts about this same RPC component of Windows since the August spread of Blaster have merely underlined the problem.
Microsoft also plans to apply more restrictive default configurations on its ubiquitous Internet Explorer web browser Local Machine and Local Intranet security zones. (R)
So someone has a quote in their e-mail signature... I don't get why we have to make a scene out of it
please, push those documents on p2p networks and on freenet (for those of you who use it) too. it is the best way to preserve them and it will make Diebold's life much harder.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. /me mods this up +1 Insightful
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
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:
These are just the sort of people I want in charge of the machines that people vote on in my election. No, really. [/sarcasm]
Nicholas Eckert
vidstudent
I heard a story once about WWII. --It went like this; when the German death camps were discovered by the Allied forces, one high ranking General, rounded up as many people in his command as possible and marched them through the scene, telling them, "Look at this and do not forget it. People are going to try to deny that this has happened."
You watch. Two years from now, when all the links and documents have been rounded up, there will be people swearing up and down that this Diebold thing is just another loony conspiracy. Just wait. The PR spin will put a rationalized face on it and raise lots of reasonable doubt, etc.
Newsflash: Conspiracies bloody well exist. Those who swear they do not are chumps who think that watching television documentary 'science' shows makes them smart. And amazingly, many of them can also tell you who Joseph Goebbels was as well! (Cuz they learned about it from a television documentary.)
-FL
I, for one, am glad that my voting site still uses the old monster sized lever-operated machines for voting. Everything is on one board, I can change my decisions as many times as I want before I exit the booth. And, of course, there's that satisfying mechanical noise when my ballot is created.
With all the millions of dollars spent trying to implement various digital solutions, is it really more expensive to maintain the old machines? Maybe the old machines don't break down often enough to support a company? How tragic is that? We have to go to a system which we know is less (physically) reliable, just so we can keep a company in business! For the cost of the new voting machine hardware, you can buy an awful lot of replacement widgets for the old machines; for the cost of anuual software upgrades you can directly employ quite a few old-machine repairmen.
And finally, I'm sure the machines at my polling station are at least 40 yeras old. All these digital stations we're buying now - what condition will they be in come 2043? Will we have to find a stick of 266MHz DDR? How expensive will it be to manufacture the (let's say) 2500 required to fix these great voting machines? We worry that the machines we have are obsolete, but aren't we just replacing them with something even worse?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
http://www.emptylogic.com/suprnova/torrents/469/li sts.tgz(1).torrent
Please remove random space inserted by slashcode.
Caveat: Its a few days old, so it might not work
'Don't Blame Me for Bush, I voted with the Majority.'
Al Gore won the vote,
did it matter ?
No.
> "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal
That's an interesting remark, though it's also totally irrelevant to the
legality of discussing technical flaws in a voting system. But hey, this
is slashdot, so let's ignore its irrelevance and discuss it anyway...
The main reason that voting doesn't change much is because of the electoral
college system, which however is absolutely necessary to keep the nation at
peace with itself. Without it, we'd be at civil war in twenty years. With
the EC, the govenrment decays and will gradually fall apart in another couple
of hundred years -- that's *better*.
The reason the candidates from the opposing parties are so much alike, is
because to have any prayer of being elected they have to garner the electoral
votes of the swing states -- the states containing roughly equal numbers of
conservatives and liberals, i.e., the states with roughly equal amounts of
non-urban and urban population. This prevents them from candidating on
platforms that would make the largely geographical boundaries between the
conservative and liberal areas more obvious than they already are and stir
up tensions between them. Thus, the system we have holds us together. A
direct voting system would encourage the candidates to appeal to the strong
emotions of one side or the other, which would drive wedges between us.
Oh, voting would *change* things then, alright -- but it wouldn't be good.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
(I hate when that happens...)
Excuse me, fellas, not meaning to troll or offend or anything, but, really, what's the point of "sigs" in any kind of business communication? They're even less professional than emoticons (but fortunately the latter seem to finally be dying out).
Seriously, can anything *good* actually come out of that little injection of snarky personality into some permanently archived business memo? You want to show me how clever and wry you are, keep a blog fer chrissake (this decade's trendy digital paen to the 20-something Ego), but keep it all separate and apart from the workplace.
Common sense, no?
....but is't the US the country whose President actually received less votes that the loser - try telling the people who voted for the "loser" that their votes matter!
Jaj
[runs and hides in flame prove shelter]
Interesting or not (it isn't very), it has nothin g to do with the story. Moderators on crack, again.
Actually, if you want to be professional, you may also ignore such aspects of your contact's appearance in order to focus on his offers and opportunities. :
If you had to work for me and you'd have refused a decent offer because of such considerations, I'd have fired you
Sigs are for people who like them, other may just ignore them.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I simple can't believe that these machines have no paper print out. What happens if there is a recount? What happines if one of the machines does out?
My wife works the polls every year and the card punch system is MUCH better in my view. I am a liberal democrate and I hate the way the last election went, but I hated hearing Democrates complaining about the card punch system.
As a voter you simple have to be responsable for your OWN ballet. How can I be responsible for my ballet when it simply spills into a flash rom some where?
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
This Modern World comic for 10.28.03
How do you like my Halloween Costume?
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
From chilling effects, the letter there is nothing in the memo claiming that the documents have been altered, claims of liebel, etc. They simply claim that the site links to documents to which Diebold holds the copyright that are being published without Diebold's consent. You'd think they'd take that approach instead of claiming that they own the documents being published if they thought they could. For that matter, though, have they even registered a copyright on these documents? Can they sue for copyright infringement if they haven't explicity registered a copyright? I don't know what the law is - in the USA or here in Australia for that matter - but I'd be interested to find out.
Or is it a vigilante Right-wing 'justice' sort of head-space which makes you spout so endlessly this apologist crap? (Hard-core K5 asshole, for those who care.)
I sometimes think that guys like you are wind-up toys which the bad guys release into the world to do their damage.
Listen: If Diebold is claiming copyright infringement, it bloody-well means that the documents are legitimate. --Though, when they have enough of the links to the evidence shut down, I'm sure they will start denying everything, just to make you happy.
-FL
What if we were to write a trojan that would find a "host" and add the contents of the memo into the "autoexec.bat" or into the "hosts" files? It then subsequently would "search" four additional hosts on the network to deploy its payload. If the system does not have a network connection, it could search for valid e-mail addresses in the boot drive and e-mail this highly informative content to other welcoming readers who then would be enlightened?
Which is nice.
The 'last war' with Iraq had been going on since 1991. If you understand basic international diplomacy and what a cease fire really means, you will understand that the war was never declared over, just an end to overt hostilities was declared between the US (and coalition forces) and Iraq.
It was similiar to what continues on today between North and South Korea, those two countries are at war and have been at war for over 50 years. Yes, 50 years. There was never a declaration of peace between North and South Korea, just a cease fire armistice.
I can't blame you for not knowing. I have the impression that most people aren't really taught such truths in school anymore. These days, for one to actually learn the truth, they have to hunt for it themselves.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Can't somebody post this on freenet? Doing so would complicate the issue of where to send the legal orders.
"We're cautioning anyone from drawing wrong or incomplete conclusions about any of those documents or files purporting to be authentic." Of course, this means that if they are not authentic, they have no DMCA claim. And if they are authentic, I still feel that they fall under fair use.
But I'll still remove them when I get my C&D letter.
you could always vote for somebody else. You don't have to vote republican or democrat. run for office yourself and make some changes.
Why hasn't the major media picked up on this? This could be the biggest scandal in US history.
Sir,
I am a constituent in your district. I am writing to thank you for supporting HR 2339 and to tell you how important this issue is to me. When I saw you had co-sponsored the bill, I was very pleased. I recently moved to this area, and previously had the pleasure of Rep. Nadler of NY as my representative. Your voting record indicates that you are representing us very well.
HR2239 is very important to me for two reasons:
As a citizen, I was ashamed of Florida 2000 and found the whole mess reminiscent of a third world country. We are still paying the price of that election with GWB's policies. I fear that next time we won't even know we have had an election stolen.
As a professional, I have been in the computer security business for over 12 years. I currently lead a global consulting practice specialising in computer security (we are based in NYC). I was very supportive of the analysis conducted by John Hopkins and I was glad to finally see someone discuss this serious issue. In my business I am responsible for securing some of the most sensitive systems such as banks, pharmaceutical R&D etc. I have a lot of experience both in securing and in "testing" systems. In our business we call this "ethical hacking" and we get paid to try to break into systems. I have seen how easy it is to subvert the security of many commercial systems. After reading the Johns Hopkins analysis of the Diebold system I was shocked at the level of risk these systems would introduce. I seriously believe that it is possible not only to compromise them, but to do so en-mass in a way that could subvert an entire presidential election. Even worse, I believe this can be done with subtlety so that it is undetected. This means our very system of democracy is at stake. In a way I wonder whether I should be surprised at the fact that republicans do not worry about this, or whether I should be concerned that they have reasons not to worry.
Your actions in this matter are admirable and of great importance. You have my support.
Sincerely,
Sleep safe, Zachary Kessin, for you now sleep in a world ruled by an unelected idiot who does not even care for a pretext when attacking a sovereign country, no matter who rules it. Be a sheep, give up your brain so you don't have to fight for whatever "justice" passes for nowadays.
he's the idiot son of an asshole!
You don't want someone who is making electronic voting machines to have that kind of sarcastic attitude. This is serious. There is no room for games or play when it comes to selecting leaders of our country.
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
Why make it illegal and risk a revolt when a simple demagogic TV ad can do the same thing?
My Big Archive Of Stuff now contains a copy of the Diebold mailing list. This gets burnt to CD and saved on a hard drive as backup. If one fails another copy is made as soon as possible. It's never going away. Unfortunately, even squished down to 6.something MB using 7z, it's too big to host on my tiny corner of the web, sorry.
Yea, that's right, go on kazaa and type in Diebold and you'll find the mail....on over a hundred different hosts with quick speedy downloads to par!
Same's true for all the p2p apps, even the waste network I'm on! Sorry Diebold, I'm not gonna stop hosting your memo's until your entire goddamn corperation is taken down and the lie is revealed.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Okay. Two things here.
1. If Diebold is small, then what do you think counts as big?
2. Try asking the average person, "How many non-Jews died in the Holocaust?" A great deal of time, money and resource has been funneled into shaping the general belief that only Jews were killed by the millions, when this is by no means the truth.
Thus, it's not so much about denial as it is spin to serve agendas.
I don't like the word 'Conspiracy' because it too has been the target of spin and social programming. When the word 'Conspiracy' comes up in casual conversation with regular muggles, people shudder inwardly and have automatic negative emotional reactions. This is the earmark of standard mind-programming as installed by the media.
This being the case, I prefer to use the word, 'Corruption'. This word has not been linked to automatic fear, repulsion and reactions of denial. Only a truly susceptible person would try to claim that Corruption does not exist.
-FL
Wow. I read this story, then went to Yahoo which displays my horoscope (I know). Today's horoscope for virgo:
Problems with machines could have your nerves totally on edge. This may be one of those days when everything seems to break. Some of the problems you might be able to fix yourself, dear Virgo, but at least one involves something that may have to be replaced. This might be the one you need the most right now! Think of it as a sign from the Universe that you should do something else. That's the only way to stay sane!
Perhaps yahoo's horoscopes can give us a better result than the Diebold machines.
The way i understand it is they will loose no matter
,
what. People have the law on their side on this one.
Like say constitutional rights ? Doesnt voting
have to be transparent with understanding that we
make mistakes and we need to go back and recount
(thats not even posible with these machines).
So if they do take you to court you can always
use the actual memos to prove your point , and
you can be asured that diebold wont be that
stupid and wont even let things go that far.
The only route is legal treats and such . It cant
posibly go beyound that , otherwise eveything
comes out. So with my understanding , all that
has to be done is to keep spreading the memos
and the talking arguments for this kind of
evil doing . And the shit will float to the top
where everyone can see it.
Another thing i wanted to touch up on
is it posible to ask your isp or hosting company
on record if they are willing to protect your
constitutional rights ? Meaning they wont cave
to any legal treat unless upheld by a judge!!!
I am sure that they woudnt want this kind of bad
publicity now would they ? So next time you
sign up for an isp or something like that
ask them to include those things in your contract
or get them on tape(just like they do to us).
just rambling for peace
I've lived in several communities in the US and have been voting since 1979 and I've never even seen a voting machine. I've always voted on paper forms that were designed to be read by an optical scanner. Other people have never seen anything but punch ballots, or "voting machines" with pull levers that mark ballots for people.
There is no country wide standard of how voting is conducted.
People outside the US may not be aware of this, but local governments (cities, counties and states) are extremely important in our system. US states are pretty much exclusively in charge of setting standards on how voting is conducted. For example, while every state has secret ballots, this is only a widely accepted custom; well into the nineteenth century people voted in some places by testifying publicly at the local courthouse. States typically don't have very stringent standardization. Local municipalities or counties (depending on the part of the country) actually conduct the polling and have a great deal of leeway in how they do it.
Combine this local autonomy with the typically frugal funding of municipal functions compared to what a European would expect, our entrepreurial spirit and our love of technological quick fixes, it's pretty much inevitable that there should be an array of half baked systems out there. The Diebold system in question is only the latest.
I wonder whether this chaos has a kind of protective effect, at least on the national and statewide level. Think about this: barring a knife edge result like the last presidential election, the only way to rig a statewide or presidential election would require undermining a variety of systems in a variety of places, using a variety of methods. The chancs of avoiding detection decrease hyperbolically in the number of exploits attempted.
The real danger with electronic voting is that in our post-Florida mania for a technical quick fix, a de facto electronic voting standard will emerge. This has happened in the past, for example in states adopting the secret ballot. However, electronic voting provides a single point of vulnerability, in which a rogue staffer with sufficient skills could conceivably change the composition of the US government. Americans tend to dismiss the possibility of voting manipulation by corporate interests as class warfare paranoia, but think of the opportunity this presents to certain foreign intelligence agencies.
What we ought to do is something that has never been done in the US: set real standards for polling methods, especially (but not limited to) electronic ones. I think most people here understand what this should include: things like auditabiliy, indepedent security analysis as part of system acceptance, etc. These standards could be implemented by multiple vendors, and for security reasons we would probably want to have at least four or five major players, and set maximums for the percentage of an electorate in a state voting on a particular vendor's machines.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From the BBC
I won't dispute the U.S.'s involvement, we supplied Iraq with weapons to fight Iran, and turned a blind eye at first when Saddam invaded Kuwait. In fact, I hate my country sometimes, often even, but stop misrepresenting the facts.
So the U.S. supported Iraq in attacking Iran, not without reason, but that's no excuse. So then Iraq invades Kuwait, but the U.N. intervened, it wasn't just the U.S.. Kuwait was, rightly, liberated, but many Iraqi soldiers were unjustly killed while retreating thanks to Bush senior. (go google for that)
This latest war, for absolutely no reason
Perhaps, but at least Saddam's regime is dead and hopefully a more peaceful one will take its place. I seriously doubt Bush Jr.'s sincerity, and no weapons were found. But to be fair, there was evidence of weapons programs, but not nearly enough to justify war. Bush Jr.'s motivation was obviously something else, whether it was money, revenge, freeing Iraq of Saddam, I won't speculate, but I generally hold a very low opinion of politicians.
What's my point? Is the U.S. innocent? No, obviously not - and there's no excuse. But are you full of shit? Hell yes. The U.S. is not solely responsible for the troubles in Iraq, and neither is the rest of the world blameless.
Playing these ridiculous "blame America" games is going to get you nowhere.
Some would say he wasn't that wrong on that either.
Are you serious? I think you need to rethink that after learning a little more about him.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
"Particularly shocking is the line: `If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.'"
Baloney! That's just a joke and an old populist sig line, and not the least bit shocking. Treating it as though it was a serious policy statement from the CEO is absurd! I'm not impressed with Diebold's stance on open voting platforms, but a credible attack on THAT position will only be hurt by silly lines like the quoted one above.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not yet suficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Hook line and sinker, every time.
You really know how to pull em in.
When last has voting really had a profound effect? When last have we voted about issues and not FOR parties? A total swing in the political rulers have not had any noticable effect on the country... hence the opinion that there had been no real need to vote.
The Civil War, which many consider the single most important event in our country's short history was precipitated by Lincoln's election. The moment southerners realized they were effectively disenfranchised by a unified northern block vote, they decided to leave what they considered to be a voluntary union. 9-11 is a drop in the bucket compared to some of the action that occured in the war. If Lincoln had not been elected, take a moment to consider what the US might be like today in terms of policy and even just who is alive and who is not...
On a more recent note, the current concensus seems to be that Bush was incorrect to get into Iraq. This must mean that people believe election of another leader would have kept us out of Iraq, right? This event has the possibility of bringing peace to the mideast via propagation of democracy through the region. Or maybe it could result in the next worldwide Muslin/Christian conflict, building irreparable animosities (eg the Balkans) across the entire planet for centuries?
It's tough to say, but it is fairly clear to me that the accident that allowed Bush to be elected legally but perhaps "unfairly" will have fairly important but unpredictable results?
All we need is for some U.S. congress member to get up and read the memos into the record. There is pretty much no legal way to stop them, and once it's in the record, they cannot be removed.
MM
get yours today
Did the distribution and misrepresentation of property not your own become an act of good? Once again, you can count on slashdot.org to disseminate lies and conjecture as truth, as long as you are sufficiently righteous. Even if these memos had some real substance, rather than merely proving people at Diebold did their jobs, no-one would have the right to distribute them with out express permission from Diebold. Are some people just that dense that they cannot grasp this concept? Do they really think they have a right to do whatever they want as long as they make claims of conspiracy? Regardless of the validity of the claim? I say the schools involved distribute the academic record of the students participating in the distribution, under the guise of "exposing cheating and academic scandal." Who cares if the charges are valid, they should have a right to expose the students' wrongdoing, right?
Put the docs on Freenet with the key "Diebold". All done.
Please, do you have any sources to back up any of these "facts" you present?
Maybe you shold open your eyes and read this article among others.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
Have you seen their home page? Doesn't it remind you of the quote "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." A few others from the "Quotes on Patriotism" page - http://www.samueljohnson.com/patrioti.html - (such as #405) seem appropriate too.
To contact your critter, go here and search on your zip code.
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal
.sig to me. Does that reflect the company's position? The employee's position? Maybe, it's simply a quotation pertinent to the division in which this employee worked. Maybe it's from a collection of quotes on voting.
Looks like a
Talking about how "shocking" this particular piece of flotsam is smacks of tabloid journalism.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
... is completely off-topic. You rednecks can rant about Iraq on your own time. All this has absolutely nothing to do with Diebold.
Why have these documents not appeared on Freenet yet? Among the mirrors listed on the "Why War?" website, there are no Freenet links. Yet this case seems to be what Freenet was designed for.
Fascism didn't tell people to kill millions of Jew, Homosexuals, Gypsies and Disabled People, just to think of how to work together, the people that supported Fascism did commit some of the most horrific crimes humanity has ever encountered but what they preeched originally was togetherness what they did was disgusting.
Fascism is a modern expression of Plato's Republic. There is an entire chapter on eugenics in that book, so it should not have been surprising that was going on. Also, if you look around in our modern world, it is pretty amazing how the worst kinds of humanity flourish and reproduce so quickly when natural selection is eliminated. I bet if you were able to bring a man from 1900 and drop him in Kansas City, he would think we were monsters. Whatever anyone may say about the methods of Fascism, the criticism was right on the money.
The Jewish question is a little more complicated. But in the early 20th century, international finance was considered synonomous with international Jewry. The criticisms of this system was even worse than it is today given the world wide depression in the early 30's. Today, we call it globalism, and is no longer associated with a particular race. Even the green party folks are hard pressed to articulate their anti-globalist stance without using the word "nationalist". I have always found it rather comical.
Basically, fascism had the same ideology on race as the Israelis. The race based laws for citizenship were no different than those in Israel today. In fact, many would argue German concentration camps were much nicer than the Israeli ones. German ones had flushing toilets, pools, tennis courts, even orchestras. The barracks were heated in the winter and had fans in the summer. They also got to work, and feel the satisfaction of being productive.
The palestinians just get tents, no modern amenities. They don't get a job. Nothing. There is no plan to resettle them. They don't get to bitch about going to Madagascar as the Jews did.
You know, as skanky as I find this little debacle, it's kind of refreshing to have a company claiming infringement who actually wants you to remove the infringing documents. They're asking you to remove it, and instead of demanding money, they're simply providing clear and simple directions to regain 'compliance' with their 'copyrights'. None of this, "certain of your documents contain offending text, and if you don't pay us lots of money we'll take you to court and tell you which ones."
I guess I prefer an honest crook every time. I still hope these honest crooks get hammered, though.
Check out the Auschwitz Orchestra You the palestinians are given that much freedom?
of the memos. Thousands of copies of it are scattered all over the world. Some are already on CD's being passed out to lawmakers.
They don't want these memos out because they point to illegal activity. I think their time and effort should be toward fixing the bugs, and supplying a verifiable paper ballot for each voter.
Resist the privatization of our vote.
photosMy Photostream
The proof? There isn't any proof. And we all know that the lack of proof is prima facia evidence that there is a conspiracy (and that it is working).
The quote is from Revolution Books, a historically Communist bookstore here in New York. In context, what it means is that voting alone cannot solve the problems in a democracy. Direct action is also required--think about the civil-rights movement. Technically, African-Americans could vote, but it took more than that to accomplish real change. So, the offending quote is more of an exhortation to do MORE in your democracy than simply vote--march, speak out, dump the odd bale of tea in the harbor.
The Civil War was a likely answer yes. It may just have been the first and last.
As for the current state. The people wanted war, and both parties would have gone to war to keep their place in office. Sure it may have been a bad decision to do so, but that is not any fault of the current government. It was cause by the pressure of the people, economy and media.
With several of the ANNOUNCE memos showing passwords to the ftp servers with their software IN PLAIN TEXT it's no wonder that security isn't a main priority there. And it's also no wonder that they're trying to round up the websites. I wonder how many copies of the voting software are floating around the net by now.
Yeah...I love this shit. I mean, I just installed Gentoo and have been googling for help configuring it. Every other 'linux forum' site I come upon has a story about how some guy invented a new wheel. If these guys work like this at their day jobs...man.
Blar.
the ISP that got scared. Liebold Threatened them too.
the book, "Blackbox Voting" is available as a free download. It is mirrored all over the world.
photosMy Photostream
Hello, I'm the Boston University mirror.
I expect that BU will receive a DMCA notice in the next day or two, and ask me to remove the memos. Although I would very much like to find this, I simply don't have the resources to get into a legal battle (and it's doubtful BU would stick its neck out for me).
But that's not even necessary. If I could just find two people willing to put up mirrors once my mirror goes down (I've already found one), than their takedown notice will have the net effect of putting another copy of the memos online. This seems to be the best overall strategy for those who can't fight this legally.
If a willing mirror could email me, and let me know what the url of your mirror is, I'd really appreciate it.
chrisn1 [at] bu [dot] edu
So, I'll ask it again. What are you doing with this information?
FL?
Far-off Lands?
Foreign Leadership Camp?
Fish Lake?
Oh, I get it, he's from Fish Lake.
The sig quote was probably quoting one of these texts.
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
Richard Lugar, and received a long reply letter. It spoke of this support for this and that legislation that lead to, essentially, a push for electronic balloting systems with "easy to read and use interfaces", etc. In the long reply to my original message in support of HR 2239, seeking a companion bill in the senate. HR 2239 calls for an ironclad requirement for a hardcopy printout of one's ballot for two purposes: 1)the voter can check their vote and 2) to supply a hardcopy for secure storage in case of recount: the hardcopies would be used in any recount.
Lugar's reply made NO mention of hardcopy printouts, ignoring the primary thrust of my letter to him. All he indicated was that he would consider future enhancements to the law as they came along.
No hardcopy? Then I flat refuse to use the voting machine. I have acquired the necessary absentee ballot request and will be using this for all future elections until a printout is part of the process.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211 .htm
.PDF format at Blackboxvoting.com and here at Scoop Ms Harris observes.
"DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 - Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters."
- Washington Post Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22
Yes. Something very strange happened in Volusia County on election night November 2000, the night that first Gore won Florida, then Bush, and then as everybody can so well remember there was a tie.
Something strange indeed. But what exactly? In the above report ( click for full version), written days after the election, hotshot Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank goes on to attribute the strange 16,022 negative vote tally from Volusia's precinct 216 to an apparently innocent cause.
".... faulty 'memory cards' in the machines caused the 16,000-vote disappearance on election night. The glitch was soon fixed," he wrote.
But thanks to recent investigations into Black Box Voting by Washington State writer Bev Harris we now know this explanation is not correct. In fact it is not even in the ballpark.
According to recently discovered internal Diebold Election Systems memos, Global Election Systems' (which was later purchased by Diebold) own technical staff were also stumped by the events in Volusia County/
In Chapter 11 of her new book "Black Box Voting In the 21st Century" released early today in
"If you strip away the partisan rancor over the 2000 election, you are left with the undeniable fact that a presidential candidate conceded the election to his opponent based on [results from] a second card that mysteriously appears, subtracts 16,022 votes, then just as mysteriously disappears."
Working in parallel with Ms Harris Scoop has also been inquiring into the events on election night in Volusia county. Much of the material that follows is similar to that which appears in Chapter 11 of her book.
The starting point in this shocking discovery about election 2000 came in a series of internal Diebold ES technical support memos.
The following is an abbreviated version of the exchange concerning the peculiar events in Volusia county. For the purposes of research the exchange is included in full as an Appendix to this report (APPENDIX TWO). The discussion took place in early 2001 as an audit was underway in Volusia county into the events.
**********
(NOTE: The names below each extract link to the full text of the emails in the appendices below.)
I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".
Lana Hires - Volusia County Florida - January 17, 2001 8:07 AM
My understanding is that the card was not corrupt after (or before) upload. They fixed the problem by clearing the precinct and re-uploading the same card. So neither of these explainations washes. That's not to say I have any idea what actually happened, its just not either of those...
The problem is its going to be very hard to collect enough data to really know what happened. The card isn't corrupt so we can't post-mortem it (its not mort).
Ken Clark - Diebold ES R&D Manager - Ja
yeah yeah. I'm not a conspiracy buff. I think CNN is just stupid. They report what they think will make you mad, not necessarily the truth.
Despite a "cease and desist" link on both sites, I've heard nothing from Diebold so far. The only conclusion one can draw from that is that Diebold knows it can't get any further than DMCA notices and simply doesn't bother about non-DMCA'able sites.
They are going after MIT. MIT has never been afraid, not even of MS. Fun fun.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
The way it happened was closer to:
The UN charter notwithstanding it would be hard to argue that Iraq believed that the US would let a resource rich nation fall into the hands of a millitarily adventurous state like Iraq.Like you'll ever run a business... hahaha...
I don't know if linking to a Nazimedia site will do much for your credibility. The so-called "editors" there will post any conspiracy-theory Jews-control-the-world crap they can get their hands on.
Give me good ol' corporate media with some sane editorial control any day.
Seriously, if you can't spell "Democrat" or "responsible", you have no right to choose the arguably most powerful man in the world.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation
with the average voter."
- Winston Churchill
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Maybe in uber fascist land, but in the free world, they're either or. Iranian, Persian, only fascist Americans claim that Iranian isn't a prim and proper word, and ergo you are an American fascist.
Having your attempts to quell leaked info on your *insert*bad*business*practice*here* land on /. is not a good way to start -- there are how many thousands of other mirrors now?
Not to mention BitTorrent and eMule links.
Sure there are probably flaws with this.
There's one flaw: if you let the voter take a human readable receipt out of the booth, it's no longer a secret ballot, and it becomes possible to bribe, blackmail, or simply pressure someone else into voting the way you want.
If that was the price we had to pay for untamperable elections, I'd willingly pay it; but it's not. Plain old pen-and-paper voting is untamperable within a couple percentage points, which is good enough for me; I don't care too much if someone gets elected by 24% of the voting age public instead of the usual 25%.
Even electronic voting can be made untamperable: now that their website's back up (if it goes down again, check Google's cache) I'd like to post Yet Another Plug for vreceipt.com's white paper on verifiable voting receipts. Basically you give the voter a receipt which:
Then, as long as nobody is adding votes to the final tally (so yes, we still need honest poll workers to make sure that the number of people walking into booths is the number of votes reported by the computers), the election results will be instantly countable, completely verifiable, and perfectly accurate. The only drawback is that it would require lots of expensive custom printers.
Granted, I don't expect to ever see this system in use; I suspect public-key encryption may be next to Condorcet voting on the list of "stuff too complicated to explain to the politicians"... but just reading about the possibilities puts all the "why is my broken smart card sending out negative numbers?" incompetence at Diebold in perspective.
Delivered-To: dfarber+@ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu
d _c -d.pdf
. html
s ts .tgzs .tgz
. cg i?NoticeID=912
.
d .html
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 21:24:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Subject: Students receiving cease-desists from Diebold...
To: Dave Farber , Declan McCullagh
Hi Dave, Declan,
We could really use your help publicizing this.
Myself, along with students from 20 other universities are starting to
receive cease and desist letters from Diebold Election Systems. A copy
of the cease-and-desist letter received by MIT is here:
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~jhall/temp/diebol
The letters are in response to our coordinated electronic civil
disobedience effort to keep a compressed file of internal Diebold
memos alive and force them to do a legal version of "whack a mole."
We have other students with the files lined up ready to take our place
as sites are taken down.
For more on the disobedience effort, See:
http://why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold
We need help getting the word out and having other institutions/
individuals post mirrors to the files. The Berkeley copies will be
available here (below) until we are forced to take them down or can
convince our University to fight the cease-and-desist actions on fair
use grounds.
http://sims.berkeley.edu/~jhall/nqb/archives/li
http://sims.berkeley.edu/~parkert/misc/list
We are within the bounds of fair use as the memos are highly
newsworthy and seem to implicate illegal activity on behalf of Diebold
Election Systems. A more extensive legal case is available by reading
Wendy Seltzer's response to one of the cease-and-desist letters:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/responses/notice
If you are a student reading this and can host a mirror, send a link
and your institution's name to info@why-war.com
Thanks for your time,
Joe
Joseph Lorenzo Hall http://pobox.com/~joehall/
Graduate Student blog: http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb/
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal."
--Excerpt from a Diebold Election Systems internal memo.
http://why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebol
From my experience, the point of "sigs" in business communication is "a place to stick the disclaimer". I have friends who work in banking, and they have 50+ line sigs which are disclaimers saying things about how you're supposed to delete the email if it wasn't intended for you, how all communication is privileged, how the employee doesn't speak for the company....
As if this sort of sig wasn't annoying enough, some of these friends insist on sending me 2 or 3 line emails. When your sig is 10x the size of your email content, don't bother!
Here is my mirror, safely beyond the reach of the DMCA:
I'm (somewhat) lazy and also having trouble understanding these Diebold memos. Could someone summarize what they say that's so damning?
My bicyles
You are placing improper standards on people because they hold jobs of high status. If you saw "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" on Nip/Tuck would you write to the network executive in charge? If Arrnold appended his messages with "Ask yourself what you can do for ME!" would you demand congressional investigation of egomania?
Only the Judge has to have the appearance of impropriety. The rest of the world can remain human.
Occasionally, politicians have used their ties to voting machine companies for fraud and illegal activities:
- Former Louisiana State Elections Official Jerry Fowler (D), is currently serving five years in prison for charges related to taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from voting machine scandals.
- Bill McCuen (D), former Arkansas Secretary of State, pled guilty to felony charges that he took bribes, evaded taxes, and accepted kickbacks. Part of the case involved Business Records Corp. (now merged with ES&S) for recording corporate and voter registration records.
Full Story here.Drill baby drill - on Mars
When I am king, I will create law that limits the right to speach (or perhaps the right to life) for vermin like you. It will be amusing to revel that "you people are just that dense that they cannot grasp this concept?" and dare violate my will.
When I am king, opposing my right to rule will also be illegal. Unless your king is actively funneling his tyranny for your benefit, which deprecates you to the same evil, why protect his tyranny? If only your everlasting devotion is rewarded by your satanist master, stengthening the power of the ring of Sauron (what legitimizes the position of your king), only strengthens the power that evil can commit against you.
The quote: "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal" from the message, is, in my opinion, poorly taken as significant. As the link shows, this is clearly a signature line - in which people put all sorts of things they find to be particularly "cute". I've seen countless emails from colleagues which include quotes that are quite deprecating of the business of their organizations - they're not meant to be taken seriously, but they do have _amusing_ relevance to most of the people who receive the emails (recall that this is an internal email to other Diebold employees).
To put any weight into a quotation which the author of the email included as an afterthought (if any thought was ever given to it after the sig file was first set up), and which was definitely never mean for public consumption, seems a waste.
There are serious issues raised by these memo's regarding Diebold's approach to the voting process. Focusing on this quote, however, simply occludes those issues.
Like you have a valuable opinion...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
If corrupted voting machines and their owners give us kings, we have the guillotine.
Diebold is an easy enough target for things they're actually doing wrong, going after them for an employee's sense of humor is just petty, and waters down any arguments for actual issue. It would be like going after Slashdot posts for misspellings...
This was INTERNAL stuff, this person wasn't an official spokesperson, nor was she a practicing physician. If she had dirt on illegal activities, cool, but no, she had a sig that, even if not a rarely perfect use of irony, is still her right as an American to display.
At least for now. You know, if these machines eroneously count two Democratic votes for every one Republican vote, this board is gonna get real quiet, real quick...
-Searcher
"I'm not allowed to say anything here, because I might piss someone, somewhere, off."
-Some guy in Cuba
Even if we can't get this passed at the federal level, we should be working to get versions of this passed at the state level. It's especially important for states like California which have large pockets of Republicans trying to implement Diebold systems.
If we act, we can stop them in California and Florida. There should be an initiative on this in the next California election. I'd work on it, but I live in Washington (we probably need to do the same thing even though we vote here with pencil and paper.)
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
What's more shocking to me than the "if voting could really change things" line is how horribly incompetent all these memos make this company appear. Voting should not be left to the buggy software of a single company that's probably sending kickbacks to the politicians. Actually, the most prevalent system today, the optical scanning system, appears to be the most ideal voting system. It leaves a clear paper trail and is counted with electronic precision. If a voter can't stay within the lines while penciling in the vote, it shouldn't be counted anyway.
And what's so LOL-worthy about that? Take this story. All the words you list apply, and the story is legitimate, whether you like it or not. it's also one of the most disgusting, Soviet-like deceptions perpetrated by your president. Not funny.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Some people seem to want voters to get a receipt showing who they voted for. This is a bad idea.
A receipt of this sort would destroy the secrecy of the ballot. It would allow people with money to buy votes, and people with power to intimidate voters to vote the "right" way.
For example, if there were voting receipts, your employer, the patriarch of your family, or local ward boss could ask to see your receipt... if you didn't vote for the "right" guy or refused to show your receipt, there could be negative consequences, especially for people without power.
Even if asking for your receipt was illegal, people would still do it... or intimidate voters with the mere possibility that they might demand to see their receipt.
I think that if the voting system is changed, it should certainly NOT include receipts, neither paper nor electronic.
There should be strong audit trails, of course, but it should be impossible to determine who an individual voter voted for.
See the Verified Voting web site.
There you can learn about HR2239 and see where your Congressional Representative stands on the issue. Links to Representatives and Senators are included so you can contact them and let them know how you feel. Let's do something other than sit around and complain about Diebold!
Joe Conason bought up a good question:
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
This is the difference between saying: "We are standardized on Microsoft Applications" and "We are standardized on TCP/IP".
Microsoft is a de facto "standard". TCP/IP is an actual standard.
What we DON'T want is a de facto standard. De facto "standards" arise around implmentation that meet the needs of people doing procurements. De facto standards happen because of the collective force of a large number of individual decisions. Arguably this is OK or even desirable in some cases, but not this one. If everyone lives with a fault in a de facto standard, then at least comparison-wise they're no worse of than anybody they're competing with. If everyone is living with BSOD in NT4, in a sense, the pain is less because it is distributed and nobody is at disadvantage.
When we talk about security however, this logic is deeply flawed. The more widespread the vulnerability, the greater damage you suffer by having that vulnerability. Therefore we should be very concerned with any de facto standards that emerge that have important security implications.
A real standard by contrast is drafted by experts in relevant fields, publicly scrutinized and debated. It is conceivable that a team working on proprietary software with closed and undisclosded design might do better than a process of public scrutiny, especially if "time to market" is an overriding concern. Conceivable but not likely. And in any case, the key advantage of a real standard is that it allows competing implementations. This removes the single point of access an spy could use to tamper with elections.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I was writing something about this earlier, and I couldn't find an actual source from where these memos came from. Then again, I'm quitting smoking and reducing caffeine, so my brain is pretty much toast right now on analytical situations.
But all of this came from a mailing list, if I recall correctly. To me, this implies that someone "defected" and as such might be willing to testify that, "Yes, these are the emails that I received", with enough proof that Diebold isn't willing to chance it.
Opinion: Scientology is a cult you should avoid. Follow the
Actually, I do place higher standards upon certain people because of their jobs. In the military, the higher in rank, the higher the standard. It also goes with the job.
Possibly. Possibly. I certainly hope you're right, but we have yet to see how the bulk of Americans react.
The trick is that there is a difference between secrets and conspiracies. A conspiracy of this type comes about when a group agrees to do something to the public without public consent. A few people often do become aware, but if they are generally ignored by the vast public, then larger consent has not been altered, and the conspiracy is still a success.
In Diebold's case, I think there is still a very good chance that the American public will simply refuse to inform themselves or do anything about the issue of bad voting machines.
I think this will be a really interesting test, since I agree, it seems that the flame of awareness is in fact reaching critical mass on this subject. But I am an optimist.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst. We're not even close to being out of the woods yet!
-FL
Yes, and here's a hilarious quote from the interview:
"We make enough money to stay in business," Hirsch said, declining to be more specific
Greedy capitalist sellout!
Seriously, it's gratifying to see that Communism has become so marginalized that even the manager of one of the few remaining Commie bookstores pays lip service to the power of the market.
Communists are the all-time champions of mass murder. People like this Hirsch cunt are the most evil people in the world, and I hate them with every fiber of my being. Collectivism must be smashed!
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Well, you read it on the Internet, so it must be true!
The entire process is transparent and more importantly, independant of the government through the agency known as Elections Canada.
If voting machines were introduced in Canada the same transparency and independance would have to be maintained. Automatic recounts are stipulated by law in close vote situations, that requires an auditable process. The Diebold machines are not auditable and would not conform to the law.
In all, it would be impossible not to mention insane, to move from a transparent, independant, auditable system to an inpenetrable, dependant, unauditiable one. I do not understand how these voting machines pass muster in the U.S.
"Please report any corrupted memory cards to me from elections. I've had one in Santa Barbara tonight. I'm curious how many more we have. We are entering another cycle of elections without this fixed I guess." (emphasis mine)
/. could be used to read these messages and gather any exerpts that might be useful. We just need a repository and some organization.
reference
I read some of the messages in the list, and saw some interesting (incrimimating?) stuff, but I don't know who to tell. Is anyone collecting excerpts from the messages? It seems that the womanpower of
The next message in the list is also interesting:
"Also have report from Marin regarding 3 precincts with significant "passed ballots", i.e., ballot going thru AccuVote without being counted. Anyone else experiencing this?" (emphasis mine)
reference
Read some of the messages for yourself. All it takes is a little wading through the normal boring company emails to get to the good stuff...
Filename: diebold_memo.html
Key: CHK@gvarXrMPVzH8eJVALa-VJEWliqgQAwI,~fu6drzFntkje
I have successfully retrieved it so you probably can also. There also seems to be a pdf version in there. They can both be found in frost.
Seriously, can anything *good* actually come out of that little injection of snarky personality into some permanently archived business memo?
The reader will think you're a human being? It's a hell of a lot better than those stupid, useless disclaimers that people include because they're too dumb to realize they're useless.
sulli
RTFJ.
It's established history. If you don't know this, you're not paying attention.
sulli
RTFJ.
I am hosting the full archives of diebolds memos. I will not give the url, but BRING IT ON DIEBOLD!!
-Seriv
I think one big reason is the sheer number of elections held in the US. Here in California each voter has several dozen elections to vote in every year.
I've worked in elections in Sweden, and we used a very secure, verifiable, triple checked hand counting system. But then again we only have three elections every four years. With 50 times as many, I can see how you'd start looking for more efficient methods.
We said that the DMCA would be used to stifle free speech and competition. It got shut down today for lexmark, but it's still being used by Diebold. This is what we were arguing about. All of you, granted you're a small minority on slashdot, but all of you who argued that the DMCA wouldn't be abused, and we just wanted to steal music, and all that other shit should be learning that we were right back then about the DMCA, and we are right right now about the dangers of corporate controlled electronic voting.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
So?
They decided that a public panic would be more dangerous than the miniscule risks associated with some dust in the air.
Good call.
the only theoretical difference between communism and socialism is this: communists believe in violent revolution. what happened in 1918?
that's it.
Dear god, how is this not flamebait? I'm by no stretch some kind of communist, but I hope I've moved in my personal politics to somewhere beyond the point where I resort to puerile name calling to express my displeasure.
Where was this posted from? The Ayn Rand school for Toddlers?
For those who don't recognise the paraphrased quote used as a .signature in that posting, it's originally a quote by the well known left-leaning (or should that be horizontal?) British politician Ken Livingston who said about the effectiveness of Democracy:
"If voting changed anything they'd abolish it"
He later reused that quote for a book. Ironically he's now the elected Lord Mayor of London, having stood as an independant and defeated the Labour parties preferred candidate.
You can read a short biography on Ken Livingston at the website of the Greater London Authority.
Chris, a taffie down under..
Notice that they reserve the right to claim damages.
Diebold, Incorporated is now safeguarding the foundation of America's history, the Charters of Freedom: the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights
Admittedly, they're talking about the vaults that store the original documents, but the irony is delicious.
Taking it a step further, why are these documents so safe? It's not because we have the originals stored in fire-proof, earthquake-proof vaults. It's because these precious documents have been copied over and over and distributed to every citizen and stored the world over. Even if the originals were destroyed, the content would be preserved. At the time of the Revolution, these documents were copied and widely distributed to insure that even if the originals fell into the hands of the British Army, the content would live on. Let's apply that model to more current situations:
1) The Founding Fathers, recognizing the value of the documents, copyright them. The Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc cannot be copied, and can only be read publically by permission of Founding Fathers (tm). Clearly, this concept would have been anathema to our forebears, as they recognized that the principals of government must be public and transparent.
2) Diebold's memos were leaked because copies were stored in an insecure manner. This (original) copy has been copied over and over to insure that it can't be destroyed. Although Dielbold is doing everything in it's power to stop the spread of the information, their success is limited. Now that the documents are on the net via ftp, p2p, and http, they can't all be tracked down and destroyed. People with an interest in freedom (wait, let me capitalize that for emphasis) Freedom continue to spread these douments so that their content is not destroyed and forgotten. I see a direct parallel here, and Diebold probably do too. That's the danger.
Here's a wacky thought as an aside. How can we place the documents in public record? There's got to be a way to make them permanantly available. All I can come up with is for someone to print them out, a second person to steal the copies, then report the crime to the police. The documents, now evidence in a criminal trial, would have to be read into the public record. Can anyone come up with a better plan?
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.
Free the code!
*dodges bottles*
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
People seem to argue this issue based on the principles and that is of course admirable. On the other hand, if you're really interested in boosting the opposition to these machines in their current form and keeping them from being deployed, there is another way. Currently, the opposition to these machines has the moral high ground but not a lot of power or media attention. How do you change that?
Start hacking these things. Steal the machines, post pictures of them being manipulated, describe in detail how to do it, blitz the media with the information. One detailed, illustrated guide to "hacking the Diebold" with wide distribution might go much further than a letter writing campaign.
You need to undermine the confidence some people still have in these machines, by any means necessary. It's dirty but it needs to be done.
Isn't democratic freedom wonderfull? Oops, only in Europe it seems.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
from this funny page
"Joel and I started this round of debugging on Friday morning. Sometime later, maybe Friday night, another programmer, Danny, came to work. I suppose it must be Sunday by now because it's been a while since we've seen my client's employees around the office. Along the way, at odd times of day or night that have completely escaped us, we've ordered in three meals of Chinese food, eaten six large pizzas, consumed several beers, had innumerable bottles of fizzy water, and finished two entire bottles of wine. It has occurred to me that if people really knew how software got written, I'm not sure if they'd give their money to a bank or get on an airplane ever again." (Ellen Ullman, in Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents. (Excerpt from Salon Magazine, http://www.salonmagazine.com, during the weeks of Oct. 13 and 20, 1997.))
...oh so true.
CHK@fsatUAqLqJP91UTrCoReT3qciVYNAwI,whenOQbgnMLSo8 4zg1~~aA/lists.tar.bz2
www.freenetproject.org
You Frickin' Loser.
-FL
The info on diebold is being mirrored from this website why-war.com. This website is very politically charged and has many anti-semetic articles. Can we not separate the right to vote from
this websites left wing agenda?
The sig line clearly points out that it's a sign seen outside a bookstore.
Pulling that quote so far out of context and using it so deceptively is very bad journalism. I'm ashamed that such a thing appeared on Slashdot.
Fix it! It makes those who are fighting Diebold's censorship look bad, and if left uncorrected it will seriously damage Slashdot's credibility.
-cheesebikini
If even a FRACTION of the ppl in the US had the ethics and moral values of "W", this world would be a MUCH better place!!!