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Diebold Folds In DMCA E-Voting Lawsuit
sunbird writes "Diebold has filed a responsive pleading (PDF) in the lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to challenge Diebold's practice of using the DMCA to suppress discussion of the critical flaws with electronic voting. Diebold states that it has "decided to withdraw its existing DMCA notifications and not to issue any further ones . . . ." Other recent developments include: this transcript of the court hearing on EFF's application for a preliminary injunction and Dennis Kucinich's linking to Diebold memos from his webpage at the U.S. House of Representatives. Stay tuned- the judge has scheduled a status conference for this Monday in the case."
I'd like to take this moment to publically thank, congratulate, and otherwise embarass my illustrious former roommate, David Weekly. Alot of people talk about problems, like how alot of people talk about "Gee, how tragic is Zero Tolerance for all these kids, oh look, another one just got expelled for learning the word 'Knife'!"
Most people don't do anything. David Weekly did.
He stepped up, fought back against Diebold, and brought justice -- not just for himself (he's the founder of the California Community Colocation Project, so the ISP takedown notices directly affected him), not just for the four college kids attacked by Diebold, but for all of us here and for everybody with a stake in the perceived integrity of the American vote.
That's some damn fine work, David. Thanks! And thanks to everyone at EFF and OPG who fought this battle with him too!
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Now they won't be sueing everyone under the sun, that if you can, throw it up on p2p services and help get a bittorent of the file circulating. The documents can be found on kazaa if you type in diebold, as you can with any other app. I suggest shareaza, which is a spywareless free P2P app that handles and allows for hosting and downloading from multiple network protocols (gnutella, bittorent, edonkey to name a few) and can be found at
m =2821
http://www.shareaza.com
. If you're just interested in reading documents, another good read at
http://www.blackboxvoting.com
for those of you who don't want to sift through hundreds of e-mails in the archive but want the good stuff(downloads are at the right side of the page). Of course, they probably can't get slashdotted to horribly without going under, and therefore, if you can download the files and throw them on a p2p app such as shareaza you'll be doing everyone a big favor or if you can download them off of a p2p app that works well too to make sure their website's bandwidth bill isn't horrendous.
Additionally, if you do nothing else and live in the US, goto the EFF's webpage and fill out their form and fax or e-mail it to your legislature (which is all nicely automated for you).
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&ite
This way, if congress gets millions of documents stating we know and we don't like the sharade, they'll have to pull it and may even throw a few congressman on the legal fire to keep us satiated.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
The Republicans are firmly in the pockets of Computer Hardware and Software manufacturers that want to keep the DMCA to prevent competitors from copying products and making compatable ones.
The Democrats are firmly in the pockets of the RIAA and MPAA that want to keep the DMCA to help them keep their strangleholds in thier markets.
Everyone else has an icecube's chance in hell of getting in regardless of who funds their habits.
It is worth mentioning Mr. Kucinich is trying to get the presidential nomination and has very little financial contamination from the formentioned industries. $36,275 from TV, movies, and music industry and $25,590 from the computer industry out of $3,399,709 total.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
that disqualifies the creep right there oh and he is a VEGAN!
The local configuration may be minimal but it may be enough to rig the vote.
What we need to do is to make sure that the configurations of the machines are identical. The trick used in Florida was to program the machines differently in white and black areas. In the black areas the machines were set to silently disqualify any ballot that had a problem of any kind anywhere. In the white areas the machines were set to give an error when there was a problem and the voter could try again.
That is the reason why the error rate was 12% in the black areas and 1% in the white. It was not as the GOP shills tried to claim that the voters were stupid, the machines had been rigged. These facts were all corroborated in the enquiry.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The county with a 12% error rate was Gadsden County, and it did not have optical scanners at the precincts. Rather, the ballots were counted only at a central location, so there was no opportunity to permit an invalid ballot to be corrected.
The allegation that Jeb Bush and Harris fixed the poll was confirmed by the commission
Bull. Did you even read the commission report? From the Executive Summary:
The report does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters. Moreover, even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred. Instead, the report concludes that officials ignored the mounting evidence of rising voter registration rates in communities.
The guy who was unearthing this was Pallast. The US press would not publish him but the UK guardian, the BBC and the international press did.
Isn't it interesting that the only "source" for these allegations is a so-called "reporter" who has renounced his US citizenship? It's quiet apparent that he has a vested interest in discrediting the Bush Presidency.
The US press only reported the story in July 2001 after the commission confirmed the evidence and Bush had been installed.
Again, Bull. Read the USCCR report before you look like an ass. The report did not find voter fraud, it found votor "disenfranchisement".
The Commission found that the problems Florida had during the 2000 presidential election were serious and not isolated. In many cases, they were foreseeable and should have been prevented. The failure to do so resulted in an extraordinarily high and inexcusable level of disenfranchisement, with a significantly disproportionate impact on African American voters
This conclusion led to a harsh Dissent from comissioner Abigail Thernstrom and Russel Redenbaugh, who said in part:
The Commission's report has little basis in fact. Its conclusions are based on a deeply flawed statistical analysis coupled with anecdotal evidence of limited value, unverified by a proper factual investigation. This shaky foundation is used to justify charges of the most serious nature--questioning the legitimacy of the American electoral process and the validity of the most recent presidential election. The report's central finding--that there was "widespread disenfranchisement and denial of voting rights" in Florida's 2000 presidential election--does not withstand even a cursory legal or scholarly scrutiny. Leveling such a serious charge without clear justification is an unwarranted assault upon the public's confidence in American democracy.
The only reason you won't see the US media looking into this story is simply because there is no story at all to report.
Harris and Bush willfully disobeyed a rack of court orders that required voters with the right to vote to be allowed to register. They also selected ChoicePoint to scrub the voter lists despite the fact they were the most expensive by 25 times the cost of the cheapest bid.
Again, you are misinformed and are obviosly basing your argument on factless partisan rhetoric. Harris and Bush had nothing to do with the selection of DBT/ChoicePoint. DBT/ChoicePoint was hired in 1997 (before Bush and Harris were even in office) as a result of Florida statute 98.0975 passed by the state legislature (again, before Bush and Harris were in offic), and they were comissioned by the Florida Director of Elections Ethel Baxtor, a democrat.
Bush and Harris also had nothing to do with the "scrubbing" of the voter list. As specified by Florida state law, this was the responsibility of the local county election officials. This means that if anybody was incorrectly removed from the voter registration, they were removed by their county election officials (who shockingly happen to be democrats in heavily democratic counties).
However the facts found by the report validate the claim that the ballot was rigged in a massively partisan manner.
Facts? What facts? The commission heard testimony from 5 people who were inaccurately included on the list, 4 of which were eventually allowed to vote after clearing up the problem. Are these the "facts" that you use to cite a rigged ballot in a "massively partisan manner"??
Ah so a dissenting statement by a group of Republicans proves that there was no electoral fraud!
And a factless report by a group of partisan Democrats does prove it?
BTW the dissent disputes the findings by rejecting all the testimony and facts found as 'anecdotal' they provide no contradictory claims, nor do they dispute the evidence in detail, they dispute the claim that the returning officer and governor had responsibility, which is odd when you look who was responsible for compiling the list at the center of the claims and for distributing the wrong and illegal advice to the returning officers.
Lets look at the "facts" represented by the USCCR report.
Willie D. Whiting, Jr., a member of the clergy and registered voter in Tallahassee, who went with his family to vote at his assigned polling place, Precinct 42 in Leon County. When Apostle Whiting presented his driver's license for identification purposes, the poll worker said his name was not on the registration list and called the supervisor of elections for Leon County to verify his registration status. Apostle Whiting asked to speak with a supervisor at that office, and he was told that an individual named Willie J. Whiting, born two days after Apostle Whiting, had been convicted of a felony in the state of Florida. Consequently, Apostle Whiting learned he had been wrongfully removed from the registration list. After Apostle Whiting threatened to contact an attorney, he was allowed to vote.[204]
William J. Snow, Jr., a Miami-Dade resident, testified that he received notice that he would be ineligible to vote in the November 2000 election because of a felony conviction. Receiving the notice "caused a great stress" upon Mr. Snow's heart because he had never been convicted of a felony. Mr. Snow testified that the problem has been corrected. Mr. Snow has been a Miami-Dade County resident for more than 33 years and voted in the 1996 election without incident.[205]
Marilyn Nelson, a poll worker with 15 years of experience in Precinct 232 in Miami-Dade County, encountered "quite a few" people whose names did not appear on the rolls at her precinct. When she called the supervisor of elections office, she was told that their rights had been taken away from them due to an alleged felony conviction. She was further instructed by the supervisor's office that she could not inform those voters of the reason for their removal from the rolls, but she was instructed to "tell them to call downtown at a later date."[206]
Professor Darryl Paulson testified that the Hillsborough County supervisor of elections estimated that 15 percent of those purged were purged in error and they were disproportionately African American. According to Professor Paulson, another source estimated that 7,000 voters, mostly African Americans and registered Democrats, were removed from the list.[207]
According to news reports, even those who had received a full pardon for their offenses were listed on DBT's exclusion list.
Reverend Willie Dixon, a Tampa resident, received a full pardon for drug offenses in 1985, and has since become a youth leader, a bible preacher, and a "pillar of the Tampa African American community who has voted in every presidential election."[208] But despite his 15 years of voting status, Pam Iorio, the supervisor of elections for Hillsborough County, sent Reverend Dixon a letter informing him that he had been removed from the rolls because of a prior conviction.[209] Eventually, Reverend Dixon was able to verify his status as a registered voter.[210]
Media accounts also captured the impact of list maintenance activities and the frustration they caused for Florida voters.[211]
Wallace McDonald, in 1959, was convicted of a misdemeanor, vagrancy, for falling asleep on a bench in Tampa while he waited for a bus. In 2000, Mr. McDonald received a letter from Ms. Iorio informing him that
75% of the people who testified had their voting rights restored. If there were over 100,000 legitimate voters who couldn't vote, why couldnt the USCCR find a single one of them? The only person they found that could not vote had in fact been convicted of a crime.
But Harris and Bush succeeded in keeping over a hundred thousand voters off the rolls, most of whom were illegally and illegitimately denied their right to vote
Well, it doesn't look like you want to pay attention to the facts. Lets try this again (not that you are going to pay any attention). Bush and Harris had nothing to do with the voter rolls. Per Florida Law it was the responsibility of local county election officials to maintain the voter rolls. Per Florida Law, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris had no authority to change the voter rolls. How can you keep pounding your agruement with a straight face? You are blaming Bush and Harris for:
A law that was passed before they took office
A voter scrub list that was not commissioned by them, but was commissioned by a Democrat
Changing Voter rolls that they had no authority or method of changing
Voter disenfranchisement where nobody was willing to testify that they were disenfranchised (several people testified that they were inconvienenced, but not disenfranchised)
Why can't you see how ridiculously partisan you sound?