Slashdot Mirror
Diebold To Drop Suit Against Whistleblowers
segment writes "Fox News reports that
'Diebold said it would not
sue dozens of students,
computer scientists and Internet service providers who had received cease-and-desist
letters from the company from August to October,' which is great for academia land, but
one should still ponder using Diebold on any level: 'an executive scolded programmers
for leaving software files on an Internet site without password protection.' Kind of a
scary thought with all the United States went through during the Bush/Gore election,
imagine the theories should a Diebold product be used in a situation like that. "
Reader doormat points out, however, that "the EFF is still going after Diebold over
the C&D letters." Several readers also submitted links to Paul Krugman's
New York Times column about Diebold's approach to public trust and accountability.
IANAL, so would anyone care to explain the logic of continuing to sue Diebold over the C&D letters, when Diebold have stopped persuing the C&Ds? (Not flaming the EFF, just curious why they aren't going after other Diebold challenges to freedom)
This is where the serious fun begins.
I think there is way too much hysteria around electronic voting.
The owls are not what they seem
Hey, I'm a fan of the capitalist ethos as much as the next guy, but when it comes to the interests of the populous it's clearly more responsible to choose open source and open standards. Should we really trust Our Data to invisible source code written by anonymous programmers ensconced in a proprietary bubble?
I guess we shouldn't be so surprised that the elite don't have the interests of the populous at heart. Hmm, maybe there's a worm in the Capitalist apple.... It's time the Open Source Community made it clear that we are an essential element of the free market ecosystem and not some fringe element to be vilified and marginalized.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Quote from story: Kind of a scary thought with all the United States went through during the Bush/Gore election, imagine the theories should a Diebold product be used in a situation like that. Either the article submittor or I has totally misunderstood something: I thought that the Diebold machines WERE used in the Bush/Gore election, and that was the source of many of the theories! Doesn't everyone else remember hearing of the memory card that gave Gore approximately -17k votes when added to the tally?
Alphanos
Has anybody done this? Really, a great way to reclaim the system from corporate buyout is to buy it back. Think about it, if 10 million geeks contribute a buck each that could be some serious cash to sway the average money-chasing pol. With the internet it would be really easy to get the word out: Slashdot, BoingBoing etc the birth of the group vigorously and overnight a powerful group could be born. There are plenty of geeks who could contribute to running a site and then it would be a matter of hiring experienced Washington operators to do the slimy work.
It would be like a Howard Dean phenomena, except aiming to restore sanity to digital and non-digital intellectual property laws. First task: repeal the DMCA. Then, get rid of the hideous Sonny Bono legislation. Public opinion would overwhelmingly be behind the efforts too.
What do Slashdotters think. Time to start a revolution right here, right now?
an executive scolded programmers for leaving software files on an Internet site without password protection.
I think we can call this "Open source by accident", or perhaps "Almost Open Source", then again "Effectively Open Source" sounds good as well. I for one would like to thank Diebold for leaving the source code were we can all look at it.
On to a more serious matter - the code SHOULD be open to scrutiny, especially by third party, independant coders. Then again, running on top of a MS OS, that may have a virus or back door scare me. What about a voteing machine that runs from a bootabel CD-Rom? The results are all kept in memory with a line printer and some smart cryptography as a backup/confirmation? It shouldn't be hard, the CD's could be inspected post election to make sure that the voting program code wasn't tampered with (unlike hard drives where I could tamper with the code and no one owuld know it). Seems to me the open source community could do a lot better in short order. PS the username and password for the open source code would be anonymous and myvotcounts@fukudiebold.com
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
1 standalone CD, all source-code wipes the system clean, builds and installs the system storing votes on secure media, CD's available on-request to those who want them, the one used on the day taken randomly from the box of a few hundred which are given out to the voters.
I can examine the ballet paper, I can watch the ballet box take my slip of paper and see it opened at the counting station, not having some level of proof that it's actually doing what it's supposed to do is a rather poor system.
Ok, their machines may be a bit flaky, but do you have any evidence of "draconian agendas"?
Well, their president promised his home state to the Republicans. How's that? Combine that with the fact that these machines are closed and, so far as we can tell, no real effort has been put into securing them or ensuring their correctness.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Thank you so much for saying this. It is good to know I am not the only one that feels this way. People are so very quick to put on blinders and assume that Diebold's CEO and friends are sitting in a darkened room planning on how best to trample the rights of US citizens. The reality of the situation is probably that Diebold is trying its best to score this contract and are making some mistakes along the way. I doubt that the CEO of diebold is aware of the ire he has raised in this (slashdot) particular community and instead is listening to his legal council; who are very predictable in these areas. Has diebold made some big mistakes? Yes, no doubt about it. Is it a conscious effort on Diebold's part to look like total asses? I doubt it. But hey, its a draconian agenda right? What does that even mean?
Certainly Diebold (as a company) is incompotent and of shady ethics. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say thats as far as it goes, and that they aren't trying to get rigged systems into place - but just barely. So many of the "features" of Diebold systems have no use I can think of except to rig sytems - in any case, intentional rigging aside, the security and integrity of the voting process was clearly not a priority at Diebold. Further, Diebold employees and reps are aware of that (they can hardly fail to be), but are willing to lie in order to thier paycheck. Depending on your viewpoint, that may or may not qualify as evil.
Their staff.
'an executive scolded programmers for leaving software files on an Internet site without password protection.'
No, an executive should have fired programmers for leaving software files on an Internet connected site without password protection. That executive then should have been fired for having such lax security practices at one of the most important NGO's in the USA today. Diebold should then be given 1 year to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's systems are secure. That year should culminate in 100 of Diebold's boxes being dropped into the yearly 2600 meeting in New York City, with any successful hack recieving 10,000 dollars and the honor of ripping up all of Diebold's contracts and co-signing the order banning the sale of Diebold election machines in the US for 20 years.
They should then go to Diebold's headquarters and salt the campus.
Seriously, giving a candidate a minus 16022? Faking demos? 25% failure rates? Intentionally making audits impossible? One of these things happening at a company selling toasters would be surprising. Three would be scandalous. But a history of gross mismanagement and neglect at a company that is the first and last word in American democracy is the highest form of the word "inexcusable." If they had done many of the things that they did intentionally, they would be arrested for treason.
There is nothing in the US constitution that says grossly incompetent companies in highly trusted positions have a right to continue to exist.
The ______ Agenda
That's a pretty common problem with Diebold systems though - they give a very good impression of having no understanding at all of any computer security concepts... pop quiz, would you rather trust them with your votes or your money?
Fuckwits can't even make their ATMs safe from Windoze RPC DCOM worms after M$ put out the patch. Though what we're doing allowing cash machines to run M$OS (with RPC turned on!) is beyond me.http://www.guylancaster.com_________ Software Engineer, contract 1991 - 2001 Global Election Systems Inc. (now Diebold Election Systems), Vancouver, BC, Canada Development and support of embedded systems firmware and host communications software. Developed a TCP/IP/PPP protocol stack to run under the uC/OS real-time operating system. The stack was based mostly on BSD sources and has been re-released as the uC/IP project on SourceForge (http://ucip.sourceforge.net). The stack is used in the current central count product and has been ported by others into several other commercial embedded systems. Developed secure Internet based protocols for transmitting election information and results. Designed and developed a compiler and interpreter for an embedded report generator system known as AccuBasic. Designed and developed a central count election system in which ballot scanners pass raw images directly to the central server running Progress 4GL. This required a bi-directional variation of the proprietary communications protocol used at the time. System administration, Web development, and technical writing. Developed an intranet Web site which has significantly improved internal communications. Maintained the Linux based email, FTP, and intranet servers for the Vancouver office. Wrote developer documentation and drafted materials for inclusion in user guides.
The reality of the situation is probably that Diebold is trying its best to score this contract and are making some mistakes along the way.
No, the reality of the situation is (note deliberate lack of qualifying "probably") that we don't know.
What we do know is that their machines are insanely insecure, have already failed in real elections, they know about it, they have tried to cover it up instead of fixing it, and have threatened to sue those who did expose these facts.
"Benefit of the doubt" is just that. You doubt the accusations, particularly because they are unproven. However, given the evidence that does exist, I don't know how you can say that they probably aren't true.
Which isn't to say I'm not largely agreeing with you. I'm just saying don't let your skepticism of critics of Diebold turn into a lack of skepticism of Diebold. They could very well be the schemers they are accused of being, no matter how sure you are that they'd never do that.
A draconian agenda would presumeably be an agenda to get draconian laws passed. Thanks to my history schooling and fantasy-novel reading, I still reflexively think of "draconian" as "like evil lizard men" instead of "like the harsh laws passed by Draco of Athens". Funny.
The enemies of Democracy are
While its fair that a company (Diebold in this case) should be allowed to believe that they are being wronged. If they act on that belief (sending DMCA takedown notices) and are found to be wrong, they should be held responsible. In this case, it would appear to me, that the EFF is trying to ensure that Diebold is held responsible for misusing DMCA takedown notices. Despite all of its flaws there are provisions for companies who misuse the DMCA takedown notices, and that is what the EFF (by proxy) is pursuing them about. Its not about sticking it to some mythincal "man", its about proper punishment for misuse of the legal system. If anything, this is a good thing, a big company is (hopefully) about to get smacked down for abusing the system.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I think there is way too much hysteria around electronic voting.
I think there is not nearly enough.
Imagine a country where...
- People were physically prevented from voting.
- Ballot boxes were removed and replaced during the course of the election.
- All the completed boxes were trucked off to a secret location where a businessman with strong ties to the president did the counting in secret then burned the ballots before anouncing the results.