Trusted Computing/DMCA vs. Diebold Pentagon Paper

The Importance of writes "Diebold's ill-fated e-voting machines have gotten a lot of coverage recently. Of particular interest is the fact that some of the most damning documents are legal memos leaked from Diebold's law firm, Jones Day. The memos were leaked to the Oakland Tribune. Now Diebold's lawyers are trying to suppress their publication. The judge has ordered the documents returned, except for those already published on the internet. Hopefully, the First Amendment will protect the newspaper's rights to hold onto the documents. However, EFF's Jason Schultz points out a very real and very scary scenario in which trusted computing combined with the DMCA makes such leaks illegal, regardless of the First Amendment."

Comments

Regardless?

[rossz]

WTF? When can anything be done regardless of the Constutition? I'll tell you: legally, NOT EVER. The Constitution trumps anything Congress might try to do. The Constitution is the guidelines by which Congress is able to pass laws. To quote the Supreme Court (sorry, I don't have the exact citation): "Anything repugnant to the Constitution is null and void."

Re:Regardless?

[aussersterne]

When can anything be done regardless of the Constutition?

Anytime. Or more specifically, whenever the Supreme Court says they can and law enforcement, guns and all (beginning with the Justice Dept.), sides with government. Who appoints justices and cabinet-level law enforcement? The President.

This is why presidential elections matter, even though it's supposedly congress that makes laws... the existence of checks and balances is not foreordained by the nature of the universe; it depends on a populace who votes carefully to keep these checks and balances in place and to keep the power-hungry or purchasable out of office.

Re:Regardless?

[Dr Reducto]

WTF? When can anything be done regardless of the Constutition? I'll tell you: legally, NOT EVER. The Constitution trumps anything Congress might try to do. The Constitution is the guidelines by which Congress is able to pass laws. To quote the Supreme Court (sorry, I don't have the exact citation): "Anything repugnant to the Constitution is null and void."

That is of course, assuming people challenge it in court, and the courts have a sense of justice and haven't sold out. Maybe when the people realize what has happened to them, they will demand their rights, and feel free to use armed revolution if necessary. Unfortunately, the apathy of the average American (spoken as a young American who is disenchanted by the rights we have lost so far, and the rights we will come to liose) makes me fear the future.

Re:Regardless?

[aussersterne]

My suggestion is to try to avoid voting Democrat or Republican. So long as people vote one of these two major parties, they simply reify and reinforce the tendency that both of them have developed (after years of playing as exclusive competitors to one another) to take whatever money is on the table in order to out-leverage and out-spend the other to get into or stay in office.

Re:Regardless?

[taped2thedesk]

That is of course, assuming people challenge it in court

Yep. And assuming that someone is so passionate about our RIGHTS that they have the balls to disobey the DMCA so that it can be challenged.

Until someone stops complaining about it and gets it to the Supreme Court, nothing is going to change. So the question is, is anyone ready to take the leap? I'm hoping that the Tribune goes and publishes anyway. Someone needs to take this risk, maybe it will be them.

I'm know I'd buy a subscription if they went through with it - probably not of much consequence to them if they lose the case, of course.

Here's to the digital millenium.

Corporate America....

[TypoNAM]

Hey welcome to Corporate America and you're no longer free thanks to those who are in the house senate for voting our freedoms away.

And I strongly believe it could get a lot worse which it will, history tells us that.

Re:This is just not good

[S.Lemmon]

Actually, using the DMCA to suppress this kind of information might, in a round-about way, be a good thing. It would make for an idea court case to have the DMCA's constitutionality challenged.

I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how people can defend these kinds of actions? What I mean is, Diebold's CEO is obviously in the back pocket of the Prez of the US. He has said he would give Ohio to the Prez in 2004 (I dunno, maybe as a bday gift). And this happens in California. I know that people are not that dumb. They have to see the connection, be it in Florida, California or even Ohio. Yet the backers of Bush and Co don't care. Are they so blind to the fact that they want only their party in power, that they can't see the road these actions are taking the nation?

Like the 'weapons of mass destruction' debacle. Is it so bad to admit the man you support is an asshat, and needs to be thrown out of power, and taken up on criminal charges? God people, take some responsibility, and quit listening to Rush and attacking anyone who doesn't think like you do.

In the immortal words of George Carlin:
I say live and let live. Anyone who can't accept that should be executed.

Re:This is just not good

[Maserati]

Agreed. We've been waiting for a really good DMCA test case. One where it's being used against a newspaper is propbably the best possible test case.

Breach of trust!

[LostCluster]

Diebold is going to be drummed out of the voting machine business very quickly now...

In California, the process of revoking their license for their transgressions has already started. The software that ran on election day wasn't the software version that was "locked down" and approved. That's just a basic outright fraud, and not something that a company in a position of trust should be trying to cover up.

Game over. Their word is no good anymore... if your anywhere in your state these machines are scheduled to be used, write your state election officials. Even if you're not going to vote on one of those machines, errant tallies from elsewhere in the state could tip the balance in your state's popular vote because it's looking to be a very tight presidential election yet again this year.

I think Diebold needs special treatment

[speedfreak_5]

The fact that they are a for-profit company (with a record of donating to the Republican party) in control of voting for some parts of the country seems a bit off. I don't believe these memos should have been leaked. They should have been publicly accessible. Hell, anything tied to their voting division should be publicly accessible to protect the voting process. And Diebold should be held accountable for having plans to screw voters over.

This is a great thing!

[erroneus]

When the first amendment is threatened by the DMCA, that's yet more people who will rally against the DMCA. The more people the DMCA hurts, the closer be come to removing it as law... once removed, it becomes less likely that laws more serious would be passed as well.

Remember the bill of rights?

[Metuchen]

Are there any other US Citizens out there that are pissed off that the government continues trampling on the bill of rights?

1. freedom of the press...just look at this story
2. the freedom to bear firearms...has been restricted.
3. the right to a speedy and public trial...citizens can now be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism, and major trials are often closed.
4. property can now be seized without due process of law.
5. wiretaps, which used to require a warrant, now can be performed with no proof and just a hint of suspicion.

The examples go on and on, and I would argue that while it may be justified in some instances, the slope is a slippery one, and I believe that we, as US citizens must stand up and tell our government that this is *not* okay!

Revolution? I doubt it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even back in Washington's day he could seldom rally more than 5,000 troops, out of a population even then numbering in the millions.

Americans are too busy watching reruns of Celebrity Treasure Island or American Idol to care about boring shit like abuse of the Constitution.

We harp on and on about being the Land of the Free(tm) and Home of the Brave(tm) but we meekly rolled over and pissed on ourselves the second we were told to by President Rumsfeld.

Don't get used to the current state of affairs, because it's going to get a hell of a lot worse eventually.

Re:Not exactly an obscure scenario...

[LordMyren]

the DMCA is the greatest weapon against freedom of information ever, yes. its horribly bad, yes.

however, by esposing the value of 'freedom of information' in such absolute form, you risk your crusade ruining your support.

patents are a form of information control. our military needs information control. there is a place for the control of information. however, the point of the DMCA 'evil' is that it should not be the corporations who control every bit of information at all related to them.

take everything to its natural ending and extremity, but no further.

Myren

Re:not voting IS the problem

[Dwonis]

I have two points:

1. People who don't understand the issues shouldn't vote on them.
2. Voting isn't going to solve the problem unless a fair voting system is used.

Re:This is just not good

[Draknor]

'Tis a noble thought.

Of course, not very realistic at all. There might be some outcry on /. or other tech-sites, but the spin that the mass-media public hears (assuming it hears anything at all, which is a big assumption) is that you were just another computer hacker-terrorist making threats & advocating "evil things on the interweb".

That is what is so scary about the Bush administration and the issue in general - in a perfect world, people would be fully informed. But in this significantly-less-than-perfect world, the public is kept in the dark, deprived of factual knowledge and fed whatever lies or spin people in power (governments, corporations) decide. It's not total control, but it works well enough for the majority of the people that it takes mountains moving before John Q Public hears and seriously considers alternate viewpoints.

Is This the America I Love?

[MichaelCrawford]

A couple of years ago I wrote an essay called Is This the America I Love? Maybe it's pertinent here, seeing how our next election is well on its way to getting even more fixed than the last one was.

I just feel the need to write right now. Something has gone terribly wrong with the country I was raised to love. The good things that America stands for are being trampled into the dirt by those charged with the burden of protecting them.

I was raised to be a patriotic American. I grew up a military brat - my father was a proud officer of the United States Navy, who served in the Vietnam War. When I was young, I was always told that my father was fighting to preserve the freedoms that were guaranteed us by the United States Constitution.

In the first grade, I attended a school run by the U.S. Navy in Gaeta, Italy, where my father was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Springfield. Each day when we started school we sang patriotic songs and said the Pledge of Allegiance. We were told that America stood for freedom and democracy and justice.

I loved America for what it stood for.

I was told that things like political persecution, detainment without trial, and beating of prisoners were things that happened in other countries, that they would never happen in America. I was told that we fought the American Revolution and wrote the Constitution specifically to ensure such things would never again happen in America.

But today I see the ugly face of repression rising in America. And it is brought to you by the United States Government.

Re:DMCA

[user no. 590291]

IF I were ever made president, I would veto EVERY peice of legislation that I didn't feel was constitutional, such as the DMCA. If congress wanted override that, then fine, but I would have let my voice be known.

That's one reason you won't ever be president. There hasn't ever been and never will be anyone in that office who doesn't owe somebody--the DMCA was downpayment on payback for years of bribes^W campaign contributions, and is only the beginning of things to come. Expect "trusted" computing to be mandatory by 2010, to "deny terrorists and spammers access to the advanced communication networks while preserving their usefulness for law-abiding Americans."

Re:This is just not good

[cthugha]

Except the case isn't just about freedom of speech, it's about the confidential nature of the lawyer-client relationship. To illustrate, let me pose a hypothetical.

You're the accused in a high-profile case on some new, egregious law, a la the DMCA or PATRIOT Act. You're not certain about whether you're guilty or not given the novelty of the provision under which you're charged, so you seek legal advice, making full and frank disclosure of what you've done so your lawyer can give you the best advice possible. Somewhere along the way a "concerned citizen" gets ahold of the memos generated in the course of obtaining this advice and passes it to the prosecution, or, better yet, the press, who throw it into the public domain so it loses its quality of confidentiality.

Now, who's rights should prevail here? Your right to skilled legal representation and the necessary adjunct right of lawyer-client confidentiality, or freedom of speech? Granted, Diebold is a corporation and nobody's liberty is at stake, but Diebold is a vessel for the economic interests of its shareholders, so property (another important right) is at stake and ought to be protected, no?

You don't have to do it across the board

[Greyfox]

I know that for the immediate future, no one can really challenge the major parties for the presidency. However there's nothing to stop you from voting for the lesser of two evils at that level and going whichever way you want to at lower levels. We had several libertarian and green victories out here in Colorado in the last round of local elections even though a lot of those same people voted for a major party for the congressional and presidential elections.

I think it shows a trend toward the major disenchantment with the major parties that people are voicing more and more. They're currently getting their feet wet with the other parties. If those parties prove themselves on a local level, we'll start seeing more fo them win in Congress and eventually they may take the presidency. And I, for one, welcome our new left-handed lesbian eskimo albino party overlords.

Re:So...

[man_ls]

If a corporation was hiding information regarding its misdoings which were at best harmful to the public good but not technically illegal, and at worst amounted to downright fraud and deceit, would you care how that information was obtained?

We're talking greater good here. It is in the interest of the public to know that Diebold's voting machines are downright dangerous to the freedom and security of American elections, DMCA and other laws on information be damned.

Re:This is just not good

[agrippa_cash]

I think you already see they key differences. Perhaps (almost certainly) these documents shouldn't be admissible in a trial. However, there is an matter of the public welfare to consider here. There is no public good that could come of people knowing my dirty secrets, but it is very much in the public's interest for citizens to know exactly what hands we're placing our votes* in. *By voteS I meant those of the citizenry. I have never voted twice in an election (though that may change with these machines.)

The US government is us....

[innerweb]

...and whenever we say the government is eroding our freedoms, we need to remember that we are not asserting our rights to prevent that erosion. Yep, most elected officials are crooked. Can't get away from that until we remove the huge sums of money from the election process (donations and such). Diebold may or may not be a company seeking to have an unusual influence on elections. More likely, like so many other companies, they are merely seeking to have an unusual hold on some contracts to supply equipment and services.

As far as the Pres and Co. goes, how do you think he got elected. Any president at some point is merely a puppet to certain private powers that be.

Think about it, why do we even need Tort law? Why do we even need contract law? Why do we even need freedom of press laws? Because people as a whole have some pretty sick individuals. And, those individuals (enough of them) tend to gravitate towards positions of power. Once they get some power, then tend to amplify it without regard for who it hurts.

Another way to understand what is happening is to look at the slow poisoning of the planet. What other effect do you think dumping mercury and lead into the atmosphere and rivers could have? What other effect do you think smog could have? What other effect could adding a grossly increased amount of heat trapping gasses into our atmosphere have? The majority of people do not care. If it kills their grandchildren, they will lament, but they will not care until then.

The reason the freedoms are being eroded and that companies get away with what they do is that most people do not want to give up their TV or their computer games. Most people will sit right in the path of that freight train until they get hit (and then cry foul).

The alternative? Fighting back is expensive and counter to the normal persons goal of having a nice quiet life. Another article on /. today mentioned a memo at Microsoft talking about the reason so many people did not abandon MS's poor products was the "lock-in" of people unwilling to put forth the energy to go to a better product.

Most people are like water, they choose the path of least resistance to arrive at the lowest standard of life. Not to be confused with the highest standards of consumerism. Heck, even I do not exert enough energy in the direction of preserving freedoms. I am too busy trying to ensure food is on the table, and my kids have a chance at college. Until we get past some rather serious social issues, the part where we clean up government is not likely to happen, as those in power will be able to keep it by keeping us divided amongst ourselves.

Innereb