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Feds to Open BlackBoxVoting User Logs?
Doc Ruby writes "Investigating a crack of eVoting company VoteHere, the FBI is said to be issuing a subpoena for the traffic logs of journalist Beverly Harris' BlackBoxVoting website. The FBI is pursuing Harris on the theory that her site is the connection between incriminating memos leaked from (VoteHere competitor) Diebold and the intrusion into VoteHere's servers. Are you on the list?"
They can't subpoena something that doesn't exist...if sites with potentially controversial content make a policy of not keeping logs more than 24 hours (or even better, simply write the logs to /dev/null) then there's nothing at all for the FBI, NSA, etc. to subpoena.
I'm surprised they don't do this already.
Thanks for the link, you dirty rotten #%@&@$#!!
Apparently a judge somewhere has been shown enough information to think that a search of the site is warranted...
Tampering with the election companies is a great way to prove that they're insecure, but it's still illegal...
Actually, if this were a slashdot article eons ago, it probably got slashdotted, and thus have lots of slashketeers on their list. Those that cared to RTFA, anyway...so that drops it down to a handful. :)
Guess here's one of those instances where it pays NOT to RTFA. Like we ever do anyway.
How about the feds crack down on the companies that make this terrible software in the first place?
So how would they prosecute this if the blame falls on VoteHere via BlackBoxVoting? Is this something that would be considered industrial espionage and prosecuted under trade secret law? What about BlackBoxVoting being labeled the "middleman" in the leak?
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Glad I gave up cracking for Lent. I wouldn't want THE MAN to rain on my parade.
Nice way to give the feds a bit more work, slashdot the site, fill up the logs pretty good...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
...there isn't enough epithets I could hurl right now at the level of inanity at this. You have a case where the firms entrusted to provide equipment & services to THE most critical democratic process are in need of investigation more than anything else. The hubris and incompetance is fucking staggering.
This administration is easily outpacing the chicanery of Harding, Fillmore, and Tyler combined.
For a site about security and privacy, they make a point of displaying in their message boards that the submitting IP address of every post is logged. Well, guess what, the Feds have reason to want to see those logs now.
I'm going to put my faith in God, and use that as an excuse to abdicate any responsability.
Whew! I feel better already.
I'm pretty sure that's nearly every slashdot article.
This is so wrong. We're talking about electronic voting, something which demands security (and transparency, but never mind the apparent paradox just now) and they're not concerned that someone has broken into their network? That's like the police not being worried that someone has been wandering around the evidence room.
Next, "A crime is a crime is a crime". Not only is that redundant but unless you're speaking algebraically it's a bunch of bullshit. In court, your method, your motive, and whether or not your hair is neatly parted and whether or not you've flossed that morning all have a profound effect upon the results of your trial. Furthermore there is a big difference between (say) accessing someone's network for monetary gain, accessing someone's network for the purposes of just defacing it, or accessing someone's network in the pursuit of liberty. Today, that sounds cheesy and fake, which makes me sad. There are valid reasons to break the law. Sometimes when you break the law for a valid reason you are punished anyway, and sometimes not, which is a risk you take - but please allow me to remind you or inform you all (as appropriate) that here in the US of A evidence gathered during the comission of a crime by a private party is admissable in court, but evidence gathered by a police officer which he has to commit a crime to collect is not (typically) so clearly society recognizes some cases in which it might be a good idea to allow selective enforcement of the law.
Maybe I just rant too readily, but I don't like this guy already.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Bev Harris Speaks on Secret Service Issue
The investigation began last October, when VoteHere, an electronic voting software company in Bellevue, reported that a hacker broke into its computer network. VoteHere founder and Chief Executive Officer Jim Adler says, "We didn't think it was a big deal."
And they want us to put our democracy in their hands??? Yikes!
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Apparently a judge somewhere has been shown enough information to think that a search of the site is warranted...
Not judge. Grand Jury.
"Just a bunch of citizens" meeting in secret and nosing into anything a prosecurot thinks might be a sign that a crime might have been committed.
Because their proceedings are (allegedly) secret and the details of their deliberations do NOT become either public record or evidence usable at a trial, claims of privilege and immunity to search do not pull much weight.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We're talking about electronic voting, something which demands security (and transparency, but never mind the apparent paradox just now) and they're not concerned that someone has broken into their network?
Especially given the recent news about the heap overflow in CVS that is being discussed in the immediately previous slashdot article.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There is a difference you know. With a warrant, jack boot thugs kick in your door and take what they want. With a subpoena, they simply hold a gun to your head and ask nicely ;-)
I think young people might get more engaged in the political process if they worked as scrutineers and staff at polling booths, but automating everything down to "push button A for war, button B for peace" won't help a bit.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
...but my logs would have long been rotated out from January. They couldn't even imply there was something being hidden by being deleted.
However, as we saw in the Steve Jackson case, the seizure is more to punish than to glean any info.
Congratulations!
You just made the list!
Truly, I am all over anyone who hacks, destroys, or otherwise wakes the public up to the dangers of e-voting. Of course, I'm now marked for GitMo by the Bush Administration, so I probably won't be posting as often...
Now you are; shouldn't have clicked that link.
Traditional Republicans yes, but the neo-cons in power are anything but traiditional Republicans. And thanks to them, the USA is a lot closer to fascism than we think:
Fascism: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
OK, the control is there, the suppression of opposition through terror and censorship is growing, belligerent nationalism is very evident, racism has always been there and now is more prominent in the "war" against terror. The only thing lacking is the true centralization of authority, although the way the President was given a free hand to declare war it's not too far off. We're just one more major attack, followed by a declaration of martial law, away from fascism.
Furthermore, as Mussolini said, fascism should more properly be called corporatism. Corporatism. Ring a bell in today's USA?
Oh, wait.
From the VoteHere site (http://votehere.com/vhti.html):
"VHTi proves that electronic voting machines worked correctly and did not cheat in every election. "
So . . . only in a few elections?
She dismisses open source software as a solution to electronic voting because bugs can remain hidden even after many reviews. While this is true, it misses the point that we should assume no system will provide a complete answer and therefore use a combination of source code auditing (best if the code is open), certification and what I believe is the most important: paper ballots that can be re-counted to provide an alternative to the electronic counting.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It has been said before:
Question Authority
and Authority will question you.
But in the past, for most of us, that was just a quaint saying to chuckle over in the dorm lounge. This is the first time this shit is coming HOME for many of us. If you think this list of users isn't going to go into a database somewhere, you probably aren't on the list in the first place.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
i visited BlackBoxVoting. come get my clueless ass.
(/. doesn't log our IPs, does it?)
"To stop the terrorists."
If Robert Novak can continue to avoid naming his source in the CIA Officer identity leak, then Bev should have no problem. Plus what she's doing bears a much greater resemblance to journalism than whatever Novak spews.
Lo and behold, looky who is writing for MSN Slate. None other than Slashdot's beloved Jon Katz. Writing the same half-informed stuff, and as always with the misrepresentative tone of having first hand experience with the subject at hand.
I was about to correct you, but it seems both I and the last poster were taught wrong. I checked your link, and verified by digging up several others. You do indeed add 's to non-plural possesive nouns like James's.
Nothing makes me madder than discovering that along the way, one of my teachers drilled the wrong thing into me. We all depend on what we were taught in things like grammar. Unlike math, there's no "going back to first principles" or "proving it for yourself." If we were taught wrong, we end up making fools of ourselves later,. Of course, it might help if we paid teachers more than a pittance, or if more than a tiny fraction of students cared, but that's another gripe for another time.
And then, of course, there's the possibility that all three sites I checked on the 'net are wrong-- lord knows the internet isn't exactly edited for accuracy. For now, I'll just have to take your word for it.
I very much want to see what her website has to say. And I very much don't want the FBI/NSA/SS (Social Security, not their Nazi counterparts also known as the SS, though it may be getting difficult to see the difference(stifling free speach etc, ya know))/whomever, to investigate me for that. Hmmm where is FreeNet when you need them?
I really wish there was a popularily used replacement for the IP address space that would gaurentee anonymity. Isn't that part of the good 'ol USA? free speach?....Or did we lose that when Prez Ford left office?....
If you followed the link, you are now.
The ______ Agenda
My name is 63.161.169.137, and I approve this message.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Excellent point you just made, and if people are really paying attention, the Steve Jackson case is only one of MANY such instances in the "computer crimes" saga.
There's a pretty amazingly large list of computer bulletin board systems that listed "FBI raid/seizure" as their reason for finally going offline - yet no prosecutions were made in the vast majority of these cases. People simply dialed up one day, got a "number has been disconnected" message, and assumed the sysop didn't want to run his/her BBS anymore.
I first realized this when looking over one of the old collections of BBS numbers found on the Internet. (I think this was someplace on the www.bbsdocumentary.com web site, but as I look there right now - I only see lists of BBS names with phone numbers and sysops, but no notes as to why they went offline.)
It seems to me that right before the Internet really went mainstream, the feds were spending an awful lot of time seizing people's BBS hardware and software, with no real motivation other than attempting to break up the "BBS scene".
With the number of U.S. slashdotters out there, we can certainly bump this in the thousands, go sign the petition:
h tml
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BlackBoxVoting.org.
Go and show that it's not just a dozen paranoid freaks out there that think the system is broken.
If journalistic privilege didn't exist, would Novak really have been able to get away with publishing the identity of a CIA operative, and been able to shield the source of the leak by claiming journalistic privilege?
There are dozens, if not hundreds of pieces of caselaw which point to a journalistic privilege existing. However, this journalistic privilege is not absolute. (Then again, no privilege is absolute! Even before USA PATRIOT was passed, attorney-client privilege wasn't absolute. Doctor-client privilege isn't absolute. Priest-penitent privilege isn't absolute.) This means that, under very specific circumstances, a court can order a journalist to cough up a source, evidence, etc.
But it's an uphill battle and it usually ends very, very poorly for prosecutors. It's a lose-lose situation. If they lose, then they look like jackasses in public and they don't want that. If they win, then the next time they're up for re-election every newspaper will endorse the other guy, and they don't want that.
In the article, she's confident that the person who was offering her the VoteHere information was NOT the person who was a contact regarding Diebold.
She also states that the investigators rarely even ask her about VoteHere, that they seem to be fishing for something else...what else is there?
Diebold gets kicked out of California. There are reasons why that company/industry would want to see her/her website/whistleblowers to go away.
I'd be really sad, if we've reached a point in our history, where the FBI gets involved in covering up the Diebold mess. Diebold has *more* than earned its place of shame, and electronic voting needs more watchdogs and whistleblowers...not less.
"Wage slave, bring me your absentee ballot, fill it out in my presence, and send it in, or I'll fire you." Now, the reason you've given is always the reason I've heard, but what about absentee ballots? No one seems to have an answer as to how they can be secure against the attack you've described.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Bev Harris would've been labelled eccentric.
Now we're done with such niceties, the bitch is a fucking loon.
If it becomes a trend that users get in trouble for visiting specific websites, I could screw over everyone I hate just by lugging my laptop within range of their unprotected wireless network
I think I just had a lightbulb go off in my head. This is how I shall eventually rule the world... eliminating my enemies via paranoid government... muhahahaha!
So the FBI is only after *selected* log info. Trusting the government to excercise restraint is exactly what the founding fathers steeled this nation against. Why on earth would intelligence agencies that have been funded by our representatives to compile massive databases NOT keep all of the information therein? You mean the agency doesn't care what *else* is in the log as long as I didn't do anything wrong? Wake up and smell the erosion of democracy!
The US Constitution specifies a peaceful "overthrow" of the government every two years: every 4 years an election allows the Executive branch to be replaced, and requires at least partial replacement every 8 (maximum 2 consecutive presidential terms); every 6 years an election allows 1/3 of Congress to be replaced, staggered by 2 years. The remaining Judicial branch is appointed at the Federal level, rather than elected, with the 9 Supreme Justices appointed for life. Some say that lifetime appointment protects a career of malfeasance. Some say the local justices elections are a worse reward for bias. And some say that the Judicial branch's increasing power to decide elections, by constraining candidates' access ballots, and voters' access to ballots, is a problem almost as serious as corporate secrecy constraining everyone's access to the voting machines inner mechanisms.
"Ours is a government built not on trust, but suspicion."
- Thomas Jefferson (paraphrase)
--
make install -not war
""Just a bunch of citizens" meeting in secret and nosing into anything a prosecurot thinks might be a sign that a crime might have been committed."
"Bunch of citizens" doing what we don't like. BAD!
"Bunch of citizens" engaging in jury nullification, which we do like. GOOD!
I not only visted her website on several occasions but I also purchased a copy of her book. It is titled "Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century." I look forward to reading it soon. I also once listen to her when she appeared on on a radio talk show. I even went so far as to write to my elected representatives on this subject. Does that mean that I will soon be on the FBI's long list of suspects?
I first started following what she and others had to say when the Swathmore College sudents launched their electronic civil disobedience campaign against Diebold. The students were trying to bring attention to internal Diebold memos which showed that Diebold employees knew how insecure their voting machines and the software was. The students were fighting Diebold's cease-and-desist letters that were forcing websites to take down the memos. For a few hours at a time websites would appear with the information and then the would quickly be shut down and dissappear. The websites not only had the internal Diebold memos but some even had the actual GEMS software and sample voting data files to play with.
The webpages included instructions on how to intall the software on your Windows computer and then use Microsoft Access to easily bypass the all security features. As I recall, it also explained how to modify the "AuditLog" and bypass the audit trail. Keep in mind that the internal memos showed that Diebold knew about most of those problems and did not seem to want to bother fixing the security flaws. Many polling places are now using Diebold voting machines here in the United States.
I did not downlaod the GEMS election software and the memos from the websites. The files would have been to large to be downloaded with my slow dial-up connecton. But, I am sure that many people around the world did. I have not kept up with what is going on lately but apparently the FBI claims to be investigating an alleged break-in at the VoteHere electronic voting software company. The FBI also seem to still be interested in the Diebold memos.
What Bev Harris and others want is for us to use voting machines that print out a stub which can be inserted into the ballot box as a backup in case a recount is needed. Machines of that type exist now but for some reason there has been less of a push for using them. Correct me if I am wrong but, I have heard that several of the voting machine companies have several lobbyists busy in Washington and have made a number of political contributions. Perhaps the main problem is that Bev Harris is trying to bring all that to everyone's attention. She and others are guilty of trying to protectly the integrity of the voting process here in the USA.
... the power of an independent judiciary who isn't afraid to give power-mad SS agents a good anal fist fuck like they deserve (and a nice $300k fine too).
i'm only disappointed that it was the govt that paid the fine, not the SS agents who committed the crime.
Absentee ballot if your work place wanted to force you vote for whoever they wanted.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Lazy, paranoid and helpfull.
wget -m http://www.blackboxvoting.org ; chmod -R a+rx *
At your service. As we speak. Univeristy-class hosting.
You might notice a slight glitch, but I'll have that corrected.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
But about every company I work for, keeps full backups for at least a year, the old daily weekly monthly scheme comes to mind..
"/Dread"
"Just a bunch of citizens" meeting in secret and nosing into anything a prosecurot thinks might be a sign that a crime might have been committed.
Alas poor justice i knew it well. Justice must be done and be seen to be done, other wise how can you have faith and trust in it?
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Hey, this is just ONE more benefit of out-sourcing!
I am now.
;)
Lets see how the feds handle a slashdotting log
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I found this paper by Chaum interesting.
/. several months ago, IIRC.
It describes (if I've understood it right) an approach to having paper receipts which couldn't be used for vote selling. I got the original reference to this off
The idea is to print the receipt on two paper with two translucent layers - together you have a complete legible receipt, destroy one half (in the polling both) and the remainder can no longer reveal your vote to outsiders. Similar to the PK approach, I think.
Warning, IANAC (...Crytographer).
SJG is a bad example here. I have personal, first-hand knowledge that they divulged classified information in one of their gaming supplements. I know, because I reported the incident to the security office of the agency I was working for at the time (this was a little while after Operation Sun Devil).
This information was not just classified, but used in the precisely correct manner for the material in question, and by an author who used to have clearance and who damn well should have known better.
It is entirely possible that they found out a few months before I did, and created Operation Sun Devil to go find out just exactly who did what when, and if there was any other classified information they had on hand that they might be about to release in other forms.
So, SJG is a bad example to compare with.
Brad Knowles
http://daily.daemonnews.org/ -- if you're not
Many people are not convicted by a jury of their peers, rather plead out because they cannot afford to effectively fight the charges.
Thus if the government says we want that person on X, even if X is bogus - unless you are willing to spend upwards of $10,000 - you will not even go to trial.
Either James' or James's is acceptable, under English (as in GB) grammatical standards. I am literally 100% certain of this.
Well, I am now.
The simple fact that concerned citizens are being investigated by the FBI while Diebold only getting a show of wrist slapping, (if that), sorta says something.
Remember; she shape of your life is up to YOU. I have been urging people to get out of the US before it is too late. That window is closing fast. Would it surprise anybody at this point to see Big Brother pick people up who are trying to cross the border with their belongings?
It's only a matter of SHORT time.
The end is getting pretty frickin' nigh. Get your shit in order.
(I wonder if Paypal is going to continue serving Blackboxvoting. .
Oh, and for those who plan to stay, (like everybody), but who don't want to be affected by the coming Draft. . . I ran across this story about a legal way to NOT be drafted. I was wondering if it is a true and viable way. Any Lawyers among you who want to give a crack at answering would be appreciated.
Cheers and Good Luck, my friends!
-FL
Grand Juries aren't about doing whatever the Prosecutor wants. Usually, they're about doing whatever the citizens want - the Prosecutor can ask them to investigate something, but there is no requirement that they do so. The Prosecutor can present all sorts of evidence that a crime has occurred, and the Grand Jury can vote not to indict (we did, in one case), and the Prosecutor can tell the Grand Jury not to indict someone, and have them indicted anyway (we did that too).
The reason Grand Juries are secret is that there are no Fifth Amendment protections when facing a Grand Jury. Yes, a Grand Jury can require you to answer a question you'd rather not (like, "Did you kill your wife?"). That said, testifying before a Grand Jury grants immunity to prosecution for any crimes discussed in your testimony. So, we had to be VERY careful about who we "invited" to talk to us. Wouldn't do at all to accidently invite the murderer to testify, thinking he was just a material witness....
It should further be noted that the Grand Jury concept came about to protect people from abuses by the government. No matter what the government says, the Grand Jury can indict or not at its whim - and if it refuses to indict, the Prosecutor/DA is just SOL, no matter how bad he wants a trial.
And finally, even if this person whose logs are being subpoena'd is considered "one of the good guys", and even if Diebold and the Republicans are "bad guys", stealing things is still illegal, so the Grand Jury investigation may be warranted.
And even more finally, why are you people whinging about this? The lady is a journalist, which means she can invoke Source Protection laws, if applicable, and refuse to turn over any information....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I don't usually curse in my /. posts, but that is just fucking priceless.
Reminds me of the justice department investigation (and criminal proceedings against) Greenpeace.
Greenpeace found a ship that was bringing illegal timber from the Amazonian rainforests. So they sent a couple guys to put up a banner on the ship, that said something like "Stop illegal logging now".
So they got caught the Justice department is using a "sailor mongering" law over 100 years old to prosecute **the entire Greenpeace organization**, not just the two chaps who trespassed on the boat. The law was intended to stop prostitutes and bookies and other "low moral characters" from getting on boats at sea.
Never mind the illegal loggers. The justice department is not investigating them, nor suing them, nor prosecuting them. Just the whistleblowers.
Let's get behind Beverly! I for one will be donating money asap!
WWJD? JWRTFA!
At the same time it is a Good Thing (TM) because if they have these logs as court evidence, and Diebold had leaked any information regarding rigging the voting machines, then it will hopefully get national media attention.
Some people go to court.
Democracy, either way, gets a nice kick back again towards a more fair system.
I personally fear the Diebold machines. But I would mistrust anything that wouldn't let me verify online what my results were, and with a paper copy.
Yesterday, a judge threw out the case against Greenpeace. Still, it shows just what a corrupt, authoritarian bunch of crooks are in charge in the administration.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
That matches up with just about everything I have heard about the "protections" offered by the Grand Jury system.
sPh
Nothing makes me madder than discovering that along the way, one of my teachers drilled the wrong thing into me.
Amen. I, myself, was terribly confused when my teacher insisted that there were seven colors in the spectrum (ye olde ROY G BIV) when I could only see six (ROY G BV).
I looked for indigo for years, and just couldn't find it. It was only much later that I learned that Newton had felt the need for the spectrum to have seven colors, and so had made one up.
As a sidenote, I wonder if I can moderate myself "Offtopic."
If you are suggesting that American citizens abandon their country, I would have to ask this most important question:
"Go where?"
In presuming that the reason why you would want to leave is because you are wearing a tin hat and afraid of the U.S. Government getting involved in your life, I would also have to ask, where else in the world could you go that you could escape from a corrupt tyrinical U.S. Government? Cuba? Syria? Iran? North Korea?
From my viewpoint, the list is very small and reads like a list of enemies of the U.S.A. that I would give a better than 50% probability that they will be invaded some time before the end of this century, also presuming a corrupt U.S. Government. Either that or internal political revolution (sponsored or not sponsored by the CIA...it doesn't matter for you personally) that would make the government friendly to the U.S.
If you wanted to escape I can't think of any place on this planet, including Antarctica, that would be safe from U.S. extradition and being able to bring you back to the U.S.A. unless you were always on the run like Osama bin Laden. And I wouldn't feel comfortable watching hundreds of people die from misguided attempts to kill me.
If you quietly leave the U.S.A. before you do anything to upset the U.S. Government, perhaps you would be safe from suspicion. But then, why are you leaving?
I'll admit that IMHO America has in some ways lost its promise of being the "Shining Beacon of Liberty", but despite all of the corruption, I've seen worse in other countries and at least usually the law works. There really are good judges that do really administer justice, and many others that are genuine in trying to make this country work. The question then becomes, Do you want to stay here, fight corruption, and work within the systems to make change, or have you given up (like Fantastic Lad) and hope that the corruption will lead to collapse, with ultimately thousands or millions dying in the process?
Also, it is much more realistic and easier to run to somewhere than run away from somewhere. That is why the question of where to go is so important. What country on the Earth offers the combination of freedom, domestic protection from war, and economic opportunites better than the U.S.A.?
If you are thinking about avoiding the military draft in the U.S.A., just make sure that the country you are moving to also isn't going to be trying to get you into their army. In the 1940's Canada would not have been a good place to try and dodge the military draft. They were more likely to send you to war than even the U.S.A., and as an outsider you would be a quick target. I even know U.S. citizens, because of their ancestry not because of their place of birth, must avoid going to certain countries because they will be drafted the minute they step into those countries. My brother-in-law is one of those, and he is the third generation removed from that country. What makes you certain that the U.S. Government won't eventually try that on you or your children?
But about every company I work for, keeps full backups for at least a year, the old daily weekly monthly scheme comes to mind..
Sure...but they didn't mention seizing backup media, just the web server.
If Robert Novak can continue to avoid naming his source in the CIA Officer identity leak, then Bev should have no problem. Plus what she's doing bears a much greater resemblance to journalism than whatever Novak spews.
... any investigation of Bev is likely to resemble a search and destroy mission.
The key difference is that Robert Novak was doing the administration's dirty work in outing the CIA operative as payback for comments critical of the administration. Any investigation of Navak is going to be for show
Bev was exposing a weakness in the voting system the administration could have used to steal another election, may well have been planning to use for just such purposes (remember Diebold's promise to "deliver Ohio" to Bush?), and quite possibly used during the last election (remember the 80,000 votes that disapppeared from Diebold machines in Florida and were never accounted for?).
This is standard Bush administration intimidation tactics, using the tried and true method of unleashing the FBI's overly broad investigative authority (even pre-9/11 it was overbroad, now it is doubly so) to harrass, intimidate, and even destroy the lives of troublesome pests who still insist on democracy in Bush's America.
While she should get the best lawyer possible, I suspect we are seeing the full weight of the federal government come down on her not because her web site might have been used by someone breaking into another server, but because she shined the light of publicity on one of their dirty little secrets. In the current environment, no amount of legalese is going to protect someone from an administration with a demonstrated willingness to step outside the law whenever it suits them.
Now cue the neo-con right's accusations of tin-foil hats and weeping democrats sore of having an election stolen from them (HINT: I didn't vote for Gore last time around, but that doesn't change the shameful facts of the 2000 election one bit).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I have been trying to get this woman's point accross for some time now. Electronic Voting systems are flawwed and WE DON'T NEED THEM! There is nothing wrong with having a judge there, instead of the person that made the mcahine, to oversee the ballot counting process, all it does is create more jobs. There are even machines that don't produce a paper printout, so the only record is the database of votes in the machine. This database could be easily changed, programmed, or hacked to show different results then it should. Until we get rid of these machines, or at least the bad one, we will not be electing our "elected officials". WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN/WOMEN! WE WONT CHANGE ANYTHING UNLESS YOU DO!
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
I had a friend who while serving as a Grand Jury foreman actually said "no" to a District Attorney. He told me the amount and intensity of intimidation and outright threats ("hope your wife doesn't have any traffic stops for the next 10 years") that rained down on him as a result was astonishing.
This says quite a bit about the character of someone who is ment to be a "public servant".
Stop investigating the people who blew the whistle and start investigating the voter fraud.
Oh yeah, that's right, you're not interesting in preserving democracy and guaranteeing the electoral process - shit, if that stuff worked you'd be back in Missouri, doing nothing, because you can't even win an election against a corpse.
This is nothing other than the government developing detailed files on each and everyone of us who has been critical of this so-called president. After dubya reappoints himself he'll be coming after us.
BTW, I've read that the reason he wanted seven colors was that he thought it'd be neat if there were a prime number.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
The U.S. has not declared war since World War II.
And even more finally, why are you people whinging about this? The lady is a journalist, which means she can invoke Source Protection laws, if applicable, and refuse to turn over any information....
That's the point, eh. The Grand Jury alread knows she's a journalist, so why would they try to subpeona this stuff, unless they are trying to erode "Source Protection" rights?
But two crimes were being committed in the very close vicinity of the boat.
My point was that a small crime committed at the same time as a large crime shouldn't be overlooked.
And you are 100% correct. The deciding factor is how you would pronounce it. If you say "James-uhs" you should spell it James's. If you say "James" or "Jamess" then you should spell it James'. Both are correct, and the written word was created to mimic the spoken word, so you should spell it as you'd say it. If you add an additional syllable at the end, then you need the "s" after the apostrophe. Otherwise, you can leave it off. Though, both are correct, so it really doesn't matter.
Learn to love Alaska
helpfull
Univeristy-class hosting.
Kindergarten-class spelling.
... being interviewed on the radio several times now. The gist of it is, she's in the forefront of proving that the vote is hijacked in this nation,and it's a BIG story. We still have millions who think the vote has actual meaning. If they really, really knew howq corrupt it is, we might have "social unrest" over it, and deservedly so, IMO. It goes to the top. The goons at the top don't want it to get out any more than it has already, they want to keep this charade going. There have been pleas for people to mirror or cache her site, because of attempts to shut her down, illegally via hacking, ddos, etc, then quasi legal attempts like this. It has less to do with hacking, and more to do with the government* trying to keep the actual information hidden, like they strive to do with any other criminal activity they engage in.
*government = fascist elements in government that make up a "shadow" government, not all government employees are in on this, obviously, just the ones who give the major orders.
It's also an attempt to just scare people off, "oh no, if I visit this website I'll get on a list!"
Well, I been there before (her site), guess I'll go again. The more people on bogus government lists, the less they can do with them in the future.
The loggers should have been prosecuted.
The Feds sent a message to Greenpeace, clean up your trespassing act.
How do these Grand Juries know "what the citizens want"? Which citizens?
Let's get this straight: you like how a Grand Jury can ignore prosecutors' evidence? That "Fifth Amendment -Free Zone" seems pretty cool? Tossing due process is pretty convenient? Harassing controversial political publishers is OK, as long as it just wastes their time in defending themselves?
It only makes these Grand Juries more sinister to know that you served on one.
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Why don't you mean those yahoos up in Michigan? Because they don't agree with your politics? If all the vast masses of armed American citizens were pitted against the American military, we'd see a massacre of the disorganized gun toters by the military killing machine.
.sig: you misunderstand the cheapness of the original federal government, which planned to save money by relying on calling up citizens with their own guns, rather than supplying them from an armory. We've obviously blown that off, and these "cartridge boxes" you prize are just keeping millions of Americans insecure every day, due to accidents and bad tempers.
Re: your
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That's apparently what it takes to finally get a Slashdot story submission accepted, despite how it seems when reading the homepage most days :).
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Picked. I don't like the complexity of the consensus "official" rules for posessives, a la Strunk & White. I also don't like the rules for quoting punctuation, like terminal '.', '?', etc. Funny how both operations use the apostrophe character, which is also a speech to a person who isn't there. That's appropriate to how these rules speak to me :).
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Was anyone at SJG convicted of that security breach?
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Perhaps, in more naive times, some might have called Harris eccentric. Instead, today we know that Anonymous Cowards slinging mere foul insults against ballot watchdogs hate America.
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If you're going to abandon America to the Christaliban, just go quietly. The rest of us who value liberty will stay here fighting for it. And for you, too, of course: you cowards will be safe nowhere from the Global War on Terror. Start telling your impressionable friends to stick together - don't get scared, get even.
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Hi Agent Mike! I'm a Charter Member of Black Box Voting and like I told you on DU (http://www.democraticunderground.com) just sign up, (it's FREE!) and send me a PM and I'll be happy to give you my contact information! You're barking up the wrong tree though, you should be investigating R. Doug Lewis and the Election Center, IMHO! (http://www.electioncenter.org) None of us at BBV were stupid enough to take the VoteHere bait when it was offered and the Diebold source code was on an open, unsecured server just sitting there for the taking by anyone who knew how to use Google. As for the Diebold memo's well they were sent to us by someone inside the company and it's a damn good thing since they detail so much illegal activity. Perhaps you should be looking into Diebold's intentional use of illegal software during elections rather than harassing us.
You did a better job the second time around, although I still don't quite follow your position. You're using your own made-up words (Christaliban) without offering definition, as well as using contradictory and grammatically confusing statements. ("How did my post make you afraid, when you're the one splitting the country") --It's very important to remember that you're not posting to yourself and to consider what you might sound like to somebody else.
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Anyway, first off, (to try to respond to what I think your points might be). . . I don't live in the U.S.A. I have, however, traveled through it fairly extensively, spent many weeks in many different cities seeing America and talking with Americans over the years. I had few problems with the U.S. when I began. That changed.
Second, I am not scared. At all. And I strongly suspect that I have a more clear idea than you do as to how 'interesting' things are going to get on the world stage, -regardless of where one happens to be on the globe.
Third. It sounds to me as though you plan to 'do your part' to protect the U.S. from corrupt politicians and those who plan to take away your freedoms. Okay, fair enough. I must say this though. .
Any efforts you have made to date have achieved very little. A psychopath is in charge of the U.S. Americans have invaded two middle eastern countries without just cause. In fact, American history is rife with bloody and dark foreign policy. You've asked, "where were you when they pulled their coup in 2000?" I was watching, stunned from across the border. Where were you?
Okay. That's unfair. Canada has its own problems, to be certain. Every country has. But in reality, there is very little an individual can do at this point. We are witnessing social programs which were set up centuries ago, and which are being stage managed carefully at every step.
I would certainly like to see America come to her senses and take the reins back, but frankly, the level of programming is so deep and so wide-spread, I just don't see it happening. There are so many fundamental realities which people are not just unaware of, but which they actively resist becoming aware of; truths which need to be understood in order for the population to have any effect upon the course of history. It's hard to even start listing them, let alone convince the sleeping masses of them when they don't want to listen.
Chritianity and Hinduism and Judaism comprise a fundamental problem. How can you undo that kind of deliberate programming when it has been working itself into the psyches of the world populace for the last 2000 years?
Zionists own the media. Corporations and Military-industrial powers control the government, and the government controls all the guns.
How many American troops shipped over seas to Stop Saddam and find his WMDs? (WMD's which SOME of us knew never existed.) There's a reason over a hundred thousand soldiers bought the lie lock, stock and barrel, and it's because they were successfully programmed from the ground up.
Just check your fear at the door when you vote for a better day in November. And try not to piss off the rest of us who are ready to do more when these criminals attempt to steal another election.
Please. There is NOTHING a 'vote' can do to alter a thing in the U.S. at this point. The current leadership of the U.S. knows precious little as it is despite what they think. Puppets. There is nobody on the ballot who can make any difference at all. And what are you going to do? Storm the halls of power if the 'vote' doesn't go the way you want? Listen, genius, that's a contingency the current government is counting on. That would be a wet dream! It's an old, old trick, and it's an effective one, because has worked every damned time throughout history, and if it doesn't have a name, it should.
In short, armed revolt is the #1 method for justify
So you're Canadian. That explains why the fascist takeover of the US is a spectator sport for you. I lived in Canada for years - I loved it, I return frequently, and ... some of my best friends are Canadians. But I also learned about the Canadian denial of dependence on the US. That's not to deny the US dependence on Canada, but that's not what we're talking about. But your location clarifies your viewpoint. It does not excuse your projection of your fear of the US onto me, who you need fear only if you're counting on fascists keeping their control of our government. Nor does it excuse your inability to see through that to the meaning of my message, as the Canadian training in reading English has, in my experience, been more than adequate. Try to pay attention, rather than flying off the handle: we're probably allies, and can strive to work together.
How can I tell that you're scared? You showed up in this thread with exhortations to quit the country, now that it's in crisis. I don't expect Canadian patriotism to keep you engaged in American politics. But pragmatism, especially as a dependent, suggests engagement rather than flight. Especially as you can hardly hide from a fascist America anywhere in the world, least of all in Canada. But there's more. You've consistently pointed out differences among all of us, never any common ground, as the basis for getting through this crisis - alienation is an other circular cause/effect of the fear cycle.
Moreover, you're ignorant. That's the basis for fear, usually ignorance of the other party, or sometimes ignorance of the party you'll become through change, after interaction. A blanket term of "Zionists own the media" - who are these zionists? The Jews? All the Jews, some Jews? Pro-Israel activists? You'll learn a lot when you investigate the media ownership of the Arab monarchs and dictators, where those trillions of petrodollars are invested. Your ignorance of politics is also betrayed by your claim that "There is NOTHING a 'vote' can do to alter a thing in the U.S. at this point", when of course it will take thousands, millions of votes to replace Bush with Kerry. And of course there's lots more to be done.
I will ignore your "armed revolt" fantasies, and its accessorized military responses, except to note that it's working in Iraq and elsewhere right now - their results might be worth the heavy cost in bloodshed to them, as it has been so many times in the past. And that they, too, have gone this route only after exhausting the propaganda "liberation" that existed only briefly, only in the media.
Where was I when they pulled their coup? I was on the other side of the country from where I'd moved since the last election, voting for Gore, in a state Gore won. He won my home state too. When there was no backlash, no mass protest of the corrupt closure of the constitutional crisis, I expected Bush to take few chances with his unprecedented weak support, and unify, follow the center to govern. And I moved to another state, which I judged would largely escape the inevitable pain of his mismanagement. But we all underestimated Bush, except for those who overestimated him (his voters, and his staff). So now we're working together, with everything we've got, to get rid of this clown without doing any more damage to the nation than he's already done. But the gloves are off. So we're even taking the time to school foreign dilettantes in how a free people keeps its liberty when threatened by tyranny.
All of us, Canadians included, have inherited the legacy of the American revolutionaries who created a state of liberty centuries ago. But some of us will fight for it, and others will leave that to the rest, hiding in false security, unless we fail and the tyranny inevitably spills across all borders. Get your spine together, get organized, and do whatever you can to help keep America free, in your own self-interest. If not, just don't get in our way.
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Arguing on the Internet is like taking part in the Special Olympics. You might win, but you're still a retard.
You mean the agency doesn't care what *else* is in the log as long as I didn't do anything wrong?
Yes, why would they? Oh, I'm sure the FBI really gives a damn that you have playboy subscription and like to read western novels.