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?"

Comments

Re:No Logs.

[LostCluster]

Unfortately, it's hard to run a web fourm without logging at least something... and they keep a registered user list.

Read the whole story from Bev Harris here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Post Subject: BBV: Secret Service on a fishing expedition. They want your name.

Bev Harris Speaks on Secret Service Issue

Re:Bring back paper ballots, pencils

[pavon]

You misunderstand the purpose of these "reciepts". They stay at the ballot box, and are availiable for recounts and audits. The voter does not take them home, and thus cannot prove how he voted. Futhermore, they do not identify who the voter is. They may have an ID that corresponds to the vote in the electronic database, but this is also not linked to the voter. A piece of paper printed by a machine and checked by the voter is just as good as on filled in by hand.

You are right that taking hardcopies home would be a stupid idea, but I have honestly not heard a single person suggest that. Unfortunately, someone started calling them reciepts, and it caught on and now everyone is all confused because they think these hardcopies are used the same way as a normal reciept. Damn it, I knew this was going to happen the first time I saw that word in a major article.

Re:Awwww fsck

[arkanes]

That is almost competely untrue. Especially when, in a case like this, the FBI has its choice of judges. I'd be suprised if they're looking for anything more specific than a list of IPs to compare to traffic logs on the VoteHere site. "Correlation between traffic at site a and site b" would be plenty with the right judge.

Unlike discovery in a trial, "fishing" warrants are perfectly legit, assuming you've got a sufficently friendly judge.

Only 549 signatures on their petition...

[Anonymous Coward]

With the number of U.S. slashdotters out there, we can certainly bump this in the thousands, go sign the petition:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BlackBoxVoting.org.h tml

Go and show that it's not just a dozen paranoid freaks out there that think the system is broken.

This is probably not needed, but WTH

[trezor]

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.

Re:Not judge. Grand Jury.

[CrimsonAvenger]

No, a Grand Jury (which I served on once upon a time) is not some nefarious plot to steal your computers.

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....