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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?"
How about the feds crack down on the companies that make this terrible software in the first place?
..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.
How long before the feds make it a requirement (via some law similiar to PATRTIOT) to keep logs?
...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.
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.'"
Apparently a judge somewhere has been shown enough information to think that a search of the site is warranted...
"A judge somewhere"... Exactly the problem, here. Thanks to the lack of clear jurisdictions containing a given website, the FBI can pretty much take their pick of every judge in the country to find one willing to issue a warrant on this. Consider me not exactly inspired with confidence on the justification for the issue of this warrant.
Gotta trust the system
No, we don't. Hear that sound? The founding fathers just broke mach-1 turning over in thier graves at your suggestion. A significant portion of the US constitution describes how to properly replace it when, not if, we need to overthrow an overly oppressive government. We cannot, and should not, trust the system. The system exists to extract real labor from you in exchange for purely token compensation. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you still trust the system, I hope you've enjoyed coming out of your coma. But I have to tell you, things have changed. The "system" allows you your freedom only because you haven't become a visible enough target yet, not because you haven't committed any crimes (and trust me, we've all committed crimes, breaking laws we don't even know exist, ones that include mutually exclusive (and thus impossible to comply with) terms. The "system" leaves us alone until it needs us to vanish, then it simply has to pick a crime with which to charge us.
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.
Wrong. You're thinking of the Declaration of Indepenence. Which, in fact, is not a part of the oppressive, monolithic "system" as you described it (the Constitution, the U.S. Code, and the laws of the several States is what I think you were referring to). In fact, the Declaration of Independence has no legal basis in our system whatsoever-- it was just a self-justification published by a bunch of guerillas revolting against an overseas colonizer (granted, it was a very well-written one). The fact that some of those same guerillas went on to establish a central government over the previously independent colonies is inconsequential. Nothing within the "system" as you call it provides for its own overthrow-- that's to be taken up by brave patriots like yourselves. (Do you really think you could make a better one?)
The "system" allows you your freedom only because you haven't become a visible enough target yet, not because you haven't committed any crimes
Wrong. The "system" allows you your freedom because you haven't been convicted by a jury of your peers of a crime that requires you be remanded into custody of the state. (You do realize that trial by jury is still in effect, right?)
You seem to have skipped a few stages on your way to 1984, my friend:
If you're concerned about the activities of a particular branch of the government, I suggest your first step should be to look up who's on that particular oversight commitee.
Your significantly less paranoid friend (who works at one of those overseen government thingies),
-d
You do realize that trial by jury is still in effect, right?
Ask the guys at Guantanamo, or the largy body of "material witnesses," suspected terrorists, and other U.S. citizens being held without trial or conviction by the US government.
Welcome to the 21st century.
you overlooked the fact that the FBI's subpoenas (even the secret ones) have to be reviewed by a judge and often a grand jury.
But what if they don't need a subpoena?
and perhaps most significantly, you seem unaware that the activities of the FBI are overseen by Senators and Representatives that you and I vote for
Oh sure, I trust the other branches of the Gov't to oversee the FBI.
The problem is that Congressional and Court oversight usually waits until things have gotten so far out of control that they can't duck their responsibility. By which time many innocent people have been hurt. I call the current stupidity in Iraq (ICRC pdf - sorry) as my first witness and Frank Church as my second.
Your significantly more paranoid friend (who has worked for two out of three branches of the Federal Gov't).
FreeSpeech.org
Oh, you have a policy of not keeping logs? We don't believe you. Mind if we visit your house and confiscate all of your computers and servers? We still need to know if your website is associated with the theft of Diebold documents.
They'll specify "all electronics and papers pertaining to logging", and they'll take everything. The only reason they aren't already gone is because we're here and if they go after em', it'll look aufuly suspicious now won't it? A website exposing the republicans' (the guys who are in power right now) connections to fixing voting machines all of a sudden gets raided by the FBI because the FBI thought they might have logs pertaining to the theft of logs at Diebold, a corporation republicans have a lot of dealings with.
Of course, it won't be spun that way in the mainstream media. No mention will be made to the connection between Diebold and republicans, and Diebold will be spun as a nice corporation that had some critical documents stolen by nefarious kniving hackers. Not to mention the humiliating defeat in california the company had, this'd just begin to really get the ball rolling at the top of the snow hill, so to speak.
Now, if you l33t haxors really want to do something useful, MIRROR THE WEBSITE! Think about it this way; Blackboxvoting.org goes down due to an FBI raid, an organized mirror is available. The main mirroring page has a nice paragraph or two explaining the websites position. The blackboxvoting owner then requests the website be redirected to the mirror site. The news hits mainstream media the day after the raid, whammo, everyone's typing blackboxvoting.org into their web browser and checking the website out, as well as reading their position on the whole thing. I'll leave the rest upto your imagination, but I think people will begin to get even more uneasy knowing congress is screwing around with their right to vote.
Of course, the ensuing media debacle will be, as always, phased out in a blast of confusion, but at least a couple thousand more Americans know their voting system is going down the toilet.
Got Gestapo?
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