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California AG Says He'll Sue Diebold
moby11 points to this Reuters story carried by Yahooo!; it begins "California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products."
Or the jury will have to count their votes ten times.
I thought politics.slashdot.org was just set up for this non-online stuff.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
So they will sue Diebold, win, and use the money to buy more Diebold products? After all, they are probably engaged in some type of "e-vote upgrade" and have already sold their "old" optical/mechanical/etc. machines to "poorer" [not considering the CA budget deficit] states.
Have they considered vendor lock-in?
"Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has said Diebold deceived California with aggressive marketing that led to the installation of touch-screen voting systems that were not tested or approved nationally or in California."
From the sounds of it, the person(s) involved with authorizing the installation gave in to Diebold's hype without bothering to give system a thourough inspection/review prior to making the decision. In addition to suing Diebold, maybe the AG should be looking for some heads to chop for making a bad situation[company pushing false claims] even worse[installation and failure of product]?
Hopefully not using those electronic voting machines...
Due to lack of disk space this user has been discontinued
We the jury, find the defendant, to be DENNIS.
Good. With California (still) facing rather sizable budget deficits and having paid Diebold so much money to begin with, this seems like a good step. I'm worried about the 2004 election in our state, we don't have enough machines, volunteers or money to solve the problems. Since my taxes went toward paying for those machines in the first place, I'd be happy to see the state get some of my money back so it can put it towards the stuff it really needs.
Too bad about the criminal case though, it may not be fair, but Diebold sure seem like a bunch of crooks to me!
on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products.
What false claim was that? "Our product does NOT rig elections."
I'm not sure why, but things have been rigged so that the politics section is more like a place to view all political stories from one place. If something is more to do with our rights online, it gets placed here but also appears on politics.slashdot.org. Ditto anything which isn't in the politics section but is in the politics topic. So it's more like a tag to be applied to stories with a political slant than a cage to contain them.
This is going to be entertaining. The developer memo that Diebold should "Charge them Out the Ying-Yang" for paper copies because it was a new feature will surely come back to haunt the company. Such a disgusting attempt to exploit the customer over product deficiencies will not sit well with a jury.
I think the damages in this case may be "Out the Ying-Yang". That's a phrase that really grows on you when the shoe is on the other foot. Come on say it with me Diebold, "Out the Ying-Yang".
Like most big lawsuits, especially between the government and a big country, this will probably go through dozens of twists and turns, and motions and objections and requests for odd evidence, and it will probably end up out of court or perhaps just be dropped.
However, since this is getting covered very widely, on Y! news, for example, it will at least people start asking questions about why people want electronic voting, and how secure it really is.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
That's right up their alley... Litigation with the complaint of "I'm too stupid."
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
It is not just the sale of the machine and things on the hype. Diebold also 'repaired' systems using unahthorized/unapproved/untested software and patches.
Fight Spammers!
(Gross generalization alert)
What you seek, cannot be. You are asking people in political offices to TAKE RESPONSIBILITIES for their actions, and that just isn't possible in this country.
Yeah, hopefully before it gets there, the California administration will step in and sue this company into oblivion. With the company being "terminated", we have less of chance of a Bush/Gore fiasco raising its ugly head and saying "I'll be back".
(Couldn't think of any retarded references to Junior, Predator, etc.)
You might be also interested to know that their system has a HUGE security hole (backdoor).
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78
Electronic voting is a guaranteed way to have a dictatorship. Once a closed source machine is in charge of counting your votes, as long as the number matches the participants, who could challenge it, it's a machine. Say good bye to minor parties if this becomes mainstream.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Totally awesome!
You're assuming that there is a company with a good voting machine package available and the ability to ramp up production quickly. From what I've read, the only reason most states are even looking at these machines are because they're being forced to do so by a stupid, reactionary federal law inspired by the 2000 FL problems. Here in Washington state, our government has been aggressively attacking the voting machine manufacturers because none of them make a good product but we have to buy at least one electronic voting machine per county by either 2006 or 2008 (I forget) or break federal law.
This is a clear case of reactionary legislation mandating solutions worse than the problems.
I was wondering when the blamestorming was going to finally hit the Diebold fiasco. At what stage will people realise that with something as important as a voting machine, independently checking its secrity would be a good idea? Sure, Diebold is partially responsible, but so are the people that decided to pay for their flawed systems.
"Out the Yin-Yang" indeed. It's hard to put a price on playing fast and loose with American democracy.
For as much as modern pundits seem to throw around the term "treason" these days, I'm surprised the term hasn't been applied to Diebold.
Tweet, tweet.
What false claim was that?
How about simply that the product was supposed to work correctly as it was claimed to do before the sale.
All technology vendors need to be foreced to quit hiding behind some software EULA that allows them to escape being held liable when their stuff don't work right. If it takes charging them with fraud, then so be it.
Umm, what the fuck planet do you come from. Diebold claimed to have a product that fit the purposes of the state (a secure electronic voting system). They marketed the system as that. The system has been found NOT to be secure, and that they knew it wasn't secure. Claiming a produuct is fit for a purpse when you know it isn't is fraud. They shouldn't just be sued, there should be people in jail over this.
As for not dragging a corporation through the courts because youy have a beef with their practices- thats THE FUCKING PURPOSE OF A COURT SYSTEM. If you think someone is breaking the law, you bring them to court and see if the judge agrees. You think when someone lies about there product and commits fraud, we shouldn't sue their asses for our money back? We sure as hell should.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Similar story in the UK not so long ago, the Government wanted to use postal and telephone voting as a means of increasing turnout, but they were seen as open to fraud and abuse (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3602170.st m), including voter intimidation. What is wrong with making it compulsory for people to turn up to a voting station to cast their vote in person? I accept that some people cannot do this, for physical reasons (disabled, etc) or work (emergency services, etc), but if people are saying they're too busy to vote then why not reallocate a public holiday so they don't have to go to work that day? And if voting is compulsory, they cannot complain about who wins in the end. If you don't vote, don't complain!
Due to lack of disk space this user has been discontinued
I wonder how things are going to go in Florida this time around, between Diebold machines, institutionalized electoral mismanagement ('00 was neither their first "00", nor their last), and 2-3 hurricanes wiping the state's infrastructure flat during the run-up to the election.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I bet DieBold will try to counter sue for slander of title, in order to hold onto investors while they bail out.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer was terminated by Republican governator Arnold Schwartzenegger.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
more proof of malfeasance(previous diebold owners running away with elections when behind in polls, etc...) :(
Politicians
Halfway down, see ctrl-f rigging
convicted fellons working for them!
i don't have an account
Backdoor vote rigging?
That is a starter list, I'll post more later, just mod the parent up(this one!)
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
And the dozen jurymen vote: 2 for the plaintiff, 13 for the defendant, 1 for Buchanan.
1) Accept, without proper testing, Electronic Voting Machines. Pay ridiculous amount.
2) Find out machines suck
3) SUE for Much More than the original cost
4) PROFIT!!
Not really. Just do not try to pull a scam. They will nail you. There were a number of real reasons why Enron was located in Texas and not all of them had to do with Oil.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sometimes, competition and rush to market is so intense that companies simply CANNOT do a proper job. The reason? No one is going to do a proper job. If you wait and do things right, then a competitor will get their half-ass product to market before you, and then you lose. No one is the wiser until way down the road. Now, since everyone is doing the hack-and-slash job, the winner is whoever managed to cover their mistakes better or who had fewer visible mistakes (or marketed better, etc.). By the time people figure out that the chosen product is shite, the companies that might have done a good job are either long gone or on to other things.
Only after this first wave of a new kind of product do companies "learn from the mistakes of the past" (translation: we can do it right this time because customers finally expect to wait on a proper product).
Capitalism is wonderful, but as with anything run by humans, it has its challenges.
Diebold is the sacrificial lamb in this case. There's no way that history could have turned out any other way. If it hadn't been Diebold, it would have been someone else doing the same crap job and then getting sued by CA. They were the lucky ones who got to market first and the unlucky ones who got caught at doing what they and all of their competitors were doing. As usual, some other company will soon come along and produce a slightly better machine, etc.
I could be wrong, but my finely-tuned USENET senses suggest that YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Random and weird software I've written.
> They don't deliberately insert loopholes into their electronic voting systems
How would you know? It's closed-source, trade-secret code.
> and it's only because of relentless pounding that a periodic vulnerability is found.
If you actually bother to read the sordid history of Diebold's voting products, you'll see they've been bug-ridden and insecure from the get-go. Yay for our MS Access-backed product!
"For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro [sic] the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo."
Read the memos at any number of sites, like http://www.hacksonville.org/diebold/
Would you accept a pacemaker that was made by a "good company" that wasn't "necessarily adequately tested"?
Is a voting machine any different than a pacemaker? If a pacemaker fails, you die. Consider that every election features some real whacko candidates. What if voting machines conspired to elect a whacko to presidental office? Do you really want to think how many people would be killed if we a madman in the Whitehouse?
The problem is that Diebold assured the technically inept California voting folks that they were perfectly able to build a good system. And then lied. And have been knowingly breaking the law. And are trying to still profit from this by charging as much as possible for printers so that there is a verifiable paper record of the votes, to fix *their* decided security holes.
I mean, really, do you *know* that they haven't been inserting loopholes? Of course not. There's a variety of ways that they can mess with the machines. We just don't know and, since each voter has neither the ability nor the knowlege to dissassemble their voting machine to ensure that it is properly recording votes, we *can't* know.
Gentoo Sucks
Herald Tribune
Washington Post, answers critics
Might be redundant cache
Dems want aditing Where have we heard this b4?Hmmmm...
F-L-O-R-I-DeU-H wants papertrail
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
...if the product were open source and it was later found to have flaws, could California sue? I think voting terminals should be open source because it allows people who may be a lot smarter than those working at Diebold to dissect it and make sure it's working properly and secure. For something as fundamanetal as voting, people should know what happens when they click on a candidate.
But back to what I was saying, California knows that if Diebold violates the contract, they can sue. If this was done by a bunch of people, they wouldn't have that insurance. They also wouldn't have had as much risk though.
I don't know, this is an interesting set of circumstances because it seems so new in our culture. I'd like to hear any opinions on people close to this matter who have some valuable insight.
You misunderstand...
"Lockyer determined sufficient evidence existed to go forward with a false claims lawsuit against Diebold," the statement said. The state's top lawyer earlier had dropped a criminal investigation of Diebold.
It's an electon year, right? Even if he's not up for re-election, it's the natural behavior of a politician.
To whit:
Diebold Vice President Thomas Swidarski said in a statement that the company was pleased Lockyer dropped the probe. Despite Lockyer's decision to sue, the company is "confident that the state's decision to intervene will aid in a fair and dispassionate examination of the issues raised in the case," Swidarski said.
What Swidarski really oughta said, "[the company] is confident that this is a political ploy and will amount to nothing."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
the California state government didn't get the memo: How do you tell when a vendor is lying? Their lips move.
How about a helping of STFU & RTFA? Before things get completely FUBAR?
"Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has said Diebold deceived California with aggressive marketing that led to the installation of touch-screen voting systems that were not tested or approved nationally or in California."
Not approved? WTF, why would any vendor, save a car mechanic, do anything without the customer's approval? Especially in the case of a multi-million dollar rollout of such a large product. I call bullshiat, I bet Diebold has many signed approvals by authorized members of the government of California. This is just the start of all the "election irregularies" finger pointing when Kerry takes it up the arse in November.
Just because when they made the law they were reacting against an event doesn't make them reactionary. Reactionaries generally react against change. While you may dispute whether this was progress or not, it was at least an attempt to change\fix a problem.
How is suing Diebold going to help anyone or the situation any? Don't you think we should save the damn money for some good systems? I mean can we even get enough money form them to pay for the stupid law suit? Pointless. The only people who benefit from this lawsuit is the lawyers. Raydude
It seems to me that Diebold hasn't done anything wrong here. They have a horrible product which doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. Incompetent, perhaps, but not wrong. The politicians, who are absolutely incapable of critical thought, especially when it comes to using tax money, screwed up buy buying into an obviously flawed system, and now they're trying to shift the blame (as politicians always do) to Diebold. Oh well, I guess that always has been and will be the way of things. Diebold's job was to sell their product. It was the customers job to decide if they needed it, and unfortunately, that customer uses our money.
Hard for me to tell, who are you refering to? Diebold heads? Innocent state employees caught in the crossfire? Or the stupid shit who failed to understand the concept of 'Due Diligence'?
Oh, and by the way, I know it's not the custom in the political arena, but isn't a leader supposed to take responsibility for the errors of his subordinates?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's finally good to see Diebold get its come-uppens. It's highly important to see this as the first step in realizing that commercial companies are incapable of securely managing our infrastructure (applies to voting and Diebold's ATMs) without the people's ability to scrutinize such products.
It's about freaking time.
(okay, so I'm a little biased.)
"He does look a bit Oompa like, even if his Loompa is a bit off-kilter."
Diebold CEO, Bob Urosevich, announced, "Like our motto says, 'We won't rest!' We will fight this lawsuit until we win! For us, it is do or die bold!"
Read my blog: HansMast.com
Has anybody tried talking to non-computer people about electronic voting? I've tried it a few times, even toning down things, but people often either don't understand what's at stake or assume I'm exagerrating.
I think this is quite possibly the most important US domestic issue this year, and feel that the word needs to get out about this, so we can try to fix what we can before it's too late. Unfortunately, I haven't been successful thus far. Has anybody else had better luck?
If you guys had been paying attention to the GNAA crapfloods and press releases, you'd know that Rolloffle is one of their shock troops. Morans.
Something tells me people just enjoy passing on the blame. Let's look at the 2000 election. "Damn those voting machines!" How about the people operating them? Hmm? "Damn these voting machines!" User and technician error is thrown aside as people realize that they can criticize the maker of the product (who is obviously working for a secure system) with support. Creator accountablility is recognized - user accountability is ignored. Maybe a cooperative effort funded by state dollars to fix the problem - as opposed to using all the money on legal fees - would offer a more secure system, more public integration and input in a government system (something our founding fathers, especially Jefferson, wanted), and an overall happy situation. Let's do it for ol' TJ.
"Leisure is the mother of philosophy" - Thomas Hobbes
"Claiming a produuct is fit for a purpse when you know it isn't is fraud."
You mean like using a Linux distro as a Key Distribution Center via Kerberos 5 ? "But they said that it was a secure!" Yeah so what. If you sued everyone who had vulnerabilities in their "advertized as secure" software we wouldn't have Mandrakesoft, SUSE, Windows XP, OSX, FreeBSD, etc...
All software has security flaws!
Creative Demolition
It is interesting how this has played out. /.ers have been moaning (rightly so) about how this stuff is bad and how the ppl in charge have been ignoring it. And now the ppl in charge seem to be waking up. There appears to be hope after all.
Having said that, it should never have happened in the first place.
Good thing that this is a Republic because it will be the electoral college to get things straight this time. Second runner ups will be the blood sucking lawyers.
Who do I sue when life makes false promises of being fair?
+35 points for dark teen angst! +600 bonus points for a subject heading that as nothing to do with the original topic or this post!
I've tried to explain the whole issue to my wife, while not computer-phobic and somewhat familar with issue in the computer industry (simply by living with me) she does think I am exaggerating the issues with machines like Diebold's. To further enhance the facts here, she has also been serving as the head election judge for my voting precinct, and is directly responsible for making sure the vote is counted fairly and accurately.
To be more blunt here, I think I understand her issues more than she understands where I'm coming from.
People are familiar with software upgrades, however, and if you tell them that you want to upgrade their comptuer just before they have a major report to turn in for work, or upgrade their operating system while they are uploading their favorite pictures to grandma, I think they would totally understand the issues without explainations even being necessary. Why a software upgrade is dangerous during the middle of an election would be of similar seriousness.
Most people consider computers to be a "black box" (no pun intended to Black Box Voting) where all sorts of "magic" occur, and the current battles over the legitimacy of eVoting are merely duels between wizards and their apprentices. Since it doesn't affect them (really... even when you are talking about who they are voting for), they don't see what the big issues are that you are complaining about.
I still say that the best way to push this all out into the open is to make sure that some obscure 3rd party candidate wins some relatively insignificant contest and breaking this down into something that the mainstream news media would be able to comprehend and complain about. Something like that might just kill eVoting altogether (which wouldn't be my goal with such a project).
Specificly, I openly suggested that this be done with the election of student body officers at a major university (less likely to land you in jail, and you might even get the student government to agree to do this in advance). I wouldn't cry too much if Nader or even Ross Perot (yeah, I know he isn't running) won Wyoming for U.S. President, but I wouldn't want to get into jail doing that.
Explaining the issues that way would be easier to explain to non-techies, that such an election could even happen, which cuts across most partisian viewpoints as well and explains why this is something that both political parties should be concerned about.
1) Accept, without proper testing, Electronic Voting Machines. Pay ridiculous amount.
2) Find out machines suck
3) SUE for Much More than the original cost
4)???
5)End up with an even larger deficit!
.
why does the porridge bird lay his eggs in the air?
I heard the count on CNN today.. 1002 US troops have died in warring in Iraq/Afganistan(combined).
Do you really want to think how many people would be killed if we a madman in the Whitehouse?
I know some might answer that question "Over a thousand and still counting...." ;) *innocent whistle*
Got mead?
we will be able to be protected by whistleblowers.
7 26256&tid=103&tid=137&tid=126&tid= 17
1 18218&tid=153&tid=103&tid=17
1 42252&tid=153&tid=172&tid=103&tid= 17
l d&author=&sort=1&op=stories
someone please correct me if i am wrong but...
this suit and the carnage over it began some time back with diebold's documents being leaked onto the net and posted just about everywhere.
the following articles will jar some memories...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/0
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/17/2
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/22/0
and there are many more on this topic, http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=103&query=diebo
basically...the new features prposed in the upcoming versions of windows and ms-office, plus the pending legislation before congress would protect the company and will kill this kind of information from being leaked.
once those leaks are sealed and only authorized eyes see these documents, you can bet that whistleblowing on nefarious activities will come to a halt.
Is it 5:30 yet?
We, the jury, find the defendant to be Pat Buchannan.
Let the AG know he's making the right choice.
-B
[Diebold] is obviously working for a secure system
And where is the evidence for this? Diebold set up machines with code that was not vetted by the CA electoral commission folks. The system had so many flaws that new ones were popping up every week. Email published to the web showed the Diebold honchos in a rather bad light, saying things like, "If democracy really worked, it would be outlawed," and, "We will sue anyone who exposes flaws in our system."
Yeah, they sound like real keen guys.
If they really were interested in providing a secure system, they would have. They are trying to replace a system that has proven relatively secure, easy to use, and fairly accurate (FL's 2000 presidential election clusterfuck notwithstanding). They should at least provide one advantage over the old system: make it more secure (it isn't), more accurate (definitely not), or easier to use (debatable).
Diebold sold them machines on promises. Those promises turned out to be lies. Let me say this exactly once: If a company sells a product based on promises, it is up to the company to provide a product that lives up to the promises.
Don't try to blame this on the operators. That's like blaming the rape victim. It's Diebold's fault for promising one thing, and delivering another.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Absolutely right. If there is one thing ordinary citizens fail to understand about how government works, it is that in government accounting, recipients of funds do not get to "roll it over" the following fiscal period. Not only do you have to spend what you have, if you don't spend what you have, you don't get more money later.
With large government IT projects (as voting machines are), the projects that get funded get funded again only if they use the money they've been given in the first place. Complaining that government agencies *don't get it* is beside the point. They are in many ways completely hamstrung by the accounting system used by government.
In fact, dasmegabyte raises an interesting point. If you want to change things for the better, get on Congress to come up with a better means of accounting for all of those tax dollars and managing their use. There is so much waste inherent in the system that has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans, but with bean counters and spreadsheets.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"Do you really want to think how many people would be killed if we a madman in the Whitehouse?"
The last count was approximately 11,000 in Afghanistan, a quarter of which were civilians.
Another 42,000 in Iraq, again, a quarter of which were civilians.
"... how many people would be killed if we a madman in the Whitehouse?"
So, and Bush is different how exactly?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Why isn't the attorney general taking them to court over that?
While I'd like to agree, just to stick it to the Republikkkins, Lockyer's a Democrap, he was elected to the position of AG (not appointed by the gov.), and it looks like he may be running for goverbator against Ah-nuld in 2006.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
The California Secretary of State, and the local county Registrars of Voters, have been working to improve our voting systems quite dilligently.
They aren't technically inept. They aren't e-voting security experts. Which isn't suprising... the lesson of the last couple of years seems to be that only a few independent experts are e-voting security experts, and that the companies doing it clearly aren't.
That was only really clear even to techies about a year ago...
They have a horrible product which doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.
Several things wrong with that statement. The first thing wrong is simple: you can't scrutinize the product, because the source code was hidden. Second, the product that Diebold deployed was not always the same product that the elections commission in CA had vetted.
The problem is simple: Diebold promised one thing, and delivered another.
Diebold's job was to sell their product. It was the customers job to decide if they needed it, and unfortunately, that customer uses our money.
See, this is the problem. Every free market apologist I read seems to think that every consumer can know everything about every product they buy. They further assume that it's okay for companies to lie, cheat, and steal to sell their product. Or, they assume that companies won't lie, cheat, or steal to sell their product.
The state of CA did study the issue, and they did try to purchase a product they thought would work. They are the ones who discovered the flaws in the system. They were promised those flaws did not exist.
Diebold has interfered with our electoral system, the underpinnings of our democracy, on a a grand scale. This is not simply a bag of Fritos that turned out to suck (duh). This is stuff that Diebold should have been more careful about, just like makers of nuclear reactors have to be more careful than makers of 50KW diesel generators.
Or are you saying that when a nuclear reactor has a design flaw and goes chernobyl, the designer/manufacturer isn't to blame?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
While reading through news items on the various Diebold electronic voting controversies, I came across this page showing step-by-step screenshots of how to secretly alter the votes on the central tabulator machines, as mentioned in a previous slashdot story.
If we can't get remove these systems (or give them paper trails) by November, perhaps we can instead follow the steps ourselves? Actually, we wouldn't even need to click through MS Access as shown above -- a quick little Visual Basic script would do the trick. It'd be neat if the US had Michael Badnarik and Ralph Nader as President and Vice President for the next four years.
Dude. The previous 3 messages called. They want their anti-bush party line back. ;)
Gentoo Sucks
That's interesting, I didn't know there was a federal mandate, no wonder the machines are such crap, they're all just rushing to get crap out the door and onto the market.
The part where everyone "knowingly" has security flaws, because everyone knows that all software has flaws.
Creative Demolition
> we have less of chance of a Bush/Gore fiasco raising its ugly head and saying "I'll be back".
:P
Except it's California. If Kerry doesn't take the state easily, that's a red flag to investigate.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
They mandated the use of electronic voting machines as a solution when at the time, and even now, no good electronic voting machine solutions exist. Perhaps I used the term "reactionary" differently than its traditional political meaning but the definition from your own link fits - "Characterized by reaction", where "reaction" is defined as "A response to a stimulus." I particularly meant in as a near-reflex reaction, where not much thought was involved in the process.
They are reactionary in that the legislation was a knee-jerk response (aka reaction) to the stimulus of the Florida voting problems. This is what has been defining much of the legislation recently, such as the Patriot Act. Something bad happens and then it's all good intentions when a bill is proposed. But no one bothers to stop to think or even just read the legislation and we usually end up with extremely regrettable side effects from laws that often prove ineffective for their original purpose as well. In most states we're pretty happy with our current mechanisms for voting but thanks to a bunch of idiots reacting to FL we're being forced to use new systems that are openly and admittedly extremely flawed and, at this point, seem to be much more open to election fraud.
After skimming around some more, I found this page which has links to voting machine executables and some election results which Diebold inadvertently made public. You can actually run the software on your home computer to try it out.
Also on the page is Election Support Guide for Diebold staff pulling support duties at the elections. It includes such gems as:
The AccuFeed is often sensitive to the orientation, size, and print quality of the ballot.. AccuFeed units tend to reflect varying behavior in terms of speed and quality of processing. Familiarize yourself with the functioning of the AccuFeed before the election if it will be used in the election. Do not offer information as to the AccuFeed's shortcomings to the jurisdiction, even where obvious.
You are quite correct. It isn't fair to call them technically inept. ;)
Gentoo Sucks
Most software I have used does not live up to it's hype... but are protected by thier ULAS does this mean that there could be an opening to challange software that doesnt live up to the hype. IANAL so I couldn't say.
It wants it's joke back.
----
Ground Control to Major Tom...
Election officials report California Attorney General Bill Lockyer was defeated by over 218 million votes in the latest recall election.
Now that California has a bunch of worthless machines laying around, is there any chance that we can install Linux on them along with some real, open source voting software?
Do you have ESP?
There were a number of real reasons why Enron was located in Texas and not all of them had to do with Oil.
Of course, once Arnie got elected he dropped the suit against them like a hot potato.
Given the Diebold machines are easily hacked, "seemed to be designed to allow for tampering", and factoring in the unwillingness of voting boards to change in the next two months, we're screwed? Seems Dubya is a shoe-in, probably why he's not doing jack squat recently.. knows he's going to win.
Oh gee, a hasty decision made in the wake of calamity without much thought just to do something ended up being a massive clusterfuck with exactly the opposite effect of what was intended? I'd pretend to be shocked, but it's not like anyone couldn't see it coming.
Glad at least some of the state governments are getting their heads out of their ass.
The enemies of Democracy are
Like in any good game it's all about following the rules and letting the game play out! That was THE fundamental flaw of the 2000 election...proper protocol was not followed by the media in order to create a sensation...
American "democracy"? I think the previous presidential elections have shown that democracy isn't the operative word here.
Folks,
This is the March/Harris lawsuit. Lockyer has decided to "join in", bringing the government in as a co-plaintiff.
At around 10:30am today, Lowell Finley (our lawyer) calls me with the news that Lockyer and the AG's office have decided to join the suit Bev Harris and I filed all the way back in October. Lockyer and company have taken this long to decide whether or not to jump in.
Their decision to do so is VERY welcome by myself, Bev and our lawyer.
Here's the repercussions:
* Bev, Lowell and myself will be splitting 15% of any winnings, versus 30% if we had to prosecute this on our own.
* We ain't complaining, first because we were never in this for the money and second because Diebold is much more likely to settle early, confronted with Lockyer's legal staff instead of just Lowell. MAYBE they'll cave in before the November election, which would be great.
* Second, our odds of any sort of win is now better.
* Third, Lockyer has sent notice to the REST of the Diebold customer counties in California that they can "join in the fun". So this could spread beyond Alameda County, the original gov't entity that Bev, Lowell and I filed on behalf of.
* This idea of suing Diebold for fraud becomes the alternative to what Solano County decided to do: pay $415,000 in their case to get out of their Diebold contract! (Note: Solano's settlement means it's TOO LATE to join in the March/Harris/Lockyer lawsuit and solution. There's a fair chance Lockyer announced all this today to prevent any more "Solano-style" mistakes.)
Other bits:
The AG's staff are promising Lowell that they are NOT getting into this in order to "sabotage the case and settle early for peanuts". They *could* do that but I believe them that they aren't.
The fact that this is being done as a "whistleblower suit" by two private citizens strongly HELPS the government versus a situation where they did it themselves, even when you factor in the small "bounty" to Bev, Lowell and myself. This is because the whistleblower laws include a triple damages provision if we can prove fraud. This becomes a "big stick" to threaten Diebold into settlement with (for less than triple damages; we'll be OK with actual costs returned plus 15% so that the gov't agencies get "made whole" despite the 15% cut.)
Without whistleblowers, first off the gov't wouldn't have had the data to do this at all and even if we just gave them the data "for free", the gov't wouldn't have the damage tripler "stick".
Finally, the question WILL come up (and already has among these replies): "Is all this legit? Did Diebold REALLY screw up here in a fashion worth suing over?"
My answer to that is at this new page showing the actual vote fraud rigged into Diebold's central tabulator software via screenshots of actual Diebold code and database structures:
http://www.equalccw.com/deandemo.html
That is all I need to say about the basic morality of this lawsuit.
Jim March / jmarch@prodigy.net
Screw that, california passed up ona good scam years ago. They only nail big political scams.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
So if they're successful then in capitalist America the machines no longer count you?
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
The problem with this "blaming of the victims" (California and it's "customer counties") is that they weren't allowed to see the source code for the product!
Only the Federally approved "Independent Testing Authorities" (ITAs) are allowed to see voting product source code. In the case of Diebold, this was Wyle Labs and Ciber Inc. (formerly "Metamor"), both in Huntsville Alabama and often relying on the same pool of employees. These agencies are approved for this "certification" process by the Federal Elections Commission.
These two acted as the "Arthur Andersons" to Diebold's "Enron".
We know that in at least two cases Diebold specifically decieved the testing labs. We have Diebold's internal memos in which managers instructed lower-level people to lie to the labs; in one case Ken Clark (Sr. Engineer and head of the tech support group) didn't think that the BS they were to pass off would fly, but the report came back from the underling that it did.
For detailed quotes of all this and technical analysis, see also my first two letters to the California Secretary of State, archived in the yellow table, right column:
http://www.equalccw.com/voteprar.html
Without the ability to even see source code, it's rather hard to blame anybody in California for this fiasco.
Diebold on the other hand had a contractual duty to provide software that obeys the Federal certification process sans fraud AND California's election laws (which require high-security products). They blew off both contractual elements, so this isn't "tort law", it's "contract law", a much more cast-in-stone (and legitimate) area of law.
Jim March / jmarch@prodigy.net
Both federal legislative houses are fairly evenly divided and the Senate in particular is completely up for grabs. But a few closely contested House seats that get swung the wrong way while everyone's eye is on the big show could have a huge effect, too..
I don't believe the tinfoil hats are called for just yet, but please try to remember that there's more than one election taking place this fall.
Or democrat judges in Florida who MADE UP SHIT and IGNORED LAWS to find for Gore?
I mean, let's be clear here.
In the past in the US, yes, the onus was almost 100% on the buyer to see if a product really did waht it said it did and if not, too bad, should have checked harder. That's not so anymore, now companies must be generally truthful about their products. As many ads demonstrate, it's not like they have to be totally straight and narrow, but they can't make blatantly false claims.
Now seeing how central to the operation of a voting maching security is, and since I'm sure California asked about, Diebold is probably liable here.
There big bussiness is in ATMs, security, and card access systems. Thing is, all these systems have a group running them that WANT them honest. That an ATM might have an exploit such that the bank could hack it's records doesn't matter, banks WANT the ATMs to maintain an honest transaction record that matches their systems. There is no incentive to hack them. Not the case with voting machines.
I really think the Diebold thing is more incompetence than malicious intent. Not sure who said it but "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity." They know how to make ATMs secure, not voting machines (they require different kinds of security).
But, let's all yammer about California suing them while ignoring the huge revelations that have happened in the last two weeks WRT Diebold.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
AP is covering the same story in a wee bit more detail:
A ID =@@2004409071097
:).
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
Yup - Lockyer didn't FILE suit, he joined in the one by Bev Harris (Executive Director of BlackBoxVoting.org) and myself (Member of the Board of Directors, same org).
AP keeps reporting that I'm a "programmer". Not true, I've tried to correct that several times now (I'm a former LAN sysadmin/tech support type).
You can see an alternate version of Bev's "cheat code problem" described with screenshots here:
http://www.equalccw.com/deandemo.html
See also my other posts in this thread for more of the background by one of the OTHER plaintiffs - Bill Lockyer is only the newest
NOTE: Bev and I demoed the same stuff as described in the link above to the California SecState's staff on August 18th of this year. Also present was an attorney from Lockyer's office. That may have been the final "tilt" Lockyer needed to join in; that or he saw how Solano County hosed themselves by paying Diebold $415,000 to go away less than two weeks ago.
Jim March
Treason only applies to government and military. (And plain ol' citizens in certain contexts.) Not corporations. So any labels of treason would have to be applied to the officials of the State of California, not the appointed executives of Diebold. Even modern pundits know this, so they won't go there.
(On the other hand, in this country, Corporations Are People Too!, so you might have a good run at trying to apply it.)
I'll also mention this little gem by Harrington:
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Next, we need a heaping helping more states to pick this up. This travesty is inconceivable. I mean, c'mon, really, this is disgusting. I wonder if a democrat would do this? So far, there is only history of republicans doing this, which isnt to say that there arent some loons in the DNC but just that it hasnt happened yet. So, hey, GOP, congrat's.
Oh for crying out loud!
MODERATORS! STOP MODDING THIS UP!
I have nothing against the guys in this thread, but DAMN this is WAY off topic. the mechanics of Australian police cars are off topic. Duh.
Sheesh, you don't have to mod them down for eing off topic, but don't mod 'em up!
You can't take the sky from me...
That's Americans. Iraqi dead due directly to US action looks like between 15,000 to 35,000.
Have a nice day.
Don't know whether you noticed or not by The Governator is not a Democrat.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
As the author, I can tell you that's a good page and the links to actual code still work.
The information therein should be supplemented with this later data:
http://www.equalccw.com/deandemo.html
That's a "walkthrough" of the "hack demo" Bev Harris did with Howard Dean on CNBC a bit over a month ago. Complete with screenshots. It can be replicated with pieces downloaded from the "Dieboldtestnotes" page.
Putting the actual code and sample data online REALLY pissed Diebold off something fierce; they filed a cease'n'desist notice against my ISP.
Which did NOT succeed in taking my site down; on the contrary, mine is the only site to have completely survived a Diebold C&D with no downtime.
To see how I pulled that trick off:
http://www.equalccw.com/liebold.html
My main "Diebold page" is at:
http://www.equalccw.com/voteprar.html - the "Dean Demo" page will be linked from there soon (prolly tomorrow).
Jim March
>Glad at least some of the state governments are getting their heads out of their ass.
Having some software knowledge among decision makers helps. For example, my state legislator used to work at Microsoft. He was the program manager for Access. His reaction to the idea of using Access to count votes is, umm, direct and to the point.
That the "Liberal Communist Hippies" of California are doing the single-most important thing this year to preserve our system of representative democracy
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Hacking democracy
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I spent a lot of the 80s working with software they called "mission critical" (you know.. like B-52 nuclear launch code or shuttle flight software). I view voting software as "mission critical", not some fucking variation of an Excel spreadsheet. Diebold's ATMs apparently were developed as "mission critical" ... isn't it interesting that voting software was treated so differently by a company with announced interests in who wins elections.
I'd go with the AG if he called election fraud conspiracy and threw the book at Diebold's senior management and the project team for that matter.
"confident that the state's decision to intervene will aid in a fair and dispassionate examination of the issues raised in the case,"
Read as "Bush will let us off"
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. --E.C. Stanton
That's some great information. Thanks!
Also, I'd like to thank you for all the work you've been doing to expose what Diebold has been up to. Please keep up the great work, and good luck in your efforts! Hopefully it'll be enough to keep us from getting disenfranchised in a couple of months.
Is there anything that the rest of us can actually do to help?
Nope, they're both part of the executive: the judicial branch refers to judges, and the AG is the head lawyer -- like you alluded to, she decides what cases to pursue, and how to manage the legal affairs. That's executive function. The courts that decide those cases are judicial.
... to let machines count their votes don't deserve democracy.
Public counting is the first foundation of democracy.
If you don't get it, then i understand why you don't live in a democracy (anymore).
Are you including sanction related deaths in that estimate? It seems rather conservative, really.
If Bush wins, we *all* "take it up the arse.
Some of us are Multi-millionaires incorporated in the Cayman Islands so we don't have to pay income tax, and, like the President and Vice President, hold a sizable fraction of our personal wealth in companies, like Halliburton, that help maintain important energy infrastructure in rogue terrorist nations like Iran.
Keep your eye on the ball if some Saudies blow up my accountant, I can get a new accountant. But the value of my shares increase proportunately with the uncertainty in energy production, since theoretically Halliburton provides services that reduce that uncertainty. That kind of return, you can't just get that anywhere....
According to http://lists.seifried.org/pipermail/security/2004- August/004631.html and http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78, there is even more than just missing security in the Diebold election machines. If these are true, than Diebold might have more troubles than it seems so far.
California has for quite a while had a largely Dem legislature and an often enough GOP member for Governor (i.e. Reagan, Deukmajian and Wilson).
That being said, CA as a state in Federal elections leans quite heavily towards Democratic candidates.
Damn trial lawyers. Protecting our right to vote! Well, they'll all be rounded up when Bullsh 'wins' again and installs Oberflecksaspittenfuhrer Zellfire Miller as the new Minister for Protection of Das State.
Public counting is the first and the strongest base of democracy. Interestingly enough, it's the first process in humankind where security has been achieved by transparence. And as such, the first open-source philosophy process in human history. Anybody must be able to check the process. Originally, you had to able to count (raised hands). Then, with more candidates, more people voting and anonymous voting process, paper ballots implied you also had to know how to read. Fair enough, as 97% of US people over 15 can read, according to the CIA world factbook (it's doubtful weither the 3% left care at all about politics, blind people left appart). It's a very powerfull process, for each and every vote is publicly checked, and can be checked by anyone (above defined). At best, voting machines let you check the process, but not every single vote anymore, which is waaaay weaker however you take it. Furthermore, this process itself, FOSS machine or not, can only be checked by a ridiculously small and elitist group of people.
"Take away our PlayStations
And we're a third-world nation"
A.D.
There seems to be a large push by the political leaders in this country to get these digital voting machines implemented as quickly and as widely as possible. Nothing ever happens fast in politics unless there is a lot of sex, money, or scandal involved. The fact that several articles have been posted on /. about the fucked integrity of these machines makes me question all the more the intentions of this "political system".
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
... then you get a prez that's worth a 16MHz 80386.
"Take away our PlayStations
And we're a third-world nation"
A.D.
Don't bet that Kerry will win California. In fact don't bet that he will win any state with the possible exception of Mass-uh-chew-setts. There again, the people in Mass. are not that bright. They elect Ted Kennedy after all. What does he do for them? Not much. He is wasted space.
Kerry's campaign is doomed. He has foot-in-mouth syndrome bad. He also does dumb things. He's got 3 purple hearts!... yea John, tell it to someone who cares. The first one you got because you were screwing around. Lucky you didn't blow your head off or kill one of your shipmates. A John Paul Jones your not! Your just a wanna-be. Everyone realizes it. You say "bring it on" at the convention and then get upset when they do. Can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Republican. You guys don't seem to understand that John is just the entry in a contest that the Dem's knew they couldn't win. A placeholder. Sort of like Mondale was in 1984 when Reagan beat him bad (won every state but one). That is because the Democratic party is to leftist and out of ideas. The country is moving to the right. Hilary understood this long ago, that is why she didn't take being VP. If she had and he bombed, she would be done. She may be done anyhow, I doubt she could get re-elected.
Kerry knows this too. That is why he and Edwards haven't resigned their Senate seats like Bob Dole did for the 1996 election, and others have done in the past. They know they can't win.
Finally the MTV awards tells the story well. The cheared for the Bush girls and booed the Kerry girls. That in heavily democratic Miami, in what is supposed to be heavily democratic MTV! It was then that I realized Kerry is done. Their "get out and vote" very well could have backfired. They thought kids were stupid and would blindly vote for Kerry.
Huh, are you telling me that it's safe to come out of my bunker now?
> > we have less of chance of a Bush/Gore fiasco raising its ugly head and saying "I'll be back". :P
>
> Except it's California. If Kerry doesn't take the state easily, that's a red flag to investigate.
Right. In California, there are other things that can raise their ugly heads and say "I'll be back."
Actually, we mentioned the backdoor a little while ago.However, a lot of people have resubmitted it, so I realize that not everyone saw it.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Conspiracy theories?
Well, no matter what about the Diebold machines out there that do malfunction...
Do you want your "eVote" machine to fall back into a Windows or Linux interface. (Us Slashdot'ers should boycott Diebold for their use of Windows, right?)
But seriously, there are plenty of non-profits out there that don't support either candidate that oppose electronic voting machines. I'm not sure of their slant, but look at Black Box Voting(.org) for a whole list of problems.
I'm no Luddite, but please let's not give the election away to anyone. Even if it's my candidate...
Get your Unix fortune now!
I was at the bank's drive through "express" teller yesterday and looked over at the machine used to send money to the teller's box (you know, the one with the little canister and vacuum tube) and guess who's name was imprinted there? That's right, Diebold.
Kind of makes you think doesn't it? No? Ok nevermind then.
Last year (state elections) I worked for Diebold in Georgia. As far as Sys Admin jobs go, this one was VERY simple, and the county I was supervising had NO problems. I briefed my elections officials the day before the election, making sure that if they had any questions to ask before hand. Come election day, they brought in the results, I entered them into the system, printed the verification reports, and that was all. Extremely simple, and there was no point when any machines were on a LAN (I've heard stories that there had been problems because people put the machines on LAN's. Cover your bases, don't hire idiots, and show some type of security. (Since the systems aren't that secure, you must keep them off a LAN.)
...Survival of the fittest...
...So when do all these idiots get dealt with?
I feel you've underestimated the degree to which this country is fucked up.
I don't trust the election process a single bit and have no faith it will be carried out legally or honestly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Someone has hijacked that link. http://www.equalccw.com/deandemo.html now redirects to http://www.microsoft.com/ Someone's toyed with your link, my friend.
3 = 2 + 2...
BOOOM!
[head explodes]
8-PP
Indiana is a state that is a give-me for the Republicans for Presidential elections, but frequently has Democrat governors and other elected officials.
I think it's because it's in the news and Bill likes to see his name in print.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It depends on how you define the problem. Florida was a close call, and if it weren't for the last minute action of the Supreme Court, Bush would have lost the presidency.
So the problem is really, "How can we more easily and reliably fix elections? How can we make the election-fixing process more obscure?"
Now, part of the implementation of the solution is to make up another pressing problem for which it is the supposed answer. And what is that problem? Hanging chads! Messy recounts! Messy Democracy!
By the way, the fix is already in in Florida. The courts in Florida have already ruled against requiring auditable electronic voting machines.
So I wouldn't blame all politicians. I'd blame those in power that will do anything to remain in power, including overturning our democracy.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I deal with crap like this often. More likely they asked if their machines *could* do this and that. The sales guy says they *can* do that. But this never gets marked up as a formal request.
.02
During the project these features are assumed to be there by the customer, California.
Later, the project manager requires changes of the product.
The end result is a product to California Spec, but the California project manager forgot to formally mandate certain requirements and then suggested other features which broke existing functionality.
Not saying this is what happened, but lord do I see this happen often.
Regardless, if it is anyones' fault, it is the State of Californias' project leader.
My
Links to a goatse site.
> You guys don't seem to understand that John is just the entry in a contest that the Dem's knew they couldn't win.
Funny, I thought Kerry was just their somewhat-good enough candidate to ride the Bush backlash into the white house. After all, Anyone But Bush, right? [35 kb animated gif, sfw]
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
"But before we get to the interview, Randi forwarded some of her recent musings to BuzzFlash.com, which are posted below:
"It's disgusting looking back now at the friends you keep when you are addicted (when you are a news junkie). Brit Hume, Tony Snow, Bill O'Reilly... They are bad men. Very bad men. All they want is to get you into it. I call it "THE LIFE." They're dangerous. They distort your mind. They seem like they care about you getting the news, but really they just want their money and fix of Clinton...
Although... I am Glad that Laura Bush is in the White House... She believes that a child beginning at the very earliest age must be taught (how to respect the servants). What a great job she did with Jenna and the "other one". But by now I think the secret service must be used to those late night runs to the convenience store for beer, rolling papers, and condoms. Not to mention the boyfriend pick ups at the local county jail. But she tips well, though, as a liberal... I must observe that even when you are the progeny of a Patrician Dynasty there is certainly no excuse for not knowing how to hide your boozing...
GEORGE is a completely different matter. Did he really declare our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is finally over? I thought I heard that. I MEAN here is a guy who thinks we should solve California's energy crisis by running an extension cord from Vegas. Guess Exxon's losing too much money on those free coffee refills. The only explanation we've gotten is that Clinton had no energy policy. Well then I guess the DRUNK MONKEYS that pick the daily oil prices have been in a bad mood since Bush came to town... "
---999---
Sure looks like that meets the 'lefts' def of hate speech.
I read the article. It looks like State's DA went after Diebold like a bunch of hustling wise guys. I don't think that's the problem.
The problem is in the engineering, NOT the money. The inability to count votes manually in this day and age is an act of nieve ego combined with insanity. Accidents happen with new products. This is not a case of 'oh-well, we'll do better next time'. The raving lunitic in the executive branch of the U.S. government is a clear sign of voting gone wrong, for all the right reasons.
Here's a nice video of Diebold's sales pitch in Texas.
Here's a preliminary security report that Ohio and Maryland paid for in the beginning of the year.
No, that is the answer to the question "Do you really want to think how many Americans would be killed if we a madman in the Whitehouse?
I don't believe the tinfoil hats are called for just yet, but please try to remember that there's more than one election taking place this fall.
And I would agree with you,but thanks to the way that California redistricts, almost all of those races have already been decided in advance.
Whazzumatter with you? Did you stop drinking the soma or something? When you stop thinking in binary fashion, you become very dangerous. So stop looking for multiple-choice answers and be a good malleable American, dammit!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Well the thing is, we didn't expect Lockyer to actually get this decision right. He took his own sweet time about it (correction though: we filed in November '03, not Oct. '03).
But now that he HAS done the right thing, it's the wrong time to put political pressure on him.
We should know fairly soon whether or not Diebold is going to settle. The AG's office says they're going to amend the complaint to reflect the results of their technical inquiry that they apparantly did this year.
The real question is, how do we use Lockyer's decision to affect Maryland, Ohio, etc? I'm not sure.
I think we hang tight for now. Understand, a settlement in California that drives them out of state WILL drive Diebold out of the vote biz (which is a small percentage of their overall revenues and leaving the vote biz will probably drive their stock price UP because the hideous PR will start to dry up).
We take whatever happens in the next month (settlement or an enhanced amended complaint) and we use that to bash the elections departments in other states with.
Jim March
I'd say about 12,000.
It would probably be easy for Diebold's attorneys to show that Diebold's intent in making the backdoor was for maintenance of the system or for diagnostic purposes, or was just the result of a screw up.
I think it would be difficult to prove such a conspiracy unless there is a lot more evidence out there to support the other parts of a conspiracy.
Putting moderation advice in your
Indeed. That's the population of the town I grew up in, right there, and then some. :(
Got mead?
Yes, and the bloody slot machines in Vegas have better security.
Gentoo Sucks
It looked like an informative link.
Apparently what this joker does is post something like this, and redirects to a good relevant link, then waits to be modded up.
Then he opens up the page and changes the redirector to a goatse.
And makes the moderators look like an ass.
Remember this link. If you see it again, mod carefully.
I "stepped right in it" and now have to clean my boots. Please learn from my mistake so you don't step in it too.
http://technewslive.info is NOT http://www.technewslive.com !!!
anubi.
FYI, Walden W. O'Dell, Diebold Systems, $14,965 in campaign contributions to Bush