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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]?
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!
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!
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!
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
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!
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.
"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.
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?
Yes, but when you are dealing with the government, and you have been given the task of designing something that is secure and does not have security flaws, then you either better:
A) Damn well do it
B) Don't even bother trying and tell them that
Otherwise you have now said you are doing something, and you are not. That is fraud. Mandrake, Suse, Windows, et al, have never claimed that their products are secure. They are claiming that they are increasing security, but they have never said "We are secure"
The difference- Diebold knew about specific flaws that compromised its key functionality. Mandrake, SUSE, etc fix the bugs when they are found, usually fairly quickly. Not to mention tyhere's the degree of insecurity found in Diebold. Its one thing to design yourself to be secure and have a flaw found. Its another to market as secure a product with as many laws as Diebold is.
Windows XP is another kettle of fish, but I think they should be responsible for their flaws as well. Its not secure and its a well known fact that it isn't- Microsoft should be liable.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
The well documented problems with Diebold have been known for over two years. Their system is badly flawed. To fix this requires a complete rewrite of the software and some hardware work. Diebold doesn't want to spend the money to fix the problem. Maybe this will force them to.
How could anyone have bought a system with poor security and no accountabilty for voting?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
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?
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.
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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
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
Why isn't the attorney general taking them to court over that?
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Hacking democracy
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
It's a weeee bit more complicated than that.
...for a more complete demo.
:(. This crap has to go regardless.
OK.
Everybody is looking at how Diebold "Corporate" in Canton OH (the parent company) is riddled with Bush/GOP links. And that's true.
But it's NOT true of Global Election Systems, the Canadian company that Diebold bought in 2002 and renamed "Diebold Election Systems" (still based in Vancouver BC to this day). Diebold corp of Ohio had been investing slightly before buying them outright but the investments do NOT go all the way back to Oct. of 2000.
Late Oct. 2000, GEMS version 1.17.5 was released. Per Bev Harris, this was the earliest version she could find that had the "double set of books" hack in it apparantly designed for election fraud. See also:
http://www.equalccw.com/deandemo.html
Early Oct. of 2000, Global hired a new head programmer for GEMS: Jeffrey Dean.
During the mid to late '80s, Dean embezzled more than $400,000 from a Seattle law firm he was doing computer consulting for. Dean was convicted in the early '90s of 23 counts of computer-aided accounting fraud in what the court called a "sophisticated scheme".
How did he end up hooked up with Global?
He shared a jail cell with another of the founders during the '90s.
Upshot: Global appears to have been run by a genuine bunch of crooks. *Not* political crooks, just plain ol' crooks. Diebold corporate didn't do enough background checks at the time of the buyout and I doubt they understood what sort of pirates they'd swallowed.
I can't be sure of course, 'cuz maybe the Canton boys DID know what they were getting involved in. But if they didn't, then the whole "Bush/GOP connection thing" that the Diebold Corporate people in Ohio are now famous for was a deeply unfortunate coincidence and God only *knows* what's going to happen in November!
Keeerist.
Think this is unlikely?
The big MONEY in election fraud involves rigging *local* elections, esp. building projects, construction bonds and the like. And people don't pay near the attention to that like they do national races.
I suspect that's what Global was really after. And I suspect keeping a secret all the way up to the Bush White House would be...unmanagable and dangerous as hell.
Am I certain Bush is "clean" (of this, at any rate)? Hell no. I *do* know that a heck of a lot of Democrats in various places have pushed for Diebold (starting with Georgia) and I know that county election officials can use the "cheats" Diebold built in very damned easily. Guys, I've personally seen MS-Access loaded onto GEMS boxes within counties - Fresno County's elections staff let me peek at their systems some months back (but the MS-Access was an older version (97) not compatible with the more recent GEMS databases so any ill with it happened some time ago, not recent).
Anyways. I don't want to end up betting on whether or not Diebold will "win out" in "hacking contests" with county elections officials
Jim March
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.
If we're successful, the courts will determine (or Diebold will admit via settlement) that their software was...well, crap. It didn't have the security features they claimed for it when they sold it, or even the security features required by Federal (FEC) regulation and the California Elections Code. So the gov't gets back the money they paid for the junk, because Diebold didn't live up to their contract. Basic fraud. The SIDE EFFECTS: 1) Diebold could leave the elections business. At a minimum, a court loss of this scope would hurt sales something fierce. Voting is a small percentage of their overall business but is the cause of most of their negative PR; closing up the voting division they bought in 2002 becomes a serious option at some point coming up REAL soon now. 2) With strong evidence that the Diebold software was crap, people may finally start realizing that the Federally approved oversight process (independent testing labs approved by the FEC and hired by the voting system vendors to check source code, etc) is seriously broken. That same oversight process approved the ES&S, Sequoia, Hart Intercivic and other such computerized voting system products. If the oversight process is broken, then those products aren't trustworthy either. The ultimate oversight would be via Open Source; that concept in voting is gaining momentum (see also the Open Voting Consortium via google). At a minimum, those other products need scrutiny. Fast. Jim March
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.
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?