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Programmer Built Vote-Rigging Demo for Florida Politician
Syre writes "therawstory reports that a programmer named Clinton Curtis says in a sworn affidavit (mirror) that he developed prototype vote-rigging software at the request of then-Florida state representative Tom Feeney. The affidavit has been turned over to the House Judiciary Committee, of which Feeney is now a member. Should we call for inspection and disassembly of all the voting machine code to see if it contains any of these secret vote tampering functions he was asked to include in his prototype?" A follow-up interview is available. A point to emphasize: he's not making any claims of actual fraud occurring in the Florida elections.
Goverments have been overthrown for less than this.
-Dipster
Voting fraud... If Florida??!! What is this world coming to?
...as programming the american public to be a bunch of scared sheep to vote for you.
Something about this story bothers me. If Curtis has been involved in a long running dispute with Feeney ranging back to 2002, why would Feeney have anything to do with him? I mean, this would not be the first example of foolishness in politics, but it would certainly be the dumbest.
Perhaps Feeney was trying to set Curtis up?
M
Presto, the Republican wins!
sulli
RTFJ.
This isn't just a dupe of a previous story... it's not just a dupe of the top story... it's a dup of an incredibly outrageous story that makes the radical right's Clinton Suicide scandals look almost sane.
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the right-wingers are astroturfing the 'net with outrageous vote-rigging stories. This helps ensure that the real story of the Green/Libertarian recount in Ohio won't be taken seriously. Karl Rove is probably laughing his butt off.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
this is hardly journalism. www.therawstory.com is obviously a left wing biased publication and I would not trust it further than I would Rush Limbaugh's website. However, there needs to be a full investigation. I would like to see a little more than one person's testimony befor curcifying this guy. If the request for developing this software took place in a meeting, who else was there and what do they have to say about this?
The trouble with blogs, is that no-one writing them has the time to follow up these stories. If a mainstream journalist breaks them there's a chance (albeit not much of one in the present climate) that they'll keep digging away, and uncover a Watergate-style conspiracy (which isn't to say that this is necessarily one of those).
But if Woodward and Bernstein were bloggers, they'd've been happy to publish the skimpy information that started their investigation -- smug that they put one over on the press -- and let the whole thing degenerate into a partisan "Nixon Sucks!" style-flamewar.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
This is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Who is Clint Curtis? What is his background? Criminal history? Most importantly, what evidence does he bring to the table? Is it his word against someone else's?
Can he produce call logs? Appointment books? Witnesses? Tapes or memos? Can he demonstrate an extraordinary knowledge of voting systems in the state of Florida?
There is a troubling taint of money on this: a "$200,000 award being offered by the nonprofit group Justice through Music for proof of voting fraud..." He is claiming he doesn't want the reward; money may have nothing to do with it. But we may have a grifter going after a score, directly or indirectly, by telling people what they want to hear. I am not saying either one: we simply don't know until more facts come out.
I fully believe we have arrived at a stage in american politics where a politician (yes, sure, a Republican politician) would tamper with an election. There is already plenty of documented funny business. I'm speaking of the felon purging in FL, stop-and-search roadblocks in OH, for instance.
Let's not forget the real moral of this story, illustrated by one thing Clint says certainly rings true regardless of the rest of his claims:
"I can't believe the Democrats were stupid enough to allow [this]," he says. "I can't imagine anyone going to a bank and not getting a receipt. But yet we have our voting machines that way. It strikes me as really odd that machines like that could even exist."
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See comments from Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting on this here:d sen/120604madsen.html
http://blackboxvoting.org/#feeny
and why this may be disinformation here:
http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120604Ma
Blackboxvoting.org has a story regarding why this story sounds like disinformation.
And did he do this before, or after, he typed up the Bush National Guard memos?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation
ABOUT DISINFORMATION: Like a good lie, it has elements of truth. Trouble is, the truth doesn't relate to the nuts and bolts of the story. For example in the Tom Feeney vote-manipulation story, people are documenting relationships between Tom Feeney and Yang, and between the writer of the story and other scandals, but so far the evidence presented does not back up the vote manipulation story itself.
DISINFORMATION IS DANGEROUS TO THE CLEAN VOTING MOVEMENT: Black Box Voting is finding real evidence consistent with fraud. We are even finding, in one of our investigations, evidence consistent with a systemic, or widespread breakdown in security, possibly exploited. Getting the facts is tedious, unexciting work, consisting of auditing and personal interviews, and it takes time. Many Americans want a magic bullet, a single shot that will blow the lid off everything at once.
That's risky. If the mainstream media continues to be bombarded with stories that sound credible, but aren't, when the real thing comes down the pike it will be ignored.
While MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and I had a run-in last week, I agree absolutely with Olbermann's earlier critique of the Madsen homeland security story, and this new Madsen story is just as weak. Most of both Madsen stories are bait and switch.
While real journalists "write tight" and include only the information directly relevant to the topic, Madsen wanders all over the place, recapping unrelated information from real news agencies, piggybacking onto their credibility, with only the most tenuous ties to what he is actually trying to prove. Analyze the meat of the story, taking out all the loose references to other stories, and Madsen's work gets very weak indeed.
Here are questions raised by the Feeney vote-manipulation story:
1. One of the most significant problems is that, while Clint Curtis describes a technique of writing a program, he never mentions HOW he supposedly got this program into the voting machines.
2. A second significant problem is that several of the Florida counties used different software in 2000 than they do now, and that various Florida counties use different manufacturers and different systems. Writing one program that would tamper with ES&S punch cards and Diebold optical scans at the same time is somewhat unrealistic. The questions this raises are these:
a. Which specific counties was this software supposedly used in for 2000, 2002 and 2004? Actually, from reading both the affidavit and the Madsen article, there is no evidence it was used anywhere.
- Madsen does a bait and switch when he discusses Volusia County. He starts by saying it is Feeney's district, and then actually goes on to report a story broken by Black Box Voting in October, 2003, about minus 16,022 votes for Bush in Volusia -- which appears to have nothing to do with the Feeney story. What systems was his vote rigging program for? Which manufacturers?
3. The techniques used to program a vote-rigging system in the Madsen article don't actually match the techniques in the affidavit by Clint Curtis, and neither one makes much sense. It's a simple matter to re-map a touch-screen to flip votes, and you don't need a special program for it. Simply switch the candidate ID numbers and it's done.
4. Most political shenanigans are not conducted by the candidate himself, but by operatives. It is certainly possible for a politician to hold several meetings in which he commits a felony in front of several witnesses, but that's not usually how it is done. A more common technique is an envelope full of cash left in a drawer of an operative, with at least one, sometimes more, buffer layers between the operative and the politician.
Clint Curtis says Feeney himself had meeting after meeting to directly discuss election rigging software. Could happen, certainly, but this seems unusual.
5. There are some statements that don't hang together from
Legitimate things like this go on all the time. It is commonly referred to as "white hat" hacking, as we all know. That may not be the case here, but it sounds more to me like the programmer is disappointed with election results and wants to pretend he's a whistleblower.
That's all that comes up in Google. Can anyone find out more? A "suicide" of an inspector general staff member of anything is inherently suspicious.
Do they mean this fella?
I saw this link a few days ago. Unfortunately he removed much of his more hilarious tin-foil hat content. The guy would actually do screen prints of sorta-related newspaper stories, then black out the names to make it look scandalous.
His demonstration program is underwhelming. You could make the same kind of thing to show any program could be trojaned.
Don't get me wrong, the e-voting situation is crazy and needs substantial reform, examination, and a general fixin'. But this guy is just another conspiracy guy trying to sell a book.
Stuff like this does NOT help address the real problems in e-voting.
This infuriates me for a different reason - the lack of vision of law-makers. I cant believe voting machines are not force to have open source code. I said personally many moons ago this would happen and ...
Its the only way to defraud fake conspiracy theories and protect peoples voting rights. People desserve to know exactly how their vote is being processed. Is mankind that stupid. Do we want revolutions and rebellions because people are too stupid to make voting (a fairly important task to be fair..pff) transparent, honest, whatever you want to call it..
Support the bills already in the House and Senate that will fix this, instead of fantasizing about how the 2004 election was "stolen" (it wasn't).
A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.
After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):
To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...
The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.
A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".
Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
Disclaimer: this comes from a previous post of mine on the subject
I think I remember an episode of MacGyver where he overthrew a violent dictator with a rubber band, 2 bottle caps, and some navel lint.
Beat that.
I've already ranted on this shitty story:
1 90 9&cid=11014994
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13
In a nutshell, I spent about an hour going through goolge links of a few of the people involved in this story (either posting it or writing it or making it up) the URLs are in my original post. Anyway, they all have long histories of being politically biased, and spewing liberal FUD.
some points to consider:
- Would a undetecable application that is mneant to be cross platform be written in VB?
- why would a journalist, that is former NSA, and supposedly has all these tech credentials use an AOL addres? Fine it may work, and he might like it, but an AOL email address takes away a lot of credibility IMHO. (see original reply).
- If this had any validity, why was it not brought up sooner? There were articles on it back in 2002. It seems like the main stream Dems would have been all over this two or three years ago, if they thought there was any truth to it.
What I find disturbing is that slashdot would run this story twice. Clearly every article and source is biased, a quick google search quickly verifies that fact.
So what we get here is supermarket fluff and liberal FUD. We won't tolerate MS FUD, but leftwing FUD must be soooo MmmMmm Good that we get a double dose!
From archive.org, we have the original story. It looks like the voting machine part was added to bring this back into the newspapers. This wouldn't be hard, considering his original job was programming for the FDOT ... *and* Yang, his *prior* employer.
Thank you, archive.org:
Sunday, June 09, 2002
---
Feeney's role in FDOT contract dispute questioned
By LAURA ZUCKERMAN (laura.zuckerman@news-jrnl.com)
Staff Writer
TALLAHASSEE -- Clint Curtis thought he was doing the state a favor last May when he alerted investigators at the Florida Department of Transportation about what he claimed was fraudulent billing by an Oviedo computer firm represented by House Speaker Tom Feeney.
Today, Curtis is still adding up the personal and professional costs for doing what he calls "the right thing" and what Florida law requires of anyone who suspects mismanagement or the waste of public funds.
"I can't believe this is how it's supposed to work," says the veteran computer programmer who worked as a technology consultant for FDOT. "I thought I was doing my duty; now I wonder if I was just stupid."
Last May, Curtis "blew the whistle" on what he believed were violations of state law by Yang Enterprises of Oviedo in an $8 million technology contract with FDOT. Curtis worked for Yang prior to being hired by FDOT, and based some of his allegations on his involvement with the state contract while at Yang.
In the filing with FDOT's inspector general, who is charged with investigating suspected misdeeds, Curtis said Yang engaged "in a practice of false billing" and employed an illegal alien, a violation of state law and cause for the immediate cancellation of the contract.
More than a year after they were lodged, the allegations only now are being fully investigated by FDOT. The delay stems in part from the fact that FDOT shifted the focus of its investigation from Yang to Curtis and the FDOT manager who approved his hiring, Mavis Georgalis.
Curtis says the shift was prompted by Yang and its allies, including Feeney, to quiet Yang's critics.
Yang's attorneys say that's not true. They deny any instances of overbilling and say the character and conduct of Curtis and Georgalis are suspect.
The charges and countercharges have touched off a series of events and repercussions that are still being felt.
The tale stretches from Seminole County to the state capital, encompassing everything from lawsuits over intellectual property to claims of influence peddling by Feeney and culminating in the firing of Curtis and the resignation of Georgalis, who was in charge of the Yang contract.
It is the kind of drama best viewed through the high-powered lens of politics, for on its fringes stands Feeney, one of the state's most well-connected players, and at its center are questions raised by Yang and its defenders about the motives of Curtis and Georgalis.
The story is laced with conspiracy theories and conflicting commentaries, much of which is spelled out in court documents and other public records examined by The News-Journal during the course of a weeks-long investigation.
ALLEGATIONS ALL AROUND
Curtis says he now believes Feeney used his position as House speaker to stifle any investigation of Yang by FDOT, which, if true, would be a violation of state ethics laws.
But Feeney, an attorney whose clients include Yang Enterprises, denies he used his influence to benefit Yang and says he played no role when the firm secured an eight-year contract with FDOT in 1999 -- with a price tag not to exceed $8 million -- to provide a computer program to manage large volumes of information.
The relationship between Feeney and Yang predates the Oviedo Republican's rise to power two years ago as House speaker, with its origins traced as far back as the 1980s, when Tyng-Lin Yang, the company's co-owner, wor
Guess the programmer never heard of Perl, eh?
The buzz is he is going to be one of the people testifying at the Conyers hearing in D.C. This will be blogged here:
http://www.truthout.org/cblog.shtml
Everyone has been speculating like wild over whether this is true and what the implications are. The affidavit also provides backup evidence to anecdotal accounts that police patrols may have been placed in spots intended to suppress the Black vote in Florida, for instance. It's really about intent, more than means.
Someone had to do it.
You move into an apartment. Everything checks out fine. But that winter, you realize that your apartment doesn't have central heating, just a fireplace. Now, you bug your landlord that your apartment needs central heating, as the fireplace is not only a fire hazard, but it only heats up your living room effectively. You make do with the fireplace for the winter.
The next winter, your landlord pulls out the fireplace and puts in central heating. But there's a new problem. The heater not only doesn't work, it belches carbon monoxide into your apartment. You complain to your landlord, and he replies "Oh give it a rest. The only reason you have central heating is because you threw a hissy fit of hysterics last winter and DEMANDED it, screaming apocalyptic cries about freezing to death if you didn't get it."
You see the problem? Yeah, people like him demanded e-voting, but giving the people an e-voting system that is so fundamentally flawed as to not even allow a manual recount is worse than what they had before. Maybe they were a little naive in assuming that any e-voting system would conform with the concepts of good UI design for mission-critical applications (eg: ABMs), but you can't blame the public for the sorry state of voting machines by saying "you asked for this!"
For the record, I'm in Canada, and I'm happy with our paper voting system.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Site...
l l.pdf
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm
link to pdf of study...
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Documents/ExitPo
Here's the link proving it...
l l.pdf
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Documents/ExitPo
You mean you don't have access to any copy of the source code, let alone every revision of a system used to determine elections? In that case the spec needs to be rewritten and the bank accounts of those responsible for making such a cretinous decision examined for evidence of taking bribes. This is one of the points where the "are you stupid, are you corrupt, or don't you care about doing your job" question needs to be asked, since there does not appear to be any other options available.
Forget the shiny new technology, if the entire voting process is not open to scrutiny it is open to abuse. A few jobs with a quick and nasty software company in a marginal electorate is not worth the potential for abuse. Perhaps a Federal election organisation running free, fair and consistant elections (two out of three is not good enough) like you see in other countries is the way to go - instead of things being down at the state or county level. There are a lot of countries that have built on a combination of the USA and Swiss election systems over the last century that may be worth looking at.
There are two bills before the US Congress that have been buried in committee since their introduction. Both these bills would require the use of open source software on voting machines and an auditable paper trail.
House: House Bill Senate: Senate Bill
I urge all US citizens to write their representatives requesting action on these bills.
In my searches for open source voting software the best I've found comes from The Open Voting Consortium.
It is time to _stop looking back. It is time to take action for positive change in the US system.sign me "Concerned Citizen"