Slashdot Mirror
Election Officials And Crackers Challenge Diebold
Rick Zeman writes "The Washington Post is reporting that election officials in Florida have manipulated election results in controlled tests. From the article: 'Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.'"
yeah looks really confusing.
.... or is it second? We'll never know, because there's no paper printouts yet. Damn corporate America, interfering in our democracy!
To err is human, but to really foul things up it takes a computer.
After all - people have been trying to rig results for a long time. But this just makes it so easy for one person to potentially change the outcome of an election....
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Almost looks intentional since the one corner is curved.
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/quotes)
7 _F.shtml).
North Carolina had the same problem with their voting machines (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051130/112120
The only new thing here is the current state finding Diebold non-compliant.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Articles which would not been posted to the frontpage before I guess...
Windows XP + network connection + data held in an *Access DB* and then transferred by memory card with no crypographic checksum.
If I prepared work like that for a client, I'd expect to get chucked out by security.
I'll also note the following:
a) Diabold say that a paper trail is not needed for security, but provide one on their own ATMs. Apparently independent verification of election results is less important then $$$ transactions.
b) Both local and remote vulns have been demonstrated on their voting machines, but the ATMs have not been pwned.
c) Diabold refuses to let the source code be reviewed, and chose to run on Windows XP so neither the program or the OS of the box can be verified safe.
d) Diabold machines can have the vote totals rewritten on their memory sticks as they do not cryptographically sign or encrypt the totals. That's plain text on a card that can be removed from the machine and has a standard file format.
e) Diabold security is fucked whether or not they put the same code they have tested on the box. With tested, verfied boxes they cannot add XP security patches for known flaws after te verification date (and if there is one thing worth keeping an 0-day for...). If they do add security patches etc then we are trusting closed source biaries to be added to election counting machines without the possibility of review. One bad actor and the elecetion is up for grabs.
No thanks. I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist but is is as if they were designed to be broken into.
Would a BSD box with one simple program, output to the framebuffer, a results paper trail and a constant SSH tunnel to the FEC be that hard? *sighs*
Fuck Diabold.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
is this a what (paid)members see? may be its being shown to everyone by mistake? I always wished hard to find out (without paying any money of course) how do they inform the paid members of an slashdot story about to be released early... Wishes _do_ come true is it?
BAIN http://www.devslashzero.com
Seriously, if someone has the knowledge of the system you just proposed, why not take the long shot and propose to work for the gov't and put that together? Not only would you be able to demonstrate how insecure Diebold's system is with a tiny PDA that can read/write their memory sticks, but you'd also be able to demonstrate that you can't do that to yours. At least not on the fly with a PDA.
Steps to stopping the stupidity:
1) Put down (favorite game) when you're off work.
2) Write plan, put something together.
3) Get in touch with someone with the power to make the (smart) decision.
4) Show off.
Nah. I'm not a subscriber but one day they offered day subsciptions similar to Salon.com, and the "Mysterious Future" just showed the next story and summary at the top without an option to comment on it.
If they did we'd have this problem fixed by now. We've know they were insecure for years now; ever since the accidental release of diebolds e-mails detailing backdoors and holes that were not patched. Who remembers that security researcher who went before congress and said specifically that his code, which was to illustrate a backdoor into the machines, was used to hack the elections in ohio? I forget his name.
:X...
o ry/Contents.html
Fact is, CEO's and friends of voting machine companies get into power. Why? Guess. It isn't the 20% of the vote they need to swing; it's the 6% after they've divided everyone on the issues. Voting laws and policys are consistantly broken, and is anything done about it? The answer lies in the question; Has anyone been taken out of power yet? Dictatorship only works if people are divided; if they stand for something and stand by it for hell or high water.
And I might, just might give credit to the guys who said "well, it's stil the will of the people" if it weren't for that they can't prove their position since there's nothing for them to count. The election board can't even tell them who voted for who so they can go around asking people.
Of course, the best way you can tell the government you don't like what you're doing is to decide you stand for something and stand for it tall. I personally chose the constitution; it ain't perfect, but it's something everyone can agree on. Of course, ever since the civil war and reconstruction the constitution's layed dormant. To make a long story short, if you want to get rid of the current government, the best way is to simply stop working for them; stop giving them your money. How do you do that? Well, basically the 14th amendment set you up to be a federal citizen by the name of a "U.S. citizen" and social security turned you into a corporate legal fiction so that income tax, which worked only on corporations, now works on you. How do you get out? You rescind your federal citizenship, declare your citizenship of your state as it was before reconstruction, rescind your birth certificate (to remove proof of being under the 14th), rescind your social security (to correct your status as a soverign instead of a corporation), then begin rescinding everything else; drivers lisence, fishing lisences, gun lisence, any contract with the federal government and it's munincipal corporations (read; the states are corporations). You can get a non-binding play-ID from the SS office if you want to get a bank account, for example. Then you simply stop paying income and social security taxes, atwhich point you stop giving the government 30% of your income and begin working to reinstate lawful government in your state via holding elections and office and organizing locally. More to the point, if enough people do it quickly enough, the federal government will have about 10 trillion in debt to pay off, and no way repay it back which means a massive collapse.
The price? Reading a few books; learning how history, governments, and legal documents work. Mabye $500 in books total. A good place to start is here:
http://www.usa-the-republic.com/revenue/true_hist
Do a find for john ainsworth and ed wahler on this page
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Stadt06.html
They've been preparing a book and an organization to do this on a massive scale. The book comes out in march-ish along with the publicisation of the startup and they hope to do it state-by-state.
is this a what (paid)members see? may be its being shown to everyone by mistake? I always wished hard to find out (without paying any money of course) how do they inform the paid members of an slashdot story about to be released early... Wishes _do_ come true is it?
... for the record - no change whatsoever so its not related to being or not being a subscriber.
My subscription had lapsed, and I saw the funny title, so I used it as an excuse to get another subscription
However, the small title area probably explains why so few people have seen this submission
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
My impression is that the Bush family is the most corrupt family every to have political power in the United States. These are people who believe that they are more than 100% right, and that other people don't matter.
It does not surprise me that Jeb Bush's state is involved in voting machine vulnerabilities. Quote from the story "... vendors such as Diebold have too much influence in the administration of elections, a view that resonated with Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the founder of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition."
The president of Diebold said he would deliver the votes to Bush. And he did.
I wrote short reviews of books and movies about the corruption, but I only barely touched the surface: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government. Note that, although Michael Moore's manner of expression is sloppy, other authors supported his main points in the movie Fahrenheit 9/11. For example, George W. Bush does hold hands with Saudi leaders, his father was at a meeting with a brother of Osama bin Laden on the day before 9/11, and so on.
It looks like a new viewing option.
I'm not sure what the grey ones are - possibly articles in other sections that wouldn't otherwise make the front page (as someone else suggested).
Have a look at your preferences - there's a new part in the front page section that lets you choose whether or not to display the grey bars, or whether to show the full stories for all, grey bars for all, etc.
Advanced users are users too!
The voter doesn't take the paper with him, as you say that would ruin the whole anonymous ballot thing. The voter gets the paper, looks at the human readable output to verify that his vote was correctly recorded, and drops the paper into a ballot box on his way out. If the paper shows that his vote was incorrectly recorded, he can ask an election official to remove his vote from the machine, destroy that paper ballot, and try again.
The election officials keep the paper ballots, machine printed recepts that is, so that in the event of a dispute they can be hand counted. Since, theoretically, every voter looked at their recept and verified that it recorded what they truly intended to vote for, if someone hacks the machines and falsifies the votes recorded there, the paper ballots get the final say in the event of a dispute.
It also gives you a good indication of where the falsification of the electronic votes got started since you can say: hmmm, district 123 shows 4000 votes for candidate X on the computer, but the paper ballots only show 1000 votes for candidate X, who messed with the machines in district 123?
Essentially we're keeping the old paper method of vote recording as a backup in the event that its suspected that someone hacks the machines.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
"For example, George W. Bush.... his father was at a meeting with a brother of Osama bin Laden on the day before 9/11, and so on."
That is intentionally misleading, is just an attempt to play on ignorance. The bin Laden family is HUGE, with a large number of brothers, of which Osama is a black sheep who has hardly had any contact with anyone.
This was one of Michael Moore's weakest points. It is like trying to link Chris Dodd with that Kennedy rapist (William Kennedy Smith) because Senator Dodd has a close collegial relationship with the rapist's relative Senator Ted Kennedy.
"Chris Dodd Supports Rapists" is as good a headline as the one Moore tried to cook up with the imagined link between GWB and Osama.
This is my idea for a voting machine. It depends for its operation on the idea that when a current is passed through two solenoids in series, both armatures will pull in. The machine itself has two units: the voting booth unit and the presiding officer's unit, linked by a cable. When not being used for an election, the machines would be made available for public scrutiny.
The voting booth unit {VBU} has a large rotary switch, a pushbutton and a meter with a green zone. The Presiding Officer's unit {POU} contains a power supply, and a column of non-resettable electromechanical counters, all but one of which are covered by a metal plate. This plate is fastened in place with a wire with an aluminium seal bearing the Returning Officer's mark. The counter readings before the start of the election are recorded on a paper label affixed to the underside of the cover plate. There is also a switch labelled "CHARGE" and "VOTE".
Each voter is issued with a unique, identifiable token -- a postcard with their name and address on it. The voter shows the token {Token One} to the Presiding Officer, who first spoils Token One and then moves the switch on the POU to "CHARGE" as the voter steps into the booth. The Presiding Officer then moves the switch to "VOTE". The voter has now traded Token One for a second token, all of which are absolutely anonymous, identical and indistinguible from one another: Token Two is an electrical charge stored in a capacitor contained within the VBU.
The voter spins the rotary switch to their preferred candidate, checks that the meter is in the green zone and depresses the voting button. The VBU capacitor is discharged through the coil of one of the concealed counters in the POU. One terminal of each of these counters is commonned together; the current through any one of the candidate counters also flows through the master counter, and returns to the other plate of the capacitor. The charge in the capacitor is soon exhausted, and cannot be replenished unless the Presiding Officer moves the POU switch to CHARGE. The voter then has the option to move the rotary switch to a different position so as to conceal their preference -- or to leave it there to advertise their preference.
Every voter has a receipt to show that they have voted {the spoiled Token One} but once a vote has been cast, the only record of that vote is the fact that the master counter and one of the candidate counters have advanced by one place. There is thus no way to link a voter with their vote. The master counter is in view of {and the counting mechanism is within earshot of} the PO, who can thus confirm visually and aurally that a vote has been cast {or separately, manually record a "no vote" if the voter leaves the booth without voting for any candidate}. All the candidate counters are concealed until the close of polling, when a few minutes' worth of mental arithmetic will reveal the true count. By virtue of its simplicity, and the fact that it has been subjected to public scrutiny, we can take for granted that the mechanism is behaving as it is supposed to; the Returning Officer need only inspect the tamper-evident seals to determine whether the result is valid or compromised.
{In case the above constitutes a patent claim, I hereby licence it for use royalty-free in all applicable jurisdictions, in the hope that it will be of service to Humankind}.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I think these are the stories that are usually on the right, after 'Your Rights Online', it usuallys says (1 More), and the stories that don't usually appear on the main page will now take up a line of text.
I like it, there's often stories in those '1 More' links that are very interesting, and they are hidden from view until you actually go and look for them.
Runnin' On Empty
You believe Moore's lies and distortions because you want them to be true.
Diebold is a fine example of how the small-mindedness of some people manifests itself. Particularly, it shows that proprietary softare and oafish business practices are next of kin.
But it has nothing to do with President Bush.
You defend Moore's dishonesty, but tout Diebold's ineptitude as evidence of President Bush's alleged corruption because his brother is governor of Florida?
That's some strained reasoning.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Well, I *am* a paying customer (witness the star by my ID, though it's more of a token of support than an insatiable desire not to see ads), and I haven't seen them before. I'm guessing they're a new feature.
Although, it's weird, because I don't see how this story relates to the one it's "attached" to in any way.
Oh well, guess we'll find out at some point.
Talk of a "paper trail" is a lot of noise and a red herring. The real issue is that validity, origin, and authenticity of the poll data. That can be done with or without paper.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I thought it might be a way of displaying "active" topics from subjects you hadn't subscribed to in your preferences. Certainly they all seemed to be articles worth skimming to decide if they're worth reading in detail.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Is anyone else disturbed by the racist tone of this story?
There's an organization called the Open Voting Consortium whose mission is "the development, maintenance, and delivery of open voting systems for use in public elections." They are directly opposed to the shenanigans that Diebold has engaged in.
Problem is, they spend their donations on actually developing the system, not in paying off Congressmen to give them lucrative exclusive contracts. Still, one can hope that it changes someday. (And donate to support the effort...)
Now I just wish the "1 More" counters said "since when"? I read several sections when I realize they update, but sometimes there'll be "3 More" for days, but not always the same 3 articles.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Even at full capacity, it would've taken 10-20 years of taking all of Iraq's oil profits (or it may even have been total net sales...) to pay for the initial cost of the war. Iraq's oil fields aren't running anywhere close to full capacity due to initial damage from the war and constant ongoing damage from insurgent activity.
Note that by "initial cost", I mean the initial 80-100 billion that Bush requested for the war. What's the price tag up to now? 200b? 300b? It's a hell of a lot more. Plus there's the cost of upgrading/rebuilding Iraq's oil production infrastructure.
If this was about oil, it was a damned stupid financial decision.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It's since you last looked at that section.
cat
Don't worry, it's just more, half-baked UI ideas from programmers who couldn't design a GUI to interact a way out of a paper bag.
Canada's national election happens to be tomorrow.....
y stem#Non-partisan_election_officers
"All votes are made on the same standard heavy paper ballot which is inserted in a standard cardboard box, furnished by Elections Canada. The ballot and the box are devised to ensure that no one except the elector knows the individual choice that was made. Counting the ballots is done by hand in full view of the representatives of each candidate. There are no mechanical, electrical or electronic systems involved in this process."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_electoral_s
Scandalous!
Cheers,
-b
Electronic voting machines and their makers never fail to amaze me. I mean, voting's a big deal, right? Elections are supposed to be honest, the results are supposed to be untampered, and we're supposed to come out with a real winner chosen by the people, no matter who we're electing for what position. Voting is practically the backbone of our democracy, and one of the most influential ways that we can speak out in our towns and in our country... And yet, for some reason, most if not all voting machines appear to be almost designed to be hacked, if they aren't defective outright.
Here in my own county, residents are very concerned about the coming elections that will be held here for county positions. Electronic voting machines will be deployed widely - I don't believe they're Diebold's, but that's not the point - and elected officials have already been cited as asking their associates off the record to find ways to crack these machines. I shit you not. The story has been mostly swept under the rug, but somehow I don't think that these guys are out to stress test these machines, given the far from spotless reputation of Madison County's upper management. The machines in question leave no paper trail whatsoever, and are practically a mirror image of Diebold's machines in functionality and security. In other words, they're fancy piles of electronic garbage designed to produce the same.
This bothers me a great deal. It really makes me just want to stick with old fashioned paper voting, or simply drive the point home by defacing one of these boxes on election day with a third-rate off the shelf hack. Preferrably both, if possible. It's ironic that the single greatest threat to the advancement of society today is the advancement of high technology. Broken tech and rigged voting machines threaten our democratic process, while robust surveillance threatens our privacy and freedom, and yet people just eat this stuff up. It's sick. Not to say that the advancement of technology is evil, but in some cases it's application would appear to be extremely counterproductive to our society and the preservation of the basic values of our country...
You said, "The bin Laden family is HUGE, with a large number of brothers, of which Osama is a black sheep who has hardly had any contact with anyone."
I have personal experiences that influence my opinions concerning this. For several years I would go to a gym at night and work out, perhaps 2 or 3 times a week, for at least an hour and a half and often 3 hours.
I met sons of very wealthy Saudi families at the gym. Working out is very boring, and people sometimes take a break and talk. Often we would have extensive conversations. This was long before 9/11/2001. I wasn't involved with a woman friend at the time, and the Saudis, who had been sent by their families to study at the university here, were never very well accepted in the U.S. culture. So, we both had plenty of time to talk. I talked with other gym regulars, of course, not just Saudis. (I've never known anyone with the name bin Laden.)
It is true that Osama bin Laden is just one of 53 children of his father, and the only one who is publicly a terrorist. However at the gym I developed a sense of how Saudis feel, although they were always polite and, being Arabs, never stated their feelings in a completely open way.
My sense is that Arabs don't like to see other Arabs killed. The U.S. government has been in the business of killing, or paying to kill, Arabs for decades. Remember, that is one of Osama bin Laden's major complaints. (The other is that he didn't like U.S. government weapons in Saudi Arabia.) Most U.S. citizens have very little awareness of the violent actions of their government, I've discovered, and would be surprised to learn how much of their money has gone to kill Arabs, or help kill Arabs, even long before the first U.S. government-Iraq war.
I never met a Saudi who was anti-American. Obviously, if they existed, I probably wouldn't. However, it seemed that Saudis were often against the habitually violent policies of the U.S. government.
Remember, 15 of the 19 people who attacked on 9/11 were Saudis. Although the U.S. media often tries to trivialize this fact, those Saudis gave their lives for their beliefs.
The Bush family believes they are friends with Saudis, particularly the man who calls himself Prince Bandar, and whom the Bush family calls "Bandar Bush". For reasons too complicated for a Slashdot comment, it is extremely unlikely that Bandar likes George W. Bush, or even George H.W. Bush. In spite of the fact that Bandar acts friendly with the Bush family, and holds hands with George W. Bush while being filmed by national media, I think that Bandar is not actually deeply friendly. He is only pretending to be friendly to advance his own agenda, a tactic that has worked extremely well.
The point of this is that Saudis often have feelings which seem sensible to them but which may seem unreasonable to U.S. citizens. Several members of bin Laden's family, not just Osama, gave money to causes that they considered pro-Arab. Those causes were sometimes anti-U.S. government. In general, people who seem to know about these things have said that there has been considerable sympathy inside the bin Laden family for Osama's actions.
I'm resolutely against violence. I'm resolutely against any government acting in secret. I love the United States intensely. However, I recognize that many people will agree with the sick logic that says that, if the U.S. government kills Arabs, Arabs can attack the United States.
What's really amazing/frightening to me is how long it has taken for the mainstream media to pick this up. The tests done by Harri Hursti for Leon County were conducted and reported back on December 13th, 2005! The Post waited until a slow news day over a month later to report on it. Since then, there's been a whole slew of additional activity on the voting machines front. For more details, see the original blackboxvoting.org article.
--Paul
Disclaimers: I have been working with the good folks at TrueVoteMD.org to get the d*mned things banned in Maryland, my home state; I'm also a plaintiff in a lawsuit in Maryland that seeks to force the Maryland State Board of Elections to follow exsting state law and get rid of them.
What Sancho did "is analogous to if I gave you the keys to my house and told you when I was gone," said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman. As Bear sees it, Sancho's experiment involved giving hackers "complete unfettered access" to the equipment, something a responsible elections administrator would never allow.
So, they're saying that a hacker without physical access would never have been able to get in and that it was only because they were allowed to touch the physical unit that they could make it do such things. That's great security. I guess we shouldn't worry about all those military computers tucked away in heavily-guarded military bases. Since no hacker could ever gain physical access to the boxes, they're totally secure!!
Jory
I agree completely. Take, for example, the manner in which Joseph P. "Bush" made millions from insider trading and stockpiling of liquor during prohibition, supported appeasement of Nazi Germany, and stuck a deal with Joe McCarthy to help his son's senate campaign.
Then there's the way that John F. "Bush," after a Senate career buillt upon the tacit support of Joe McCarthy, was elected--without a majority of the popular vote--President in 1960, despite allegations of voter fraud in Texas and Richard Daley's Chicago. After delivering an inaugural speech plaigarized from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. ("...it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return."), he made several attempts to assassinate the president of Cuba, began US involvement in Vietnam, and, after repeated humiliations by Nikita Khrushchev, allowed construction of the Berlin Wall.
His younger brother, Edward M. "Bush," got drunk one night and drove his car into the sea, leaving a female passenger to drown, and promptly calling his lawyer, then going home for the night, leaving the submerged car undiscovered until the next morning.
Ted's nephew, William "Bush" Smith, had a medical career plagued by allegations of rape and sexual harrassment, including several lawsuits settled out-of-court.
Replace "Bush" with "Kennedy," and I agree with your assessment. Unprecedented corruption? Hardly.
It seems the new gray-bar format disables it so it's really a moot point, but it's most definitely not since I last looked at the section. I thought it might have been "in the past 24 hours" but there were days where the games section would have like "26 more" and maybe 10 were stories posted in the last day. The numbers didn't match "since the last time a story made it to the front page" either.
...and then they'll give you a flying pony for being a good citizen.
This was a work of art until the last paragraph. Try not to diminish your impact by overexplaining. Thanks for a great post, anyway.
But, Democrats will prefer Diebold machines now. I mean, if they can easily go in and alter the results, they have a better chance at stealing more elections and "taking back the majority."
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
In the 20th century, dictators managed to get elected thanks to their understanding of the full power of radio or television. In this new century, the wide adoption of riggable and unaccountable election systems will become the tool of choice for all dictators wannabes.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Yes. I got here through a grey bar link. I agree it sucks, the whole thing looks like some articles are randomly reduced to such mini-announcements.
Now going and looking for an option tou switch them off...
C - the footgun of programming languages
There's something eerie about a man named "Oswald" replying to the post above...
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
In all fairness, you could use paper ballots in the New England states, which don't vote for all that much. You might only vote for 5 offices in any given year.
In 2004, here in Columbus (Franklin County, Ohio) we voted for 57 different offices, judgeships, city/county/state initiatives and referenda. If you multiply that out by the 590,000 votes cast, then you see why electronic balloting is a necessity.
Yeah, it's retarded. I almost missed this article, then thought... wtf is that? Is Slashdot rendering pages wrong in Firefox again?
I don't have a problem with the presentation. But I want to know why it's attached to the Disney/Pixar deal story. It implies that there's a connection.
What, is Jobs going to buy Diebold and give us iVote, and leverage the Mickey Mouse property to promote it? "Heeeey kids! Tell your parents to vote - they can do it on their iPods now! Hee hee!"
I worked with a guy a few years ago that got wrapped up in this, um, er, philosophy. He actually got the HR department for a fortune-500 company to stop witholding social security from his paycheck on the basis of a poor reproduction of a letter on congressional letterhead from a Congressman with these unique ideas. About 9 months later, he gets word from HR that not only are they resuming witholding, but complying with a garnishment order to recoup not only the witholdings in default, but penalties and interest as well. If HR hadn't ended up looking like complete idiots in this case, I'm pretty sure they would have let him go, but I'm sure the embarrasment on their part tied their hands.
Lo and behold, he's dismissed about a year later. Last I heard he was serving time for trying to meet with a supposedly 14 year old he met on the internet who had in fact been an undercover police officer in a chatroom. Wish I could get you to talk to him, but I'm sure he can't take phone calls these days...
A Brazilian was telling me that Lula, the president of Brazil, is corrupt. I asked him, "How many innocent civilians did Lula kill?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://energybulletin.net/12125.html
Not just firefox.. konqueror too
What they really need is a secure voting system. One that requires positive identification of the voters, cross checking to make sure they only vote once, a paper trail - with incremental checksums. They can do it with lottery tickets, why not with voting? Purple dye people's thumbs too.
The only real question is - is the Diebold system more secure than what we had, which was very insecure and subject to known corruption? I think we all know we are not there yet to a secure system. One that ensures that even the stupid can cast a vote.
John McCain and Russ Feingold, nearly managed to push a campaign finance reform bill through congress in 2001. They failed, but it shows that some people at the top do care about making America a better place, and that they are working towards making it happen.
How naive. I live in Las Vegas. There are very strict rules about programming gaming machines. Under the rules it is allowable (and common practice) to program "near misses" in slot machines. Slot machine payouts are not exactly random. The percentages are tightly regulated. A "near miss" is a neat little trick that controls the outcome of non-winning rolls. As long as the computer has determined that you aren't going to win on this roll, it manipulates the outcome so that it looks like you "almost" won.
For instance, if three 7's is the big jackpot, it can make the result be two 7's, with the third slot having a 7 just one row off. You can see all three 7's in the window, and you would have one with just a little more luck.
This encourages players to keep playing.
Dubya hams it up with his old chum and Bonesman pal, Jack Abramoff who currently is exposing several criminals whom he easily bought and paid for, like J.D. Hayworth, that you elected to represent you and protect you in Washington D.C. When asked about the landslide of photos that show Dubya palling around with Abramoff, always sporting that huge "I just got more money" grin, Dubya refused to comment but his mangy unbathed lapdog McClellan stated: "We also got pictures of him playing in aircraft in Texas while your parents served & died in Vietnam and we got no pictures much less record of him copmleting his dodge of Vietnam before disappearing about the time his Daddy was made head of the CIA with no experience or qualifications for that job." Rumors are flying that as long as Abramoff names only names that oppose W and his Bonesmen plots that Abramoff will be pardoned or given the fat life along with his family similar to another patsy, Jack Ruby.
Several photos are now being excused away by the White House in at attempt to sweep more facts and associations under the rug. This may serve however as an excellent distraction from the other ongoing cancers destroying America such as: the failure of the illegal aggression in Iraq, no WMD there, the best live training and recruitment station ever for terrorists in Iraq before they deploy stateside, the building of further anti-american sentiment in the middle east and amongst Muslims, Scooter Libby releasing any classified information he wants with a promise of a pardon from Dubya, Carl Rove just barely dodging an indictment also with a pardon promise from Dubya, hordes of other Republicans committing tax fraud & embezzlement & profitting from the position you elected them to while doing nothing for you, the ever weakening dollar you only work harder for, unstoppable juggernaut of inflation causing a skyrocket in the cost of living, out of control housing costs, lack of good jobs, poverty totally unchecked and cared about, the out of control deficit, big business empowered to further economically repress the people, the growing massive devide as Americans are no longer Americans but strictly only a religious and/or political label, a failing economy that cannot support the majority who is impoverished, no hope for a better future as none of the above are addressed or cared about, skyrocketing oil costs again despite no hurricane to excuse the gouging with an oil man in office stealing oil, no aid for the poor this winter as they are not important enough to not freeze, mixing of church and government just like Iran, complete disregard for the Constitution they swore to protect as they bypass it and all checks and balances in the name of "terror" with no warrants or check to this power, encouragement of racial profiling furthering bigotry and racism again in America, lack of accountability as another crisis is thrown out so the old one and charges from it are forgotten, more of your liberties and rights and freedoms are taken away for "your own good" and safety, torture of human beings not even getting a day in court, removal of any and all due process. This list could easily continue as this administration makes the biggest grab for power for the Executive "branch" ever in the history of the United States.
Google: A Patriot's Letter
http://www.lp.org/ [lp.org]
What will not be news is Americans continue to vote Democrat and Republican into office to push and continue the same failures that keep failing. If you are truly sick of it, vote out *ALL* encumbents and vote Libertarian otherwise you asked for it so enjoy it. Hopefully your vote will not be ignored like in 2000 & 2004, or "Diebolded" to be more accurate.
SAMA means something to this poster, and if doesn't to you then you know don't know shit about America's foreign policy and just how far we will go to further the corporatacracy and the imperialist goals of those bound for the World Bank after cementing their fortunes in US office.
Here is a link directly to the book's site:
http://www.economichitman.com/
I suggest the rest of you wake up also before blindly supporting the leader of your herd through everything.
Don't tell me that none of you ever read Harry Harrison's famous "The Stainless Steel Rat for President" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553276123/qid=11 38052026/sr=1-18/ref=sr_1_18/102-5041110-1773764?s =books&v=glance&n=283155. explaining how to rig an electronic voting system (for the good of the people, though...) 1 38052026/sr=1-11/ref=sr_1_11/102-5041110-1773764?s =books&v=glance&n=283155 by the same author (Soylent Green). I find it fun that these techniques float slowly north to G.WLand.
See, I have been living the last few years down in sunny MX, which, in its best days, always reminds me of "Paraiso Aquí", the subject of this book. In the others, though, it reminds me of "Make Room! Make Room!" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0425023907/qid=1
On the other hand, rigging elections has always been my country's most popular sport (i'm from Corsica....), so that I am nobody to comment.
If you have not read that book, do it, it quite worth it, and funny too...
It's a Proud and Lonely Thing to be a Stainless Steel Rat....
Bush family? Sad to say, Abraham Lincoln was more corrupt than all the Bushes combined.
:)
It is from historic point of view meaningless and erroneous to compare the governance between two people coming from different centuries. Worldview, Democracy, rights and ethics evolved enormously since the 19th century, we are talking of a time where it was considered normal (anyway in most of Europe) that 'normal(>90%)' people are not considered 'able' to vote.
The point is do not compare Bush with Lincoln, but Bush with it's contemporaries. Considering this, it does not mean the conclusion would be different at all,
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And you have got to be off your rocker with your head cracked.
The Federal Government has no business in 99% of the shit it dips into, when the Constitution was framed by our Founding Fathers...now try to get into the mindset they had in that time with the crown and their own challenges, the Federal Government's job was to protect the rights and freedoms of it's citizens and protect the Constitution and protect the sovereignity of our nation so we are not overrun. Building highways? You poor daft soul, that gets CONTRACTED out by bids to PRIVATE companies anyway and the Feds just steal their cut for doing JACK SHIT. They build an army so they can take away your local help in a disaster and send them to die for nothing in an illegal and unjust act of aggression. Anything and everything the Feds can and do do, can be done better and cheaper and again BETTER by a private corporation. They do not need to STEAL my money so they can WASTE it in their corrupt lives partying up with Jack Abramoff and Dubya. I am an adult, I can make my own decisions and do my own saving and my own planing and can do it much better when the Feds are not stealing all the money that *I* worked hard for since I have to work from January till June JUST to compensate for that theft (Called "Taxes" by most cattle). We would not have that theft happening if the Feds did not need to constantly fund their ongoing failures and new failures while crippling the value of the dollar and destroying the economy while making an all time record high and growing deficit get bigger. If they were not so busy trying to take away freedom and tell people how they can live their lives and how they can make choices and precisely what choices to make, there would not be black markets and underground clubs. People will regardless do what the fuck they want to do when they want to do it, including the world. Stem cell research steams ahead in the rest of the world who will benefit and reap it's rewards while we are stuck back in 2000 starting to fossilize and prepare to accept our oncoming 3rd world status as we stagnate.
Overturn Roe v Wade, Mexico and Canada and the rest of the world will be waiting with open arms. They banned stem cell research and the rest of the world laughed hard and kept going with their research and progress. Keep your lost and pathetic war on drugs, you have yet to even make progress and supply continues to meet demand and the rest of the world profits and criminals grow stronger just like what happened with the 18th Amendment. The victim in these examples is the American Citizen, and we pay the ultimate price as our economy and coveted Superpower status moves into atrophy while conservatives move to strangle our progress and competition because of their obsession with imaginary friends. We are committing suicide by allowing the Feds to get more powerful and produce more failures and more restrictions and laws and actions that accomplish nothing in the big picture. Does your imaginary friend think suicide is cool or something for fucks sake? Then why are we trying to hang ourselves by justifying a total failure like the Federal Government in it's current role, growing role and capacity!?!?!?!?!!!!
People are obsessed with the two parties which have brought nothing but failure after incompetent failure. They will vote for somebody not even knowing the first thing about their platform based soley on their association with one of the two long term providers of constant pure failure. Now they voted they feel they did their civic duty and leave that parasite unchecked as they forget their constituents and head to D.C. to get with Dubya and get on the Abramoff cash cow for personal wealth and benefit. Maybe when they are caught being a crooked criminal and the media hypes it a bit, that person pretends to care again and may gripe a bit at work. They do not change the way they vote. They do not make it a point to keep tabs on D.C. at all. They do not protest. They do not show their dislike of this by writing to a
The Federal Government has no business in 99% of the shit it dips into, when the Constitution was framed by our Founding Fathers...now try to get into the mindset they had in that time with the crown and their own challenges, the Federal Government's job was to protect the rights and freedoms of it's citizens and protect the Constitution and protect the sovereignity of our nation so we are not overrun. Building highways? You poor daft soul, that gets CONTRACTED out by bids to PRIVATE companies anyway and the Feds just steal their cut for doing JACK SHIT. They build an army so they can take away your local help in a disaster and send them to die for nothing in an illegal and unjust act of aggression. Anything and everything the Feds can and do do, can be done better and cheaper and again BETTER by a private corporation. They do not need to STEAL my money so they can WASTE it in their corrupt lives partying up with Jack Abramoff and Dubya. I am an adult, I can make my own decisions and do my own saving and my own planing and can do it much better when the Feds are not stealing all the money that *I* worked hard for since I have to work from January till June JUST to compensate for that theft (Called "Taxes" by most cattle). We would not have that theft happening if the Feds did not need to constantly fund their ongoing failures and new failures while crippling the value of the dollar and destroying the economy while making an all time record high and growing deficit get bigger. If they were not so busy trying to take away freedom and tell people how they can live their lives and how they can make choices and precisely what choices to make, there would not be black markets and underground clubs. People will regardless do what the fuck they want to do when they want to do it, including the world. Stem cell research steams ahead in the rest of the world who will benefit and reap it's rewards while we are stuck back in 2000 starting to fossilize and prepare to accept our oncoming 3rd world status as we stagnate.
Overturn Roe v Wade, Mexico and Canada and the rest of the world will be waiting with open arms. They banned stem cell research and the rest of the world laughed hard and kept going with their research and progress. Keep your lost and pathetic war on drugs, you have yet to even make progress and supply continues to meet demand and the rest of the world profits and criminals grow stronger just like what happened with the 18th Amendment. The victim in these examples is the American Citizen, and we pay the ultimate price as our economy and coveted Superpower status moves into atrophy while conservatives move to strangle our progress and competition because of their obsession with imaginary friends. We are committing suicide by allowing the Feds to get more powerful and produce more failures and more restrictions and laws and actions that accomplish nothing in the big picture. Does your imaginary friend think suicide is cool or something for fucks sake? Then why are we trying to hang ourselves by justifying a total failure like the Federal Government in it's current role, growing role and capacity!?!?!?!?!!!!
People are obsessed with the two parties which have brought nothing but failure after incompetent failure. They will vote for somebody not even knowing the first thing about their platform based soley on their association with one of the two long term providers of constant pure failure. Now they voted they feel they did their civic duty and leave that parasite unchecked as they forget their constituents and head to D.C. to get with Dubya and get on the Abramoff cash cow for personal wealth and benefit. Maybe when they are caught being a crooked criminal and the media hypes it a bit, that person pretends to care again and may gripe a bit at work. They do not change the way they vote. They do not make it a point to keep tabs on D.C. at all. They do not protest. They do not show their dislike of this by writing to a snake still in D.C. They do not show they are serious by voting these vermin and all of thei
That is hazard pay you thinking of kid, which was gone the milisecond W performed his little stunt on the aircraft carrier declaring an end to active combat despite it obviously still being dangerous. You were just introduced into one of the many unlubricated shafts handed to our poor as they are sentenced to die in Iraq for nothing, not to mention their families left without a breadwinner/parent getting crap for pay with a high chance of their loved one dying every second they are in Iraq.
A majority in Iraq are National Guard, which is a far cry from a fulltime active soldier but they are treated and deployed as such. It is fine printed that you can get pulled into service for a far fetching lie like the illegal and unjust aggression against Iraq, but not what the liar who recruited you promised when they spun one weekend a month and one month a summer serving your local community.
Some lies and treacherous acts you just simply cannot spin away or ignore.
Given the Bush family history, Google Prescott Bush and his Bank, it does not surprise me in the least and thus why I never supported this tyrant.