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Hotel Minibar Key Opens Diebold Voting Machines
Billosaur writes, "As if Diebold doesn't have enough to worry about! On the Freedom To Tinker blog, Ed Felten, one of the co-authors of the recent report 'Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine', reveals an even more bizarre finding related to the initial report. It turns out that you can gain access to an AccuVote-TS machine using a hotel minibar key. In fact, the key in question is a utilitarian type used to open office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and the like. They might as well hand them out like candy."
I know I'm preaching to the Slashdot choir, and it's been said a thousand times before, but as long as we have closed voting processes, we're going to have people screwing up by doing things like having voting machines accessible with hotel minibar keys. We hate Microsoft for their closed-source software, yet we continue to accept this kind of idiocy.
Quick question: If we have viable alteratives, such as those presented by the Open Voting Consortium, why do we continue to bother with these stupid Diebold machines? I know, dumb answer, because Diebold pays the people who decide lots and lots of money.
I would say write to your Congresscritters and let them know that you want these screwed up pieces of junk out of our polling locations, but like I said, I know I'm preaching to the Slashdot choir, and you won't do it. >:-( But realistically, just know that until you do, we can look forward to many, many more articles about this kind of thing. Ooh, at least until we see the one that says, "Electronic voting machines hacked! Election results tainted!." Or even better, when we see nothing at all and Richard M. Stallman is mysteriously elected President in a write-in landslide.
sigh Oh well, it was worth a shot. Just give me my damn +5 and go back to reading about lasers on Intel's chips now.
Electronic systems - including electronic voting machines - will always be able to be tampered with, no matter who makes them, no matter what their CEOs stupidly say, no matter what ongoing audit mechanisms are implemented, whether they're open or proprietary, and no matter what legislation or other initiatives mandate or recommend them.
Finding out that computer systems can be tampered with and that some large-scale enterprise-class systems can have shoddy security, physical and otherwise, should come as no surprise to us, particularly in this community. On this particular issue, a generic security key is used because of key management issues and the fact that casual access is what's being prevented. Neither of which excuses this or any of the numerous other glaring shortcomings and flaws in this equipment. No one - citizen, politician, or party - benefits from universally shoddy security on electronic voting systems. No one.
Remember, too, that voting legislation, in large part in response to issues in the 2000 election, designed to ensure fair, uniform, and universal access to voting for all citizens by mandating electronic voting equipment, such as HAVA (2002), were Democratic and bipartisan efforts.
The real issue is that Congress screwed up: they inherently, and erroneously, believed that since we trust so many critically important things to machines, certainly reliable electronic voting is possible, and indeed, we use automation, computers, and machines in almost every aspect of our lives to increase efficiency and reliability - why should voting be any different?
Except for one problem: when you're trying to administer a one-vote-per-person system that also maintains anonymity, and also disallows any external entity from discovering who voted for which candidates, when there is no permanent, voter-verified paper trail, the system as a whole cannot be trusted, since any level of security will always be able to be overridden. This has nothing to do with open source versus proprietary, or how shoddy physical security on e-voting systems is. A permanent, voter-verified paper trail solves all of these problems.
The only problem is that no legislation mandating electronic voting systems includes or speaks to any provisions requiring permanent paper receipt printing capability. All of the major e-voting vendors - Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia - have this capability, but it's an add-on that requires retrofitting existing equipment, or in some cases, purchasing new equipment. And that takes money many counties and municipalities - particularly in the most hotly contested areas - don't have. (Hint: it's not just poor areas that have long lines)
Our focus now should be on passing legislation that requires permanent voter-verified paper trail capability on all newly deployed e-voting systems, and allocates funds and creates a timeline for deployment on existing systems. Please, continue to raise this issue with both your county election officials and your elected representatives.
This issue is too important and too critical to the integrity of our election process to let rest.
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Temporary disclaimer, since this seems to have been an issue for people reading my posts lately: I am not a Republican, did not vote for Bush in the last election, and have always voted for more non-Republican (usually Democratic) candidates since I have been voting.
They might as well hand them out like candy.
And that's exactly what the politicians are looking for.
After all, these machines were never seriously designed with security in mind...they were designed to be easily compromised.
I think I'll take a hotel minibar key down to my local ATM to see if I can score some free money. If Diebold is honestly this incompetent, it'll be a snap. If, however, the voting machines are specifically designed to be compromised, I'll probably have a harder time of it.
Any bets on the outcome of my little experiment? Didn't think so.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Wasn't the point of electronic voting to save time tallying the votes? Without a paper trail, of course, there can be no recount, so that certainly speeds things up. But if there WERE a paper trail, everyone would be clamoring for a manual recount anyway.
I suppose, like upgrading to Microsoft Office 2003, and thus requiring better computing hardware, we did it for the economy.
The only problem is that no legislation mandating electronic voting systems includes or speaks to any provisions requiring permanent paper receipt printing capability.
Do not use the word "receipt" in this context. A receipt is something that you take with you, as a personal record of a transaction. A receipt is worse than useless here... you don't WANT people to be able to show the party bosses that they voted the "right way".
What is needed is a "permanent paper ballot capability", where the ballots are retained at the voting place and serve as the primary official paper (ahem) trail.
I honestly thing we have no good solutions left, except to organize, and on mid-term election day, if faced with an electronic voting machine (with no paper verification of course), we must have the courage and patriotic discipline we have expected of ourselves all our lives, and destroy the machine beyond repair immediately, on the spot. If on election day, I find myself in front of a Diebold machine, I really don't know what aill happen. But if I have confidence that I won't be alone in doing the only thing morally defensible, I certainly DO know what will happen.
So. Anyone interested?
As if the American People didn't have enough to worry about. There, fixed that for ya.
How long are we going to tolerate this?
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
"Finding out that computer systems can be tampered with and that some large-scale enterprise-class systems can have shoddy security, physical and otherwise, should come as no surprise to us, particularly in this community. On this particular issue, a generic security key is used because of key management issues and the fact that casual access is what's being prevented. Neither of which excuses this or any of the numerous other glaring shortcomings and flaws in this equipment. No one - citizen, politician, or party - benefits from universally shoddy security on electronic voting systems. No one."
Sorry, but I disagree with one part what is otherwise an insightful post. Some people do benefit from shoddy vote counting equipment. Who? The party machinery of the two major parties who already have people in the polling places.
There are three qualifications for a person(s) who benefits:
1) they have to have a reasonable excuse for being in physical proximity to the machine.
2) They have to have a reasonable excuse for having a key. According to TFA, this is easy.
3) They have to be part of a group for whom a small margin of change change results in a benefit. ( if a Dem or Rep gets 51% instead of his predicted 48%, nobody really suspects. When some third party candidate gets 51% instead of his predicted 3.5%, that is too obvious. )
There are people who benefit. Unfortunately, these are the same bunch of people who give their stamp of approval on voting machines. The wolves are in charge of the henhouse here.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Maybe I'm being paranoid here but this seems like the sort of thing that could easily be exploited in a really nasty way. A group of well funded [fill in your favorite conspiracy theory related group of individuals here]* could theoretically get people into key places around the country where these machines are in use then infect them with a virus that siphons the vast majority of votes to a candidate that has no choice at all of winning (Ralph Nader or something like that). Imagine the exit polls on CNN, etc. showing a close race between the Democratic & Republican candidates and then the Green Party actually winning by a landslide. Something like this would cause such an increase of mistrust of the government that election results for an entire generation would be questioned. It wouldn't be terrorism in the classical sense, but it would generate a huge groundwell of mistrust that could damage the federal government for a long time to come.
* <tinfoil_hat=on>Of course the unnamed group could even be a major political party</tinfoil_hat>
Quick question: If we have viable alteratives, such as those presented by the Open Voting Consortium [openvotingconsortium.org], why do we continue to bother with these stupid Diebold machines? I know, dumb answer, because Diebold pays the people who decide lots and lots of money.
Things like Diebold are needed tools for fixing elections.
Republicans may not like it, but their candidates for the last 2 elections had the elections fixed.
Nomatter what you do, unless entire entourage of republican party officiers in counties related to suspicious activity are fired off, republican party will always carry a stain of dishonor.
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I think the distinction that needs to be made here is that voting needs to be an open process -- not just use open source software, but apply some of the same principles. (Mainly that ANYONE can verify the voting process is valid.) So things like paper trails, open source software, and voting officials who can actually verify what is going on (because with diebold, all they can do is lug the boxes around).
OK, I'm missing the ??? and Profit!! steps, but this seems like a pretty easy way to DOS the machine. Of course, the election officials would catch on, eventually. And does the machine make a beep when it's being tampered with?
I'm not saying your last election was a fraud.
I'm also not saying that you guys suck at democracy.
I am saying that you suck at capitalism.
Let's assume that you want to get at the card or whatever is behind the panel.
Why isn't this panel made out of glass that you have to shatter with a little hammer or teflon paper that you have to cut? That way, there's obvious proof of access. The vendor can repair the windows for the next election - it's a revenue stream for them. If the replacement costs $500 or so to install (due to all the fancy features like holograms, RFID, and seals, etc.) then fakes would be prohibitively difficult to get. It would be better physical security than a "Bic" lock.
I think Diebold was lazy, not conspiring. The rest of you were lazy by allowing these lazily built machines to run your election.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I disagree. What we need to retain (and often times regain) is paper ballots.
Voter-verified paper audit trails are a placebo. What assurance do you have that what is printed is the same as what is recorded? None.
All attempts to date to actually audit a VVPAT, to the best of knowledge, have demonstrated just how infeasible the task is. Jill LaVine, Sacramento County's Registrar of Voters testified to the EAC that their audit took 1h 15m per ballot printed on the VVPAT.
Meanwhile, many people, like VerifiedVoting.org are proponents of Rush Holt's HR 550, which would require all electronic voting machines to have a VVPAT. Even though I utterly oppose all electronic voting, I do not oppose HR 550. Why? Because HR 550 requirements would demonstrate the folly of using electronic voting machines and the voter verified paper audit trail.
I will note here that New Mexico (VoterAction.org), Connecticut (TrueVoteCT.org), and others are successfully throwing out the DREs and bringing in voter-correctable precinct-based opticals scanners. That is today's best available solution.
Something I've never seen questioned in all these discussions - What's the point of going electronic? The old systems, while far from perfect, were not bankrupting the society, and through their clumsy diversity, were resistent to centralized attempts to manipulate the elections. My feeling - the true cost greatly outweighs any legitimate benefit. This is a case where we should all 'Just Say No'. I'm certainly a computer person, but I don't think everything needs to be done using a computer.