Diebold Election Results Released By AZ Judge

Windrip writes "A judge in the case covering the nature of the database used in Diebold Gems software during Pima County, Arizona elections has ruled the DB is not a computer program (pdf). The result is that the Arizona Democratic party will have the chance to review previous elections for transparency and accuracy. ''The Pima County Democratic Party sued the county this year for the electronic databases from past elections. The party requested the databases and passwords be released according to Arizona public-records law. Pima County denied that part of the request, while turning over other records the party asked for. In closing arguments of the four-day trial that began Dec. 4, Pima County argued the databases meet the definition of a computer program, which is protected by state law, said Deputy County Attorney Thomas Denker."

Comments

Re:Good.

[Arancaytar]

Presumably the same way that gems like "your RAM is evidence, do not delete" come about.

Re:Good.

[CastrTroy]

The data set is not a program, but the program required to interpret the dataset is. If the data files are in some binary proprietary format, there may not be an easy way to interpret what's in the data files without also having access to the program.

Then it would be defective by design

[Kupfernigk]

Databases need to be available to be output in a standard format, and describable by a data dictionary. Data stored in a binary proprietary format which cannot be interpreted without reading the code of a program is NOT a database.

Why do I in any case guess that this database is either MSDE or SQL Express?

A simple remark

[VincenzoRomano]

How is it possible in the 21st century in the USA that one uses electronic voting machines with one hand while publishing important documents as scanned images with the other one?

From The Article (not the PDF)

[TTURabble]

"There is a significant risk these systems could be hacked or discredited," Denker said.

I pretty much think that this is the point; and it is an important point, because without the ability to call "bullshit" then you lose the legitimacy of the votes. Any corporation wouldn't trust an accountant to maintain the books without auditing them periodically, this is basically the same thing.

also, the systems can already be hacked (quite easily I believe)

Re:DIebold Defeats Democracy

[spleen_blender]

Just a hint, they both are the same thing. Don't trust either, fight both.

Re:DIebold Defeats Democracy

[dbcad7]

who had only to push around a few bits

Close races are close races.. can go either way.. that's when manipulation is useful... If there is no doubt that someone was going to win, and they didn't, manipulation would be kind of noticeable wouldn't it ?

Security by obscurity?

[argent]

If the security of the system depends on keeping the implementation secret, then it's not secure. Huckelberry's assertions are themselves an indictment of Diebold's product.

Re:Not again!

[Falstius]

Yeah! And why bother investigating burglary, just buy better locks. No need to investigate embezzlement just have better accountants. Oh, and murder, pshaw. We should focus on inventing better medicine.

Accountability is important. There is not nearly enough of it in the American government, at any level.

Take the 2004 election

[elrous0]

Does it make you a conspiracy theorist to be suspicious and cautious when an election comes down to a few hundred votes in a state whose election commissioner was appointed by the brother of the winning candidate?!?! If it is, then give me my tin-foil hat, brother!

Just base metal or dried pigment until viewed

[zooblethorpe]

A database file is just data, to be interpreted by a database program.
But the database program is just data to be interpreted by the CPU.

Data vs. document is a spectrum. There is no clear distinction. ...

Everything is just data. What makes it meaningful is the order and interpretation that we impose on it.

How very Hinduistically existential of you, actually. Quoting from a recent Natl. Geo. article, Faces of the Divine in the January 2008 issue (which I received earlier this week, thanks apparently to time-traveling magazine editors):

... Beauty meant nothing in itself: A work of art, whether a bronze statue of Shiva engaged in his cosmic dance of creating and destroying the universe or a painting of the Buddha attaining enlightenment under the bodhi tree, amounted to no more than base metal or dried pigment until a viewer responded to it. Seeing a painting or sculpture in a temple opened the minds of receptive worshippers to intimate communion with the divine. Seeing was believing.

Hindus call this intense participatory relationship with art an act of darshan, or "seeing" the deity. "Such seeing does not literally mean merely using one's eyes," according to art historian Vidya Dehejia, "but is a dynamic act of awareness." For the Buddhist monks and their patrons at Ajanta monastery, paintings of the Buddha served the same potent function, providing a key to revelation.

So I suppose what you describe would be the CPU's darshan of the code. (Though one could probably make a reasonable argument about which is data and which the program on the basis of specifically how dynamic the darshan needs to be to make sense of it.)

I find it somehow reassuring, and deeply cool, that certain wisdoms of the ancients can be perfectly relevant in wildly different contexts. It's also humbling to find how much our supposedly "primitive" ancestors got right in areas that we have forgotten or set aside. :)

Cheers,