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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."
Presumably the same way that gems like "your RAM is evidence, do not delete" come about.
Imagine the votes sitting in a beowulf-cluster of puppet-controlled machines!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
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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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Why do they keep demanding recounts! Seems like the better approach would be to set out a platform that solves the basic problems for the majority of people. Instead they (both parties) spend time tearing down each other as well as themselves then run crying to the courts when things don't happen to fall their way.
Concentrate on solving the problems not trying to figure out some loop hole or proving some conspiracy and blaming others for not doing well at the polls.
I really wish there was a third party candidate that had a shot at winning.
CREATE TABLE total_votes (
democrat_vote_total TINYINT,
republican_vote_total BIGINT
);
Why do I in any case guess that this database is either MSDE or SQL Express?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
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?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
"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)
I'm sure that it has changed since then, but it was reported a few years ago that they were using MS Access MDBs. No, seriously.
A little old, but as I was saying: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0309/S00106.htm/
Just a hint, they both are the same thing. Don't trust either, fight both.
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. We tend to think of documents as just information, describing some structured knowledge, which is true. But by contrast, we tend to think of programs as containing primarily step-by-step instructions. But those instructions don't execute themselves. They're input to something. And moreover, not all programs are instructions. Consider Prolog, where the functions are described in terms of logical relationships, and the step-by-step instructions are inferred by the interpreter. Just because the Prolog program doesn't include instructions, per se, doesn't make us say it's not a program. At the same time, the distinction between a Prolog program and an expert system knowledge base (in term of form and function) is not clear.
Everything is just data. What makes it meaningful is the order and interpretation that we impose on it.
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 ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
The text of the PDF requires them to release "every file .. that ends with the extension 'gbf' or 'mdb', and the password for 'gbf' files." It also mentions that the data has been scrutineered with Access.
The arguments about an Access database being a "program" are probably related to the ability of MDB to contain queries (aka stored procedures).
GBF files are encrypted / compressed MDB files. The dockit claims that "a gbf file can only be created and opened by the GEMS program", but I suspect it unpacks them to a temporary file somewhere before it opens them up with the normal library.
Other little GEMS (sorry, couldn't resist the pun)...
* "Microsoft has warned against using the mdb format for some critical applications, such as election management software."
* Each expert witness endorsed a statement that the GEMS software has significant security flaws.
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.
OMFG. You are serious. The Jet database has long been considered deprecated by Microsoft.
My blog
Let me fix those typos for you:
Diebold is the corporation's choice for subverting democracy.
Imagine a world where people vote, but the votes don't matter because the corporations have bribed both wings of the single party in this plutocracy. They just sit in a machine controlled by puppets of the Corporation. We are living this dream.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Those of you truly interested in this story should read the firehose version.
I think the links in the firehose version of the story are more apropos to this post's tags.
Of particular concern to me is the replacement of one the original post's links with one that references a newspaper I consider to be a parody of press oversight. I would never source that bloated, piss-stained, corporate catamite in any post I write.
So, when /. writes "Windrip writes", they're lying. I didn't write what was posted on the front page of /. I didn't even provide one of the links in the story.
Nevertheless, of particular interest to /. readers might be the forensic study conducted on the DB. I found it here.
Except that Diebold's CEO is a member of the Republican party, and one of George Bush's Rangers, a class of high donation supporters for his election campaigns. Money doesn't buy loyalty when your target is already paying off someone else he supports.
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):
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,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Yeah right both parties are the same thing.
Prime example: Imagine the world today with a President Bush vs. a President Gore or President Kerry.
Both parties may share some of the same social diseases, and the fringe reactionary kooks of both parties are still reactionary kooks, but A==B? No way.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
This is about as serious as an episode of Guiding Light.
My blog
... can we get a peek at the 2008 election results that Diebold is planning?
Have gnu, will travel.
Can we get the last 8 years of our lives back? How about the thousands of Americans that've died in combat, and the resulting 100,000+ innocent Iraqi's that've died as a consequence of this bastard?
The fact that Diebold's central tabulator used Microsoft Access?
(Reported in several stories, notably a DVD called "Invisible Ballots")
That their hardware is some of the most programmer-friendly ever (straight X86 CPU, SDcard, CompactFlash sockets)?
(This is a simplified, smaller version of a larger report. A quick Google search will reveal more.)
WindowsCE OS?
(Same report as above)
Executable Scripts on the ballot-definition CF cards?
(Demonstrated in "Invisible Ballots", also known as the Hursti Hack)
By one set of measures these sorts of decisions are hallmarks of el-cheapo implementation of systems that should have been designed to meet far more rigorous standards of security and reliability.
Finally, I refer you to the author of a nice little easter-egg that he was asked to write: Clint Curtis
The *most charitable* characterization of this issue is that these people are guilty of professional negligence. Anyone understanding the importance of elections to this society and that (especially recently) elections are extremely high value to some people, and are hotly contested, would understand that voting systems should be developed under the strictest, most disciplined methodologies.
It is clear that none of the major voting system suppliers have bothered with the most basic architecture, design, verification and validation methodologies.
In a word, yes.
I am very active in the central Ohio voting reform movement, and it is important to distinguish between statements I believe to be true versus statements that are demonstrably true. It's too easy to fall into a variety of traps and this work is far too important to lose credibility due to hyperbolic speech.
There is also the legal threat: Powerful, wealthy people are pissed off at people like me and I am watching my Ps and Qs carefully. The electronic voting systems people have been making *big* money here as they have been elsewhere, and they are no different from anyone else who does not want the gravy train stopped by a bunch of citizens insisting on honest elections.