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.

Hey now!

[Rob T Firefly]

In closing arguments of the four-day trial that began Dec. 4, Pima County argued the databases meet the definition of a computer program In that case, all the filing cabinets in my office meet the definition of filing clerks, and should all be drawing salaries. Just write those checks out in my name, boss, I'll take care of the details...

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:Good.

[Steauengeglase]

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.

Re:Good.

[Steauengeglase]

A little old, but as I was saying: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0309/S00106.htm/

Re:DIebold Defeats Democracy

[spleen_blender]

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

Re:/. exclusive - the DB schema

[geminidomino]

You forgot:

third_party_total BOOLEAN

Programs, Data, fuzzy distinctions

[Theovon]

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.

Re:Programs, Data, fuzzy distinctions

[tlhIngan]

Most modern architectures blur the distinction by allowing data and code to reside in the same storage, and even allowing you to treat a section of memory as data at one moment and code at the next (which in theory allows for some neat self-modifying code (but that hasn't proven useful in the consumer market at least) but in practice is the root cause of every email virus ever).

Actually, you're referring to Von Neumann architecture. The other architecture is Harvard. Harvard has separate code and data memory (mostly - you still get the convenience of immediate mode addressing in Harvard). But code can only work on data memory - it cannot work on code memory. However, it's only really useful for speciailized computers running the same code on different data (e.g., signal processing - the data is transformed the same way all the time, so the code can reside in ROM, while the data comes in from whatever source is providing it).

The Von Neumann architecture (code and data are intermingled, and one and the same) is your standard computer architecture. However, the behavior is used very often. Think every time you call exec() or CreateProcess() - the OS has to allocate memory, copy the code to memory (i.e., to the OS, your executable program is data), then tell the processor to run the code (now the data is code). Or even consider the bootstrap program - it has to find the OS loader program, which it copies off some storage to memory (data), then runs it (code). It's this architecture that makes modern computing possible...

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 ?

Access confirmed in the court ruling

[Dr_Barnowl]

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.

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.

Re:DIebold Defeats Democracy

[sm62704]

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.

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!

The craptaculous /. edit

[Windrip]

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.

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,

While they're at it ....

[PPH]

... can we get a peek at the 2008 election results that Diebold is planning?