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Diebold Patch May Be Evidence of '02 Election Tampering
An anonymous reader writes "Stephen Spoonamore, founder of IT security firm Cybrinth and former advisor to John McCain, claims he has new evidence of election tampering by Diebold in the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senate races. A whistleblower gave Spoonamore a patch that was applied to Diebold machines in person by the Diebold CEO. Spoonamore confirmed that the patch did not correct the clock problem it supposedly addressed, but contained two parallel programs. Without access to the hardware, he could not learn more. He reported his findings to the Justice Department, which has not acted."
As an IT support person, the scope of the Diebold patch update is suspicious. Why just two counties? Why not the whole state? Why a special trip by the CEO? Too many bells are going off here.
When I did IT updates. I would update a few test configurations and select users then let them run for a bit. Then roll out to the masses. About 2,500 PCs if you will.
The justice department needs to begin investigating this immediately.
This whole situation stinks to high heaven.
Thanks,
Jim
Remember folks, Diebold is now known as "Premier Election Solutions"--they changed their name to get away from the bad PR! So don't call them "Diebold" any more and don't forget!
Just like MediaSentry becoming "SafeNet", we shouldn't be so quick to forget who the scumbags are!
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
2003;
The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.
O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.
The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
plus they don't count the absentee ballots unless the rigged results are close enough that the absentee ballots might change the outcome.
Interesting that he's not mentioned in the summary, but several other sources seem to indicate that Karl Rove is behind this.
Go ahead and mod me down, I've got decent karma.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Here in Oregon, enough people were opting to vote by mail that they just decided to get rid of polling places altogether. We do still have ballot boxes at various community locations (libraries, schools, etc.) so you can drop off your ballot instead of paying for postage.
Oregon's vote by mail system does not protect against vote buying. However, Oregon citizens are willing to risk that potential danger in exchange for the ability to have voting parties, where a group of friends can get together, discuss each issue on the ballot, answer each other's questions, and make an informed decision while eating cookies and generally enjoying each other's company.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
And how is this making war against the United States or giving Aid and Comfort to it's enemies in time of war? Here in the USA, that's how treason is defined in the Constitution. Calling any and everything you don't like "treason" is exactly why it was defined that way, and why the Constitution specifies that a conviction can only be obtained by direct confession in open court or on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act. I knew that the standards of education here were dropping, but I didn't thing they'd dropped that far.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Jeff Dean, Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer at Global Election Systems (GES), the company purchased by Diebold in 2002 which became Diebold Election Systems, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in software he created for ATMs using, according to court documents, a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years[8]. In addition to Dean, GES employed a number of other convicted felons in senior positions, including a fraudulent securities trader and a drug trafficker.
Avi Rubin, Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Technical Director of the Information Security Institute has analyzed the source code used in these voting machines and reports "this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts.
Following the publication of this paper, the State of Maryland hired Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform another analysis of the Diebold voting machines. SAIC concluded "[t]he system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise."
Hm, you're right, there's only a few dozen websites out there claim Bob Urosevich was the CEO of Diebold Election Systems.
As far as I can tell his "official" title was, Bob Urosevich was the President of Diebold Election Systems from January 2002 until the second half of 2004. Prior to 2002, he was the Chief Operating Officer and President of Global Election Systems (which was bought by Diebold).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Actually, he was President of Diebold Election Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Diebold... a slight oversight, but not as simply wrong as you make it out to be (and it's understandable how one might confuse it with the parent company). See for example http://web.archive.org/web/20030811034309/www.diebold.com/news/newsdisp.asp?id=2915.
" Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason Why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot. "
Though some of the fungi in military showers can be pretty tough.
So can a ground fault
in case first link fails
What?
Oh, look the story is gone
Not from my squid cache, bro.
A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections.
Stephen Spoonamore is the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. At a little noticed press conference in Columbus, Ohio Thursday, he discussed his investigation of a computer patch that was applied to Diebold Election Systems voting machines in Georgia right before that state's November 2002 election.
Spoonamore is one of the most prominent cyber-security experts in the country. He has appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs and ABC's World News Tonight, and has security clearances from his work with the intelligence community and other government agencies, as well as the Department of Defense, and is one of the worldâ(TM)s leading authorities on hacking and cyber-espionage.
In 1995, Spoonamore received a civilian citation for his work with the Department of Defense. He was again recognized for his contributions in 2004 by the Department of Homeland Security. Spoonamore is also a registered Republican and until recently was advising the McCain campaign.
Spoonamore received the Diebold patch from a whistleblower close to the office of Cathy Cox, Georgiaâ(TM)s then-Secretary of State. In discussions with RAW STORY, the whistleblower -- who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation -- said that he became suspicious of Diebold's actions in Georgia for two reasons. The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds. The source states that Cox was not privy to these changes until after the election and that she became particularly concerned over the patch being installed in just those two counties.
The whistleblower said another flag went up when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock, which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of Stateâ(TM)s office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address.
Some critics of electronic voting raised questions about the 2002 Georgia race even at the time. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was five percentage points ahead of Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss in polls taken a week before the vote, lost 53% to 46%. Incumbent Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who led challenger Sonny Perdue in the polls by eleven points, lost 51% to 46%. However, because the Diebold machines used throughout the state provided no paper trail, it was impossible to ask for a recount in either case.
Concerned by the electoral outcome, the whistleblower approached Spoonamore because of his qualifications and asked him to examine the Diebold patch. McCain adviser reported patch to Justice Department
The Ohio press conference was organized by Cliff Arnebeck and three other attorneys, who had filed a challenge to the results of that the 2004 presidential election in Ohio in December, 2004. That challenge was withdrawn, but in August 2006 Arnebeck filed a new case, King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, alleging civil rights violations in the 2004 voting. The case was stayed in 2007. On Thursday, Arnebeck filed a motion to remove the stay and allow fresh investigation.
Individuals close to Arnebeck's office said Spoonamore confirmed that the patch included nothing to repair a clock problem. Instead, he identified two parallel programs, both having the full software code and even the same audio instructions for the deaf. Spoonamore said he could not understand the need for a second copy of the exact same pr
Just callin' it like I see it.
I'm a former typewriter technician from 'those days'. You are ignoring some significant information.
Back 'then', and up to about 1990, typewriters were, as you pointed out, capable of printing fonts other than Courier and Prestige Elite. Such machines were somewhat rare, the most common alternative being Orator from IBM.
More significant, however were two features of 'those' documents: Proportional spacing and text centering. These capabilities were significantly less common, and centering is not a typewriter feature - it is an operator's skill.
Looking at one of the documents here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Guardgif.gif, you can see in the first paragraph the word 'Ellington'. It appears to me that the 'i' is properly spaced for proportional type. This limits the available typeariters at that time to pretyt much the IBM Executive or IBM Composer, neither of which were common, and both would have been uncommon on GSA purchasing. It's possible that the Lt. Colonel who is shown as the author could have a clerk using one of these, but very unlikely.
More interesting, the unit designation in the second paragraph, 111th F.L.S., has the superscripted 'th'. I don't think this was common on even the Composer, but maybe the Excecutive would have had that character. So this document was probably typed on an IBM Excecutive machine?
It doesn't seem likely that this was typed on any Selectric machine. There are characteristics that pretyt much leave out a Selectrtic as the source.
This picture of the document is pretty much inadequate for more serious analysis, sadly. It's been thorugh too many duplications, and many characteristics of the type are lost and useless for further investigation. Looking at the 'r's in the document, some are missing serifs. The word 'MEMORANDUM' has the 'R' dropped significantly, where further on the line the word 'FOR' is fairly well aligned. This is not easy to do on a typewriter, but then again the quality of the picture makes it nearly impossible to do a better analysis.
When I first saw these documents, I was astonished. These were not typed.
Oh, and the centering? On a proportional space machine, this is not a trivial operation. You need to space characters using 1,3,4, or 5 sub-spaces, and I forget the technical term for this level of escapment. A fair amount of training, and practice, are necessary. Maybe the clerk for a Pentagon commander has this skill, but not likely the clerk for a Texas ANG officer.
Nice try, but this was a fake. Though I'd LOVE to see the originals. The ink and impressions would answer a lot of questions. Copies fail these tests.
Give it up. Rather was fooled, and willingly so.
Let's ban all-electronic balloting so WE won't get fooled again, k?
ps- you wrote "The claims that the documents were fake, were based on the incorrect belief that typewriters could not produce superscript "st" and "nd"". Name me four. Hint, one I mentioned above. Second hint, ignore Adler typewriters, none used in GSA back then. Third hint, ignore Smith-Corona, Facit, Underwood, they dndn't make that sort of machine. Fourth hint, stick to IBM, Olympia, Royal. NOt so sure about Royal. You don't know typewriters.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.