Judge Suppresses Report On Voting Systems

Irvu writes "A New Jersey Superior Court Judge has prohibited the release of an analysis conducted on the Sequoia AVC Advantage voting system. This report arose out of a lawsuit challenging on constitutional grounds the use of these systems. The study was conducted by Andrew Appel on behalf of the plaintiffs, after the judge in the case ordered the company to permit it. That same judge has now withheld it indefinitely from the public record on a verbal order."

Comments

Wikileaks?

[wraithguard01]

Hmm... This looks like a job for wikileaks. Couldn't be too hard to find. Has it been posted at all? If so, could a quick google archive search prove useful? I would be very interested to see the results of this study, and would be even more interested to know this judge's reasoning behind withholding it.

Re:Wikileaks?

[mdmkolbe]

The restraining order is temporary until arguments can be heard. If we weren't so close to the election a better strategy would be to wait and argue it in court. No need to make the judge angry or risk a contempt of court charge by leaking it.

With it so close to the election though, those arguments may not be heard soon enough. (OTOH, it may already be to close for the report to make any difference anyway.)

Re:Wikileaks?

[RAMMS EIN]

I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that the consideration here shouldn't be "what do we do about these issues, given the date of the election?" but "what do we do with the date of the election, given these issues?"

Re:Wikileaks?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Wraithguard01 wrote:

Hmm... This looks like a job for wikileaks. Couldn't be too hard to find. Has it been posted at all? If so, could a quick google archive search prove useful? I would be very interested to see the results of this study, and would be even more interested to know this judge's reasoning behind withholding it.

Violating the court order and posting the report to Wikileaks might soun good, but would be very counterproductive in the end.

First. it is very likely that the order may be lifted after arguments are heard. Violating a direct court order is going to extremely annoy the judge; judges do not take well to people disobeying direct court orders. The correct way to deal with it is to contest the order, and argue it out.

Second, Appel has been given access to the source code. The only way he was given this access was by the court having guaranteed to the vendor that they would not release trade secrets to the public. If Appel demonstrates that he does not consider himself bound by the court orders, do you think that he will ever be given the chance to examine source code, from any vendor, ever again? Do you think that anybody will ever be given the opportunity to examine source code? Consider the following conversation sometime in the future

"Your honor, you tell me that if we give the plaintiffs access to the source code of our voting machines, it will remain sealed under court order. However, in the case 'New Jersey versus Sequoia AVC' the court gave the vendor exactly that guarantee, but the plaintiffs recklessly disobeyed the court order. Why should you believe their promises, when they have demonstrated that they do not consider bound by promises they make in a court of law?"

The correct answer is, argue it out. Don't piss the judge off. Make it clear that the good guys are the ones who obey the rule of law, and the bad guys are the ones who are contemptuous of it.

Re:Wikileaks?

[cHiphead]

Easy, you throw out the voting machines and manually tabulate votes, its real fucking easy, you have a written/typed ballot, the poll monitor records the vote on a running vote list as the votes are handed in, then the votes are hand counted later that evening, totals on the poll working tabulation are compared to hand count totals, recounts conducted as necessary.

All handcounts are done under public video surveillance from multiple angles done by multiple sources (eg. web based camera, cspan camera, government run camera, 2 LOCAL news station cameras, and 2 national news station cameras.)

Hows that sound? (Yeah, theres a few more details and possible steps to shore up security of the votes, but its just a first outline)

Cheers.

Re:Wikileaks?

[DoofusOfDeath]

I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that the consideration here shouldn't be "what do we do about these issues, given the date of the election?" but "what do we do with the date of the election, given these issues?"

I've somewhere read a quote, "For a tyrant, any excuse is sufficient." Do we really want to give elected officials any plausible excuse for delaying elections? Delaying elections is a favorite tactic of autocrats that want to stay in power while pretending to support democracy.

Re:Wikileaks?

[kharchenko]

>If Appel demonstrates that he does not consider himself bound by the court orders, do you think that he will ever be given the chance to examine source code, from any vendor, ever again? Do you think that anybody will ever be given the opportunity to examine source code?

The whole question should be irrelevant - you should not be able to run something as vital as election using a piece of proprietary software. If they don't want to show the code - they should have no chance at getting the contract in a first place. But thanks to narrow-minded (at best) choices made by politicians we are now in a position where we have to choose between due process and fair election. Disgraceful!

this does not look good for the judge.

[DragonTHC]

With things the way they are right now, this judge should think again.

We already know that e-voting systems suffer from ridiculous flaws that were in-built.

This report might show that. The judge is seriously playing for the wrong team here.

Re:this does not look good for the judge.

[Mr. Slippery]

He's playing on the right team here. It's far too late to fix it, we have to ride this election through.

Nonsense. It's far to important to "ride it through". Decertify the machines, print a bunch of paper ballots, and hire a bunch of people to count them. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? If accurate elections aren't worth spending government money on, nothing is.

Sounds like Sequoia is trying to avoid bad press

[morgan_greywolf]

According to TFA the judge was reluctant to suppress the report. The lawyers for Sequoia Voting Systems, which was not a party to the lawsuit, basically told the Court some BS about the report, and the judge, wanting to be fair to Sequoia, reluctantly agreed to suppress it for now. My guess is that a redacted version, which strikes out Sequoia's trade secret information, will eventually be released.

Conspiracy theorists need to put away their tinfoil hats on this one. It's pretty obvious what's going on here.

Trade Secrets

[MosesJones]

Come on, we all know why this hasn't been released. Its because Sequoia will be claiming trade secrets based on their proprietary code. Now in a normal case this would make sense. If you made an aircraft engine control system that was 20% more efficient that the market average and someone in a court case claimed you used some of their code then you'd be pretty annoyed if your internal secrets were then published.

The issue here however is that this is about democracy and the counting of votes. There are no trade secrets in the counting of votes, it is a public process and it should be, indeed is required to be, publicly auditable. The problem here is that the Judge has applied commercial thinking to a public interest case, understandable but wrong.

There is a fundamental problem in the US right now around the audit and accountability of the democratic process. To borrow a phrase from the justice arena, Democracy mustn't just be done, it must seen to be done. A closed and proprietary voting system with no external verification does not enable this to happen. No-one in the US system (with its 98% re-elect rates) appears to care about this.

Now personally though the guy referenced here has done a good job in the write up I was personally more impressed that Brian Kernighan was part of the review team.

once again...

[i.r.id10t]

I find myself posting this particular comment a lot in regards to voting issues...

Strangely enough, the last armed revolt against the government in the US was in Athens, Tn. in *1946*. The cause? Voting issues...

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1985/2/1985_2_72.shtml [americanheritage.com]

Not that I am advocating it, but it will be interesting to see just how PO'd folks will get...

Re:So...

[I cant believe its n]

Wow, first he orders... then he orders...

And if "the company" did get into the judges pocket they would soon find out that Judge Linda Feinberg is a she.

Re:4759 is a prime number

[morgan_greywolf]

Well, let's see 4 = D, right?

There 3 4's.

There are 4 1's and 4 > 3, so subtract 10 from the 31 factor and you get 21. 21=U

The first two digits of 326 are 3 and 2, the sum of which is 5. 5=E

So our first word is DUDE.

And I'm pretty sure the rest of the message has to do with thinking, because 4433 makes you think.

So, the message is:

"Dude, you are SOOOO overthinking this."

Re:So...

[falcon5768]

actually what the judge did was completely right even though we dont like it publicly. She is temporarily withholding the findings until they meet in court to prevent a slew of issues that could crop up where it to be released prematurely. This happens all the time in the legal world but people often dont know it unless they are directly involved in the trial.

The findings WILL be made public, but only when the trial actually starts.

But then that isnt as sensational is it?

Re:So...

[Dunbal]

Companies that deserve to tank deserve to be tank. There's no special god-given "right" to profitability. Oh it's a shame when people lose their jobs, and god knows I've lost enough money these past months on certain banks that have tanked, but this protectionism only encourages a sloppy attitude in a company insomuch as they feel they don't have to work anymore, they've "arrived", and now the "system" will protect them from anything.

      Oh government, please bail us out because we've scammed our shareholders with creative accounting and billions of dollars worth of assets we've had on the books and borrowed money against aren't actually worth anything. Oh government, please hush up our "trade secrets" because our code is so simple even a 4 year old could reproduce it/any grandmother could debug it and point out how bad it is.

      Businesses existed and were successful before the lawyers started bouncing around the concept of "intellectual property". It was about being first, being fastest, producing more product or higher quality, and actually competing. Coke has their "secret formula" - but that never stopped Pepsi or any other "cola" variety from existing. But people buy more Coke because of the marketing, not the "secret" formula. All intellectual property does is make money for lawyers. I suppose I should be thankful that every IP lawyer is one less ambulance chaser...

Trade secrets are by definition never published!

[Z-MaxX]

This has little to do with trade secrets, which are often published, and which are protected by patents.

You are completely and totally wrong on this.

FACTS

1. Trade secrets are never published. In fact the holder of a trade secret fails to protect it well enough and it is discovered, then it becomes public domain information.

2. Trade secrets and patents are mutually exclusive concepts. You either (a) choose to make something a trade secret and keep it secret, or (b) choose to publish information and patent the thing.

The reason patents were introduced is to create an incentive for companies to knowledge of an invention with the world around, and in exchange for that, the government gives the inventor exclusive rights to make money from that invention for a reasonable and limited time.

References

Patent or trade secret?
  Patent, Trademark, and Trade Secret

Re:Wikileaks? I Agree, but I don't vote anymore...

[OldHawk777]

If a Puppet-POTUS/POTUS can be purchased, then they are bought and sold.
If a politician can be purchased, then they are bought and sold.
If a DoJ AG can be purchased, then they are bought and sold.
If a judge can be purchased, then they are bought and sold.

It ain't democracy, but what is good for a Czar, is good for a PPOTUS....

Folks, it is just politics for US. Democracy with word-spin, says we vote for selected politicians that support trickle-up (nothing trickles2US) economics for the wealthy. It puts less folks to work and more folks into bankruptcy, but all the money-changers in Washington know how to lovingly squeeze US all to death. It ain't treason ... it is the American Banana Republic (US, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela...) way of life.

The $1US of ten years ago now has the international purchase value of about $0.25US. The PPOTUS's and leaders of the last 20+ years presided over the fall of US telecom, medical, auto, education, life quality.... Lets not blame the terrorist ... like me they don't even vote (they never did).

I gave up voting after Ronnie's election, and politicians are always happy to lose a voted, but never election. Our separate-but-equal medicine, education, food, shelter, safety, income... is a cast culture with the wealthy few taking more every day ... next nepotist payroll is $700B ... it won't be the last; So, don't FUS is not a possible reality for US children ... expect the same that their parents and grand-parents will get the next few+ decades.

!HAVEFUN!