Swedes Cast Write-In Votes for SQL Injection, Donald Duck

An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish elections were held recently (the third Sunday of September to be exact) and it seems that a few people tried to interfere with the election by voting for parties which were in effect named to be SQL injection attacks or similar. Clever stuff! Little Bobby Tables in real life." That wasn't the only oddity of the election; reader MZeroOne writes: "The Swedish Election Authority published the results of last Sunday's general election and even though the current prime minister retained power, the candidate who got the most individual handwritten votes was Disney's Donald Duck." Maybe the existence of the Hard Alcohol Party (237 votes) helps explain why the Pirate Party didn't have a better showing.

Comments

For those who don't read XKCD.

[Dayofswords]

The 'Little Bobby Tables' reference:

"Exploits of a Mom"
http://xkcd.com/327/

Re:For those who don't read XKCD.

[JazzXP]

There's somebody on /. that hasn't seen that comic?!?!

The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[FlorianMueller]

Since a number of activists from the anti-software-patent movement joined the Pirate Party, including its first MEP (Christian Engström), I've been following its development closely and at some point even lent them a signature to support their participation in an election in my country (Germany), even though I ultimately didn't vote for them.

I've commented on the Pirate Party's failure to evolve into a serious political force. The EUobserver, an independent website covering European politics, published a streamlined version of my analysis. The original version goes into some more detail and appeared on my blog.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[FuckingNickName]

What every young, unrepresentative group of loud, idealistic men don't realise is that most people just want peace, a job and a house. And, if you spend your time employed rather than campaigning for the abandonment of the intellectual property concept, you will have enough money to pay for it anyway. And what you cannot pay for, you put on credit. And debt doesn't really matter... continue working hard and you can pay fast enough that no-one takes your stuff away... your government is not going to let civilisation collapse even if everyone else is in debt too.

Life has been easy for quite a while. And of course I want to exploit you if I have the intelligence to do so. And I want to protect my legal rights to make it possible, not to share. Then I'm even more secure and my surroundings even more luxurious.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Nursie]

The only bit I object to in your argument is this -

And, if you spend your time employed rather than campaigning for the abandonment of the intellectual property concept, you will have enough money to pay for it anyway.

It's not necessarily about being able to afford to buy stuff. It's about rights and reform in the new digital age.

Other than that you're spot on, most people would rather get on with life and vote for whoever requires them to think about it the least.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Most pirates probably just vote for the green party (miljöpartiet) instead - they changed their policy to support filesharing after the pp got 7% in the EU election - because they are a mainstream party and there was no doubt that they would get in. How much of a difference this has made I don't know but they did do very well in the election.

Their internet-related policies

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[tenchikaibyaku]

As not all the ballots are counted as of yet it's possible that the final result will differ a few points, but it's worth noting that the Swedish Pirate Party basically seems to have retained its voters from the previous election:
2006: 0.63%
2010: 0.65% (preliminary)
This even though they were more or less absent from the public debate before the election.

I also think that the existence of a Pirate Party here in Sweden has managed to affect the public debate regarding piracy and privacy related questions more than what shows up in the polls.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[mikael_j]

Actually, the grandparent (or rather, the people described in the post) missed the point. The point isn't "we can't afford stuff! stuff should be free! WAAAH!", it's about rights, personal integrity and in extension safeguarding a free and democratic society. However, most people would rather get a $50/year tax cut and not think so much...

And it really helps them when people from established political parties describe the pirate party as thieves, slackers and people who just want something for nothing. Makes it a lot easier to just think "I can afford stuff, I don't need stuff for free." while you vote for whoever promises you the biggest tax cut.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[TheRaven64]

In the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, they got 90 votes in the last UK election. To put this in perspective, Mad Cap'n Tom, a joke candidate, got 84 votes in the same constituency. If the Pirate Party actually want to achieve something, then they need to start being constructive. A few suggestions:

• Change the name. Pirate Party makes them sound like a bunch of teenagers.
• Propose a sensible alternative to copyright, or propose a reasonable term for copyright. Their current proposals, if implemented, would cause significant damage to the economies of most western countries.
• Focus more on the privacy and security policies - people are more sympathetic to people who want to be left alone than to freeloaders.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Kjella]

Just a few things:
1) The EU and national elections are really not comparable, people care about so vastly different things. Neither before, during or after did PP have anything like a 7% support in polls for the national parliament. But in retrospect, they didn't have a good enough national election platform to push while they still had media's attention because all the effort had gone into the EU election. They got silent and when it was ready media had lost attention.

2) There has been extremely little room for any other than the traditional parties and SD who got almost 3% in the last election, the number of "other" votes dropped from 2.75% to 1.41% and all others backed while PP increased from 0.63% to 0.65%. All major issues related to PPs politics have been pushed back to past the election, like the TPB trial who "coincidentally" begins next week.

3) It might look more like an activist group, but as long as no party is willing to seriously fight for the same issues then PP will have to fight for representation on their own. It took three days after the election for the Greens - including the Swedish representative - to vote for another anti-filesharing bill in the EU, they are only playing the populist opinion but will trade it away in any negotiation.

4) There have been no rounds ot mass lawsuits in Sweden, TPB is still up and running, they get some of the world's best free services like Spotify, in short people don't see the immidiate need for political change. But polls asking people for their opinions rather which party they'd vote for show that PP is having an effect on the attitude to copyrights. More and more people dispute that copyright infringement equals theft. If it again becomes a political topic, PP will do better than last "wave".

Personally I'm at least hopeful for 2014...

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[vadim_t]

No, it's not about that.

I don't object paying for stuff. I pay for indie games, and donated to the musopen project and some others. Many of those are things I don't even have to pay for if I don't want to.

I object paying to parasites who want to create laws that will make it impossible for me to avoid paying them, because they want to introduce taxes on media, internet connections, and restrictions as to what my hardware can do. Simply not buying their stuff doesn't do it, because even if I don't buy or pirate a single CD they'll still put a tax on my hard disk and connection, throttle my torrent of CC licensed music, include DRM crap in my hardware, and prevent centuries old material from entering the public domain. If I don't buy, they'll say that I'm torrenting and use that as a justification for the things I've listed.

That bullshit has to be removed at the source, through laws that make it illegal and cut its funding. I'll gladly pay the artists, but I don't want to give a single cent to the parasites from the RIAA, MPAA and ASCAP.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[wertigon]

Actually, I disagree... The Pirate Party is everything but a one-hit wonder. However in the world of politics, things move slowly, by neccessity.

The Pirate Party made a really bad election this year, but that does not seem to have demotivated any of it's members. If anything, it has made them even more interested in continuing the fight. The fact that members from other parties join PP here in sweden only serve to prove that PP is here to stay, IMO.

So a one-hit wonder? Nay. Not when their core issues are so important. But they do need help, and lots of it...

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Aceticon]

Intellectual Property law created what in effect is a tax paid directly to other persons/companies:
- Against the natural laws, it gives people and companies ownership of ideas and lets them charge you every time you share an idea.

It's very simple really: with Intellectual Property you have to have authorization to give/share things with others and pay for iy, without it you're free to do as you which with what you have and what you know.

I'm surprised this point is not raised more often by the "Pirate" political parties: instead they tend to get drawn into abstract discussions on (for most people) obscure points ...

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Joce640k]

This ... and the fact the the government is piggybacking all sorts of censorship and internet-usage-log laws on top of what the RIAA wants. And the fact that the government is selling out to the RIAA in the first place, thus undermining the entire democratic process.

I was never particularly militant, I'm now old enough to have a job/house/mortgage, I'm voting pirate in the next elections.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[TheRaven64]

They also proposed non-commercial copyright infringement be completely legal. This basically means that there is no reason for anyone to ever purchase entertainment, or any other copyright material that they are not going to make a profit from using, because they can legally get it for free. On the other hand, they didn't (for example) say anything about forcing the BBC to abandon DRM, support open standards for distributing its own work, and use CC (or similar) licensing for license-fee funded programming.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[VJ42]

They also proposed non-commercial copyright infringement be completely legal.

Yes, because millions are doing it anyway; the law is next to useless and serves no point except to criminalize teenagers in their bedrooms

On the other hand, they didn't (for example) say anything about forcing the BBC to abandon DRM, support open standards for distributing its own work, and use CC (or similar) licensing for license-fee funded programming.

This is plain wrong: from the relevant section of the PPUK Manifesto

Government copyrights are increasingly becoming a problem for society, with data such as maps and postcodes being jealously protected by government departments. We will introduce a new right of access to government funded data, requiring the release of all maps, statistics and so on that have been paid for by the taxpayer in open formats, under a Creative Commons or similar licence, giving the public access to research that they have already paid for. An exception will be made for cases that genuinely have national security or privacy concerns.

This will include the output of the BBC, which is funded by the licence paying public and should therefore belong to the licence paying public. We will amend the BBC's charter to prevent the BBC from using DRM technology, and to require the BBC to release all their content under a Creative Commons licence. We pledge to maintain and expand the current list of important national events that cannot be exclusively broadcast pay TV services, and we pledge to put into action the government's existing but widely ignored Open Source Action Plan, which would encourage the use of free software in the public sector, saving money, and making the UK less reliant on foreign software suppliers.

As you can see, we covered all of that.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[dkleinsc]

I'm not sure the name is their problem. After all, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party has won elections in Britain.

No, their major limitation is that they're primarily a single-issue party, and their stance on that issue has been taken by some of their opponents. So while they haven't experienced much by way of electoral success, as far as putting their ideas into mainstream politics in Sweden they've done a fantastic job.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[robot256]

Here's one start: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090806/1659115788.shtml. The article references other artists who have spoken out against the RIAA's anti-filesharing tactics.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Archangel Michael]

Taxes are about freedom as much as your "rights, personal integrity and in extension safeguarding a free and democratic society" are. In fact, I would suggest that any government who's tax rates are greater than 20% on personal income is deeply infringing upon the right to pursue happiness.

Of course, well regulated citizenry is key to socialistic bliss. And damn everything else, I want to download music and not pay the artists a wit for it.

Speak all you want about sticking it to the man, and how you're for the poor oppressed artists and whatnot. And poor starving artists still exist, in spite of all the attempts of the Pirate Party and geeks protesting the MAFIAA.

The point is, here we are, ten years into the age of File Sharing and whatnot, and all those people downloading all that music and not paying for it are doing is making noise and giving me a headache.

Meanwhile government fines people for growing food in their backyard.

Government skimming off the top of the productivity of people is 100 times worse than anything the MAFIAA is doing to artists.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[retchdog]

distractions from the serious business of slashdot, of course.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[wootest]

To begin with, I don't know of another Swedish party with an official position on pharmacy patents.

There will always be people who want "copyrighted stuff for free", and since it became plausible a few decades ago, there always has been nearly free availability of "copyrighted stuff". The difference is that the rest of the democracy fundaments weren't being torn down in defense of it.

The IPRED directive intended to halt file sharing, as implemented in Sweden, perverts the concept of common carriers (it's not the PO's fault if you send people pot in envelopes), a fair trial (the civil trials are exempt from setting reasonable damages, they can seize your bank account, raid your house, make you the target of an investigation without telling you and you have to prove that you're not personally guilty) and reinvents the shame pole (you have to take out an ad in a newspaper of your own payment saying that you did something wrong). Some of these concepts date back to the Roman Empire. Is it really proportional to the crime?

There are more directives and motions like these, in other areas, and the Pirate Party is fighting them too, like supporting the repeal of a recent law enabling a defense authority, FRA, to tap every packet of Internet traffic that crosses the country borders in the interests of "preventing external threats", painted by a former Stasi employee as a tool they could only have dreamed of. Or why not by railing against the implementation of the EU Data Retention Directive, which would document every cell phone call or email. Don't confuse poor research and jumped conclusions with their actual, openly-discussed agenda.

But even where the focus is on file sharing, I don't think you'll agree after reading through the actual law that the measures are proportional, necessary or effective.

Something else: the summary mentions the "Hard Liquor Party". Although tiny (the data from the election agency lists where they appear specifically on write-in votes because their per-party ballot papers weren't available), they're a real political party, and they want to reduce the Swedish alcohol consumption by 50% to achieve many other beneficial side-effects, like decreases in domestic violence, poor performance in schools, heart failure and so on. While they didn't get my vote, I empathize with their politics.

Hard Alcohol Party...

[Anonymous Coward]

... sadly isn't what you'd think. They are antibooze-ists. Huge disappointment.
Translated homepage: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http://www.spritpartiet.se/&prev=_t&twu=1

On a separate note, other notable entities voted for were "Shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits", and a silly javascript insertion attempt. Full data at http://www.val.se/val/val2010/handskrivna/handskrivna.skv

Re:Hard Alcohol Party...

[Adambomb]

R;12;Skåne län;83;Helsingborg;01;Helsingborg Norra;0701;Ödåkra V;Stick it up your fucking ass!;1

oh my.

Donald Duck

[BetterThanCaesar]

The Donald Duck party is an all time favourite joke vote in Sweden, but it is actually a registered party. They promise free alcohol and wider sidewalks. They don't have a budget for voting slips, but write-in votes are valid (if spelt correctly). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Duck_Party

Re:Donald Duck

[BetterThanCaesar]

Spelt is a valid and common spelling. I'm not from North America.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spelt#Etymology_1

For those who are American

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweden, is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe.

Re:For those who are American

[caluml]

Its capital is Bern, and they are famous for cuckoo clocks and Hitler.

Re:For those who are American

[arb phd slp]

Actually, Bern is the capital of Switzerland (which is also famous for the clocks), and Hitler was born in Austria and was the dictator of Germany. It looks like you've got some problems with geography and history.

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

Re:For those who are American

[V!NCENT]

USA: Yes?
Eurpope: Oh hai thar, teh Germanz be attacking us! Help!
USA: Yes the state of germania. I've been there during my trip in Africa I believe. How unfortunate. We realy feel sorry for-
Europa: Oh and they have an intercontinental ballistic missile program, underground intercontinenal balistic missile bunkers facing in the direction of the US; under contructio-
USA: Right away!

Re:SQL Injection?

[MichaelSmith]

More than you might think.

Re:SQL Injection?

[pla]

Seriously? What is this, 1997? Who still writes code vulnerable to those?

Seriously, you don't even want to know.

Over my past two jobs, all but one of the most important enterprise systems we used had zero protection from attacks like these. Talkin' accounting, inventory, POS - Even the Borg of ERP packages, MS Dynamics, still chokes on merely having apostrophes in most fields.

And from what I've seen of banking systems that I've had to interface with, I'd keep my money under my bed - Except many of them haven't quite caught up to all this fancy "new" SQL tech. Nice safe 60s era COBOL code - And yes, they still use two digit years, because after all, we have another 90 years before the Y2K fixes will break.

Re:If people are tossing their votes away . . .

[halfaperson]

Well yeah, that is actually often the point of humourus votes. It shows you support the democratic system but perhaps none of the available representatives, whereas ignoring to vote means not using your democratic rights at all.

Yuck it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, the neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats won 5.7% of the vote, 20 seats, giving them the balance of power.

Thanks for the joke votes. Your apathy just gave actual Nazis a say in parliament.

Re:Yuck it up

[halfaperson]

Nazis? They are actually more Israel friendly than most established parties, and one of their MP:s is jewish.

While their ideological platform is built mainly on restricting immigration, that hardly qualifies as nazism. And joke votes are hardly a sign of apathy. If you really need to point fingers, why not aim them at the ~18% of the population that didn't vote at all? Get your facts straight.

Re:Yuck it up

[Vintermann]

The SD was created by the merger of several small, right-wing anti immigration parties, some of which were pretty openly nazist. The Jewish community in Sweden are among the many who accuse them of still "wearing their brown shirts under their jackets".

For what it's worth, though, there is still at least one openly neo-nazi party that did not join them, and now occupies the niche (such as it is) on their right.

Re:Yuck it up

[halfaperson]

But for the benefit of anybody happening upon this post, yes, they are Nazis:

It won't be long before Sweden Democrats show true anti-Semitic nature.

From your link:

The SD did not include any anti-Semitic messages in its platform. On the contrary, it has two Jewish members among its top ranks and has actually come out in support of Israel at times.

Seriously, that's the best you can manage to come up with? One would hope for some evidence of your claims since you apparently feel entitled to judge for others.

You might want to sit down for this...

[Chineseyes]

There are banks, hospitals, utilities and other institutions that don't take kindly to change. These institutions have ancient (as in I ran across a piece of code that was written when I was in diapers) legacy systems running key functionality that many people's everyday lives depend on. If you ever had to take a look at any of the code for these legacy systems it would frighten you, but what is more frightening is that most of these institutions have an "if it's not broken don't fix it" mentality so don't expect modern security issues to be addressed in a lot of these legacy systems anytime soon.

Re:If people are tossing their votes away . . .

[bint]

No, it just says a lot about what *these people* think about quality of the candidates.

Reality catching up to fiction

[Drakkenmensch]

From the Norm MacDonald Show, Laurie's concession speech:

"I'd like to congratulate the winners who got more votes than I did, write-in candidates Mickey Mouse and pornstar Wendy Whoopers."

Re:For those who are European

[Nadaka]

Uhh, The Finnish may as well be Russians, Norway is that other country up there nobody cares about and WTF is Denmark? (Im joking everyone)

Denmark? Well Horatio, it smells kinda rotten.