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Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States (vice.com)
Kim Zetter, reporting for Motherboard: The nation's top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company
installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them. In a letter sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in April and obtained recently by Motherboard, Election Systems and Software acknowledged that it had "provided pcAnywhere remote connection software ... to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006," which was installed on the election-management system ES&S sold them.
The statement contradicts what the company told me and fact checkers for a story I wrote for the New York Times in February. At that time, a spokesperson said ES&S had never installed pcAnywhere on any election system it sold. "None of the employees -- including long-tenured employees, has any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software," the spokesperson said. ES&S did not respond on Monday to questions from Motherboard, and it's not clear why the company changed its response between February and April. Lawmakers, however, have subpoena powers that can compel a company to hand over documents or provide sworn testimony on a matter lawmakers are investigating, and a statement made to lawmakers that is later proven false can have greater consequence for a company than one made to reporters.
The statement contradicts what the company told me and fact checkers for a story I wrote for the New York Times in February. At that time, a spokesperson said ES&S had never installed pcAnywhere on any election system it sold. "None of the employees -- including long-tenured employees, has any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software," the spokesperson said. ES&S did not respond on Monday to questions from Motherboard, and it's not clear why the company changed its response between February and April. Lawmakers, however, have subpoena powers that can compel a company to hand over documents or provide sworn testimony on a matter lawmakers are investigating, and a statement made to lawmakers that is later proven false can have greater consequence for a company than one made to reporters.
If your electronic voting booth runs a commercial operating system then you have already failed to secure your systems.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The Man finally figured out that stealing money is for chumps. The best crime is to steal the whole country.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
"provided pcAnywhere remote connection software ... to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006,"
The same PCAnywhere that was so egregiously exploitable that Symantec - Symantec of all companies, gave out free copies of version 12 to users who owned literally any prior version no matter how old it was? THAT is the product that was being utilized on voting machines?!
It has become abundantly clear that any company selling technology-based solutions to the government which can successfully win a bid should under no circumstances be allowed to do the job.
I TOLD YOU SO GOD DAMN IT.
Why would you assume they wouldn't install a backdoor? WHY??? Changing election totals gave them trillions of dollars in tax cuts and complete power.
Don't talk about open-source replacements. Any solution with electrons will be hacked and controlled. Go back to paper, the way Canada does, or did before the Tories rammed e-voting in. I wonder why, I wonder.
Reading up on verified paper voting trails. (=My personal wishlist item for verifiable elections) reveals some disturbing stuff from 2016's election:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/paperless-pennsylvania-can-swing-state-verify-2016-vote-n660266
"Even benign breakdowns of aging equipment — 43 states have machines that are more than a decade old ", i.e. states with voting machines from before 2006, the new standards didn't come in until 2007 and ESS only removed this software on machines made AFTER 2007.
You claimed it was 15-20 years ago, but the article says 2007 was the time they removed them and then only for new voting machines sold.
"when Pennsylvanians go to the polls to elect a new president in a month, more than 80 percent of them will be using machines that don't have a paper-backed audit."
Let me guess, Pennsylvania was polling strongly for Clinton yet elected Trump by a slim and plausible margin.
"Hillary Clinton leading by up to 12 points in Pennsylvania..."
(From Wikipedia after the article)
Trump wins Pennsylvania by 48.18% to 47.46%...
I'm guessing that this is odd.
2012, strong Obama, 2008 strong Obama, 2004 kerry, 2000 Al Gore....
Yeh right, and now you can't even verify it because you didn't have a paper trail to verify against.
FFS,
What's really racist is the idea that minorities are just incapable of getting an ID.
I support voter ID, but a California driver license costs $35. A California ID card (drinker's license) is $30. At the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are those for whom this is too much of an expense. Demanding payment in exchange for the privilege of voting is an illegal poll tax. Either change the Constitution or offer free IDs.
It's not just the ID itself, but the supporting documentation.
A new copy of my birth certificate costs $50, or I have the option of traveling 2000 miles to get a free copy at the county's offices.
Voting machines decide who gets a huge amount of power in our government. Backdoor access via a software package whose source code had been leaked and exploited, leading to the manufacturer recommending that it be removed, is huge goddamn deal.
No, they don't. They verify that the name you gave them is a registered voter. And that's all they do
Actually, they verify name and address, and that you have not voted yet.
Btw, think voter ID is gonna fix it? Guess what you need to produce a fake id? Name and address.
It's a well known open secret that liberals routinely bus "voters" around on election day
If this was actually happening at a large scale, it would be easy to catch and result in a lot of convictions. Yet there have been 0 people caught transporting false voters.
In-person voter fraud is extremely rare. Those that do it and are caught are not all members of one political party. In fact, there's been slightly more Republicans caught doing it in the last few years, largely because of false claims like the one you make here.
Also, even if it weren't overly hard to get the documentation (and I'm not saying it isn't), the voter ID folks are playing the margins. If they can prevent a small number of Democrats from voting in a few states in a close election, they can pull off an upset victory like Trump's.
That's why the Russians targeted black voters with fake "Black Lives Matter" groups either misdirecting potential black voters or telling them not to bother voting. And it worked in places like Michigan and Winsconsin. Along with voter ID laws that similarly suppressed the black vote enough to tip the balance.
The Electoral College allocation of extra votes to small population states is a problem too. But that's in the Constitution and hard to change. Voter suppression enjoys no such protection, and needs to be fought if you believe in one-person, one-vote.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...