We, as the geek community, need to acquire a Diebold voting machine and inspect it closely. We need to put it in a lab, set it up as an election machine, reproduce the environment, and see exactly what it does. We need to report the results in a way that are reproducible and understandable to the world.
Consider that in Florida, where Diebold was used in several counties, the exit polls showed a 8-percent spread in favor of Kerry. The official results are much different. Consider also that Diebold is a contributor to the Republican Party.
Also consider, that the Republican Party fought legal battles to ensure the touch screen voting systems in Florida are NOT REQUIRED to have a paper trail. That in itself is disturbing. (Here's a South Florida newspaper story about this: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/s fl-pcpaper26oct26,0,5649106.story?coll=sfla-news-p alm )
This is not a conspiracy theory (yet), but simply a loose end that needs to be tracked down, carefully.
If it was one of the many high level institutions that Microsoft has given access to, then Microsoft likely has a method to track the leaked code back to the source.
When I'm using a Linux box away from home, and I absolutely don't want my web traffic to be able to be sniffed, I use this semi-quick solution.
I installed Squid (the proxy server) on my box at home (which has a cable connection) and then use this simple one-line SSH command to create a SSH tunnel, which forwards all my web browsing to my proxy server at home, across an encrypted channel.
Then I just have a copy of Opera on my machine away from home, set to use a proxy server on localhost port 45855. Works beautifully for web browsing that a company can't sniff.
Note that I used the "-g" option of SSH, which allows other machines to connect to my locally forwarded ports (i.e. they can use the proxy server back at my home by connecting to the local port on my machine.) Take it out if you don't want this.
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We, as the geek community, need to acquire a Diebold voting machine and inspect it closely. We need to put it in a lab, set it up as an election machine, reproduce the environment, and see exactly what it does. We need to report the results in a way that are reproducible and understandable to the world.
s fl-pcpaper26oct26,0,5649106.story?coll=sfla-news-p alm )
Consider that in Florida, where Diebold was used in several counties, the exit polls showed a 8-percent spread in favor of Kerry. The official results are much different. Consider also that Diebold is a contributor to the Republican Party.
Also consider, that the Republican Party fought legal battles to ensure the touch screen voting systems in Florida are NOT REQUIRED to have a paper trail. That in itself is disturbing. (Here's a South Florida newspaper story about this: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/
This is not a conspiracy theory (yet), but simply a loose end that needs to be tracked down, carefully.
We are the ones to do it.
If it was one of the many high level institutions that Microsoft has given access to, then Microsoft likely has a method to track the leaked code back to the source.
Like Tom Clancy's Canary Trap, for example.
When I'm using a Linux box away from home, and I absolutely don't want my web traffic to be able to be sniffed, I use this semi-quick solution.
I installed Squid (the proxy server) on my box at home (which has a cable connection) and then use this simple one-line SSH command to create a SSH tunnel, which forwards all my web browsing to my proxy server at home, across an encrypted channel.
ssh -o ProtocolKeepAlives=15 -q -f -N -C -g -L 45855:localhost:3128 myusername@MY.HOME.IP.ADDRESS
Then I just have a copy of Opera on my machine away from home, set to use a proxy server on localhost port 45855. Works beautifully for web browsing that a company can't sniff.
Note that I used the "-g" option of SSH, which allows other machines to connect to my locally forwarded ports (i.e. they can use the proxy server back at my home by connecting to the local port on my machine.) Take it out if you don't want this.