Exactly right. Now the problem becomes how to recover the lost rights. The last time it took a revolution, eight years, and thousands of lives to achieve the goal. I think that this next election may be the last "free and fair" (for some defintions of free and fair) election this nation will see. Both parties are set on forcing closed-source, no user-servicable parts, no valid audit trail electronic voting machines on the American electorate. Unless we are able to convince the entrenched powers-that-be in Washington that it's in their best interests to restore the Constitution and the rule of law to their rightful places in America we will have a totalitarian government sooner than any of us want to believe.
Think it can't happen here? We now have secret police, secret court proceedings, holding of persons without charge or meaningful legal counsel, secret search warrants, secret searches, roving wiretaps of anyone a prosecutor might want to call a terrorist, continuous encroachments on essential liberties such as free speech and the right to keep and bear arms. Need I go on? If either major party candidate gets elected look for more of the same. Kerry would be a bit smoother than Bush, but the end result will be the same: an American public that will wake up one day and wonder "why are the police searching my house?"
As someone's signature here mentioned in another discussion: There are four boxes associated with liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Start now.
I'm glad to see that the folks who want to demonstrate in New York during the Republican Convention are fighting the use of "Free Speech Zones." Why Americans aren't rioting in the streets over this unparalelled trampling of the right of free speech is a mystery to me. I suppose that most of them are too worried about who's going to get voted off the island. What they don't seem to realize is that they have a chance to vote the neo-fascist Bushites off the island in real life.
The whole concept of "Free Speech Zones" is anathema to the American Constitution. Yet, the Bush people have made great use of them to keep any sign of discontent out of the sight of the "Great Leader." Just try showing up at a Bush campaign rally with an anti-Bush banner or sign and see how far you get. You'll be told that "you have to go sit on the Group W bench...over there with the jailbirds, child molesters and father-rapers..." (apologies to Arlo Guthrie). So far the pusillanimous courts in this country, the same courts that religiously uphold a "woman's right to chose" refuse to tell the government how far off-base they are with this.
Those who believe that throwing Bush out and putting Kerry in will fix the problem are wrong. John Kerry has not made an issue of the loss of civil liberties that people in this country are being subjected to. If he was serious, he should have been at the forefront of those locked in the "Free Speech Zone" at the Democrat's Convention and led the charge to tear down the wire. Instead, he says he's upset, but does nothing to stop the process. The big problem in the U.S. right now is that the people are more afraid of the government than the government is of the people.
Vote Libertarian this year. It's the only party that truly stands for freedom and protection of the Constitution.
I think that it's becoming more clear every day that the U.S. is headed in the direction of becoming a police state. The threat of "terrorism" is being used by the governemnt to expand its police powers in the name of "defending liberty." This is as good an example of double-speak as I can think of. Every step the government has taken since 9/11 has seen a reduction in the liberty of Americans to have privacy, be free from unwarranted intrusions and searches, etc.
Unfortunately, I do not think that John Kerry, if elected, will stop this trend. He has not made protection of civil liberties, except for abortion, a major issue in his campaign. He voted for PATRIOT and, AFAIK, has made no calls for it to be repealed, re-examined, sunsetted, etc. He has given me no reason to vote for him.
On the other hand, the Libertarian candidate, Michael Badnarik http://www.badnarik.org/index.php is calling for a halt to the expansion of the government's police powers. I intend to vote for him as I don't accept that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote. I urge anyone concerned about the growth and misuse of governemnt power to consider a vote for Badnarik.
I absolutely agree. I just sent an email to all of the folks I normally exchange email with to let them know that as of Monday the 16th I'll be using encryption (GnuPG) on all out-going email and IM client sessions. I've been pestering people for months, maybe a couple of years, to start using PKI at least with their email. Maybe this step will force them to do it.
As far as I know it should be possible to encrypt VoIP by tunneling it through SSH, It may also be possible to encrypt it directly, but I have no experience with VoIP so its inner workings are a mystery to me.
Proprietary does not have to mean non-standard. It may simply mean that a company doesn't want, for whatever reason, to Open Source their implementation of a standards compliant product.
if enough people sign this declaration it may have some power in persuading CIOs and other IT management types that Open Standards are beneficial to the corporations of which they are employees. Appealing to the herd instainct is sometimes very useful in dealing with PHBs. Also, a show of wide-spread support for Open Standards may cause companies that subscribe to the "embrace, extend, extinguish" school of thought to re-think their approach to the marketplace.
What bothers me is that, if the game companies prevail in this suit, another bite is taken out of the doctrine of "fair use" and the traditional right to make backup copies of software. Where is it written that society is required to provide content producers with all the money they want? This is another example of how badly flawed the DMCA is. With database companies beginning to assert copyright over aggregations of raw data I can foresee a time when backing up your own data will be legally questionable because it may be derived from a copyrighted database somewhere. Someone needs to put an end to this madness.
Does anyone know if the EFF or ACLU will file amicus briefs on the side of 321? This seems like the sort of lawsuit those organizations ought to be trying to stop.
You make an interesting point in a roundabout way. Why is it that whenever proprietary code is stolen the "security commentators" start predicting the end of the world? As you note, Linux code is available to anyone and there have been very few, if any, exploits that have brought down significant numbers of machines. Unless one postulates that F/OSS software is orders of magnitude better than proprietary code I don't see any automatic connection between stolen source code and security problems.
I do think that it would be interesting, as an intellectual exercise, to perform a security audit of the Cisco IOS code. This would give us a baseline from which to begin an analysis of the quality of F/OSS versus proprietary software. Until we can get such an accounting of the problems with both F/OSS and closed source software the arguments over which is better will continue to be based on religion and not fact. Unfortunately, given the DMCA and other legal restrictions I suspect that anyone who openly makes such an analysis would be liable for fines and possible jail time.
Given some of the things that have been in the news lately regarding IOS exploits I won't be surprised if we see some major attacks, but I don't think that's an automatic result of the theft. Let's hope that Cisco will be willing to allow the code to be audited as that will help out everybody in the long run.
The thing that I like best about the Indian system is that it essentially duplicates the old-fashioned paper ballot, without the paperwork. Instead of a box that the voter puts his ballot in there's a little electronic box that adds up the votes as it goes along. The control boxes are physically taken to the central voting registry and manually unlocked to record the vote counts, with interested parties having immediate access to the results and the ability to do a precinct-level recount almost immediately.
Notice what's not there: no network to expose data to possible manipulation between voting machine and central server; no fancy machine lacking tamperproof seals; no fancy database with built-in unpassworded backdoor "for support purposes"; no MS software anywhere in the loop; no manufacturer's president sworn to "delivering the vote" for an incompetent incumbent. It's those last couple of items which will prevent the adoption of the Indian system in this country.
Bummer. At least the Californicators made it much easier to file for monetary recovery. All I had to do was send them my snail mail info. About two weeks later I got a form that I had to fill in giving the gory details of the MS theft and send it back in. Since the purchase was more that five years ago I didn't even have to provide a sales receipt to the state; just where I bought the machine and what software was pre-loaded. I'm still waiting for my $110 check, though. It's been almost six months since I sent in the form. It'll be so nice to spend Billy's money on something Linux related.
The double dipping for license fees shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, MS recently told the SEC that Linux is a significant threat to its revenue stream. This is simply a way for MS to enhance their cash flow, give them more money with which to fund SCO lawsuits, and play the PR game to show how "thoughtful and caring" it is. Gates and company are evil, but they're not stupid.
It is funny, but also only too true. This is the sort of thing that helps make conspiracy theorists look better. It seems to me that this incident needs to be investigated more. The AG should not be let off easily on this as, whether the original came from the MPAA or was reviewed by them, there is evidently much too close a connection between them and the office of the AG.
I don't think it's that simple. As with everything in life there are two sides to this story. Unfortunately, for us, neither side is being particularly forthcoming with facts.
For instance, if Richard was attempting to negotiate a payment rate for hosting the site over the past three years, I would expect that he would at least have notes of the meetings involved. There is no mention of this on the "savepat" website. I would also expect that, since money was being talked about, that someone from the county treasurer's office would have been involved or at least informed; yet there is no information provided about this.
As with many "small town" issues I suspect that the real reasons behind this issue are personal and will remain hidden. As of now we don't have enough info to make informed decisions about the case, other to observe that a $300K bill for hosting a rather specialized website seems a bit on the high side.
Ah yes, I can see it now. The AV software will be considered to be an "essential part of the OS." Let's see, first we had the browser wars, now we're having the multimedia wars, next will be the AV wars; anyone else see a pattern here. I won't lose any sleep over Symantec and that whole herd of parasitical AV vendors going out of business. However, I will be concerned if the DOJ doesn't step in and nip this move in the bud. Too much to hope for I suppose considering that MS has effectively paid off the administration and the DOJ.
Not only is it a black box, it's a black box that periodically explodes for no apparent reason. This happened to me a couple of times this past week. Yes, I use Windows, sometimes, only to play games... Anyway, I was running Railroad Tycoon 3 and the machine suddenly rebooted.
Here's an OS under which an application can not only nuke the OS, but also the machine itself. The BSOD may have gone away to a large degree under Windows XP, but the random reboots continue. I know this isn't a hardware problem as it's the same hardware that I'm running Linux on as I write this. The combo of Linux + this hardware has never locked up, rebooted, died a hideous death, or done anything other than be rock solid and stable. linux is clearly the better choice for doing any serious work with a computer.
It's nice to see that the Europeans, unlike our DOJ, aren't caving in to MS' demands. Clearly, the European Commission has people on its staff who know that a media player is not, by nature, an intrinsic part of an OS. Simply because MS says that their media player is an intrinsic part of the OS doesn't mean that this is some sort of immutable law of computer science and the EC is telling MS that the argument won't fly. Now if only our DOJ would get on the stick and punish MS for its continued illegal use of its monopoly position.
You may be right about the GWB fund-raising issue being a red-herring. On the other hand, it wouldn't take a large number of Diebold staff to change election results. As a previous poster pointed out one only has to carefully choose a few precincts in a few swing states, change the vote counts, and viola...a subtly rigged election without any electronic or paper trail to give things away.
I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, as I'm also a believer in Occam's Razor. However, given the known flaws in Diebold's machines it wouldn't take many people to affect the election by engaging in a bit of electronic vote rigging. And don't think it's not possible. The Chicago machine under the current Mayor Daley's father routinely rigged elections, by hand, and used hundreds of people to do it. Given the stakes in the upcoming election, possibly the survival of America as a liberal democracy, I look for those currently in power to use all means fair or foul to win the election. After all, these are the same people who have assured us that our private information won't be used in the upcoming CAPPS II system, only to have Northwest Airlines admit that it turned over such data to NASA for "research." The current administration has simply lied too often about too many things for me to believe that they wouldn't stoop to vote rigging to stay in power.
So you caught that part, too, eh? Why the NPR reporter let that statement go unchallenged is a mystery to me. As grondu suggested above, I'm writing a message to NPR outlining what I perceive as the gross failure of this piece to really get at the heart of the matter; which is the need to have open and verifiable systems in place to handle the votes of this country's citizens. Diebold, given their history of coverups, lies, and attempts to shut down public discussion of their shortcomings is hardly the company that I would choose to build an e-voting system.
I heard the NPR story on yesterday's ATC and was struck by the reporter's failure to ask some hard questions. For instance, there was a statement by a Diebold spokesdrone to the effect that "we fix any security issues that we think could be a problem." There was no followup regarding earlier reports of a Diebold built-in backdoor to the systems "for maintainence purposes.' A back-door which, IIRC, required no password or user id to gain access to the server's databases.
Also, there was no discussion of the debate between those of us that believe that the e-voting systems should be required to use Open Source software vs. folks at Diebold and other vendors, who foist off the "trust us, we know what we're doing" line on the public. There was no real discussion of the effect that questionable e-voting results could have on the American political system. There was also no mention of the fact that Diebold's president is involved with raising money for the G.W. Bush re-election campaign and has pledged, IIRC, "to do everything I can to deliver the vote to George Bush." All in all I'm afraid that NPR really dropped the ball on this particular issue.
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Exactly right. Now the problem becomes how to recover the lost rights. The last time it took a revolution, eight years, and thousands of lives to achieve the goal. I think that this next election may be the last "free and fair" (for some defintions of free and fair) election this nation will see. Both parties are set on forcing closed-source, no user-servicable parts, no valid audit trail electronic voting machines on the American electorate. Unless we are able to convince the entrenched powers-that-be in Washington that it's in their best interests to restore the Constitution and the rule of law to their rightful places in America we will have a totalitarian government sooner than any of us want to believe.
Think it can't happen here? We now have secret police, secret court proceedings, holding of persons without charge or meaningful legal counsel, secret search warrants, secret searches, roving wiretaps of anyone a prosecutor might want to call a terrorist, continuous encroachments on essential liberties such as free speech and the right to keep and bear arms. Need I go on? If either major party candidate gets elected look for more of the same. Kerry would be a bit smoother than Bush, but the end result will be the same: an American public that will wake up one day and wonder "why are the police searching my house?"
As someone's signature here mentioned in another discussion:
There are four boxes associated with liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Start now.
Vote Libertarian. It's our only hope.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I'm glad to see that the folks who want to demonstrate in New York during the Republican Convention are fighting the use of "Free Speech Zones." Why Americans aren't rioting in the streets over this unparalelled trampling of the right of free speech is a mystery to me. I suppose that most of them are too worried about who's going to get voted off the island. What they don't seem to realize is that they have a chance to vote the neo-fascist Bushites off the island in real life.
The whole concept of "Free Speech Zones" is anathema to the American Constitution. Yet, the Bush people have made great use of them to keep any sign of discontent out of the sight of the "Great Leader." Just try showing up at a Bush campaign rally with an anti-Bush banner or sign and see how far you get. You'll be told that "you have to go sit on the Group W bench...over there with the jailbirds, child molesters and father-rapers..." (apologies to Arlo Guthrie). So far the pusillanimous courts in this country, the same courts that religiously uphold a "woman's right to chose" refuse to tell the government how far off-base they are with this.
Those who believe that throwing Bush out and putting Kerry in will fix the problem are wrong. John Kerry has not made an issue of the loss of civil liberties that people in this country are being subjected to. If he was serious, he should have been at the forefront of those locked in the "Free Speech Zone" at the Democrat's Convention and led the charge to tear down the wire. Instead, he says he's upset, but does nothing to stop the process. The big problem in the U.S. right now is that the people are more afraid of the government than the government is of the people.
Vote Libertarian this year. It's the only party that truly stands for freedom and protection of the Constitution.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I think that it's becoming more clear every day that the U.S. is headed in the direction of becoming a police state. The threat of "terrorism" is being used by the governemnt to expand its police powers in the name of "defending liberty." This is as good an example of double-speak as I can think of. Every step the government has taken since 9/11 has seen a reduction in the liberty of Americans to have privacy, be free from unwarranted intrusions and searches, etc.
Unfortunately, I do not think that John Kerry, if elected, will stop this trend. He has not made protection of civil liberties, except for abortion, a major issue in his campaign. He voted for PATRIOT and, AFAIK, has made no calls for it to be repealed, re-examined, sunsetted, etc. He has given me no reason to vote for him.
On the other hand, the Libertarian candidate, Michael Badnarik http://www.badnarik.org/index.php is calling for a halt to the expansion of the government's police powers. I intend to vote for him as I don't accept that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote. I urge anyone concerned about the growth and misuse of governemnt power to consider a vote for Badnarik.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I absolutely agree. I just sent an email to all of the folks I normally exchange email with to let them know that as of Monday the 16th I'll be using encryption (GnuPG) on all out-going email and IM client sessions. I've been pestering people for months, maybe a couple of years, to start using PKI at least with their email. Maybe this step will force them to do it.
As far as I know it should be possible to encrypt VoIP by tunneling it through SSH, It may also be possible to encrypt it directly, but I have no experience with VoIP so its inner workings are a mystery to me.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Nah, we need to hope that some of these patents contain "prior art" relevant to today's software patents. Where's my time machine when I need it?
Just my $.02,
Ron
Proprietary does not have to mean non-standard. It may simply mean that a company doesn't want, for whatever reason, to Open Source their implementation of a standards compliant product.
Just my $.02,
Ron
if enough people sign this declaration it may have some power in persuading CIOs and other IT management types that Open Standards are beneficial to the corporations of which they are employees. Appealing to the herd instainct is sometimes very useful in dealing with PHBs. Also, a show of wide-spread support for Open Standards may cause companies that subscribe to the "embrace, extend, extinguish" school of thought to re-think their approach to the marketplace.
Just my $.02,
Ron
What bothers me is that, if the game companies prevail in this suit, another bite is taken out of the doctrine of "fair use" and the traditional right to make backup copies of software. Where is it written that society is required to provide content producers with all the money they want? This is another example of how badly flawed the DMCA is. With database companies beginning to assert copyright over aggregations of raw data I can foresee a time when backing up your own data will be legally questionable because it may be derived from a copyrighted database somewhere. Someone needs to put an end to this madness.
Does anyone know if the EFF or ACLU will file amicus briefs on the side of 321? This seems like the sort of lawsuit those organizations ought to be trying to stop.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Go for the latest version. Most chicks say they aren't impressed by size anyway.
Just my $.02,
Ron
You make an interesting point in a roundabout way. Why is it that whenever proprietary code is stolen the "security commentators" start predicting the end of the world? As you note, Linux code is available to anyone and there have been very few, if any, exploits that have brought down significant numbers of machines. Unless one postulates that F/OSS software is orders of magnitude better than proprietary code I don't see any automatic connection between stolen source code and security problems.
I do think that it would be interesting, as an intellectual exercise, to perform a security audit of the Cisco IOS code. This would give us a baseline from which to begin an analysis of the quality of F/OSS versus proprietary software. Until we can get such an accounting of the problems with both F/OSS and closed source software the arguments over which is better will continue to be based on religion and not fact. Unfortunately, given the DMCA and other legal restrictions I suspect that anyone who openly makes such an analysis would be liable for fines and possible jail time.
Given some of the things that have been in the news lately regarding IOS exploits I won't be surprised if we see some major attacks, but I don't think that's an automatic result of the theft. Let's hope that Cisco will be willing to allow the code to be audited as that will help out everybody in the long run.
Just my $.02,
Ron
The thing that I like best about the Indian system is that it essentially duplicates the old-fashioned paper ballot, without the paperwork. Instead of a box that the voter puts his ballot in there's a little electronic box that adds up the votes as it goes along. The control boxes are physically taken to the central voting registry and manually unlocked to record the vote counts, with interested parties having immediate access to the results and the ability to do a precinct-level recount almost immediately.
Notice what's not there: no network to expose data to possible manipulation between voting machine and central server; no fancy machine lacking tamperproof seals; no fancy database with built-in unpassworded backdoor "for support purposes"; no MS software anywhere in the loop; no manufacturer's president sworn to "delivering the vote" for an incompetent incumbent. It's those last couple of items which will prevent the adoption of the Indian system in this country.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Bummer. At least the Californicators made it much easier to file for monetary recovery. All I had to do was send them my snail mail info. About two weeks later I got a form that I had to fill in giving the gory details of the MS theft and send it back in. Since the purchase was more that five years ago I didn't even have to provide a sales receipt to the state; just where I bought the machine and what software was pre-loaded. I'm still waiting for my $110 check, though. It's been almost six months since I sent in the form. It'll be so nice to spend Billy's money on something Linux related.
Just my $.02,
Ron
The double dipping for license fees shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, MS recently told the SEC that Linux is a significant threat to its revenue stream. This is simply a way for MS to enhance their cash flow, give them more money with which to fund SCO lawsuits, and play the PR game to show how "thoughtful and caring" it is. Gates and company are evil, but they're not stupid.
Just my $.02,
Ron
That's assuming that he's better able to reproduce than he is to reason his way to a conclusion.
Just my $.02,
Ron
It is funny, but also only too true. This is the sort of thing that helps make conspiracy theorists look better. It seems to me that this incident needs to be investigated more. The AG should not be let off easily on this as, whether the original came from the MPAA or was reviewed by them, there is evidently much too close a connection between them and the office of the AG.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I don't think it's that simple. As with everything in life there are two sides to this story. Unfortunately, for us, neither side is being particularly forthcoming with facts.
For instance, if Richard was attempting to negotiate a payment rate for hosting the site over the past three years, I would expect that he would at least have notes of the meetings involved. There is no mention of this on the "savepat" website. I would also expect that, since money was being talked about, that someone from the county treasurer's office would have been involved or at least informed; yet there is no information provided about this.
As with many "small town" issues I suspect that the real reasons behind this issue are personal and will remain hidden. As of now we don't have enough info to make informed decisions about the case, other to observe that a $300K bill for hosting a rather specialized website seems a bit on the high side.
Just my $.02,
Ron
If he shoots as well as he thinks the safest place to be will be directly in front of him.
Just my $.02,
Ron
No, no. This isn't predatory behaviour. This is just "reaching out to our Unix brethren." Yeah, that's it. That's our story and we're sticking to it.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Ah yes, I can see it now. The AV software will be considered to be an "essential part of the OS." Let's see, first we had the browser wars, now we're having the multimedia wars, next will be the AV wars; anyone else see a pattern here. I won't lose any sleep over Symantec and that whole herd of parasitical AV vendors going out of business. However, I will be concerned if the DOJ doesn't step in and nip this move in the bud. Too much to hope for I suppose considering that MS has effectively paid off the administration and the DOJ.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Not only is it a black box, it's a black box that periodically explodes for no apparent reason. This happened to me a couple of times this past week. Yes, I use Windows, sometimes, only to play games... Anyway, I was running Railroad Tycoon 3 and the machine suddenly rebooted.
Here's an OS under which an application can not only nuke the OS, but also the machine itself. The BSOD may have gone away to a large degree under Windows XP, but the random reboots continue. I know this isn't a hardware problem as it's the same hardware that I'm running Linux on as I write this. The combo of Linux + this hardware has never locked up, rebooted, died a hideous death, or done anything other than be rock solid and stable. linux is clearly the better choice for doing any serious work with a computer.
Just my $.02,
Ron
It's nice to see that the Europeans, unlike our DOJ, aren't caving in to MS' demands. Clearly, the European Commission has people on its staff who know that a media player is not, by nature, an intrinsic part of an OS. Simply because MS says that their media player is an intrinsic part of the OS doesn't mean that this is some sort of immutable law of computer science and the EC is telling MS that the argument won't fly. Now if only our DOJ would get on the stick and punish MS for its continued illegal use of its monopoly position.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I wonder what the mating rite looks like and how long the gestation period is.
Just my $.02,
Ron
You may be right about the GWB fund-raising issue being a red-herring. On the other hand, it wouldn't take a large number of Diebold staff to change election results. As a previous poster pointed out one only has to carefully choose a few precincts in a few swing states, change the vote counts, and viola...a subtly rigged election without any electronic or paper trail to give things away.
I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, as I'm also a believer in Occam's Razor. However, given the known flaws in Diebold's machines it wouldn't take many people to affect the election by engaging in a bit of electronic vote rigging. And don't think it's not possible. The Chicago machine under the current Mayor Daley's father routinely rigged elections, by hand, and used hundreds of people to do it. Given the stakes in the upcoming election, possibly the survival of America as a liberal democracy, I look for those currently in power to use all means fair or foul to win the election. After all, these are the same people who have assured us that our private information won't be used in the upcoming CAPPS II system, only to have Northwest Airlines admit that it turned over such data to NASA for "research." The current administration has simply lied too often about too many things for me to believe that they wouldn't stoop to vote rigging to stay in power.
Just my $.02,
Ron
So you caught that part, too, eh? Why the NPR reporter let that statement go unchallenged is a mystery to me. As grondu suggested above, I'm writing a message to NPR outlining what I perceive as the gross failure of this piece to really get at the heart of the matter; which is the need to have open and verifiable systems in place to handle the votes of this country's citizens. Diebold, given their history of coverups, lies, and attempts to shut down public discussion of their shortcomings is hardly the company that I would choose to build an e-voting system.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I heard the NPR story on yesterday's ATC and was struck by the reporter's failure to ask some hard questions. For instance, there was a statement by a Diebold spokesdrone to the effect that "we fix any security issues that we think could be a problem." There was no followup regarding earlier reports of a Diebold built-in backdoor to the systems "for maintainence purposes.' A back-door which, IIRC, required no password or user id to gain access to the server's databases.
Also, there was no discussion of the debate between those of us that believe that the e-voting systems should be required to use Open Source software vs. folks at Diebold and other vendors, who foist off the "trust us, we know what we're doing" line on the public. There was no real discussion of the effect that questionable e-voting results could have on the American political system. There was also no mention of the fact that Diebold's president is involved with raising money for the G.W. Bush re-election campaign and has pledged, IIRC, "to do everything I can to deliver the vote to George Bush." All in all I'm afraid that NPR really dropped the ball on this particular issue.
Just my $.02,
Ron