Greg Palast covered the Florida election fraud, and in chapter one of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" he talks about how the electronic voting machines were set to swallow spoiled ballots in mostly black areas, and return them for correction in mostly white areas.
Anyone concerned with electoral fraud in the US, the use of poisoned databases to cull legitimate voters from the electoral rolls, and the future of voting might want to read Chapter One - Jim Crow In Cyberspace [PDF] of the book.
Choice Quote -
"One can't sabotage democracy with felon lists alone. Balloteating machines worked well in Gadsden and other Black counties, but cyberspace offers even more opportunities for fun and
games. This time, it's "touch screen" voting. No paper trail, no audit path, no fights over recounts: recounts are impossible.
"Florida is the first state to adopt this video-game voting technology.
Secretary of State Harris immediately certified the reliability
of one machine, the iVotronic, from Election Systems
and Software of Omaha. On their Web site, there is a neat
demo of their foolproof system you can try out. I did - and
successfully cast an "over-vote," a double vote for one candidate.
Then the site crashed my laptop. But hey, the bugs will
be worked out . . . or worked in.
"The question is, who else is touching the touch screen? In
the case of the iVotronics, it's Sandra Mortham. Ring a bell?
She was Harris's Republican predecessor as secretary of state,
the one who hired DBT. Now she's iVotronics representative
in Florida."
"Why wasn't there all this hue and cry when twin tape decks appeared on the market?
You must not have seen LP sleeves with a little [cassette-shaped] Skull and Crossbones, bearing the legend,
"Home taping is killing the Music Industry."
"Album and song sharing is not a new, 'net age problem. It happened all the time pre-Internet. Anyone who says they haven't copied a tape or recorded from the chart show on the radio is either very young or a liar. The only reason this is gaining public airtime is simply because the 'net, being free speech epitomised, is an easy target for any group of totalitarians, the RIAA included."
The internet is the enemy of the RIAA.
Home taping was limited, because although you could copy something quite well (albeit with analogue's inherent restrictions) there was no large scale distribution network for these copies.
The PC, and the ripping of CDs to MP3, is the digital equivalent to home taping, but the internet is a whole new addition to the situation.
It liberates to the people, what was previously only in the hands of the RIAA; namely distribution.
Digital copying plus user distribution (via the internet,) removes the RIAA's stranglehold over music moving about.
Personal Computers have transformed the value of, and the way we regard music, I would say.
Download, cut, copy and paste an image file? Enjoy it for your own personal use (...as opposed to selling it?)
"In the UK parents can actually be sent to prison if their child does not attend school."
Unless they're smart enough to tell their kids that if they want to play hooky, they just have to get themselves expelled.
Then the school demands they don't go to school, as opposed to demanding that they do!
Any child who loves his parents enough to keep them out of jail just has to be a disruptive influence in class.
On the other hand, any child who's really pissed at their parents...
"It does not grant them the right to shift the costs of seeking out copyright violators, to other organizations such as Verizon...
The only reason the RIAA wants Verizon to be forced to expend man-power and financial resources to seek out copyright violators, is because if the RIAA had to do it on their own, then they would go bankrupt."
It would seem like a few companies try this sort of thing.
Just today I got a bill from FedEx after ordering some CDs from the US (I live in the UK.) The bill said that I had to pay a small charge for duty, a larger fee for VAT, and an administration fee for them dealing with the whole thing!
They pay Customs and Excise the VAT and Duty upon import, and collect from me, but they want me to re-imburse them for doing so!
I'll naturally pay the VAT & Duty (reluctantly) but as for their "administration fee" which is not inconsiderable, I plan to tell them to whistle for it, since I have a rather strange policy of only paying for services and goods which I specifically purchase, and it seems to me that it's HM Customs & Excise which has requested this service from them.
I wonder if they'll issue a summons/debt collector for the sum?
Well watever; I'm not paying it on point of principle. Besides, if Customs & Excise want the money they should come to me, not to some company that decides it'll issue a charge to me without my express authorisation.
I'm thinking of telling FedEx that I charge a fee for dealing with this sort of crap, and that they'll get their money when I get mine (which coincidentally is exactly the same amount they're charging me. What are the chances of that?)
I had similar crap from an internet selling company, that wanted me to carry the costs of postage and packing for an item which turned out to be faulty. They were effectively wanting me to act as their insurer.
A bit of investigation, and a combative telephone call quoting some stuff from the Office of Fair Trading website, and leaving them under no doubt that I was prepared to take this matter to court (despite the small sum involved) if necessary, and I eventually got ALL my money back, and the company changed their terms and conditions.
Of course, because they were such arses about it, they lost a good customer, and all the profit they could have made from me, permanently. Dopes.
Persistence sometimes pays off (and not just for me; for all the other customers of that company.)
I hope Verizon sticks at it, and fights this to the bitter end, and I'd hope that plenty of other ISPs join in the fight, because this nonsense (and it's associated costs) are going to hit them too.
I would add that in order to facilitate this, you or someone of a like mind should post a comment to that effect, though (for all the people who haven't seen your post here.)
Something to the effect of -
"This story is a duplicate of an earlier story. In order to hasten the editors of Slashdot to make even rudimentary efforts to end the constant repetition of stories that appear on/., we would request that readers show solidarity and do not respond to this story, and instead post to the original, which can be found <a href="yada yada">here</a>"
"This is a perfect example of why gun ownership is a good idea and why our forefathers thought the Second Ammendment was a good idea."
Really?
Although America took the all-out war option to rid themselves of British rule, I think I remember another country that got the Brits off their backs, without the use of any weaponry, whatsoever.
Doesn't that rather undermine the example?
You Americans... it's all asses and guns with you lot... asses and guns.
"Two thirds of workers have given their password to a colleague... and three quarters knew their co-workers passwords."
With this statistical anomaly, I can only surmise that there are people out there posing as people's co-workers in order to harvest passwords, before disappearing into the night!
People, I implore you, please double-check that the "colleague" you give your password to, is infact a co-worker, and not a... who knows... terrorist... or something.
The security of your account, even your company, could depend on it!
"The idea of being an anonymous luzer scraping out a living killing orcs in a vast countryside teeming with 100,000 other anonymous orc-killing luzers... shit, if I wanted that, I'd play The Sims Online... or I'd just drop the RPGing and stick to real life."
No, no, no!
There are no orcs in The Sims Online!
There are no orcs in real life!
Please trust me on this, and don't kill any orcs you meet while walking down the street.
Step away from Everquest, and spend a little time, re-adjusting to real life... please, for pity's sake.
It seems that before, the organic pesticide was effective because it was only sprayed occasionally (once or twice a year) and the pests didn't have time to develop resistance.
With the pesticide being accessible throughout the whole crop-cycle, the pests have adapted, and now thrive on the poison, which they now regard as a food source, growing even larger than normal, and rendering a weapon in the arsenal against pests, entirely ineffective.
"Once a science becomes feasible, it's going to be explored. Better it be done by respectable, civilized scientists than underground organizations of questionable ethical bent."
For fun, throw corporations funding and directing the respectable, civilized scientific research, into your mix, and then watch as we laugh, as we burn, in an all-consuming sub-atomic fire that rends our space-time continuum asunder!:D
Herman Goëring's testimony at the Neurenberg Trials:
"Naturally the common people don't want war, but it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship...
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...
"All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
I don't want to be especially critical here, but after you'd been blown off (that term has got to be past it's double-entendre use-by date) you could have rung up a local/national newspaper, and told them the story.
Maybe that's what people who discover security flaws will have to do now, to protect themselves.
The sentence "The sentence "swiping really fast after the transaction" is a violation of the DMCA. Seriously." is also a violation of the DMCA.
Repeat ad infinitum.
Ad people have always ripped off... er... taken their inspiration from... er... no, I do mean ripped off artists' work.
That advert for Guinness, featuring the trumpet-heavy, slightly-comedic, music with the guy wandering about in a funny manner, with a pint of Guiness, springs most easily to mind.
That said, it is a good advert. The first time I saw it, I was transfixed, and I can't say that about many (if any) adverts.
It's also worth noting that the advert is almost entirely silent and it comes as a relief, amongst the morass of noisy "Look at me! Look at me!" adverts that make up 99.9% of ads.
Mind you, I have no intention of buying a... what was it? Toyota? Honda? Nissan?
It probably sounds like I get a percentage from sales of this book, but, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast, answers all those questions.
The proof is there. The Witnesses have had testimonies taken and recorded. The Database operators coughed to the corruption. Gore rolled over and played dead. The figures speak for themselves. Jed didn't need to fix it at the exact number (Bush "won" by 537 votes; 80,000 Democratic voters were barred from voting,) he just needed to do his best to fix the election, so his brother could at least win Florida.
"Why do you think this has never been shown on TV on any news stations during the election? Surely the NY Times or NBC news would have?"
And that should be the most scary part of the story if you're a US citizen: Salon.com covered it. The Nation.com covered it. All the major media outlets who even sniffed at the story... you know what it took them to stop?
They phoned Jed Bush's office, asked him about it, and stopped when he denied that it was happening.
The o major news outlets that covered it were here in the UK. The BBC covered it and The Observer & Guardian Newspapers broke stories on it.
As the book I mentioned clearly states, most US journalists don't want to rock the boat, do the work, and their employers don't want to be involved in risky and costly investigations, so they often just regurgitate press releases.
[A little like Google News!!:) ]
If you want to read an autopsy of the Florida fix, and other stuff like that, you could do worse than read "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," by Greg Palast.
"The Murdoch media are generally populist right-wing, but they pretty soon slotted in behind Blair when they saw which way the wind was blowing."
And Blair, is of course, champion of the Left!
Just look at all of Murdoch's rags; could you describe any of them as having even a center-left bias?
I would accept your argument if there was one instance of Murdoch slotting in behind some Left-wing regime/party, to advance his business interests, but for the life of me, I can't think of one single example.
Oh... The Chinese Communists... communism is left wing, that's right!;o)
The question your question raises for me, then, is how many corrupt state results are people prepared to accept before it's unacceptable?
Is there an acceptable level of deliberate corruption of the democratic process?
The corruption in Florida, was, frankly, huge; not a few dozen "dead people" voting: tens of thousands of eligible Democrat voters, blocked, deliberately.
I'm sure Jeb Bush didn't know that it would have been Florida that swung the election for his brother, but, he had made the pledge that Bush would get Florida, no matter what, and he did. No matter what. With each state result having such significance, because of the electoral college system, such corruption can... well... make presidents.
I just don't get how some people consider this a minor point, as if a fixed state result here or there, is somehow, not such a big deal.
It has nothing to do with the electoral college. Jed Bush fixed the Florida vote, for his brother, using ChoicePoint Data Base Technologies, deliberately corrupt databases to prevent eligible voters from voting, specifically those who were inherently Democratic voters...
To the tune of about 80,000 Democratic voters.
Have a look at this fella's stuff on the Bush election theft.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone concerned with electoral fraud in the US, the use of poisoned databases to cull legitimate voters from the electoral rolls, and the future of voting might want to read Chapter One - Jim Crow In Cyberspace [PDF] of the book.
Choice Quote -
"One can't sabotage democracy with felon lists alone. Balloteating machines worked well in Gadsden and other Black counties, but cyberspace offers even more opportunities for fun and games. This time, it's "touch screen" voting. No paper trail, no audit path, no fights over recounts: recounts are impossible.
"Florida is the first state to adopt this video-game voting technology. Secretary of State Harris immediately certified the reliability of one machine, the iVotronic, from Election Systems and Software of Omaha. On their Web site, there is a neat demo of their foolproof system you can try out. I did - and successfully cast an "over-vote," a double vote for one candidate. Then the site crashed my laptop. But hey, the bugs will be worked out . . . or worked in.
"The question is, who else is touching the touch screen? In the case of the iVotronics, it's Sandra Mortham. Ring a bell? She was Harris's Republican predecessor as secretary of state, the one who hired DBT. Now she's iVotronics representative in Florida."
You must not have seen LP sleeves with a little [cassette-shaped] Skull and Crossbones, bearing the legend,
"Home taping is killing the Music Industry."
"Album and song sharing is not a new, 'net age problem. It happened all the time pre-Internet. Anyone who says they haven't copied a tape or recorded from the chart show on the radio is either very young or a liar. The only reason this is gaining public airtime is simply because the 'net, being free speech epitomised, is an easy target for any group of totalitarians, the RIAA included."
The internet is the enemy of the RIAA.
Home taping was limited, because although you could copy something quite well (albeit with analogue's inherent restrictions) there was no large scale distribution network for these copies.
The PC, and the ripping of CDs to MP3, is the digital equivalent to home taping, but the internet is a whole new addition to the situation.
It liberates to the people, what was previously only in the hands of the RIAA; namely distribution.
Digital copying plus user distribution (via the internet,) removes the RIAA's stranglehold over music moving about.
Download, cut, copy and paste an image file?
Enjoy it for your own personal use (...as opposed to selling it?)
Why not a music file?
Unless they're smart enough to tell their kids that if they want to play hooky, they just have to get themselves expelled.
Then the school demands they don't go to school, as opposed to demanding that they do!
Any child who loves his parents enough to keep them out of jail just has to be a disruptive influence in class.
On the other hand, any child who's really pissed at their parents...
The only reason the RIAA wants Verizon to be forced to expend man-power and financial resources to seek out copyright violators, is because if the RIAA had to do it on their own, then they would go bankrupt."
It would seem like a few companies try this sort of thing.
Just today I got a bill from FedEx after ordering some CDs from the US (I live in the UK.) The bill said that I had to pay a small charge for duty, a larger fee for VAT, and an administration fee for them dealing with the whole thing!
They pay Customs and Excise the VAT and Duty upon import, and collect from me, but they want me to re-imburse them for doing so!
I'll naturally pay the VAT & Duty (reluctantly) but as for their "administration fee" which is not inconsiderable, I plan to tell them to whistle for it, since I have a rather strange policy of only paying for services and goods which I specifically purchase, and it seems to me that it's HM Customs & Excise which has requested this service from them.
I wonder if they'll issue a summons/debt collector for the sum?
Well watever; I'm not paying it on point of principle. Besides, if Customs & Excise want the money they should come to me, not to some company that decides it'll issue a charge to me without my express authorisation.
I'm thinking of telling FedEx that I charge a fee for dealing with this sort of crap, and that they'll get their money when I get mine (which coincidentally is exactly the same amount they're charging me. What are the chances of that?)
I had similar crap from an internet selling company, that wanted me to carry the costs of postage and packing for an item which turned out to be faulty. They were effectively wanting me to act as their insurer.
A bit of investigation, and a combative telephone call quoting some stuff from the Office of Fair Trading website, and leaving them under no doubt that I was prepared to take this matter to court (despite the small sum involved) if necessary, and I eventually got ALL my money back, and the company changed their terms and conditions.
Of course, because they were such arses about it, they lost a good customer, and all the profit they could have made from me, permanently. Dopes.
Persistence sometimes pays off (and not just for me; for all the other customers of that company.)
I hope Verizon sticks at it, and fights this to the bitter end, and I'd hope that plenty of other ISPs join in the fight, because this nonsense (and it's associated costs) are going to hit them too.
Nice idea.
/., we would request that readers show solidarity and do not respond to this story, and instead post to the original, which can be found <a href="yada yada">here</a>"
I would add that in order to facilitate this, you or someone of a like mind should post a comment to that effect, though (for all the people who haven't seen your post here.)
Something to the effect of -
"This story is a duplicate of an earlier story. In order to hasten the editors of Slashdot to make even rudimentary efforts to end the constant repetition of stories that appear on
Somehting like that, maybe.
Really?
Although America took the all-out war option to rid themselves of British rule, I think I remember another country that got the Brits off their backs, without the use of any weaponry, whatsoever.
Doesn't that rather undermine the example?
You Americans... it's all asses and guns with you lot... asses and guns.
"Two thirds of workers have given their password to a colleague... and three quarters knew their co-workers passwords."
With this statistical anomaly, I can only surmise that there are people out there posing as people's co-workers in order to harvest passwords, before disappearing into the night!
People, I implore you, please double-check that the "colleague" you give your password to, is infact a co-worker, and not a... who knows... terrorist... or something.
The security of your account, even your company, could depend on it!
2003-04-17 22:12:22 Anti-pest GM Crops Create Superpests. (articles,biotech) (rejected)
It was basically just a slight edit of the post above. ;)
You should give it a go (maybe with a new angle, or something.) Good luck
No, no, no!
There are no orcs in The Sims Online!
There are no orcs in real life!
Please trust me on this, and don't kill any orcs you meet while walking down the street.
Step away from Everquest, and spend a little time, re-adjusting to real life... please, for pity's sake.
Stuff like this in the genetics field, is already happening, albeit with pests.
In an article in the Independent on Sunday pests have started thriving on poisons genetically implanted [?] in crops.
It seems that before, the organic pesticide was effective because it was only sprayed occasionally (once or twice a year) and the pests didn't have time to develop resistance.
With the pesticide being accessible throughout the whole crop-cycle, the pests have adapted, and now thrive on the poison, which they now regard as a food source, growing even larger than normal, and rendering a weapon in the arsenal against pests, entirely ineffective.
For fun, throw corporations funding and directing the respectable, civilized scientific research, into your mix, and then watch as we laugh, as we burn, in an all-consuming sub-atomic fire that rends our space-time continuum asunder! :D
Herman Goëring's testimony at the Neurenberg Trials:
"Naturally the common people don't want war, but it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship...
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...
"All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
Maybe that's what people who discover security flaws will have to do now, to protect themselves.
The sentence "The sentence "swiping really fast after the transaction" is a violation of the DMCA. Seriously." is also a violation of the DMCA.
Repeat ad infinitum.
That advert for Guinness, featuring the trumpet-heavy, slightly-comedic, music with the guy wandering about in a funny manner, with a pint of Guiness, springs most easily to mind.
That said, it is a good advert. The first time I saw it, I was transfixed, and I can't say that about many (if any) adverts.
It's also worth noting that the advert is almost entirely silent and it comes as a relief, amongst the morass of noisy "Look at me! Look at me!" adverts that make up 99.9% of ads.
Mind you, I have no intention of buying a ... what was it? Toyota? Honda? Nissan?
Whatever.
Perhaps it's time we outlawed corporations funding and fixing laws for their own benefit. :)
The proof is there. The Witnesses have had testimonies taken and recorded. The Database operators coughed to the corruption. Gore rolled over and played dead. The figures speak for themselves. Jed didn't need to fix it at the exact number (Bush "won" by 537 votes; 80,000 Democratic voters were barred from voting,) he just needed to do his best to fix the election, so his brother could at least win Florida.
"Why do you think this has never been shown on TV on any news stations during the election? Surely the NY Times or NBC news would have?"
And that should be the most scary part of the story if you're a US citizen: Salon.com covered it. The Nation.com covered it. All the major media outlets who even sniffed at the story... you know what it took them to stop? :) ]
They phoned Jed Bush's office, asked him about it, and stopped when he denied that it was happening.
The o major news outlets that covered it were here in the UK. The BBC covered it and The Observer & Guardian Newspapers broke stories on it.
As the book I mentioned clearly states, most US journalists don't want to rock the boat, do the work, and their employers don't want to be involved in risky and costly investigations, so they often just regurgitate press releases.
[A little like Google News!!
If you want to read an autopsy of the Florida fix, and other stuff like that, you could do worse than read "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," by Greg Palast.
And Blair, is of course, champion of the Left!
Just look at all of Murdoch's rags; could you describe any of them as having even a center-left bias?
I would accept your argument if there was one instance of Murdoch slotting in behind some Left-wing regime/party, to advance his business interests, but for the life of me, I can't think of one single example.
Oh... The Chinese Communists... communism is left wing, that's right! ;o)
The question your question raises for me, then, is how many corrupt state results are people prepared to accept before it's unacceptable?
Is there an acceptable level of deliberate corruption of the democratic process?
The corruption in Florida, was, frankly, huge; not a few dozen "dead people" voting: tens of thousands of eligible Democrat voters, blocked, deliberately.
I'm sure Jeb Bush didn't know that it would have been Florida that swung the election for his brother, but, he had made the pledge that Bush would get Florida, no matter what, and he did. No matter what. With each state result having such significance, because of the electoral college system, such corruption can... well... make presidents.
I just don't get how some people consider this a minor point, as if a fixed state result here or there, is somehow, not such a big deal.
I have to admit my mind boggles at that.
The re-count did not show up the 80,000 Democrat voters illegally prevented from voting, by Jed Bush.
To the tune of about 80,000 Democratic voters.
Have a look at this fella's stuff on the Bush election theft.
For an alternate schema, try The Political Compass.
Well, after reading about 90% of the posts on this article, I think your post sums up the situation the most succinctly and clearly.