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Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Shocking News from Bev Harris: Easily Hacked Machines Could Have Affected up to 40 Million Votes...

March 15

Speaking of the failures of the corporate press, I wish they would do just a tad more investigating on our faulty voting machines. I mean, I like the work that Bill Moushey is doing at the Innocence Project and Dennis Roddy is one of the finest reporters/writers in the country but determining whether we have a functional democracy, well, that's more important than whatever it is they're putting they're time into. Consider that an Indy Press value judgement. Greg Palast shouldn't have to do all the hard lifting.

(Aside: Notice I didn't mention the Tribune Review? I figure why bother. Plus, I clearly think management is on the other side. Lately, I've been having just a ton a fun at their decisively mean-spirited media gossip site, where I suggest that organizing a union might solve their problems. Or as I wrote:

"Date Posted: 13:45:37 03/14/05 Mon
Author:
Philip Shropshire
Subject: Re: New Policy
In reply to: The Moderator 's message,
"New Policy" on 23:29:07 03/12/05 Sat

Don't look at me. I just wanted you guys to get a union. That's why the PG staffers make more money, I would think. With a union, you get rights and implied and/or explicit just cause termination rights. Without union, you got jack. We'll treat you any way you
(sic, should have said "we") want and you'll like it or you'll quit or we'll fire you. On the other hand, that is a reflection of the Scaife worldview. What? You thought that creating third world conditions in the US didn't apply to you...? Next, you'll think you won't get drafted..."

I haven't gotten a response yet from those anonymous tough guys...ah well. Aside over.)

Luckily, we have the Internets. By the way, the value of the net is kinda like the value of the mafia that was explained by the mafia don in Goodfellas: "People come to us who can't take their problems to the police." Likewise, people go to the net to get information they can't get from corporate media sources. Let me offer this news item from Black Box Voting's Bev Harris (an admittedly controversial figure on the left who's been accused of pumping her book sales more than solving this problem of democratic malfunction, but she's done some eye-opening work, that I'm not getting from the PG or gawd help us local television news stations...)...

Bev explains to us how easily hackable these machines are over at her site.

Now, I'm printing this in its entirety. It's that important. Nothing today on NPR, CBS, gawdawful local television news, even the "liberal" PG (They remind me of the print version of the Democratic Party in that they don't really fight for anything, at least not when it comes to raising taxes or bond issues to keep Lazarus afloat or the Pirates in town...) will be as important.

TUESDAY MAR. 8, 2005: Investigation Update (Submitted to members of the House Judiciary Committee on Mar. 4 and Mar. 8.)

In mid-February, Black Box Voting, together with computer experts and videographers, under the supervision of appropriate officials, proved that a real Diebold system can be hacked.

This was not theoretical or a "potential" vulnerability. Votes were hacked on a real system in a real location using the actual setup used on Election Day, Nov. 2, 2004.

In October, Black Box Voting published an article on this Web site about remote access into the Diebold system. After examining the Diebold software and related internal e-mails, local security professionals were able to demonstrate a hack into a simulated system.

In February, we were allowed to try various hacking techniques into a real election system. To our surprise, the method used in our October simulation did not work.

However, another method did work. The hack that did work was unsophisticated enough that many high school students would be able to achieve it. This hack altered the election by 100,000 votes, leaving no trace at all in the central tabulator program. It did not appear in any audit log. The hack could have been executed in the November 2004 election by just one person.

This hack stunned the officials who were observing the test. It calls into question the results of as many as 40 million votes in 30 states. We are awaiting the response of the House Judiciary Committee to this new development for their investigation.

In another real-world example, Black Box Voting obtained the actual files used in the Nov. 2 election in a specific county. In this situation, the local officials did not know how to run their Diebold system, so a Diebold tech ran the election in that county. Election officials remembered the Diebold tech's first name, but not his last name.

The Diebold tech had gone home after the election, and no one in the county was able to access their own voting system, leading to some consternation because they could not provide our public records request.

Because local officials could not access their logs, we were given permission to sit down and copy files. (We have since found that this is not an isolated problem -- many local officials are painfully unfamiliar with their own voting systems.)

Local officials did not know their password, so Bev Harris asked if they would like her to hack the password. They said "yes" (!)

Later, to our even greater surprise, Bev Harris found that the password set by the Diebold tech on this real election file, used in the Nov. 2004 election was ... drum roll please ... the diabolically clever password: "diebold." (This took only two tries to guess.)

The significance of these two reports is this: By hacking into the central tabulator so easily, we showed that Diebold has not told the truth about the security of its system. Indeed, the software being used in BOTH examples is still extremely vulnerable, with little or no effort made to correct its security flaws.

We have offered to meet with public officials at several different levels to provide more documentation on these problems.

By the way, my colleague Doc Menlo has organized all of these sites over at American Samizdat. Here's his listings: 20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA : The Brad Blog : Ohio Election Fraud : Rotten in Denmark : Blackboxvoting.org : Help America Recount : Votergate : Verifiedvoting.org : Voteprotect.org : Blackboxvoting.com : Instant Runoff Voting : Black Box Notes : Diebold Variations

Week of March 6th thru March 12th

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