Something truely terrifying

[giza]

If y'all aren't familiar with the controversy surrounding the Diebold voting machines, here it is in a nutshell: their machines are insecure and buggy. There is NO audit trail and it is VERY easy to mess with the results of an election. Furthermore, the management of Diebold has made VERY partisan comments along the lines of being, "Committed To Helping Ohio Deliver Its Electoral Votes To The President Next Year".

And, a few hundred memos have recently been leaked which do a great job of incriminating Diebold. They admit to bugs and all sorts of other problems in their own software. The creepiest installment of this is that now that the memos are out, Diebold has been sending Cease and Desist letters to websites hosting the memos. Great strategy guys, don't improve your product but try to silence your critics instead. I'm sure that'll give you guys positive PR...

Comments

[duncandahusky.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting semi-furry tie-in here, too. The exceedingly furry-friendly Plan Nine Publishing is publishing Bev Harris' Black Box Voting, an expose of electronic voting and its failures, as well as making the book contents available for free on the BBV website. Go David!

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I imagine if the CEO of Diebold said the exact same thing, only used the word "Democrats" instead of "Republicans" you'd be very upset yourself.

Voting machines need to be developed in an open standard and with safeguards to prevent cheating either for Republicans or Democrats, otherwise we don't have a republic at all. I could give a quart of owl's piss about who is in power at date X; that the votes are counted and counted correctly is what's important to me. It may be hard to find a company that doesn't have a political connection, but clearly some sort of safeguard in development needs to be taken into consideration to prevent cheating in elections. Today, it might be in your favor, but next time it might be in the other guys favor. Best to eliminate the possibility of it, don't you think?

[entropicana.livejournal.com]

I'm not American, nor a Democrat, nor am I partisan to either side. I'm a fence-sitting syrup drinking Canuck. And this IS a problem, whether your conservative ass wants to admit it or not.

In Canada we have what is called 'Conflict of Interest', where politicians and their business dealings are closely monitored to be sure they remain as impartial as possible.

This is a textbook conflict of interest. While I doubt that there is any grand overarching conspiracy, it's not good political business.

Furthermore attempting to shunt the focus away from the conflict by invoking 9/11 is low and does nothing to prove your point. It just gets people angry and thus makes it easier to distract them from the main point.

Democracy is the main point. It gives the poeple a voice. That's why the US is so hellbent on selling it to the rest of the world. If the appartaus of US democracy is bug-ridden, unauditable and possible comprimised by partisanship, then the voice of the people may no be heard correctly. It thus behooves you to stop trying to invoke 9/11 and do something to fix the machinery of your voting system, literally and figuratively.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I did some Googling, and you are correct, the CEO said "the President" and not "bush".

However, I interpret that to mean "the current president" (what other president is there?), which means Bush at least for the next year or so. This seems to be the way that many others have interpreted it, too.

[elfasi.livejournal.com]

There's nothing adequate I can think of to say in response to this, you're so far off what I consider correct and right, I'm wondering how I ever considered you someone worth knowing. Thanks for showing your true colours though, gonna make my various friends lists a little tidier.

[freakylynx.livejournal.com]

That's quite depressing to have someone so partisan that they base friendship soley on a few political comments - is that so supposed to be the be all and end all to life?

If politics is all someone cares about then it probably is a good thing to not have them on your friends list.

Myself, I try not to get in the mix - there's no winning either way and the facts are almost always warped or incomplete. I despise both parties and partisanship from either side like what was just demonstrated above really annoys me. Like everything else, it's just an opinion - take it seriously or not, I don't care.

[unciaa.livejournal.com]

*froth froth*
*fume fume*

[freakylynx.livejournal.com]

*grins*

Exactly :P

Safeguards in software development.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

Voting machines need to be developed in an open standard and with safeguards to prevent cheating either for Republicans or Democrats, otherwise we don't have a republic at all. I could give a quart of owl's piss about who is in power at date X; that the votes are counted and counted correctly is what's important to me. It may be hard to find a company that doesn't have a political connection, but clearly some sort of safeguard in development needs to be taken into consideration to prevent cheating in elections.

The way this is typically done for things like banking software, if I understand correctly, is to have two contractors, each implementing half of the software, with the software partitioned in such a way that a back door in one half won't compromise the security of the system as a whole. The security of this approach is limited by your ability to choose truly independent contractors, and to partition the code so as to achieve the desired backdoor-tolerance.

The "open standards" approach, when taken to its logical conclusion of using openly-visible code as well, is a completely different approach. It's security is limited by the ability and motivation of third parties to check over the code for for holes.

I don't see what's wrong with the paper system, myself.

[quentincoyote.livejournal.com]

Yes, good one. I've been fretting over this issue for quite some time now :-/

Q.

[jfbat.livejournal.com]

There are a few models of black-box voting machines utilizing touch-screen technology that also print oput paper ballots for recount purposes. That strikes me as a better option at a comparable cost to taxpayers. If those in charge of modernizing voting machines across the country really have the best interests of the country in mind, that's the option they'll choose, IMO. Asking 200 million elegible voters to trust untested (well, that's not true, they have been tested which is how these flaws were discovered), unsecure (and perhaps unsecurable) technology is a bit much under any circumstances. Certainly in the case of a national election.

[freakylynx.livejournal.com]

*lol*
For a second there I thought it was gonna be something about Linux ;P

[giza.livejournal.com]

In that case, my next post will shatter your mind, just you wait and see! :-)

[unciaa.livejournal.com]

Shatter or blow?

[freakylynx.livejournal.com]

Erf???

[giza.livejournal.com]

Yes.