Reply #82: some clarification

[TinfoilHatProgrammer]

If you can pull some code out of your stolen archive which miscounts votes as they come in, changes valid totals, or implements a secret back door through which Diebold or its operatives secretly enter to alter the results, I will eat my tinfoil hat. I say this with the confidence of someone who's already looked at the code and is qualified to interpret it. You can't produce it.

Show me what I'm asking for and you'll make me a believer.

Screaming "Access! They use Access! Shame!" is not going to do it. While that seems to be enough for most of the people here, it doesn't really qualify as "nefarious".

Screaming "They link against RPC libraries for God's sake!" is not going to do it. That doesn't qualify as "nefarious" either, and it's entirely laughable to boot.

(As an aside, whatever happened to that whole RPC *cough* scandal *cough* anyway? If memory serves, you'd claimed a few days ago that Diebold wrote some code to intentionally open a security hole that was reported last week in order to exert remote control over... something (I suppose it must have been the central computer). Was that just irresponsible "reporting" on your part? I never caught the end of the discussion, it was wiped out in yesterday's data loss. The last I saw, you were invoking the Bush defence, i.e. "I didn't really know what I was talking about so I can't be held responsible for what I said.")

Show me the specific lines of code or the source code files that actually do something along the lines of what I've suggested. I want none of your usual far-fetched theorizing about packet-sending, self-erasing makefiles or "malicious" linkage against benign stadard system libraries. It's simple. I don't require or expect it to "break" on DU, the administrators here have already stated their reticence to allow posting of copyrighted material. You have a whole web site devoted to the subject, why not "break" it there?

I guess I will wait for the big mainstream media expose.

As for your television scenario, demonstrating how to operate Microsoft Access to play with a database isn't going to do it for me either. Set up some machines in a realistic configuration and enter some fixed number of votes on them, then show me that the totals on any individual machine are incorrect. Or show me how someone can just walk into the polling station and hack the election. Or show me how they can hack it from their car with a laptop computer, I'm sure someone suggested that scenario over the last week. Or show me how someone can hack the GEMS computer or any of the voting stations over the internet. Or over the phone, even. Open the Microsoft security hole you claimed they built into the program last week and use it to change the results. If you're just going to demonstrate that a corrupt person in charge of the election could mess with the results with Access after the poll closes, be sure to have them do it in a simulated post-election frenzy with media present and the clock ticking, and don't forget to show how the fudged totals in Access are reconciled with the pre-fudging paper reports that come out of each vote machine. And don't forget to show how the same corrupt election official is prevented from throwing boxes of paper-based ballot results into the river... because that actually happens.

JC