BBV: Jim March & Diebold In Yahoo!

[GregD]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031028/480/sc10110280507

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031028/ap_on_hi_te/electronic_voting_leaks_2


SAN JOSE, Calif. - Despite lawsuit threats from one of the nation's largest electronic voting machine suppliers, some activists are refusing to remove from Web sites internal company documents that they claim raise serious security questions.


Diebold Inc. sent "cease and desist" letters after the documents and internal e-mails, allegedly stolen by a hacker, were distributed on the Internet. Recipients of the letters included computer programmers, students at colleges including Swarthmore and at least one Internet provider.

[althecat]

1. This is Rachel Konrad's latest... if you search on Google it is EVERYWHERE

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=rachel+konrad+diebold&sa=N&tab=wn

Konrad is doing a brilliant job on this.... it is interesting that Associated Press is the only wire agency on this. They have been on it since the begginning - firstly with some reporters in Baltimore. Plus of course they were the only ones who did not screw up on election night 2000...

[damnraddem]

2. "It's proprietary information ...

how we plan to fix the 2004 election."

Unfortunately, the news stories do not provide links to any of the websites that post the documents.

[hunter]

5. So many ways to fix an election...

That's a "feature" of these BBV machines.

And on some of them you can easily fit entire ballot boxes in your pocket or up your sleeve!

This is a kick.

[arcane1]

3. be sure to RATE THE STORY

for what it's worth

:toast: to the BBV crew!!

[Snazzy]

4. Still #2 AP Tech Story

4.23 with (only) 292 votes

[RedEagle]

6. Rate the Story

Kick!

[Adjoran]

7. I sure hope these guys have retained private counsel

From the AP:

"Wendy Seltzer, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said she has been contacted by about a dozen groups that received cease-and-desist letters. Among them is Online Policy Group, a nonprofit ISP that hosts the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, which published links to the data.

Seltzer encouraged them to defy the Diebold cease-and-desist letters.

"There is a strong fair-use defense," Seltzer said. "People are using these documents to talk about the very mechanism of democracy - how the votes are counted. It's at the heart of what the First Amendment protects."

Although Seltzer believes Diebold's legal case to be weak, she worries about a chilling effect."


While Seltzer may be correct about a fair-use defense for those discussing the papers, what she doesn't mention is that, if the documents were obtained illegally, Diebold will be able to subpoena all computer records of those involved well before any trial. This amounts to free combination fishing expedition/anal exam for Diebold to use against a lot of people.

No matter how just the cause, it is dangerous to place your personal liberty and property in the hands of an attorney who has another agenda. The EFF does some great work in fighting for internet freedom, but anyone threatened with legal action is best advised to retain their own counsel, whose only interest is in their protection, not some greater goal - no matter how laudable that goal may be.

That caution noted, it will be very interesting to see what is in those files!

[hunter]

8. "Diebold will be able to subpoena all computer records..."

That's quite an amusing thought, actually.

But oh dear, Adjoran... does mean you yourself will be looking at those "interesting" Diebold files?

Accckkkkkkk! You are tainted! You'd better hire private counsel, and prepare for your Diebold "anal exam."

BTW, all my computer records are stored on systems I found in the dumpsters behind Yoyodyne Populsion Systems, just after they folded.

It's only fair that I give Diebold's lawyers (and their so-called computer experts) a chance to brush up on the care and feeding of glowing green slime memory units. We call them GloG-SMUs for short.

What's that watermelon doing there? Could it be yet another form of computer record? You never know. Better carry that out to the truck too, guys...