Cuyahoga County, OH Possibly Exposed Election System To Computer Virus

[Hissyspit]

http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_44962.shtml

From YubaNet.com

US
Cuyahoga County Ohio Possibly Exposed Election System to Computer Virus
Author: Election Science Institute
Published on Nov 2, 2006, 08:04

The memory cards that will be used to store votes on Election Day in Cuyahoga County, Ohio were stuck into ordinary laptop computers in September, possibly exposing the county's election system to a virus infection. This serious security lapse was caught on video through the efforts of Cleveland resident Adele Eisner and Cleveland-area filmmaker Jeffrey Kirkby, who has graciously made his raw footage available on the Internet for personal viewing here.

- snip -

"Diebold has repeatedly stated that this type of security breach is virtually impossible due to security practices employed by the vendor and election officials," said Edward Felten, Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University. "Anyone who watches the video can now see for themselves that a virus could penetrate the election system via tasks performed by election staff."

The new video shows a group of election workers sitting at tables, each with a laptop computer. An official explains that these laptops were gathered from around the office, and some are the personal laptops of election workers. Each worker has a laptop and a stack of memory cards, and is inserting the memory cards one by one into the laptop. Cuyahoga County officials claim that every one of the county's memory cards gets this treatment, in order to archive vote records from the May 2006 primary election onto CD-ROMs.

Ordinary laptops are of course vulnerable to computer viruses and other malicious software. Given the number of ordinary laptops in the room, it is reasonably likely that at least one is infected with spyware, a virus, or other malware. This puts at risk the memory cards, and the votes they will record from next week's election.

- snip -

"I first raised concerns to the Cuyahoga County Board of Election in mid-Summer, after Secretary of State Blackwell released an advisory about transferring electronic election data to CD ROM. After I witnessed the transfer, I raised concerns a potential security breach to Cuyahoga Board of Elections Chairman Bennett and the rest of the board on October 2nd," said Adele Eisner. "Unfortunately, the board simply defended its dangerous practice."

MORE

[liberal N proud]

1. They are doing everything they can to screw this up

Democracy gets another bloody nose.

[OzarkDem]

2. A "virus", eh?

Looks like the GOP will do anything to corrupt voting in Cuyahoga Co.

[buddysmellgood]

3. Ohhh nowww. Come on. Maybe it could result in a glitch or a snaffu or a

kink but surely you don't think that it will have an impact on the election? :sarcasm:

[nashville_brook]

4. flashback 2004: the Conyers Report on Ohio

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010605Y.shtml

We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards.

Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) was one of the worst offenders in 2004 with more that 175,000 PURGED VOTERS.