http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/yourmoney/09vote.html?ex=1068958800&en=aa83991f48b55bf6&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLEMachine Politics in the Digital Age
By MELANIE WARNER
Published: November 9, 2003
N mid-August, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year," wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose company is based in Canton, Ohio.
Snip...
Making matters worse, the software code for the machines was discovered in January by a Seattle-area writer on a publicly accessible Internet site. That the code was unprotected constitutes a significant security lapse by Diebold, said Aviel D. Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins, co-author of the study of the code.
Snip...
About 15,000 internal Diebold e-mail messages also found their way to the Internet. Some referred to software patches installed on Diebold machines days before elections. Others indicated that the Microsoft Access database used in Diebold's tabulation servers was not protected by passwords. Diebold, which says passwords are now installed on machines, is threatening legal action against anyone who posts the files or links to them, contending that the e-mail is copyrighted.
& MORE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/yourmoney/09vote.html?ex=1068958800&en=aa83991f48b55bf6&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE