Update on BBV and Agent Mike

[papau]

Black Box Voting Bulletin - Feel free to distribute
(Agent Mike is item 6)
WEB ADDRESS FOR ONLINE UPDATES: http://www.blackboxvoting.org - CLICK "Forums" - THEN SELECT "Latest Updates." Direct link: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1954.html
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2. UPDATE 1-18-05: CONSUMER PROTECTION LAWSUIT ACTIVATED AGAINST DIEBOLD:
DISCOVERY SCHEDULED TO COMMENCE Feb.4. Black Box Voting board member Jim March and Executive Director Bev Harris filed two lawsuits against Diebold in California. The first, a false claims ("Qui Tam") suit, is expected to settle shortly for a $2.6 million payout to the state of California by Diebold. The California false claims case is the first successful consumer case against Diebold, and at a $2.6 million reimbursement to Californiataxpayers, will assign the largest penalty in any voting machine-related case so far. California is expected to compensate Harris and March for their originalresearch in the case. The exact figure has not yet been determined by the courts, but the initial proposed settlement allocates around $76,000 each. Bev Harris's compensation will be donated to Black Box Voting, as a restricted contribution which must be spent specifically on additional consumer litigation to protect election integrity. March and Harris have been joined by three other Californians in a second lawsuit, alleging fraudulent business practices and unfair competition by Diebold. Papers were filed this week in Sacramento Superior Court reactivating this lawsuit, which will provide a vehicle for seeking discovery from Diebold about its business practices and voting systems. Some of the Qui Tam money is tagged towards underwriting discovery in the second case. Whereas in the first case, the California Attorney General was able to assert control, this newly reactivated case allows the plaintiffs more direct control over discovery. Plaintiffs have requested four months to conduct discovery, and have scheduled written interrogatories and witness requests by Feb. 4, 2005. (more:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/2291.html)
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3. UPDATE 1-17-05: NEW: BBV DOCUMENT ARCHIVE at bbvdocs.org. This document archive will release specific information, including voting machine information not previously available to the general public. It will focus first on optical scan information from Diebold, because Ohio is now leaning toward replacing its punch card systems with Diebold optical scans, and many anomalies were identified in Florida and Washington with Diebold opticalscans.

To be featured in the BBV Docs archive:
- 2004 Election audit logs and results
- Voting system user manuals, software, bug reports and certification
documents
- The complete repository of the Diebold memos
- Many items from the original Diebold FTP site
- Items from Sequioa, ES&S, and Hart Intercivic
- Previously unpublished correspondence between key election officials.
- Full text of election-related lawsuits
- Original source materials from Black Box Voting book
- Transcripts of interviews with key elections officials
- Items of interest to the history of the voting integrity movement

New items are being uploaded daily. We are installing a high-speed document scanner to convert thousands of pages of FOIA documents, including correspondence among voting industry officials, to Internet format for open source investigation and examination.

TIPS FOR USING THE ARCHIVE:
* Link to document archive portal (currently skinny, but check back
frequently as new documents go online daily): http://www.bbvdocs.org

* TO SEE EVERYTHING IN THE ARCHIVE AT ONCE: Go to this link:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/2197.html and click "tree
view" at the bottom.

* TO SEE EVERY DOCUMENT IN THE CATEGORY AT ONCE: In "tree view" click the +
sign by the folder.
(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/2197.html)
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4. UPDATE 1-10-05: THE "CRYPTO SOLUTION" - GOOD OR BAD?
Direct link to full article, a counter point of view, legislative updates that invite crypto into voting, and an active discussion on the CryptoSolution: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2051/2051.html

Prepared legislation makes "paper trail" a sham -(Wait! We thought we were going to get paper ballots!) Guess again. Waiting in the wings is an end-run around paper ballots, a cryptography application that is anything BUT transparent. Citizens are about to find out that the devil really IS in the details.

CRYPTO solution vs. PAPER BALLOT solution

The Crypto Solution gives you a slip of paper with a secret code on it,which you later take to the Internet to find out that you voted. Not HOW you voted. Not how everyone voted, so the public can know who really won. Not even, really, that your voted was counted. For these things, you are told to trust. Trust who? Well, cryptographers with defense industry ties. The current computerized voting system is about to become even more mysterious and opaque, unless you put up a fight. FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN FIGHT BACK. Learn the questions to ask about the Crypto Solution at the bbvforums.org (Black Box Voting Forums) workspace for election integrity: Crypto section -- http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2051/2051.html
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5. UPDATE 1-6-05 - CONSTITUTIONAL EQUAL PROTECTION AMENDMENT FOR VOTERS?
(more: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1961.html)

The bold action by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in challenging the Ohio members of the electoral college, made possible by the actions of committed, relentless citizens and voting integrity groups nationwide, gave discussion of election improprieties a forum on national TV. More important, it could lead to proposed corrective legislation, and possibly a Constitutional amendment. In the United States, we have no federal right to vote -- instead, a citizen's right to vote is really a state resident's right to vote. With voting, THERE IS NO EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW. If we do enact federal equal protection legislation for voting, many of theinappropriate actions taken by state officials would be struck down incourt, and it would be much easier to litigate problems with votingmachines. When Florida was allowed to systematically disenfranchise voters, it hid behind state's rights. When Ohio's Secretary of State Ken Blackwell successfully disenfranchised voters in Ohio, through inappropriate rules on provisional ballots and other measures, he hid behind state's rights.
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5. More updates:
1-5-05: Election Misconduct as a Public Records Crisis
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1960.html

1-5-05: Update from Washington D.C.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1959.html

12-30-2004: Volunteer Actions -- Activating the Eagles
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1957.html

12-29-04: Update on 'Help America Audit'
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1956.html

12-28-04: Update for donors, and a look to 2005
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1955.html
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6. BBV CONFIDENTIAL - Security issues: We kept part of our site, including an e-mail account, on a Web server that had experienced security breaches. One reason was to see if we could get some footprints to identify hackers.

We did not achieve that, but did get some interesting information.

On Jan. 11, thirty minutes into a transmission to approximately 800 Washington state activists (recommending tough questions to ask at a VoteHere meeting), a security flaw was exploited in our system, and a subsequent file change took out the blackboxvoting.org e-mail for both incoming and outgoing e-mail. This was not due to anti-spam reports. It wasdue to a security problem.

We obtained the logs, including our logs from one of our firewall programs. Most IPs could not be identified, but we did identify two that were interesting: One was traced back to a specific individual who has frequented hacking message boards, who has links to a particular organization that has engaged in interference with Black Box Voting .org. The other traced back to the Department of Defense. These were not Web site visits, but intrusion actions, and there are ways to tell the difference.

While examining these logs, we were also able to identify visits to the Web site by Agent Mike or someone related to his organization. ("Agent Mike" is the Secret Service agent who interviewed Bev Harris several times last year about an alleged VoteHere hack, but mostly about the Diebold Memos). Most of Agent Mike's IP traces -- identified from a series of e-mails he sent to Bev Harris -- are from a special use category that does not permit tracing. One of Agent Mike's IP addresses, however, leads back to the anti-terrorism asset forfeiture branch of the U.S. Treasury. We have not looked for Agent Mike on all the logs, but the last time he or his friends visited appears to be October 2004.

On November 12, seeking answers to a specific vote-fraud question on the Diebold voting machines, Black Box Voting went to Florida for one day. We didn't get back until Dec. 9. While in Florida, together with local citizens, we found significant problems in volusia County (Diebold - audit did not check out; note the outstanding contributions of Florida Fair Voting Coalition and citizen Susan Pynchon), Pinellas County (Sequoia - stay tuned on this one, outstanding work by localcitizens), Brevard County (Diebold --obstructiveness and lying about publicrecords) and Palm Beach County (Sequoia -- all kinds of problems, with very important work by local citizens), in addition to what's been reported elsewhere.

Black Box Voting met with citizens in Florida who are making a real difference.WHAT'S IN STORE FOR AMERICA: The key word is "relentless." We have not given up. We will not give up.

1. Unfortunately, the Black Box Voting "volunteer action" forums are compromised; hackers broke in and removed our own ability to use or moderate our own forums. Good people are working on that and we will solve it soon.

2. The Black Box Voting Cleanup Crew plan: ACTIVATING THE EAGLES

"Doves, sparrows, and other low-flying birds gather together, but eagles soar alone and must be gathered one at a time."

You, as an individual citizen, are America's best hope to clean up elections, which must be done starting at the local level. Using your own common sense, get started on your own local elections. Take an action, and let us know what you've done. Black Box Voting investigators will be traveling to meet with citizens who show that they take initiative on their own.Our republic will revive when we have REAL grass roots growing, that is, people who are taking independent action on a local level, using their own common sense. This does not always require a group. One person can make a real difference. We can help you by giving you ideas, technical advice, and by sending an investigator to you.

If actions taken by Black Box Voting make sense to you, try something similar in your local jurisdiction. A Black Box Voting investigator may arrange to meet with you or your group, to help educate you, share ideas, and fund-raise. We will select those who show initiative on their own, with creative ideas that make things happen independent of our organization. When we say "fund-raising," we are not talking about fund raising for Black Box Voting. We visit you on OUR OWN dime. Whatever you arrange for fund raising during our visit will go to YOUR group, to empower action, purchase your local public records, pay court costs, whatever you need to use it for.

Grass roots activism, in the form that is most dangerous to corporate-controlled power, is activism that is not centralized. A national organization with chapters in each state, which issues official position papers and directs/organizes actions, is using a corporate model itself.

Black Box Voting is more revolutionary: We encourage independent action, which we do not control or directly organize. We are looking for relentless, clever, loosely allied people, taking actions they have figured out for themselves, using their own common sense and whatever resources they can bring to bear. This creates a swarm that becomes impossible to fight.

Usually, before we will send an investigator to help you, you must show that you are taking action on your own. We are more interested in auditing elections and enforcing transparency than we are in holding rallies, and we are most interested in helping citizens who are self-directed, gutsy, sensible, and difficult to discourage.

[Boredtodeath]

1. More Bev Harris paranoia

Looks like someone needs to up her meds again.

[papau]

2. Don't think it is paranoia - I know the programers helping her - may not

be authorized by Federal Gov - but this stuff is happening.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. I like the idea of using the funds from the first case, to pay for a 2nd

that would still have a chance to result in discovery & depositions.

[Kelvin Mace]

5. Let her publish the logs

for everyone to read, and we might believe her. It takes much more than her claims of conspiracy these days.

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

The taste of Republican butt does not improve with age.

"The NeoCons can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They do not feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

[el_gato]

3. typical baseless chickenshit personal attack

either address the information provided or be regarded as someone who can only engage in personal insults

[Boredtodeath]

6. Wrong on all counts

baseless - absolutely zero evidence is produced for these allegations. A simple publishing of the access logs would provide evidence that the allegations are based in truth or reality. That evidence has not been produced. If anything is baseless, it is the claims.

chickenshit - with the history of the Bev Borg on DU, commenting truthfully takes an act of courage.

personal attack - not even close. Bev's history shows that a great deal of her rantings, allegations and personal attacks on others proves this is fact, not personal attack.

Try again.

This was nothing more than an attempt to publish the BBV trash at DU. You'll note, the entire front page of BBV is produced here, not the only the allegations of the title of the original post. It was an attempted PR moment, reminiscent of Bev Harris - an attempt to drive traffic to a dead and dying web site.

In fact, a quick review of the DU rules would show this post is a violation of the copyright rules as it produces more than "4 or less paragraphs of the quoted material."