Impounding the Machines at the Conyers' Meeting

[JunkYardDogg]

There was a lot of Awareness by many of the Reps and the "Witnesses" (Speakers) of the need to impound the Equipment and do a Forensic
Analysis of the software
Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (Texas) advocated strongly about impounding the equipment and investigating the software- she knows that is where the answer is
Other witnesses said the same thing
Cliff Arnebeck stated that in their lawsuit, they are filing intense discovery motions, many aimed directly at impounding and investigating the equipment, tabulators, and servers (maybe my messages to him have not been in vain)
Jesse Jackson called for forensic examination of the equipment
If Arnebeck is successful in his discovery motions, there should be evidence of Criminal Acts
I do not think that he is F'n around
This wasn't a publicity photo moment
All the people sitting behind the Reps were staff counsel (lawyers)
Perry Aplebaum is the Chief Counsel, they are taking this real serious, and they have no back up except for us
This group of Reps knows damn well that the Election was Rigged
BUT
why were there no Reps present from Californee???

The Dawg wants to know

[Helga Scow Stern]

1. Mine is Elton Gallegly, as evil as they come, and perhaps not legitimately

elected.

Should Boxer and Feinstein have been there? Would have been nice.

[JunkYardDogg]

5. I missed Gallegly, mine is Kapps (Oxnard)

[Spiffarino]

27. Gallegly is a little prick

I mean that. He's about three feet tall and has a huge Napoleon complex. I remember him canvassing the neighborhoods when I was a teenager...as big a RW corporo-creep as ever lived. I'll never forget the embarrassing photos of him smashing Toshiba TV sets. Gave all the RWs chubbies; the rest of us were just weirded out.

[AntiFascist]

36. Feinstein seems to have her head deeply buried in the sands of Iraq....

I wish she would prove me wrong.

Boxer, on the other hand, seems to be involved with PDA. I don't know too much about this.

My Rep is on the ball and has responded:
"...On November 5, 2004, three members of the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking it to investigate any voting irregularities that had been reported. Although the letter was not circulated to all Members of Congress for our signatures, I firmly support this investigation because we have a right to know if our elections were anything less than completely fair and accurate..."

Are there other California reps more closely involved?

[emcguffie]

2. Are "Reps" Republicans?

Just not sure. Behind the Reps are attorneys.

[KittyWampus]

4. Representatives... Congress

[JunkYardDogg]

6. Reps= Representatives, as in House of

I use much more descriptive language for Repunks, et al

[emcguffie]

3. Or congresspeople?

or are they Representatives? Just checking.

[JunkYardDogg]

8. Congress includes BOTH the House of Representatives and the Senate

Since there were only Representatives ( and Democrats at that) present, I refer to them as "Reps"
Look I'm new here
I have to learn your "slang"
so it goes both ways

[robbedvoter]

7. Translation for "PROOF" people: this is how you get the proof!

next time you ask for convincing proof - see if the GOP allows us to get it.

[EMunster]

9. IMPOUND THEM QUICK...

But it seems to me that it might be be too late. I know nothing about voting machines or machine storage. But whoever had access to them before, probably has had access since -- for over a month.

[JunkYardDogg]

10. Yeah, Sucks doesn't it

[lapfog_1]

11. Cripes folks

Any good hacker knows to erase all traces of tampering after the
deed is done. We are never going to "prove" electronic vote fraud
UNLESS 1) one of the hackers captured evidence while creating and
installing the hacks, and/or 2) they were criminally stupid in
creating their hacks and left evidence.

#2 is just not going to happen.

My guess is that they got hackers who are motivated not by money
but by ideology, so #1 isn't likely to be the case either.

Go ahead, impound the machines, turn them over to forensic
computer scientists... but I really doubt anyone will find anything.
I know that if *I* had created the hack, you wouldn't find a single
goddam thing.

[JunkYardDogg]

12. You're right about the Ideology part

That's way I think all those convoluted stories about operatives being trained in Reform schools is a waste of time
All the software mal-apps were done in house
ES &S was started with seed money from Howard Ahmanson . a Chalcedon
Dominionist, for the sole purpose of rigging elections for a Religious takeover of America
The software was written by wacks who think they are doing God's work- they make much more trustworthy perps than any programmers for hire
There still might be something on the harddrives, the servers for the Central tabulators can be backtraced- this is done all the time in white collar criminal cases- there's something there
Remember, these people are so drunk with the idea that they have God's authorization to take over America and the fact that they got away with rigged machines in: the 1996 election of Nebraska's Sen. Hagel, the 2000 Florida Blatancy, and the 2002 Georgia Sham "Election", that they figured they can get away with anything
They have been working on this plan for 30 years-
There are now no checks and balances and they are planning on nobody seizing the equipment
The programming in these machines is fairly simple ( there have have been documented expert analysis of Diebold programming ), not very sophisticated, and definitely not written to conceal any type of
their true intentions. Remember, this was done by people who were convinced that they could get away with this and were protected by the ruling government and their God- This was not done by Professional Level Criminals . They were never inspected before, why should they think they were going to be seized now? After all,
Who's going to investigate?
The President?
The Dept of Justice?
The FBI?
The Courts?
Congress?
The States' Secretaries of Stae and Attornies General?
Who??

[RevCheesehead]

32. Did it for God, eh?

"The software was written by wacks who think they are doing God's work- they make much more trustworthy perps than any programmers for hire."

"Remember, this was done by people who were convinced that they could get away with this and were protected by the ruling government and their God- This was not done by Professional Level Criminals."

Apparently, God couldn't bring about a fair election, so he needed people to cheat in order to win. And amateur criminals at that! Sounds like God is slipping a bit in his omniscence and omnipotency!

[lapfog_1]

35. Ahh, the sophistry of fundamentalism

First is to "divine" the will of God.

Once convinced that you now understand the will of God, it's
easy to convince yourself that YOU have to implement God's will...
in effect becoming an instrument of that will. By doing so you
ARE effecting the will of God. And the laws of man are of no
consequence (morally speaking) when you are on a "mission from God".

[AntiFascist]

37. What you just stated.....

sounds frighteningly close to the fundamentalist base for the other two major monotheistic religions outside of Christianity. All the more reason why there should be separation of church and state. Otherwise, we will turn into another Middle East, arguing who's omniscient power is greater.

[lapfog_1]

38. Our fundies are very much like THEIR fundies

and I suspect capable of the same evils.
By "our" I mean the United States. I, personally, am not a
Christian.

As I recall, there was a US General who stated "Our God is greater
than their God" in a speech a while back. He got called on the
carpet for the remark, but mostly because he was on record with the
statement.

[JunkYardDogg]

41. Religious Extremism justifies sodomizing Democracy

lapfrog_1. Most Rev CheeseHead, and AntiFascist:
You are hitting the truth on the nail head
I do not know if this following report has been talked about here,
but EVERYONE must read it
it chronicles the founding , the history, the founders, and the root foundation of the NeoCon/Dominionist Movement it is long but worth reading, so good, that you should print it out
it is "The Yurica Report" READ IT

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm
know thy enemy
It is VERY DISTURBING

[JunkYardDogg]

44. See Post # 41

[MarkusQ]

39. Not amatures

Remember those 20 amazing facts?

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

That said, it's very hard to cover all your tracks. Doing so takes time, and increases the chance that you'll be detected. I've seen people caught be the darnedest things, including being too thorough cleaning system logs.

--MarkusQ

[dlaliberte]

13. Timestamp evidence might be all there is

Depending on how the evidence is erased, it might leave some evidence. Since nothing else should have been done to the machines since the election, anything that was done after that is suspicious. The OS might have a log of activity that the hacker forgot about, but probably not if he is any good. Old versions of files or blocks of the files might be left on the disk. Beyond that, it should be possible to tell that something was changed by doing microscopic analysis of the disk, and it may be possible to tell what used to be written on the disk even though it was erased. I've heard of disk recovery services that can do this, though at great expense.

So yes, it is possible to destroy the evidence, but if we can at least prove that evidence was destroyed, that should be worth something. The penalty for tampering with or destroying evidence ought to be very severe, but it would be hard to justify making it as severe as the penalty for the wrong doing that would be proven by the evidence, since we don't know that that evidence really was there in the first place.

However, maybe there is something in election law that would help us, such as special handling restrictions of any voting equipement.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

14. Penalty For Tampering

It's probably a slap on the wrist and a $1,000 fine. It's not like the hacker was smoking a joint or something serious.

[MadScientist]

17. Not necessarily true

A cursory exam of the hard drive may show nothing amiss, but a detailed analysis can sometimes find things despite great efforts to hide them.

As you surely know, deleting a file merely flags its entry in the file allocation table (FAT). (Imagine crossing out an entry in a book index.) This is how 'undelete' programs can restore a file after it is deleted and the recycle bin emptied.

Even if the FAT entry is erased (harder to do than it sounds) or overwritten (unlikely) then the odds are still good that the sectors of the files are still intact, and can be restored.

There are a couple of ways that the data would be irretrievable:
If they used a 'shredder' program (Would need to be very sophisticated programmer), which overwrites the actual disk sectors, or if enough new files were created after the deletion that it had to use the space freed up by the deletion. Often this is not the case, because most OS's (including Windows) tend to write to free and clear areas, not the first available spot. This is why we need to defrag our hard drives - The O/S only overwrites sectors if it doesn't have a choice (because there aren't any clean sectors left.)

If a shredder program were used, that fact would be evident by the very blank spot on the hard disk. Proof of tampering.

Assuming the program doing the manipulation was installed some time ago, and that it is a standalone program (not incorporated directly into the main programs) then it is a small chunk of data, a few dozen kilobytes. A sector of data that small is likely to stay there for MONTHS even with moderate use of the computer. (The O/S considers a small chunk of space in the middle of other files to be inconvenient to use, why bother when there are many free gigabytes?)

Since the only files that a voting machine or tabulator should be writing to the hard drive are log files (which are usually large files) this means the small 'erased' program WOULD be recoverable.

Once the offending data is recovered, it would likely be machine language binary code. At this point we would need to 'Disassemble' it (this is a hacker technique) and determine exactly what it does. There would likely be many many files we would need to go through, very time consuming, BUT VERY POSSIBLE.
And once we have that binary code, IT WOULD BE UNDENIABLE PROOF OF FRAUD.

Also, I would suggest that we search for any machine that crashed on election day. We could backup its hard drive without booting the system, and we would have a snapshot of the machine state AS OF NOVEMBER 2.
We could then trick the machine into thinking it is still November 2nd and run through various vote entries to watch it manipulate the votes in real time.

You get me the hard drive from one of these machines, and I could find the proof. And there are many people much more skilled than I.

[cyberpj]

20. Another Tech Here - and I agree with MadScientist

Hard Drives can give up a lot of info thought deleted. It's getting those that may not happen. We need to start with proof we can produce or calculate ourselves. Then MAYBE we can still get some equipment audits.

[lapfog_1]

21. Sophisticated?

Please. This is basic hacking 101.

You never, ever use file system operations to either install or
(most importantly) delete the hack. You wanna bet that I, or any
competent hacker, can't make the disk file system (FAT or NT or
any unix file system) look like nothing happened, that files which
were installed or modified for the duration either disappear or
are restored showing no effect?

Dude, I write file systems for a living. It's not that hard.

As for "blank spots" leaving a trace. I wouldn't leave blank spots,
rather I would either leave the disk just as it was OR leave traces
of things fill the sectors used with things that might plausibly
be there (like fragments of other files).

As for the rest of your stmt, I would wager $10,000 that you couldn't
"prove" that I hacked a system AFTER the fact. And I am not the
most expert hacker in the world... I haven't done any serious hacking
since college days. Most of the hacks you read about are not very
sophisticated, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist, it's
just that nobody is catching them.

Oh, BTW, I was one of the guys the US gov called on to dissect and
reconstruct the Morris worm back in the day.

[MadScientist]

22. I'm sure you could

do it without leaving a trace.
But you aren't the culprit here. (Are you?)

I have yet to meet a repuke that I would call 'sophisticated', in any sense of the word.

I don't think they could even be called hackers, if any of the info we've heard is correct. And their algorithms left a lot of clues as to what they did, means they are sloppy.

Just so we're on the same page, what method do you think they used to penetrate the system? Which system?
How? Why?

I've heard talk of hacking on the touch-screens and on the GEMS- type vote tabulators. Which are you talking about?

[lapfog_1]

23. I'm sure that there are a few fundie hackers

These hacks were likely "factory installed". I'm pretty sure
that they are as clever as me (like I said, I wouldn't rate myself
as expert anymore). Motivated by ideology, not money... at least
that's my best guess.

Which systems did they hack? Probably more than one of the touch
screen systems, though it's possible to have only done one. The
tabulation systems would be a target too, but much riskier as a
hand recount of paper trail (or even touch screen trail) would
show a problem... and more importantly, the recount would be the
final accepted tally. So it would be better to hack the source,
namely the touch screen voting machines... Diebold would be my
first suspect. But if I was in charge of doing this, I would
really do more than one system. And, as I've explained in other
posts, I wouldn't do more than move random number of votes from
one candidate to the other as needed to get the result I wanted
(something like a 5 to 10 percent win for "my" candidate... close
enough to be plausible, but not close enough to call for a recount).

If I was going to do this, I would have done a "dry run"... like,
say, Max Cleland in 2002. If caught, then all that is lost is a
single senate race...

[MadScientist]

24. OK

So if automated code was factory installed onto multiple touch-screen systems at Diebold, what do you think about impounding a machine that crashed on November 2nd (and hasn't been used since)?

If the offending program is set to self-destruct after doing its business (or after a set time) then such a system would still have the malware installed, right?

[lapfog_1]

28. That would be one to inspect, if you get your hands on it.

However, If I was doing it... here is how I would construct it.

The hack would be activated by the machine initiating a "live vote"
instead of "test run" or other diagnostic initiation. Even then
the "live vote" init would test for the correct date OR by some
sort of external signal (I understand that these things may have
modem access). Anyway after being activated for a "theft run", I
would first go about erasing all traces of hack on disk, then, as
the vote progresses, I would be changing votes dynamically, mostly
in memory even before any trace of the vote hits recorded medium,
like a log file or bubble memory (like a Sandisk device).

When I erase the traces of the hack, I would scrub the disk by
writing multiple random patterns over the affected sectors, and
then writing sectors which look like plausible data (like frags
of other files and such). And the end of the "hacks" life, whatever
they use to determine that the vote is "over", the hacks last
act is to erase any traces of it's program or data from the memory
used (though this last step is likely not needed, since the
possibility that someone would take a powered up and non rebooted
machine and do something to capture memory is unlikely in the
extreme). Remember that I believe this to be factory installed
so there is even a chance that seemingly innocent things like a
complete memory scrub on system reset might be there intentionally
to help hide the existence of the hack.

I would hack every machine from multiple manufacturers and then
have a random amount of theft from each machine (but always enough
to likely ensure a proper theft, likely based on the last poll
numbers before the election). For example, my candidate is behind
3 percent in the last polls for the states that I need, so what I
do is have the machines steal 9 percent (+/- random amount with
a mean of 2 percent)... the nine percent biased by some amount to
account for precincts where my hacks are not installed.

[MadScientist]

29. Mostly agree

I agree with most of that, if the individual voting machines were the target.
If the dirty deed is done at the factory, then how do they do machines from multiple manufacturers?

I agree that it is possible to do a perfect hack with absolutely no evidence left behind.

But I'm reading your position as: Since it is possible to leave no evidence, it is impossible that evidence will be found. So don't bother.

I'm stating that the likelihood that they did a perfect job of covering their tracks is low, therefore the probability of finding evidence is very high.

Perhaps I am underestimating our opponents. Perhaps you overestimate them.
I don't feel we should ignore the possibility that they are incompetent.

BTW, I'm still leaning toward the tabulators being the target. They accumulate votes from multiple sources. This means several thousand votes at a time, rather than several hundred that an individual touchscreen machine handles.

If that was the case, a hand recount will expose it. I still say grab the touch-screens and tear the hard drive down byte by byte.

[lapfog_1]

30. What if you find evidence

There are already many examples of malfunctions and odd results.
The posts about these seem to be non-stop.

Can we ever prove that Kerry won? Enough to stop the inauguration?

I know, a lot of us don't want to give up.

I think the best thing to do is to make sure this doesn't happen
again... and failing that, then to make sure that the last one with
hands in the cookie jar (voting boxes) is US.

In an ideal world, we would vote with touch screens that produce
a paper ballot (in the language of the person voting), and that
after the voter inspects the prepared ballot, it gets tabulated
twice, by two different machines from two different suppliers.
And there are random hand counts as well. Plus enough voting
equipment so everyone can vote, plus uniform voter registration
rules (motor/voter sounds pretty good to me)... and so on.

If we (the dem/progs) lose to the repugs fair and square, so be it.
If America wants to vote fascism into power, so be it.

But if we can't get that... then I suggest we start playing just
as dirty as the other side, otherwise, we will never have a dem
majority in the house, senate or president, no matter the "will
of the people".

As for the current election, I just don't see anyone overturning
what is "accepted" right now. Might feel different if Kerry or
the DNC were raising hell and filing lawsuits left and right, or
if we could get even ONE major media outlet (other than Keith) to
investigate. All that we have now are "sore loser" labels and
"conspiracy nut" stories... even though I was pretty convinced
BEFORE the election that Bushco would steal it... if he could only
keep it close, which he did. Now I'm convinced they DID steal it.
I simply cannot imagine 9 million MORE votes for Bush in 2004 than
in 2000. Doesn't jibe with any repuke friends said before Nov 2,
and doesn't jibe with anything else. I just don't think that 9
million evangelicals came out to vote for Bush that DIDN'T vote
for him in 2000, plus the new voters were FOR Kerry. Knowing it
and proving it are two different things. Proving it and making
it STICK are also two different things. I don't think we can prove
that enough votes were screwed with to change the outcome (even
in Ohio), and I think that even it was proved, making it stick
would require guns and stuff. And we, as a nation, just aren't up
for that. Note that in the Ukraine, there were MASSIVE demonstrations
when the vote didn't agree with the exit polls... and note that
we haven't had 2 million or 3 million march on congress. Numbers
large enough that the MSM can't ignore them.

[hootinholler]

43. Yeah, what they said.

Good exchange guys. I remeber the Morris worm. I remember Henry Spencer's 10 commandments too, and Dikstra's er, commentary, on programming style.

But it all just boils down to looking at the machines. If you find nothing then it's effort spent. You will certainly learn in the process. If you find something then it becomes very worthwhile.

lapfog: "I don't think we can prove that enough votes were screwed with to change the outcome (even in Ohio), and I think that even it was proved, making it stick would require guns and stuff."

Personally, it's enough that *any* votes were screwed with! I'll be part of that million in WDC. When? I think the day before the congress accepts the electoral vote would be a pretty good time.

-Hoot

Which leaves the burning question: Vi or Emacs? (I'm Emacs)

[newyawker99]

33. Hi MadScientist!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[proudtobeadem]

26. But they're criminals and criminals are stupido

[lapfog_1]

31. Nope - not always

Criminals are, by and large, stupid.

But "patriots" (by that I mean people motivated to break the law
for the "good" of the country) are not always stupid. I suspect
that the PNAC folks, convinced of their rightness, have a "black
ops" team (or teams) already working in the US and elsewhere. One
of the primary black ops teams would be election rigging around the
world (what good is promoting democracy everywhere if you can't
control it?). Getting repug leaning companies like Diebold to "hire"
members of the vote rigging black ops team would be a snap... call
from some aid to the Veep, from his undisclosed location, asking
for a favor for a couple of "down on their luck" engineers to the
CEO of Diebold... easy. Done. Then the hack is installed and
tested. Stupid people doing this? Not hardly. They think its
required to save democracy from the rabble. They've done it before,
perhaps more than a few times. Iran/Contra was one of the few times
that it was exposed.

[JunkYardDogg]

34. Nicaragua used Es & S or Sequioia Machines

They have been doing this probably since Nicaragua
Bush Sr. was involved in that and it was rigged Didn't the CIA
Drug Dealing Dept do that?
One goal in a dissident Political Movement is to Create an awareness
in the population outside of their immediate boundaries- what was encouraging about the hearing was the Representatives themselves
were talking about software purposely written to change the vote counts and impounding and analyzing the equipment- actually that is a
good advance for us-now it is more than just us demanding it
All the programs had to do was change the vote 2%-which than causes a 4% difference I think that they all use the same touchscreens

[corbett]

15. Most Of Senate Democrats Playing It Safe

I'm curious myself why California Democrats weren't better represented during the Conyers forum. Senator Boxer definitely should have been there, too. My guess as to why she wasn't is that Kerry won California decisively and she doesn't want to rock the boat until she has to since her reelection campaign was a slugfest.

[FullCountNotRecount]

16. A slugfest? She won by a big margin and biggest votegetter in CA history

or herstory.

[JunkYardDogg]

18. Sen Boxer is just that, a Senator

There have been NO Senators willing to Jump into the Election Fraud fight and that is the Problem
What I am surprised at, though is Maxine Waters not being there -she has always been somewhat of an outspoken person

[hangloose]

19. Well no one hmmmmm , I am going to call Boxer right now and

ask why

[farmbo]

25. Want us to Move On?Release the source codes and produce the machines

Until then, the supposition, based on statistical analysis of exit polls and down-ballot races, is that votes were flipped from Kerry to Bush in 5-6 SW Ohio counties.

Put up or shut up GOPers!

[KoKo]

40. Where were my very LIBERAL Reps from NC....I e-mailed them and gave

$$$'s to their campaigns and have been invited to their Christmas Parties because of our donations and support!....Where are they????

[lonestarnot]

42. Better be in absentia due to diligence on the trail of the theft!