Bev Harris makes claims again that

[Andy_Stephenson]

don't quite match up to the sensationalism.

Equipment test under fire

"An attorney for the company that makes Leon County's voting equipment told state and county officials Thursday it was "very foolish and irresponsible" for Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho to let an outside group try poking holes in vote-tabulation security systems."

snip

"But Sancho said the equipment recently put through its paces by Black Box Voting will never be used again in a regular election. He said the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization was closely monitored as it tried to "hack" into the system - and that even if Black Box had left some bugs behind, his office has ordered an upgraded model that will be used in the 2006 elections."

snip

"In a blistering letter to Sancho, all seven county commissioners and Paul Craft, the head of voting-system certification in Hood's elections office, Lindroos said Sancho compromised the security of the system by letting Black Box Voting try to crack it. He said Sancho may have "intentionally and negligently allowed unauthorized personnel to make modifications to your system that are not discernible to you or your IT staff. "Aside from potential violations of our licensing agreements and intellectual property rights, we believe this to have been a very foolish and irresponsible act," Lindroos wrote."

snip

"Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting in Renton, Wash., said she made three visits to Tallahassee and worked with two computer-security experts between February and May. They tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the computer system from outside the courthouse but Sancho then allowed access to a secure room - where only one of his employees has the codes to operate the computers."

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/11858709.htm

So Bev was not really successful like she alluded she was. They HAD to be in the same room as the system to crack it. That is quite different from what she sad she did. So her sensationalism is not quite what it was made out to be...yet again.

[iconoclastic cat]

1. Very interesting!

Thanks.

[FogerRox]

2. yeah I read that, not impressive at all

ROj continues flossing his teeth.

[Andy_Stephenson]

3. So now we know....it would take someone on the inside to

perpetrate fraud on this scale...

"They tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the computer system from outside the courthouse"

So if it takes someone on the inside...to hack the optical scans...I feel a bit better. However to do a massive large scale election rig you would need to have somone in each and every county in on the scam. OK that could be possible but highly unlikely. I still think the tabulator hooked up to a modem is far more vulnerable than the optical scan machines. Just my opinion but one that is grounded more in fact than fiction. It is far easier to gain access to the tabulator via modem than it is to the opscans. Yes the memory cards are created in GEMS...but not when the system is online.

I am going to ask my expert a few questions on this tomorrow morning...Bevs little test is not passing the smell test all of a sudden.

[Griffy]

6. or a better hacker.. perhaps 1 with inside knowlegde..

of course, Warren County had a lockdown and accounted for a huge portion of bush alledged lead in Ohio. We all just want the truth!

[Andy_Stephenson]

7. Warren County was strange...

I audited them myself...Missing pages...padded rolls and they were not using Diebold.

[merwin]

26. Just because she wasn't able to find the point of entry into the system

from the outside doesn't mean that there isn't one... I don't trust her abilities to 'hack' into anything... except maybe a sandwich. That she could probably get into.

[Wilms]

27. .

[merwin]

28. LOL, where is Sandwich?

[Wilms]

29. Massachusetts

Just take a key word from the post, stick it in Google Image Search, and out comes some funny stuff.

[merwin]

31. Hey, that's fun!

[Andy_Stephenson]

4. Another article that

has more information Bev left out of her report..

"In Leon County, access to the machines is strictly controlled, limited to a single employee. The memory cards are kept locked away, and they're tracked by serial number."

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/11811936.htm

And from Ion Sanco of Leon county Fl.

"What conclusions can be drawn from this exercise? First, the optical scan voting system was resistant to external penetration, including using the modems which transmit election results from the precincts to the central vote accumulator. Outside hacking is seen as one of the greatest potential threats to undermining citizen confidence in the election process. The Leon County Supervisor of Elections is tremendously relieved that such penetration was not accomplished.

Secondly, the potential for internal sabotage does exist. It is imperative that security protocols be developed which limit access to the central voting computer and memory cards in election offices. Limited access, video surveillance, and tight controls on the use and distribution of memory cards, all practices currently in place in the Leon County Election Office, are vital to ensure unauthorized actions do not compromise the integrity of the elections process.

Finally, the ultimate insurance that Leon County’s votes are counted correctly resides in the paper ballots of the voters themselves. If the public or election official has any question over the results of an election, a hand count of the optical paper ballot provides the truth. No internal manipulation of any computer or memory card can alter the votes on these paper ballots.

Based upon the data developed out of this exercise it is the opinion of the Leon County Supervisor of Elections that any effort to limit or remove the manual examination of paper ballots to confirm the correctness of election results is not in the public interest."

http://www.leonfl.org/elect/SpecialReport.htm

So Bev only tells part of the story. As usual.

[Bill Bored]

18. Access limited to ONE employee? I wonder which PARTY he/she belongs to? nt

[In Truth We Trust]

5. Paper ballots NOW!!! Hand counts NOW!!! N/T

[NC Beach Girl]

8. her spin is no surprise

Yeah, she didn't quite mention anywhere on her site that they had the access codes that only an employee would have....in fact, I saw her post elsewhere on the net that this "hack" could be done in five minutes by a television repair guy and on her site she claimed it took her 2 computer experts just 24 hours. Neither claim quite adds up to the 3 months, 3 visits, 2 computer experts and unfettered employee access that she needed to perform her publicity stunt (with documentary cameras rolling!) does it?

Saying that anyone with full employee access and no supervision could change votes is the most blatantly obvious statement she makes and it really wouldn't matter what system was used IMHO. But, the real questions is why would this corrupt employee bother with secret codes and hacking memory cards? A corrupt and unsupervised employee could burn paper ballots or feed a few extras into the pile to more easily change an election...maybe she'll do a shocking expose on that next (in Hawaii, on her next vacation).

Also, wasn't she all over the net a few months ago claiming with absolute certainty that anyone (I believe she claimed even a high school student) could just dial into a machine to change votes from the parking lot and she totally proved in her latest stunt here that she was lying? I'm sure she wrote a correction on her site about that so that her minions won't keep repeating it and spreading misinformation, right? Oh wait....

[KoKo]

9. Andy, if there's a fine "hair of truth" to the claims about her hacking

the "Opti-Scans" please let me know. We in my state are pushing for them over the DRE/Touch Screens and if there's any evidence that she's bringing to light about this ...I need to know because we have two bills in our State's House/Senate to get rid of the DRE's and replace with "Opti-Scan" and that was the BEST "poltical bargain" we could make to get the "touchscreens out of the state" to comply with HAVA rules and bride between the "Politico Hacks" who want those machines and those of us who are pushing VVPB?

Given that I'm in a Red State with DINO DEM Gov...and we have the "Peoples with Disabilities Coalition" fighting for the DRE's we had to compromise.

To me...the next step is to make sure that our "OptiScans" have code that can be verified... If Bev has found a way to show how easy it is to co-opt the "Opti-Scans" that we had to compromise getting in over the DRE's then this is something we need to know about???

I hope you understand what I'm saying here. WE HAD TO COMPROMISE asking for OPTI-SCAN over DRE's. Because that was our only CHOICE for change at all?

Hope you are doing well post surgery and glad to see posts from you..

koko

[Andy_Stephenson]

10. I am still ok with the optical scans

for one reason...there is a ballot. The optical scans are far safer than paperless DRE's...there are a few precautions that should be taken but optiscans are safe IMHO....Just make sure that you get proper audits and that the paper trumps the machines.

[Dee625]

14. Potential optical scan problems

Disclaimer - I am certainly no expert. These are just thoughts I came away with from witnessing the recount in an optical scan county.

#1 The paper ballots themselves. I learned that over 100 ballots were not counted (these are the ones I caught spitting out and protested) because they were printed wrong. When I asked why they were not being counted, their immediate response was that that group came from the printer wrong. IOW, they KNEW this. It took my protest to get them to make the ballots count. So all votes below pResident on the ticket don't count to this day.

#2 The people running the ballots through the scanners. They use little oval white stickers and black Sharpies to "fix" the ballots. It works really well. Some ballots ended up to where there was no way to determine original intent.

#3 The results from the optical scan machines are downloaded to a floppy disk and taken to the Director's PC. The Director of the BoE (a very partisan Republican) is the ONLY one with access to the voting data in the PC. A Board member told me they could add votes at the PC. I have to assume if you can add you can delete.

[LightningFlash]

22. Unfortunately she's right....It's bad news.

There is little to no security on Optical scans at all. You HAVE to make sure it has verified source code. Lobby in your state and county and even get Dean's help if possible. MANDATE open auditable source code, and DEMAND that no partisans sit there and control the machines.

[Bill Bored]

13. Diebold Op Scans and DREs are both programmed via GEMS.

This is what she should be talking about -- not little men inside ballot boxes! And how does she know they're not WOMEN BTW??? :)

[WHAT]

11. Paper Ballots...Hand Counted...

AAARGGHH

[Bill Bored]

12. Andy, I agree her account of the story reads like a Tidy Bowl ad.

The "little man in the ballot box" remark was asinine!

However, I don't remember them saying they were able to crack it from the outside. Did she say they cracked it from the outside on her message board?

I'm more concerned about her unsupported allegations about laws that supposedly prohibit the hand counting of paper ballots. If any of that is true, it is a concern and she's right to bring it up, but wrong to do so without citing ANY references!!! She is an amateur, although true amateurs don't get paid for their work, do they?

[NC Beach Girl]

15. outside hacks...

There are a few places that I've seen Bev claim she could hack from the outside. She did a story back in October (conveniently scrubbed from her board now) claiming she could hack remotely.

She references that claim in this post from March 9.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/3826.html?1110401502

In October, Black Box Voting published an article on this Web site about remote access into the Diebold system. After examining the Diebold software and related internal e-mails, local security professionals were able to demonstrate a hack into a simulated system.

Clearly, her current story on hacking is the same as that vague, factless March 9th post on her message board..she just waited 3 months to post it again and still managed to leave out the key information that to accomplish this "hack" it required:

1. full, unsupervised employee access and security codes,
   
2. an international team of computer experts, and
   
3. multiple visits over several months.
   

Why did it take 3 months to post the same story again? Your guess is as good as mine.

In her current version of the story at http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/5921.html
she claims:

In the case of Leon County, inside access was used to achieve the hacks, but there are numerous ways to introduce the hacks without inside access. Outside access methods will be described in the technical report to be released in mid-June.

One has to wonder if all these outside ways to hack are possible, why she didn't take this opportunity to put her computer experts to work and prove it on a real voting machine. So yes, she is still claiming that she could hack the system from the outside, despite Ion Sancho, the guy who allowed her to do the testing, reporting on his own site http://www.leonfl.org/elect/SpecialReport.htm that:

The results were clear. No outside hack was accomplished.

If you check the story closer on her site she also helpfully lists the "minimum requirements" for this hack, and nowhere in that list does it mention that you actually need full unsupervised employee access -- and you need it before, during, and after the election. Funny. Very misleading, but funny. I think she probably felt the truth made her story was a lot weaker so she just omitted it entirely.

For all of her bots out there, THIS is a prime example of how she damages the movement. Knowingly providing false information, misrepresenting anything she really DOES do, and blatantly contradicting herself in several places all over the internet makes her look like a nutbag and makes the real activists look ridiculous by association. There are enough real problems to tackle in the areas of election reform.. she's just more interested in getting her name in the paper (and let's not forget being the star of that documentary!) than helping real activists with the work.

[LightningFlash]

23. Either way, we have to remember Diebold's still worse than her....

Diebold's so out of control they have DINOs and GOP scam artists at nearly all of their districts. It's a nightmare, they should literally be forced into bankruptcy.

Support divestiture for democracy http://www.velvetrevolution.us

[kster]

16. I am very disappointed right now

in this silliness !

[garybeck]

17. me too

Bev's article did not claim that she made it in from the "outside".

in fact she plainly states the minimum requirements to hack the system:

1. A single specimen memory card from any county using the Diebold 1.94 optical scan series. (These cards were seen scattered on tables in King County, piled in baskets accessible to the public in Georgia, and jumbled on desktops in Volusia county.)

2. A copy of the compiler for the AccuBasic program. (These compilers have been fairly widely distributed by Diebold and its predecessor company, and there are workarounds if no compiler is available.)

3. Modest working language of any one of the higher level computer languages (Pascal, C, Cobol, Basic, Fortran...) along with introductory-level knowledge of assembler or machine language. (Machine language knowledge needed is less than an advanced refrigerator or TV repairmen needs. The optical scan system is much simpler than modern appliances).


I don't think she sensationalized the level of access required to hack into the system.

The article posted attacks Ian Sancho who should be applauded for allowing investigators to inspect the system. It is ATTROUCIOUS that people should be condemned for allowing people to inspect our election equipment.

PEOPLE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO INSPECT OUR ELECTION EQUIPMENT!

Anyone who is attacking Ian Sancho for doing this should move to some other country where they don't even pretend to have a democracy.

[NC Beach Girl]

20. Wrong

Bev clearly DOES say in her article that she can attack from the outside:

In the case of Leon County, inside access was used to achieve the hacks, but there are numerous ways to introduce the hacks without inside access. Outside access methods will be described in the technical report to be released in mid-June.

This is important because Mr. Ion Sancho clearly states that she was NOT able to attack from the outside. http://www.leonfl.org/elect/SpecialReport.htm

Someone is misrepresenting the facts, who is it?

By the way, where in that list of minimum requirements that you helpfully quoted does she list that you need employee access? It seems an odd thing to leave out considering that Mr. Sancho and the newspapers managed to relay that important part of the story, but oddly the person who created a minimum list of requirements to perform this "hack" did not.

This was not a case of "anyone can hack the election", this was a case of "a corrupt employee can hack an election if not supervised properly"...and frankly, this is nothing that we didn't already know. How long would it take for the lone corrupt unsupervised employee to just shred some ballots? A lot less time and effort, I'd bet.

Speaking of time, it is amazing that she has claimed it takes anywhere from 5 minutes to "less than 24 hours" to perform this task depending on when you read her story at her site (because it has changed several times since being posted). Mr. Sancho's statement tells us that it took "three separate attempts over a four month period".

Again, someone is misrepresenting the facts, who is it?

Bev, once again, has overstated what she did and left her followers to regurgitate her misinformation. In a nutshell, her amazing discovery is that election employees should not be left to set up all the equipment or process all the results unsupervised. Astounding.

[garybeck]

21. maybe we should wait for the report

it says in the article that the technical report on outside hackability will be coming in mid-June.

If it doesn't come, then there is reason for criticism. But I don't see a false claim, when she states clearly that the report will be coming.

the attacks on Ian Sancho for allowing investigators to inspect the system are outrageous.

[BeFree]

24. Nice try

But you lose all credibility when you state:

"How long would it take for the lone corrupt unsupervised employee to just shred some ballots? A lot less time and effort, I'd bet.

It is well known that through the use of electronic means, every ballot can be altered in a matter of minutes. Therefore your claim of ...a lot less time and effort... is null and void and shows a total lack of comprehension of the subject. Thanks, and have a nice day.

:smile:

[kster]

19. How does Bev Harris

cook pancakes,cause I want to do it just the opposite. :sarcasm:

[autorank]

25. How Rovian...we knew this was coming. There will be others.

You know, plant someone in the midst of a true story that will discredit it. It's true that there was Republican election fraud, sure seems so, but WOW, if they can say "everybody does it" then they think the issue will go away.

I have a little secret for "them" -- the public is furious at * and company. We don't hear it on the news, only see it in the occasional public opinion poll--Bush negatives over 50% for BOTH performance and personal approval.

Rove or neo-Roves are out of tricks. The public knows now that this thing was rigged. Internal sabotage for a tiny movement, i.e., "they all do it" from election fraud researchers, won't come close to cutting it.

Memo to all collaborators: "The sky is indeed falling."

[autorank]

30. Hey Andy, Is "emerging" internal doubt an attempt to deflect this?

Coingate Breaks Wide Open
That's why some Democratic members of Congress are planning to meet with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean next week to talk about what happened in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election.

Ohio held the keys to the White House last year, deciding the presidential race by a margin of fewer than 120,000 votes.

"I think there should be an investigation of Ohio," said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo), who last week put a statement on the congressional record about Ohio's investment scandal. She said she is hopeful a meeting with Mr. Dean will put Democrats in position to undertake a review of what occurred in her home state.
---------------------------------------------------

Hmmm...all of a sudden, the seeds are planted for "they all do it" illustrated by your story, rumors of others saying "everybody did it."

Interestingly, the heat has really been turned up here. People are coming from all over to go after TruthIsAll in the past few weeks, swarms. He's got the key with his no bull shit, show all the work statistical analysis.

On some level, DU has been turned into the Lebanon of the election reform fight.

Sowing internal dissension and disagreement to divert attention from thereal story...well, maybe Coingate is the key and this is there last stand.

GREAT POST

Contact the DNC and Give 'em Hell About NOT Acting on Election Fraud

NEW LEADERS FOR A NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY