On Diebold, ignore this at your peril...

[feelthebreeze]

Sadly, Dieb-Throat doesn't disappoint
>
>When I wrote last week's Dieb-Throat column about a whistleblower
>revealing security risks in Diebold touch-screen voting machines, I
>was deliberately setting myself up for a sucker punch. Go ahead,
>clean my clock. Make me see stars.
>
>I awaited a deluge of feedback, ridiculing me for believing anything
>posted on a blog (<http://www.bradblog.com>www.bradblog.com), along
>with mountains of evidence showing that Diebold's machines are
>perfectly reliable and completely tamper-free, and that our election
>results were never and could never be secretly altered. I
>desperately wanted some snarky software geek to explain this to me
>in one of those "Jane, you ignorant slut" diatribes.
>
>Why beg for such abuse, particularly when it's often offered freely
>without my prompting? Because I really, really, really wanted
>Dieb-Throat's allegations to be untrue. Wistful dreamer that I am, I
>believe in the democratic process. I believe my vote counts. I
>believe your vote counts. We may not vote the same way, but the fact
>that we vote at all matters.It's the very foundation of everything
>our country stands for. If our votes are meaningless, democracy is
>meaningless. Our country is meaningless. All you folks out there
>flying Old Glory on your front porches and SUV antennae, guess what
>- if our votes don't mean anything, then that flag's nothing more
>than a piece of colored cloth.
>
>So, there I sat waiting, hoping to be cold-cocked. I wasn't. Not
>even a slap. Nor a pinch.
>
>Does this mean the Dieb-Throat column was met with reader apathy?
>Did everyone just skip ahead to the crossword puzzle? Far from it. I
>got mail. Tons. More mail than my homicidal lesbian bunny ever
>generated. And here's the thing. These weren't just simple "you go,
>girl" pats on the back. I received lengthy, detailed e-mail from
>obviously well-educated people with computer software expertise, all
>extremely disturbed by the potential for voter fraud that existed in
>Diebold voting machines during the 2004 presidential election, and
>as far as anyone knows, still does.
>
>Among the things forwarded to me was a 255-page PDF of a voting
>machine security analysis than prepared by Compuware for the state of
>Ohio in January 2004. There's a thorough explanation of how the
>studies were conducted and a blow-by-blow analysis of Diebold
>security risks. The analysis reveals several ways to alter votes
>and, in particular, issues concern over the Compuware team's ability
>to guess the PIN numbers for Diebold's voting cards (with which you
>can change tallies)in less two minutes.
>
>Their summary: "During the course of our study, Compuware has
>identified several significant security issues, which left
>unmitigated would provide an opportunity for an attacker to disrupt
>the election process or throw the election results into question."
>
>Also forwarded to me was a RABA Technologies study conducted for the
>state of Maryland in 2003. Their analysis of the so-called "Smart
>Cards" (which are used in the voting process) was even more
>disturbing: "Initial guesses on the team's part provided instant
>access to the card's contents. Given access to the cards' contents,
>it became an easy matter to duplicate them, to change a voter card
>to a supervisor card (and vice versa) and to reinitialize a voter
>card so that it could be used to vote multiple times." With a
>Diebold supervisor card, you see, you can change vote tallies.
>
>Can it be any worse? Oh yes, my friends, it can. If votes are
>changed electronically, it's completely undetectable. Can it get
>still worse? Infinitely. The federal government knew about this
>prior to the 2004 election. And did nothing.
>
>In a Sacramento Bee article written by Yolo County Clerk/Recorder
>Freddie Oakley, she notes: "These machines are programmed with
>computer code far beyond the technical knowledge possessed by
>ourselves or by any voting official we know . . . computer code that
>is indeed secret, its secrecy closely guarded as the proprietary
>intellectual property of the machines' manufacturers."
>
>She further notes Diebold president Walden O'Dell's statement in a
>2004 fund-raising letter to Ohio Republicans, "I am committed to
>helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
>
>Remember which state was the make-it-or-break-it state in the 2004
>presidential election?
>
>Yeah.
>
>America - 1776-2004. R.I.P.

[librechik]

1. link?

[cdsilv]

5. Don't know about veracity of dieb-throat, but I'm a programmer as ....

...well as a system engineer. Have been since 9/82. Yes, if a programmer wanted to insert code that would favor one person over the other, it would be very easy to do - on MANY levels.

Programmers 'slant results' all the time. Who audits us? Software audits are very difficult and time consuming - therefore, they are very expensive.

You seldom audit software unless it's failure will cause loss of life.

Look at all the 'credit card' companies who have had their client DB's hacked.

[Gyre]

2. Link but not the complete article

http://www.davisenterprise.com/articles/2005/10/04/columnists/debra_loguercio/090loguercio.txt

[OnTheOtherHand]

4. here's the whole thing

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/articles/2005/09/30/opinion_columnists/opinloguercio.txt

"Debra LoGuercio is the editor for the Winters Express and writes a weekly column for McNaughton Newspapers."

Winters Express is a CA paper -- http://www.wintersexpress.com

[applegrove]

3. Beware of anon. Especially when it stirs a pot that separates us.

Just take it with a grain of salt.

[petgoat]

7. That the Diebold Tabulators are Vulnerable Through a Software Back Door

is verified by a Department of Homeland Security alert from 8/04.

http://www.us-cert.gov/

Consider it divisive fact if you must. Still a fact.

[applegrove]

8. I was talking about the anon. Of course the software has linkages.

Diebold is a business. When have you ever had a version of Microsoft anything when there wasn't ways for them to link to new things.

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. no longer anon (and not originally anon)

-- see my reference information upthread.

Most of the OP really isn't divisive, because as petgoat points out, it pretty much states facts. (I'm not sure what you mean by "linkages," but there are real security problems here.)

In my reading, the OP makes it sound as if Ohio may have been stolen on DREs or other Diebold equipment, which doesn't seem likely to me based on the returns I've seen out of Ohio. (In Mahoning County, most likely a bunch of the screens were miscalibrated, whether accidentally or maliciously is unknown.) There is so much we know (and don't know) about Ohio that it is hard to know where to start.

[kster]

6. K&R...nt

[kster]

9. kick..nt