Surveillance/data-mining and Election Fraud. Is there a connexion?

[EuroObserver]

Does/could this 'total surveillance data-mining' stuff (see lala_rawraw's DU thread 1 and DU thread 2, video here) overlap with and contribute to electoral manipulation, and if so, how?

Let's see what the great minds here come up with!

(ed. to clean up title).

[MelissaB]

1. Well, I think they are connected, but the question to me is did they use

the connection. Here is something I posted in the first thread in post #60.

ChoicePoint has ties to electronic voting vendors, e.g. CP has a data mining alliance with SAIC, and SAIC wrote wrote voting system security software for Diebold. It is untenable that a truly free country would permit the obvious conflicts-of interest inherit in the nexus between these entities...

Lots more, but it's a freaking PDF that I don't know how to copy and paste.

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/CEPN_Centralized_Voter_Reg_1.pdf

[EuroObserver]

4. You can copy text from a .pdf

(as long as it's not locked - this one isn't) using the "Select Tool" - looks like this: I> - button sixth from left in my just-updated version of the reader.

[MelissaB]

6. Got it! Thanks

I. NO to Privatization and NO to ChoicePoint
We assert that the government has no authority
to contract with any private entity to control
data that could impact the public’s right
to a free and fair election. For the following
reasons, it is untenable to permit the further
consolidation of personal data in the hands of
one private entity, particularly ChoicePoint.

a. ChoicePoint’s Product & Service
ChoicePoint has access to about 19 billion
public records, and the company reportedly
has information on virtually every adult living
in the United States. MSNBC recently reported
that ChoicePoint’s databases on U.S.
citizens are rife with errors, yet ChoicePoint
offers NO way for a citizen to remedy them.
Florida’s Senator Bill Nelson has proposed
Centralized Voter Registration Recommendations to EAC
Northern California Contact: Sherry Healy, DFA-Marin <[e-mail]>
Southern California Contact: Marcy Winograd, PDLA <[e-mail]>

Centralized Voter Registration

Recommendations to EAC

We, the California Election Protection Network, composed of 22 citizen organizations
working together across the State of California to achieve election integrity, respectfully
submit our position statement on centralized voter registration. This document
seeks to assist the Elections Assistance Commission (“EAC”) in the creation of a federal
protocol for the most accountable and transparent centralized voter registration system
possible, while complying with the impending January 1, 2006, Help America Vote Act
(“HAVA”) laws. These are our seven recommendations and supporting arguments.
I. NO to Privatization and NO to ChoicePoint
II. “ Bottoms-Up” Data Flow
III. Sufficient Notice
IV. Paper Trail—Retain Current Paper and Ink Registration Book System
V. Website Access
VI. Removal from Registration Data Base: Minimum of 10 Years Inactivity
VII. Non-Partisan Management of Voter Registration
File: CEPN_Centralized_Voter_Reg SLTH052105
Centralized Voter Registration Recommendations to EAC of 4
File: CEPN_Centralized_Voter_Reg SLTH052105
a bill to correct this injustice; but to date, no
legislation has been passed in this regard.

b. ChoicePoint’s Ties to the Military
ChoicePoint has extensive contracts with
our military. In its wisdom, the U.S. government,
federal and local, has traditionally
ensured our freedom by separating the powers
of the military from matters of civic government.

c. ChoicePoint’s Ties to E-Voting Vendors
ChoicePoint has ties to electronic voting
vendors, e.g. ChoicePoint has a joint data
mining alliance with SAIC (Scientific Applications
International Corporation), and
SAIC wrote voting system security software
for Diebold. It is untenable that a truly free
country would permit the obvious conflictsof-
interest inherent in the nexus between
these three entities (ChoicePoint, SAIC &
Diebold)—who together—control election
software security programs, e-voting
equipment and personal data files on each
citizen. Whether this alliance is strategic or
merely one of convenience, where are the
safeguards to assure our citizenry that abuse
cannot result?

d. ChoicePoint’s 2000 Presidential Election
In the 2000 Presidential Election, the initial
proclamation of victory was based on
a margin of a mere 537 popular votes. This
is particularly disturbing knowing that the
NAACP soon thereafter sued ChoicePoint’s
DBT Technologies, alleging that their database
led to the massive disenfranchisement
of many Florida citizens from their lawful
right to vote. The case settled, but it was ultimately
revealed that ChoicePoint’s DBT
Technologies’ software had targeted over
94,000 citizens to be purged, primarily on
the grounds that they were felons, but that
only 1-in-30 of those targeted actually were
felons. Through the use of that ChoicePoint’s
DBT Technologies, over 90,000 citizens
were wrongfully purged from the Florida
voter registration database.

e. ChoicePoint’s Recent Legal Problems
ChoicePoint is currently under investigation
by the federal government for inadequately
protecting their data from theft, i.e., they sold
the confidential files of 145,000 citizens to
identity thieves. Also, ChoicePoint is now a
defendant in a class action lawsuit for securities
fraud, because two top ChoicePoint of-
ficials sold $21M worth of their ChoicePoint
stock before the security breach was widely
known. The case is currently pending in the
United States District Court for the Central
District of California. (The U.S. General Accounting
Office is looking into whether to
take additional action on these charges.)

f. ChoicePoint’s Concentration & Privatization of
Information
Information is power and ChoicePoint—
with its unprecedented massive data files on
each of our citizens—unquestionably has
enormous power. Where are the checks and
balances to protect our citizens from abuse?
Further, from an accountability point of
view, it is untenable that ChoicePoint, as a
private entity, may take citizen data—then
manipulate the data using proprietary software,
which is protected by “trade secret”
laws—and thereby render the data inaccessible
to public scrutiny.


Well, this was a test to copy and paste a PDF, but people really need to read the whole thing. :)

[MelissaB]

2. ChoicePoint was responsible for the "felon" purge in Florida

From Greg Palast

Florida's flawed "voter-cleansing" program - Salon.com's politics story of the year

www.Salon.com
Monday, December 4, 2000
E-Mail Article
Printer Friendly Version


If Vice President Al Gore is wondering where his Florida votes went, rather than sift through a pile of chad, he might want to look at a "scrub list" of 173,000 names targeted to be knocked off the Florida voter registry by a division of the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. A close examination suggests thousands of voters may have lost their right to vote based on a flaw-ridden list that included purported "felons" provided by a private firm with tight Republican ties.

Early in the year, the company, ChoicePoint, gave Florida officials a list with the names of 8,000 ex-felons to "scrub" from their list of voters.

But it turns out none on the list were guilty of felonies, only misdemeanors. The company acknowledged the error, and blamed it on the original source of the list -- the state of Texas.


More: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=55&row=1

[EuroObserver]

3. It was your ChoicePoint posts that started me thinking, MelissaB.

Electoral rolls are one obvious place to start.

Will read and sleep on it tonight (here in Europe) I guess.

[MelissaB]

5. There is a lot of information in those two threads.

We could do some digging. Anybody interested?

[Blutodog]

7. Voting fraud just one part of Info warfare

Of course the GOP is using all of it's Corp.clients and their databases to datamine info to use against it's political enemies. Information is POWER. The D's have been way behind the curve on this. The GOP is only going to grow stronger in this area as time goes on not weaker. They run elections just like any other battlefield. Politics is warfare to them. The GOP is essentially a military/political/Information org. now. Huge Corps. like Lockheed and IBM are at the core of this effort and they are the end of democracy. They are replacing democratic rule with a new form of Information age fascism unlike anything yet seen on this planet. The Chinese and Russians are also building such states from the ruins of Marxism. The U.S. is now essentially a Leninist state like China with a tiny ruling elite that uses all the power of it's computing resources to control and direct power in this country. The old politics of going to the voters is just nothing more then a facade for these people now.The Demos. are still playing this losing game for some reason even though their leadership must know the game is up. The GOP will steal what they can't win using these methods. This is thwe age we now live in the D's will either develop ways to counter this or fade away.

[WHAT]

8. it's like rote politics...

There's no art to it and this is why I think it won't work. They don't have the tools to sing their way to a new language of life and thus will be blinded by tech glitz. This is why the corporate media is shrinking itself to a handful of people making noise at us while they admire each other. Forget the donkey and the elephant, the carrot and the stick, the push me pull me. What we have now is a whole new dimension where the old rules don't apply and they think if they can lead the world forward by pushing it backwards it still won't work.

I won't be around to see the outcome but I don't think it will be what "they" expect.

ps I like your post, I just thinking I'm reacting in like manner to it. I still don't think it will evolve to meet expectations.

[Blutodog]

9. Art to it:

I agree it's a souless exercise in trying to use machines and cunning to rule and it won't work. Nevertheless, they are going to try anyway.

[EVDebs]

14. TIA was offshored into Global Information Group Ltd's

Bahamas based operations. Ben H. Bell, IIIrd, a 'former' intell employee is operator.

[Zan_of_Texas]

12. Great post, blutodog!

The US used economic warfare in the last half-century to dominate other countries, much more than traditional weaponry.

I think the information wars are the cutting edge now, and the centralization of the voter rolls, and the massive data being accumulated now -- many times what anyone can even imagine -- are very much anti-democracy, as they are aggregated and controlled in the hands of a very few.

[mirrera]

10. Accenture and overseae internet voting...

Not quite "data mining" but another avenue of corruption...


My reccollection...Accenture a new name for Arthur Anderson...internet voting...Kucinich helped kill it.

Found it!
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/oh10_kucinich/031001Enron.html



http://NoBullshiRt.com

[EVDebs]

11. NSA, Jackson Stephens, Systematics, CIA, corruption, and Iraq

Just start connectiong the dots. Systematics apparently has WhiteHouse computer access...what else?

[EVDebs]

13. SAIC was hacked a year ago...Global Sigmoidoscope strikes again

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=521016&mesg_id=533555

only in reverse, it seems. Who's got the goods on the guys with the goods ?