Republican Professional Hacker Disses Diebold Bigtime!

[Roger_Otip]

this from daily kos - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/16/225713/53

A self described Republican, who makes his living as a "white hat" security hacker, easily hacked Diebold's system, and states he'd be surprised if this election wasn't hacked.

"What I found truly shocked me, and made me physically ill.  That's what is documented on the other page. It IS that bad. I personally don't have conclusive evidence that voter fraud was perpetrated, but I can tell you as an Information Security professional that it would have been very, very easy to do."

his name is Chuck Herrin and his site is here: http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

trying to find out more about this guy.
do a google search on his name and he seems genuine enough - at least he's certainly a qualified computer geek - a "white hat" hacker he calls himself, and brought up a republican, though it seems he's been warning about the dangers of computerized voting for a while.

old versions of his site seem okay: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.chuckherrin.com

showing how easy it is to hack the vote doesn't prove it was hacked, but if there are people out there with a motive to hack the vote and with the ability to do it, coupled with weird irregularities in vote tallies, exit polls etc. then it becomes very hard to believe there wasn't any hacking.

[colonel odis]

1. if he's a republican, then he should be happy the vote was hacked.

cause that's the only way bush could have won.

his concern sounds more like a disingenuous, "wow, i can't believe we had to cheat to beat you guys" more than anything else.

[Roger_Otip]

5. he's been pressing this issue since way before the election

a republican can be just as concerned about this as a democrat, since with the system as it is it's open to hacking from either side, or even from outside america. as he says:

"I got involved with this because I have been against the adoption of these voting systems for years. It's a dumb-ass idea to implement them this way - our votes are too important. I wouldn't trust my Bank with computer systems this insecure; Hell, I wouldn't keep recipes on a system this insecure."

[Straight Shooter]

19. Sorry, wrong foundation for an argument, i.e., he's a Republican

Two very good friends of mine are Republican. They voted for Kerry. Another semi-friend is Republican and voted for bush. He will be appalled when the truth is exposed.

The radical fringe of the Republican party is probably about 25 percent. Unfortunately, they're in control now of their party.

[colonel odis]

22. i was neither looking for nor stating an argument. just my opinion.

though i'm a little surprised to see the outpouring of sympathy for republicans this morning.

if he's a republican, then the leader of his party condoned and possibly approved of the hacking. is he glad bush won the election? did he vote for bush? would he prefer kerry to have won (which kerry probably did)?

if the old line republicans don't like the new, crazy, evangelical republicans they could have voted for kerry. otherwise -- in my opinion -- the blood of anything that happens to this country is on their hands, too.

sorry.

[Ducks In A Row]

21. lots of republican want their party back from the RINOs, the same way...

we want our party back from the DINOs

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. Mere proof of means, motive, and/or opportunity to hack.

indicates it is not secure. People need to keep asking questions.
It can't hurt. In fact.......

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. Mr. Herrin occasionally posts on DU.

If he is a Repub(And I have no reason to doubt him), then he may well be the last honest one and Diogenes can just put out that lamp.

Thank you, Mr. Herrin. Thank you for lending your expertise to the most non-partisan thing that has ever existed: The Truth.

[ladjf]

4. We are wasting time worrying about whether the machines

or the polling places are being rigged.


Here is the one way to assure that the election process is valid.


Every vote must be validated as being cast by an qualified American citizen. The easiest would be to match the vote to the SS#. For public
view, the voter's SS# is connected to a voter defined alias or ID.
Additional security could be to have an alias ID and a voter password,
created by the voter.

A complete log of the voting transactions is not only created as the votes are cast but, after election day, is made public on a precinct
level. Each voters votes would be shown on one line of the voting log.
For example:My voting ID is hotshot24. The transaction log would show
hotshot24 pres. kerry vp edwards senator blah prop21 no, ect.
At the bottom of the document the sum of the votes would be shown.
Each precinct would turn in those totals to the State.

What makes this work is that every voter can verify his vote by looking in the local newspaper and verifying that his vote was properly
recorded and that it matched the paper receipt he/she received as the
votes were being cast.

This system will work. The cost would be minuscule compared to the loss of Democracy by not doing it. We could damn well spend the money
to make our elections valid better than 200-300 billion to murder Iraqis.

So far, I've posted this idea about 15 times on DU and not one person
has commented one way or the other. It seems that everyone is too
busy whining about either the machines or the polling place practices
to give any thought to going around all of that with a new system for
casting, recording and verifying votes.

There is no way to significantly cheat if this system is in place.
And that's what we need, a system that is safe, safer than our current bank accounts.

[Roger_Otip]

6. sounds great, but...

how are you going to implement that if the government is against it? perhaps the government is quite happy with the system they have now. they've won two elections from it - if it ain't broke don't fix it.

[Boredtodeath]

7. Ridiculous - ballot secrecy demolished

Sure, attach the SS# to the ballot. Then your employer can easily make sure you voted the right way before he decides to hire or fire.

[ladjf]

9. The connection to the SS# would be internal, never published.

The public connection would be to the alias, which could be anything
you created. No one would know the SS# to which that alias ID was attached.

If it were deemed that the SS# involvement was too risky from a privacy standpoint, each voter could be assigned a confidential
voting number that would be used instead of the ID or still related to
an ID. The system would work the same. I suggested the SS# because they are already in place. The only way an employer or anyone else
could find out who is represented by a published alias ID would be to
be able to massively hack the voting machines and in that case they could have already been doing that. In the 2004 election, we told our name and address to the poll worker in order to get the voting card.
There is every opportunity for unscrupulous people to know who you voted for. The system I suggested would be based on internal, invisible an encoded computer logic, a setup that would not be available to anyone's employer or anyone else.

[Boredtodeath]

14. Yeah, uh huh...wonder if Craig Kidd would agree with you

Fulton man who cast 2 ballots stirs questions on early polling

By CARLOS CAMPOS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/29/04

The case of a Fulton County man facing possible felony charges for voting twice in the July primary has raised questions about the potential for fraud through a new early voting initiative.

snip.....

After learning of Kidd's actions, Secretary of State Cathy Cox's office recommended last week that Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard consider pursuing felony charges of voting twice in the same election.

Kidd's case, which was discussed Wednesday at a meeting of the state Election Board, raised questions about the possibility of voter fraud through the advance voting, a year-old program gaining in popularity. More than 76,000 Georgians cast ballots through advance voting during the July primaries.

snip....

"We made a mistake," Sullivan said. "Yet when you vote absentee or advance, you sign an oath saying you're not going to vote again in this election and when (voting on Election Day) you fill out a voter certificate saying, 'I have not already voted in this election.' "

Sullivan said Kidd's advance vote was tossed out after it was discovered. Early votes are marked with a numbered identification in case they are later challenged, Sullivan said.

snip....

Voting twice in the same election is a felony in Georgia. Kidd has not been charged with a crime. A spokeswoman for Howard said the matter is under investigation.

Kidd declined to comment. But Davis, who spoke on Kidd's behalf, told board members that Kidd was not attempting to commit fraud. "This is simply a person who's trying to make that one vote count one time," Davis said.

snip....

Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/election/0904georgia/30voting.html

[ladjf]

16. I'm not sure that I understand your point.

If you mean that using the voter to vote matching system I suggested that a person could vote twice: The program logic would prohibit that as it is set to allow only one vote per election.

What is your suggestion for improving the election process or do you feel that what we had in 2000 and 2004 is OK?

[KittyWampus]

8. U.S. Has Secret Ballots. However, Requiring ID & Staining Fingers After

votes so you can't vote again were suggestions made by European observers.

Paper ballots, open code and keeping ballots in plain sight by observers of both parties at all times would answer most problems.

Also, mandated numbers of machines per voter population.

[ladjf]

10. But in the end there needs to be a verifiable document

that records and tallies all votes. And unless the voter is able to see that log, with his transactions on it, it is still vulnerable to fraud. Everyone wants to get worried about privacy and that's understandable. I am suggesting that in one way or the other each voter has some sort of valid ID, known only to himself that is shown on the public log of votes at his precinct. I can think of no other way to secure the election than that.

Your suggestions are good would be be a huge improvement over what we now have. The weakness is that too much is being handled by people on voting day or shortly there after. It needs to be machine driven but
individual human verified. We will use the speed and transparency of the machines and the confidence that each voter has compared the log
to the receipt they received on voting day.

[sybylla]

12. Lots of reasons it won't work

First, in my tiny county, we had 15,000 votes. No newspaper is going to print a record of vote for 15,000 or even 5,000 which is the likely coverage of the weekly papers here. Not feasable.

Second, if there is a problem with how your vote was recorded, don't you then have to blow your "alias" to report it? Could the government entities in charge of your vote not claim that you're just changing your mind after the fact? You have no proof that you voted a particular way and they have no proof that you didn't.

Third, when citizens of this country were fighting for the right to vote for people of color, obstacles such as appropriate ID were used against blacks to disenfranchize them. If a particular kind of ID is required and a poll worker is of one particular persuasion, could they not refuse to accept the ID of certain voters of another persuasion under a variety of claims of doubt? HAVA is requiring we bring photo ID to the voting booth for 2006. How many people of questionable means or with affiliations to the "wrong" party will this disenfranchise? If your address doesn't match or your ID has a six year old photo that doesn't look that much like you any more, will they turn you away? Already happened this year in Ohio.

Fourth, in days long past, politicians used to actually buy votes and employers used to demand that their employees voted a certain way or lose their job. Giving someone a way to be able to prove they voted a particular way after the election is done may take us back to those days we thought we'd left far behind.

Fifth, because the government is in charge of managing the vote, all their records are public records. There is no way to have a secret voter ID. Anyone with the means could make a FOIA request and that information would be public knowledge along with your voting record.

Too many potential problems with a voter to vote matching system. Security of the vote, like security of your bank account comes through your ability to verify your transactions combined with regular and thorough auditing. Seems to me the solution is simple. You get to view a printout of your ballot and drop it into a ballot box for auditing.

[ladjf]

15. Sibylla - great rebuttal of my suggestions. Let's work on this

together.

In you county, a ten page newspaper supplement, paid for by federal funds would list all 15,000 votes. (150 lines X 3 sections per line)
This is doable. The key is that the gov. picks up the tab. Each person verifies their vote.

I am advocated a process where the voter would either type or spell out in voice command the characters of his/her voting alias. The authorization to vote would be internal to the voting machine's computer. The voter would receive a voting receipt after voting and would not be able to change his vote later. For additional security,
your idea about using the receipt for tallying votes could also be done.

The about process would counter your third objection about certain people being disenfranchised as the process is an internal computerized logic. It will accept the voter if the voter's ID matches the preset up connection with either SS# or some other assigned official voting code. The details of that could be worked out to make
it easy and secure.

Your forth augment, that the voter could use the receipt to verify to someone who they voted for could be countered by turning in the receipt by following your suggestion for the tally. In that way , if there was a question, the receipt could be reproduced as a by product
of the vote tallying process.

Your fifth argument is valid. However, it would be against all Constitutional law as it now exist for anyone to be able to investigate to whom you voted. But, using your same logic, as it now stands, Bush is going to be inaugurated in Jan by a system of votes
that cannot verify in any reasonable way that he actually received enough valid votes to be elected. In other words, we are so worried about someone finding out for whom we voted that we have put a system in place that allows the most outrageous incumbents to simply rig the system and claim victory. Personally, in these times where it appears
that there has be a coup d'etat by way of rigged elect ins in 2000 and 2004, I would happily be willing to have my vote published as the headlines of every newspaper in the U.S. rather than sit back and watch our great Country be stolen, without a shot fired, by ruthless
crooks.

Yes, there may be lots of problems with matching vote to voter. But, they could be solved. And the price we pay for privacy isn't worth it in comparison to what is currently happening. I like your thinking. Stay with me on this. Let's work up an idea that is near bullet proof.

jimf

[BlueDog2u]

13. What you are describing

Is quite similar to the system designed by Tennessee African American inventor and entrepreneur (rip), Athan Gibbs, killed recently in a freak auto accident.

So watch your step, buddy.

/sarcasm off

Of course. This is the kind of system we need. Too bad our elected officials have already flushed billions down the toilet on those Dieobold criminals.

I can't find a website for Truvote (shame, shame, shame....), but here are some online news stories that may interest you.

http://www.technologycouncil.com/news.ez?viewStory=701

http://www.unknownnews.net/030314truvote.html

http://www.tennessean.com/business/archives/04/03/48811616.shtml

[ladjf]

17. bluedog2u: Thanks for the interesting references to the Truvote

system pieces. You are correct, my suggestions are essentially use essentially the same idea that the after vote log is verified by
the user. However, my ideas were somewhat simpler to use. The TruVote required the use of the INTERNET where I suggested the logs be published at gov. expense in local newspaper supplements. TruVote is in the process if trying to get financial backing to create the system in total. My thought is to sell the Country on the idea of voter self verification and utilize as much of the technology that is already in place as possible, modifying the software to account for
voter verification. The Diebold equipment could be used but the insane policy of closed computer code would have to go. That crap would be flushed out and replaced by transparent logic and monitored
by whatever outside entities as required to assure total integrity.

Thanks also for the warnings with regard to my health. Honestly, I'm
68 years old and perfectly willing to take some serious chances for
our Country and our children. Wellstone and RFK paid the price. Why shouldn't I?

jimf

[TorchTheWitch]

11. Chuck Herrin is a DUer

and he made this lovely step-by-step instructional page on how to hack the vote complete with screen shots. I understand he's working with Bev and blackboxvoting.org.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm

[shakerbaker]

26. He's been a Republican since

he was 2yo he says. Well the Republicans of 20-30yrs
ago are of little relationship to the Neo Cons of today.
Those Republicans would vote for Kerry for their Country.

[genieroze]

18. If you leave a 20 dollar bill on the counter

in front of a known crook, they will steal it. The temptation would be to great. We have these fascists who want power at any cost, are you saying that if the chance wasn't there they wouldn't take it. They would, they did. they are scum.

[Roger_Otip]

20. i wouldn't bother if it was only $20

$20 isn't worth that much these days, is it?
and i'm not a crook. i'm an honest law abiding citizen.
but if there was an election sitting there on the bar and i knew i could take it without anyone realizing i had then i'd be very tempted.

[Wordie]

23. I sent a copy of this to Countdown with Keith Olbermann

This is an important aspect to this story. Its the kind of thing that leads credence in a more moderate or conservative mind to the theories about voting fraud. There are a lot of moderates out there who I suspect have only heard about the voting "irregularities" in the context of "conspiracy theories." Information like this guy could provide (I'm hoping Olbermann might do an interview), is what might be needed to get them to pay attention. And, the more attention, the more MSM will HAVE to start covering this.

[truehawk]

24. kick

[truehawk]

25. kick