URGENT: Americans: Protect your freedom and votes

Worlds Spanner · Post by **Worlds Spanner** » 2003-10-22 12:24am

As some of you may or may not know, I am a student at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia, PA.

At the moment, there are a group of students engaged in an act of civil disobedience, hosting online hacked memos from Diebold, Inc. revealing the flaws and dangers of their electronic voting machines.

Tommorrow, we will be meeting with the Dean of the College to discuss the course of action that the College will take in this matter.

We would really appriciate it any of you could send respectful letters of support to Dean Bob Gross (rgross1 at swarthmore dot edu) and cc them to info (at) why-war.com before 4 PM EDT on Oct. 22.

THE MEMOS

Read the diebold memos:
http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/

Search the diebold memos:
http://why-war.com/memos/cgi-bin/search.pl

MEMO EXCERPTS

"Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I
have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed."
source:
http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/announ ... 00002.html

"I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern
over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services
which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an
unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing,
and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to
exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves
then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not
meet expectations."
source:
http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/announ ... 00001.html

"I feel that over the next year, if the current management team stays in
place, the Global [Election Management System] working environment will
continue to be a chaotic mess. Global management has and will be doing the
best to keep their jobs at the expense of employees. Unrealistic goals will
be placed on current employees, they will fail to achieve them. If Diebold
wants to keep things the same for the time being, this will only compound
an already dysfunctional company. Due to the lack of leadership, vision,
and self-preserving nature of the current management, the future growth of
this company will continue to stagnate until change comes."
source:
http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/announ ... 00007.html

"[T]he bugzilla historic data recovery process is complete. Some bugs were
irrecoverably lost and they will have to be re-found and re-submitted, but
overall the loss was relatively minor."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/suppor ... 00090.html

"28 of 114 or about 1 in 4 precincts called in this AM with either memory
card issues "please re-insert", units that wouldn't take ballots - even
after recycling power, or units that needed to be recycled. We reburned 7
memory cards, 4 of which we didn't need to, but they were far enough away
that we didn't know what we'd find when we got there (bad rover
communication)."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/suppor ... 00034.html

"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/suppor ... 00109.html

"I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have
been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216
gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please
explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of
standing here "looking dumb"."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/suppor ... 00068.html

"[...] while reading some of Paranoid Bev's scribbling."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/suppor ... 00069.html

"Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots.
They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of
polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry
for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the
media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or
print any Election Results before the Polls closed. ***However, if there is
a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even
better.***" (emphasis added)
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/rcr.w3 ... 00051.html

"4K Smart cards which had never been previously programmed are being
recognized by the Card Manager as manager cards. When a virgin card from
CardLogix is inserted into a Spyrus (have tried CM-0-2-9 and CM-1-1-1) the
prompt "Upgrade Mgr Card?" is displayed. Pressing the ENTER key creates a
valid manager card. This happens in Admin mode and Election mode."
source:
http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/bugtra ... 00025.html

LEARN MORE

http://www.why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.html

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-10-22 12:27am

"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal."

I smell BS.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-10-22 12:46am

You know, there may really be problems with these voting machines--I have not read through all of the evidence at this time so I am not in a position to make a judgement--but I seriously question the viability of these "hacked memos" without some supporting evidence.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-10-22 12:54am

Amazingly, I agree with the Duchess. I'm suspicious of all politicians, but it'll take a little while before I accept this sort of thing at face value.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-10-22 01:03am

Swarthmore hun? That's where I live, and god does a lot of BS come out of that school. And your links are all 404's.

Worlds Spanner · Post by **Worlds Spanner** » 2003-10-22 01:12am

Slashdotted.

We should have lunch sometime

Worlds Spanner · Post by **Worlds Spanner** » 2003-10-22 01:15am

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:You know, there may really be problems with these voting machines--I have not read through all of the evidence at this time so I am not in a position to make a judgement--but I seriously question the viability of these "hacked memos" without some supporting evidence.

Quite rightly. There's evidence, but in that Diebold is in fact sending cease and desist letters.

http://www.eff.org/Legal/ISP_liability/ ... letter.php

Those I suppose this could be fake as well.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-10-22 01:32am

These memos are very alarming, but exceptional claims require exceptional proof, and saying you've hacked Diebold's network and retreived top secret company memos constitutes an exceptional claim. Give me something more.

Worlds Spanner · Post by **Worlds Spanner** » 2003-10-22 01:41am

I have no idea who did the hacking. These alleged memos have been floating around for a while. Usually they don't stay in one place for long because ISPs are wimps and back down to threats from lawyers. We're trying to convince Swarthmore not to.

I can't prove that the memos are top secret, but the cease and desist letter indicates that they are in fact Diebold property and Diebold wants them offline.

I suppose the question is, is that cease and desist letter real?

Do we have an expert in that sort of thing?

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2003-10-22 01:43am

Is linking to hacked material exactly legal and in the bounds of the TOS?

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-10-22 01:55am

This info is starting to make mainstream news and that combined with the cease and desist orders has me terrified that these memos are legit. I'll wait awhile to pass my own judgement but this doesn't smell like BS to me.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-10-22 01:59am

Worlds Spanner wrote:I have no idea who did the hacking. These alleged memos have been floating around for a while. Usually they don't stay in one place for long because ISPs are wimps and back down to threats from lawyers. We're trying to convince Swarthmore not to.

I can't prove that the memos are top secret, but the cease and desist letter indicates that they are in fact Diebold property and Diebold wants them offline.

I suppose the question is, is that cease and desist letter real?

Do we have an expert in that sort of thing?

The cease and desist letter looks legit, but I'm not an expert.

Datana · Post by **Datana** » 2003-10-22 02:05am

Worlds Spanner wrote:Quite rightly. There's evidence, but in that Diebold is in fact sending cease and desist letters.

That in itself isn't evidence for the veracity of the documents. The letter only claimed theft of Diebold intellectual property, and the original websites referenced are completely gone, though appear to have been response threads to a story. There is nothing connecting your "documents" to what Diebold wanted removed, or that these "documents" of yours are even real -- for all I know, the letter was in response to an illegal posting of Diebold machine source code elsewhere in the responses! I Googled up some information concerning the incident -- the only sites that came up are leftist ones with an axe to grind against Diebold and sensational Slashdot "articles" about an election in Georgia that didn't go the way it was expected to.

In your favor, though, certain files were confirmed to have been stolen from Diebold in March according to Wired, and none of the "documents" are dated past that -- it at least proves you're a decent forger. Connect these with the March files and you might begin to have a case. I sincerely doubt it, though. I'm calling BS.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-10-22 10:34pm

Nathan F wrote:Is linking to hacked material exactly legal and in the bounds of the TOS?

If Swarthmore's legal code is anything like the one I work under, using a computer to do anything against State or Federal law (such as data piracy) is considered a major violation of terms of service. Swarthmore's website is undergoing updating currently, so I can't access their Student Handbook to check their legal code.

Worlds Spanner · Post by **Worlds Spanner** » 2003-10-23 01:14am

You have the right of it.

The fallout of the meeting is that the students agreed to take down the files (thus protecting Swarthmore) and file a counter claim against Diebold while OTHER students keep the files up on non-college servers.

This was expected although the press from the school deciding to fight our battles for us would have been impressive.

Worlds Spanner · Post by **Worlds Spanner** » 2003-10-23 07:27pm

Swarthmore College has taken down the above linked files.

If anyone cares to follow this, here's the best place to do so: http://www.why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.html