BBV and Diebold timeline: good article :)

In case you haven't seen it yet... -C
http://www.agonist.org/archives/009318.html

Captures events (with links!) very well. But no working links to the Diebold emails. :(

"Captures events (with links!) very well. But no working links to the Diebold emails. :( "

Heh, will leave that to the unstoppable, underground file transfer/sharing methods ;)... We don't have the resources to get into a frontal fight right now... -creativelcro

I'm reading the article now -- very good! But the Diebold acquisition was finalized in Jan. 2002, not 2003. The letter of intent was signed June 2001, sale finalized Jan. 2002.

The site was discovered and made public by those of us at Black Box Voting -- the details of how it was discovered and what we did next are in Chapter 7, available for download, free, at http://www.blackboxvoting.com

"the same information was published a few days later at Scoop" -- actually, Scoop published the information about the same time, or even a day or two earlier than we did at BlackBoxVoting.org. His site still has the memos up, and he apparently has not received a cease & desist.

Back to my reading :)

Bev

doh! Sorry... Will change... :)

Oh... OK, I read part of the chapter yesterday ev... So, when you described the GES site biz with the FTP button, that was the FIRST time that had been discovered and/or reported ? Somehow, I thought that someone else had provided the info, or some tips, and then a number of people, including you, started looking for it. Sorry, it's been difficult to gather information about what happened several months ago. Thanks. -c

And no whistleblower pointed me to it -- but it had been discovered by many people, I've since learned. It's just that they quietly downloaded and kept it to themselves.

In my interviews with software engineers (and salesmen) from voting machine companies, I learned that they've all known about it for years and that Diebold's source code has made the rounds of the other vendors.

I found out that past and present election officials, county workers, and both past and present Diebold and Global Election Systems employees used the site.

So, saying I'm the first that found it is not accurate, but no one tipped me off to it -- I literally did find it on Google. Several people apparently found it, which is why Diebold so endangered election security by leaving it up. According to internal memos, they discussed the fact that it was insecure but did nothing to take it down.

Which reminds me of the Ken Clark memo: He says he knew about the back door in MS Access that allows tampering with the voting system, but did nothing to secure it, citing the reason that sometimes they have found it useful to do "end runs" around the system.

They knew that the FTP site was insecure, but did nothing to secure it. Were they also using the FTP site to do "end runs" (i.e. upload stuff with plausible deniability?)

Just wondering.

Ok, thanks. That was VERY helpful! I'll change the first paragraph accordingly. Later this ev, I hope :).
-C

The pages, like yours, that are clean, easy reads documented with links look the simplest but actually take the most time to produce.

It's an impressive piece of work. I'll send the link along to Reps. Kucinich and Kaptur.

Bev

Thanks! :evilgrin: :thumbsup:

:kick:

Fantastic job. (Making note to myself: Add link to this to BBV sites)

Bev

Check your PM's I am ready for my assignment for Tue and Wed.

Put them up an hour ago.

David Allen
Plan Nine Publishing
www.plan9.org
www.blackboxvoting.com

Diebold Voting Machines
We vote for you, so you don't have to!

Part I is the first hotlink in the piece.

Eloriel

.....:evilgrin: Diebold Machines and Your Vote