BBV: New Indymedia.org Feature On Black Box Voting

[althecat]

http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=356465&group=webcast

Indymedia fights Diebold's legal attempt to silence discussions about e-voting


Documents are publicly available that detail vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines manufactured by the Diebold Corporation. Diebold has been sending cease and desist letters to internet service providers (ISPs) that host the documents or links to them. Numerous Indymedia servers have been targeted by Diebold in its campaign to suppress this critical information.
Indymedia will defend its right to post internal memos and documents detailing vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines manufactured by the Diebold Corporation. The documents were made publicly available, and subsequently reported by writer Bev Harris on her websites blackboxvoting.com and blackboxvoting.org.

The vast information contained in these documents is still being investigated by top computer scientists and researchers, but a set of widely circulated internal memos detail Diebold's flippant disregard of test runs, accuracy audits, and security for its voting machines. System tests (much like a dress rehearsal) are often required by local election laws--Diebold memos mention how they simply changed the name "memory test" to "***System Test Passed***" as if the machine performed a self audit. The memos also say how Diebold installed new versions of the voting software that were left untested.

Their election results are not secure, as evidenced by this comment in one email regarding the "contents" (i.e. the votes) of the e-voting machines: "Now, where the perception comes in is that its right now very *easy* to change the contents. Double click the .mdb file." Diebold's Republican executives have touted e-voting as a solution to the punchcard voting systems that scandalized Florida in 2000. In fact, this evidence of security and reliability flaws raises serious questions about this "solution" to election woes in the US.

Diebold responded to these disturbing claims by using an intellectual property law--the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) --to force websites to remove the memos and emails, effectively muzzling investigative journalists such as Bev Harris.

Diebold has been sending cease and desist letters to internet service providers (ISPs) that host the documents or links to them. If they want the protection of the DMCA's "safe harbor", the DMCA requires ISPs to take down the material for at least 10 days, even if the material is protected as copyright ."

MORE HERE...
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=356465&group=webcast

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This is a very significant Indymedia Post... is the second to top feature on the main Indymedia.org central host. Indymedia has thousands of writers and reporters in nearly every significant city in the U.S. and all around the world.

[Kelvin Mace]

1. Diebold's new talking point

Is that the emails have been altered. This is, of course, a lie, but one that they will push hard to make stick.

If Diebold really believes this, I invite them to let us question, under oath, the employees who wrote them.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org

[Zan_of_Texas]

2. Irony abounds

Can Diebold prove that the emails were altered?

Can we prove they weren't?

Hmmmmm.

No more than Diebold can't prove that their electronic vote totals weren't altered.

[creativelcro]

3. That's why..

it may be somewhat difficult to use some parts of the memos in court. But there is independent evidence for a lot of the stuff in there... -C

[harmonyguy]

5. IF the Diebold memos WERE altered...

significantly enough to affect the facts, meaning, or intent of the original, the altered memos could not be claimed to be works derived from the originals.

If any alteration allegedly made was trivial, then Diebold could potentially claim that they own the copyright on the altered work, by it effectively being a derivative work, HOWEVER
if the alteration is significant enough for it no longer to be recognizable as Diebold's work, then they cannot claim copyright on it.

So which is it Diebold?
Are these memos from your staff, in which they can't be claimed as having been altered, or are they altered in which case you can't play whack-a-mole on stuff that you didn't write?
Make your mind up! You can't have it it both ways.

Since Diebold has already chosen to play whack-a-mole, they appear to be presuming that the memos WERE, in fact, written by their people without alteration, unless of course all this legal letter-writing was just a campaign of corporate harrassment.........

(I'll climb off my soapbox now, thanks)
HG

[Spazito]

4. If they say the e-mails were altered....

all they have to do is release the originals and prove they were not altered, right? I don't see them doing that for some strange reason.

[RedEagle]

6. Back up

Kick

[gristy]

7. Great article

with lots of good functional links!