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Since you repeat the exact same thing you said the first time, let me reiterate. I'll be a lot more concise so you don't get bored or confused.
1. the SAIC report is flawed. This is not an opinion. It is a fact.
Then stop using it to support the anti-Diebold argument. If it's flawed, neither side can use it to support their position. End of story.
2. There is no way SAIC could perform the assessment in the time that it takes to.
Then stop using it to support the anti-Diebold argument. And throw out the Rubin report on the same grounds, since it was conducted over even less time. It was also conducted by less-qualified people (i.e. grad students, for the most part), and was certainly not conducted to IEEE standards either. If a long-term, in-depth study conducted to rigorous IEEE standards is your criterion for acceptibility, then I don't want to hear about a single report that isn't conducted to that level. You can also throw out all of the "informal" analysis conducted by anonymous (but surely super-qualified) BBV volunteers. They (to my knowledge) haven't conducted any studies to IEEE standards either (although they've made a lot of hilarious statements like the ones that I've mentioned and you've conveniently ignored). By your own argument, the verdict must remain out on the reliability and security of the system until such time as an acceptable study is performed. You can't have it both ways.
3. Transferring the database to Oracle is a non trivial task for Diebold given the lack of system engineering in their system. It would greatly improve their reliability if they did. However, it would up their cost by roughly $200K. I don't know how the state election officials would feel about that one.
You have no idea what you're talking about, unless you're privy to the GEMS source code. The rest of us aren't. To my knowledge, the only code that's been made available is the code to their touchscreen voting terminal, which (as I'm sure you know) doesn't use a database at all. Therefore, any conclusions that you make about the scope of the effort involved, putative increases in reliability, or costs associated with the change are nothing more than sheer speculation. I maintain that if database access is performed through a common abstraction layer such as ODBC or OLEDB, then changing the underlying database represents a relatively trivial exercise. Which is also speculation, obviously, but at least my speculation has a rationale -- yours is simply presented as fact based on your alleged superior wisdom.
3. The quality of the programmers is certainly in question.
By whom? On the one hand we're led to believe they're incompetent, on the other we're led to believe that they've managed to insert nefarious, undetectable vote-rigging code and remote-access back doors into their product. :rolleyes:
4. You don't have to publish your resume to answer my question. But surely you must know what the largest system that you have ever worked on is and what are the most stringest requirements for reliability and availability that you have ever been required to support. Sharing these figures with the rest of us adds to your credibility. If your systems are household names so much the better.
I let the logic of my arguments speak as to my credibility. For all your talk of SLAs and five 9's, it was still your assessment that Diebold should hook up their voting machines and their back-end database to a network. Even Bev Harris, who has no discernible technical experience whatsoever, can explain to you why that's a bad idea. So you can keep telling everyone how great your credentials are and questioning mine -- in the meantime I'll stick to simply pointing out where you're wrong.
5. The agenda is more than a vendetta against Diebold.
No it isn't. I've already explained why in my earlier post, and you've added nothing new.
Most of them have been selected as the lowest cost bidder -- Imagine that!
Welcome to the real world. That's the way the system works. Seriously.
Your democracy being safeguarded by the lowest cost bidder.
No it's not, it's being safeguarded by state laws and county election procedures, as well as the manufacturers of voting equipment. Why must you exaggerate?
Almost every IEEE/NIST standard or coding standard has been violated! Start matching up the Diebold System against these standards and you will go to town with a list of deficiencies.
Show me where adherence to IEEE/NIST standards is a requirement for voting equipment and we can debate the point.
Problems with people's criminal backgrounds would have surfaced had background checks been run. The very standard that SAIC references in its report calls out for background checks of key employees to ensure adequate system security.
Four of the people mentioned by Bev Harris in her "five (sic) felons" press conference are not key employees (point of fact, they are not employees at all). One of them is not even a felon. And one of them is, in fact, an ex coke dealer who runs the printer. He should be fired immediately.
Use of foreign programmers has been always suspect in sensitive governmental systems.
Well that's going to be a problem, because it seems that all the programmers in question are Canadian. I have no counter-argument to make here, since Canadians are in fact foreigners. Guess we better shut Diebold down now.
DOD (who performs the security checks for all governmental agencies) does not have the resources to check on someone's personal history in Russia or China.
Fascinating. When have we established, exactly, that any of these Russian and Chinese people Bev refers to are actually Russian or Chinese? Or is having a Russian name or Chinese ancestry enough cause to disqualify them? What if they're all, in fact, Canadians? Is that better? At least they're probably not Republicans or right-wingers.
Unfortunately, at least in Russia, under Communism, most of the top notch programmers worked for their Defense Department/KGB. That was just the way the system worked then. I don't feel very comfortable with an ex-KGB employee working on my election system. Sorry.
Just for the record, communism in Russia hasn't really been an issue since the Reagan era. And as I pointed out earlier, I'm not sure where it's been established that there are any Russian nationals involved... just one guy Bev dug up in Canada with a Russian-sounding name. It's a pretty big leap you're making to "ex-KGB employee" but that is, of course, the BBV way.
What we want is for these systems not to be fielded until adequate provisions and safeguards have been met.
Yes, yes... and in the meantime, we can all espouse the cherished "let's be more like France!" argument. Or its distantly-related cousin, "let's be more like Canada! (just don't let them program our election systems)."
If Diebold et al were trying to do the right thing, they would have willingly held off on fielding these systems!
Your naivete is shocking.
Thanks for the effort, but you've added nothing new here except for a bit of deplorable anti-communist fear-mongering. My original points remain the same, and I'm not going to waste any more time repeating them for you again. Just re-read as required.
JC
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