Newsweek: BBV "baseless conspiracy theory ... no one hacked touchscreens"

Umm, anybody up for setting them straight?

There are epic flame wars between Internet geeks over the vulnerability of the machines to hackers, and baseless conspiracy theories that Diebold, one of the largest maker of screen voting machines, is secretly rigging the software to favor Bush. In 2003, Wally O'Dell, the company's CEO, wrote a fund-raising letter vowing to deliver votes for the president. But no diabolical plot has been uncovered, and no one has hacked touchscreen machines, something that isn't considered much of a risk anyway. "This would be very hard," says Jeremiah Akin, a programmer who works with election-monitoring groups. Even so, he says, "there are people who are very good at doing hard things."

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6215309/site/newsweek/

I don't have enough knowledge (or, perhaps memory) to write a letter on the issue. I only know that Bev's consortium has proven several times that they can be hacked.

Despite having the best computer programmers on the face of the planet, after years of development Microsoft is still unable to provide an operating system that is not vulnerable to security breaches.

There are new security patches released EVERY WEEK to deal with newly discovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft software, code flaws that seriously compromise every PC currently in operation.

I work for a computer software company and there are always unexpected glitches that are difficult to diagnose and fix, even with routine functions such as building a shopping cart. If one of the programmers wanted to deliberately compromise a system, their chances of success would be very good indeed. It's incredibly difficult to review thousands of lines of code and insure that every single block does exactly what it should and nothing more.

to them in revenue

So go figure. They wouldn't be for Bush or anything, now would they?

mentioned about test-hacking Diebold and change the votes without any difficulties.

maybe I was misreading or something.. I couldn't use the search function to find the articles in this forum so *shrugs* Also they seem forget that Diebold is owned by republicanscum, not trustworthy at all.

or so ways of designing a system to hack the election with little or chance of having my hack revealed. But I would need one thing I don't have: insider access. And, strangely enough, insider access is the one thing that is omitted from the debate as "a baseless conspiracy theory".

It need not be that way. If we allow that a motivated insider can steal an election, we could put safeguards on the system to prevent and/or detect their presence. Several of us right here at DU came up with such a system after the 2002 election. I took the suggestions and put it in a petition back in December 2002:

Introduce legislation that, as a minimum,

1.) Requires that ALL voting machines produce a voter reviewed paper ballot that is then put into an appropriate locked ballot box.

2.) Allows that each major party should have the opportunity to spot check, for a few precincts, the difference between the machine reported results and a hand recount of the above paper ballots.

3.) Provides for exit polls on the day of the election and, should there be a statistically significant difference between the reported results of the election and this exit poll, automatically orders a hand recount.


Well, we were heard. Rush Holt of New Jersey put it in a bill and introduced it well over a year ago. It was. of course, tied up in committee. The voting machine companies have fought the suggestion tooth-and-nail and have enlisted various groups (including the cynical use of handicapped advocates) to aid in their campaign.

Citizens have been routinely shut out of the process of approving these machines. Here in Pennsylvania, my best friend managed to get on the special citizen's advisory committee that was charged with providing input to the Secretary of State. He was chosen, we suspect, because he is one of the state's leading advocates for handicapped persons. Well, having educated him on the issue, he went on to educate most of the other citizens on the committee. Then guess what: The Secretary of State decided to send the assistant to the assistant of the undersecretary to attend one meeting and take notes. And that was the last meeting of said committee.

And Bev and Andy can provide many, many more examples of experiences just like mine. So excuse me if I suspect "the Fix is In" this November 2nd. I guess I'm just another conspiracy theorist.

is the phrase "no diabolical plot" - although that seems to fit the two-digit access code hack perfectly. But that's not good enough for Newsweak, because it's not the touchscreen itself, but on the tabulator, so it doesn't count.

We could f**ing videotape J.Baker himself in the act of entering

update total = -16161 in votes where candidate = 'Kerry'

and their story would be "Dem allegation of irregularities denied."

:kick:

They have an article (very very good) about how easy it was for experts from the NSA to hack into 6 diebold touchscreens and thier server used by the state of Maryland for the primary (and the upcoming election.)

For instance:

You can pick the lock that protects the removable media that has the machines voting information with a paper clip. If you don't have a paperclip, then just get a key for any diebold machine, because they all use the same key!

The server uses Windows 2000. The one the team used didn't have any of the Micosoft recomended security upgrades. As of Sept. , the state of Maryland had not acted upon any of the 10 recomendations made by the team, which included rewriting the code so it wasn't so easy to hack in to.

but it has a picture of a supersonic private jet on it,

it also features Jay Leno creaming his pants because he found a 1927 Duesenburg X.

A guy wrote an article about the dangers of computer fraud waaaay back then and experts at the time expressed concern about voter fraud via computers, and then govt of Texas even predicted that someone would try to steal the presidency.

so, that Newsweek article is interesting since it appears the person who wrote it has no knowledge of DECADES of concern about this issue, or else is simply trying to practice a little "project truth" style journalism.

The New Yorker is notorious for fact checking and research. What does the person writing for Newsweek have to back up this article, other than "of course no one would do that?"

this link is a copy of Dugger's New Yorker article from 1988.

http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/dugger.shtml

by the same author: "how they could steal the election this time."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59774,00.html?tw=wn_story_related

...but what do they know about computers?

Wired and its sources is well-know. That's what we need.

I agree with that statement, 'computers and voting should not mix'.

Nobody does business where figures are involved without a source document and a double entry to prove the figures. To do single entry tabulations only invites fraud as any first year business student can tell you. This is no different whether tabulating money or votes. It seems our CEO Prezidunce would know that. Or, maybe he does and condones it?

What we have consistently said is it is the central tabulator! I would be very hard to rig an average of 2500 touchscreen machines in a county, and yes the touchscreens have vulnerabilities. I know GEMS...and it is a hackers dream. That again is where the problem really lies.

I am concerned at the way Newsweek chose to handle this story. GE isn't biased or anything are they?

It's all about preventing VOTER fraud.

Does didly about INSIDER fraud.