[Reader-list] Targeting Diebold with Electronic Civil Disobedience

[Sunil Abraham]

So this is how Bush won? Imagine when this starts happening in India.
        ---------------------------------------------------------------
        We refuse to comply. We refuse to allow the suppression of
        evidence that proves a Diebold machine registered 16,022
        negativevotes for Al Gore in Precinct 216 in Florida in the 2000
        presidential election.
        ---------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks,

Sunil
        
Targeting Diebold with Electronic Civil Disobedience
http://why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.html

Get the Files
Note that the location of the documents may change, but this page will
always have the current links — if nothing else, you can read some
excerpts. Archived file (tarred and gzipped): here, here. BitTorrent:
here. EDonkey/Overnet: here. Browse the documents: here. Search the
documents: here. Please e-mail us if you are willing to publicly mirror
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will attempt to keep the links up to date but may not respond to
specific e-mails of this type.

Campaign Update  
Day Two: Today Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital
Commons held a public meeting with Dean Bob Gross of Swarthmore College.
Overnight, word had spread of this action and Gross had received over
250 emails of support from individuals throughout the world including
“tech celebrities” and Swarthmore alumni.


Swarthmore College, unfortunately, is not willing to take a strong stand
against Diebold, and is systematically disabling the network access of
any student who hosts the files. “We can’t get out in front in this
fight against Diebold,” Gross said during the meeting with over fifty
students, staff, and faculty. Gross, apparently, did not see that by
taking an active stance against Why War's actions Swarthmore was aiding
Diebold's suppression

Although Why War? acknowledges Swarthmore's position, we will continue
to explain the importance of this issue to the administration. We had
hoped that an institution once praised for allegiance to the pursuit of
truth would have taken a more forceful stance in defense of information.
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the college would be under
no liability after informing a student that s/he should not be hosting
the file. Yet Swarthmore is choosing to act counter to the spirit of
both its traditions and rules, the latter of which requires that
students be given three days to take down work challenged as an
infringement of copyright. There is no provision under either the DMCA
or Swarthmore’s own rules to allow for shutting down a student’s network
access, in particular when no challenge has been made against that
specific student. Why War? is deeply distressed by Swarthmore's
inability, or unwillingness, to understand that the magnitude of this
situation: a fair presidential election!

After consultation with SCDC, the two groups have decided to pursue
different courses of action. Although the two groups are no longer
working together, we are confident that the actions of both groups will
independently result in continued access to Diebold’s memos. SCDC has
decided to comply with any cease and desist requests and subsequently
take legal action against Diebold. Why War?, on the other hand, will
continue to provide access to the memos by listing mirrors provided by
individuals worldwide.

Why War? is confident that SCDC’s counter-complaint will result in
Diebold being forced to stop its campaign of suppression. In the
meantime, you can be assured that Why War? will continue to provide
access to these documents on this page.

If you would like to join this campaign of electronic civil disobedience
by hosting the memos please e-mail info at why-war.com. For those unable to
host the documents, we encourage you to send letters expressing your
disappointment about Swarthmore’s lack of principle directly to the
college newspaper, at phoenix_letters at swarthmore.edu (and please cc your
letters to us).

Representatives of the media should contact media at why-war.com.

Why War? believes that what we are doing is legal; though we see it as
an issue of electronic civil disobedience we believe it is Diebold which
is abusing copyright law in an attempt to shut down free speech and the
democratic process. The four criteria of “fair use” copyright law are
the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the
substantiality of the portion used and the effect of the use upon the
potential market of the copyrighted work. We believe the publication of
these documents is integral to the function of the democratic process.
The memoranda themselves are not marketable products, and in this case
we believe the nature of the work, which threatens elections occurring
in 37 states, outweighs the need to selectively excerpt portions of the
documents. If there is anything the American people have a right to
know, it is how their votes are being counted.

Read our earlier press release.


Excerpts from the Diebold Documents  
“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]

“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]

Fradulent Machine
dieboldes.com
Diebold voting machines are used in 37 states and provide zero security
against election fraud.

“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]

“[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]

“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]

“If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.” [source]

“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]

“[...] while reading some of Paranoid Bev’s scribbling.” [source]

“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.” [source] (emphasis added)

“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]


One Member's Position  
        “[I am] committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to
        the President next year.” Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold [source]
        “A quiet revolution is taking place in US politics. By the time
        it’s over, the integrity of elections will be in the
        unchallenged, unscrutinised control of a few large — and
        pro-Republican — corporations.” Andrew Gumbel, Independent, Oct.
        14, 2003 [source]
        
More fundamental than the right to vote is the right to a free and fair
election. It is a necessity that forms the center of democracy. Without
fair elections the state loses its legitimacy and democracy crumbles.
Today Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons
begin an active electronic civil disobedience campaign to draw America’s
attention back to the center of democracy — for it is crumbling.

We have in our possession the internal memoranda of Diebold Elections
Systems, the company in charge of the electronic voting machines in 37
states, and we intend to share them. These memos prove that Diebold
knowingly produced an electronic election system that contained
absolutely no security against voter fraud. In fact, the lead engineer
from Diebold wrote over two years ago that anyone could change votes
without leaving a trail: “Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with
MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log.” GEMS
stands for Global Election Management System and is the central computer
in each county on which the votes are stored after the election.

Diebold has filed cease and desist orders against anyone who has
attempted to share these memos with the public. They have taken down
hosts all over the world, including the personal website of the very
journalist who broke this story, Bev Harris. We refuse to comply. We
refuse to allow the suppression of evidence that proves a Diebold
machine registered 16,022 negativevotes for Al Gore in Precinct 216 in
Florida in the 2000 presidential election. We refuse to comply with a
company whose CEO has given $9,965 to Bush and the Republican National
State Elections Committee since 2001, while declaring that he is
“committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President
next year.”

And we are asking you to refuse as well.

Our strategy to combat Diebold is simple. Through active, legal
electronic civil disobedience we can bring to light the usually silent
act of suppression. The result will be a permanent and public mirror of
the memos — documents whose public existence strengthens democracy.

One journalist in Seattle has written that Dean Logan, director of
records, elections and licensing services in Seattle, “decided election
security was a ‘legitimate issue’ after internal company e-mail was
posted on the Internet and discussed in a Salon.comarticle Monday.” Our
goal is to force these documents back into the sunlight.

Logan should be alarmed — the depth of Diebold’s deceit extends far
beyond what most Americans are comfortable believing. In fact, there are
already allegations that Diebold was responsible for the highly
questionable results from the 2002 election in Georgia. Andrew Gumbel
writes in the Independent:

        Something very odd happened in the mid-term elections in Georgia
        last November. On the eve of the vote, opinion polls showed Roy
        Barnes, the incumbent Democratic governor, leading by between
        nine and 11 points. In a somewhat closer, keenly watched Senate
        race, polls indicated that Max Cleland, the popular Democrat up
        for re-election, was ahead by two to five points against his
        Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss.
        Those figures were more or less what political experts would
        have expected in state with a long tradition of electing
        Democrats to statewide office. But then the results came in, and
        all of Georgia appeared to have been turned upside down. Barnes
        lost the governorship to the Republican, Sonny Perdue, 46 per
        cent to 51 per cent, a swing of as much as 16 percentage points
        from the last opinion polls. Cleland lost to Chambliss 46 per
        cent to 53, a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points
Why War? believes that the mere possibility that the core principle of
democracy — a fair election — is under attack demands action. We believe
we are afforded the right to publication of these documents because of
the integral part they play in the counting of votes in America. When
such action is met with legal threats, we believe the conscientious path
is to engage in open, democratic, and legal electronic civil
disobedience.


-- 
Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org
MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs'
314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA
Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611
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then you and I will still each have one apple. 
But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas,
then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw