Voting Machines - Hacking
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| Tue, 08-24-2004 - 3:18pm |
Wednesday Bev (Harris of Black Box Voting) and her team of experts, including a brilliant computer
programmer, Dr. Hugh Thompson, did the Diebold hack for members of the
California Sec. of State's Voting Panel. They (the State) carefully
rearranged her meeting from last week, (after she had driven 10 hours
from Washington state to be there), when all eight members of the panel
were present, to this week, when only three members were present. (Bev
guessed that they did this so they wouldn't have a quorum present.)
They had other guests there, too, at Bev's requests: an accountant,
since she uses the analogy that running an election is essentially
bookkeeping, and that all records for an election should be kept in the
same responsible way as a good set of books is kept; and their own
computer programming expert from the state's side (who is also one of
the Voting Panel). Also present was one of the attorneys from their
AG's office.
Bev and Hugh Thompson clearly demonstrated her latest bombshell
finding: that the Diebold GEMS software, in most versions or maybe all
that are currently in use around the country (this I would have to
doublecheck with her) has a hidden, second set of books on the central
tabulator that can be accessed from a "back door" where, to use one of
Bev's earlier phrases, "any hacker with a laptop" could jump right in
and change the final vote totals. Hugh Thompson also demonstrated that
even a hacker who didn't have Microsoft Access on their computer, the
program necessary to run an election on the GEMS software, could write
a simple 7 LINES of code and still hack in anyway. He affirmed that
"hundreds of thousands" of people out there had the level of expertise
to do just that.
Also present was Andy Stephenson, former candidate for Secretary of
State for Washington, with evidence that one of Diebold's programmers
named Jeffrey Dean (now in jail) had also been in jail prior to being
hired by Diebold for 23 counts of felony theft, including charges of
embezzling using sophisticated software programming methods to commit
his crimes.
The invisible "second set of books" appeared on the GEMS program
versions that came out just after Jeffrey Dean was kept on as a
consultant for Diebold after they purchased Global Election Systems
(GES) a few years ago.
Probably the most notable thing about this event was the lack of any
clear outrage or shock on the part of the Sec. of State's witnesses, or
any commitment to take any particular action based on what they had
just seen. They thanked Bev for coming in and said they would "take the
information under consideration" or some such BS language. No one on
"our" side believes they will do anything with the information. We all
hope we are wrong.
The invisible "second set of books" is present on Diebold's optical
scan counting software as well, not just the DRE's. This is pretty bad
stuff!

This electronic voting is a nightmare waiting in the wings.
I hate the idea, unless someone can prove that it is impossible (1000000%) to hack into the system (which will never happen as hackers can get into the Penatgon computers, and the FBI, which have some of the most severe encryption systems in the world in place).
Thank God my county is fairly rural and still uses paper ballots.
Venus