[Sosfbay-discuss] Fwd: Diebold's Problems

[Andrea Dorey]

FYI, in case you have not seen this.
Andrea

Begin forwarded message:

[It appears that California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has
> changed his stripes, and is now causing Diebold massive problems.
> Below this article, see an extract about the test of the Diebold
> machine in Florida, referred to here]
>
> From: Black Box Voting, Dec 20
>
> BREAKING -- California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has laid a
> subtle and elegant trap.
>
> Today, California threw Diebold Election Systems' pending
> certification into a tailspin, using Machiavellian logic designed to
> cast doubt on the federal testing lab process, the upcoming HAVA
> deadline and Diebold voting systems simultaneously (while standing
> neatly aside to watch the house of cards collapse).
>
> This move follows on the heels of a devastating hack demonstration by
> Harri Hursti sponsored by Black Box Voting, which took place in Leon
> County, Florida on Dec. 13. This hack manipulated memory cards by
> exploiting design defects and Diebold's customized "AccuBasic"
> program code.
>
> Here's how the California trap works: In a terse letter to Diebold,
> State elections chief Caren Daniels-Meade writes,
>
> "Unresolved significant security concerns exist with respect to the
> memory card used to program and configure the AccuVote-OS [optical
> scan] and the AccuVote-TSX [touch-screen] components of this system
> because this component was not subjected to federal source code
> review and evaluation by the Independent Testing Authorities (ITA)
> who examined your system for federal qualification. It is the
> Secretary of State's position that the source code for the AccuBasic
> code on these cards, as well as for the AccuBasic interpreter that
> interprets this code, should have been federally reviewed.
>
> "Swe are requesting that you submit the source code relating to the
> AccuBasic code on the memory cards and the AccuBasic interpreter to
> the ITA for immediate evaluation. We require this additional review
> before proceeding with further consideration of your application for
> certification in California."
>
> And herein lies the trap. Federal testing authorities are supposed to
> rely on standards set by the Federal Election Commission. The FEC
> standards prohibit "Interpreted code" - thus, the AccuBasic
> "interpreter" is illegal. (The entire AccuBasic source code tree is
> written in a home-brewed language that Diebold programmers made up
> themselves, making it more difficult for certifiers to examine.)
>
> The Hursti memory card attack demonstrated in Leon County Florida
> manipulated the voting system by passing code through -- drum roll
> please -- the Diebold interpreter, using a set of programs called
> AccuBasic which was written in a concocted computer language and (now
> it is revealed) was never examined at all by federal testing labs.
>
> The ITA dilemma: ITAs have the choice of either recommending code
> that explicitly violates FEC standards (placing an unsupportable
> liability burden on them) or admitting that the original
> certification was defective. If the ITAs retract their
> recommendation, it will effectively strip Diebold of its federal
> certification, and may also affect its older products.
>
> The Diebold dilemma: Diebold can refuse to submit its code to the
> ITAs, but that will lose the state of California, continuing a
> pattern initiated last week when two Florida counties dumped their
> Diebold machines. Alternatively, Diebold can submit its code and
> watch as the federal authorities sever their product line from the
> U.S. market.
>
> The position is made more unstable because Diebold is now fending off
> stockholder suits by an armload of attorneys piling on to solicit
> clients for a voting machine-related securities fraud lawsuit.
>
> <http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/ 
> 15656.html>
> =========================
>
> (Volusia County FL)
> A test election was run in Leon County on Tuesday with a total of
> eight ballots. Six ballots voted "no"... Two ballots, cast by Dr.
> Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes"....
>
> At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by
> Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting
> machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory
> card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with
> plus and minus votes.
>
> The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The
> standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is normal
> procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting
> machine.
>
> Correct results should have been: Yes:2 ; No:6
>
> However,... the results tape read: Yes:7 ; No:1 [reflecting the votes
> that were pre-loaded onto the card rather that what the actual
> ballots said]
>
> <http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/ 
> 15595.html>
>
>
Andrea Dorey
Santa Clara County Green Party

Chinese Proverbs:
"Serving the powerful is like sleeping with a tiger."
"It is difficult to get off a tiger's back."