*Tin foil Hat* on BBV

[Must_B_Free]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA9T8I7DJD.html

"A team led by Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins, examined the machines' source code, which a Diebold worker anonymously published on the Internet earlier this year. "

A gut feeling - I think someone in Diebold knew about the faking of this whole system and purposefully put the stuff out there for someone to "find" and pick apart.

Whistle blowing alone doesn't work because those who respond to the whistle are crooked. Colleen Rowley demonstrated that. My hypothesis supports the best way for a concerned american(s) to take action on a massive conspiracy to defraud American voters.

I don't think this stuff wasn't innocently stumbled across, but there was an inside tipoff on the whole thing.

[Bushfire]

1. Interesting theory

I too can't believe all the programmers are GOP. Remember it was taken down twice now from seperate FTP sites I believe. We could have inside help on this issue. Time for some help inside Sequoia and ES&S.

[DEMActivist]

2. You are completely wrong

off base and incorrect.

The source code is not fake. And it was no setup.

Folks who know computer programming know this is the real stuff.

So, what do you think of the LATER admission by Diebold that it WAS USED IN THE 2002 ELECTION IN GEORGIA AND OTHER STATES?

[Bushfire]

3. He didn't imply that the code was fake IMHO

just that an employee made it available thru a FTP link. Could be that is was company policy, but the ramifications of leaving it unsecure are too big. If it wasn't found, the activism going on now would be at least 6 months behind schedule more than likely.

on edit: "A gut feeling - I think someone in Diebold knew about the faking of this whole system..." that allows multiple ledgers, and potential vote manipulation.

[GAspnes]

4. I don't think so

There was a ton of activity on that server, including more than one Diebold employee directing customers to download files and patches from the open ftp server. I don't believe it was just one disgruntled employee who set it up.

"Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

[sendero]

5. hmmmm.....

Well, first off I believe they put that code on an FTP site as a convenience for the people in the field who had to do patches and installations. Beyond that it gets interesting.

Because it would have been *trivially* easy to put it on an ftp server that required a login/password. Why didn't they do that? It could just be laziness, some people in the tech world are just too sure nobody is going to "find" their ftp server simply based on the idea of "why would anyone care"?

But lets assume that it was a trivally easy site to discover, say "ftp.diebold.com". That would be easy to find by someone just poking around. But if it were a more esoteric URL, well I don't see how it would have been discovered without a tip off.

Who initially discovered this stuff? We should ask him/her :)

[BevHarris]

6. I discovered the site and I broke the story on it. Here's how it happened:

(More is in the book, including screen shots of the site) "which a Diebold worker anonymously published on the Internet earlier this year." -- the reporter didn't understand. What the reporter should have said was "the site was available with anonymous access" meaning you don't have to have a user name.

Here's how I found the site:

The voting systems are a secret. They are so secret you can't examine a machine or even look at a manual. My publisher told me we needed to find a technical manual somehow. The only way I could think of to do that was to find someone who works for either the company or an elections person who uses the machines.

I was most interested in ES&S -- at that time, I hadn't done much work at all on Diebold. I started looking for people I could call who work for ES&S. I went to the ES&S web site and found the email "[e-mail]." I entered "essvote" in Google and found a few dozen programmers, salespeople, technicians and other employees who work for ES&S.

Still, I was kind of chicken about just calling them. What would I say? "Hey, let me see a manual?" So I procrastinated by convincing myself that I had to find as many names as possible. I got some from Sequoia, and I got a couple from the email dieboldes.com. I entered "Global Election Systems" and found some old documents with e-mails ending in gesn.com. I think the one I found was something like "[e-mail]." Something like that. So I entered "gesn" in Google.

I was still procrastinating, hoping to come up with some inspiration about how to persuade someone to give me a manual. I was on page 15 of Google looking for "gesn" when I found the obscure web page with the ftp site on it. Here is the screen shot of that page:



I started clicking the links on the menu. First, I clicked "press releases." I wanted to see what kind of claims this company was making. Some of the links were dead links. I clicked all of them, ending with the "FTP" link. It took me directly onto a page and there I was, staring at files. There was no sign in at all, you just clicked the link and there the files were.

While still on the page, I called my publisher. While I was on the phone, he went to the page. "What am I looking at?" I asked. "Click pubs" he suggested. We did, and started wandering through the directories. It was just stunning how many files were on there. Then I called a lawyer. While I was on the phone, he went to the web page. "Unbelievable," he said. "They literally invite you in and there is not any notice at all. It is perfectly legal for you to examine these files."

I then called several activists in the electronic voting industry, many of whom you've heard of. I directed them to the site. Some went, some didn't. I also called some reporters. At least one major reporter went to the site while I was on the phone with him. Each of the people I called told other people about it.

Later, I learned from sources who work for other voting machine companies that this site has been general industry knowledge for some years now. Many people have been downloading the stuff, for years, from all over the world.

In total, there were approximately 40,000 files in thousands of directories, nested within other directories, which were nested in other directories...

If one was to print out everything on the site, it would fill approximately half a million pages. The User Manual sends people straight to the ftp site. In fact, it says that the tech sets the county election office up with "Cute ftp" to download things from the site. "It's easy and fun," it says.

If this doesn't answer the question, buy the book. It has much more detail on the contents of the site.

Bev Harris
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

[stickdog]

7. No.

Not even close.