November 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Nerd party needed to replace 'left-wing' Democrats, says area man
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/05/net_nerd_party/print.html> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT Nerd party needed to replace 'left-wing' Democrats, says area man By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco (andrew.orlowski at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 5th November 2004 17:20 GMT Election 2004 A newspaper columnist has called for the old-fashioned, "left wing" Democratic Party to be replaced by a new, emergent party of computer nerds. Free-marketeer Dan Gillmor of Silicon Valley's San Jose Mercury urges the Democrats to abandon "old, discredited politics", while an "increasingly radical middle" needs a new party with some "creative thinking". From where will this come? In a column (http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10086652.htm) published the same day, he tells us. Writing before the outcome was known, Gillmor enthuses about "the most exciting development ... the new world of cyber-politics," where the "expanded horizons" on offer should cancel out the groupthink, which he briefly acknowledges, and lead to greater accountability and participation. Such settler rhetoric - "new world", "horizons" - is familiar stuff from techno utopians. So too is the hope, amongst many intelligent, impatient people with a reluctance to develop their social skills, that we must be able to do better. (Bill Gates doesn't have the patience or inclination to watch TV, and many internet activists don't have the patience or inclination to persuade a stranger, which is a lot more difficult and unrewarding.) We briefly heard about "Emergent Democracy" last Spring, although it disappeared in about the time it takes you to say "Second Superpower". But we're sure to hear more about this itchy, push-button, "interactive" version of democracy, a kind of thumbs down at the Roman Coliseum, in the future. Maybe Dan will become its Arthur Schlesinger. But for now, how can a computer-savvy nerd party help? We don't see Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, having trouble being re-elected, and the man's been described as a "one-man socialist Torquemada." Because politics is n-dimensional, based on values and not some right-left scale, his "old fashioned" efforts to remind corporations of their social responsibilities may well be very popular if put to the public. [*]So it isn't clear that the Democrats must abandon the idea that we're happier when the corporations are left to manage themselves. Nor is it clear that the internet is a net civic good, yet, or that it increased voter turnout more than other factors did in the 2004 election. So the conclusion that we're then invited to draw - that the Democrats are doomed because they're lagging in some kind of technological arms race - doesn't necessarily follow. But let's take each one of these ideas in turn. Man machine Such settler rhetoric flourishes where a sensible grasp of what humans can do, and what the machines can do, is out of kilter. Wild and improbable visions often follow. When something good happens, people are quick to praise the machines. "If people are more moved than ever to participate, I'm betting that the Net played a big role," writes Dan. But if something bad happens, we blame stupid humans for not "getting it". Voters in Texas using machines from Hart InterCivic, discovered that their votes were nullified when they browsed the ballot by turning a wheel. "It's not a machine issue," Shafer said. "It's voters not properly following the instructions." And you might ask, who's fault is it that the Jim Crow boxes were so badly designed? (Dan, to his great credit, urged Californian voters to demand an auditable paper ballot this week, and castigated election officials for not making voters aware that they had the option.) But the echo chamber effect won't go away, because it's a defining characteristic of computer-mediated communications everywhere, and not just in this deeply polarized country. My colleague Thomas Greene puts it most succinctly. "You can say something someone disagrees with at a party, and they'll talk to you. Try doing this online." Where the barriers to participation are low, the barriers to making a hurried exit are equally low. There are no social obligations to sticking around, unlike in the real world. (There are subtle factors within the overall trend. Today's thin-skinned ego-driven weblogger may simply have been yesterday's Usenet faint heart, for example. And well-designed software can encourage better online participation: the DailyKos abandoned weblog software for the much more community-orientated Scoop system, and became the Slashdot of politics - only one where people say interesting things politely.) The settler iconography is no accident: the idea that everything "old fashioned" must be discarded, and everything is new again. "Like the American settlers, internet dwellers create a myth that there was no politics before they arrived," Will Davies pointed out, in a brilliant talk at NotCon this year. They needed to do this to ignore the fact that the land was already occupied. "To the same end, internet settlers choose to ignore the historical and sociological facts of how the internet is run, and who can't get on to it and why, and the mechanisms used online to divide people." Gated communities substitute group for social, and "cease to question the macro institutions and systems around them." The gated communities have already gone up, on the internet. One of its founding engineers, Karl Auerbach told your reporter earlier this year that physically, as well as sociologically, "The internet is balkanizing. Communities of trust are forming in which traffic is accepted only from known friends." Remind you of anything? What this leads to is a false sense of reality. Howard Dean supporters had a tremendous disappointment when man and message failed to resonate in Meatspace. The noise of online participation isn't a very reliable indicator of what people are really thinking or doing. "Everyone I know voted Democrat," people asked yesterday "How could this happen?" In fact, voter turnout rose little in prosperous areas with high broadband penetration, but dramatically in areas where broadband penetration was lowest: up over ten per cent in Mississippi, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico. Meanwhile, the cornerstones of civic life - community and church groups - were far more effective in getting out the vote. These delivered a Republican victory. So for Doctor Gillmor to prescribe the ailing patient 'more internet' is a strange choice. For him to advocate abandoning the US left's organizational vehicle (with one current useless owner, but a proven track record of some moderate success, if you look at the log book) makes senses only if, like Dan, you don't think think the left should have an effective vehicle at all. (He wants a "radical center", remember . On being asked to abandon the project, progressives might be tempted to echo Gandhi, who when asked what he thought of western civilization, replied "I think it would be a good idea!" Giving up barely after we've started, on a center ground defined by others, or by nothing but technology, isn't an adequate replacement. For some people, technology is the answer, no matter what the question may be. But Gillmor's reasons for wanting a new net party are rather like, to paraphrase Kennedy, asking not "what can the machines do for me?" but asking "what can I do for the machines?" . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Did electronic voting pass the test?
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/05/us_election_electronic_voting/print…> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Internet and Law ; eGovernment ; Did electronic voting pass the test? By Robin Bloor, Bloor Research (robin.lettice at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 5th November 2004 12:38 GMT At about the time that Senator John Kerry had accepted defeat and phoned President Bush to congratulate him, stories were circulating on the Internet claiming that the electronic voting machines in Florida and Ohio and some other states might have been rigged for a Bush victory. The claim stems from the fact that exit polls were indicating a marginal Kerry victory in those key states, but his apparent exit poll advantage was not reflected in the total vote count. This indeed was the shape of the story if you sat through the election night telethon. At first it looked as though Kerry was doing well, but as the night wore on a Bush victory became more and more likely. So what are we to think of the claim? Despite the "conspiracy theory", there is good reason to believe that it was a genuine Bush victory. First of all, the final outcome reflected the fact that Bush held a small lead in the opinion polls right up to election day. Although all of the individual polls were subject to a margin of error greater than Bush's lead, the aggregation of the polls was still slightly in favour of Bush (and this reduces the statistical error margin). The pollsters had been plagued by suggestions that they were not properly accounting for the youth vote and most, if not all of them, examined, re-examined and adjusted their weighting parameters in an attempt to account for the expected high youth vote for Kerry. The pollsters have a big self-interest in not being too far wrong. The indications, on election night itself, were that the level of disenfranchisement through technology failure, long lines of voting and voters being turned away from the polls for lack of proper credentials, was much lower than in 2000 and, although there may have been one or two areas where there were problems, there is no reason to believe that the election was skewed by such incidents. Another straw in the wind was the gambling money - which has historically provided a reasonable guide to an election's outcome. While it is illegal for most American's to place bets over the Internet (on anything), many of them do. Throughout the whole campaign the betting odds were in Bush's favour - in effect predicting a Bush victory simply by the weight of money that was gambling on that outcome. The figures for the total bets placed (on Betfair one of the leading sites for such bets) was $4.2m on Bush and $1.2m on Kerry. Finally, the results from Florida and Ohio, which were only marginally in Bush's favour were not particularly out of line with the voting in the US as a whole. As it worked out, these results seemed to reflect the mood of America. So what are we to think of the electronic voting "conspiracy theory"? Here too there are reasons to pause for thought. The companies that supply the machines (Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, and Sequoia Voting Systems) would destroy their own business if it were ever discovered that the technology was compromised. Would they take the risk? I personally doubt it, especially as it would involve bringing more than one or two people into the "conspiracy", any one of whom could go public on what was going down. Also, bending the software to affect the result in a very subtle way (and get it right) is probably very difficult to achieve. The margin for failure is high and the whole scheme is very risky. There is however legitimate cause for concern in the simple fact that many of the electronic voting machines that were deployed did not have audit trails that validated the figures they gave. If there were any kind of malfunction in any of these, there was simply no way to validate the figures. The justification for complete transparency and validation of voting technology is not only desirable but necessary. Indeed if ever there was a case for the open sourcing of program code then this is it. One hopes that by the time the next major elections in the US come round, there will be paper audit trails on every voting machine deployed. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Hedge Funds Are Bringing Democracy to the Financial World
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109986653339766981,00.html?mod=opi…> The Wall Street Journal November 8, 2004 BUSINESS EUROPE Hedge Funds Are Bringing Democracy to the Financial World By JEAN-MICHEL PAUL November 8, 2004 Assets under management by hedge funds have reached the $1 trillion mark, having grown at 20% a year since 1990. Hardly a day goes by without a new hedge fund being set up by a former trader or portfolio manager. This is the largest single structural change in the financial world since the coming of age of mutual funds at the beginning of the '80s. What we are in effect looking at is the beginning of a fundamental shift: the disintermediation of the role played by investment banks and their trading floors in particular. As technology allows set-up costs to dwindle and economies of scale to disappear, successful traders and portfolio managers, attracted by higher rewards, will continue to leave the large trading floors to set up shop offering formerly exclusive products to investors at large. In the process, a new market is being created and transaction costs decreased. Why and how is this happening? First and foremost, the hedge-fund revolution has been made possible by new technology that translated into a lower cost base. The sunk cost of starting and establishing a new investment and trading platform fund has literally collapsed -- as day traders well know. The Internet, together with the ever-increased capabilities of ever-cheaper computers and the democratization of programming and software skills, are enabling a few people to team up and create an efficient office at low cost. A team of two or three with a limited budget can now achieve what it would have taken dozens of people to do at considerably higher cost. Second, hedge funds are characterized by their asymmetric payoff. Managers typically get 2% of management fees and 20% of any performance achieved over a given benchmark. This incentive encourages the managers to perform, aligning investors' and managers' interest. It also means that the best traders will have an irrepressible incentive to set up their own hedge funds. The best performers will also have every interest in taking in as much money under management as they can without decreasing their performance. This means that asset allocation to traders and trading strategies is democratized and optimized. Investment banks have responded by embracing what they cannot prevent. They try to limit the brain drain by creating internal hedge-fund structures and to limit profitability decline by increasing the trading capital at risk. But beyond these defensive moves, they are inventing new roles for themselves as "platform provider," "prime broker" and even "capital introducers." This further modifies the financial landscape by allowing hedge funds to capitalize on the banks' distribution networks and customer access while maintaining their investment-decision independence. The keys to the banks' old trading-room environments were economies of scale, high sunk costs -- and professional asset allocation and supervision. Allocation is about optimal allocation of resources, chiefly capital, to the different strategies offered by the trading teams as opportunities come and go as the economic cycle unfolds. Risk control is about a constant independent review of the traders' positions, an ongoing assessment of the risk involved in the strategy. Upstart hedge funds have no risk-management departments but as traders set up independent hedge funds, risk control and asset allocation have been taken over by so-called funds of funds. These funds of funds, which receive funds from institutional investors and private banks, carry out repeated due diligence on hedge funds, looking for best of breeds. They also make regular quantitative and qualitative supervision control, so as to monitor ongoing risk-taking. Thanks to the expansion of the hedge-fund universe, trades and strategies that were yesterday the private backyard of investment banks are now, through hedge funds, available to traditional investors. This in itself creates for investors at large -- and chief among them pension funds and insurance -- a seemingly new asset class, that is a set of financial instruments whose payoff is fundamentally different and decorrelated from the traditional long-only approach. But the hedge fund world is not problem free. A question often associated with the hedge-fund transformation is capacity. By this, it is meant that the ability of a hedge fund to accommodate new investors while maintaining returns will diminish. There is no doubt that for "traditional" investments this is true. Similarly, as more and more "traders" arbitrage the same inefficiencies, these disappear, together with the arbitrage profits. This phenomenon explains a significant part of the lackluster results of the hedge-fund industry as a whole so far this year compared to former years. But because of the lower set-up costs, the lighter structure and higher incentives, ideas for new strategies are appearing and being deployed faster than ever before. This enables a continuous stream of new, if temporary, superior returns as start-up fund exploit new strategies. In other words, the law of creative destruction applies to hedge funds too, ensuring that new "alternative" funds will continuously replace overcrowded traditional alternative strategies. A related genuine concern is the increased level of leverage observed in the industry. As the industry develops to play its role as a significant asset class, some hedge funds, and indeed funds of funds, unable to find new markets to generate the uncorrelated alpha, the industry holy grail, continue to play their traditional market in an ever increasing leveraged way. But a leveraged position is bound to increase volatility. This, in turn, as was shown in the famous LTCM debacle, is bound to translate into failures from time to time. This is all the more the case because most positions will exhibit a strong correlation in a liquidity crisis. Indeed, hedge-fund failures are likely to become more common going forward, if only because the sheer number of hedge funds has increased. Similarly, pressure on hedge-fund margins is bound to increase. These corrections are also part of the market maturing and should be welcomed. Hedge funds are here to stay. The investment-disintermediation paradigm is based on a financial-industry reorganization that offers the prospect for a more efficient and transparent market as well as access to new investable asset classes. Its implications are as important to the financial sector as the appearance of the high-yield market in the 1980s was to the corporate-bond industry. Mr. Paul is a senior analyst at Atlas Capital Group. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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37 arrested in net gun swoop
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/05/met_guns_net/print.html> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT 37 arrested in net gun swoop By Tim Richardson (tim.richardson at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 5th November 2004 15:02 GMT Thirty-seven people have been arrested after the Metropolitan Police seized more than 100 firearms in a crackdown on weapons traded online. Some 700 addresses have been raided over the last four days as officers mounted the UK-wide operation. In all, 86 handguns, ten rifles, three machine guns, seven shotguns, 13 stun guns and a crossbow were nabbed in Operation Bembridge. Class A drugs were also seized during the raids. Said Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, Head of the Met's Specialist Crime Directorate: "This is the climax of a long-term intelligence operation where we have identified weaponry purchased over the Internet. I am delighted by its success and the sheer number of firearms, ammunition and other weapons seized will make London a safer city." The apparent ease to which guns are available online was highlighted this week by a Labour MP who compiled a list of handguns he claims were for sale on internet auction site, eBay. Steve McCabe, MP for Birmingham Hall Green, has called on eBay to pay closer attention to goods for sale on its pages after he was able to buy an air rifle on the auction site last month. He told the House of Commons: "The other week, it was possible for me to buy a gun from the eBay internet site. The way in which the sellers work is simple. They advertise an empty bag or box. The buyer bids for that bag or box, and when that is done, the seller throws in the gun for free. "This site is being used to facilitate a trade in illegal weapons," he said in a call for the Home Secretary to take action. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Dimpled Chips
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

<http://www.thecrimson.com/today/printerfriendly.aspx?ref=504331> The Harvard Crimson Online :: Print Article Originally published on Monday, November 08, 2004 in the Opinion section of The Harvard Crimson. Dimpled Chips By MATTHEW A. GLINE MATTHEW A. GLINE It seems perfectly reasonable that election officials in Palm Beach County, Fla. would have wanted a change in their voting equipment after the 2000 election. And touchscreen voting machines seemed like an obvious choice: Confusing butterfly ballots that had made the state a national laughing-stock were replaced by clear, well-labeled, brightly colored buttons; the machines were backed by the latest developments in counting technology (a field which has, somewhat counter-intuitively, apparently seen a fair bit of action in recent years); and most importantly of all, the nearest Chad would now be the one in North Africa. What the election officials were probably not expecting, however, was the experience of one particular Palm Springs voter, who after patiently tapping through screen after screen of national and local officials fulfilling her civic duty was presented with an unsatisfying message of all too familiar a form: "Vote save error #1," the machine said, "use back-up voting procedure." Voteprotect.org is a website run by a handful of nonprofit organizations including VerifiedVoting.org and the Electronic Frontier Foundation which collected and organized reports of voting irregularities during last Tuesday's election. A cursory look at their data on problems related to the voting machines themselves reveals some interesting trends. The entire state of Massachusetts, where votes are recorded in large part by older optical scanning equipment, reported a total of 7 such incidents out of nearly 3 million ballots-one for every 500,000 or so votes cast. Palm Beach County had 27 machine related incidents out of their 550,000 votes-each voter there was roughly three times more likely to report trouble with their equipment than a voter was here. These incidents ran the severity gamut. In Georgia, where all voting is done on touchscreen machines, voters complained of long lines due to malfunctioning machines or machines with dead batteries. There were complaints of slow machines, and machines which at first refused to accept the "smart cards" each voter used to identify themselves. Some machines crashed or went blank while they were being used. Some machines, however, had bigger issues: "Voter's machine defaulted to Republican candidate each time she voted for a Democrat," one report from Cobb County, Georgia reads. "She told the precinct supervisor about the problem. It continued to happen 7 times." Similar incidents occurred in reasonably large numbers-some voters tried to push a button for Kerry or Bush and found that the X would appear next to the name of the other candidate. These problems were probably not due to a vast right-wing conspiracy in the voting machine industry. (Though it's not entirely clear that such a conspiracy doesn't exist-a board member of Diebold Election Systems, the company which makes most of the touchscreen voting systems that have been deployed, did at one point guarantee he would deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004. The promise sounds even more ominous in hindsight.) Rather, most of the issues surrounded poor "calibration" of the touchscreen inputs-the machines would register taps on one part of the screen as if they had been taps at some slightly different point. There were technicians on hand who could recalibrate the machines, and this tended to fix the problems for subsequent voters. Still, as a result these machines relied on voters' being sufficiently astute to notice when the confirmation said something different than what they had chosen, and sufficiently persistent to duke it out with the machines and complain to overworked officials when things went wrong. And for all the effort on the part of Florida officials to escape "close calls" due to fuzzy voting tools, these errors sound a lot like the dimpled chads they endeavored to replace. Or they would, were it not for one more disquieting feature of most touchscreen voting equipment deployed in this election. Senator Kerry graciously conceded on Wednesday morning. But had he decided to fight it out and asked for hand recounts, it's not clear what this would mean with respect to the new machines: They produce no printed receipt. In fact, they leave no paper trail at all. A lawsuit fought out in the Florida court system over the past six months tried to change this fact, but election officials have ultimately refused to deploy such equipment, calling it a frivolous expense. I don't mean to doubt that President Bush won this election fairly, and I don't think touchscreen voting machines, for all their irregularities, tipped any balances. They even carried some ancillary benefits: Disabled persons, the blind in particular, were able to vote unassisted in a presidential election in large numbers for the first time in American history. Still, we need to be able to trust the machines we use to vote. This doesn't mean we need to understand how they work-no one should have to know that their voting machine employs strong cryptography to keep their votes safe. It does, however, mean that in our fleeting interaction with the machines, we have to be made confident they're doing what they're supposed to do. We don't, for the most part, trust our computers. We save often, we're told to run virus-scanning software-and still, we hear stories about lost theses and long treks in the snow to find working printers. But I think it's quite clear at this point that while it takes a few days (and maybe a letter grade or two hit) to rewrite a history paper, it can take years to recover from a presidential election. Matthew A. Gline '06 is a physics concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Mondays. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Atlanta will be test site for health card
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

<http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6433571/print/1/displaymode/1098/> MSNBC.com Atlanta will be test site for health card Transaction titan First Data will put credit-card machines in doctors' offices By Justin Rubner Atlanta Business Chronicle Updated: 7:00 p.m. ET Nov. 7, 2004 One of the nation's leading money movers now wants to move your medical information. Denver-based First Data Corp. has picked Atlanta as the first city to test a beefed-up credit-card machine it hopes will do nothing short of revolutionize the health-care industry. The financial transaction titan (NYSE: FDC) plans to start the pilot in January after completing several rounds of focus-group studies here during the next couple of months. The machine eventually would allow a doctor to find out everything about a patient's health benefits -- from claims status to eligibility to co-pay specifics -- with a swipe of a card. The information could then be printed out of the terminal, much like a credit-card receipt. Currently, a doctor or assistant has to photocopy a patient's insurance card and then call the patient's insurance company for specific information, check each insurance provider's Web site for more general information, or flat-out guess. "While the patient is still in care, we can immediately say how much the doctor needs to collect from the patient and the insurance company," said Beverly Kennedy, president of First Data's health-care division. Many in the health-care industry see an automated, nationwide system to process payments and transfer medical records as long overdue. For one, there's the mountain of paper records associated with the current way of doing business. Second, there's more complex government regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Adding to the complexity are increasingly complex health-care plans. Then, the costs of medical administration itself also are rising. Kennedy said $275 billion is spent each year on such administrative costs. Eventually, the hope is, an automated system would reduce such expenses. First Data wouldn't be the first player to attempt such an ambitious project. There is a program in Wyoming, North Dakota and Nevada that uses "smart cards" to store medical records, according to published reports. In addition, First Data competitor HealthTransaction Network Corp. is pushing insurance companies to issue debit cards that would be linked to medical spending accounts. But an inclusive nationwide system has been hard to come by, primarily because of the high number of small, loosely connected doctors' offices. Real-time intelligence First Data's machine, manufactured by Phoenix-based Hypercom Corp. (NYSE: HYC), will have smart-chip technology as well as the familiar magnetic strips. Such chips, which are not being tested in the pilot, allow a greater amount of information to be passed through and allow that information to be stored. There are privacy concerns that need to be ironed out. However, when policy intersects with technology, the terminals will be ready with the chips, which already have been used in Europe, Kennedy said. Insurance companies participating in the program will give their customers special cards to be used at participating health-care facilities. One of the state's biggest insurance companies, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia Inc., could be one such participant. Spokesman Charlie Harman said the company is in talks with First Data but declined to give specifics, saying it was too "proprietary" in nature. "This is an important concept," Harman said. "We need to marry technology to the health-care system." Harman said Blue Cross Blue Shield already is on the cutting edge of technology; for example, it is actively involved with a system that allows physicians to send prescriptions to pharmacists electronically. Some hospitals also are involved with "e-prescribing," including Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. To make it seemingly risk-free for doctors, First Data will give the terminals away, Kennedy said. But that doesn't mean the company won't make money -- First Data collects transaction fees, as it owns the network the information travels over. First Data, Western Union Financial Services Inc.'s parent company, processes all sorts of financial transactions over its network. The company provides electronic commerce and payment services for approximately 3.1 million merchant locations, 1,400 card issuers and millions of consumers. The terminals will plug into the wall just like the current generation of credit-card terminals and will be easy to use, Kennedy said. "It's got to be 'simple-stupid,' " Kennedy said. "It's got to be intuitive." Initially, the terminals will be tested in medical doctors' offices and will offer only eligibility data. The doctors have not yet been chosen. Eventually, Kennedy said, officials plan to expand the program nationally to opticians and dentists and it would offer a complete suite of medical information -- referrals, authorization, claims status. The "light at the end of the tunnel" would be for the program to offer real-time claims adjudication. Kennedy said Atlanta was a clear choice for the pilot primarily due to its size and diverse mix of insurance companies and government programs. The company wanted a large player -- like Blue Cross Blue Shield -- and a good "sprinkling" of national players and small insurance companies. Another important factor is Atlanta's fairly large number of provider groups, or administrative offices that run several doctors' offices. So far, tests have gone smoothly, the company says. "They absolutely love this," Kennedy said. "They keep asking when they can get their own terminals." ) 2004 Atlanta Business Chronicle -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: This Memorable Day
by John Kelsey 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

>From: Peter Gutmann <pgut001(a)cs.auckland.ac.nz> >Sent: Nov 6, 2004 2:10 AM >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net, ocorrain(a)yahoo.com >Subject: Re: This Memorable Day >The figure that's usually quoted is that 80% of German's military force was >directed against Russia. Of the remaining 20%, a lot had already been engaged >by France, the UK (via the BEF, the RAF, North Africa), Greece, etc etc before >the US got involved in Europe. So the Russians should get most of the credit. Yep. I think to a first approximation, the US defeated Japan and the USSR defeated Germany. My impression is that a lot of the push to do the D-Day invasion was to make sure the USSR didn't end up in possession of all of Europe at the end of the war. (Given how things developed, this was a pretty sensible concern.) >Peter. --John

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Single Field Shapes Quantum Bits
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

<http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/11/rnb_110804.asp?trk=nl> Technology Review Single Field Shapes Quantum Bits November 8, 2005 Quantum computers, which tap the properties of particles like atoms, photons and electrons to carry out computations, could potentially use a variety of schemes: individual photons controlled by optical networks, clouds of atoms linked by laser beams, and electrons trapped in quantum dots embedded in silicon chips. Due to the strange nature of quantum particles, quantum computers are theoretically much faster than ordinary computers at solving certain large problems, like cracking secret codes. Chip-based quantum computers would have a distinct advantage - they could leverage the manufacturing infrastructure of the semiconductor industry. Controlling individual electrons, however, is extremely challenging. Researchers have recently realized that it may be possible to control the electrons in a quantum computer using a single magnetic field rather than having to produce extremely small, precisely focused magnetic fields for each electron. Researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin at Madison have advanced this idea with a scheme that allows individual electrons to serve as the quantum bits that store and process computer information. Electrons have two magnetic orientations, spin up and spin down, which can represent the 1s and 0s of computing. The researchers' scheme relies on the interactions of pairs of electrons. Tiny electrodes positioned near quantum dots -- bits of semiconductor material that can trap single electrons - can draw neighboring electrons near enough that they exchange energy. The researchers' scheme takes a pair of electrons through eleven incremental steps that involve the electron interaction and a global magnetic field to flip one of the bits from a 0 to a 1 or vice versa. The technique could be used practically in 10 to 20 years, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the July 15, 2004 issue of Physical Review Letters. Technology Research News -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Blackbox: Elections fraud in 2004
by J.A. Terranson 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ BREAKING -- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it. Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. ----------------------------------------------- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: We.re awaiting independent analysis on some pretty crooked-looking elections. In the mean time, here.s something to chew on. Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED -- the National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that your voting system is safe. This trust was breached. NASED certified the systems based on the recommendation of an .Independent Testing Authority. (ITA). What no one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for security (and NASED didn.t seem to mind). The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California Secretary of State.s office had trouble getting its hands on one. The ITA refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine our surprise when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple of them showed up in our mailbox. The most important test on the ITA report is called the .penetration analysis.. This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break into the system to tamper with the votes. .Not applicable,. wrote Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that tested the Diebold GEMS central tabulator software. .Did not test.. Shawn Southworth .tested. whether every candidate on the ballot has a name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most important question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth.s report says .not reviewed.. Ciber .tested.whether the manual gives a description of the voting system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report says .not applicable.. Ciber .tested. whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when Bev Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators accepting large numbers of .minus. votes, he said he didn.t mention that in his report because .the vendors don.t like him to put anything negative. in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors. Shawn Southworth didn.t do the penetration analysis, but check out what he wrote: .Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS software version 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED certification number N03060011815.. Was this just a one-time oversight? Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. Here is the same Ciber certification section for VoteHere; as you can see, the critical security test, the .penetration analysis. was again marked .not applicable. and was not done. Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test. Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier. Here is a copy of the full Ciber report (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on GEMS 1.18.15. Here is a zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. Here is a real live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your findings. TIPS: The password for the vote database is .password. and you should place it in the .LocalDB. directory in the GEMS folder, which you.ll find in .program files.. Who the heck is NASED? They are the people who certified this stuff. You.ve gotta ask yourself: Are they nuts? Some of them are computer experts. Well, it seems that several of these people suddenly want to retire, and the whole NASED voting systems board is becoming somewhat defunct, but these are the people responsible for today's shoddy voting systems. If the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to certify a voting system, and you get a report that plainly states that security was .not tested. and .not applicable. -- what would you do? Perhaps we should ask them. Go ahead. Let's hold them accountable for the election we just had. (Please, e-mail us their answers) They don't make it very easy to get their e-mail and fax information; when you find it, let us know and we'll post it here. NASED VOTING SYSTEMS/ITA ACCREDITATION BOARD Thomas R. Wilkey, Executive Director, New York State Board of Elections David Elliott, (former) Asst. Director of Elections, Washington State James Hendrix, Executive Director, State Election Commission, South Carolina Denise Lamb, Director, State Bureau of Elections, New Mexico Sandy Steinbach, Director of Elections, Iowa Donetta Davidson, Secretary of State, Colorado Connie Schmidt, Commissioner, Johnson County Election Commission, Kansas (the late) Robert Naegele, President Granite Creek Technology, Pacific Grove, California Brit Williams, Professor, CSIS Dept, Kennesaw State College, Georgia Paul Craft, Computer Audit Analyst, Florida State Division of Elections Florida Steve Freeman, Software Consultant, League City, Texas Jay W. Nispel, Senior Principal Engineer, Computer Sciences Corporation Annapolis Junction, Maryland Yvonne Smith (Member Emeritus), Former Assistant to the Executive Director Illinois State Board of Elections, Illinois Penelope Bonsall, Director, Office of Election Administration, Federal Election Commission, Washington, D.C. Committee Secretariat: The Election Center, R. Doug Lewis, Executive Director Houston, Texas, Tele: 281-293-0101 # # # # # THURSDAY Nov. 4 2004: If you are concerned about what happened Tuesday, Nov. 2, you have found a home with our organization. Help America Audit. Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. We need: Lawyers to enforce public records laws. Some counties have already notified us that they plan to stonewall by delaying delivery of the records. We need citizen volunteers for a number of specific actions. We need computer security professionals willing to GO PUBLIC with formal opinions on the evidence we provide, whether or not it involves DMCA complications. We need funds to pay for copies of the evidence. TUESDAY Nov 2 2004: BREAKING NEWS: New information indicates that hackers may have targeted the central computers that are counting our votes. Freedom of Information requests are not free. We need to raise $50,000 as quickly as possible to pay for records and the fees some states charge for them. We launched one major FOIA action last night, and have two more on the way, pell-mell. Now is the time. If you can't donate funds, please donate time. E-mail to join the Cleanup Crew. Important: Watch this 30-minute film clip Voting without auditing. (Are we insane?) SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Nov 3 2004 -- Did the voting machines trump exit polls? There.s a way to find out. Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. America: We have permission to say No to unaudited voting. It is our right. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips. An earlier FOIA is more sensitive, and has not been disclosed here. We will notify you as soon as we can go public with it. Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour deletion on election night; .trouble slips. revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists. Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer protection group for elections. You may view the first volley of public records requests here: Freedom of Information requests here Responses from public officials will be posted in the forum, is organized by state and county, so that any news organization or citizens group has access to the information. Black Box Voting will assist in analysis, by providing expertise in evaluating the records. Watch for the records online; Black Box Voting will be posting the results as they come in. And by the way, these are not free. The more donations we get, the more FOIAs we are empowered to do. Time's a'wasting. We look forward to seeing you participate in this process. Join us in evaluating the previously undisclosed inside information about how our voting system works. Play a part in reclaiming transparency. It.s the only way. # # # # # Public Records Request - November 2, 2004 From: Black Box Voting To: Elections division Pursuant to public records law and the spirit of fair, trustworthy, transparent elections, we request the following documents. We are requesting these as a nonprofit, noncommercial group acting in the capacity of a news and consumer interest organization, and ask that if possible, the fees be waived for this request. If this is not possible, please let us know which records will be provided and the cost. Please provide records in electronic form, by e-mail, if possible - crew(a)blackboxvoting.org. We realize you are very, very busy with the elections canvass. To the extent possible, we do ask that you expedite this request, since we are conducting consumer audits and time is of the essence. We request the following records. Item 1. All notes, emails, memos, and other communications pertaining to any and all problems experienced with the voting system, ballots, voter registration, or any component of your elections process, beginning October 12, through November 3, 2004. Item 2. Copies of the results slips from all polling places for the Nov. 2, 2004 election. If you have more than one copy, we would like the copy that is signed by your poll workers and/or election judges. Item 3: The internal audit log for each of your Unity, GEMS, WinEds, Hart Intercivic or other central tabulating machine. Because different manufacturers call this program by different names, for purposes of clarification we mean the programs that tally the composite of votes from all locations. Item 4: If you are in the special category of having Diebold equipment, or the VTS or GEMS tabulator, we request the following additional audit logs: a. The transmission logs for all votes, whether sent by modem or uploaded directly. You will find these logs in the GEMS menu under .Accuvote OS Server. and/or .Accuvote TS Server. b. The .audit log. referred to in Item 3 for Diebold is found in the GEMS menu and is called .Audit Log. c. All .Poster logs.. These can be found in the GEMS menu under .poster. and also in the GEMS directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, as a text file. Simply print this out and provide it. d. Also in the Data file directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, please provide any and all logs titled .CCLog,. .PosterLog., and Pserver Log, and any logs found within the .Download,. .Log,. .Poster. or .Results. directories. e. We are also requesting the Election Night Statement of Votes Cast, as of the time you stopped uploading polling place memory cards for Nov. 2, 2004 election. Item 5: We are requesting every iteration of every interim results report, from the time the polls close until 5 p.m. November 3. Item 6: If you are in the special category of counties who have modems attached, whether or not they were used and whether or not they were turned on, we are requesting the following: a. internal logs showing transmission times from each voting machine used in a polling place b. The Windows Event Viewer log. You will find this in administrative tools, Event Viewer, and within that, print a copy of each log beginning October 12, 2004 through Nov. 3, 2004. Item 7: All e-mails, letters, notes, and other correspondence between any employee of your elections division and any other person, pertaining to your voting system, any anomalies or problems with any component of the voting system, any written communications with vendors for any component of your voting system, and any records pertaining to upgrades, improvements, performance enhancement or any other changes to your voting system, between Oct. 12, 2004 and Nov. 3, 2004. Item 8: So that we may efficiently clarify any questions pertaining to your specific county, please provide letterhead for the most recent non-confidential correspondence between your office and your county counsel, or, in lieu of this, just e-mail us the contact information for your county counsel. Because time is of the essence, if you cannot provide all items, please provide them in increments as soon as you have them, and please notify us by telephone (206-335-7747) or email (Bevharrismail(a)aol.com) as soon as you have any portion of the above public records request available for review. Thank you very much, and here.s hoping for a smooth and simple canvass which works out perfectly for you. We very, very much appreciate your help with this, and we do realize how stressful this election has been. If you need a local address, please let me know, and we will provide a local member for this public records request. In the interest of keeping your life simple, we thought it best to coordinate all records through one entity so that you don.t get multiple local requests. # # # # # We now have evidence that certainly looks like altering a computerized voting system during a real election, and it happened just six weeks ago. MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now. There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. .Turning off. the modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting server from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet. In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside intrusion. It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem .trouble slips. consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of events. COMPUTER FOLKS: Here are the details about remote access vulnerability through the modem connecting polling place voting machines with the central vote-counting server in each county elections office. This applies specifically to all Diebold systems (1,000 counties and townships), and may also apply to other vendors. The prudent course of action is to disconnect all modems, since the downside is small and the danger is significant. The central servers are installed on unpatched, open Windows computers and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines. Since RAS is not adequately protected, anyone in the world, even terrorists, who can figure out the server's phone number can change vote totals without being detected by observers. The passwords in many locations are easily guessed, and the access phone numbers can be learned through social engineering or war dialing. ELECTION OFFICIALS: The only way to protect tomorrow's election from this type of attack is to disconnect the servers from the modems now. Under some configurations, attacks by remote access are possible even if the modem appears to be turned off. The modem lines should be physically disconnected. We obtained these documents through a public records request. The video was taken at a press conference held by the King County elections chief Friday Oct 29. The audit log is a computer-generated automatic record similar to the "black box" in an airplane, that automatically records access to the Diebold GEMS central tabulator (unless, of course, you go into it in the clandestine way we demonstrated on September 22 in Washington DC at the National Press club.) The central tabulator audit log is an FEC-required security feature. The kinds of things it detects are the kinds of things you might see if someone was tampering with the votes: Opening the vote file, previewing and/or printing interim results, altering candidate definitions (a method that can be used to flip votes). Three hours is missing altogether from the Sept. 14 Washington State primary held six weeks ago. Here is a copy of the GEMS audit log. Note that all entries from 9:52 p.m. until 1:31 a.m. are missing. One report that GEMS automatically puts in the audit log is the "summary report." This is the interim results report. We obtained the actual Sept. 14 summary reports, printed directly from the King County tabulator GEMS program, because we went there and watched on election night and collected these reports. These reports were also collected by party observers, candidates, and were on the Web site for King County. Here are summary reports which are now missing from the audit log. Note the time and date stamps on the reports. Note also that they are signed by Dean Logan, King County elections chief. We have the original reports signed in ink on election night. What does all this mean? We know that summary reports show up in the audit log. There are other audit logs, like the one that tracks modem transmissions, but this audit log tracks summary reports. Dean Logan held a press conference Friday morning, Oct. 29. Kathleen Wynne, a citizen investigator for Black Box Voting, attended the press conference and asked Dean Logan why three hours are missing from the audit log. Here is a video clip Logan said the empty three hours is because no reports were printed. OK. But we have summary reports from 10:34 p.m., 11:38 p.m., 12:11 a.m., 12:46 a.m., and 1:33 p.m. These reports were during the time he said no reports were run. Either the software malfunctioned, or audit log items were deleted. Because remote access through the modems is possible, the system may have been hacked, audit log deleted, without Logan realizing it. Perhaps there are two of this particular kind of audit log? Perhaps this is an incomplete one? Bev Harris called King County elections office records employee Mary Stoa, asking if perhaps there are any other audit logs at all. Mary Stoa called back, reporting that according to Bill Huennikens of King County elections, the audit log supplied to us in our public records request is the only one and the comprehensive and complete one. Perhaps it is a computer glitch? The audit log is 168 pages long and spans 120 days, and the 3 hours just happen to be missing during the most critical three hours on election night. Diebold says altering the audit log cannot be done. Of course, we know a chimpanzee can't get into an elections office and play with the computer, but to demonstrate how easy it is to delete audit log entries, we taught a chimpanzee to delete audit records using an illicit "back door" to get into the program, Diebold told reporters it was a "magic show." Yet, Diebold's own internal memos show they have known the audit log could be altered since 2001! Here is a Diebold memo from October 2001, titled "Altering the audit log," written by Diebold principal engineer Ken Clark: "King County is famous for it" [altering the audit log] Here is Dean Logan, telling a Channel 5 King-TV News reporter that there were no unexpected problems with the Diebold programs. This was at the "MBOS" central ballot counting facility in King County in the wee hours of Sept. 15, on Election Night. Dean Logan on Election Night, Sept 14 2004 Note that he says there were no problems with modem transmission. When we obtained the trouble slips, in a public records request -- documentation that indeed the modems were not working fine, we were accidentally given the access phone number for King County. Were we so inclined, if we had simply kept this under our hat, we could take control of your central server on election night from our living room. Here are the trouble slips showing problems with modems. Note that King County generously provided us with the "secret" information needed to hack in by remote access. We did redact the specific information that gives this information to you. Here are more trouble tickets. One that is a concern: "OK to format memory card?" (This would wipe out the votes in the electronic ballot box.) Election officials: Disconnect those modems NOW. If you don't: You gotta be replaced. Reporters: Some election officials will lie to you. Show your kids what bravery looks like. Be courageous. Report the truth. Citizens: Please help us by joining the Cleanup Crew. For now, e-mail crew(a)blackboxvoting.org to join, since our signup form has been taken out. Candidates: Make a statement. Do not concede on Election Night. Wait until audits and records can be examined. # # # # # HOW TO MONITOR THE CENTRAL TABULATOR: Black Box Voting developed these guidelines to help you create an audit log, which can then be compared with the FEC-required computer-generated audit log inside the computer. Yes, this is a lot of stuff, and it might feel overwhelming, but whatever you can do -- it is very much appreciated. THINGS TO BRING WITH YOU - A notebook and pen. Preferably a notebook with a sewn binding, if you can find one. Do not take notes on a computer. - A cell phone - Binoculars If you can, also bring these: - A camera - A small tape recorder - A video camera, with a zoom lens if possible Note that some counties will require you to turn off your video camera during the entering of passwords, a valid request. You should, however, be able to videotape the rest. Don.t pull your camera out right away. Avoid confrontation by leaving your video camera in the bag -- better yet, a purse. Pull it out only when there is an event of significance. HUMAN FACTORS You can.t be effective if you make assumptions or let others intimidate you. - Don.t let others make you feel dumb. - Make no assumptions about security. It might be worse than you expect. - Don.t count on the accuracy of anything other people tell you, even if they work for the county or the vendor. - About party observers, techies, or lawyers: Remember that they have not examined the actual software or setup, and they are operating on assumptions, hearsay, or in some cases, may be trying to misdirect your attention. - Vendor contracts prohibit county officials from examining their own software. Elections officials may just be repeating what someone else (the vendor) has told them. YOUR ROLE AS AN OBSERVER: CREATE YOUR OWN AUDIT LOG so it can be compared to the real audit log. Write down the following. For every event, write the date, time, including minutes. 1. NAMES & AFFILIATIONS: Get the names of everyone there. Find out affiliation. 2. WHERE ARE THE COMPUTERS: Establish the number and location of all vote tabulation computers. They call them different things: tabulators, servers. What you want is the computer that adds up all the votes from everywhere in the county. - Some counties have only one. If there are more than one, find out where each one is. If there is more than one tabulator, ask if they are networked together and find out if any of them are in places you can.t observe. 3. SYNCHRONIZE YOUR WATCH with the central vote-tally computer. Ask officials to tell you the time on the computer. If more than one, ask for the time of each and the ID number of each. log the date and time, to the minute, in this format: Nov 02 2004 11:25 p.m. Nov. 03 2004 01:15 a.m. CREATE A LOG FOR THE FOLLOWING: People: Ask names and affiliations for, and log the START and STOP time for: a. Who accesses the terminal (the keyboard and screen) b. Who sits at the terminal c. Who accesses the server (the computer the screen is hooked up to) d. Who enters and leaves the room COMPUTER ACTIVITIES: Log the START and STOP time for the following events and write down the name of the person involved: a. Putting disks, CDs, or any other item in the computer b. Taking disks, CDs, or any other item out of the computer c. Uploading disks, CDs, or any other item d. Viewing a preview of a report e. Putting a report on the Web, even if this is done from another computer f. Printing a report g. NOTE WHAT.S ON THE SCREEN: Use binoculars to view the screen. - Note upload icons. - Use binoculars to read and record error messages. Note the time. - Note indicators of processes, when a status bar shows how much is left to do h. PROGRAM CRASHES: - Watch to see if the program suddenly disappears from the screen (a program crash) or any system error message appears. If so, note the time and other details, and see below for how to record system crashes. - Get the date and time and note who was at the computer - Note whether any results were being transmitted or uploaded at the time the crash occurred. - Did the crash take down the whole computer or did it just close the tabulator program unexpectedly. - Log all activities and conversations that occur just after the crash. If have a tape recorder, leave it in your purse, now is the time to turn it on. But keep making notes regardless of whether you have tape, and trust your gut. What you think might be important is probably important. WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING YOU CAN FIND OUT ABOUT MODEMS. i. Note when, where, and who feeds ballot data into the computer in the central office. Describe what they are feeding the cards into, where the items are located, who does it, and when. j. DISK MANAGEMENT: - Note what kind of data storage device is used to move data around. You are looking for floppy disks, CDs, USB keys (about the size of a pack of gum). - Note where they get the disk from originally (whether it was from the machine, meaning it could have a program or data on it already, or out of a package of new disks). - Track the chain of custody: Where it is taken, and have someone watch it when taken to any other machine, note what programs you can see on the other machine - Note whether (and what time) it comes back and if it is put into the machine again. k. Moving the results: They have to move the results somehow. Ask questions about their procedures. - Is someone coming and going every hour or so with paper results? - Are they moving results to the Internet with a floppy or CD or USB key (looks like a little piece of plastic, about the size of a piece of gum) - If no one is leaving the machine to post the results, chances are they are doing this at the computer, meaning they are probably hooked up to a network or the Internet. Ask questions about the details and record what they say, and the name of the person who says it. l. If you see somebody open a web page or they do something that lets you know there has been Internet access, write it down. m. BEHAVIORAL CUES: - Note whether people look worried or stressed. Log the time it begins and the time it ends and who they are. - A now a word about .wranglers.. Some elections offices appoint a person -- sometimes a party observer they are chummy with -- to act as .wranglers.. They identify any person who might ask troublesome questions, and if an event occurs that could cause embarrassment, the appointed wrangler then goes over to distract the observers. Really. This is an elections procedure in some jurisdictions. They actually call it a wrangler. - If someone comes over and engages you in conversation, look around, and see if officials have suddenly congregated into an office or people are huddling over a computer. See if you can find out what you are not supposed to see. - Log behavior that is distracting, noting the time and person. - Log time and people involved in other distraction events, for example: The lights suddenly go out; a fire alarm goes off; someone spills something, loud noises, someone knocks something over. RECORDS TO REQUEST: Each state has a public records act, but in most cases, you can get records you ask for if you are nice. Here are important records you.ll want: 1. Get a copy of each INTERIM RESULTS REPORT. Stand guard over what you have. If someone comes in to remove or .replace one with a better copy. hang onto the first and take the replacement, marking it. Make sure all interim reports are time-stamped by the computer. If they aren.t, note the exact time you see them appear. 2. Request the COMPUTER AUDIT LOG for Oct. 29-Nov 2 (actually, it is important to get the printout BEFORE YOU LEAVE that night. It will only be a few pages, and can be printed from the vote-tally program.s menu. 3. Ask for a copy of all the POLLING PLACE RESULTS SLIPS. These are sent in with the results cartridges. Try to get copies before you leave that night. If they won.t give copies to you then, put in a public records request and ask how soon you can pick them up. 4. Ask for a copy of THE UPLOAD LOGS. These are on the computer and can be printed out on election night. They list each polling place and the time results were uploaded. 5. There are ADDITIONAL LOGS in the Diebold GEMS programs you can request: >From the GEMS folder .data., ask for the poster logs. There may be folders in the GEMS .data. directory titled .download., .log., .poster. and .results.. Ask for copies of these logs. 6. Here.s a report that is very long but incredibly important and valuable. Ask if you can have the ELECTION NIGHT DETAIL REPORT -- the precinct by precinct results as of the time all memory cards are uploaded from all precincts. Depending on the system, they.ll call it different things -- in Diebold, it is called the Statement of Votes Cast (SOVC) report. 7. Let us know which REPORTS THEY REFUSE to give you on Election Night. We can then put in Freedom of Information (public records) requests formally. Once we have your observation log, and the records you obtain on Election Night, we can start matching up events and data to audit for anomalies. # # # # # Post information in the county and state at BlackBoxVoting.ORG. If the site is hacked out, come back as soon as it is up and post the information. Thank you, and let.s have an orderly election. # # # # # Now, there is a film crew who has been brave enough to capture what's really going on: THIS IS THE ONE: Here's the film that's breaking new ground on voting machine investigations. Includes never before seen footage and information: download 30 minute preview of the upcoming feature film. NOTE: Please give your attention to the real film by the real investigators: Russell Michaels, Simon Ardizzone, and Robert Carrillo Cohen -- they are the real deal. (Someone who ran off with a portion of the proprietary footage has been pitching a similarly named, inferior production which is missing most of the good stuff.) By the way, we've worked with most of the documentary producers out there, and Russell Michaels, Simon Ardizzone and Robert Carrillo Cohen are in a class by themselves -- In my opinion, they are the only filmmakers who have been doing real, in-depth, long-term in-the-field investigations on this issue -- Bev Harris. Remember: - Don't concede: Candidates, make a statement about voting without auditing. Hold off on your concession until the canvass is done - Gotta be replaced: If your county melts down into litigation, hold officials accountable if they chose to ignore warnings and failed to mitigate risks with preventive actions (like disconnecting telephone modems). Note that most voting machine problems will be found between Nov. 3-12, during the canvass, and a few weeks later, when public records requests are obtained.

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Re: Your source code, for sale
by Tyler Durden 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

>What if I block the outbound "release the money" message after I >unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you >can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have >usable product and you don't have usable money. Well, yes, but this would be a very significant step forward from the current situation. As t-->infinity the vast majority of non-payments are going to be for the purpose of greed. If the payment is already 'gone', then you need a whole different set of motives for wanting to screw somebody even if you get nothing out of it. So in other words, you have at least solved the payment problem "to the first order", with no 3rd party. With fancier mechanisms I would think you can solve it to 2nd order too. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Check out Election 2004 for up-to-date election news, plus voter tools and more! http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx

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