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CDR: Florida absentee ballots
by George＠Orwellian.Org 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

http://www.tvdance.com/bush-gore/ ---- Overseas absentee ballots, as opposed to in-state... http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0046/elect4.shtml WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 15-With the presidential election supposedly hanging on Friday's count of absentee ballots from overseas, observers caution this potential bomb may turn out to be a dud. So far only 447 military ballots have been received by the postal authorities. At that rate, The Washington Post calculates, the amount of military ballots would end up at an underwhelming 750-a far cry from the originally projected 2300. Military votes were projected to make up the bulk of overseas ballots, which are set to be tallied on Friday, November 17. As the Voice reported last week, Monte Friedkin, chairman of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party, said state elections officials had not picked up at least 500 absentee ballots from the post office on Election Day, raising the possibility that someone is tampering with the absentee vote. In theory, absentee ballots from the armed forces would help Republican George W. Bush, who clings to a slender 300-vote margin. In 1996, Republican Bob Dole received most of those votes. But Pentagon observers caution this may not be the case. While there is no love lost for Clinton-Gore among the military branches, it's not a done deal by any means. Soldiers and sailors vote along class lines, with the brass going for Bush. But the enlisted soldiers, especially black men and women, could just as easily turn out for Gore. Florida beefed up its laws governing absentee ballots after a Miami election was overturned due to fraud. But Democrats question whether the statutes are working, because they claim Republic an-controlled county elections officials violated the law by sending out absentee ballots to people who didn't ask for them. State law stipulates voters must request absentee ballots. Perhaps the small number of absentee ballots can be explained by the following: WorldNetDaily reported yesterday that a source on the USS Tarawa, a U.S. assault ship near Yemen, said that "thousands" of ballots were languishing onboard. The Pentagon, which first denied this report, now says, according to the New York Post, that the ballots of some 3000 sailors and marines on the USS Tarawa, USS Duluth, and USS Anchorage would be flown back to the United States "expeditiously." Capt. Van P. Brinson, who says he did not receive his absentee ballot, told WorldNetDaily he penned a November 8 e-mail in which he wrote: "I cannot speak for the remainder of the crew of the Tarawa, but I do know that the majority of the Marines and sailors that I have spoken with are in the same boat. What is distressing about the situation is that a majority of the pilots aboard are registered voters in Florida." Stripped of confusing press reporting and legalistic mumbo jumbo, the results of the endless Florida recount so far amount to next to nothing. According to Sam Smith?s Prorev.com afternoon tally, after a week of recounting, the change in the vote "finally certified by the state for Palm Beach County represented two-tenths of 1 percent." As reported previously, Gore carried Palm Beach County by 140,000 votes, collecting 24 percent of the total vote.

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CDR: BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans
by R. A. Hettinga 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

--- begin forwarded text

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Re: Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
by Lynn.Wheeler＠firstdata.com 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

As an aside ... AADS (http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ ) relies on existing business processes that provide secure bindings in account records ... just adding public key & digital signature to existing authentication processes for non-face-to-face and/or face-to-face transactions (i.e. the meaning of what is in the account bindings continues to be what the business processes have defined those meanings to be). existing e-commerce is straight forward because it operates almost totally within existing account-based business processes ... and the business transactions tend to include more complex bindings from the acocunt records (than just authentication) ... things like real-time credit-limit, open-to-buy, running totals, month-to-date and/or year-to-date activity, etc. the original PKI target from the early '80s for offline email authentication was a problem since it mostly any kind of authentication binding processes. "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> on 11/11/2000 11:25:35 AM Please respond to "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com>

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CDR: the ballot
by Tom Vogt 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

text in german, but I guess everyone will get the point... finally, we have a copy of the *real* official ballot... http://www.autsch.de/sdw_111300.html :))

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CDR: Bush's legal contradictions
by George＠Orwellian.Org 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

It's all just politics... Bush said keep it out of the courts, then went to Federal court. Now...(snipped) http://foxnews.com/election_night/111600/trail.sml # # The Florida Supreme Court, in a one-paragraph decision, denied # a petition by Florida Secretary of State Harris to halt manual # recounts in at least two counties and consolidate 11 lower-court # cases into a single one. The ruling gave elections officials # in Palm Beach and Broward counties reason to restart a hand count # of as many as 1 million votes. # # The Bush campaign has argued that the seven-member state panel # - filled entirely by Democrats - has no authority in the case. # "It's my opinion that the [Florida] Supreme Court has no # jurisdiction," said Barry Richard, a Bush legal adviser.

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CDR: Late-postmarked ballots from ZOG-occupied Palestine
by Tim May 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

Now we hear of calls urging dual-citizenship residents of ZOG-occupied Palestine to send in absentee ballots to Florida, especially for the estimated 400 dual-citizenship, or visiting tourists, from Palm Beach County. The claim is that if they can "prove" they were unable to have them postmarked by the time polls closed in Florida, due to the violence or whatever, that maybe they will still be allowed in. (And I wouldn't put it past the ZOG to rig the postmarks and then put the ballots on a fast jet to Florida.) According to a Reuters story, " Friday November 10 12:52 PM ET U.S. Absentee Voters in Mideast 'Unknown Quantity' By Danielle Haas JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Absentee voters living in Israel and Palestinian territories could influence the outcome of the razor-edge U.S. presidential election but are unlikely to be able to vote late, a U.S. embassy official said on Friday. Some analysts had speculated that voters registered in Florida but living in Israel and Palestinian-ruled areas could still send in ballot papers if they proved they were unable to postmark them by the November 7 deadline. " -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.

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CDR: CIA proctologists
by anonymous＠openpgp.net 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

US Citizenship is required, as is successful completion of a medical evaluation, polygraph interview and an extensive background investigation. A "medical evaluation"?? http://www.odci.gov/cia/employment/jobpostings/architectstud.htm

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CDR: (CCS New Release) Futures Outlook, Broadcast
by info＠ccstrade.com 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

Dear Client/Subscriber, Now that our new site has been released, we wanted to make you aware of two new items available to you: 1.) The Fall Futures Outlook. A comprehensive 100+ page report, covering many aspects of all major markets including fundamental and technical analysis, both short term and long term, from stocks, interest rates, currencies ... to grains, softs, meats ... etc. 2.) Live broadcast direct from analysts on the floor of the exchanges. The flash broadcast after last Thursday's important USDA Crop Production report gave us an immediate interpretation of the numbers. Check out the Initial Snapshot Report and the six page follow-up under "Research" on our website. Here's a link for your convenience. http://www.ccstrade.com/ccs/research/ Look for additional new releases and upgrades over the next several weeks. As always, we appreciate your business and continued support. Thank You, Lannie Cohen, President Capitol Commodity Services, Inc. http://www.ccstrade.com/ (800) 876-8050 (317) 848-8050

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CDR: Re: Fwd: First Site
by David Marshall 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

ellie900(a)usa.com writes: > THE NEW LINK FOR OUR SITE. > SORRY FOR ANY TROUBLE YOU MAY HAVE HAD WITH THE OLD LINK. > THIS ONE HAS ALL THE CORRECTIONS > > http://3638141293/36/1059436/legal.html One boggles when some idiot who spams refers to a URL as a "line," and then can't even give a valid URL. What did they do, convert the IP to a single value and then translate it to decimal? Why? It's obviously to dodge complaints. I have to wonder about anybody who would write a browser which accepts something like that in the first place.

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CDR: Re: [ca-firearms] voting
by petro 16 Nov '00

16 Nov '00

>> From: petro <petro(a)bounty.org> >> >> It would be fairly simple to eliminate *most* of the current >> voter fraud schemes, and fairly inexpensive. > >Please provide details of this simple technique for >eliminating voter fraud. I've always found utopian >fantasies intriguing. "Reading Comprehension Counts". Please re-read the sentence you quoted. I do not claim that it would be fairly simple to eliminate *all* voter fraud, simply to eliminate *most* of the current schemes, and at only a fairly small increase over what is now spent. Heck, in the long run it might even save money. > >(In formulating your prospectus, please keep in mind >and provide detailed specifications for dealing with the >old bugaboo identified by our old pal Juvenal: "Sed >quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? [Who will guard the >guards themselves?]" Statistics. Keep in mind that I haven't spent days or weeks working on this, and I am sure that this will open up *new* methods of fraud, but I don't claim to be able to prevent that. As in many security protocols, the goal is simply to make it more "expensive" to cheat the system than it is to go along with it, so the first step is to make registration require a little more effort. All rolls are purged after every general election. This way you need to re-register after every election. All registrations *must* be done in person, with the exception of those not *physically* present in the state for more than 5 consecutive business days during the registration period. For those people, they may request an "absentee registration request card", which they fill out, have notarized (the notary is simply notarizing that the card is filled out, not that the person filling out the card did so accurately). If constitutional (and I assume this is questionable) and feasible (this part I haven't worked out yet) one must show "proof of citizenship". It's tough, because we don't yet have "papers", and I don't really advocate mandating "papers". In fact I strongly disagree with papers. One suggestion I've heard is to require the presentation of some sort of proof of paying income tax, or at least filing for income tax, on the theory that anyone who pays into the system ought to have a say in it. I don't necessarily disagree with that. At the time of registration a "registration card" is handed to the individual. They are informed (in writing) that in order to vote they *must* present this card. This card contains a mag strip with a unique number (that is not linked to the individual), and a bar code that is the encrypted version of that number done with a the public half of a key (to prevent forgery). That key changes from election to election. The registrant must also sign for the card, and print their name. This is not to be tied to the number on the card, but just to account for every card. Each polling place has a swipe card reader and a bar-code scanner. These are used to check that each card is "proper" by checking that the number on the back is encrypted with the proper key. (this way the private key isn't released until *very* shortly before the election). At the polling place, the "voting machines" are changed so that when you punch a whole, it records vote electronically, as well as providing a swipe card reader. When you are finished voting, it prints the ballot with your choices for each office in an OCR font, and a bar code with a hash of votes at the bottom (using a different large random number). The machine then wipes everything *but* the hash, and this new number. (this completely disconnects the voter from the ballot). The voter then visually examines the ballot to make sure it is correct. If they are happy with it (well, that it's correct anyway) and then presses a "I'm done" button. This checks in the voter number and the hash, and the new random number, (stores it either on board, or on a machine on a "lan" (wire the polling place) the machine on the lan can be made fairly fault tolerant) (the voter number is to check for "double spending", the hash is a checksum for validation, the random number is for later verification). The "I'm done" also prints out a second card identical to the first. One is for the individual, should they wish to keep it, to later validate that their vote was counted properly. The other (since they are identical) goes into a sleeve (to prevent prying eyes) and into the ballot box. If they are not happy with it, they push the "do over" button, and start back from the top. Repeat as necessary until satisfied. After the polls have closed, the ballots and the vote counter (the machine storing the hashes and numbers) are taken to the collection point, where the hashes & random numbers are uploaded (at this point I think the voter number will no longer be needed), and the as each ballot is counted, it is marked off against the hash it matches. Then this list is made public (the list of hashes and random numbers). Each voter can then (if they care to) check their random number (either on line, or in a trip down to the local polling place). There would also be a reduced number of "ruined" ballots, since each ballot is human readable, and printed twice if one side gets screwed up, the other should still be useful. If that fails, then a human *should* be able to read as much of it as possible. Failing that, it simply gets listed as "unreadable", and if they voter checks, they can come down with their original ballot and present it for the count. Absentee ballots would be slightly problematic in this, but much of this could be done using a simple PC/Macintosh program, so Military bases could easily accommodate their soldiers & sailors. (Well, the marines and the flyboys as well). I would also provide a 96 hour period for counts to take place, as well as for people to be able to challenge the vote--if they can show that their vote wasn't properly counted (provable by presentation of a ballot) then things are rechecked. Since the ballots are now printed with an OCR font AND a bar code, they can still be machine read *AS WELL AS* easily verified by hand. The voting process remains (absent the registration process) almost identical to the current one. There is no use of cryptographic protocols to *protect* the voting, only to check for fraud and provide strong accounting. I believe that this would make fraud *much* harder to get away with, and eliminate much of what I have seen and heard about in the way of fraud--the "stiff wire" used to create invalid ballots, the dumping of large numbers of ballots in the trash, the "lost" ballot boxes, etc. It also makes things like voting the dead harder--since each card has to be signed for each election. Maybe there are things I've missed, and maybe this wouldn't be as cheap as I believe it to be, but I belive it would be a damn sight more secure than we have today. -- "To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished."--Pierre Proudhon

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