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Re: Donald's Job Description
by Tyler Durden 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

You MUST be new here, Pete ole boy... >Do you really think Kerry wouldnt have signed the Patriot Act if he >was president? Federalized the drivers license requirements? Pushed >for socialized medicine with central controls? Kerry or Bush, Kang or >Kodos, in the end it means the same thing. I'm sure there are several Cypherpunks who would be very quick to describe Kerry as "needs killing". You MIGHT find some Cypherpunks put up a weak counter-argument just to keep an open mind on the matter, but I doubt it. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx

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Death Notice: Matt Heckaman
by J.A. Terranson 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

[Posted to a variety of places, as Matt was a prolific coder who maintained many ports and worked on literally dozens of projects] -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://obit.pumphreyfuneralhome.com/obit_display.cgi?id=161939&listing=Curr… Matthew Heckaman Ferraro Born in Mishawaka, IN on Jan. 4, 1982 Departed on Oct. 20, 2004 and resided in Gaithersburg, MD. Memorial Service: Oct. 30, 2004 Cemetery: Arlington National Cemetery Columbarium Please click on the links above for locations, times, maps, and directions. Matthew Heckaman Ferraro (age 22) Matthew of Gaithersburg, MD, formerly of Montreal Canada, passed away on Wednesday, October 20, 2004. He was the beloved husband of Stacie Jo Ferraro; loving son of Claire Ferraro (husband, Eddy) and Marshall Heckaman (wife, Sharon) of Indiana; loving brother of Andria, David and Allan; stepbrother of Cynthia Ferraro (Daniel Aston) son-in-law of Mike and Marjorie Bland of Maryland and their daughters, Resha and Stephanie; grandson of Adrien and Cecile Blanchette of Montreal, Canada and John and Ruth Heckaman of Indiana; grandson-in-law of Anastacia Quitania. He was predeceased by a stepbrother Jonathan Ferraro. Also survived by his aunts and uncles, Helene Blanchette (Denis Pare) and Pierre Blanchette of Montreal, Canada, Nicole Blanchette (Brian Smith) of London, Ont., Dorothy (Doc) Anderson of Illinois and by all his extended family and friends in Montreal, Indiana, Maryland and elsewhere. Matthew was an active duty PV2 of the United States Army. A memorial service will be held at PUMPHREY.S COLONIAL FUNERAL HOME, 300 West Montgomery Avenue (Rte 28 just off I-270, exit 6-A) Rockville, MD on Saturday, October 30, 2004 at 1 PM. Inurnment service with Military Honors will be held at Arlington National Cemetery Columbarium on Thursday, November 4, 2004 at 10 AM.

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Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
by R.A. Hettinga 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

I'll see you one fizzled October surprise, and raise you... Are we having fun, now? Cheers, RAH -------- <http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041027-101153-…> The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published October 27, 2004 Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad. "The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units." Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration. Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said. The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said. The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment. The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material. Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said. "That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there." The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday. A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA. The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6. "The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said. The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime. According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken. It is not known if the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003. A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria. The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not convince Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said. A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said. However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said. The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country. Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots. The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said. Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq. The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said. Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said. "Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said. Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said. The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said. Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003. The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said. Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing. The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive. Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. -- ----------------- 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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Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
by MAILER-DAEMON＠ibuc.com 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

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Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
by MAILER-DAEMON＠ibuc.com 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

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Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDX> Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine >From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (Redirected from RDX) Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, also known as RDX, cyclonite, or hexogen, is an explosive material widely used by the military. There are many interpretations of its acronym including (but not limited to) Royal Demolition eXplosive and Research Department Explosive. In fact the latter is nearest to the mark. New explosives were given an identification number preceded by the letters 'RD' indicating 'Research and Development'. For some reason, this explosive was unable to be given a number (the story goes that the department that issued the numbers had just blown itself up - but this may be apocryphal). Instead the letter 'X' was appended to indicate 'unknown' with the intention of adding the number later. Although a number was issued, the term 'RDX' stuck. In its pure synthesised state it is a white crystalline solid. As an explosive it is usually used in mixtures with other explosives and plasticizers or desensitizers. It is stable in storage and is considered the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives. RDX forms the base for a number of common military explosives: Composition A (wax-coated, granular explosive consisting of RDX and plasticizing wax), composition A5 (mixed with 1.5% stearic acid), composition B (castable mixtures of RDX and TNT), composition C (a plastic demolition explosive consisting of RDX, other explosives, and plasticizers), composition D, HBX (castable mixtures of RDX, TNT, powdered aluminium, and D-2 wax with calcium chloride), H-6, Cyclotol and C-4. [edit] Properties It is a colourless solid, of density 1.82 g/cm3. It is obtained by reacting concentrated nitric acid on hexamine. It is a heterocycle and has the shape of a ring. It starts to decompose at about 1700C and melts at 2040C. Its structural formula is: hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine or (CH2-N-NO2)3 At room temperatures, it is a very stable product. It burns rather than explodes, and only detonates with a detonator, being unaffected even by small arms fire. It is less sensitive than pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). However, it is very sensitive when crystalized, below -40C. Under normal conditions, RDX has a Figure of Insensitivity of 80. The manufacture of RDX can easily pollute soil and groundwater. [edit] History The discovery of RDX dates from the 1890s when a German (Hans Henning) offered it as a medicine. Its explosive properties were not recognized until 1920 (Herz?). In the 1920s RDX was produced by the direct nitration of hexamine. It was only in 1940 that an efficient production method was found, possibly at the McGill University Department of Chemistry (Meissner?). It was widely used during WW II, often in explosive mixtures with TNT such as Torpex (TNT (42%),RDX (40%) and aluminium (18%)). RDX was used in one of the first plastic explosives. Categories: Explosive chemicals | Heterocyclic bases | Nitroamines Article Discussion Edit this page History Create an account or log in Navigation ? Main Page ? Community portal ? Current events ? Recent changes ? Random page ? Help ? Donations Search Toolbox ? What links here ? Related changes ? Special pages In other languages ? Deutsch ? Frangais ? Polski ? ? ? Slovenscina ? This page was last modified 20:56, 26 Oct 2004. ? All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details). ? About Wikipedia ? Disclaimers -- ----------------- 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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Europe opts for biometric passports
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

<http://news.com.com/2102-1012_3-5429679.html?tag=st.util.print> CNET News Europe opts for biometric pasports By Lars Pasveer http://news.com.com/Europe+opts+for+biometric+pasports/2100-1012_3-5429679.… Story last modified October 27, 2004, 5:56 PM PDT Ministers for European Union member states agreed on Tuesday to adopt biometric passports. The first biometric passports are set to arrive in 18 months and initially will record the facial characteristics of the bearer. In three years, European travelers will also have to provide a fingerprint for the passport. The facial and fingerprint data will be stored on an embedded chip, along with a digital copy of the bearer's photo. The decision, made at a meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourg, is not yet final. Austria, Finland and the Netherlands have voiced minor concerns about the proposal, but they will probably not turn out to be insurmountable obstacles. The European push for biometrics is heavily influenced by a United States policy change for passports for people from "visa waiver" countries after the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. plans to introduce a biometric passport requirement by this fall for these countries were widely seen as unrealistic. However, by Oct. 26 next year, all visitors from these countries will have to provide a machine-readable passport with biometric data. -- ----------------- 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: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by John Kelsey 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

>From: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com> >Sent: Oct 19, 2004 10:23 AM >To: jamesd(a)echeque.com, cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) ... >In developing markets the US track record is terrible. The more we interfere >and set up puppet governments and petty dictators, the result has always >been the near elimination of any kind of real modern economy. >More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented >from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example is >China and Vietnam. Bolivia is interesting to watch. So, Taiwan and South Korea seem like rather obvious counterexamples. >-TD --John (Not a fan of interventionist foreign policy, FWIW)

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Suprynowicz: Why isn't Kerry way ahead?
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

>Bush and Kerry: Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Brie. :-) Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Oct-24-Sun-2004/opinion/2502279…> Sunday, October 24, 2004 Las Vegas Review-Journal Why isn't Kerry way ahead? Most liberals think those stupid heartland voters just don't get it By VIN SUPRYNOWICZ REVIEW-JOURNAL I was reminded why I usually don't bother with the canned PBS "Washington Week" program when I accidentally tuned it in last Sunday. (OK, I found it shamefully riveting -- like slowing down to inspect the carnage of a traffic accident.) In an attempt to assemble an even-handed panel to discuss how George Bush and John Kerry did in the debates, host Gwen Ifill and her tax-funded PBS producers assembled four folks, one each from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine and National Public Radio. Jim Bovard and Doug Bandow and Walter Williams and Bumper Hornberger were all out on the tennis court? PBS can't afford to fly in a single token conservative or libertarian from the Orange County Register, the Colorado Springs Gazette or even the Detroit News? Are any of these people likely to discuss (or even grasp) what a Kerry administration would do to the business environment in this country? Has any of them (or Sen. Kerry, for that matter) ever run or even worked for a small business? Ms. Ifill even fed her panel a line straight out of those hundreds of spam e-mail letters we received -- generally beginning some hours before the debates -- saying, "What I saw tonight was John Kerry looking presidential." Listen up, gang: This isn't 1960. No one was watching to see if the "young, callow" Sen. John Kennedy -- er, Kerry -- could hold his own against that master of political minutiae on the global stage, eight-year veteran Vice President Richard Nixon. John Kerry was cast in the role (I use the verb advisedly) by the chiefs of the military-industrial status quo (gotta discredit that Howard Dean; he might actually cut off the Halliburton contracts) because he looks like someone swiped the audio-animatronic Lincoln from Disneyland and shaved off his beard. Of course he looks presidential. No one ever doubted John Kerry studied harder in prep school and is more likely to speak in complete sentences than former longtime heavy drinker George Bush. What people wonder about the guy is whether, if he's elected, he wouldn't be likely to pull on a striped jersey and a black beret, light up a Gauloise and promptly go sell us out to Jacques Chirac, who loaned and sold billions worth of stuff to Saddam Hussein after Sept. 11, and to Kofi Annan, who with his son is currently up to his ears in the crooked Iraq oil-for-food cash diversion scandal. Ms. Ifill, who is about as likely to ever vote for George Bush as she is to request major dental surgery without an anaesthetic, seemed genuinely puzzled as she asked her panelists about the undecided voters, again and again, "Who are these people?" After all, folks of Ms. Ifill's intellectual stature decided how to vote in this election back in November 2000. What kind of unwashed snake-handling Bible-thumpers could still be undecided? They still out at the stock car races, or what? Two to 4 percent of the populace will indeed decide this election, which looks close as to the popular vote. But frankly, I doubt the Electoral College vote will look that close -- precisely because the Electoral College was designed to protect small rural states from having our national elections decided in a few corrupt urban cesspools. The socialists in California, Daleytown, New York and New England have convinced themselves -- with the co-dependent aid of the thoroughly left-leaning bicoastal press that I saw on display on PBS last Sunday -- that this election is a close call. But why then is John Kerry, who they're bugling as having "won every debate by a landslide," still running behind? Remember, this is the bunch who couldn't imagine how their hero, Adlai Stevenson, could possibly lose to that slow-talking dimwit, Dwight D. Eisenhower -- twice. And they only beat the skulking Richard Nixon in 1960 by outright union-run vote fraud in West Virginia and Illinois. No, as the Electoral College votes are tallied Nov. 2, I think it may be clearer that there are now (again?) two Americas: a "sophisticated" urban kleptocracy made up of California and Hawaii, Daleyville and New York and New England, still moaning that our tax rates lag behind those of "progressive" Europe and Japan, and the rest, a huge red mass of pickups with dogs in the back, shouting "Yahoo" and -- I'm not saying this doesn't make me a bit uneasy, mind you -- anxious to go kick some serious A-rab ass. The reason these leftist spinmeisters can't seem to parse the thoughts of the "undecided voters" is that they're asking the wrong question. These voters are not trying to make a decision between George Bush and John Kerry. About two-thirds of this "final 4 percent" are trying to decide whether to go with their lower-tax, less-government principles and vote for Libertarian Michael Badnarik, or whether John Kerry and his "internationalist" socialist pals are so truly dangerous that these final holdouts should hold their noses and vote for simpleminded warmonger George Bush and his hideous Patriot Act. The remaining one-third of this "final 4 percent" are trying to decide whether to vote their pacifist principles and cast a ballot for Ralph Nader or the Greens -- or whether George Bush and his hideous Patriot Act are so dangerous that they should hold their noses and vote for John Kerry -- who, after all, voted for the war in Iraq, and for the hideous Patriot Act. Evidence of how large this unreported phenomenon has become arises now in the form of Web sites such as www.votepair.org, which seeks to "pair up" Kerry voters in states that are not in play in this election, with third-party voters in battleground states. Goal? The Kerryites in New York and California (Massachusetts? Illinois?) offer to vote for Nader, Cobb or Badnarik (in states that Kerry will win, anyway), thus assuring these third-party candidates of the same nationwide totals, "freeing up" third-party voters in the swing states to cast a vote for John Kerry. I'm not saying such technically illegal schemes will work, mind you -- just that they recognize the real conundrum the truly undecided voter now faces. No, in the end, George Bush is likely to win because Americans prefer "the devil they know"; because Bush at least talks about leaving us in control of some part of our lives; because Americans rarely elect U.S. senators; because Americans rarely elect "progressive liberals" (the preferred modern euphemism for socialists); because Americans never elect anyone who admits he's going to raise our taxes (where's the Walter Mondale Presidential Library?); and because Americans have never changed presidents in the middle of a war. What's that? It's "not a real war"? Howard Dean could have made that case, as do Mr. Badnarik and Mr. Nader. But Kerry voted for the war in Iraq ... and for the hideous Patriot Act, while he was at it. Bush and Kerry: Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Brie. None of this is to deny George Bush is inarticulate and has done little or nothing to downsize government. But does anyone think John Kerry would do better at that task, simply because he's a better public speaker? If that were the case, wouldn't Jesse Jackson already be president? George Bush is likely to win a substantial Electoral College victory in part because Americans figure he comes by his simple-minded (but still, in the end, right and decent) principles of honestly and sincerely, whereas John Kerry's only known principle, his sole anchor of conscience, was his belief that interventionist, "unwinnable" foreign wars such as Vietnam were bad. He has now abandoned that anchor and principle in vowing to continue the war in Iraq, because the focus groups told him so. And George Bush is also likely to win because John Kerry really is dangerous. Remember, the Clinton-Gore ticket won election only because they claimed to be "new Democrats" from conservative small Southern states who would downsize government and "end welfare as we know it." When Al Gore showed his true colors four years ago -- especially on gun control and socialized medicine -- he went down in flames, even in the South. Bush is actually likely to run more strongly this time -- especially as Iraq is a wash, what with Kerry absurdly promising to win it with his friends, the French. Why? Americans have no intention of turning tail and running from Iraq, and thus handing Islam a huge recruiting victory in the Arab heartland -- which is precisely what we all know John Kerry really wants to do, despite his absurd contention that Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan will pull on their hip boots and wade in to save our bacon. But more importantly, John Kerry served as lieutenant governor of "Have a Gun, Go to Jail" Massachusetts. Hello? I know retired servicemen who get from New Hampshire to New York by driving around Massachusetts so they won't be jailed for possession of a self-defense weapon -- they don't want to pay the governor of that state $5 in taxes on a dinner and gas. John Kerry would hand over one-seventh of the American economy to Hillary Clinton and her socialized medicine scheme. He would embrace the crippling Kyoto Treaty (he blamed George Bush, during the debates, for "distancing our allies" by refusing to sign) and put the Derek Shearer-Roberta Achtenburg gang back in charge of environmental and workplace regulation. (You think American factory jobs are fleeing overseas now? Elect this guy and it would be, "Last person out of the Rust Belt, please turn out the light.") John Harris of the Post told Ms. Ifill that John Kerry has never led in the polls because "he has a problem connecting personally with the voters." Well, that's true. But couldn't it also be because they can clearly see he's lying about all that "job creation" -- that in fact he can't wait to turn over the country to a bunch of regulation-happy socialist academics out of Harvard, Columbia and the People's Republic of Santa Monica? Nah. Voters out in the heartland couldn't be concerned about that. Them tobacco-chewing cowboys is too dumb. Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods." -- H.L. Mencken

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E-Vote Vendors Hand Over Software
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

<http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,65490,00.html> Wired News E-Vote Vendors Hand Over Software By Kim Zetter? Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65490,00.html 03:00 PM Oct. 26, 2004 PT In an effort to increase the integrity of next week's presidential election, five voting machine makers agreed for the first time to submit their software to the National Software Reference Library for safekeeping, federal officials said on Tuesday. The stored software will serve as a comparison tool for election officials should they need to determine whether anyone tampered with programs installed on voting equipment. The National Software Reference Library is part of an election security initiative launched by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a new federal entity that Congress created after the Florida 2000 election problems. The EAC is the first federal entity established to improve the integrity and efficiency of elections. DeForest Soaries, chairman of the EAC, in June requested software from the largest voting companies, which provide 90 percent of the software to be used in computerized voting machines on Tuesday. The EAC will eventually ask all voting companies, even those that produce counting software for punch card machines, to submit their software. Soaries called the library a major step and praised the vendors for their willingness to increase the transparency of elections. "Their acceptance of our request to submit their software begins the process that assures the country that we will have (a) higher level of security and therefore confidence in e-voting than we have ever had before," Soaries said in a press conference. The National Institute of Standards and Technology -- the agency that sets official measurements and defines standards for all kinds of commercial products -- will maintain the voting software library. NIST already manages a library of other types of software, like the Windows 2000 operating system, to help law enforcement investigate crimes involving computers. Doug White, the library's project leader, said NIST stores applications on CDs in a room that is similar to a criminal investigator's evidence locker, which means the software can be used as evidence in a court. Counties and states will eventually be able to use the library to verify that they are using a certified version of software. This is good news to Scott Konopasek, the registrar of voters for San Bernardino County in California. In September, after California certified a new version of software for his county's voting system, the vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, sent Konopasek the software to load on his machines. But when Konopasek asked the state to verify that the software the vendor gave him was unchanged from the version the state certified, state officials told him they had no means to verify it and that Konopasek would have to trust the vendor. Vendor trust was precisely the measure of verification the state was using last November when it discovered that Diebold Election Systems had installed uncertified software on machines in 17 California counties without telling the state. NIST's voting software library was established too late this year to examine software that has already been loaded onto locked voting machines, so election officials won't be able to verify that they have unchanged, certified software before Tuesday's election. But if questions about the veracity of a voting system arise after the election, computer forensic experts will be able to compare the software used on machines with the software in the NIST library to see if the software was altered. They can do this by comparing hash files, which are digital fingerprints that identify the integrity of software. The hash is a mathematical sum derived from the software code. If someone changes the software, the mathematical sum changes as well. "This gives us one more mechanism for assuring voters that their votes have been recorded and reported correctly and haven't been tampered with," Konopasek said. "There's no one single thing that election officials will ever be able to do to convince everyone. But the more we can add to our inventory of audits and controls, the more we can establish confidence of voters -- not just the technically savvy voters, but all voters." Soaries acknowledged that the library alone can't secure elections and voting systems but can only work in concert with other procedures. And the EAC still has to work out several issues related to the library, such as who will be responsible for checking hashes before an election if county election officials don't have someone knowledgeable on staff to do so. EAC has to determine how best to handle patches, or last-minute fixes and upgrades to machines. Currently, it will be up to the county and vendor to decide whether to resubmit that software to the library before an election. And the EAC has to establish a policy for dealing with false positives -- that is, when a hash check indicates that software has changed when it actually hasn't. In addition to the library, the Commission has instigated several measures to increase the integrity of elections. These include developing new voting machine standards that would require voting machine companies to make machines that are more secure. The commission is also looking at developing national standards for election procedures to establish uniform methods for physically securing voting machines and providing checks and balances to prevent and catch voter fraud. Additionally, the commission has been speaking about creating a clearinghouse to gather reports from states and counties about problems they encounter with voting equipment. -- ----------------- 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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