By Anonymous, Section News Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2003 at 03:34:23 PM PST
Anonymous Hero writes: According to Scoop Sludge Report, author C.D. Sludge says, "The story you are about to read is in this writer's view the biggest political scandal in American history, if not global history. And it is being broken today here in New Zealand. This story cuts to the bone the machinery of democracy in America today. Democracy is the only protection we have against despotic and arbitrary government, and this story is deeply disturbing. Imagine then if it were possible to somehow subvert the voting process itself in such a way that you could steal elections without anybody knowing..."
rickyjames here. The remainder of text in this submission was provided not by Anonymous Hero, but by me, cutting-and-pasting a few paragraphs of interest from the rather lengthy report which is referenced, then adding some Google-located links like I do for my own stories. I think this is sorta borderline for a SciScoop science story, but it IS about computers and it IS kinda interesting. Thanks for submitting it, AH - please submit more stories and more often!
....The above description [see first paragraph link] of a corrupt voting system is not the result of an overactive imagination. Rather it is the result of a extensive research by computer programmers and journalists working around the globe. Principally it is the work of investigative journalist Bev Harris, author of the soon to be published book "Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century." And most important of all, it is the result of research focussed on investigating the actual software distributed by one of the largest voting systems companies operating in the recent U.S. Elections.
CAVEAT: It is important to note that the research into this subject has not established that the files we have been working on were in fact in situ in County Election Supervisors' offices at the last election – nor have we proof that the back door we have discovered - which might enable the rigging of elections - was actually used in any recent election. However, it is the considered opinion of all those involved in this investigation that it is not up to us as journalists or programmers to prove that elections were rigged; rather it is a responsibility of the electoral system itself to prove its integrity.
In the course of investigating the issue of the integrity of new electronic voting machines, Bev Harris learned that people around the world had been downloading from an open FTP site belonging to Diebold Election Systems, one of the leading manufacturers of voting systems. This website contained several gigabytes of files including manuals, source codes, and installation versions of numerous parts of the Diebold voting system, and of its vote counting program GEMS. Realizing we had stumbled across what might be the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers for elections, the full contents of this website have been secured around the world at several locations. The original website was itself taken down on January 29th 2003. We can now reveal for the first time the location of a complete online copy of the original data set. As we anticipate attempts to prevent the distribution of this information, we encourage supporters of democracy to make copies of these files and to make them available on websites and file sharing networks.
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