Posted on 09/26/2006 12:01:39 PM PDT by kenn5
DENVER, Sept. 22 -- A judge on Friday chastised state officials for botching efforts to ensure that electronic voting machines are tamper-proof, but he cleared them for use in the November election, saying it is too late now to change course.
Denver County District Judge Lawrence A. Manzanares said the secretary of state's office had violated state law by failing to come up with minimum security standards for the machines. He added that the office had done an "abysmal" job documenting which tests were performed on the machines and should not have allowed computer manufacturers to vouch for the security of their own products.
The judge said, however, that he would not bar the machines with the election just six weeks away and county clerks warning that they might not have time to print enough paper ballots.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
So, what, nothing happens? The judge says "You just violated state law" so what's the punishment? Can't I see some job loss, fines or jail time for violating election law?
But you can infect it with a vote-changing virus that will propagate to other machines using currrent polling station procedures. It was recently shown by Princeton researchers to be quite possible with many of the Diebold machines out there.
They didn't use hard drives, but the physical act with Diebold machines took about a minute -- and that was before they found out they didn't need to pick the lock since it used a standard, easily available office furniture key.
It is for the Diebold machines, but Windows' deficiencies weren't part of how they compromised the system. It was simply the ineptitude and/or carelessness of Diebold.
The Diebold machines use flash memory, no hard drives.
I used to work for a manufacturer who made the printer mechanism for Diebold ATMs. Back then, the O/S for the ATMs was IBM OS/2. Since their roots are firmly in the banking industry, I'd be very surprised if they are using a Microsoft O/S. OS/2 is still used quite widely in that sort of thing.
Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 in the AccuVote-TS.
Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 in the AccuVote-TS.
OK, I'm officially surprised. :-)
Bad, bad decision IMO.
Windows had nothing to do with the vulnerabilities recently published. Still, I'd prefer an open source OS with open source software so everybody can know its clean.
I'm aware of that, and... I agree with you. :-)
This may be the greatest system of government on the face of the earth. But everyday I become more ashamed of those in elected office. They have neither the ability nor the will to enforce our laws nor keep our fiscal house in order so that we remain a sovereign nation. Now we must come to the conclusion that these clowns cannot even figure out how to administer an election which gives the average citizen confidence in our democracy.
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