Guest guest Posted August 31, 2004 Report Share Posted August 31, 2004 http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/77 Consumer Report: Part 2 - Problems with GEMS Central Tabulator Submitted by Bev Harris on Thu, 08/26/2004 - 11:38. Investigations This problem appears to demonstrate intent to manipulate elections, and was installed in the program under the watch of a programmer who is a convicted embezzler. According to election industry officials, the central tabulator is secure, because it is protected by passwords and audit logs. But it turns out that the GEMS passwords can easily be bypassed, and the audit logs can be altered and erased. Worse, the votes can be changed without anyone knowing, including the officials who run the election. Multiple sets of books (Click " read more " for the rest of this section) The GEMS program runs on a Microsoft Access database. It typically recieves incoming votes by modem, though some counties follow better security by disconnecting modems and bringing votes in physically. GEMS stores the votes in a vote ledger, built in Microsoft Access. Any properly designed accounting program will allow only one set of books. You can't enter your expense report in three different places. All data must be drawn from the same place, and multiple versions are never acceptable. But in the files we examined, we found that the GEMS system contained three sets of " books. " The elections official never sees the different sets of books. All she sees is the reports she can run: Election summary (totals, county wide) or a " Statement of Votes Cast " (totals for each precinct). She has no way of knowing that her GEMS system uses a different set of data for the detail report (used to spot check) than it does for the election totals. The Access database, which contains the hidden set of votes, can't be seen unless you know how to get in the back door -- which takes only seconds. Ask an accountant: It is never appropriate to have two sets of books inside accounting software. It is possible to do computer programming to create two sets of books, but dual sets of books are prohibited in accounting, for this simple reason: Two sets of books can easily allow fraud to go undetected. Especially if the two sets are hidden from the user. A hidden trigger The data tables in accounting software automatically link up to each other to prevent illicit back door entries. In GEMS, however, by typing a two-digit code into a hidden location, you can decouple the books, so that the voting system will draw information from a combination of the real votes and a set of fake votes, which you can alter any way you see fit. That's right, GEMS comes with a secret digital " on-off " switch to link and unlink its multiple vote tables. Someone who tests GEMS, not knowing this, will not see the mismatched sets of books. When you put a two-digit code into a secret location can you disengage the vote tables, so that tampered totals table don't have to match precinct by precinct results. This way, it will pass a spot check -- even with paper ballots -- but can still be rigged. How and when did the double set of books get into GEMS? Black Box Voting has traced the implementation of the double set of books to Oct. 13, 2000, shortly after embezzler Jeffrey Dean became the senior programmer. Dean was hired as Vice President of Research and Development in September 2000, and his access to the programs is well documented through internal memos from Diebold. The double set of books appeared in GEMS version 1.17.7. Almost immediately, according to the Diebold memos, another Diebold programmer, Dmitry Papushin, flagged a problem with bogus votes appearing in the vote tables. The double set of books remained, though, going through several tweaks and refinements. From the time Jeffrey Dean was hired in September, until shortly before the Nov. 2000 election, GEMS went through over a dozen changes, all retaining the new hidden vote tables. For four years, anyone who has known how to trigger the double set of books has been able to use, or sell, the information to anyone they want. Black Box Voting Associate Director Andy Stephenson has obtained the court and police records of Jeffrey Dean. It is clear that he was under severe financial stress, because the King County prosecutor was chasing him for over $500,000 in restitution. During this time, while Jeffrey Dean was telling the prosecutor (who operated from the ninth floor of the King County Courthouse) that he was unemployed, he was in fact employed, with 24-hour access to the King County GEMS central tabulator -- and he was working on GEMS on the fifth floor of the King County Courthouse. (Dean may now be spending his nights on the tenth floor of the same building; after our investigations appeared in Vanity Fair and the Seattle Times, Dean was remanded to a work release program, and may be staying in the lockup on in the courthouse now.) Jeffrey Dean, according to his own admissions, is subject to blackmail as well as financial pressure over his restitution obligation. Police records from his embezzlement arrest, which involved " sophisticated " manipulation of computer accounting records, report that Dean claimed he was embezzling in order to pay blackmail over a fight he was involved in, in which a person died. So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer over the GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent of the votes in the election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen. And just after he is hired, multiple sets of books appear in GEMS, which can be decoupled, so that they don't need to match, by typing in a secret 2-digit code in a specific location. Dr. David Jefferson, technical advisor for California voting systems, told Black Box Voting that he could see no legitimate reason to have the double set of books in a voting program. He surmised that it might be incredible stupidity. Dr. Jefferson should speak to Jeffrey Dean's partners and those who worked with him. " Stupid " is not how he is described. The descriptions we get, from Dean's former business partner, and from others who worked with him, are " sophisticated, " " cunning, " " very bright, " " highly skilled, " and " a con man. " This is the man who supervised the programming for GEMS when the multiple set of books was installed. Diebold, however, is the company that did nothing about it. Internal memos show that Dean was sent the passwords to the GEMS 1.18.x files months after Diebold took over the elections company. Diebold clearly did not examine the GEMS program before selling it, or, if it did, chose not to correct the flaws. And after exposing this problem in 2003, Diebold still failed to correct it. Elections were run on this tamper-inviting system for more than three years, and anyone who knew could sell the vote-tampering secrets to anyone they wanted to, at any time. It has been a year since this report was first printed, and Diebold has never explained any legitimate reason for this design, which is rather elegant and certainly is not accidental. Click here to donate (Go on to Part 3 for more) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.