Did the NSA help Bush hack the vote?

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Did the NSA help Bush hack the vote?

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:23:52 +0800

 

 

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2006/1294

 

Columns

Bob Fitrakis

 

Did the NSA help Bush hack the vote?

January 9, 2006

 

What do we make of the President boldly proclaiming that he has " spy

powers? " Does he have X-ray vision too?

 

When he and his cronies crawl up into Cheney's bunker with the sign on

the door " He-man Woman-haters Club. No Girls Allowed (except Condi), "

do they synchronize their spy decoder rings and decide what new absurd

folly to unleash on the world?

 

Illegal invasion of Iraq, suspending writs of habeus corpus, secret

CIA torture dungeons, or election rigging? Most people outgrow such

childish games and fantasies by the time they're ten years old. And by

age twelve, most understand that the President is not a king. Or a

dictator. That U.S. citizens have inalienable rights.

 

That there are such things as search warrants. If the executive branch

of government is going to conduct surveillance on the American people,

they have to get a warrant from the judicial branch specifying what

they're looking for and the reasons for the search.

 

The Bush administration's utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution and

the specific information we now know about its use of the National

Security Agency (NSA) surveillance network should further call into

question Bush' 2004 presidential " election. " In a recent revelation,

we have learned that the NSA shared the fruits of its illegal spying

on behalf of Bush with other government agencies.

 

What are e-voting machines and central tabulators that pass the voting

results over electronic networks from the internet to phone lines? No

more than data easily spied on and tapped into. The Franklin County

Board of Elections, for example, tells us that it was a " transmission

error " in Gahanna Ward 1B, where 638 people cast votes and Bush, the

Wonder Boy, received 4258 votes. It's not magic, nor is it an accident

or an act of God. If the vote total wasn't so hugely illogical, no one

would have caught it.

 

Bush and his cabal are notorious for collecting raw intelligence data

and using it for their political gain. While many progressives accept

the fact that our government manufactured an illegal war in Iraq and

routinely violate human rights worldwide, many are reluctant to accept

that they would spy on John Kerry and rig the election – which is very

easy to do when the NSA does your bidding.

 

What part of the headline in the Columbus Dispatch: " Diebold vote

machine can be hacked, test finds " don't people understand? The

electronic hacking and monitoring of votes by U.S. intelligence

agencies has a long history, from mainframe computers in the 70s and

80s to DREs in the 80s and 90s. In face, W.'s father appears to be one

of the first beneficiary of e-voting fraud with his victory of Bob

Dole in the 1988 New Hampshire primary.

 

Most voting rights advocates are well aware of Al Gore's infamous loss

of 16,000 votes in the 2000 Florida presidential election, which

allowed Bush's cousin at Fox News to call the election for Dubya. How

do we explain the bizarre " rob georgia " Diebold file that Bev Harris

of Black Box Voting found on the internet after the stunning upset of

Senator Max Cleland of Georgia.

 

The recent revelations about hacking of Diebold voting machines and

the findings of the General Accountability Office as to the insecurity

of the e-voting networks cannot be separated from the president's

criminal use of the NSA to spy on American citizens. As much as we

rejoice in the resignation of Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell and the

pending lawsuits by shareholders against Diebold, it should not

obscure the massive continued potential to hack the vote.

 

Both Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines ran November 2004

cover stories on how easy it is to hack the e-voting machines and

their communication networks. In one famous cartoon, a teenage hacker

was announced as the president.

 

This is precisely the type of game George W. and his He-man

authoritarian boy's club would engage in. Recently, Professor Steve

Freeman of Penn spoke at a New York election reform forum and told the

audience that a third of the Kerry voters who showed up in exit polls

in rural Republican-dominated areas simply don't show up in the actual

vote tally. Not just in Ohio, but throughout the nation.

 

Would a president who believes he has spy powers, the right to

torture, the ability to wage illegal wars based on bogus, manufactured

intelligence reports, simply refuse to spy on Kerry and rig an

election electronically? In Ohio, two burglaries occurred against the

Democratic Party in Lucas County and Franklin County just prior to

2004 election involving computer theft.

 

Congress must investigate whether Bush used the NSA for partisan

political gain during the 2004 election, and whether any NSA Bush

operatives or other members of the security industrial complex had

access to e-voting machines, central tabulators or the communication

lines that delivered the voting results.

 

--

Bob Fitrakis is the co-editor of Did George W. Bush Steal America's

2004 Election? with Harvey Wasserman (www.freepress.org) and

co-counsel with Cliff Arnebeck in the Alliance for Democracy suit

against the Hocking County Board of Elections.