Fw: 100's of ways to rig U.S. Voting Systems and No One Is Paying Attention

[Guest guest]

" Magginkat " <magginkat

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 05:35:04 -0500

[AggressiveProgressives] Fw: 100's of ways to rig U.S. Voting

Systems and No One Is Paying Attention

 

 

 

 

 

(A " must-report " for press and a " must-read " for election officials!)

 

A year-long expert study of US voting systems finds 100's of ways to

rig U.S. voting systems and recommends solutions that virtually no

states now use.

 

The fallacy being promulgated by election officials is that " tampering

could be detected and prevented by watching voting machines with video

equipment " (Really? Should we believe that election officials can

see through voting equipment and read machine language 0's and 1's [on

and off bits] that no computer scientist would ever claim to be able

to read?)

 

 

As reported by USAToday on June 27, the most comprehensive, expert

report ever written on US voting systems, " THE MACHINERY OF DEMOCRACY:

PROTECTING ELECTIONS IN AN ELECTRONIC WORLD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY " , was

released by the BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE AT NYU SCHOOL OF LAW.

 

Executive Summary:

http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20Summary.pdf

 

The Brennan Center task force evaluated voting systems of Diebold,

Sequoia, Hart Intercivic, ES & S, Unilect, and Microvote In the past,

local press where these systems are used, have neglected to inform

voters about prior expert reports, but have repeated the lies of

voting system vendors as told by election officials.

 

Election officials in the vast majority of states using the studied

voting systems, including Utah which was mentioned in the June 27

USAToday article because some Diebold flaws were recently uncovered

there and the county clerk who uncovered them was locked out of his

own office when he refused to concede, have yet to implement even one

of the security recommendations made in the executive summary of the

Brennan report.

 

The Brennan Center task force members are:

 

Chair

Lawrence D. Norden, Brennan Center for Justice

 

Principal Investigator

Eric L. Lazarus, DecisionSmith.

 

Government Experts:

 

Dr. David Jefferson, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Chair

of the California Secretary of State's Voting Systems Technology

Assessment and Advisory Board

 

John Kelsey, PhD, National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST)

 

Rene Peralta, PhD, NIST

 

Professor Ronald Rivest (MIT), Technical Guidelines Committee, Election

Assistance Commission

 

Howard A. Schmidt, Former White House Cyber Security Advisor for

George W. Bush; Former Chief Security Officer, Microsoft

 

Academic Experts:

 

Professor Matt Bishop, University of California at Davis

 

Professor David Dill, Stanford University

 

Professor Douglas W. Jones, University of Iowa

 

Joshua Tauber, PhD, formerly of the Computer Science and Artificial

Intelligence Laboratory at MIT

 

Professor David Wagner, University of California at Berkeley

 

Professor Dan Wallach, Rice University

 

Private Sector Experts (Commercial and Non-Profit):

 

Georgette Asherman, independent statistical consultant, founder of

Direct Effects

 

Lillie Coney, Electronic Privacy Information Center

 

Jeremy Epstein, Cyber Defense Agency LLC

 

Harri Hursti, independent consultant, former CEO of F-Secure PLC

 

Dr. Bruce Schneier, Counterpane Internet Security

 

Matthew Zimmerman, Electronic Frontier Foundation

 

---

 

CORE FINDINGS

 

Three fundamental points emerge from the threat analysis in the

Security Report:

 

" All three voting systems have significant security and reliability

vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity of

national, state, and local elections.

 

" The most troubling vulnerabilities of each system can be

substantially remedied if proper countermeasures are implemented at

the state and local level.

 

" Few jurisdictions have implemented any of the key countermeasures

that could make the least difficult attacks against voting systems

much more difficult to execute successfully.

 

VOTING SYSTEM VULNERABILITIES

 

After a review of more than 120 potential threats to voting systems,

the Task Force reached the following crucial conclusions:

 

For all three types of voting systems:

 

" When the goal is to change the outcome of a close statewide

election, attacks that involve the insertion of software attack

programs or other corrupt software are the least difficult attacks.

 

" Voting machines that have wireless components are significantly more

vulnerable to a wide array of attacks. Currently, only two states, New

York and Minnesota, ban wireless components on all voting machines.

 

---------

 

Are election officials going to stop following the falacious advice of

voting system vendors; stop passing on hooey to press; and take steps

to secure our voting & election systems?

 

The full executive summary of the Brennan Center report can be found here:

 

http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20Summary.pdf

 

The fallacy being promulgated by election officials is that " tampering

could be detected and prevented by watching voting machines with video

equipment " (Really? Should we believe that election officials can

see through voting equipment and read machine language 0's and 1's [on

and off bits] that no computer scientist would ever claim to be able

to read?)

 

Local press in states with deeply flawed voting systems like Georgia,

Utah, Mississippi, Nevada, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and

many others, need to let the public know what measures are available

to secure our democracy and civilization for future generations.

People that rig elections do not share mainstream U.S. values!

 

Please urge candidates not to concede any election in any state that

has not fully implemented the Brennan Center recommendations until

after following the recommendations of the National Election Data

Archive to ensure that the correct candidates are sworn into office

(found at http://ElectionArchive.org).

 

----

 

Brennan Center Executive Summary:

http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20Summary.pdf

 

SECURITY RECOMMENDATIONS

 

There are a number of steps that jurisdictions can take to address the

vulnerabilities identified in the Security Report and make their

voting systems significantly more secure. We recommend adoption of the

following security measures:

 

1. Conduct automatic routine audits comparing voter verified paper

records to the electronic record following every election. A voter

verified paper record accompanied by a solid automatic routine audit

of those records can go a long way toward making the least difficult

attacks much more difficult.

 

2. Perform " parallel testing " (selection of voting machines at random

and testing them as realistically as possible on Election Day.) For

paperless DREs, in particular, parallel testing will help

jurisdictions detect software-based attacks, as well as subtle

software bugs that may not be discovered during inspection and other

testing.

 

3. Ban use of voting machines with wireless components. All three

voting systems are more vulnerable to attack if they have wireless

components.

 

4. Use a transparent and random selection process for all auditing

procedures. For any auditing to be effective (and to ensure that the

public is confident in such procedures), jurisdictions must develop

and implement transparent and random selection procedures.

 

5. Ensure decentralized programming and voting system administration.

Where a single entity, such as a vendor or state or national

consultant, performs key tasks for multiple jurisdictions, attacks

against statewide elections become easier.

 

6. Institute clear and effective procedures for addressing evidence of

fraud or error. Both automatic routine audits and parallel testing are

of questionable security value without effective procedures for action

where evidence of machine malfunction and/or fraud is discovered.

Detection of fraud without an appropriate response will not prevent

attacks from succeeding.

 

-----

 

A heart-felt " Thank You " to the Brennan Center!

 

----

Kathy Dopp

http://electionarchive.org

National Election Data Archive

Dedicated to Accurately Counting Elections

Subscribe to announcements by emailing election-

Please donate or volunteer.

 

" Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body

and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day, " wrote

Thomas Jefferson in 1816