It should be simple to put together a list of objectives voting machines must satisfy (e.g. proof your vote was recorded) rather than objectives vendors must satisfy (e.g. Adequate bribes)

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/evote/0,72130-0.html?tw=rss.index

Did Florida Foul Another Ballot?

By Kim Zetter 02:00 AM Nov, 17, 2006

Six years after the phrase "Florida recount" entered the national lexicon, another recount in the Sunshine State is sparking new controversies about poorly designed ballots, faulty voting equipment and negligent election officials.

This time the problem isn't butterfly ballots and hanging chads, however, but the new, multimillion-dollar touch-screen voting equipment that officials purchased in the wake of the 2000 election fiasco.

The machines, critics say, may have lost more than 18,000 votes cast in Sarasota County last week for a congressional seat that Republican candidate Vern Buchanan seized by a margin of fewer than 400 votes.

That's because 18,382 ballots recorded no vote for either Buchanan or his Democratic opponent, Christine Jennings, in the 13th Congressional District -- a House seat that previously belonged to Katherine Harris, the former Florida secretary of state who played a pivotal role in the 2000 presidential recount.

Critics are calling this new recount a sham, since the touch-screen machines have no paper trail and questions about the missing votes remain unanswered. They say a planned legal challenge contesting the results, likely to be filed next week, could help prove once and for all that electronic voting systems are unreliable.

"We're hoping this situation in Sarasota is going to show how absolutely insane it is to have these machines recording our votes ... or not recording our votes," says Susan Pynchon of the Florida Fair Elections Coalition.

... Sarasota Elections Supervisor Kathy Dent did not respond to a request for comment, but initially dismissed the importance of the missing votes in her county, saying that voters either failed to see the race on the ballot because it appeared high at the top of a ballot page that also included the governor's race, or they simply decided not to vote in that race -- although they did cast votes in other races on the ballots.

The iVotronic machines, made by Election Systems & Software, are not new to such controversy. The same brand of machine was responsible for losing 436 ballots in a North Carolina election in 2002. The iVotronic was also used in another Florida election in 2004 in which 134 ballots were recorded as blank.

In the North Carolina case, ES&S attributed the problem to a software glitch that caused the machines to falsely sense that their memories were full. Although the machines allowed voters to continue to cast ballots, the votes were not recorded.

... So-called undervotes -- blank races -- are common in elections, but the percentage of undervotes in a race seldom rises above 2 percent; a rate of 5 percent to 6 percent is considered bad. Some Saratoga precincts had undervote rates of more than 20 percent.

... The missing votes in Sarasota are significant for another reason.

Prior to the election, voters who cast ballots in early voting complained that the machines were failing to record their selection in the congressional race. Voters reported that the screen appeared to register their vote when they made it, but then showed no vote cast in that race on the review page.

... Dent initially dismissed voter complaints about the machines as anecdotal and insisted there was nothing wrong with the equipment.

Under pressure from critics, she later backtracked and asked the state to conduct an audit of the machines.

The audit was halted this week, however, after complaints from Jennings' attorney about how the testing was to be conducted, insisting that experts representing both candidates be involved in the process.

... In addition to the machine audit, Buchanan's narrow margin of victory triggered an automatic recount, per Florida election law. But a recount of the electronically cast portion of the votes has little meaning, critics say, since officials are simply running the same digital numbers through the tabulation software and have no way to independently verify that the numbers were recorded correctly.

If someone outside the government had lost votes...

http://techdirt.com/articles/20061116/094423.shtml

FTC Slams Security Firm That Lost Customer Data

from the burn dept

Remember Guidance Software, the security firm that helps companies identify when a hacker has compromised their systems, but then proceeded to lose data on their own customers? It's finally settled with the FTC, for in the government's words it failed to, "...implement simple, inexpensive and readily available security measures to protect consumers' data. In contrast to claims about data security made on Guidance's Web site, the company created unnecessary risks to credit card information by permanently storing it in clear readable text." So basically, it was total negligence from a company that should have known much better. For most companies, one data breach probably wouldn't damage their reputation too much, but when it's so closely related to your company's mission, and you've received such a harsh rebuke from the FTC, it's hard to see their reputation not taking a hit.

But of course they didn't lose them, they just moved them to an election where they needed them.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20061116/091957.shtml

No Need To Vote Early And Often When The E-Voting Machine Counts Your Vote In Triplicate

from the automating-vote-fraud dept

Remember how the press (and e-voting companies) were telling us there were no major glitches in their equipment this past election? That, of course, was until votes turned up missing in Florida and Arkansas. However, don't fret. We may have found the missing votes. You see, down in Texas, just outside of Austin, the voting machines there were found to have counted each vote three times. This was discovered only after election officials wondered why there were more votes than visitors. In typical e-voting company fashion, the makers of these machines, Election Systems & Software, once again refuses to concede that their machines are the problem, blaming human error in the operators of the machine. Yes, that's right, when their machine counts votes in triplicate, it's not the fault of the machine that should be designed in a way to never let that happen, it's the fault of the users, all of whom had their votes count multiple times. Apparently it never occurred to Election Systems & Software that part of their job in designing the voting machine is to make it impossible for "human error" (or anything else, for that matter) to allow votes to be counted multiple times.

Compare (contrast) the inability of election commissions to understand technology with the way political parties can make it work for them... This is also an indication that any laws to restrict data gathering on citizens will have an exemption for anything that might help political parties.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2060543,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

Political Parties Reap Data Mining Benefits

November 16, 2006 By Wayne Rash

WASHINGTON—Both major U.S. political parties entered into a new era in the way they use the information they collect on voters throughout the United States.

Using new levels of sophistication in how they collect, clean and manipulate the information in their massive databases, the parties are able to predict with reasonable accuracy how individual voters will vote when they get to the polls, [perhaps we could eliminate this voting stuff altogether? Bob] and to target voters individually where needed.

... "The DNC is using Netezza to analyze large amounts of data," said Ellen Rubin, vice president of Marketing for Netezza in Framingham, Mass.

... "They had over 900 fields for each one of the data records," Rubin said.

... Rubin said that a lot of work was required to match voter lists with other databases to ensure that contact information was correct and complete.

... "Our database is not one where we feel that too much information is too much. The more information we can add and overlay is better."

... Part of the reason there's so much information is that the parties both retain data that goes far beyond voter registration lists.

"It starts with basic voter registration and party registration data," Holmes said.

"Then there are things like hunting licenses and other publicly available information," he said, "and then there's consumer data information such as magazine subscriptions. There's no one thing. It's a combination of information that gives you the picture you want to see."

No doubt this is another technique politician could use to “get information to voters”

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/359?ref=rss

Russians use SpamThru to pump stock

Robert Lemos 2006-11-16

One researcher has pointed to a Russian spam group and the SpamThru Trojan as a major force behind the recent jump in stock and pharmaceutical junk e-mail.

In a report released earlier this week, Joe Stewart, a senior security researcher at SecureWorks, has found evidence that a group of technically adept Russian spammers has used the SpamThru Trojan to create a bot net of more than 70,000 computers. The compromised systems are used to send junk e-mail carrying pump-and-dump stock scams and advertisements for pharmaceuticals.

The Russian group may be responsible for at least part of the increase in spam seen over the last three months, according to an article in eWeek. The surge--detailed in a SecurityFocus article at the end of October--has caused companies to see anywhere from 30 percent to 450 percent more junk e-mail in the past three months.

The findings adds to evidence that bot nets are increasingly becoming the tool of choice for cyber criminals. The people behind the bot nets, known as bot masters or bot herders, frequently amass thousands, hundreds of thousands and, sometimes, millions of compromised computers together to more efficiently attack targets or send spam. One company--anti-spam startup Blue Security--fell afoul of one large spammer, who used bot nets to launch massive denial-of-service attacks against the company, driving the firm out of the anti-spam business.

Computers in at least 166 countries are part of the bot net controlled by the Russian spammers, Stewart stated in the analysis.

Once again, the comments are worth reading!

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/17/065214&from=rss

British "Secure" Passports Cracked

Journal written by hard-to-get-a-nickna (965978) and posted by CowboyNeal on Friday November 17, @06:31AM from the trust-us dept. Encryption Privacy

hard-to-get-a-nickna writes "The Guardian has cracked the so-trumpeted secure British passports after 48 hours of work: [Why so long? Bob] 'Three million Britons have been issued with the new hi-tech passport, designed to frustrate terrorists and fraudsters. [I think not! Bob] So why did Steve Boggan and a friendly computer expert find it so easy to break the security codes?'"

Ethics is as ethics does?

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1163585123256

Angry DAs Battle Critics on the Web

Raises risk of prejudicing cases, waiving work-product privilege

Pamela A. MacLean The National Law Journal November 16, 2006

A few California district attorneys are mad as hell [frequently a synonym for “not thinking” Bob] at the press and they're not going to take it anymore.

Critical media coverage has prompted local district attorneys in San Jose, Bakersfield and Orange County, as well as a city attorney in San Diego, to take on local newspaper criticism by posting responses on the Internet through county Web pages and, in the case of San Diego, regular blog postings.

It signals new media savvy among the prosecutors, but it also raises the potential risk of tainting the process by crossing ethical lines that might prejudice an active case, waive work-product privileges or lock prosecutors into a strategy before the case fully develops, warned Laurie Levenson, a former prosecutor and now a professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.

"They are just raising the stakes by taking on the paper through a Web page. Mark Twain was right -- 'Don't fight people who buy ink by the barrel,'" Levenson said. "I love the fact the public remains more informed about what is going on in a prosecutor's office, but the question remains: How carefully monitored is it, and does it impact the right to a fair trial?"

Employees still don't get it. If the company owns the communications channel, they MUST monitor it. (Another example of the fish you could land with a little creative e-discovery?)

http://techdirt.com/articles/20061116/131033.shtml

Reminder: When Ditching Your Company To Build A Competing Product, Don't Discuss It On Work Computers

from the just-a-suggestion dept

Earlier this year, we noted that Yahoo had sued some former employees after they jumped ship (as a group) to another company -- but discussed the move using Yahoo's instant messenger before moving on -- allowing Yahoo to claim that the group took trade secrets with them to the new company. [...does that necessarily follow? Bob] While it seems particularly short-sighted to use Yahoo's IM product while at Yahoo to discuss such things, if you're using a company's computers, it really doesn't matter what tool you're using. VentureBeat notes that Iconix has convinced a judge to issue an injunction against a startup, after Iconix reviewed instant messenger messages between two former employees while they were still at the company discussing their plans for the new company. In the messages, one of them even admits that he's confused over which company they are talking about. It probably does happen all the time, but if you're planning on jumping ship from your current company, you should probably find some other way to discuss it.

Interesting...

http://www.mises.org/story/2377

Why Wal-Mart Matters

By Art Carden Posted on 11/16/2006

Perspective is everything...

http://digg.com/world_news/Whatever_You_Think_About_The_Second_World_War_Is_Wrong

Whatever You Think About The Second World War Is Wrong!

csandb submitted by csandb 21 hours 32 minutes ago (via http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8134617&fsrc=RSS )

That, at least, is the contention of Norman Davies, a trenchant British-born historian whose scope, ambition and knowledge about Europe are unmatched. His aim in this new history of the war is to puncture the comfortable myths created by the combination of popular culture (especially in films) plus the self-centred history taught in schools.

[From the article: The casualties of the 1944 Warsaw uprising were the equivalent of the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre, every day for two months. ]

Why did Microsoft help fund the SCO v. IBM case?

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Steve_Ballmer_says_Linux_uses_our_intellectual_property

Steve Ballmer says Linux "uses our intellectual property"

deadmitch submitted by deadmitch 9 hours 59 minutes ago (via http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;839593139;fp;16;fpid;1 )

In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property.

I LOVE free!

http://community.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/160217&from=rss

Mapping the universe with open source software

2006.11.16 10:01 StoneLion

Astronomers at New York City's Hayden Planetarium and Rose Center for Earth and Space think space exploration should be easily accessible to anyone. To make that possible, they offer an interactive atlas of the universe that anyone can download for free.

... More open source astronomy Partiview and Digital Universe aren't the only ways Earthbound astronomy aficionados can track the skies from their computers. We profiled Virtual Moon Atlas, Stellarium, and Celestia in an earlier article.