12-9-05: Diebold hack test -- Sec. St...

Author Message   BBV Admin Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 2929 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 6 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, December 9, 2005 - 3:23 pm:        Update on Diebold Voting Machine “Hack” Testing Letter faxed and mailed Dec. 9, 2005 To: California Secretary of State, Attn Bruce McDannold, cc: Bruce McPherson From: John S. Baker, Attorney at Law, Dorsey & Whitney Southern Calif. Office “I represent Black Box Voting, Inc., a non-partisan, non-profit 501c(3) corporation. On June 16, 2005, Black Box Voting sent a request to examine the Diebold Election Systems component: the programmed “electronic ballot box” memory cards used in optical scan and touch screen voting systems (“Component”). This request was made pursuant to California Elections Code Section 19202 (“19202 Request”), which provides: Any person or corporation owning or being interested in any voting system or part of a voting system may apply to the Secretary of State to examine it and report on its accuracy and efficiency to fulfil its purpose. The Secretary of State shall complete his or examination without undue delay. “In the 19202 Request, Black Box Voting asked that the Component be evaluated for five possible flaws with respect to: the latest optical scan systems (firmware 1.96.4); the paperless touch screen, as used in Alameda County on November 2, 2004; the new TSx system proposed for certification; and any older optical scan model still in use in California. A copy of the 19202 Request is attached for your convenience. “Even though Section 19202 requires the Secretary of State to complete his or her examination without ‘undue delay’, Black Box Voting did not receive a response to its Request until Saturday, November 19, 2005. In that e-mail response, you indicated that the Secretary of State would afford Black Box Voting an opportunity to demonstrate the vulnerabilities with the Diebold AccuVote-Os, based on the exploits outlined in the Hursti report. You also stated that Diebold agreed to make their equipment and their staff available for such tests on November 30, 2005, at the California Secretary of State’s office, 1500 11th Street, Sacramento. In connection with your response, you attached a document that provided the “actual protocol and conditions” (“Protocols”) for the proposed test. “Unfortunately, the Protocols, which were written by Diebold, were seriously flawed, because they contemplated testing equipment that was specifically hand-picked by Diebold, rather than randomly sampling voting machines that were currently in existence and being utilized. The proposed test system (Optical Scan terminal 1.96.6) was of a type that had not been certified or used in California and was not an item requested for examination in my client’s 19202 request. However, my clients would be willing to evaluate this item, but only in addition to the requested items. The test also contemplated that Diebold would control all of the conditions, despite the fact that it had a vested interest in the outcome of the test and would stand to lose millions of dollars if the test showed flaws in the voting systems created by Diebold. My clients have other concerns with the initial test protocols; for example the time limits were listed as “required” but were left blank. We can discuss these issues once a proper dialog on these issues is established. A copy of your response and the Protocols are attached as Exhibit 2. “On November 22, 2005, less than two business days after you sent your response, you sent an e-mail at 5:11 p.m. stating that if Black Box Voting would like to participate in the test it would have to respond by 10:00 a.m. the following morning. You also said that the time of the test would be moved from 8:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. A true and correct copy of your November 22, 2005 response is attached as Exhibit 3. “Less than three hours after receiving your November 22 e-mail, Black Box Voting responded by suggesting that the Protocols be changed by selecting machines from certain County election offices which have not shown a bias for Diebold. Unfortunately, you have never responded to this correspondence or permitted the inspection, despite Black Box Voting’s reasonable request under California Election Code Section 19202. As such, the Secretary of State has clearly violated Section 19202. “Accordingly, please contact me upon receipt of this letter as to whether the Secretary of State will allow Black Box Voting’s 19202 Inspection and, if so, which Protocols he is agreeable to. If we do not receive a response to this letter by December 16, 2005, Black Box Voting will be forced to pursue other available legal remedies.” (END OF ATTORNEY LETTER) From Black Box Voting — AT ISSUE Procedures to be negotiated include: 1) The secrecy provisions written by Diebold -- Black Box Voting recommends that all facets of the test should be open to the public and to the media. 2) Access and time limits -- Diebold wrote that a time limit would be set but did not specify whether it would be 30 seconds or two weeks. Diebold left a "blank" after the time limit item. Black Box Voting recommends that testers should have the same level of access, time, and supervision as San Diego poll workers in the July 26, 2005 election. 3) Versions to be tested should match those in the 19202 request. Diebold involvement in writing procedures sent to Black Box Voting by Calif. secretary of state: The California secretary of state provided written testing procedures to Black Box Voting in the form of a Word Document. A review of the "properties" feature on this electronic document reveals that it was written by Rob Pelletier of Diebold Election Systems, then sent to Black Box Voting from the Secretary of State's office. It is the position of Black Box Voting that the vendor should not control the testing of this system.   Catherine Ansbro Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Catherine_a Post Number: 1306 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, December 9, 2005 - 3:30 pm:        It's pretty shocking that the SoS would send an email at 5:11pm, demand a response by 10am the next day, and then not have the courtesy to respond to BBV's timely response. I bet they're kicking themselves about what the Document Properties revealed.   Edward Robles Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Tedeger Post Number: 18 Registered: 11-2005 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 4:14 am:        So what do you expect from the crooks who are about to take over the State of Ohio? A reasonable attitude, or even a law-compliant one? What I do not understand is how they got to the SoS. Let's go back to a full-court press for paper ballots and rubber stamps. That always worked well, even if it was a trifle slow. Far better slow accurate counts than fast inaccurate (or rigged) ones.   BBV Admin Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 2930 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 5:39 am:        Edward, We are presently circling around the Ohio SOS, by our having requested public records from the EAC, Hardin and Lucas counties, and the SOS's office, itself, to find out whether Blackwell disclosed BEFORE the November 2004 election, to the Ohio counties and the EAC about the GEMS defect which was found by Compuware Corporation and documented in their August 18, 2004 Report to be a "high", "high", "high" risk in all 3 categories of their testing. So far, we have received responses from Hardin County and the EAC stating that they did not receive any warning from Blackwell about this, but have not yet received any responses from either Lucas County (no surprise there!), nor the SOS's office (certainly no surprise there!!) regarding our request. You also have to conclude that Blackwell failed in his fiduciary duty as a chief elections officer in not informing the SOS's of those other states using this software in the 2004 general election (about 800 other counties) about this defect as well. Obviously, he was more interested in protecting Diebold's best interest (money) over the citizens' best interests (a voting machine that wasn't "open for business"), because there was no way Diebold could have mitigated the defect in time for the election. We still don't believe they've mitigated this defect. We hope that by showing such protection of a vendor by this SOS, it will open the door to more scrutiny, not only of Blackwell, but of other SOS's throughout the country, who have exibited similar pro-vendor behavior that has resulted in questionable elections in their states. America, wake up! Kathleen Wynne   joe Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: 911review Post Number: 1 Registered: 12-2005 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 2 (A keeper?) Posted on Sunday, December 11, 2005 - 6:19 pm:        also see... Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers http://911review.org/brad.com/printer_code_tracking.html printer code tracking Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers - Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You   Jim March Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Jimmarch Post Number: 75 Registered: 01-2005 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 3:01 pm:        Joe, that's an interesting point. In this case it's not really the scanners we have to worry about so much as the people/companies that print the ballots. "Microdot control information" is most definately possible. This would also mesh with the trend towards newer scanners that keep a complete digital bitmap image of each voted sheet. In one sense these have a security advantage in that we can refer back to the fairly high-res scanned images as a fraud check. But the bad news is, instead of looking for crude changes to the paper in a "dot area" about the size of the end of a pencil eraser (so-called "character position scanning" to see if a particular bubble is filled in) we're now scanning the pages at 200 - 300dpi. High enough resolution to make out "microdots" on the paper with secret codes in them. All of the Hart paper scanners are of this new high-res type. Diebold has such a thing waiting in the wings (no Federal cert yet) but probably in use in some of the states that don't require Fed cert before use. This is the "high speed" absentee ballot ("central count") scanners. There are advantages to "bitmap high-res scanning" but...you've just shown us a potential downside. Jim

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