Stunning Document Surfaces to Show That America's #1 Voting Machine Manufacturer Hides Security and Operation Flaws from The State of Maryland and the Country
In September, 2003 Linda Lamone, the Administrator of Maryland's State Board of Elections and President of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) hands over a critical study on the security of the Diebold Election Systems machines that count all of Maryland's votes.
Between the time that the State of Maryland commissioned the highly respected Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to evaluate the effectiveness and security of their electronic voting machines and the time that the study is made public, critical pieces of information have been edited, omitted and, in some cases words added, to fundamentally alter the original meaning of the report's conclusions.
Enter the world of electronic voting machines, the "cure" to hanging and dimpled chad.
It is a seamy world of secrecy, proprietary software, partisan executives "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President", politicians asking programmers to design software to flip vote totals, and lots and lots of money.
And it is a world of completely inconsistent realities. Diebold and the other manufacturers insist that their machines are safe and secure yet every single cyber security expert and computer scientist has, for years, been screaming into an empty wilderness of media attention, that . . .
The machines can be hacked, by the implanting of malicious code, at the factory.
The machines can be hacked during transport from the factory.
The machines can be hacked while on "Sleepovers" before the election.
The machines can be hacked (in 1 minute with a .50cent mini bar key) during the election, and
These machines can be hacked, at the tabulator, after the election.
What makes this SAIC report, called "The Pentagon Papers of Electronic Voting" by some computer experts, so important is that:
1. It shows, in black and white, that what Diebold says to election officials and voters across the country is not the truth.
2. It shows that there are virtually no security protocols in place for certain Diebold machines and that the recommended security protocols were purposely removed.
3. It shows that the analyzed Diebold machines were not functional nor secure for use in elections and raises serious doubts that they are ready for the November 7, 2006 Midterm elections.
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