Cringeley Will Write About Voting Machine Security Again!

[On the Road]

This is a followup from LoganSquare's thread on the PBS Tech columnist "I, Cringeley".

DU Thread
Cringeley column

I followed papau's suggestion and wrote to the author.

My email:

Bob --

I'm concerned about the voting machine flaws I saw in your column and elsewhere. I hope you will write more about the issue.

A lot of the research is being done by Democrats who are partisan but seem to be truly concerned about vote theft. (Bev Harris of http://www.blackboxvoting.com/ is one who I know slightly from another website.) Some of the findings on the software are very curious, including multiple vote registers, backdoors, wireless access, the ability to change time and date stamps, and practices like leaving vote totals on unsecured FTP sites during the counting process.

I don't know how serious or incriminating these flaws are. It would be valuable to see an evaluation from a nonpartisan expert like yourself. The fact that it has not been a front-page story is not surprising -- it often takes months or years for important stories to break. And this is potentially a very important story.

Jack Neefus
Collage Park, MD

To my surprise, Cringeley replied immediately:

Dear Jack,

I'll be covering it the week after next. It will take me until then
to feel confident I have a handle on the story and can add some value
to the discussion.

All the best,

Bob

And finally, here's my reply to him:

Bob --

Great -- thanks for the quick reply. There are also some people at Johns Hopkins working on the issue.*

I also saw your article on DTMD and CLEC vs. ILEC. Very timely. I work for Verizon and am interviewing with both the fiber-to-the-home and Competitive Intelligence groups. It shed some light on things I wasn't familiar with. Thanks.

Jack Neefus
College Park, MD

*Baltimore Sun article: http://www.sunspot.net/news/yahoo/bal-te.md.vote25jul25,0,3898855.story?coll=bal-newsaol-headlines

Cringeley's a good independent columnist. His opinions will help stir the pot in the tech world, where a lot of this seems to be brewing.

[papau]

1. ribofunk - you are my hero! - great news.

I met Bob a few decades ago when he wrote about PC's - and he impressed me as a straight arrow AND a nice guy. I spent $3 per month per mag he was in just to read his column! But I guarantee you he does not know me from a hole in the ground!

This is great news.

We need to get Bev to send him a response to Diebold"s PR statement. Also A David Dill response would help.

Bob has been around enough, and is easily respected enough, to make the election commissioners statements of "No I did not make a mistake buying Diebold" look very silly, if he comes to a conclusion that they are very wrong, and that he wants to make them look silly -
I expect the former but not the latter - I think in two weeks we will have a very respected Tech voice in the media explaining why these electronic "voting" touch screens need paper, auditable, trails.

[On the Road]

2. Papau -- I'm Glad You're the First Hit

(I was beginning to think nobody cared.)

Seriously, I am going to be out commision for an idefinite period of time. (Phone company's going on strike next week and I have to fill in 12 hours a day with no internet.) Could you check Cringely's column and post it on DU when it appears? I would greatly appreciate it.
He no only seems to be a good guy, he has a PBS forum from which to speak to tech journalists, programmers, and people in industry. His voice could be important.

[papau]

3. No problem - I'll see that it is posted to DU and that Bev gets a copy

:-)

:toast:

:-)

[RedEagle]

4. How about starting research at the USACM Workshop on Voter Verified system

Maybe he could start getting a handle on it at the USACM Workshop on Voter-Verified systems?


USACM Sponsored Workshop on Voter-Verifiable Election Systems July 28-29, 2003


http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=46

If this link doesn't work, go to: www.verifiedvoting.org and look at the right hand side of the screen for a short write up and link to this page.