Diebold; Sunny Optimists of the Computer World

[mburbank]

Diebold spokesman David Bear admitted to the New York Times that the back door was inserted intentionally so that election officials would be able to update their systems easily. Bear justified Diebold's actions by saying, "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software... I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

-Ap wire

[kahljorn]

I have an idea of what that 'piece' is hinting at but can you fill in the blanks?

Are those the election machines that were used in florida and ohio?

[Dr. Boogie]

Max, you're missing the big picture here: if we don't believe in evil people, they'll cease to exist!

[mburbank]

Diebold makes touch screen voting machines. It's just been revealed that they ahve a back door with no security features at all (not even password protected) that allows you to alter individual results or enter new totals.

It's not a mistake. Diebold inlcuded it intentionally. It's supposedly to make it more 'suer friendly'. Diebold says we don't have to worry about the machines being messed with, because basically, they think 'nobody would do that.'

Diebold was a major contributor to the Bush Campaign.

[El Blanco]

"Self authenticating" aka "Security Through Obscurity" is frighteningly common in the IT field, Max. Its basically a cheap way of making people think the machines are secure.

The line of thinking is that ,yes, the information is easy to acces. But, the only people who can actually find it are the ones who are authorized to do so.

Yes, it is bullshit and it pisses me off when I see clients use it in place of actual security measures. However, it has more to do with companaies being lazy and/or cheap than any nefarius plots.

And is there any information about who else Diebold has contributed to? Did Kerry get any money from them?

[mburbank]

I don't think it's neccesarily a plot. But

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software... I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

That's just idiocy. There's ALWAYS been election fraud, much of it conducted by officials. It's more than idiocy, I don't believe the guy who said it believes it.

[derrida]

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software... I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Preechr, no!