HBO's Hacking Democracy Available Online

prostoalex writes "HBO's controversial special 'Hacking Democracy' on issues with Diebold voting machines is now available in full on Google Video." Covered earlier on Slashdot, the documentary seems to have gathered quite a bit of heat from Diebold in addition to the one that didn't air.

Re:Google video.

[oroshana]

If you have the "VideoDownloader" extension for Firefox, it gives you three choices of downloading the video from google: flv, avi, mp4. I'm sure you can find at least one of those options suitable.

Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch an hour and 20 minute video on google? No thanks
http://isohunt.com/torrents.php?ihq=Hacking+Democr acy [isohunt.com]

Re:Countdown

[DragonWriter]

Fact is an affirmative defense to libel.

No, it is not in the US. An affirmative defense is something the defendant must prove. Truth is not an affirmative defense to defamation (libel or slander), proof of falsity is part of the prima facie case for defamation that the plaintiff must prove.

To determine facts there is a legal process known as "discovery." I don't imagine that Diebold is going to be in much of a hurry to go there; hissy fits are their stock in trade.

Yeah, putting the facts in this case into a public forum is exactly what Diebold wants to avoid; a defamation suit is the last thing they'd want to do.

Script Changes

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved seeing the places where the Closed Captioning did not match the Narration on the movie. I watched it on my TiVo, and I always have CC on since it makes it easier for me to follow at low volume levels.

In 2 places that I remember, the narrator completely diverged form what the CC said. Specifically, when discussing the elections officials in the county where the "Random" 3% sample was supposed to be recounted, the CC mentioned that 2 of the election officials were indicted for election fraud. However, the narrator skipped that part and rephrased the segue to the next section.

It's a conspiracy, I say!

Re:The weird thing about electronic voting

[spiffyman]

Why the sudden 180?

Simple: because there have been a number of documented problems [wikipedia.org] involving electronic voting in the last 3 election cycles.

In 2000, everyone (not just the Dems - don't be a tool) supported electronic voting because it looked like the easiest way to avoid another Florida. But then it turned out that the machines government officials latched onto are worse than bad.

Is it so wrong for concerned citizens to want a non-disenfranchising electoral system with both accessibility and accountability?

Re:Vote Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

Andy Tanenbaum at electoral-vote.com has the House at 239/196 seats, Senate at 50/49/1.

California's Paper audit trail - huge improvement

[irenaeous]

I thought this would be of interest. I texted a friend of mine who works as a pole worker volunteer about the system used in Orange County California. The "OC" uses a paper audit trail system developed by Hart-Intercivic [hartintercivic.com].

Here is what my friend had to say:

The current electronic voting machines consist of a Judge's Booth Controller (JBC) & a daisy chain of (usually) 8 electronic voting screens w/Voted Paper Audit Transaction Systems (VPATS). The JBC governs all of the screens, but is not connected to any VPATS, each of which is independent to its own voting screen. The entire system is completely self-contained -- it does not hook into any other computer system. It only hooks into the wall plug to give it power.

The first voter (a non-volunteering, random citizen who just happens to be first in line) signs the OPEN POLLS paper tape that verifies that no votes have been cast on the JBC for that election. Each voter is given a temporary access code that allows him/her to vote on an assigned electronic screen. The number is randomly assigned by the JBC volunteer & has no connection to the voter's identity. It expires as soon as the voter casts his/her ballot and/or a brief period of time elapses with no voting activity on the electronic screen. The voter enters his/her access code, then chooses his/her vote for each candidate/race on the electronic screen. When he/she is finished choosing, a review screen displays all of the choices & prints the same review on the attached VPAT, which the voter can see, but cannot touch (it is sealed inside the VPAT machine). When the voter verifies that this is his/her correctly voted ballot, the ballot is cast electronically & is reprinted on the VPAT (again, the voter can read it, but cannot access it).

No poll worker can access the VPATS (actually for the duration of the election & counting, neither can a ROV employee), nor can they change the electronic screen. If the voter makes a mistake, the entire ballot must be cancelled & the voter must start again. Once the voting day is finished, & the JBC prints out an additional summary of all the votes cast during the day at that polling place, everything is turned back into the ROV (through a system of manual labor all done by community volunteers, supervised by a ROV employee). The VPATS go to one location. The printed JBC summaries (beginning & ending) go to another location. The JBC goes to a third location. All votes are tallied (by a mixed group of employees & community volunteers) in each of the 3 locations, & compared. If there are discrepancies, the VPAT tally is generally preferred first, then the JBC printed summary, then the JBC electronic count. (There could be legitimate reasons to change the ranking, but I don't know what those are. They are printed out & available to the public.)

About absentee ballots (which I am using this time since we are working a polling place not near our own precinct) -- once they reach the Registrar of Voter's (ROV) office, the unopened envelope is recorded so that you cannot vote again by showing up at the polls, & then it is transferred to a completely different office before it is ever opened. The different office has no access to the list of registered voters. There the envelope is opened & the ballot is taken out & separated from the envelope. All the envelopes are isolated elsewhere, the ballots are bundled together & transferred to a different office, where they are counted by non-employee community citizen volunteers like me.

I am still undecided if the safeguards are sufficient, but this sounds pretty good. The "OC" is a Republican area, but the paper audit trail requirement reforms are due to requirements by the California Secretary of State [acm.org], a Democrat.

Personally, I have no confidence in any system without the p

Tally Software

[tymbow]

I noted that one of the computers running GEMS (don't know if it was an actual tally machine) seemed to have Bear-Share installed so I assume it was connected to that "series of tubes". Nice; a Windows box running something as monumentally critical as voting connected to the web and probably used for general computing as well - there's a system I would have faith in. I'm also amazed at how stupid this piece of software was. You modify the MS access database (or maybe it was a plain JET database) which has seems to have no protection whatsoever and the stupid software doesn't even notice - "its ok, it has a password". Diebold made much about encryption but it seemd bogus if you can modidy databases and memory cards and not have the software notice. The worst part is the election officials presented all seemed to blindly accept that all was OK. I'm we use paper in my country.

Debra Bowen - pro Open Voting

[Onymous Coward]

By the way, if you're voting in California, you might consider that one of the candidates for Secretary of State, Debra Bowen [debrabowen.com] is a proponent of Open Voting.

Bruce McPherson, the incumbent, appears to be obstructing progress towards open voting.

I don't know the other candidates' stances. Anyone?

Re:One that didn't air?

[Deathbane27]

There was no other documentary that didn't air.

After hearing Diebold piss and moan, HBO responded "It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing.", which is basically a roundabout, offline version of "RTFA" (or, in this case, "WTFM").

Canadian electronic voting (was Re:Excellent!)

[rakerman]

Err, you really should be talking to your city councilors, they're the ones who handle municipal voting issues.

I'd be happy to document any experiences with the Ontario November 13 municipal elections in my blog, Paper Vote Canada [papervotecanada.ca].

Re:2 experiments I'd like to run.

[novus ordo]

Already been [securityfocus.com] done.

Wikipedia is your friend

[tibike77]

GVI format and conversion

Google Video Files (.gvi), and latterly its .avi files, are modified Audio Video Interleave (.avi) files that have an extra list containing the FourCC "goog" immediately following the header. The video is encoded in DivX4 alongside an MP3 audio stream. DivX video players can render .gvi Google Video Files without format conversion (after changing the extension from .gvi to .avi, although this method of just renaming the file extension does not work with videos purchased with DRM to protect it from piracy). Among other software VirtualDub is able to read .gvi files and allows the user to convert them into different formats of choice. There are also privately developed software solutions, such as GVideo Fix, that can convert them to .avi format without recompression. MEncoder with "-oac copy -ovc copy" as parameters also suffices.

Very simple conversion with no program

It is Simple to convert a GVI or GVP file. 1st download file, then open file with notepad. There will be a URL address. You copythe URL into your browser then you get a download window from google server for files real format AVI mpep wmv ect.

Torrent

[Little_Professor]

If you don't want to mess about with Google Video, here's the high-quality torrent http://isohunt.com/download/14712136/hacking+democ racy [isohunt.com]

In other words...

[Saikik]

The video [google.com]

The url to the video. Links directly to the file Short version above, paranoid long version below :)

http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0 &secureurl=wQAAAFtCSd0BXfG1A817GeMkPAixlrkhjTWsskg by79JBOPbMzTAWcrRpb5kuJoGJ1uu3ONHnqzgA98N_mFLH_Oxo PJL3TYewqMSfRqbRKDo8XHf6vDHnCg-zRK8FvtnQY8zujarb8N Sd0_hDUs6cD3IP5mk7YpFQNrH9Kq47Tn33koWBKh5gcLkt8fwo 9fqi63QsZjnoESjeD16VJKF4CXrkA0qM6xtKjUEDYw-wmUnLUY iFZ1j1NC6986P-XtJdTmK7OetHXDLjwh_dmNcjDJBs_I&sigh= 13RHbEsHegQ5Ae3kWbGSv_nhTTo&begin=0&len=4917885&do cid=-7236791207107726851 [google.com]

Watch the most interesting bit ...

[dogbreathcanada]

If you don't have the time to watch the entire thing ... start watching at 1:05:15 until at least 1:16:00 ... which includes Diebold stating that the memory cards cannot be hacked without the system knowing, and then watching the process of the memory cards being hacked and altering the outcome of an election (and the system not registering the fraud). All it takes is to preset the cards with a number of negative votes for one candidate and the same number of positive votes for another candidate (thus not altering the total number of votes cast).

It's not hate, it is disrespect and dislike.

[Futurepower(R)]

"... rabid bush haters ..."

Bush has given the world plenty of reason to dislike him: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy [futurepower.org].

"... but you act like bush has minions at every voting station actively working against those who would vote against him."

You completely missed the point. You apparently didn't watch the HBO movie, and haven't been reading about Diebold events. The voting machines are computers, and it is easy to program them to give results. In 2003, the Diebold CEO said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to (President Bush) next year." [pbs.org]. 'The Cleveland Plain Dealer also reported that O'Dell was one of President Bush's top fund-raisers, ranked in the elite "Pioneer" echelons for collecting a minimum of $200,000.'

George W. Bush is the most disrespected U.S. president, by far: George W. Bush comedy videos [futurepower.org].

Re:already got it.

[MachineShedFred]

I agree with you. However, it's important to note that corruption in the Federal Government did not start with the 2000 Presidential Election. It's been around long before that.