HBO's Hacking Democracy Available Online 350
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.
Countdown (Score:2)
Bittorrent (Score:2, Informative)
http://isohunt.com/torrents.php?ihq=Hacking+Democ
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Weird Fact: Bozo is a compliment. (Score:4, Funny)
You called the President of the United States a bozo. For any other president, that would be disrespect. For George W. Bush, that is an improvement over what he is usually called, so I guess he can count you as one of his warmest friends.
Check what comedians say about him: Funniest George W. Bush Comedy Videos [futurepower.org]. (I'm assuming that we can all agree that bozo is friendlier than "cretinous simpleton".)
Re:Weird Fact: Bozo is a compliment. (Score:4, Funny)
Watch the most interesting bit ... (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia is your friend (Score:5, Informative)
Google Video Files (.gvi), and latterly its
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.
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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.
Just as it is for all abusive control freaks.
KFG
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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.
Yeah, putting the facts in this case into a
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"Fact" is also not an affirmative defense to libel, although "facts" are a component of both the prima facie case for libel and most defenses to it.
Your statement was wrong however interpretted, but it seemed most likely that you mistook "fact" for "truth" and simply reversed the burden of proof ("truth" was a common law affirmative defense.)
But now it just seems like you were stating something that was even more wrong, and had only the most tenuous possible connection to reality.
Re:Countdown (Score:4, Funny)
Since this line of debate was started by your claim that there was no burden of proof with affirmative defenses, because proof was moot with them, your correction, while accurate, demonstrates that your original position was wrong.
It has nothing to do with the burden of proof on the elemetns of the plaintiff's case, but it has everything to do with the burden of proof the defense has with regard to proving the elements of the affirmative defense.
I think you are confused as to the context of this discussion. There is no judge.
Well, we agree on that.
Or, looked at a different way, I gave you an opportunity to either productively move the discussion forward, or make a fool out of yourself, and you chose the latter option.
Ah. So your delusion about the mere existence of a judge is rather deeper than it initially appeared. Might I suggest you seek professional help with that?
Re:The weird thing about electronic voting (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, those silly Democrats. They're not happy if Republicans steal an election with paper ballots, they're not happy if Republicans steal them with electronic ballots. How do they want you to steal them, eh?
Well, if you ask me, the deal is that the Bush machine is getting ready to pull some fast ones tomorrow, and they expect they're going to have some peculiar "upsets" that need to be explained away, so they're sending folks like yourself around to soften up the crowd in advance. But hey, some people think I'm paranoid.
Aw, poor baby. You might lose some karma.
Re:The weird thing about electronic voting (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and the Republicans are really good at that one. You got to hand it to them, whenever they're under-fire they go on a really strong counter-attack (kind of like this one).
Bullshit. You don't have documentation of that.
Now this at least actually happened. Against the long litany of sins in Ohio in 2004, against the use of hired thugs to interfere with the vote count in Florida in 2000, you can point to this one mindless prank.Hardly. But they cheat so well! Or at least, the new breed of Republicans do... give 'em one or two more elections and maybe we can forget about the rest of them.
To quote an interview with Steven Freeman [principlesproject.org]:
Did you notice the ONLY vote fraud they FOUND? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. You don't have documentation of that.
Did you notice, by the way, that the only actual fraud in 2004 the HBO documentary FOUND was 200 votes stolen FROM Bush in the "troublesome in 2000" Florida precinct they went after first?
(Of course this is still consistent with the theory that, in 2004, the Republicans knew how to rig things untracably a
Re:The weird thing about electronic voting (Score:5, Insightful)
- The "safeguards" in place border on the non-existant at this point. No one who understands those DRE machines thought they were a good idea.
- I would not believe the 2004 election was stolen were it not for
- the patterns in the exit-poll data discrepancies
- the huge number of conventional election corruption techniques deployed in Ohio.
In other words, you can spin, spin, spin all you want, but there's a reality-based world out there, and some day the truth (if you will excuse the expression) will out.Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. If people doing the same thing on the other side, there is no problem? The problem is that people are able to do this in the first place! Which party is doing it is completely immaterial. (especially to me, I don't even live in the US)
It's not hate, it is disrespect and dislike. (Score:3, Informative)
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 help [pbs.org]
Re:The weird thing about electronic voting (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is you can't possibly deny that, say, Diebold Accuvote machines aren't pieces of swiss-cheese as far as vote security is concerned, and you can't possibly deny that the management of the big electronic voting companies (Diebold and ES&S) have a known Republican bias -- both of those points are tremendously well documented. The one and only thing you can possibly deny is that maybe those two points weren't put together to steal the 2004 election -- except that there is that nasty little problem of explaining away the peculiarly large exit-poll discrepancies that correlated with the use of those voting machines.
Hence, I vehemently deny your accusation that this is all Democratic spin, and I reiterate that this is just an attempt at Republican counter-spin.
El wrongo... if you really believe that (and I find it unlikely that you really do) you're not paying attention.
Well, at the moment it's a little hard to believe that, because all polls seem to agree that most people are sick of the Iraq war, and annoyed at the Bush regime's handling of it. The American people can be a little slow on occasion, but they do catch on eventually (you know, "some of the people some of the time" and so on, as was once said by a man who doesn't deserve to be associated with the current crop of people calling themselves Republicans).
What is so hard to believe about Karl Rove engaging in an internet astro-turf campaign? Wouldn't it seem weird if he didn't try something like that?
In any case, I'm not suggesting that every conservative voice on slashdot is necessarily a hired Republican-sock puppet. What I am saying is that there's a surprising number of folks doing mindless reiteration of the same pretty lame talking points, like "Oh the democrats do it too!", or "oh polls are so inaccurate", or "oh you're just a tinfoil hat conspiracy nut like those 9/11 truthies!" Those folks, I find, shall we say, suspicious.
It must be biased. We just don't realize that The Democrats Do It Too (so it must be okay).
In any case: if anyone is so whacked as to still be reading this: don't get so wrapped up in the "the elections are rigged!" business that you don't bother voting. Yeah, they're rigged, but none of us know how badly they're rigged, and if it's just a finger on the scale (and not a two-ton weight) we need all the legit voters out there we can get.
Re:The weird thing about electronic voting (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, just that like that guest I served in the restaurant yesterday. He complain there was no sauce on the steak, so I took it back and gave him a new one with sauce but this time no fries. But guess what: he still complained. Sheesh, there's no pleasing some people.
Look, everyone agrees the old system was hopeless. Does that mean we have to accept whatever crap we are offered as a replacement? The main complaint with the voting machines is really very simple: the results are unverifiable. Even if no other actual problems were found (although they have), this really should disqualified the Diebold machines. It is a very simple point, very easy to understand, and very easy to understand the importance of. If you don't get this, you are not smart enough to vote.
The fix is well known: keep a paper trail. Now here's the hard part: That does not mean a return to badly designed paper based mechanical voting. Got that? Yes, I know the word "paper" is involved in both but don't be fooled by that. Really: they are still not the same thing, and they do not share the same problems. Trust me on this, or better still, just think it over for two seconds.
So the only question left is why would anyone oppose the fix, except if they stand to gain from errors and/or manipulation that the fix would prevent?
Political character of the American electorate (Score:3, Interesting)
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Well okay. As long as you promise not to drown the facts in another "he said/she said" shouting match.
Oops, too late.
I think the Democrats are too timid to cross the street without a helicopter, the idea of them committing election fraud on the scale that the Republicans have been getting away with is completely laughable.
Even if it were really the
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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
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It's true we need more modern electoral systems. In fact, if we can build a fully electronic system that is reliable and accountable, we can rid ourselves of that electoral collage crap that we deal with today. You know the one where the electoral votes elect the president, not the popular ones? The one where the electoral votes aren't necessarily a reflection of the popular votes?
With a reliable and fast electronic vote system, we can actually have a way to have
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Ah, you've got to love the general tenor of political debate in America, eh?
According to some accounts, the reason John Kerry caved-in so quickly and refused to challenge what had gone down in Ohio is he was afraid people would call him a "sore loser".
Way to go John... we weren't using that democracy for much any way.
No Talking! (Score:5, Funny)
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True, unless you are one of the people who already noticed it was posted to Google before Slashdot posted it.
I was in the educational videos last night watching the "Physics for Future Presidents" lectures. (great stuff!) I noticed the Dibold video in my search results. That was some pretty hot stuff and covered some pretty blarring problems including official records in the trash and other serious
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You would be referring to Bev Harris, who runs the site Black Box Voting [blackboxvoting.org].
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One that didn't air? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Thanks.
It boggles my mind (Score:2)
They do millions of ATM transactions FLAWLESSLY every day
But then again, it is flawless by design. Who am I kidding.
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Diebold is a big part of the problem, but they're simply just one of the players in an untrustable voting system.
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You'd be surprised (Score:5, Funny)
'; UPDATE votes SET type='W', name='Electronic voting is not ready yet';
Interesting?? (Score:2)
Re:It boggles my mind (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, ATMs are capable of providing a paper receipt and the accuracy of ATM actions are routinely audited by average citizens with a vested interest in the accuracy of an ATM's tabulations.
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it's really too bad that average citizens don't have any vested interest in the accuracy of a voting machine's tabulations...
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It's the "ability to audit" thing that's a problem.
I can audit an ATM's accuracy by looking at my bank statement. I can't check whether a voting machine recorded my vote -- unless I use something like the punchscan solution.
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there, tool all of 12 seconds to come up with that. And you are telling me a multibillion-dollar behemoth could not imprement auditing of any sort?
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"Auditing of any sort" is one thing. Auditing packaged such that the states' election officials are willing to actually buy it is a different matter.
Different problems though (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the case with a voting machine. Here you can't really trust, well, anyone. The person who controls the machine might very well want to change the results so you have to have a system to keep them from doing that. It's a much harder problem.
It would be somewhat analogue to why encryption works for SSH but not for copy protection. With SSH you are trying to keep everyone out except for trusted parties. You trust the server, it trusts you (if you authenticate). All the people who should have keys. However for copy protection you want to keep everyone out, even the person who you are giving the software to in the end. You want them to have use but not access. Well it doesn't work like that, the key has to be there somewhere and thus the encryption is mostly just for show.
So that's actually part of the problem here. Diebold just kinda decided to apply their ATM design to voting machines, but that doesn't work because voting machines are a much harder problem.
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Re:It boggles my mind, it shouldn't (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit! I have really been wasting a lot of time debugging software if all I needed was a little positive thinking!
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Tell yourself that if the software you are writing is not secure, you will lose everything, and then tell all the people up the chain of command and all your customers the exact same thing.
THEN it'll automatically make itself bug-free.
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Is this an official download? (Score:2)
Is that legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is that legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
> video is buttery thick with irony
That's because you're an idiot. Influencing an election is a fraud on our entire system of government. Making an unauthorized copy of a video that exposes it is not stealing, no matter how much the content industry wants you to think so.
Re:Is that legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why only one? I'd say 'both' is pretty likely.
Checks and Balances (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the fact that I have very little faith in the electoral process in the USA, and no confidence at all in the election results - what I still retain faith in is the way that US citizens will not stand idly by, while democracy is stolen from them, whether it be by design, or by mistake (it's immaterial really, either way).
The important thing is that the US system of checks and balances permits citizens to kick up an almighty stick about the systems which count (or fail to count, or alter, even worse!) their votes.
The only question in my mind is this: can the citizens of the USA kick up a big enough stink, and fast enough, to produce a fair election in 2008. Somehow, I doubt it, sadly.
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I take your drift, of course, because we've seen remarkably little of "checks and balances" in action of late. To take one example, the election fraud in Ohio was pretty scandalous, but the Republican congress got out their rubberstamp and accepted the result anyway: party loyalty seems to have paralyzed the US system of "checks and balances".
But then, that suggests to me that i
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Well, since way more than half of the people that were elected by all of us to Congress decided the PATRIOT Act was an important set of tools, the question (rather than why "helf the people" weren't listened to) is why way more than half of them elected legislators that didn't do their bidding. Or did they?
If half of the people couldn't talk the "leaders"
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Well, I do understand that there are people who think that. I also know that some people think that, say, Ted Kennedy is actually a form of Scotch Drinking Orangutan. But that's only half true. Just because white-hot hatred of someone makes it soothing to see conspiracies where there's really just Florida v
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These sorts of things very nearly have me convinced that the vast majority of Americans are oblivious to the world; fast asleep, perhaps, with visions of iPods and SUVs dancing in their head.
Indeed, and on the other side we have utter morons who think the current era is like Nazi Germany and Bush is preparing to do a "Hitler" and seize power.
Is there (not accusing you personally of this, but for rhetorical sake) no one who actually THINKS and sees things relatively clearly? No, there wasn't massive el
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Yes, our current Stay and Lose strategy is much better.
This is another thing I don't understand. How exactly do you (and others like you) define "lose"? We've already won. Hussein is gone. The country has been turned into a democracy.
Of course, it's not that simple -- the government is extremely unstable. There is an unofficial civil war going on, fighting for power. Not all of the country is represented in the government, creating a lot of tension. There are still a lot of terrorists aiming at Americ
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PNAC's goal is to build and expand the American empire smiliar to the Third Reich of Nazi Germany.
Exactly what I'm talking about. -sigh- That, sir, is simply silly. Unless you can show exactly how we're going to make any other country a new state of the US by force, it's just silly.
And just because someone writes a book doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. There are a hell of a lot of books "proving" UFOs, too. Not to mention books about religion.
And we europeans aren't jealous of yo
Re:Checks and Balances (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they should understand that anyone who claims polls are "notoriously inaccurate" is most likely making excuses for election fraud, because while polls are clearly not perfect they are, at this point, the one and only check remaining on the integrity of the electoral process. Unless you go for the "it can't happen here" faith-based approach.
Americans should not have to take this sort of thing on faith. We're supposed to be the pros at democracy, not the laughing-stock.
Ah, the good old "you're just like those truthies" smear, combined with an "oh, everyone does it". You guys really need some better talking points.
I wish the 2004 election fraud were bullshit. In fact, I wish it were at least plausibly deniable, but it just isn't: you had unusually large exit-poll discrepancies that were nearly always in the Republicans favor, correlating with multiple different factors, e.g. (1) the use of electronic voting machines, (2) the presence of Republican governors, (3) "battle ground" states...
That is over and above the many and various well-documented dirty tricks pulled in Ohio.
(Funny having a bunch of Canadians taking a Republican line all of a sudden, isn't it? Usually they just laugh at us for not using paper ballots.)
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Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
I asked the elections official how did they know my vote was counted. Her response was, (as she pointed to a small LCD display), "this counter here says how many votes this machine processed." I asked her how does she know it was counted *CORRECTLY* she made the mistake of saying "we're pretty sure it's correct."
At this point I demanded to know how "pretty sure" she was. Her defense was "there's a paper trail incase of an error" - a fairly valid defense. I proceeded to point to two electronic Diebold machines, the 6" thick ones with an LCD screen, and asked her "what about those?" She told me in a very matter of fact way that there's a paper trail for those too.
I asked her where the printer was, and if she ever actually say a printer. It was at this point that she no longer wanted to talk to me and kinda laughed me off as some sort of conspiracy wackjob.
The fact that we used these machines after their utter failure in larger US elections pissed me off, but the fact that they FAILED in CANADA, just one province over (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/25/
I wanted to argue with her further but had no hard references memorized, essentially making my argument invalid. I did a bit of research from the usual sources (http://www.blackboxvoting.org), but I was really hoping to see this documentary before the elections tomorrow.
I encourage all Canadians voting in municipal elections tomorrow to make your feelings about e-voting (especially on Diebold machines) known to the organizers, and write your MPs and MPPs to tell them that e-voting is not acceptable.
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I agree with your statement and will probably talk my municipal elected official. Now I want to add that our federal voting system is right now perfectly good in is paper ballot country wide form. If any party, Conservatives or Liberals, try to introduce some of those shenanigans blatant imitation of democracy, I really hope that all Canadians wi
Canadian electronic voting (was Re:Excellent!) (Score:3, Informative)
I'd be happy to document any experiences with the Ontario November 13 municipal elections in my blog, Paper Vote Canada [papervotecanada.ca].
I hear that a live performance... (Score:4, Funny)
2 experiments I'd like to run. (Score:2)
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And on a side note, isn't it funny how all these Texas-based companies keep coming up again and again? Diebold, Halliburton, KB&R, Enron, etc. etc. Maybe we should take a closer look at the education software firm Bush's brother runs that supplies
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Negative votes? (Score:2)
Re:Negative votes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to set the record straight;
The vote was can the machine be hacked?
6 no votes were cast and 2 yes votes were cast.
The pre count showed no votes cast for either option and no votes cast.
After the count (optical scan) the official verified result was 7 yes and one no.
My question is - why did the initial printout show zero votes?
The initial votes on the card were zero..
The important question is.. How did the final count get altered?
Answer.. The card that does not contain a program actualy does contain a program. That program altered the result. Re-watch the film. The card contains much more than just the poll totals which is denied by the manufacture.
I would hope the machines would format any card at the start of an election and then write the encrypted count totals to the card and nothing else except a checksum and the machine ID number.
California's Paper audit trail - huge improvement (Score:2, Informative)
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:
Open Source Voting anyone? [GPL+] (Score:2)
Open Voting System Explained
What is the Open Voting system?
The Open Voting system is very much like a traditional system in which the voter enters the voting place, marks his or her choices onto a paper ballot, and inserts the ballot into a ballot box except the voter marks the ballot using a computerized voting station rather than a pencil or colored marker. The Open Voting system preserves the paper ballot. However, which is printed in plain text that the voter can read
Another (shorter) Video (Score:4, Interesting)
What Disturbs Me... (Score:2, Insightful)
Either I win or you cheated... (Score:2, Insightful)
Tally Software (Score:4, Informative)
Debra Bowen - pro Open Voting (Score:4, Informative)
Bruce McPherson, the incumbent, appears to be obstructing progress towards open voting.
I don't know the other candidates' stances. Anyone?
If the Diebold company has nothing to hide (Score:3, Insightful)
Truth in advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
I voted today on a Diebold machine.. (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Google video. (Score:5, Informative)
More clicking, less typing? (Score:2)
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Agree (Score:2)
I agree.
I thought the subject matter was excellent, and it makes you wonder why the most important function in a democracy is treated so cheaply.
However, I was disappointed with the program itself. I was expecting something of the quality of HBO's other documentaries, or something from PBS's Frontline. Rather, instead of being a thoughtful exposition of facts, it was loaded with anecdotes and storytelling. Why would I care about Bev Harris's conversations durin
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computers let you do alot more alot quicker.. so the time needed is alot less.. It is a big deal... it is all about who you trust.. and if you can't trust the people running
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The memory cards are, as was shown in the documentary where they were shown be unpacked on receipt,
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WRONG!
No access to the machine needed during or after the election. Please re-watch the film. Access to the memory card before the election was all that was needed. What is important is who watches the cards the night before the election? The tampered card showed no votes registered before the election with no votes for either option. It passed as genu
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Oh yeah, Bev Harris can be so annoying. Going around causing trouble, starting things like Black Box Voting [blackboxvoting.org]. Life would be so much more peaceful if people would just shut up about Election Fraud.
By the way, Bev Ha
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If you want to stick with blockbuster hollywood entertainment, that's fine. This is a documentry. The content is the star of the show, not the lady's acting.
The content is HOT!
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Democrats have this way of penalizing success with higher taxes and murderous business regulations. They also completely miss that China is an emerging problem that will bite us in the ass soon enough (unless we control the natural resources/oil needed for their economy).
The Democrats would also close the borders to the point where we would not be able to bring in the needed skills, instead opting to give amnesty to millions of high-school d
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