[Peace-discuss] Fwd: NYT: U.S. Bars Lab From Testing Electronic Voting

[Chuck Minne]

Hal Snyder <hal at drxyzzy.org> wrote:    I guess we should not be surprised at the result when voting machine 
manufacturers are left to validate their own product. It's 
reminiscent of Bush's voluntary measures for corporations to clean up 
the environment.

- Hal


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04voting.html?th&emc=th
  
U.S. Bars Lab From Testing Electronic Voting
New York Times
1/4/07
edited for length

A laboratory that has tested most of the nation's electronic voting 
systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after 
federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control 
procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the 
required tests.

Experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest that crucial 
features like the vote-counting software and security against hacking 
may not have been thoroughly tested on many machines now in use.

"What's scary is that we've been using systems in elections that 
Ciber had certified, and this calls into question those systems that 
they tested," said Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at 
Johns Hopkins.

Computer scientists have shown that some electronic machines now in 
use are vulnerable to hacking. Some scientists caution that even a 
simple software error could affect thousands of votes.

In various places, elections have been complicated by machines that 
did not start, flipped votes from one candidate to another or had 
trouble tallying the votes.

Until recently, the laboratories that test voting software and 
hardware have operated without federal scrutiny. Even though 
Washington and the states have spent billions to install the new 
technologies, the machine manufacturers have always paid for the 
tests that assess how well they work, and little has been disclosed 
about any flaws that were discovered.

The Election Assistance Commission did not finish creating the 
oversight program until last month. Until then, the laboratories had 
been at the heart of the system to evaluate voting machines, a system 
that seemed oddly cobbled together. While the federal government 
created standards for the machines, most of the states enacted laws 
to make them binding. The states also monitored the testing, and much 
of that work was left to a handful of current and former state 
election officials who volunteered their time. As a result, voting 
rights advocates and other critics have long been concerned about 
potential conflicts of interest, because the manufacturers hire the 
laboratories and largely try to ensure confidentiality.

Michael I. Shamos, a computer scientist who examines voting machines 
for Pennsylvania, said he was disappointed that the commission had 
hired some of the same people involved in the states' monitoring 
program and that it never announced it had found problems with Ciber 
operations.

Dr. Rubin of Johns Hopkins said the laboratories should be required 
to hire teams of hackers to ferret out software vulnerabilities. And 
the laboratories will still be paid by the voting machine companies, 
though a bill now in Congress could change that to government financing.

A recent appearance in Sarasota, Fla., by the SysTest Labs president, 
Brian T. Phillips, raised eyebrows. After a Congressional election in 
the Sarasota area ended in a recount last month, the victorious 
Republican candidate hired Mr. Phillips as a consultant to monitor 
the state's examination of whether there had been a malfunction in 
the voting machines. Several critics questioned whether Mr. Phillips 
should have taken such work, either because of its partisan nature or 
because it represented such a public defense of the industry.









  

Before you call 9/11 conspiracy nuts crazy, explain what happened to 7 World Trade Center (WTC7) and how it was accomplished. (Never heard of WTC7 before, have you? – that’s not surprising, it’s the camel in the tent that everybody ignores.)
  



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