California AG Says He'll Sue Diebold 394
moby11 points to this Reuters story carried by Yahooo!; it begins "California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products."
A YRO topic?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A YRO topic?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Recoup some of our money (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad about the criminal case though, it may not be fair, but Diebold sure seem like a bunch of crooks to me!
Sued "Out the Ying-Yang" (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the damages in this case may be "Out the Ying-Yang". That's a phrase that really grows on you when the shoe is on the other foot. Come on say it with me Diebold, "Out the Ying-Yang".
Re:From TFA... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:From TFA... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mayber caveat emptor doesn't apply to the gov'ment?
Re:A YRO topic?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like most big lawsuits... (Score:3, Insightful)
Like most big lawsuits, especially between the government and a big country, this will probably go through dozens of twists and turns, and motions and objections and requests for odd evidence, and it will probably end up out of court or perhaps just be dropped.
However, since this is getting covered very widely, on Y! news, for example, it will at least people start asking questions about why people want electronic voting, and how secure it really is.
California (Score:2, Insightful)
more than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Diebold needs to be bankrupted (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A YRO topic?? (Score:1, Insightful)
You're right, the topic has nothing to do with nerd stuff and it obviously doesn't matter. The political sideshow of personal attacks on Shelley, an opponent of election fraud, isn't worth mentioning either. Until everyone can buy government on EBay it simply isn't online enough for consideration by anyone other than patriots.
And now for the finger-pointing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Price on Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
For as much as modern pundits seem to throw around the term "treason" these days, I'm surprised the term hasn't been applied to Diebold.
How about simply... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about simply that the product was supposed to work correctly as it was claimed to do before the sale.
All technology vendors need to be foreced to quit hiding behind some software EULA that allows them to escape being held liable when their stuff don't work right. If it takes charging them with fraud, then so be it.
Re:Is this the right way to go about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for not dragging a corporation through the courts because youy have a beef with their practices- thats THE FUCKING PURPOSE OF A COURT SYSTEM. If you think someone is breaking the law, you bring them to court and see if the judge agrees. You think when someone lies about there product and commits fraud, we shouldn't sue their asses for our money back? We sure as hell should.
Re:A YRO topic?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:California / Business -- Not a good combo (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. Just do not try to pull a scam. They will nail you. There were a number of real reasons why Enron was located in Texas and not all of them had to do with Oil.
First to market: Corporate natural selection (Score:4, Insightful)
Only after this first wave of a new kind of product do companies "learn from the mistakes of the past" (translation: we can do it right this time because customers finally expect to wait on a proper product).
Capitalism is wonderful, but as with anything run by humans, it has its challenges.
Diebold is the sacrificial lamb in this case. There's no way that history could have turned out any other way. If it hadn't been Diebold, it would have been someone else doing the same crap job and then getting sued by CA. They were the lucky ones who got to market first and the unlucky ones who got caught at doing what they and all of their competitors were doing. As usual, some other company will soon come along and produce a slightly better machine, etc.
Re:Is this the right way to go about it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this the right way to go about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is a voting machine any different than a pacemaker? If a pacemaker fails, you die. Consider that every election features some real whacko candidates. What if voting machines conspired to elect a whacko to presidental office? Do you really want to think how many people would be killed if we a madman in the Whitehouse?
The problem is that Diebold assured the technically inept California voting folks that they were perfectly able to build a good system. And then lied. And have been knowingly breaking the law. And are trying to still profit from this by charging as much as possible for printers so that there is a verifiable paper record of the votes, to fix *their* decided security holes.
I mean, really, do you *know* that they haven't been inserting loopholes? Of course not. There's a variety of ways that they can mess with the machines. We just don't know and, since each voter has neither the ability nor the knowlege to dissassemble their voting machine to ensure that it is properly recording votes, we *can't* know.
Not Approved? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not approved? WTF, why would any vendor, save a car mechanic, do anything without the customer's approval? Especially in the case of a multi-million dollar rollout of such a large product. I call bullshiat, I bet Diebold has many signed approvals by authorized members of the government of California. This is just the start of all the "election irregularies" finger pointing when Kerry takes it up the arse in November.
Re:Is this the right way to go about it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A YRO topic?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but when you are dealing with the government, and you have been given the task of designing something that is secure and does not have security flaws, then you either better:
A) Damn well do it
B) Don't even bother trying and tell them that
Otherwise you have now said you are doing something, and you are not. That is fraud. Mandrake, Suse, Windows, et al, have never claimed that their products are secure. They are claiming that they are increasing security, but they have never said "We are secure"
Re:Right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows XP is another kettle of fish, but I think they should be responsible for their flaws as well. Its not secure and its a well known fact that it isn't- Microsoft should be liable.
Re:Logical fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
How could anyone have bought a system with poor security and no accountabilty for voting?
Re:A YRO topic?? (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, while most of the problems with Diebold software can easily be explained by total incompetence and lack of regard for the importance of correct behavior (as opposed to the appearance of correct behavior), some thing are very hard to see as anything except a deliberate creation of a way to manipulate votes.
Re:And now for the finger-pointing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not one.
Do you even understand how government, especially local government, works?? You get the money once. It's a set sum, with an additional budget for maintenance and support. If you don't spend the money, it's gone. So you have to buy when you have it. You can't wait. You can't hope or wish. You have to pick a vendor and pay them and hope they do a good job, because the money won't be coming back if you wait too long.
Diebold had machines. People bought them because Diebold made big promises and nobody else had a decent machine for a fair price. Meanwhile, Open Source lost yet another battle due to a complete lack of understanding of how things work. If an OSS solution had been ready when the evoting money came in, and that solution was cheaper and backed by a solid company with a reputation and support staff, it would have won.
That didn't happen. Not because local government is stupid and doesn't understand open source, but because open source is nearsighted and reactionary and was not ready.
Problems with Explaining eVoting to Non-techies (Score:3, Insightful)
To be more blunt here, I think I understand her issues more than she understands where I'm coming from.
People are familiar with software upgrades, however, and if you tell them that you want to upgrade their comptuer just before they have a major report to turn in for work, or upgrade their operating system while they are uploading their favorite pictures to grandma, I think they would totally understand the issues without explainations even being necessary. Why a software upgrade is dangerous during the middle of an election would be of similar seriousness.
Most people consider computers to be a "black box" (no pun intended to Black Box Voting) where all sorts of "magic" occur, and the current battles over the legitimacy of eVoting are merely duels between wizards and their apprentices. Since it doesn't affect them (really... even when you are talking about who they are voting for), they don't see what the big issues are that you are complaining about.
I still say that the best way to push this all out into the open is to make sure that some obscure 3rd party candidate wins some relatively insignificant contest and breaking this down into something that the mainstream news media would be able to comprehend and complain about. Something like that might just kill eVoting altogether (which wouldn't be my goal with such a project).
Specificly, I openly suggested that this be done with the election of student body officers at a major university (less likely to land you in jail, and you might even get the student government to agree to do this in advance). I wouldn't cry too much if Nader or even Ross Perot (yeah, I know he isn't running) won Wyoming for U.S. President, but I wouldn't want to get into jail doing that.
Explaining the issues that way would be easier to explain to non-techies, that such an election could even happen, which cuts across most partisian viewpoints as well and explains why this is something that both political parties should be concerned about.
I wonder how much longer... (Score:3, Insightful)
someone please correct me if i am wrong but...
this suit and the carnage over it began some time back with diebold's documents being leaked onto the net and posted just about everywhere.
the following articles will jar some memories...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/0
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/17/2
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/22/0
and there are many more on this topic, http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=103&query=diebo
basically...the new features prposed in the upcoming versions of windows and ms-office, plus the pending legislation before congress would protect the company and will kill this kind of information from being leaked.
once those leaks are sealed and only authorized eyes see these documents, you can bet that whistleblowing on nefarious activities will come to a halt.
Re:How can we tell people about electronic voting? (Score:5, Insightful)
See "The boy who cried wolf".
See "The Y2K bug will destroy civilisation so you better stock up on cans of food and bottled water and shotgun ammunition, and a bunker in the middle of nowhere would be good too..."
Of course you personally probably didn't do the wolf crying but the media did and people know nothing happened (and don't believe that the people working to fix problems might have had something to do with that).
Also the "fear of computers" has been reduced by the wide acceptance of ATMs. After all if the banks trust them with huge amounts of money, why shouldn't I with voting]?[*]
* Of course banks don't want to lose money and don't gain anything from ATM fraud. The makers of the machines could steal lots of money but the banks would notice... Whereas with voting the machine makers and the election runners (or a section of them) can be working together to rig the vote - a very different, and much harder to secure situation.
Re:What He Really Oughta Said (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't think it has anything to do with the false claims made by diebold, or their failure to place certified machines in the voting districts?
Or the wild insecurities in the system?
Re:Is this the right way to go about it? (Score:3, Insightful)
The California Secretary of State, and the local county Registrars of Voters, have been working to improve our voting systems quite dilligently.
They aren't technically inept. They aren't e-voting security experts. Which isn't suprising... the lesson of the last couple of years seems to be that only a few independent experts are e-voting security experts, and that the companies doing it clearly aren't.
That was only really clear even to techies about a year ago...
Re:Not Approved? (Score:3, Insightful)
I call bullshit too, but on Diebold. This isn't the start of it; this was reported and investigated months ago. Diebold *did* install untested software on many of their voting machines. They had a specific list of build numbers that were authorized. They ignored this list.
This is well-known, and well-documented. Diebold tried to pull a fast one, fucked up the engine of democracy, and tried to weasel out of it.
Companies do this. It's easier to make money by sometimes not following the rules than it is by following the rules all the time.
This is just the start of all the "election irregularies" finger pointing when Kerry takes it up the arse in November.
If Bush wins, we *all* "take it up the arse."
Wider implications ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just hope he doesn't have the case in Florida.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Both federal legislative houses are fairly evenly divided and the Senate in particular is completely up for grabs. But a few closely contested House seats that get swung the wrong way while everyone's eye is on the big show could have a huge effect, too..
I don't believe the tinfoil hats are called for just yet, but please try to remember that there's more than one election taking place this fall.
Re:Is this the right way to go about it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Have a nice day.
Re:Is this the right way to go about it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:UK Elections (Score:2, Insightful)
Any pyschologist will tell you that the combination of both negative and positive reinforcment is a strong motivator for behavioral change.
Aside from that, the only other really good reform I can think of to our political system would require a complete constitutional rewrite whereby there was proportional representation in both houses of legislature, reduced federal beuracracy, direct elections, and a generally more state/local centric government.
(I hope some of that made sense, I'm having a difficult time phrasing my thoughts coherently this evening.)
People stupid enough... (Score:2, Insightful)
Public counting is the first and the strongest base of democracy. Interestingly enough, it's the first process in humankind where security has been achieved by transparence. And as such, the first open-source philosophy process in human history. Anybody must be able to check the process. Originally, you had to able to count (raised hands). Then, with more candidates, more people voting and anonymous voting process, paper ballots implied you also had to know how to read. Fair enough, as 97% of US people over 15 can read, according to the CIA world factbook [cia.gov] (it's doubtful weither the 3% left care at all about politics, blind people left appart). It's a very powerfull process, for each and every vote is publicly checked, and can be checked by anyone (above defined). At best, voting machines let you check the process, but not every single vote anymore, which is waaaay weaker however you take it. Furthermore, this process itself, FOSS machine or not, can only be checked by a ridiculously small and elitist group of people.