Princeton and Lehigh University researchers have finally been allowed to release the findings of their analysis of the Sequoia (formally Diebold) AVC Advantage voting machines that are used in many states in the US. The report reveals a sorry list of security problems that allow miscreants to disenfranchise voters.
Here is the executive summary that was released with the report.
I. The AVC Advantage 9.00 is easily "hacked" by the installation of fraudulent firmware. This is done by prying just one ROM chip from its socket and pushing a new one in, or by replacement of the Z80 processor chip. We have demonstrated that this ``hack'' takes just 7 minutes to perform.
The fraudulent firmware can steal votes during an election, just as its criminal designer programs it to do. The fraud cannot practically be detected. There is no paper audit trail on this machine; all electronic records of the votes are under control of the firmware, which can manipulate them all simultaneously.
II. Without even touching a single AVC Advantage, an attacker can install fraudulent firmware into many AVC Advantage machines by viral propagation through audio-ballot cartridges. The virus can steal the votes of blind voters, can cause AVC Advantages in targeted precincts to fail to operate; or can cause WinEDS software to tally votes inaccurately. (WinEDS is the program, sold by Sequoia, that each County's Board of Elections uses to add up votes from all the different precincts.)
III. Design flaws in the user interface of the AVC Advantage disenfranchise voters, or violate voter privacy, by causing votes not to be counted, and by allowing pollworkers to commit fraud.
IV. AVC Advantage Results Cartridges can be easily manipulated to change votes, after the polls are closed but before results from different precincts are cumulated together.
V. Sequoia's sloppy software practices can lead to error and insecurity. Wyle's Independent Testing Authority (ITA) reports are not rigorous, and are inadequate to detect security vulnerabilities. Programming errors that slip through these processes can miscount votes and permit fraud.
VI. Anomalies noticed by County Clerks in the New Jersey 2008 Presidential Primary were caused by two different programming errors on the part of Sequoia, and had the effect of disenfranchising voters.
VII. The AVC Advantage has been produced in many versions. The fact that one version may have been examined for certification does not give grounds for confidence in the security and accuracy of a different version. New Jersey should not use any version of the AVC Advantage that it has not actually examined with the assistance of skilled computer-security experts.
VIII. The AVC Advantage is too insecure to use in New Jersey. New Jersey should immediately implement the 2005 law passed by the Legislature, requiring an individual voter-verified record of each vote cast, by adopting precinct-count optical-scan voting equipment.
See here for the blog of one of the people who produced the report.
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc, in the run up to the 2004 US election. more
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
End Of America - The Movie
The movie adaptation of Naomi Wolf's book by the same name opened at a New York film festival yesterday. Apparently, the tape was delayed in traffic for an hour which prompted an impromptu round table discussion between Naomi Wolf, Alec Baldwin and Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union. Somebody called Karina Longworth was there and she recorded and transcribed the discussion. You can read it at her blog here
The DVD will be released in January, assuming that President Palin doesn't declare it as a Weapon of Mass Instruction and have the producers locked up as Enemy Combatants that is.
The DVD will be released in January, assuming that President Palin doesn't declare it as a Weapon of Mass Instruction and have the producers locked up as Enemy Combatants that is.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The American Flag
Did you know that there are actually two official US flags? One is the military flag and the other is the civilian flag. The military flag is flown during times of war while the civilian flag is flown during times of peace.
Can you tell which is which?
Take a look here to find out.
Can you tell which is which?
Take a look here to find out.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
The US Government is officially "above the law"
Apparently the USAF was recently sued for violating the U.S. Governments own Digital Millennium Copyright Act(DMCA) by cracking the code that would expire a piece of software.
It seems that the appeals court concerned has ruled that "The United States, as a sovereign, is immune from suit save as it consents to be sued".
Just how often the US Government would actually "consent to be sued' is left as an exercise for the reader.
It seems that the appeals court concerned has ruled that "The United States, as a sovereign, is immune from suit save as it consents to be sued".
Just how often the US Government would actually "consent to be sued' is left as an exercise for the reader.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Sony Lifestyle
This is an edited version of something I posted in another blog a few years ago when I was more into fighting feminism. Since then I have come to comprehend that like most other "isms", feminism is simply a tool of the ruling elite that is designed to divide the masses and keep them from rising up against their oppressors.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Sony Lifestyle
Ask just about anyone today about the kind of society we live in, and most of them will respond with something like "a capitalist democracy".
They are wrong.
What we have is "capitalist marxism-lite", which is a fascinating combination of what to most people would appear to be two diametrically opposed systems.
But they are not that diametrically opposed when you think about it. In fact you may soon realise that Marxism-lite requires a capitalist foundation on which to flourish.
Marxism Lite does not require the jackboots, truncheons and Gulags that we associate with traditional Marxism. Yet, just like traditional Marxism, Marxism Lite has as its central goal the total and utter control over the populace by a group of elites. Just like Marxism it uses class warfare, propaganda and censorship to achieve this goal. It also provides substantial penalties for non-conformists.
Marxism Lite has a considerable arsenal at its disposal. This arsenal is far more subtle than that used by previous well known Marxists such as Stalin. Tanks, guns and jackbooted thugs give people a clear enemy to struggle against. Not so Marxism Lite.
Where the Soviets had Gulags, we have complete and utter, unquestioning reliance on our surrounding society. Plentiful food, mortgaged-to-the-gills home ownership, government welfare, home theatre systems and expensive cars keep us all on the financial treadmill, always striving to keep ahead of our creditors whilst still collecting about us ever growing piles of blinking lights and glittering trinkets. Most people today measure the quality of their lives by the number and quality of the trinkets that they own. Few city folk today are truly self-reliant. Many city people today are unable to cope for even short periods without the support networks provided by our modern urban environments. Roughing it usually means going without plumbing for a few days.
We have what I call a "Sony Lifestyle".
It follows that, if you can threaten to take from a man his Sony Lifestyle, then what has he left? His entire life has been spent building an identity based on possessions. We teach our children from the time they are babes to crave possessions. Ask most parents today, and you will find that you cannot buy your children lunch these days unless it comes with a plastic toy. This craving for possessions will develop through to adulthood, it will follow them through their entire lives. Just as it has for their parents, that is to say, you and I. They too will embrace the Sony Lifestyle.
If you can threaten to take all this away, remove access to the "Sony Lifestyle", then what you really have is a milder form of "threatening to send someone to the Gulag" The effect is much the same. When you step on to the treadmill you, by necessity, acquire a reliance on the infrastructure that provides that treadmill. Take away our government and its infrastructure and the concept of "home ownership" becomes meaningless, an artificial construct. Your "ownership" of that house will last exactly as long as you are able to defend it from malfeasants. Finally, reliance begets obligation. When you are on the treadmill, you are obliged to not rock the boat, or you will be thrown overboard.
Be warned, once you are on the treadmill it is hard to get off again.
Of course, losing the Sony Lifestyle is considerably less extreme a fate than that of being sent to do hard labour in some Siberian Gulag. This too works in favour of Marxism Lite. Being subjected to enough jackbooted oppression is sure to invoke thoughts of rebellion in even the meekest of the citizenry. Giving people ample creature comforts and threatening to take them away again is less likely to create a groundswell of rebellion. People consider that as long as they toe the line and don't make too much noise that they can have reasonably happy, safe and appliance-filled lives. This is a powerfully appealing option to a most people. Most people don't crave democracy, they crave security and comfort.
Of course people have to know what the party line is. Someone has to tell them what it is they are supposed to think, and therefore what they are not to think. To help people with this, television stations and the broader media helpfully provide an unending stream of propaganda designed to explain to people exactly what they are expected to think. They do not lecture us, bludgeon us and demand that we concur. That would engender resistance. It is more effective to just subtly repeat the message over and over until we just begin to believe it to be true.
Consequently, over time, we learn from television that if you are female, coloured or homosexual, then you are Good. It follows then, that if you are not female, coloured or homosexual, then you must be Bad. This is where the class warfare, a prerequisite of all forms of Marxism, comes into play.
Western media can be constantly found fanning the flames of class warfare. Women, racial minorities, homosexuals and just about any other minority you care to imagine are being constantly encouraged by the babbling box to foment feelings of oppression and resentment. If there are not enough oppressed groups available we can simply invent new ones. Be the oppression real or imaginary it doesn't much matter, there are plenty enough people who are willing to accept a free ride in exchange for their participation in a lie.
The very same media also works hard to ensure that dissenting viewpoints are never allowed visibility in the public arena. Any dissent that slips through the net is quickly shouted down, the dissenter often slandered and subjected to ritualistic public humiliation. This phenomenon has come to be known as "political correctness". In Stalin's Russia, it was known simply as "censorship".
Accordingly, to publicly express non-approved thoughts in a sufficiently grand fashion is to invite upon oneself the threat of lawsuits, fines, public embarrassment and possibly even the loss of ones job.
Or put another way, the loss of the Sony Lifestyle.
Political correctness is a mechanism to force groupthink onto individuals. For Marxism Lite to prevail, one must simply not allow people to express viewpoints that are not pre-approved by the People Who Know What Is Best For You. Our schools are no longer used as institutions of learning so much as indoctrination centres designed to inculcate within children a complete understanding of what is Good. Good being defined by The Good of course. If you were to tell your children that you think that multiculturalism might not in fact be the best thing since sliced bread then they would likely recoil back in horror. If they were to learn that deep down you don't think that feminism has been entirely a cause for good in this world they would probably ask you why you hate their mother so much.
So, over time, most people choose to simply shut their mouths and distract themselves by slipping the DVD of "The Lord of the Rings: Special Directors Cut Super Extended Edition" into their five thousand dollar home theatre system. Life just wouldn't be the same without it.
Any group that might offer to the populace an alternate frame of reference, a different window through which to view the world, or a support framework that is not controlled by the People Who Know Best, is systematically attacked by the media. For decades now church groups have been routinely ridiculed and mocked by the media. Religion has been all but driven from our schools. People must not be allowed to show allegiance to anything outside of The Good.
Likewise, families are being systematically destroyed. Families without fathers are forced to rely on The Good for their continued survival and to provide them with the Sony Lifestyle. An absent father is unable to protect his children from being defacto raised by the government. Women comply willingly because they have been told that they have been oppressed by the fathers of their children. They consequently allow The People Who Know Best to take responsibility over their lives. The oppressors, the straight white men, are forced to foot the bill through draconian child support and alimony rulings.
In return for our Toyota 4x4's, plasma screens and designer clothes, we live in increasingly homogenised, sterilised, safety certified boxes with propaganda piped in 24x7 disguised as entertainment. We lap it up as if it were ambrosia.
Meanwhile, the controlling elite, a loosely defined, ethereal glob made up of academics, judges, bureaucrats, special interest lobbyists, business leaders and the media, cook up ever more subtle ways to manipulate us to their own ends.
They know what is best for us after all.
At all costs we must continue to think Good thoughts and buy new Toyotas. An unthinking populace is an easily led populace. An easily led populace is easy to control and in this world control means money and money means power. It is much easier to convince a person who is unaccustomed to thinking that she simply must have this particular brand of deodorant lest she smell like a wharfies armpit in summer. People who think are much harder to sell to after all.
You just gotta love the Sony Lifestyle.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Sony Lifestyle
Ask just about anyone today about the kind of society we live in, and most of them will respond with something like "a capitalist democracy".
They are wrong.
What we have is "capitalist marxism-lite", which is a fascinating combination of what to most people would appear to be two diametrically opposed systems.
But they are not that diametrically opposed when you think about it. In fact you may soon realise that Marxism-lite requires a capitalist foundation on which to flourish.
Marxism Lite does not require the jackboots, truncheons and Gulags that we associate with traditional Marxism. Yet, just like traditional Marxism, Marxism Lite has as its central goal the total and utter control over the populace by a group of elites. Just like Marxism it uses class warfare, propaganda and censorship to achieve this goal. It also provides substantial penalties for non-conformists.
Marxism Lite has a considerable arsenal at its disposal. This arsenal is far more subtle than that used by previous well known Marxists such as Stalin. Tanks, guns and jackbooted thugs give people a clear enemy to struggle against. Not so Marxism Lite.
Where the Soviets had Gulags, we have complete and utter, unquestioning reliance on our surrounding society. Plentiful food, mortgaged-to-the-gills home ownership, government welfare, home theatre systems and expensive cars keep us all on the financial treadmill, always striving to keep ahead of our creditors whilst still collecting about us ever growing piles of blinking lights and glittering trinkets. Most people today measure the quality of their lives by the number and quality of the trinkets that they own. Few city folk today are truly self-reliant. Many city people today are unable to cope for even short periods without the support networks provided by our modern urban environments. Roughing it usually means going without plumbing for a few days.
We have what I call a "Sony Lifestyle".
It follows that, if you can threaten to take from a man his Sony Lifestyle, then what has he left? His entire life has been spent building an identity based on possessions. We teach our children from the time they are babes to crave possessions. Ask most parents today, and you will find that you cannot buy your children lunch these days unless it comes with a plastic toy. This craving for possessions will develop through to adulthood, it will follow them through their entire lives. Just as it has for their parents, that is to say, you and I. They too will embrace the Sony Lifestyle.
If you can threaten to take all this away, remove access to the "Sony Lifestyle", then what you really have is a milder form of "threatening to send someone to the Gulag" The effect is much the same. When you step on to the treadmill you, by necessity, acquire a reliance on the infrastructure that provides that treadmill. Take away our government and its infrastructure and the concept of "home ownership" becomes meaningless, an artificial construct. Your "ownership" of that house will last exactly as long as you are able to defend it from malfeasants. Finally, reliance begets obligation. When you are on the treadmill, you are obliged to not rock the boat, or you will be thrown overboard.
Be warned, once you are on the treadmill it is hard to get off again.
Of course, losing the Sony Lifestyle is considerably less extreme a fate than that of being sent to do hard labour in some Siberian Gulag. This too works in favour of Marxism Lite. Being subjected to enough jackbooted oppression is sure to invoke thoughts of rebellion in even the meekest of the citizenry. Giving people ample creature comforts and threatening to take them away again is less likely to create a groundswell of rebellion. People consider that as long as they toe the line and don't make too much noise that they can have reasonably happy, safe and appliance-filled lives. This is a powerfully appealing option to a most people. Most people don't crave democracy, they crave security and comfort.
Of course people have to know what the party line is. Someone has to tell them what it is they are supposed to think, and therefore what they are not to think. To help people with this, television stations and the broader media helpfully provide an unending stream of propaganda designed to explain to people exactly what they are expected to think. They do not lecture us, bludgeon us and demand that we concur. That would engender resistance. It is more effective to just subtly repeat the message over and over until we just begin to believe it to be true.
Consequently, over time, we learn from television that if you are female, coloured or homosexual, then you are Good. It follows then, that if you are not female, coloured or homosexual, then you must be Bad. This is where the class warfare, a prerequisite of all forms of Marxism, comes into play.
Western media can be constantly found fanning the flames of class warfare. Women, racial minorities, homosexuals and just about any other minority you care to imagine are being constantly encouraged by the babbling box to foment feelings of oppression and resentment. If there are not enough oppressed groups available we can simply invent new ones. Be the oppression real or imaginary it doesn't much matter, there are plenty enough people who are willing to accept a free ride in exchange for their participation in a lie.
The very same media also works hard to ensure that dissenting viewpoints are never allowed visibility in the public arena. Any dissent that slips through the net is quickly shouted down, the dissenter often slandered and subjected to ritualistic public humiliation. This phenomenon has come to be known as "political correctness". In Stalin's Russia, it was known simply as "censorship".
Accordingly, to publicly express non-approved thoughts in a sufficiently grand fashion is to invite upon oneself the threat of lawsuits, fines, public embarrassment and possibly even the loss of ones job.
Or put another way, the loss of the Sony Lifestyle.
Political correctness is a mechanism to force groupthink onto individuals. For Marxism Lite to prevail, one must simply not allow people to express viewpoints that are not pre-approved by the People Who Know What Is Best For You. Our schools are no longer used as institutions of learning so much as indoctrination centres designed to inculcate within children a complete understanding of what is Good. Good being defined by The Good of course. If you were to tell your children that you think that multiculturalism might not in fact be the best thing since sliced bread then they would likely recoil back in horror. If they were to learn that deep down you don't think that feminism has been entirely a cause for good in this world they would probably ask you why you hate their mother so much.
So, over time, most people choose to simply shut their mouths and distract themselves by slipping the DVD of "The Lord of the Rings: Special Directors Cut Super Extended Edition" into their five thousand dollar home theatre system. Life just wouldn't be the same without it.
Any group that might offer to the populace an alternate frame of reference, a different window through which to view the world, or a support framework that is not controlled by the People Who Know Best, is systematically attacked by the media. For decades now church groups have been routinely ridiculed and mocked by the media. Religion has been all but driven from our schools. People must not be allowed to show allegiance to anything outside of The Good.
Likewise, families are being systematically destroyed. Families without fathers are forced to rely on The Good for their continued survival and to provide them with the Sony Lifestyle. An absent father is unable to protect his children from being defacto raised by the government. Women comply willingly because they have been told that they have been oppressed by the fathers of their children. They consequently allow The People Who Know Best to take responsibility over their lives. The oppressors, the straight white men, are forced to foot the bill through draconian child support and alimony rulings.
In return for our Toyota 4x4's, plasma screens and designer clothes, we live in increasingly homogenised, sterilised, safety certified boxes with propaganda piped in 24x7 disguised as entertainment. We lap it up as if it were ambrosia.
Meanwhile, the controlling elite, a loosely defined, ethereal glob made up of academics, judges, bureaucrats, special interest lobbyists, business leaders and the media, cook up ever more subtle ways to manipulate us to their own ends.
They know what is best for us after all.
At all costs we must continue to think Good thoughts and buy new Toyotas. An unthinking populace is an easily led populace. An easily led populace is easy to control and in this world control means money and money means power. It is much easier to convince a person who is unaccustomed to thinking that she simply must have this particular brand of deodorant lest she smell like a wharfies armpit in summer. People who think are much harder to sell to after all.
You just gotta love the Sony Lifestyle.
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