Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org
To date the “Red Team” reports have been released; a preliminary report on audits has been released; and the accessibility report has been released. Our cup nearly runneth over.
But wait, there’s more?
Yes, there are still 6 more reports that have not been released. There are three reports, one for each vendor, on the source code review. There are also three reports, one for each vendor, on the document review. All six of these reports are important to the total picture and all of them will be used in the final decision making process.
We encourage the Secretary of State to let the voters see those remaining reports. If the reports are 100 pages each, that’s 600 pages of information that we need time to read and study.
Secretary Bowen, release the reports, please.
UPDATE 01 August: Today Princeton Prof. Ed Felten of Diebold Accuvote TS hack fame, asked on his blog, FreedomToTinker, “Where are the California E-Voting Reports”. In his blog Prof. Felten says:
Here’s the official explanation, from the Secretary’s site:
The document review teams and source code review teams submitted their reports on schedule. Their reports will be posted as soon as the Secretary of State ensures the reports do not inadvertently disclose security-sensitive information.
This explanation is hard to credit. The study teams were already tasked to separate their reports into a public body and a private appendix, with sensitive exploit-oriented details put in the private appendix that would go only to the Secretary and the affected vendor. Surely the study teams are much better qualified to determine the security implications of releasing a particular detail than the lawyers in the Secretary’s office are.
More likely, the Secretary is worried about the political implications of releasing the reports. Given this, it seems likely that the withheld reports are even more damning than the ones released so far.
If the red team reports, which reported multiple vulnerabilities of the most serious kind, are the good news, how bad must the bad news be?
We ask again; Secretary Bowen, release the reports, please.
UPDATE 02 AugustAnother set of reports, source code review, has been released today. Thank you Secretary Bowen.
As I understand it the source reports are being further redacted by Bowen because the review teams uncovered such a sorry mess that she’s worried about immediate attacks that might be launched… even with the limited data that was in the source reports delivered by the teams…
There has been discussion before that EVM software is so pitiful in design that it could not withstand even limited exposure.
It’s ridiculous on the face of it, of course, but that’s the e-voting scam for you.
Y’see… that’s the corporate “Trade Secret”…
Great story. When are is someone going to post about the discovery of the loss/destruction of ballots and other crucial 2004 election information in Ohio? Oh God please, can you send Kenny Blackwell go to prison?
This illustrates some of the wisdom of S. 559 that mandates any citizen can review the source code.
The EVM companies do not want that to be exposed because it will reveal incompetence of the Katrina kind, and “you are doin a heckuva job” Diebold will be the new condemnation of incompetence.
And you can bet that Senator Stephens will block the new source code ethics as he is doing to the ethics bill overwhelmingly passed in the House, even as his own house is searched under warrant by the FBI and IRS.
“We don’t need no stinking source code transparency or ethics rules” is the new mantra.
http://rawstory.com/showoutarti...%2F%3Fpage%3D3
Thank you John Gideon for bring this point to the fore.
THE important point -when it comes to the usage of these machines- is the finding that none of the systems met the HAVA requirements (‘current law’) for usage in an election.
It is HAVA that dictated just ONE voting machine per precinct for disabled voters.
And it is HAVA which is paying for these systems (read our tax monies).
And only 40% of the HAVA monies allocated for the States has been spent.
And most contracts have clauses related to non-performance.
And Counties/States CAN return such monies even if they have already been distributed.
So there is NO rational for using voting systems that violate the law; or is the law going to be further demeaned by California per the Bush Administration modus operandi?
An ancillary -and also most important point- is how did these systems ever get approved by the Federal testing labs to begin with?
Bruce #5
Read the story of The Lone Tester for a start.
Maybe Ca. reports couldn’t be released until Ohio destroyed all their ’04 ballots.