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Princeton Report Says Voting Machines Easily Hacked

With a few days to go before the presidential election, a report has been released by Princeton University and other groups that sharply criticizes the e-voting machines used in New Jersey and elsewhere as unreliable and potentially prone to hacking.

The 158-page report, which was ordered by a New Jersey judge as part of an ongoing four-year legal fight over the machines, says the e-voting machines can be “easily hacked” in about seven minutes by anyone with basic computer knowledge. Such hacking activity could enable fraudulent firmware to steal votes from one candidate and give them to another, the report said.

The controversy involves the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H direct-recording electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems.

The report comes amid news stories in at least three states - West Virginia, Texas and Tennessee — where voters have told local election officials that they believe the e-voting machines they used tried to switch their votes to other candidates.

The AVC machines can be hacked by installing fraudulent software contained in a replacement chip that can be installed on the main circuit board, according to the report. Such a part replacement is very difficult to detect, it noted.

Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor who is one of the authors of the report, said that such security vulnerabilities cause doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the machines.

The plaintiffs, a group of public interest organizations, argue in their lawsuit against the state of New Jersey that the machines should be discarded because they can’t meet state election law requirements for security and accuracy. State officials who back the machines argue that the machines are adequate for the job.

The lawsuit is expected to go to trial in January, but in the meantime, the court allowed the Princeton report to be released to the public.

The report gives details on how the machines could be manipulated by someone who wanted to change the results of the election, and it strongly criticizes the designs and security of the devices.

At the same time, Appel said that while such a scenario is possible, “it doesn’t mean that somebody is dishonest enough to do it.”

“Even so, it’s an unpleasant place to be in to have to use these machines that are so hackable,” Appel said. “Early next week, I’m going to have to go out and cast my vote on one of these machines.”

The problem, according to the report, is that there are many opportunities in the storage, distribution and deployment of the DRE machines where an unauthorized person could manipulate them and not be detected.

“Somebody could have hacked it at any time” during those stages before an election, Appel said.

Michelle Shafer, a spokeswoman for Sequoia Voting Systems, said in an e-mailed response that the company emphatically denies the conclusions of the Princeton report.

In a 19-page response posted on Sequoia’s Web site, the company argues that the researchers who contributed to the report removed factory security hardware from the tested machine before they performed their analyses. The Sequoia response also says that an operator panel cover was not in place when the testing was conducted, which would have made a potential attack “far less likely to succeed before they are stopped, or at minimum, detected.”

The Sequoia response also harshly criticizes the researchers as having an “inflammatory tone” about the company’s DRE machines, while “editorializing on the wonders of paper ballots and optical scanning” as an alternative and more trusted method of voting. The company said the Princeton report includes “numerous factual errors and cases of intellectual dishonesty.”

Appel defended the report’s conclusions.

“There’s no perfect technology for e-voting, but I think the consensus of computer scientists is that precinct-counted, optically scanned paper ballots is the best method” in terms of reliability and accurate recount auditing, Appel said. “The voter fills out a paper ballot that is scanned and counted in their precinct. You have your numbers right at the close of the polls, with two independent records — the computerized numbers and the pile of paper ballots in the sealed ballot box.”

Tags: election, evoting, princeton, princeton report, Sequoia, voting

Recent Presidential Candidate Dr. Ron Paul Comments on Economic Crisis

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has been an opponent of the government’s financial bailout plan from the outset, and he doesn’t like it any better for the recent tweaks. “I don’t think it’s going to do any good whatsoever,” Dr. Paul said.

“The credit markets are starting to loosen up a bit,” Chetry suggested. “Is that a sign that maybe it is working?”

“Maybe to some degree on the short run,” Paul acknowledged. “But that just means that we’ll have more inflation. You can’t create $5 trillion out of thin air and not expect inflation. … In time, we’re going to all suffer and pay for this.”

“Economically, it’s a disaster,” continued Paul. “This is going to cause a great deal of harm. It’s like a drug addict taking a strong fix, and he feels better for a day or two, but believe me, we’re going to kill the patient … so I would say, let’s get off this addiction.”

Paul said he doesn’t see much to approve of in either major party candidate’s program, although he favors McCain’s approach to health care and Obama’s promise to bring the troops home from Iraq. However, he felt that on balance an Obama victory would be “a disaster for the country,” because at least with a Republican president confronting a Democratic Congress, “they’d be fighting a little bit instead of just having no restraints whatsoever.”

Paul believes that the current economic problems will be good for his own movement in the long run. “As this situation deteriorates,” he suggested, “more people are going to say, hey … maybe limited government and freedom work and this idea that we can depend on government for all these programs is an illusion.”

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Tags: bailout, Economy, ron paul

Obama Shown Favor in the Press

Apparently, but not surprisingly it is being reported by a media insider that Barack Obama is being heavily favored by the news media in general, including newspaper and television outlets.
Many of course call this political control through unfair means, considering that the media is supposed to be unbiased in its reporting and fact gathering, but guess what folks it’s not, and it is working for the democrat controlled media.

Tags: barack obama, bias, democrat, media, obama, unbias, video

Iraqi Refugees: U.S. Citizens Get Crapped on Again

If life in the U.S. hasn’t already been downgraded enough by the economy caused mainly by the Iraqi and Afghanistan Conflicts then it is about to get worse if washington has its way by importing thousands of Iraqi Refugees into the U.S., Please somebody tell me, are they CrAzY!

The United States has surpassed its goal of admitting 12,000 Iraqi refugees this year and expects more, perhaps tens of thousands, next year, the State Department said on Friday.

The United States expects to admit a minimum of 17,000 Iraqi refugees in fiscal 2009, which begins October 1, the department’s senior coordinator for refugees said. Thousands more Iraqis and their family members could arrive through a special visa program for people who worked for the United States or its contractors.

“I think you’ll see the U.S. government admitting over the course of fiscal 2009 tens of thousands of Iraqis into the United States,” coordinator James Foley told reporters.

Up to 3,000 could come from Baghdad, where the United States began interviews this year, he said.

So far this year, 12,118 Iraqi refugees have arrived and 1,000 more are booked to travel to the United States by the end of this month, when the U.S. fiscal year ends, he said.

That marks a huge leap from just 1,600 Iraqis admitted in the previous year. That number drew widespread criticism from refugee groups that said Washington should do more to help millions of Iraqis who have fled instability and violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The number is still lower than what some other countries have taken. Sweden, a country of 9 million people, has admitted over 40,000 Iraqis since 2003.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates 2 million Iraqis are living abroad, mostly in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Some 2.5 million are internally displaced.

One refugee advocacy group, Human Rights First, said it welcomed the news Washington had met its target for Iraqi arrivals in 2008 but that the “low” goal of resettling 17,000 refugees in fiscal 2009 should be raised to at least 30,000.

“The number of Iraqi refugees we have welcomed to our shores is still just a fraction of those in need,” said Amelia Templeton of the New York-based group. She said the U.N. refugee agency estimated that 85,000 Iraqi refugees from the most vulnerable groups would need resettlement next year.

Foley called on the government of oil-rich Iraq to do more to help Iraqi refugees abroad as well as plan for returning Iraqis by addressing their needs for security, social services and property compensation.

So far, he said, Iraq had spent only about $25 million to help its refugees abroad, and provided about $200 million for an initiative to help returning refugees. The latter amount was “rather small,” considering the number of Iraqi refugees and the improving security situation inside Iraq, Foley said.

“One cannot rule out in these situations the possibility that the refugees in large numbers themselves will decide it’s time to go back, but will the Iraqi government be ready for that? That’s what we have to prepare for I think,” Foley said.

The United States spent over $318 million in humanitarian aid for Iraqi refugees this year, Foley said. Washington sought support from other donors, “particularly in the region, not to mention, the government of Iraq itself.”

Foley said he was grateful that Syria, a country with which the United States has strained relations, had agreed to a new facility for refugee processing, which would enable Washington to handle larger numbers of refugees.

Tags: iraq, iraqi refugees, refugees, wire tapping

Sarah Palin’s Email Account

The internet activist group “Anonymous,” famed for its exposure of unethical behavior by the Scientology cult, has now gone after the Alaskan govenor and republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

At around midnight last night some members affiliated with the group gained access to governor Palin’s email account “gov.palin@yahoo.com” and handed over the contents to the government sunshine site Wikileaks.org.

Governor Palin has come under media criticism in the past week for using private email accounts to avoid Alaskan freedom of information laws. The contents of the mailbox show this to be true and also hold clues of at least one other Yahoo based mail account held by Palin, “gov.sarah@yahoo.com“.

The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin’s inbox, two example emails, address book and a couple of family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account name tends to re-enforce the earlier criticism of Palin’s email use.

The list of emails include an exchange with Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell about his campaign for Congress. Another screenshot shows Palin’s inbox and an e-mail from Amy McCorkell, whom Palin appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007.

The e-mail, a message of support to Palin, tells her not to let negative press get to her and asks Palin to pray for McCorkell, who writes that “I need strength to 1. keep employment, 2. not have to choose.”

According to Kim Zetter of Wired Magazine, McCorkell confirmed that she did send the e-mail to Palin.

Subsequently tests by Wikileaks reveal that both Palin’s “gov.palin@yahoo.com” and her unrelated “gov.sarah@yahoo.com” account have now been deleted, almost certainly by Palin herself.

According to the Guardian, who has looked at the Wikileaks data, among the emails in Palin’s account were several from addresses belonging to her aides, including a draft letter to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a discussion of nominations to the state court of appeals, and several bearing “DPS”, the acronym for the Alaska Department of Public Safety.

DPS supervises the Alaska state troopers. Could the e-mails in question be relevant to the brewing ethics storm over Palin’s push to sack her former brother-in-law from the force?

The contact list included also holds accounts for other official representative’s private email accounts, including those of Alaska’s Kris Perry and Sharon Leighow.

Screen Shots of Inbox

Click For Larger images and then again for the largest size

Note that the ‘ctunnel.com’ reference in the browser screen shots is to a proxy service used to prevent the activists from being traced.

Wikileaks may release additional emails should they prove to be of political substance.
Account information used by the anonymous ‘hacktivists’:

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Tags: anonymous, cyberterror, email, hacking, palin, sarah palin, yahoo