Sunday, May 31, 2009
It Takes Courage to Resist, and Stop Pretending
Since there haven't been any updates to the We Do Not Consent blog in May I want to share two pieces I had published elsewhere this month, as well as ask for help with my new website. Below is an article from the latest Vets For Peace Chapter 56 newsletter, The Foghorn, describing a recent encounter with a US soldier refusing to return to duty in Iraq. Beneath that is a letter I wrote to the Eureka Times-Standard in response to an editorial that has since disappeared from its website. It doesn't come up via various cache searches either, which is very lame. This is why the GuvWurld News Archive exists, though unfortunately I didn't save this particular editorial. (On the plus side, last week contributing editor Jane Allen restored more than 1500 articles to the archive. These have been missing since last year's hosting migration and represent nearly 25% of the current site.)
But first, as mentioned here last month, I'm soon going to stop posting at WDNC. I have finished assembling my new free e-book, We Do Not Consent, Volume 2, containing 20 of the most essential WDNC blog posts. The release of the book will coincide with the launch of my new video blog, which needs help! Web design is not my greatest strength. My ideas for the new site go way past what you see here at WDNC, and need to support the seriousness of the Project-Based Format talk show proposal.
All of this is explained in great detail in an interview I recently did with Tom Pinto that will be published in the Steelhead Special in July. So while I've been traveling through most of this spring I've been pretty relaxed about moving this all forward. Now the new site has become somewhat of a bottleneck for a lot of the related projects and the Steelie's publication has begun to loom as a deadline. Please contact me if your web design skills can help take this all to the next level. Is it the least you can do?
http://www.vfp56.org/Newsletters/VFPNews_June09.pdf
Veterans For Peace Chapter 56
June 2009 Foghorn
Page 6
It Takes Courage To Resist
By Dave Berman
Everyone who attended the May 2009 meeting of VFP-56 will long remember the guest who joined us that night. "Hugh" (a pseudonym) was recently back from serving in Iraq. Clean cut and well dressed, when asked for his story, the soft spoken man told us he was 29 days AWOL and would technically be considered a deserter the following day.
Seemingly without hesitation or reservation, members offered safe crash space, camping gear, and a bucket we passed around that quickly filled up with money. It was a VFP-56 meeting, after all, so I would expect nothing less.
Hugh told us he was walking away from the military with two confirmed kills on his conscience, plus the memory of seeing the violent death of Alex, the buddy with whom he had enlisted. Hugh thoughtfully put himself in the shoes of Iraqis, pondering what we would be doing if a foreign force invaded and occupied our country. The war is illegal and based on lies, he said. Understanding the risks of both returning to Iraq and refusing to do so, Hugh said earlier that day he had attempted to go public with his story but the local TV station told him he was not a credible source (is that the pot calling the kettle black?).
Following the meeting I waited my turn to have a few words with Hugh. Handing him my business card, I offered to help him get his story out if he decided to continue trying to go public (he has not reached out to take me up on this offer, which still stands). On the back of the card I wrote www.CourageToResist.org, the website of a group dedicated to helping those who refuse to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The seeds of Courage To Resist were first planted in the Bay Area in February 2003 when Marine L/Cpl Stephen Funk became the first military serviceperson to publicly refuse to fight in Iraq. By May 2005, CTR launched more formally and now operates as a 13 member collective with three paid staff, over 2000 donors, and services including "political, emotional, and material support to all military objectors critical of our government's current policies of empire."
In addition to supporting the well-known Lt. Ehren Watada, the CTR website also features profiles of Cliff Cornell, Robin Long and dozens of other people whose names and stories should be known throughout the broader peace movement. According to CTR:
"In the past few years, tens of thousands of service members have resisted illegal war and occupation in a number of different ways - by going AWOL, seeking conscientious objector status and/or a discharge, asserting the right to speak out against injustice from within the military, and for a relative few, publicly refusing to fight."
Tens of thousands. Let that sink in. 10,000 x ? We are always so much stronger than we realize. I'm reminded of the excellent documentary Sir! No Sir! Perhaps it is time for VFP-56 to sponsor another screening?
CTR Project Coordinator Sarah Lazare says their message for soldiers is "if you have the courage to resist, we have your back." Hugh heard the same from VFP-56, that he should regard us as family, and that if he is in our area he is welcome at our future monthly meetings.
http://www.times-standard.com/ci_12357883
Stop pretending
Letters to the Editor
Posted: 05/13/2009 01:15:31 AM PDT
I agree with the general sentiments of your April 26 editorial, "Better Together," saying that "together we all stand a better chance of getting through this penniless season than we do apart," and "money can never replace a community's soul."
Of course you are also correct that recent news has made it impossible not to notice the "economic meltdown," and that the "nation's headline writers" are "prone to hyperbole," while "understating the magnitude" of our current financial crisis.
What a rare and welcome treat to see you acknowledge that the media typically does not offer an accurate portrayal. This admission makes your opening paragraph seem downright silly -- nobody is looking to this or other newspapers for "leadership in how to navigate treacherous waters."
The public would be well served and content if we could merely rely on you for an accurate depiction of reality, one which recognizes the fiscal collapse has been (inevitably) coming and visible for years, far longer than "the past several weeks." With bankruptcies everywhere and newspapers disappearing, you stand little chance of survival by continuing to pretend things are mostly normal.
Dave Berman
Eureka
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2009/05/it-takes-courage-to-resist-and-stop.html
Labels: CourageToResist.org, Eureka Times-Standard, Foghorn, GuvWurld News Archive, Letter to the editor, Project-Based Format, Steelhead Special, Tom Pinto, Vets For Peace
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Unemployment Rises, Media Act Surprised
The word "unexpected" should not be used when referring to much anymore, but especially not an increase in unemployment numbers. First the Eureka Times-Standard caught my eye with this AP story:Jobless claims jumped unexpectedly last week
That instantly sent me to Google news where I found similar stories all using the word "unexpected" in Forbes, Times UK, Hartford Courant, and of course many others advancing the official narrative.
The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 09/04/2008 09:07:35 AM PDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of newly-laid off workers seeking unemployment benefits jumped unexpectedly last week, the government said Thursday, reversing three weeks of declines.
In contrast, here is what we all see and feel around us, acknowledged last month at Global Research: Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide.
Unemployment is on the rise. Who knew?
Eddie Bauer to close more stores after closing 27 stores in the first quarter.
Cache, a women’s retailer is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines closing 150 stores nationwide
Talbots, J. Jill closing stores. Talbots will close all 78 of its kids and men's stores plus another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J. Jill.
Gap Inc. closing 85 stores
Foot Locker to close 140 stores
Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores. The 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, filed for bankruptcy protection last month.
Levitz - the furniture retailer, announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910.
Zales, Piercing Pagoda plans to close 82 stores by July 31 followed by closing another 23 underperforming stores.
Disney Store owner has the right to close 98 stores.
Home Depot store closings 15 of them amid a slumping US economy and housing market. The move will affect 1,300 employees. It is the first time the world's largest home improvement store chain has ever closed a flagship store.
CompUSA (CLOSED).
Macy's - 9 stores closed
Movie Gallery – video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery
and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental
chain closed last fall as part of bankruptcy.
Pacific Sunwear - 153 Demo stores closing
Pep Boys - 33 stores of auto parts supplier closing
Sprint Nextel - 125 retail locations to close with 4,000 employees following 5,000 layoffs last year.
J. C. Penney, Lowe's and Office Depot are all scaling back
Ethan Allen Interiors: plans to close 12 of 300 stores to cut costs.
Wilsons the Leather Experts – closing 158 stores
Bombay Company: to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores.
KB Toys closing 356 stores around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.
Dillard's Inc. will close another six stores this year.
MORE
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20080802&articleId=9728
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/09/unemployment-rises-media-act-surprised.html
Labels: AP, economy, Eureka Reporter, Eureka Times-Standard, Forbes, GuvWurld News Archive, Hartford Courant, Times UK, unemployment, unexpected
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Adventure Therapy For Veterans Coming to Incopah
Another great project I've learned about through Vets For Peace is called Incopah, a rural retreat for veterans transitioning back to life at home. This is something in the making, that isn't yet launched, at least not this chapter of a burgeoning nationwide network at VeteransVillage.org. Other similar campuses have opened across the country, no two exactly alike but all offering adventure therapy for vets.
Adventure therapy, via Wikipedia (excerpt): "Adventure therapy approaches psychological treatment through experience and action within cooperative games, Trust activities, Problem Solving Initiatives, High adventure, outdoor pursuits, and wilderness expeditions."
Google adventure therapy and you can find various counselors offering to facilitate such a process, as well as research and books on the topic.
I have been hearing about this over the past year or so as efforts have picked up here in Humboldt County, CA, where Incopah is planned near Willow Creek. My friend Marc Knipper is spearheading this local effort and has started getting some press for it. On Friday evening, KMUD radio aired an almost 8 minute interview (listen .mp3) that I excerpted for the GuvWurld news archive.
And this is from the July 21 Eureka Times-Standard (archive):The program, a 22-acre retreat in the hills near Willow Creek, called "Incopah," would help transition vets using adventure therapy, non-denominational spiritual ceremonies and meditative work with the land, Knipper said.
This is such a great project and I'll be looking for ways to provide support. Fundraising is underway with sights set on January to begin clearing the 22 acres. The T-S article concludes:
Drug- and alcohol-free, the veterans would make pottery, raise bees, garden and do other therapeutic, tactile work, while participating in ceremonies based on indigenous philosophies.
"One day they're in Iraq killing people, and the next day they're home. One day you're a warrior and the next day you're not -- native people know you have to bring your warriors home, nurture them and prepare them," Knipper said.
Knipper said he envisions the veteran-built retreat offering veterans a place to reflect and recover, off the grid and solitary in the forest "to bring our warriors back into the tribe."
Incopah could house between 20 and 30 veterans at any given time, and would be open to the public for guided adventure tourism -- like rock climbing or white water rafting -- six months out of the year.
Knipper said by opening the resort to tourism, the program could be financially self-sustaining, and would teach the veterans skill sets that could benefit them in the job market after they leave.Donations can be made to Incopah, or Veterans Village, through Knipper: Mknipper@VeteransVillage.org or phone 707-498-6937 for more information.
Here is a link to the Incopah page on the Veterans Village website. The umbrella group was created by Nadia McCaffery whose son Sgt Patrick R. McCaffrey was killed in Iraq on June 22, 2004.Because a commercial airliner brought Patrick's flagged-draped coffin to Sacramento and hundreds of waiting friends, media captured one of those rare administration censored visuals of fallen heroes. Since that day, an apolitical mother has publicly questioned the war and searched for a "totally new, better way to involve ourselves in the world."
The names of both mother and son are quite well known now, and each returns thousands of Google hits. Like the family of Pat Tillman, Nadia McCaffrey has been tenacious at compelling exposure of a full accounting of her son's death at the hands of Iraqis he was training. I can't help wondering if that is its own form of adventure therapy for the grieving?
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/08/adventure-therapy-for-veterans-coming.html
Labels: adventure therapy, Eureka Times-Standard, GuvWurld News Archive, Incopah, KMUD, Marc Knipper, Nadia McCaffrey, Pat Tillman, Sgt Patrick R. McCaffrey, Veterans Village
Monday, January 28, 2008
Municipal Civil Disobedience In Berkeley
We need to see more of this. From Saturday's Contra Costa Times:http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_8086310
Three cheers for Berkeley, and boo hiss for the California Supreme Court, deciding last Thursday that employers can fire MMJ patients:
City considers aiding marijuana patients
BERKELEY: Resolution would declare area a sanctuary for medical pot users and distributors
By Doug Oakley
STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 01/26/2008 02:59:19 AM PST
Berkeley is considering a plan to help get medical marijuana to patients if the Drug Enforcement Administration shuts down any of the city-permitted cannabis clubs.
The plan by City Councilmen Darryl Moore and Kriss Worthington already has drawn fire from the Berkeley police, the city manager's office and the DEA.
The resolution before the City Council on Tuesday night declares Berkeley a sanctuary for medical marijuana users and distributors, and says "the city itself shall ensure a continuum of access to medical marijuana" if the DEA moves in.
Whether that means the city selling marijuana itself or helping another distributor get started is up in the air at the moment, Moore said. He wants the police chief and city manager to come back with suggestions.
MORE...http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_8073837
# # #
Medical pot use can get you fired
Thadeus Greenson The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 01/25/2008 01:27:41 AM PST
A California Supreme Court decision Thursday allowing employers to fire workers for using medical marijuana has some local attorneys disappointed and scratching their heads.
"To me, it's an absolute travesty that patients who receive doctors' recommendations to use medical cannabis are discriminated against in the workplace," said Greg Allen, a local attorney with experience handling marijuana cases. "I'm pretty appalled at this ruling."
The high court upheld a Sacramento telecommunications company's firing of Gary Ross, who flunked a company-ordered drug test but had a medical marijuana card authorizing him to legally use marijuana to treat a back injury sustained while serving in the Air Force.
The company, Ragingwire Inc., successfully argued it rightfully fired Ross because all marijuana is illegal under federal law, which does not recognize medical marijuana laws in California and 11 other states.
MORE...
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/01/municipal-civil-disobedience-in.html
Labels: Berkeley, California Supreme Court, Contra Costa Times, Darryl Moore, Eureka Times-Standard, Greg Allen, Kriss Worthington, Medical Marijuana, Municipal Civil Disobedience, Ragingwire
VCC Plans Poll-Watching Operation
The Voter Confidence Committee today announced intentions to organize Humboldt County poll watching during next Tuesday's California Primary Election. Within mere minutes of e-mailing the press release (shown in full at the bottom of this post) I received voice mail from Thadeus Greenson at the Eureka Times-Standard and Terri Klemetson from KMUD radio news.
I called back a short while later and had perhaps a 15 or 20 minute discussion with Greenson. His December 24 article was the subject of my most recently published opinion piece. We did swap one e-mail each at that time, but did not fully engage. Last week Greenson exchanged words with the VCC's Bob Olofson, who published this letter in Friday's T-S.
So with all this recent history, I was very pleased that Greenson had so many questions for me today, demonstrating curiosity about the most recent framing efforts by the VCC. Namely, let's talk about tangible numbers for a hand-count so the community can objectively judge the viability of this option, without regard for unsubstantiated opinions from elections officials.
I will even give Greenson a bonus point for asking about the December 12 letter hand delivered by Aryay Kalaki of the VCC to Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich requesting various public data. To this day, the request has not been met and no media have backed up our call for the information or mentioned the Registrar's unwillingness to comply. While I'm on the subject, I'm sorry to have to report that new Election Manager Kelly Sanders has also failed to meet a VCC request for information submitted first by voice mail last Thursday and then via e-mail on Friday. We are seeking information to help us plan the poll watching operation.
Meanwhile, when I called back KMUD's Klemetson I think it was our first conversation. She asked me for an appointment to speak by phone tomorrow to record an interview for tomorrow night's news. I really should have pushed to have her interview me then to appear on tonight's news so that discussion of the VCC poll-watching planning meeting could possibly bring out some people. But no, we'll talk at 9am tomorrow.
On thing not mentioned in the press release below is that the VCC website now has a page with an outline of what a poll-watcher should watch for.
PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dave Berman, 707-845-3749 or info@VoterConfidenceCommittee.org
Election Watchdog Group Seeks Community Volunteers
January 28, 2008 – Humboldt election watchdog group the Voter Confidence Committee (VCC) will be organizing community volunteers for a poll-watching operation on Tuesday, February 5, the day of California's Presidential Primary Election. Those willing to help monitor the election can attend a VCC planning and training session this Tuesday, January 29, starting at 6pm at Old Town Coffee & Chocolates, 211 F Street in Eureka.
"The Voter Confidence Committee has repeatedly and clearly stated our concerns about privatized and secret vote counting," said VCC co-founder Dave Berman. "To the extent that we are able to see how our elections work, we believe the community has a responsibility to carefully watch what happens on Election Day."
Volunteers need not attend the training to participate and can obtain a list of things to watch for at the VCC website, www.VoterConfidenceCommittee.org. Even citizens not intending to participate are encouraged to contact the VCC with reports of anything unusual. A special Election Day hotline has been created at 707-633-4130, or via e-mail at integrity@VoterConfidenceCommittee.org.
The VCC will be coordinating activities on Election Night from a temporary base of operations at 332 Grotto Street in Eureka's Henderson Center. Members of the public are welcome to drop in.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/01/vcc-plans-poll-watching-operation.html
Labels: Aryay Kalaki, Bob Olofson, Carolyn Crnich, Eureka Times-Standard, Kelly Sanders, KMUD, poll-watching, press release, Terri Klemetson, Thadeus Greenson, Voter Confidence Committee
Friday, January 25, 2008
Rabbi Les Scores Points For Voter Confidence Committee
Voter Confidence Committee member Rabbi Les Scharnberg scored big this week with an OpEd in the Arcata Eye, plus a great front page quote in Tuesday's Eureka-Times Standard's coverage of the NAACP event honoring MLK on Monday:Rabbi Lester Scharnberg said the dream of the freedom to vote has become a nightmare, especially as voters are putting faith into vote-counting machines.
Les's speech during the event had such great impact that he was invited to make a presentation to both the local NAACP board of directors, and also the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission. Way to go Les!
"Now the threats to individual freedoms are more subtle," he said. "We're being asked to put our trust into a machine. They no longer allow us to count the votes hand by hand. Look closely at the dream of those who died to have your vote counted."
The VCC also got ink this week in this T-S letter to the editor by new VCC member Bob Olofson. An unrelated (and somewhat bizarre) LTTE by Donna-Lee Phillips also questions the use of electronic voting machines.
The VCC is putting finishing touches on a poll watching program for the Feb. 5 primary. I hope to have more details announced about that by the end of the day.
Meanwhile, one more media reference from this week, found in the North Coast Journal's lengthy report on Bill Clinton's recent visit to Eureka:McKinleyville resident David Berman seemed to be in charge, conferring with the Secret Service agent and with Lauren Levinson, a young campaign worker from the Hillary for President Sacramento office sporting a bright green Team Hillary scarf. (Berman is not to be confused with the Eureka elections activist of the same name.)
In the first day or two after Clinton's visit, a few people asked me if I was at the event or involved in any way. I had no idea why I was being asked this, but now the Journal article makes it clear. Too bad for this other Berman because the article lays a bit of blame at his feet for the hundreds or more people who were left in the cold, unable get into the event or even find an available bathroom as they waited. Worse still for Berman, the Journal reports:David Berman, who was running the show, declined to answer questions on the record after the event. (On the day of the event, he had told a reporter that it is considered extremely bad form for an advance man to appear in a story.)
Bad form indeed. Still, this was a compliment to me, as far as I can see, and the second such one in the Journal in recent weeks. Recall Marcy Burstiner's December 6 comment:I like having the Eureka Reporter around. It gives jobs to my current and former students. And it prints any opinion out there. For those who see it as a bullhorn for Arkley, they ignore how it prints columns by Amy Goodman, Dave Berman and others.
That's two articles in two months that refer to me even though the articles had nothing to do with me and weren't quoting me. It is very flattering, really.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/01/rabbi-les-scores-points-for-voter.html
Labels: Arcata Eye, Bill Clinton, Bob Olofson, Eureka Times-Standard, Humboldt Human Rights Commission, Marcy Burstiner, NAACP, North Coast Journal, Rabbi Les Scharnberg, Voter Confidence Committee
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Eureka Times-Standard OpEd: Hand-counting ballots can work
As promised last night, below is the My Word opinion column I wrote, published in today's Eureka Times-Standard, though oddly not yet on the paper's website (I picked up a hard copy and found the piece on page A4, including a picture of me from at least three years ago).
UPDATE: 1/3/08 12:20pm -- The T-S website now has my column. It occurred to me over the past few hours that the headline it was given, while certainly a positive statement, doesn't really reflect what this essay is about. I've been saying hand-counting can work for years now. This piece says the T-S is abdicating its responsibility to foster community dialog about whether hand-counting is superior to Diebold opscans, even as the Voter Confidence Committee creates the very means by which the community can make objective comparisons. A more apt headline would have been: "Election Watchdogs Dog Newspaper For More Detailed Dialog on Election Conditions."
(archive)
Hand-counting ballots can work
My Word, by Dave Berman
1/3/07
Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich said hand-counting paper ballots is "not a practical solution" ("As primary fast approaches, election offices are in turmoil," 12/24/07) and she's not convinced it would be more reliable than continuing to use secret vote counting machines repeatedly discredited in actual elections and academic studies, including CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen's Top To Bottom Review.
It is certainly reasonable for the Times-Standard to publish the Registrar's opinion. But did the T-S ever ask her for data comparing counting methods for accuracy, cost or any other measure? The Voter Confidence Committee (VCC) has requested such information, repeatedly, and the Registrar has not only confessed to having no such information, she has failed to deliver on her promise to obtain it and make it available.
Setting the Registrar's unsubstantiated opinion aside, the bigger issue is false balance, which the T-S created by pairing the Registrar's view with superficial mention of the VCC report recommending hand-counting, noting also that we're documenting community support for the idea.
Not mentioned is the VCC hand-count forecast tool (a spreadsheet), used to create projections and plan for the requirements of hand-counting in precincts on election night. This allows the public to objectively judge whether hand-counting is indeed preferable.
In fact, this was our contribution to the federal lawsuit mentioned in the "turmoil" article, and it was previously described in the T-S on August 16.
When this becomes part of the story, an unsubstantiated opinion no longer stands in true balance, instead reflecting false balance. "He-said/she-said" can not truly balance all news articles. The community can and should discuss the relative merits of hand-counting in tangible terms, made possible by the VCC but shunned by the T-S.
Yes, shunned.
Readers should know the T-S editorial board met with VCC members on August 14. Not only was the forecast tool presented at that time, the VCC also reiterated concerns stated in our report about the Registrar's so-called "Transparency Project."
Our critique has appeared elsewhere in local media, but its absence from the "turmoil" article falsely suggested universal support for the project.
Worse still, the article cited Bev Harris as a Project supporter. In response, Harris posted a statement online saying she was misquoted and does not support the Project: "The concept of providing ballot images to the public after running them through an intermediary program developed by David Dill (or anyone else!) is absurd and misses the point entirely. What is it about these guys that they just cannot RESIST inserting "An Expert" in between "The People" and "Our Ballots"?"
To be clear, VCC objections to the Transparency Project are as follows:
Going from ridiculous to sublime, another expert was cited as a Project supporter, Harri Hursti, "who famously hacked into Diebold voting machines." Not just Diebold machines, but the exact equipment used here in Humboldt (as well as other models).
Additionally, certification is the Registrar's oath to the accuracy of the results, which should come after, not before, all checks for accuracy are completed.
The T-S might have mentioned that while bending over backwards to once again congratulate the Registrar for a decision made nearly four years ago. Forgoing touch screen machines in favor of optical scanners was a false alternative. Both types of machines have been repeatedly discredited, and both types count in secret, requiring the public's blind trust without providing any rational basis for confidence in reported results. The Registrar's devotion to casting paper ballots is hollow if counting accuracy is not verifiable.
Please visit www.VoterConfidenceCommittee.org for links to recent media coverage of election integrity issues as well as our report on local election conditions, the forecast tool, and the sign-up form that will allow us to demonstrate there are enough local voters willing to hand-count to get the job done on election night.
Opinions expressed in My Word pieces do not necessarily reflect the editorial viewpoint of the Times-Standard
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/01/eureka-times-standard-oped-hand.html
Labels: Bev Harris, Carolyn Crnich, Debra Bowen, Eureka Times-Standard, False Balance, hand-counting paper ballots, Harri Hursti, My Word, spreadsheet tool, Top To Bottom Review, Voter Confidence Committee
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Bob Koehler on Pseudo-Reporting
I don't say enough good things about the writing of Robert C. Koehler, syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. Visit www.commonwonders.com for an archive of his work on topics including, but not limited to, and in no particular order: PTSD, depleted uranium, homelessness, war and more importantly peace, Divine Strake, and many other lesser covered topics including election conditions in America.
I receive Koehler's columns via e-mail and today read his latest, "Pseudo-Reporting." Check his site (or countless newspapers, no doubt) sometime Thursday for Koehler's full commentary on the coverage of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. An excerpt:While there was some good, or at least restrained, reporting by U.S. media as the tragedy unfolded, the main sources of news for most Americans maintain what I can only call a cocked trigger of jingoism, which often goes off before the screams subside and the blood and debris are hosed into the gutter.
DAMN STRAIGHT! Read Bob Koehler everybody.
"Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us," Robert Fisk observed in the U.K's Independent. Yeah, I'd say so. I'd add: insulting, infuriating, dangerous - this media readiness to act as the propaganda arm of the party in power, to simplify evil as the sole domain of the enemy du jour, to "unite" the country in self-righteousness and hatred of that enemy.
Without such shamelessly bad reporting - perhaps a better term is "pseudo-reporting" - we couldn't have gone to war with Iraq in 2003 or, for that matter, Spain in 1898. Pseudo-reporting has, alas, a long tradition. It appeals to a docile, uninformed populace and demands the scrutiny of citizens capable of complex thought. Outing such reporting when it fizzles - when too much counter-evidence keeps it from gaining momentum and creating policy - is particularly useful. It's easier to sharpen our awareness of the forms of deception when the deception is not actively doing harm.
After reading this column in my e-mail today I wrote to Koehler. It was maybe the third or fourth time I had ever done that so it is not like we are in any kind of regular two-way contact. I told him I really appreciate columns like "Pseudo-Reporting" where he takes apart the performance of the media. I mentioned the false balance issue I've been raising here at WDNC, and I shared with him the as yet unpublished My Word opinion column I recently submitted to the Eureka Times-Standard. Koehler's response:Thanks, Dave! Great article -- I applaud you for pushing the paper as hard as possible to do it's job and hope they have the guts, or sense of fairness, to publish it. Keep me posted.
You're all posted now - not three hours later Times-Standard editor Rich Sommerville wrote me, tersely:
Happy new year,
Bob Dave: Your My Word column is to be published Thursday.
The piece is a response to the December 24 article "As primary fast approaches, election offices are in turmoil." I'll post it in full here at WDNC tomorrow morning once it is on the T-S website.
Regards,
(sig file)
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/01/bob-koehler-on-pseudo-reporting.html
Labels: Benazir Bhutto, Bob Koehler, CommonWonders.com, Eureka Times-Standard, False Balance, Pseudo-Reporting, Rich Sommerville, Tribune Media Services
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Others Criticize Humboldt's So-Called "Transparency Project"
In my last post, I took apart a December 24 Eureka Times-Standard article (archive). As promised, I have submitted to the paper a My Word opinion column that reflects and expands upon what I posted here a few days ago. I think the T-S has a policy of allowing writers a My Word column every six months. In that case, there may be a problem getting my full essay in the paper right now (previous column 8/16/07, (archive)). However, since it is a critique of such egregious problems with their article, I would hope the paper would open itself up to such criticism. If not, I strongly suspect one of Humboldt's other newspapers will be glad to shine the light.
This morning on the T-S website I found a letter to the editor dated 12/30. It is from S. Franke in McKinleyville, and I've posted it in full at the bottom of this post to show who else besides the Voter Confidence Committee is criticizing the so-called Humboldt Transparency Project.
Before I get to that, however, I want to offer one of the ways that the new My Word column expands on my last blog post. I originally pointed out that the T-S article cited Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org as a Project supporter. What I did not realize at the time was that Harris was about to release a statement saying she was misquoted and actually opposes the Project (full statement follows, italics emphasis added to indicate what I quoted in the My Word column):Black Box Voting has been misquoted twice in a week, first in an AP article that said Brunner had consulted us before developing her recommendations (she hadn't, and we disagree with her recommendations) and now saying we are behind the latest voter confidence / read: voter con idea.
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The concept of providing ballot images to the public after running them through an intermediary program developed by David Dill (or anyone else!) is absurd and misses the point entirely. What is it about these guys that they just cannot RESIST inserting "An Expert" in between "The People" and "Our Ballots"?
At this point the only place to try ballot images would be in contests like the primaries, just days or weeks away, and only in situations where there is no other alternative but a high volume of centrally counted ballots, like in Los Angeles where there will be nearly two million mail-in ballots to count on Feb. 5, just five weeks from now. And then, the only point in it would be if it was done in public, on video, with a separate non-counting off the shelf scanner, and the CDs were released instantly.
So along comes Dill. "Hey, just stick my handy dandy overlay over the ballot images before you give them to the public, it will manipulate --- strike -- "remove stray marks" -- from the ballot images.
One more concept bites the dust. Amazing how easy it is to take people's eye off the ball, which is CITIZEN oversight, not "Dill's oversight."
http://www.times-standard.com/letters/ci_7841283
(archive)
Dealing with vote accuracy
Letters to the editor
Article Launched: 12/30/2007 01:15:19 AM PST
Regarding your recent story about County Elections offices ("As primary approaches, election offices are in turmoil," Dec. 24), I don't see the significance of scanning and posting voted ballots on the Internet.
First of all, the idea is getting old and with no funding, probably dead. Second, it does not address fraud because the scanned images will only be the sanitized end result of the process. Third, we could not be sure that all the ballots were there and that the software to sort them was accurate.
While playing with the ballots might be fun, it certainly would not add to the accuracy and security of our elections and would be a frivolous waste of money. It will only add another layer of complexity, opportunity for hacking, and falsely assure the public.
I would like to hear more about the new auditing procedures that should have been instituted -- statistical analysis, security measures, etc., as directed by the secretary of state. Most election offices already have internal auditing procedures and trained employees in place.
I don't believe one thing will confirm the accuracy of all the points of possible errors or fraud that can take place. We need to independently check every step of the voting process carefully and not just depend on a vague promise of some future fix.
S. Franke
McKinleyville
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/01/others-criticize-humboldts-so-called.html
Labels: Bev Harris, Black Box Voting, Eureka Times-Standard, Humboldt Transparency Project, S. Franke, Voter Confidence Committee
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Eureka Times-Standard: As primary fast approaches, election offices are in turmoil
Monday's Eureka Times-Standard has a front page story that continues on the back page called "As primary fast approaches, election offices are in turmoil" (archive).
This article describes some of the fallout experienced by elections departments throughout CA in the wake of Secretary of State Debra Bowen's Top To Bottom Review. Humboldt is depicted as being on relatively stable footing, and though that may be the case, no mention is made that there has still been no Election Manager named to replace Lindsey McWilliams, who left in June. The last hiring update I got was at the Nov. 20 Election Advisory Committee meeting when Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich told us she was checking references on three candidates and didn't have a time frame for making a decision. She also emphasized that she was not feeling desperate because current staff is performing great. So none of that was in the article.
T-S reporter Thadeus Greenson does paint a very favorable picture of the Humboldt Transparency Project, including referencing David Dill, Bev Harris, and Harri Hursti. There was not even a hint of irony in describing Hursti "who famously hacked into Diebold voting machines." Excuse me, but it wasn't just Diebold voting machines, it included the exact equipment we use here in Humboldt. No criticisms of the Transparency Project were included, though I have detailed several on many occasions, as recently as Saturday. That may get recycled into the letter to the editor or My Word column this will prompt me to write.
As with many previous T-S articles, this one contains false balance. This is probably the biggest issue I have with this story. While there are no quotes from VCC members our group is mentioned:Still, some feel Bowen's decision didn't go far enough and the optical scan vote counting machines are also inaccurate and susceptible to hacking.
This is false balance because the Registrar offers an opinion with nothing to back it up. How do I know? Because the VCC has asked, repeatedly, and the Registrar does not have data comparing hand-counting and optical scan counting for cost, accuracy or anything else. Yet her dismissive opinion is supposed to balance the VCC recommendations, which come backed by our report (and many others), and tangible projections that will allow the community to judge what is practical. Naturally our ability to take the discussion out of the range of "he said/she said" was left out of the article.
The Voter Confidence Committee of Humboldt County released a report on voting conditions in the county that called for a complete transition to hand counting for all ballots. While Crnich said this would put a tremendous strain on poll workers and the election office, she isn't convinced it would be any more reliable than the machine counts and hand-count audits are in place.
"It's just not a practical solution," Crnich said.
But Humboldt's committee is far from the only ones calling for hand counting, which they say is both practical and more accurate than machines counting.
Earlier this month, the committee and 30 other election integrity groups joined an amicus brief in the suit brought against New York State by the Department of Justice. The brief argues hand counting paper ballots is compliant with the Help America Vote Act, and asks the court to order the two federal races on the state's next ballot to be hand counted.
Meanwhile, the Humboldt Committee is busy recruiting Humboldt voters willing to hand count ballots come election day. But Crnich said no such hand counting will take place. She said the procedures are simply not in place, but visitors are welcome to observe election-night happenings according to Bowen's guidelines.
One more bone to pick. This article refers to a lawsuit brought by San Diego County to push back against Bowen's new guidelines. But it does not mention the memory cards that disappeared from a FedEx shipment last week en route from Sacramento to San Diego. If its balance ye want, I'm just sayin'...
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http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/12/eureka-times-standard-as-primary-fast.html
Labels: Carolyn Crnich, Debra Bowen, Election Advisory Committee, Eureka Times-Standard, Harri Hursti, Report on Election Conditions, Thadeus Greenson, Top To Bottom Review, Transparency Project, VCC
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Accountability Moment For Eureka Times-Standard
Recently here at WDNC, I have been calling attention to fact-deficient articles in the Eureka Times-Standard (see here and here). Naturally the focus has been on the coverage of "voting machine" news. Today the T-S has published a "My Word" guest opinion column (archive) that pulls it all together. The full text is at the bottom of this post.
But first, I want mention this past Tuesday, when Voter Confidence Committee members Rabbi Les Scharnberg, Ruth Hoke, and I met with the T-S editorial board to discuss the VCC's Report on Election Conditions In Humboldt County, our campaign for hand-counted paper ballots, and of course, their recent dreadful coverage. The meeting was roughly 42 minutes and on the record. A complete recording is here (.mp3). It may not be uniformly exciting, but then we stood our ground several times in challenging their assumptions and rejecting some of their marginalization tactics, and that may be worth hearing.
And one last thing before I get to the My Word column, in case you missed it last night, click here for a letter to the editor which I had published in this week's issue of the Journal.Eureka Times-Standard
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Collective amnesia about e-voting safety
Dave Berman
Article Launched: 08/16/2007 04:15:49 AM PDT
Election conditions have figured prominently in recent news, thanks in part to a technical review of the state's voting systems conducted by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen. Bowen's "Red Teams" of computer security experts compromised the security of every system tested, including Diebold and Hart InterCivic equipment used in Humboldt County. The Times-Standard's coverage of this topic deserves serious scrutiny.
On July 28, the T-S ran this headline [on the Web]: "Local election systems may be vulnerable to hackers." This was the first paragraph: "A team of University of California computer scientists were able to hack into several voting systems used by California counties, including the two systems currently used in Humboldt County, the secretary of state announced Friday."
When clearly reporting that election systems are vulnerable ("were able to hack"), why does the T-S headline say they may be vulnerable? [Editor's note: The headline in the print edition said, "Election systems at risk of hacking."]
The T-S quotes Humboldt Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich being dismissive of these results, and in a manner extraordinarily similar to corporate propaganda defensively spun by "voting machine" vendors. This phenomenon is afflicting registrars throughout the state. They want the public to believe some new precautions can offset the machines' systemic design flaws.
In a report found on the secretary's website, Bowen's Diebold Source Code Review Team wrote: "Improvements to existing procedures may mitigate some threats in part, but others would be difficult, if not impossible, to remedy procedurally. Consequently, we conclude that the safest way to repair the Diebold system is to reengineer it so that it is secure by design."
On Aug. 7, the T-S presented another distortion: "E-voting order may have little impact here." While I may not think Secretary Bowen went far enough in defining new certification conditions, it is definitely a good thing that she has banned modems from transmitting precinct results to election department headquarters. Memory cards from all precincts will now have to be physically delivered to central HQ, and announcing results on election night may no longer be possible. Little impact?
On Aug. 8, the T-S again created a false impression with the headline: "County election system fares well in review." This headline contradicts previous T-S reporting as well as the facts.
This same article also congratulates the registrar for previously choosing optical scanners over touch screen machines, both of which "count" votes in secret. The T-S is correct to place a premium on paper ballots. But the methods of casting and counting votes must be evaluated separately. Lauding this decision is like feting Ford for new seat belts in response to exploding Pintos.
Why is the T-S shaping news this way, without even a balancing view from within the community? How can the registrar defend previously discredited equipment now again debunked? How could recent test results have strengthened her resolve to use Diebold's optical scanners? Why does the registrar choose to align herself with a company that employs convicted computer fraudsters and faces multiple class action lawsuits from investors, rather than with results of legitimate state-sponsored academic university studies?
Humboldt County's Voter Confidence Committee recently completed an eight-month study and published a "Report on Election Conditions in Humboldt County, California." Over the past several years, Humboldt media have documented numerous breakdowns of "voting machines." Yet somehow, word on the street seems to be that we have never had any problems here. Is there any wonder where such confusion comes from?
Regardless, this report is both an antidote for collective amnesia, and a blueprint for community involvement needed to make our elections transparent, secure, and verifiably accurate. The VCC has developed a spreadsheet tool for creating labor, cost and time estimates for an all hand-counted election. Using the VCC spreadsheet tool, The Journal's Hank Sims "twiddled" with the numbers and found hand-counting "wouldn't be all that time-consuming or costly" ("Town Dandy," Aug. 2).
Publicly counting votes by hand involves the community in its democracy and makes elections a citizen-owned endeavor. The media witnessing and documenting the process would establish the credibility of the reported results.
The VCC tool and report are now available at www.VoterConfidenceCommittee.org. We encourage more public discussion about election conditions, and in particular, what creates a basis for voter confidence without relying on blind trust.
To get involved, e-mail: info@VoterConfidenceCommittee.org or look for our volunteers signing up people who want the county to know they are willing to hand-count paper ballots on election night.
Dave Berman is a founding member of the Voter Confidence Committee. He resides in Eureka. His blog is http://WeDoNotConsent.blogspot.com.
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/08/accountability-moment-for-eureka-times.html
Labels: Debra Bowen, Diebold, Eureka Times-Standard, Humboldt County, Rabbi Les Scharnberg, Report on Election Conditions, Ruth Hoke, The Journal, Voter Confidence Committee
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Diebold's Wobble (LTTE in the Journal)
WDNC readers know I've been closely following the Humboldt media reporting on "voting machines." Hank Sims at the Journal has been doing better than most lately and so I told him so in a letter to the editor published in this week's Journal, at newsstands as of today but not yet online (I don't think they publish letters online anyway, which is too bad). The full text is below.
One other quick note first and that's about the paper with the poorest record lately, the Eureka Times-Standard. Yesterday, along with two other members of the Voter Confidence Committee, I met with the T-S editorial board. I'll have more on that in the morning, when I'm told Thursday's paper will contain a guest opinion (My Word) column I wrote.The Journal
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August 16, 2007
Page 4, "Mailbox"
Diebold's Wobble
Dear Editor:
These are words of encouragement for Hank Sims to continue writing about Humboldt County's election conditions. In his last two "Town Dandy" columns (Aug. 2 & 9), Sims made it real for our community that official state-sanctioned computer security experts, aka Red Team hackers, "made mincemeat of the machines, demonstrating a variety of ways to skew the vote." The machines in question are Humboldt's so-called "voting machines," optical scanners made by Diebold.
Sims succinctly summarized that our machines "could be easily jimmied and rendered inoperative." I will not stand by and let people say that all election reporting is as misleading as the Times-Standard's coverage ("County election system fares well in review," Aug. 8).
Sims has it right. He even got a sneak peak at the Voter Confidence Committee's new spreadsheet tool for creating labor, cost and time estimates for an all hand-counted election. This tool is now publicly available in conjunction with the VCC's new "Report on Election Conditions in Humboldt County." Both can be found at www.VoterConfidenceCommittee.org.
When Sims "twiddled" with the numbers, he found hand-counting "wouldn't be all that time-consuming or costly." This addresses a major misconception in the community. But for those who think having election night results is crucial, Sims also notes Secretary of State Debra Bowen's new prohibition on the use of modems to transmit precinct results to the election department headquarters, "which means that we will no longer have election night results."
Could hand-counting be faster, cheaper, and more accurate? Twiddle onward.
Dave Berman, Eureka
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/08/diebolds-wobble-ltte-in-journal.html
Labels: Diebold, Eureka Times-Standard, Hank Sims, The Journal, Voter Confidence Committee
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
What Have We Learned About Elections Lately?
CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen made a dramatic late-night announcement on Friday, August 3, presenting her certification decisions for the state's voting systems. Bowen completely decertified InkaVote, sold by ES&S and formerly used only in Los Angeles, because the source code was not submitted for review. All other equipment was decertified and recertified with new conditions for use, based in part on the reports (lower on same page as above link) of Bowen's Red Teams of computer security experts (see my summaries of the Diebold and Hart Intercivic reports). Some of these terms are vague or confusing, and I'll cover that in a bit.
What is clear to me is that the public is becoming more aware and more concerned about our election conditions. I have observed more people than ever having open discussions about Diebold, Bowen, and hand-counting paper ballots. More than a few people contacted me by e-mail in the past week to ask how to get involved. The increased interest in election integrity feels palpable to me.
While plentiful, Humboldt media coverage has been mixed, at best, while at other times presenting an alternate reality. On July 28, The Times-Standard gave us a headline of "Local election systems may be vulnerable to hackers" above a lede that makes clear local election systems ARE vulnerable to hackers. Today, a T-S headline read, "County election system fares well in review" - despite the Red Team reports of countless exploits found in our Diebold optical scanners.
Hank Sims had a little more on the ball in last week's Town Dandy column in the Journal: "...the hackers basically made mincemeat of the machines, demonstrating a variety of ways to skew the vote...The Red Team also verified that the optical scanning machines found at our precincts could be easily jimmied and rendered inoperative."
Having checked out the amazing calculator tool (.xls) I wrote about last week, Sims went on to address the feasibility of the Voter Confidence Committee's campaign for hand-counted paper ballots:Berman's suggestion: Ditch the machines and go to a pure hand-count of all votes cast. Initial twiddling with the numbers suggests that it wouldn't be all that time-consuming or costly -- and wouldn't you rather wait a few days and spend a little more for a trustworthy count?
I have no objection to being called "obsessive" when the same article makes my case this well. The new issue of the Journal is out but not yet online. Sims again writes about elections, referring to Bowen's "weekend massacre." The problems this will cause Humboldt are "relatively minor," says Sims, contrasting with the newly machine-less LA. True that.
However, I believe Sims understates things when saying that shoring up security for the GEMS central tabulator will merely mean "our elections office will have to change up procedure a bit." I leave it to the reader to re-trace my many prior references to the dangers of GEMS. Here I shall only point to the words from another of the reports provided to Bowen in her Top To Bottom Review (TTBR). This is from the Executive Summary of the Source Code Review of the Diebold Voting System:Vulnerability to malicious insiders
It doesn't get any more devastating than that. All the preening of Humboldt Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich is plainly phoney, and the media pandering to her is reprehensible. Sims gets a pass for his support of HCPB, but here is more bad journalism from the T-S ("E-voting order may have little impact here"), and without Rebecca S. Bender it seems the Eureka Reporter has gone mute on this subject, save a great letter to the editor submitted by VCC members Ruth Hoke and George Hurlburt.
The Diebold system lacks adequate controls to ensure that county workers with access to the GEMS central election management system do not exceed their authority. Anyone with access to a county's GEMS server could tamper with ballot definitions or election results and could also introduce malicious software into the GEMS server itself or into the county's voting machines.
Although we present several previously unpublished vulnerabilities, many of the weaknesses that we describe were first identified in previous studies of the Diebold system (e. g., [26], [17], [18], [19], [33], [23], and [14]). Our report confirms that many of the most serious flaws that these studies uncovered have not been fixed in the versions of the software that we studied.
Since many of the vulnerabilities in the Diebold system result from deep architectural flaws, fixing individual defects piecemeal without addressing their underlying causes is unlikely to render the system secure. Systems that are architecturally unsound tend to exhibit "weakness-in-depth"-even as known flaws in them are fixed, new ones tend to be discovered. In this sense, the Diebold software is fragile.
Due to these shortcomings, the security of elections conducted with the Diebold system depends almost entirely on the effectiveness of election procedures. Improvements to existing procedures may mitigate some threats in part, but others would be difficult, if not impossible, to remedy procedurally. Consequently, we conclude that the safest way to repair the Diebold system is to reengineer it so that it is secure by design.
What is happening is that Crnich and other Registrars throughout the state are in a highly defensive posture. Being forced to give up all their equipment would mean maximum uncertainty and the greatest amount of work. Instead, in fine CYA fashion, we see continued apologies for secret vote counting machines. You don't have to look all that closely to see the similarities in the rhetoric of Registrars and machine vendors such as Diebold. It is unconscionable that the results of Bowen's TTBR would make anyone more inclined to support "electronic voting machines." We're past the time of being surprised by such things, including the media's facilitation role. It is time we use these points against them. Ready for the first great example?
As Sims points out in his new column, Bowen has banned the use of modems for transmitting precinct results to the central tabulator. The VCC report addresses the risks of modems and obviously calls for their banishment as they are unnecessary with hand-counting. The beauty of what Sims says:"The machines will have to be physically delivered back to Elections HQ before the counting commences, which means that we will no longer have election night results."
Of course, one of the most common blusters we hear against HCPB is that it will take too long. We are now very close to having definitive proof that HCPB will be faster. The VCC continues to call upon Crnich to help us narrow down the range of estimates plugged into the calculator tool (.xls) for forecasting manpower needs and costs of hand-counting 100% of the paper ballots. And now, thanks to Sims, I believe we should hereby permanently lay to rest the canard of immediate election results being prioritized over accuracy.
Now, regarding Bowen's conditional certification of Diebold, the way she has this posted online, I'm unable to copy and paste text directly out of the document. So, here I'll just re-type brief references and encourage you to read the full document for yourself.
Page 2
"voting systems analyzed were inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results...contain serious design flaws...which attackers could exploit to affect election outcomes...Diebold software contains vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to install malicious software on voting machines and on the election management system, which could cause votes to be recorded incorrectly or to be miscounted, possibly altering election results...due to these shortcomings some threats would be difficult, if not impossible, to remedy with election procedures...with access only to the Windows operating system on the Diebold GEMS election management server supplied by Diebold and without requiring access to Diebold source code [Red Team members] were able to access the Diebold voting system server software and to corrupt the election management system database, which could result in manipulated voter totals or the inability to read election results, rendering an election impossible to complete electronically."
Page 3
"...without accessing Diebold source code, [Red Team members] gained access to the election management server to manipulate and corrupt the election management system database...some of these attacks could be carried out in a manner that is not subject to detection by audit, including review of the software logs."
[WDNC]: the next quote is from page four and it strikes me as contradictory and dangerously hypocritical (sorry Bowen)
Page 4
"...tampering with optical scan equipment...can be readily detected and corrected through hand counting of the optical scan paper ballots marked and directly verified by voters."
[WDNC]: First of all, this begs acceptance of the vulnerability. With various exploits described as difficult or impossible to detect, there is no justification for guaranteeing detection, let alone correction, with opscans. This puts an undue burden on the People whose rights are not being secured here, as a government is charged to do. Rules and regulations trying to promote public oversight must first clear the view with a more transparent method of counting votes.
Page 4
"...studies have shown that many voters do not review VVPAT [Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail] records and that test voters who do review VVPAT records to not detect many discrepancies that have been intentionally introduced..."
Page 5
"In order to provide accessible balloting to voters with disabilities in compliance with HAVA, jurisdictions may use no more than once AccuVote-TSx per polling place on Election Day."
[WDNC]: This refers to the touch screen models, not used in Humboldt. Registrars have been complaining about this and it is easy to understand why. They are either going to have massive logjams of voters all trying to vote on one machine where there used to be several or many, or they will urgently have to buy many new optical scanners, or they will have to resort to hand-counting.
Page 5
Requires "a 100% manual count of all votes cast on an AccuVote-TSx."
[WDNC]: This is astounding. Hand-counting 100% of the votes defeats the purpose of having the machine count them. My assumption is that Bowen's is trying to discourage use of the touch screen machines and so the hope would be for relatively few votes cast this way in need of being hand-counted.
Page 6
"Before any use in the February 5, 2008, Presidential primary election, jurisdictions must reinstall all software and firmware (including reformatting all hard disk drives and reinstalling the operating system where applicable) on all election management system servers and workstations, voting devices and hardware components of the voting system. Voting system application software must be reinstalled using the currently approved version obtained directly from the federal testing laboratory or the Secretary of State."
Page 7
"Within 30 days of the date of this document, the vendor must develop and submit to the Secretary of State for approval, a plan and procedures for timely identification of required security updates (e.g., operating system security patches, security software updates, etc), vendor testing of the updates, and secure distribution and application of vendor-approved security updates."
[WDNC]: Why should we have confidence in the machines in their newly approved form when the expectation is that more security flaws will be found? Avi Rubin makes a similar observation. This page also inexplicably allows for networking, though it does have the modem prohibition. It also makes reference to the two-person rule which I believe goes back to the Feb. 2006 VSTAAB report, which recommends that optical scanners and memory cards never be in anyone's sole possession. This would seem to preclude sleepovers, however, page 9 seems to allow poll workers to take home machines prior to Election Day.
Page 8
"Upon request, members of the public must be permitted to observe and inspect, without physical contact, the integrity of all externally visible security seals used to secure voting equipment in a time and manner that does not interfere with the conduct of the election or the privacy of any voter."
[WDNC]: This is looks great on paper but we've seen Registrars plainly obstruct the access of citizens to their Democracy. This should carry a severe criminal penalty. Page 8 also requires posting of poll tapes, another apparent victory that in reality carries no weight. As the VCC learned last November, precinct poll tapes are useless when the County never provides as a basis for comparison raw precinct scanner data that has not been combined with absentee or other ballots not cast on the scanner in the precinct on Election Day.
Page 8
"Any post-election auditing requirements imposed as a condition of this certification shall be paid for by the vendor. Jurisdiction users are required to conduct the audits and the vendor is required to reimburse the jurisdiction."
[WDNC]: I'm getting near the end now. Just a few more stray notes, such as page 9 continuing the requirement (begun under McPherson?) that counties submit a post-election problem report to the SoS. Page 10 describes how to deal with machines whose security has been compromised, and also machines that have been rebooted or which have rebooted themselves. The bottom of page 11 and the top of page 12 is a bit troublesome. It attempts to put vendors on the hook for warrantying their equipment, but all it really does is say they have to stand by their word and repair equipment at their expense when they have been caught lying again. This is not nearly strict enough. Finally, page 12 expands the requirement for vendors to give the SoS a copy of the source code, in addition to placing a copy in escrow.
So, what have we learned about elections lately?
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-have-we-learned-about-elections.html
Labels: Carolyn Crnich, Debra Bowen, Diebold, Eureka Reporter, Eureka Times-Standard, hand-counting paper ballots, Hank Sims, The Journal, Voter Confidence Committee, VSTAAB
Monday, July 30, 2007
Bowen Review Lights Up Humboldt Media
Following up on Friday night's post (Bowen's Red Team Compromises Each Voting System Tested) where I excerpted from the Diebold report, (much later) tonight I will present several items from the Hart Intercivic report, which also has relevance here in Humboldt. But first, a check of the local media.
The Eureka Times-Standard was first out of the gate on Saturday morning (archive). There are two things I have to point out about this article. The story's lede, sets the stage:Local election systems may be vulnerable to hackers
I don't know that Faulk could have written a more straight up or accurate intro to this story. It makes it clear that hackers ARE able to hack into Humboldt voting systems. Then why does the headline say merely that the machines MAY be vulnerable to hackers?
James Faulk/The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 07/28/2007 04:21:31 AM PDT
EUREKA -- A team of University of California computer scientists were able to hack into several voting systems used by California counties, including the two systems currently used in Humboldt County, the secretary of state announced Friday.
The second comment I have about this article pertains to the last two paragraphs:Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich said it's unclear under what conditions the tests were prepared.
As I noted in the comments on the T-S website, the introduction of this report dismisses the Registrar's dodge:
"It's my understanding that the red team attacks that were made during the top-to-bottom review did not take into consideration the security efforts or guidelines that had been added by former Secretary of State Bruce McPherson -- so whether or not the systems could be penetrated with those other security guidelines in place, I don't know," Crnich said.In developing our attacks, we made no assumptions about constraints on the attackers. "Security through obscurity" – or the practice of assuming a veneer of security by relying on attackers not having access to protocol specifications or of using tools that are perceived to be difficult to acquire – is not an acceptable option for any system that can't afford to have its security compromised. Our study examined what a dedicated attacker could accomplish with all possible kinds of access.
Quoting myself from the T-S site...The greatest threat to our election systems comes not from an individual voter, but rather from insiders at the elections department or working for the machine vendor (Diebold). These are the people with the greatest access to these exploits who can secretly make large scale changes that will never be detected...I go on to say some other things but that's the gist for this post.
Now, the next article to land will be in Tuesday's Eureka Reporter. The story has been online for maybe an hour now. It is kind of strange. There is no byline and I'm the only person quoted other than a Bowen press release. The headline is: "Audit standards review group releases report." This refers to yet another component of Bowen's Top To Bottom Review (TTBR). Check out the 38-page report as a .pdf here. This article is comprised almost entirely of excerpts from the report and then concludes with quotes from me.
I believe the person who called me said her name was Laura. She sounded young and a little uncertain. She told me former elections beat writer Rebecca S. Bender had left the paper as of Friday last week. I knew about this because a few months ago at an Election Advisory Committee meeting, David Cobb inadvertently "outed" Rebecca's planned departure before she really wanted people to know. I had no reason to mention it until now but I do wish her well. So anyway, Laura asked for a comment on this new standards review report that came out today. I declined to comment since I hadn't read it. She then asked about the other related reports and we had a more general conversation about what is happening. Here's what she used:Though he had not yet seen the report, Dave Berman, one of the founding members of the local Voter Confidence Committee, said he is aware that other studies have been conducted recently regarding the voting process in California, and said he looks forward to Bowen's announcement on Friday as to what action she plans to take.
It seemed out of place at the end of this article but then I'm not sure I've ever had a better quote!
Berman said the Voter Confidence Committee promotes the idea of handcounting 100 percent of the ballots the first time around and recounting 10 percent for the audit. He said simply increasing the percentage recounted in the audit is like "putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound" when the first count is performed by machines.
Hank Sims from The Journal and also KHUM called me today too, presumably for his Town Dandy column due out on Wednesday. We actually spoke twice, and in between he spoke with Registrar Crnich. That made our second chat very interesting. During that time he also got to look at something I am now making public for the first time.
This is a spreadsheet that allows you to enter different variables, such as how many precincts are in your county and the average number of ballots cast per precinct. All together, the numbers you enter will then estimate how many ballot counters you need and what it will cost to pay them to do an all hand-count election. The Voter Confidence Committee will be incorporating this great new tool into the next iteration of our Report on Election Conditions in Humboldt County, CA. I don't know when that will happen. Meanwhile, election integrity advocates working for HCPB anywhere will find this tool useful. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Nancy Tobi and Democracy For New Hampshire. It is their recent presentation that provided me with the formula for creating the calculator. [NOTE: The presentation was actually made by NH Assistant Secretary of State Anthony Stevens – WNDC regrets the error.]
I have a feeling that after I've heard from a few people about the calculator I'll probably want to make it the centerpiece of another post instead of burying this announcement 80,000 paragraphs under the sea. At any rate, back to Hank Sims.
He asked me if I felt vindicated by these new reports. I told him I would not use that word. It suggests I had previously been thought wrong but now stand affirmed. The truth is that the findings of Bowen's TTBR explicitly state that previous exploits were again confirmed. Anybody coming around to these findings of fact really can't plausibly explain previously thinking otherwise.
Sims informed me that Registrar Crnich took a position with him that was similar to the one she took in the T-S piece above. Having already addressed this once, I realized it wasn't just sounding familiar from the Registrar. Moments before I got the first Sims call, I was looking at a document I had just received from the indefatigable Tom Courbat of Sav-R-Vote in Riverside County, CA. Click here for "the corporate line" by Sequoia, attempting to explain away all the findings of Bowen's Red Team members. I never did finish reading it, but its "those aren't the droids you're looking for" tone pretty much parallels what our Registrar was trying to pull off.
Plain and simple: there is no way to spin these reports to make the machines look good. Their time has passed. We've reached a tipping point of public consciousness where secret vote counting machines are completely unacceptable and public officials who continue to defend them do so at the risk of their own credibility.
Finally, as promised at the beginning of this marathon post, here are excerpts from Bowen's Red Team report on Hart Intercivic. These first two passages are identical to wording in the Diebold report. There are several other passages in common.page 1
In developing our attacks, we made no assumptions about constraints on the attackers. "Security through obscurity" – or the practice of assuming a veneer of security by relying on attackers not having access to protocol specifications or of using tools that are perceived to be difficult to acquire – is not an acceptable option for any system that can't afford to have its security compromised Our study examined what a dedicated attacker could accomplish with all possible kinds of access.
p.10
Our study was constrained by the short time allowed. The vulnerabilities identified in this report should be regarded as a minimal set of vulnerabilities. (emphasis in original)
p.11
The Red Team, working in close conjunction with the 2007 TTBR Hart Source Code Team, discovered that the Hart EMS software implicitly trusts all communication coming from devices appearing to be Hart-branded and neither authenticates the devices nor performs adequate input validation on data transmitted to it by the devices. This allows for the possibility that a compromised device, such as an eScan that had been tampered with at a polling station, could infect the EMS systems. In particular, the Source Code Team discovered a weakness in the code that would allow an eScan to perform a buffer overflow attack and execute arbitrary code on the computer running SERVO.
...
The team was also able to access device-level menus that should be locked with passwords but were not. This access could allow an attacker a vector for altering configuration settings and/or executing a denial of service on the eScan.
Some of the findings from previous studies on precinct count optical scanners were replicated on the eScan, and they allowed the Red Team to maliciously alter vote totals with the potential to affect the outcome of an election. These attacks were low-tech and required tools that could be found in a typical office.
The Red Team implemented an attack devised by the 2007 TTBR Hart Source Code Team that was able to extract election-sensitive information from the eScan and issue administrative commands to the eScan. The leaked information would allow an attacker the ability to execute further attacks, while administrative commands issued to the eScan could erase electronic vote totals and audit records from an eScan while putting it out of service for the remainder of the Election Day. For more details on these attacks, please see the 2007 TTBR Hart Source Code Team report.
3. JBC
The Red Team verified previous findings on the JBC regarding access code generation and also discovered that a surreptitious device could issue commands that caused the JBC to authorize access codes. If the JBC is in early voting mode, it will not print receipts for the access codes issued. If the JBC is in regular election mode, it prints a receipt each time an access code is issued. When in early voting mode, an attacker could attach the surreptitious device to the JBC. (Note: the surreptitious device is easily concealable in one hand.) After waiting for about a minute, while all possible access codes are issued, the attacker could then proceed to cast multiple ballots using any access codes.
Additionally, the team expanded on previous findings that the MBB in the JBC is vulnerable to tampering during an election. Extracting the MBB from within the JBC during an election and tampering with it without detection would probably require poll worker access, but the team was able to prove that this access would be sufficient to alter vote totals – and in such a manner that it would not be detected in the course of normal operation, though a very thorough audit might reveal it. Furthermore, the team found that post-election MBB tampering safeguards (by which we mean only the technological safeguards, not procedural safeguards such as the use of tamper-evident seals) are insufficient to guarantee that such tampering would be detected. Thus, the team is confident that post-election MBB tampering would succeed in many, if not all, instances.
Finally, the Red Team collaborated with the 2007 TTBR Hart Source Code Team to decode the protocol used for communication between the JBC and eSlates. This protocol does not authenticate the devices on the bus (the communication line), so all communication is considered trusted. The teams were able to intercept the communication, but they were unable to get an exploit working to interrupt or manipulate the communication; this, again, was due to time constraints. Full details of this work can be found in the 2007 TTBR Hart Source Code Team report. The teams are confident that, given more time, they could craft a device that could maliciously alter vote totals and violate voter privacy.
p.14
IV. Successful Attack Scenarios
The following attack scenarios were successfully carried out in the laboratory environment of the Secretary of State’s testing facility.
1. Attack Scenario 1
In this scenario, a malicious voter prepares a surreptitious device and brings it with her to the polling station during early voting. She registers as usual and is issued an access code. Before she leaves the registration table, however, she quickly connects her device to the JBC and converses with the poll workers for a brief time—thirty to forty seconds should suffice. She proceeds to an eSlate and casts a ballot normally. She then enters arbitrary access codes and casts ballots at will, continuing to do this for as long as she suspects she will be unchallenged in the voting booth, casting an arbitrary number of ballots. This results in an electronic ballot box stuffing attack.
In an early voting situation, when the JBC doesn't print out a ballot access receipt each time an access code is issued, the Polls Suspended Report (automatically printed by the JBC) will indicate an unusually large number of access codes issued and more ballots cast than voters who checked in at the registration desk when polling concludes. In regular election mode, this problem would likely be detected much sooner, since the JBC is designed to print a ballot access receipt each time an access code is issued by the machine.
2. Attack Scenario 2
In this scenario, a malicious poll worker finds an opportunity after the close of polls to alter the contents of the MBB using his personal laptop. The attacker identifies ballots containing votes for a candidate he doesn't want to win the election and overwrites those ballots with records containing votes for a candidate he does want to be successful. After tampering with the MBB, the attacker replaces it in the expected chain of custody. The technological safeguards for detecting this tampering are insufficient and can, by default, go unobserved. This results in altered vote totals that can only be detected in the event of a manual recount of eSlate VVPAT records.
3. Attack Scenario 3
In this scenario, a malicious observer uses a remote device to capture the audio narration – including the narration associated with a voter's actual voted ballot – from an eSlate with audio capabilities. She is able to observe voters walking up to the eSlate and match them to the audio narration she is capturing, allowing her to violate a voter's right to privacy by linking voters to their vote selections.
...
p. 16
VI. Conclusions
Although the Red Team did not have time to finish exploits for all of the vulnerabilities we discovered, nor to provide a complete evaluation of the Hart voting system (System 6.2.1), we were able to discover attacks for the Hart system that could compromise the accuracy, secrecy, and availability of the voting systems and their auditing mechanisms. That is, the Red Team has developed exploits that – absent procedural mitigation strategies – can alter vote totals, violate the privacy of individual voters, make systems unavailable, and delete audit trails.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/07/bowen-review-lights-up-humboldt-media.html
Labels: Debra Bowen, Diebold, Eureka Reporter, Eureka Times-Standard, Hank Sims, Hart Intercivic, James Faulk, KHUM, Rebecca S. Bender, The Journal, Voter Confidence Committee
