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Journal GMontag's Journal: Fair and Balanced? 26

Journal by GMontag

Diebold To Drop Suit Against Whistleblowers

Kind of a scary thought with all the United States went through during the Bush/Gore election, imagine the theories should a Diebold product be used in a situation like that.

Not sure what relevance this has, other than Diebold could be accused of re-counting until the Democrat wins? Perhaps it is an insinuation that Diebold would replace the Florida Supreme Court and attempt an end-run around the "Safe Harbor" provision? Ooops, I am letting facts cloud an irrational arguement.

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Fair and Balanced? More

Fair and Balanced?

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  • And they've already proven themselves untrustworthy by modifying the voting machines without getting them recertified, by faking election results during tests et cetera. The worry is legitimate that they might rig an election, although I'm inclined to disbelieve it solely by how incompetent they've shown themselves to be.
    • 100% Republican Owned?

      Quite interesting turn of vents! So you have a complete list of all DBD [corporate-ir.net] shareholders and you know with certainty their party affiliation, but you are tossing the "Big Brother" label at them?

      This keeps getting curiouser and curiouser!

    • Careful there -- you're repeating as ``facts'' a number of wild claims about Diebold which Bev Harris has made on her e-voting web site, but which have not been verified by any credible news source.

      This isn't necessarily your fault, mind you -- a number of publications, including Wired and the New York Times (we all know what a reputation for fact-checking they have ;-) ) have picked up stories like this from Miss Harris' ``blackboxvoting.com'' web site and run them as if they came from a credible sourc

      • a number of Miss Harris' wild claims have already been discredited

        Sorry, I wasn't aware that she was a Democratic activist, nor that no one else was checking her facts. Mind providing a link to any articles debunking her claims?

        • Here's some more information on Miss Harris' political ties:

          • She's a frequent guest columnist on hard-left websites like BuzzFlash [buzzflash.com], and WorkingForChange [workingforchange.com] -- sites which have repeatedly claimed that Bush carried out the 9/11 attacks, and which have played host to all sorts of anti-Semitic and other fringe nonsense.
          • Talion.com, the publicity firm she co-owns for her `day job' plays host [talion.com] to a wide range of kooks and conspiracy theorists, including Dan Hopsicker and Chuck Michaels, leading prop
          • I wasn't implying that you were trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. I was just interested in where they were discredited. That said, I'm not so attached to her claims that I'll try to prove them. Laziness is my other middle name.
          • wouldn't it make more sense for you to provide us to some links to any credible source which is making the same wild claims that Miss Harris is?

            More wild trolling from the neocon, eh? That's right, try to avoid ever defending your own position, and always be on the attack. You made this claim:

            that Diebold has modified equipment outside of the normal certification process (Miss Harris' own source later admitted that the virus-protection software updates which she claimed had been installed after the equip

            • Since we've already shown [slashdot.org] in this thread that the only source making claims of active fraud against Diebold is herself a wildly partisan hack with a history of making wild and inaccurate political claims, there's really not a credible claim here to rebut in the first place -- but then you know that, or you wouldn't have trimmed the series of links to Miss Harris' other work out of my post before responding to it. :-)

              Nonetheless, if you want to see how quickly these claims fall apart under any actual exa

              • Wow. You sure can misquote. Examine the piece you pulled from the article:

                Behler said Diebold provided warehouse workers with at least three patches to apply to the systems before state officials began logic and accuracy testing on

                them. Behler said one patch was applied to machines when he came to the warehouse in June, a second patch was applied in July and a third in August after he left the warehouse.

                You are implying that the "them" I bolded was the systems, when it was in fact refering to the patches.

                • Nice try, Mr. `lif', but if you read the quote (or the article) again, you'll see you're clearly stretching here. To quote:

                  Behler said Diebold provided warehouse workers with at least three patches to apply to the systems before state officials began logic and accuracy testing on them. Behler said one patch was applied to machines when he came to the warehouse in June, a second patch was applied in July and a third in August after he left the warehouse.

                  It's quite clear here that the word ``them'' in ``

                  • From your first link:

                    This program is designed to assure that software operating on the county servers matches precisely the software that was tested and certified at the national and state levels, and that no extraneous software resides on the servers. The Secretary of State plans to extend this "hashing" capability to all 26,000 touch screen terminals.

                    which means they don't verify the software on the terminals. Then you say this:

                    So let's look at our sources here. On my side:

                    the article cited [wired.com] denies Ha

                    • While you can assert that the article claims that the stations were not tested after being installed in voting locations if you want to, let's look at what the people who actually do the testing, and the people who actually ran in the election say, shall we?

                      Bobby Kahn, campaign manager for the campaign which lost the election in question says, in the article I linked earlier:

                      Just what are the checks in Georgia? First, the system is qualified by an ITA, or Independent Testing Authority, which is the go

                    • I get the vague impression that you don't actually read my posts completely, and instead write knee-jerk illogical responses, attempting to twist things into your position.

                      In other words, the system installed necessarily is identical to the one which was certified, and has had no software, configuration, or data added or removed.

                      In my last post, I included this quote and made this statement:

                      The Secretary of State plans to extend this "hashing" capability to all 26,000 touch screen terminals.

                      which me

                    • It's interesting to note how little you actually say in between the jabs and insults in this post, Mr. `lif'. Let's look at the two claims you do make, after all:

                      First, you take this quote:

                      Security is an on-going process, and is constantly updated. Most recently, KSU developed a state-of-the-art hashing program used to examine the servers in all 159 counties. This program is designed to assure that software operating on the county servers matches precisely the software that was tested and certified

                    • But all of this fits a very clear pattern of yours, the pattern of wishful thinking:

                      you wish that /. allowed longer user names, so you expect the rest of us to pretend that it did, and somehow guess what the dropped characters of your nick were supposed to be.

                      you wish that it would turn out that the Republicans didn't really win in Georgia, so you expect the rest of us to pretend that Mr. Behler has anything useful to contribute to the discussion, even though he is blatantly speculating about events w

                    • Since you've now departed from the subject almost completely, I will take it that you have nothing left to say about the matter at hand. I seriously suspect that most readers of this thread have decided just that two or three posts ago.

                      As for my original claim, I said then and I say now this: there are no credible sources making the claim of fraud on Diebold's part which `loucura!' made.

                      In this entire thread so far, only two sources at all have been quoted for these claims, confirming my point:

                    • If you think he is funny just checkout the Howard Dean quotes in my other JE :-)
                    • Come on now, GMontag, you're not honestly going to tell me that you think neocon can make random claims without backing them up, and still claim to have a logical position? I've read your other posts, and you seem to have a grasp on logic and an ability to cite sources that actually support you. You agree with this guy?
                    • Can you provide a source for his claim, or am I still just taking neocon's word for it?
                    • Plenty of sources for his claims and refuting yours have been posted in this discussion already. Just because you choose to believe nonsense does not invalidate him.

                      Well, it's more like nothing supports your side several posts have reduced your arguement to nothing.
                    • In this post [slashdot.org], neocon made this claim:

                      Miss Harris' own source later admitted that the virus-protection software updates which she claimed had been installed after the equipment was checked out was actually installed before

                      In this post [slashdot.org], I ask if he can provide proof for his claim. So, unless I misunderstand the burden of proof here (and if I do, please explain why), my "side" has not been invalidated. I'm not quite sure what you think I'm arguing, but I'm sure that my argument has not been "reduced to nothi

                    • Your argument has been ``reduced to nothing'' because neocon has clearly shown how the quote from `later' in the same Wired article admits that the updates were installed before the system was checked.
                    • Your argument has been ``reduced to nothing'' because neocon has clearly shown how the quote from `later' in the same Wired article admits that the updates were installed before the system was checked.

                      So I will now quote liberally from the article, as you seem incapable of reading it.

                      Now a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election

                      that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared wit

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