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01/31/2004 Archived Entry: "In case you still think your vote matters ..."

IN CASE YOU STILL THINK YOUR VOTE MATTERS ...

When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new [Diebold electronic voting] machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. ...

Critics of new voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too bad to be true. Maryland's 16,000 machines all have identical locks on two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000 keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates of the keys at local hardware stores, although that proved unnecessary since one team member picked the lock in "approximately 10 seconds."

And that's in addition to the multiple electronic hacks the consultants easily managed to perform, according to the New York Times.

And Diebold, the maker of these 21st-century election-stealing machines trumpeted the study as a triumph.

Posted by Claire @ 06:17 PM CST
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