Archives for August 2004

at BlackBoxVoting.org are spreading the word about yet another security concern related to Diebold equipment. This time, however, it isn’t the individual voting machine at issue. Rather, it seems that the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole. “By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set.” [via Boing Boing]

notes that Michael Moore was in the press box at Madison Square Garden when McCain took his jab at him last night at the Republican National Convention. Apparently Moore was there on assignment from USA Today.

a balanced and subtle dissent to the 9/11 Commission Report and subsequent praise for the document.

Much more troublesome are the inclusion in the report of recommendations (rather than just investigative findings) and the commissioners’ misplaced, though successful, quest for unanimity. Combining an investigation of the attacks with proposals for preventing future attacks is the same mistake as combining intelligence with policy. The way a problem is described is bound to influence the choice of how to solve it. The commission’s contention that our intelligence structure is unsound predisposed it to blame the structure for the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, whether it did or not. And pressure for unanimity encourages just the kind of herd thinking now being blamed for that other recent intelligence failure — the belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

How Long Can the Country Stay Scared?. An argument against the current practices of the Department of Homeland Security. Schneier says that the DHS is “inadvertantly… achieving the same thing” as terrorists. I’m not so sure it’s entirely inadvertant. No one who has read Orwell can think so.