Pissed Off Diebold Blames Elections Office for Its Failure

Diebold is puffed up and fuming about the recent successful hack by Black Box Voting on some of its Florida touch-screens. The elections supervisor in the county where the state capital is located had invited the group to see just how secure the voting machines were and now Diebold wants his head on a platter.

Tallahassee Democrat:

An attorney for the company that makes Leon County’s voting equipment told state and county officials Thursday it was “very foolish and irresponsible” for Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho to let an outside group try poking holes in vote-tabulation security systems…

In a blistering letter to Sancho, all seven county commissioners and Paul Craft, the head of voting-system certification in Hood’s elections office, [senior corporate counsel for Diebold Election Systems Inc. Michael] Lindroos said Sancho compromised the security of the system by letting Black Box Voting try to crack it. He said Sancho may have “intentionally and negligently allowed unauthorized personnel to make modifications to your system that are not discernible to you or your IT staff.

Actually, the test proved that it was already impossible to confirm that elections were being conducted reliably. That was the problem there, big boy. But Little Red (State) Glenda Hood, who presides over Florida’s elections and does whatever Jeb wants, is all about punishment – of the good guys.

An aide to Secretary of State Glenda Hood said the Division of Elections “will be contacting all appropriate parties to review this matter.”

Sancho already said he was taking the hacked machines out of commission, so whatever. Meanwhile, Diebold still hasn’t taken any responsibility and just claims the test was rigged.

“Your improper actions, Mr. Sancho, are equivalent to leaving your car unlocked, with the windows down and the keys left in the ignition, and then acting surprised when your car is stolen or the interior vandalized,” wrote Lindroos. “Other examples would be acting surprised if anomalies were discovered after you left paper ballots exposed in an unsecured area and invited individuals of questionable character to visit the room, or asked some unknown person to deliver paper ballots to a central counting location without a trusted escort.”

Well not exactly, according to Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.

Harris…said similar Diebold systems are used in about 800 cities and counties across the country, with three to five employees having access in each jurisdiction, and that the system “should send up a red flare” if a dishonest employee tries to change vote totals.

Harris said Black Box evaded security systems and changed votes without setting off any alarms in its tests.

“It took us less than a minute to replace the Diebold system with something we wrote and to hijack the whole system,” she said. “I would venture to say it doesn’t happen in Leon County, but that’s like saying nobody ever embezzles. When you have 800 jurisdictions and three to five employees with access in each, that’s like saying you’ve got 3,000 to 4,000 employees and none of them will ever try something.”

Hell, if I thought it would get rid of W. & Co. and I might give it a shot myself.

Connect:

One thought on “Pissed Off Diebold Blames Elections Office for Its Failure”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.