- And by the way, they read every word. Hi, agent Mike.
This "investigation" no longer passes the stink test.
-
- He says not to tell folks about the "investigating"
they are doing.
-
- I have cooperated ad nauseum to this absurd investigation
of the "VoteHere hack" which looks to me like it is something
entirely different. I'll tell you what it looks like to me:
-
- A fishing expedition.
-
- It appears that they may be using the Patriot Act to
circumvent some of the civil rights protections laid down in the 60s. You
see, it is illegal for a government agency to go in and demand the list
of all the members of a group. And you can't investigate leaks to journalists
by going in and grabbing the reporter's computer.
-
- After the Diebold memos were leaked, and my web site
was shut down, around the time of the California recall election, I started
getting solicited to accept VoteHere software. I didn't bite, because it
was obvious that this was an entrapment attempt.
-
- Okay, a word about VoteHere: This is the company that
has no visible means of support. It doesn't seem to sell anything. Its
board is heavily infested with defense industry types -- a former CIA director
(Robert Gates, now heads George Bush School of Government); it had Admiral
Bill Owens, also Vice-Chairman of SAIC and a member of the Defense Policy
Board with Perle and Wolfowitz, a very close friend of Cheney; currently
headed by former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro.
-
- VoteHere announced that it would be releasing its software
for review, back in July 2003. It was planning to release it in September,
and was supposed to do so to Dr. David Dill's web site. It never released
the code, just a bunch of literature about its product. (It did release
some, but not all, of its code this month, making a big splash about it).
About a week into October, I got solicited with an email "click this
link" for VoteHere software.
-
- Now who would fall for that? Why would anyone in their
right mind grab the stuff in some clandestine manner when it was being
released into the open momentarily? And this is a company that never sells
anything. Who gives a shit anyway, what its software does? It now is trying
to peddle yet another alternative to a voter verified paper ballot, an
idiotic solution where we turn over auditing of the vote to a handful of
cryptographers who work for a private company with defense industry ties.
No one I know thinks that is even a viable concept, so why would we care
to examine the software these cryptographers make up?
-
- I was in the ending stages of writing my book, putting
new chapters online every few days, at that time. Like I'm going to hack
into VoteHere (those who know me realize that I couldn't hack my way out
of a paper bag) -- this was just dumb.
-
- I turned down the software. In early January this year,
VoteHere does a press release that it was "hacked" in October
and tries to blame it on the activism community. I published an article
expressing doubt that we'd gotten the whole story.
-
- Now, I have been interviewed by the Secret Service on
this VoteHere "hack" story about five times. They never spend
much time on the hack. Most of the time is spent on the Diebold memos,
which they claim they are not investigating.
-
- Here's the deal: The leaking of memos to journalists
is not something the government can come in and demand to investigate very
easily.
-
- Under the Patriot Act, "hacking" crimes were
turned over to a new division, called the CyberCrimes division, and placed
under the auspices of the Secret Service. And let me tell you what they
want from me now: They want the logs of my web site with all the forum
messages, and the IP addresses. That's right. All of them. A giant fishing
expedition for every communication of everyone interested in the voting
issue. This has nothing to do with a VoteHere "hack" investigation,
and I have refused to turn it over.
-
- So, yesterday, they call me up and tell me they are going
to subpeona me and put me in front of a grand jury. Well, let 'em. They
still aren't getting the list of members of BlackBoxVoting.org unless they
seize my computer -- which my attorney tells me might be what they have
in mind.
-
- Also, Agent Mike told me he just "happened"
to be on the plane with me a couple weeks ago. What's that supposed to
do? Scare me? "You were going to Oakland," he said. Yeah, and
Diebold lawyer's memos appeared in the Oakland Tribune, but guess what,
Mike: That was the first hop of three on my way to Dallas. I left that
morning for a speech at the Dallas Democratic Forum that evening. Never
even got off the plane. Better luck next time.
-
- And if they were really investigating what they said
-- a VoteHere "hack" can someone explain why they want the logs
from the web site BlackBoxVoting.org -- it was SHUT DOWN due to Diebold
cease & desists during the period of the supposed "hack."
-
- And (you know who you are) -- consider this a heads up:
If you start bumbling around in my house with U.S. marshalls, the very
first thing that will happen is mainstream news coverage that you are misusing
the Patriot Act to get at membership lists and private correspondence for
a fishing expedition on stuff that isn't even the subject of a legitimate
investigation.
-
- Yeah, I'm not a happy camper. Taking the pulse of our
democracy nowadays, it doesn't feel very healthy, does it?
-
- Bev Harris
-
- P.S. Everyone say hi to Mike.
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- http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
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