EFFector 17.15: Verify the Vote - Stand Up for Accountable
Effector List
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424
In the 287th Issue of EFFector:
* Verify the Vote - Stand Up for Accountable Elections!
* Op-ed: TSA and CAPPS II - Anatomy of a Cover Up
* Sun Microsystems, Craigslist Donate Linux Servers and Bandwidth
* MiniLinks (12): Diebold's "Pentagon Papers"
* Staff Calendar: 04.30.04 - Cindy Cohn speaks at "China's Digital
Future," Berkeley, CA
* Administrivia
For more information on EFF activities & alerts:
<http://www.eff.org/>
To join EFF or make an additional donation:
<https://secure.eff.org/>
EFF is a member-supported nonprofit. Please sign up as a member today!
: . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .
* Verify the Vote - Stand Up for Accountable Elections!
Democracy is government by the people, and the right to vote is
critical to determining what each of us wants of our government.
Nearly one-quarter of American voters - more than 35 million people
- will exercise that right using electronic voting (e-voting)
terminals in the next presidential election. Unfortunately, some
e-voting equipment has been hastily developed and poorly tested,
putting your right to vote in greater jeopardy than ever before.
There are widespread reports of voting terminal failures, and
growing concern about the (in)security of these machines is
fueling fierce debate over how to ensure the integrity of our
elections.
Two key problems are that many machines cannot be audited to
verify that they are correctly recording each person's intended
vote, and that many do not allow real recounts. And while new
voting technology promises fully accessible, private voting for
Americans with disabilities and non-English speakers, machines
that cannot verifiably record and tally votes break that promise.
This is not an acceptable foundation for our democracy.
EFF, VerifiedVoting.org, Moveon.org, True Majority, CalVoter.org,
and Working Assets/Act For Change have joined forces to let you,
the voters, know what the challenges are for making computerized
voting work, and how you can help.
~ The Challenges
1. Electronic voting machines must provide voter-verifiable paper
audit trails. Future election systems may provide integrity
through other means, but for now, paper trails are necessary.
2. There must be fully accessible, private voting for Americans
with disabilities and non-English speakers.
3. There must be transparency in voting-system development and
testing, and especially in computerized voting. Computer code
used in elections must be open to independent scrutiny.
EFF has made progress on several fronts, including launching a
grassroots activism campaign that helped convince California
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to mandate voter-verifiable paper
trails for state elections by 2006. This is a great start -
but we need your help to take the fight nationwide.
~ How You Can Help
1.) EFF is launching a 3-month "Verify the Vote" campaign:
<http://www.eff.org/e-vote/> Help us raise $250,000 by
July 1st, and we'll use the funds to keep the fight for
voter-verifiable elections alive through the 2004 election
and beyond. Every dollar counts, so donate today at
<https://secure.eff.org/>
2.) Write your representatives and ask them to support the
Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003
(S. 1980 and H.R. 2239), which requires openly reviewed
software and voter-verifiable paper audit trails for all
new e-voting machines.
3.) Since decisions to purchase e-voting machines are made at
the county level, let your local elections officials know
that any machines purchased should have voter-verified paper
audit trails.
4.) Contact your Secretary of State to encourage him or her to
pursue policies that establish responsible criteria for the
types of e-voting machines that can be adopted by your
state.
Finally, we encourage you to support the other organizations
joining this campaign. If we work together now, we can help
save the November elections, as well as provide a roadmap for
preserving our democracy in the years to come.
: . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .
* Op-ed: "TSA and CAPPS II - Anatomy of a Cover Up"
By Kevin Bankston
EFF Staff Attorney and Bruce J. Ennis/Equal Justice Works Fellow
On Good Friday evening, after everyone, including its own
spokespeople, had gone home, American Airlines quietly admitted
that in 2002, it secretly transferred passenger data to
government contractors. Specifically, the airline provided
1.2 million passenger records to contractors developing
prototypes for the Transportation Security Administration's
(TSA) controversial Computer Assisted Passenger-Profiling
System (CAPPS II). These records contain detailed personal
information, such as your name, address, phone number, travel
itinerary - even your credit card number.
American admitted to the transfer only after several months of
official denials by TSA, which repeatedly claimed that it
never used real passenger data for CAPPS II testing.
Our conclusion: Either TSA has been lying to us about CAPPS II,
or its officers are incompetent.
We'll be charitable to the officers and assume that TSA lied.
~ The Tip-off: JetBlue Passes the Torch Data
The first clue was dropped in September of 2003, when Edward
Hasbrouck discovered that JetBlue had secretly supplied over
five million passenger records to Torch Concepts, a U.S.
Department of Defense contractor. Torch was engaged in
data-mining research - specifically, to develop techniques for
flagging air passengers as potential terrorists.
Sounds suspiciously like CAPPS II, doesn't it? And then the
situation got even more suspicious: it was revealed that TSA
not only knew about but actually facilitated the JetBlue/Torch
data hand-off. Yet TSA somehow managed to keep its hands
clean: because neither TSA nor its contractors *possessed* the
data in question, it violated the spirit rather than the
letter of federal privacy laws.
~ The Pattern: A Second "Data Valdez"
Shortly after the JetBlue scandal broke, Northwest Airlines
admitted to handing over to NASA three months' worth of
passenger records - once more for data-mining research.
Again, TSA's hands were technically clean. And again, the
denials kept coming: even after the news broke about
Northwest, TSA flatly denied possessing real passenger data
or using it to test CAPPS II. (Well, not quite - it did admit
to using the records of 32 TSA employees who had consented
to be guinea pigs.)
TSA made these denials to the press; to its bosses at the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when the department
was investigating the JetBlue scandal; and to the General
Accounting Office (GAO) when it was investigating CAPPS II.
It even told Congress directly that it never used real
passenger records for CAPPS II testing.
Yet now we can draw no other conclusion than that TSA lied.
~ Fool Me Thrice
Despite all of this, we are expected to trust TSA with a
comprehensive database of all our personal travel details -
just as we are expected to trust 1.) a Justice Department
handed an astonishing amount of surveillance power in the
weeks after 9/11, 2.) an FBI seeking to implement a
surveillance state on the Internet, and 3.) government
programs working to enable total information awareness of
everything we say or do.
We're not buying it, and we don't think you should, either.
Please: stand up for your rights as a U.S. citizen and demand
that Congress put an end to the lies by fully and publicly
investigating TSA and CAPPS II. We deserve to know the truth
about our travel privacy. There are already a few Senators
asking the right questions, but your voice - right now - could
make a real difference:
<http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2888>
Finally, if you aren't one already, please consider becoming a
member of EFF - because that would make a real difference, too.
Having more members gives us significantly more muscle with
lawmakers, the press and the public at large. Each and every
membership - even yours - counts.
For this editorial:
<http://blogs.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001470.php>
Join EFF today:
<https://secure.eff.org/>
Wired article on TSA and CAPPS II:
<http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,63067,00.html>
List of the types of information a passenger record contains:
<http://www.ugr.es/~aquiran/cripto/novuelan/en-a11-listapnr.htm>
More about CAPPS II:
<http://www.eff.org/Privacy/cappsii/>
: . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .
* Sun Microsystems, Craigslist Donate Linux Servers and Bandwidth
We would like to thank Sun Microsystems for generously donating
two new Sun Fire v65x web servers to EFF, and Craigslist for
providing us with the bandwidth and rack space to run them. The
two Linux servers are being used to host the EFF website.
Donations like this one help to ensure that EFF has the resources
necessary to continue to fight the good fight for freedom online.
Thank you, Sun and Craigslist!
: . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .
* miniLinks
miniLinks features noteworthy news items from around the Internet.
~ Another Reason to Order Chinese
Collection agencies are data-mining pizza delivery databases to
track down debtors:
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-04-27-pizza-no-privacy_x.htm>
~ Diebold's "Pentagon Papers"
Yale's Ernest Miller with an analysis of leaked documents showing
that Diebold was warned against using uncertified software in
California's elections - but went ahead and did it anyway:
<http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/003325.html>
EFF's follow-up post:
<http://blogs.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001467.php>
~ Deception Loves Company?
A county clerk in Indiana has accused Election Systems and Software
(ES&S) of using uncertified software in Marion County elections -
then "willfully and purposely" lying about it:
<http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1799902&nav=0Ra7MSKq>
~ (Mis)Educating Children About Copyright
The Boston Globe with an excellent piece on the one-sided copyright
"education" that Hollywood is foisting upon middle-schoolers:
<http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=189>
~ Spreading the Gospel via P2P
Fans of Christian pop are getting a lot of it over P2P networks,
where anonymity can ease the social stigma of rocking out with
the Lord:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/weekinreview/25lela.html>
(Registration unfortunately required.)
~ CD Sales Continue to Rise
And file sharing is still around. Maybe those studies concluding
that P2P isn't hurting the music industry are (gasp!) correct?
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/8396823.htm>
~ Aarr-natomy of the Word "Pirate"
Ever wonder when real swashbucklers and IP-absconders were first
conflated? 1668:
<http://time.blogs.com/technofile/2004/week17/index.html#a0001258726>
~ Acacia Underscores Need for Patent Busting
The company wants to file a class-action suit against porn companies
that may have violated its video-streaming patents. If Acacia wins,
expect similar claims against G-rated businesses:
<http://www.xbiz.com/news_piece.php?id=2984>
~ Another Bad Tech "Solution" to P2P
Palisade Systems is partnering with Audible Magic to offer a tool
that scans email, IM and other Net traffic for copyrighted
material and breaks connections mid-transfer - regardless of
whether the transmission is legal:
<http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39152667,00.htm>
~ ICANN Goes SLAPP-Happy on VeriSign
ICANN is trying to convince a court that VeriSign is engaging in
a "strategic lawsuit against public participation":
<http://www.cbronline.com/currentnews/31245c50672e109d80256e7d0032e042>
~ A Bad Idea Becomes Even Worse Legislation
CNET's Declan McCullagh with an analysis of California State
Senator Liz Figueroa's misguided Gmail bill:
<http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5198082.html>
The bill itself:
<http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=190>
(Official California Legislative Information)
~ Wisconsin Sues DirecTV
Alas, not over its shakedown campaign - the state Attorney General
is taking the company to task for failing to inform customers
of certain rights:
<http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=191>
(TwinCities.com; registration unfortunately required.)
: . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .
* Staff Calendar
For a complete listing of EFF speaking engagements (with
locations and times), please visit:
<http://www.eff.org/calendar/>
~ April 30 -
Cindy Cohn speaks at "China's Digital Future: Advancing the
Understanding of China's Information Revolution"
UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
3:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
<http://journalism.berkeley.edu/conf/chinadf>
. : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .
* Administrivia
EFFector is published by:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco CA 94110-1914 USA
+1 415 436 9333 (voice)
+1 415 436 9993 (fax)
http://www.eff.org/
Editor:
Donna Wentworth, Web Writer/Activist
do...@eff.org
To Join EFF online, or make an additional donation, go to:
<https://secure.eff.org/>
Membership & donation queries:
membe...@eff.org
General EFF, legal, policy or online resources queries:
a...@eff.org
Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is
encouraged. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the
views of EFF. To reproduce signed articles individually, please
contact the authors for their express permission. Press releases
and EFF announcements & articles may be reproduced individually
at will.
To change your address or other information, please visit:
<http://action.eff.org/subscribe/>
If you have already subscribed to the EFF Action Center, please
visit:
<http://action.eff.org/action/login.asp>
To unsubscribe from the EFFector mailing list, send an email to
ale...@action.eff.org with the word "Remove" in the subject.
(Please ask do...@eff.org to manually remove you from the list if
this does not work for some reason.)
Back issues are available at:
<http://www.eff.org/effector>
You can also get the latest issue of EFFector via the Web at:
<http://www.eff.org/effector/current.php>
++++++++++++++++++++++++
You received this message because ri...@math.missouri.edu is a member
of the mailing list originating from ale...@action.eff.org. To
unsubscribe from all mailing lists originating from
ale...@action.eff.org, send an email from ri...@math.missouri.edu to
ale...@action.eff.org with 'Remove' as the only text in the subject
line.