According to this story, as far as I can make it out,
the Orca project, a Republican Party effort which had a
not so successful beta test last November 6th, included
code to alter the election results in certain critical
venues, like Ohio. Anonymous sabotaged or blocked these
functions. Rove 'melted down' on TV not because he was
surprised by voting results in Ohio, but because he
expected them to be fixed. Of course Anonymous is being
rather coy, although they say they plan to publicize the business through Wikileaks. If it is true that an
attempt was made to jigger the vote count, it could
expand into a considerable scandal. On the other hand
it could all be a fable.
On Sun, 18 Nov 2012 15:46:08 +0000, Xox wrote:
> According to this story, as far as I can make it out,
> the Orca project, a Republican Party effort which had a not so
> successful beta test last November 6th, included code to alter the
> election results in certain critical venues, like Ohio. Anonymous
> sabotaged or blocked these functions. Rove 'melted down' on TV not
> because he was surprised by voting results in Ohio, but because he
> expected them to be fixed. Of course Anonymous is being rather coy,
> although they say they plan to publicize the business through Wikileaks.
> If it is true that an attempt was made to jigger the vote count, it
> could expand into a considerable scandal. On the other hand it could
> all be a fable.
If hackers have the ability to prevent alleged manipulation of electronic voting machines, don't they also have the ability to manipulate the machines themselves? It may very well be that the elections Anonymous "saved" had really been won by Republicans.
I oppose electronic voting machines, especially ones that do not print paper receipts to use to verify the results. Like leftists who oppose identification requirements, rightists oppose paper ballots because fraud is their intent. Oh, they'll say that presenting a library card or installing a dot matrix printer is just too complicated and expensive, but their true motive is fraud.
In article <k8avs0$3m...@reader1.panix.com>, Xox <etac...@etaoin.com> wrote:
> According to this story, as far as I can make it out,
> the Orca project, a Republican Party effort which had a
> not so successful beta test last November 6th, included
> code to alter the election results in certain critical
> venues, like Ohio. Anonymous sabotaged or blocked these
> functions. Rove 'melted down' on TV not because he was
> surprised by voting results in Ohio, but because he
> expected them to be fixed. Of course Anonymous is being
> rather coy, although they say they plan to publicize > the business through Wikileaks. If it is true that an
> attempt was made to jigger the vote count, it could
> expand into a considerable scandal. On the other hand
> it could all be a fable.
In article <k8avs0$3m...@reader1.panix.com>, Xox <etac...@etaoin.com> wrote:
> According to this story, as far as I can make it out,
> the Orca project, a Republican Party effort which had a
> not so successful beta test last November 6th, included
> code to alter the election results in certain critical
> venues, like Ohio. Anonymous sabotaged or blocked these
> functions. Rove 'melted down' on TV not because he was
> surprised by voting results in Ohio, but because he
> expected them to be fixed. Of course Anonymous is being
> rather coy, although they say they plan to publicize > the business through Wikileaks. If it is true that an
> attempt was made to jigger the vote count, it could
> expand into a considerable scandal. On the other hand
> it could all be a fable.
I'm afraid this runs into the rule of thumb I usually apply to historical anecdotes: If it makes a good enough story to survive on its literary merit, it should be viewed with suspicion.
What seems to me more plausible is that some Obama supporter succeeded in infiltrating the Romney operation and sabotaged the software. That would fit the other reports I have seen a good deal better. I raised the possibility and discussed implications a few days back on my blog:
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2012 15:46:08 +0000, Xox wrote:
> > According to this story, as far as I can make it out,
> > the Orca project, a Republican Party effort which had a not so
> > successful beta test last November 6th, included code to alter the
> > election results in certain critical venues, like Ohio. Anonymous
> > sabotaged or blocked these functions. Rove 'melted down' on TV not
> > because he was surprised by voting results in Ohio, but because he
> > expected them to be fixed. Of course Anonymous is being rather coy,
> > although they say they plan to publicize the business through Wikileaks.
> > If it is true that an attempt was made to jigger the vote count, it
> > could expand into a considerable scandal. On the other hand it could
> > all be a fable.
> If hackers have the ability to prevent alleged manipulation of electronic
> voting machines, don't they also have the ability to manipulate the
> machines themselves? It may very well be that the elections Anonymous
> "saved" had really been won by Republicans.
> I oppose electronic voting machines, especially ones that do not print
> paper receipts to use to verify the results. Like leftists who oppose
> identification requirements, rightists oppose paper ballots because fraud
> is their intent. Oh, they'll say that presenting a library card or
> installing a dot matrix printer is just too complicated and expensive,
> but their true motive is fraud.
Following the West (R)/Murphy(D) contest in FL18, the fraud was so
obvious in the illegally locking of the doors and re-tabulating at
midnight post election day the alleged early votes to swing 4000 votes
from 2000+ for West to 2000+ for Murphy by re-reading the cartridges
and not any of the paper ballots used to make the cartridges. There is
no automatic recount unless there is 0.5% difference, and Murphy was
up by 0.7% until the black female democrat supervisor of elections in
this disputed county of St. Lucie in FL18 took sick and went home so
that a 2-1 vote permitted a re-re-tabulation but only of less than
half of the early votes to knock the difference down to 0.58% and West
asked the obvious question why not the other half, so that a re-re-re-
tabulation of all those votes is going on today (Sunday) until the
noon deadline to certify, and, of course, they missed that deadline,
so Murphy wins. In all this no actual reference to the paper ballots
has been made -- even the obvious question: do the number of paper
ballots equal the number tabulated on the cartridges?
The issue of a "paper trail" was and remains a red-herring until
according to Florida law a democrat judge steps in declares fraud by
Republicans which would have set the deadline later, at least.
"Through the website Wonkette today, the hacker collective
Anonymous released a statement on the election, and the
content of the statement is an eye opener:"
>> Are you saying that the election machines can be hacked?
> No, but the other poster certainly was.
Nope, you're wrong..
> The only reports of "hacking" that I've ever seen about voting
> machines required physical access to the voting machines.
Yup, now what about the manner in which all of the 'voting machines'
gets tallied? Do you have any idea how that takes place?
> Are the voting machines in your area connected to the Internet?
Are you suggesting something that doesn't actually have to take
place, in order to downplay (and/or delete) the facts that you
clearly don't understand?
>> According to this story, as far as I can make it out,
>> the Orca project, a Republican Party effort which had a
>> not so successful beta test last November 6th, included
>> code to alter the election results in certain critical
>> venues, like Ohio. Anonymous sabotaged or blocked these
>> functions. Rove 'melted down' on TV not because he was
>> surprised by voting results in Ohio, but because he
>> expected them to be fixed. Of course Anonymous is being
>> rather coy, although they say they plan to publicize
>> the business through Wikileaks. If it is true that an
>> attempt was made to jigger the vote count, it could
>> expand into a considerable scandal. On the other hand
>> it could all be a fable.
> I'm afraid this runs into the rule of thumb I usually apply to
> historical anecdotes: If it makes a good enough story to survive on its
> literary merit, it should be viewed with suspicion.
Whatevuh..
> What seems to me more plausible is that some Obama supporter succeeded
> in infiltrating the Romney operation and sabotaged the software.
Nah, the RNC, through it's own inexperience and disdain for
arithmetic, managed to 'sabotage' it all by themselves..
--Never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by stupidity..
>> According to this story, as far as I can make it out,
>> the Orca project, a Republican Party effort which had a not so
>> successful beta test last November 6th, included code to alter the
>> election results in certain critical venues, like Ohio. Anonymous
>> sabotaged or blocked these functions. Rove 'melted down' on TV not
>> because he was surprised by voting results in Ohio, but because he
>> expected them to be fixed. Of course Anonymous is being rather coy,
>> although they say they plan to publicize the business through Wikileaks.
>> If it is true that an attempt was made to jigger the vote count, it
>> could expand into a considerable scandal. On the other hand it could
>> all be a fable.
> If hackers have the ability to prevent alleged manipulation of electronic
> voting machines, don't they also have the ability to manipulate the
> machines themselves?
Nope, that would be a false generalization on your part..
> It may very well be that the elections Anonymous
> "saved" had really been won by Republicans.
On Sun, 18 Nov 2012 12:45:26 -0800, David Friedman wrote:
> In article <k8avs0$3m...@reader1.panix.com>, Xox <etac...@etaoin.com>
> wrote:
>> According to this story, as far as I can make it out,
>> the Orca project, a Republican Party effort which had a not so
>> successful beta test last November 6th, included code to alter the
>> election results in certain critical venues, like Ohio. Anonymous
>> sabotaged or blocked these functions. Rove 'melted down' on TV not
>> because he was surprised by voting results in Ohio, but because he
>> expected them to be fixed. Of course Anonymous is being rather coy,
>> although they say they plan to publicize the business through
>> Wikileaks. If it is true that an attempt was made to jigger the vote
>> count, it could expand into a considerable scandal. On the other hand
>> it could all be a fable.
> I'm afraid this runs into the rule of thumb I usually apply to
> historical anecdotes: If it makes a good enough story to survive on its
> literary merit, it should be viewed with suspicion.
> What seems to me more plausible is that some Obama supporter succeeded
> in infiltrating the Romney operation and sabotaged the software. That
> would fit the other reports I have seen a good deal better. I raised the
> possibility and discussed implications a few days back on my blog:
My considerable experience with computer projects -- it has been
my 'profession' for going on 50 years -- leads me to believe that
deliberate sabotage is usually easy to detect and remedy, but such
classic screwups as overconfidence, bad planning, failure to inform, failure to document, and above all failure to test, all of which
were noted in reports of difficulties with Orca, are endemic to the
craft, especially when a 'business' (boosterist) mentality is brought to bear on its practitioners by the people who write their
paychecks. Everything I heard sounded exactly like the many, many
project failures I had witnessed and heard about over the years.
The disease seems to be incurable; the same mistakes, grand, petty
and in between, are made over and over again. Perhaps they are
coded in the human genome. In fact I have heard that the Democrats had the same sort of problems with their similar system four years ago; the reason it was not noised about more was only that apparently there was less boasting about it beforehand.
I am not sure why these computer systems beat the ancient
technology of precinct captains with ordinary checklists of voters.
My experiences also cause me to doubt Anonymous's story. One
might conceal a hacking operation within another, larger project, but it's pretty risky. It would be smarter to have
the whole thing entirely concealed and completely separate from everything else, in which case it would be very difficult
to detect until the last moment, if at all. A lot more information will have to come out of the events before one can judge whether anything like that happened, anyway.
