taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

E-Voting: Paul Krugman: Fear of Fraud:

It’s election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger’s campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.

When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.

This isn’t a paranoid fantasy. It’s a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent.

Here is Gumbel’s account. It’s quite simply crazy:

On March 4, Floyd and Cassel saw the second Sequoia employee, Eddie Campbell, return to the registrar’s office and watched him pop into his pocket what looked like a PCMCIA card similar to those used to store votes on individual touchscreen machines. The Sequoia AVC Edge machines do not make a paper record of individual votes, and any record of total votes for a potential recount — vital in a race separated only by 45 votes — would only be stored on that kind of card.

Floyd shouted out: ‘Where are you going with that?’ But he received no answer.

Incredible.

Tags: account, card, challenger, count, e-voting, election, fear, fraud, record, recount, sequoia

EU: EU Reporter (PDF) thoroughly trashes the new law:

The legislation as structured is opposed by lawyers and judges, who have said that large corporations will be able to slap pre-emptive injunctions on small manufacturers and put them out of business without any fear of having to pay compensation if their action proves to be no more than to gain commercial advantage.

Music companies will get the right to demand raids merely on suspicion of a breach including on private homes.

WITHOUT PROOF factories could be closed, assets and bank accounts frozen by opportunist actions based on patents claims, Greg Perry, Director General of the Brussels-based European Generic Medicines Association told EU Reporter. …

Pressure from the current 15 Member States is being blamed by a large swathe of industry for rushing bad legislation into law. Surprisingly, one of Britain’s largest corporations has slammed both parliament and Council saying: ‘It will take many years to undo the damage that this legislation has the potential to do.’ Unsurprisingly the corporation, normally close to the British Government, refused to be named.

Tags: action, advantage, business, compensation, eu, fear, law, legislation, music, pdf, reporter

Spam: Lee Maguire on pay-per-mail schemes. A great read — recommended to anyone who has given thought to this system.

It’s usually the fear of the odd overlooked gem that has rendered anti-spam techniques impotent. A salutation from a long lost friend with the subject ‘Hi’, an important business mail sent out-of-hours from the kid’s computer, that domain renewal reminder. Most people would apply no charge on the things they want to read, and a bajillion dollars on spam. And if there’s mail you don’t want to read but have to? Chances are you’re being paid to read them already - get back to work.

SoCal: an amazing satellite picture of the wild fires, courtesy of NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Tags: anyone, fear, gem, impotent, lee, maguire, mail, read, salutation, spam, system