Why?

Because Brad has a story up about the whitewashed “independent report” on the numerous security flaws in Diebold machines that was done after the 2002 elections in Maryland. Trust me, it is a must read. It’s too long for any one excerpt to do it justice, but here’s a sneak peak:

Between the time that the State of Maryland commissioned the highly respected Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to evaluate the effectiveness and security of their electronic voting machines and the time that the study is made public, critical pieces of information have been edited, omitted and, in some cases, words added, to fundamentally alter the original meaning of the report’s conclusions.

The original SAIC report, coming in at nearly 200 pages, was reduced, redacted and altered such that the only version the public — or even state officials including the Governor and the full State Board of Elections — would ever be allowed to see was a wholly sanitized 38-page version of the report.

Until now.

For the first time, we’ve been able to review the complete, much sought-after, unredacted version of the SAIC report which has been kept at bay from Maryland state officials…as well as the computer science and security community…as well as the election integrity community and public at large since it was originally completed in 2003.

It has been called “The Pentagon Papers of Electronic Voting Systems” by some members of the computer science and security community. […]

(cont.)

What makes this SAIC report, “The Pentagon Papers of Electronic Voting” as some computer experts have described it, so important is that:

1. It shows, in black and white, that what Diebold says to election officials and voters across the country is not the truth.

2. It shows that there are virtually no security protocols in place for certain Diebold machines and that the recommended security protocols were purposely removed from the publicy released version of the report.

3. It shows that the analyzed Diebold machines were not functional nor secure for use in elections and raises serious doubts that they are ready for the November 7, 2006 Midterm elections.

The complete study, dated September 17, 2003, is the response to research performed by Johns Hopkins University Computer Science Professor Avi Rubin citing severe security flaws on the Diebold touch screen machines, including a surprising lack of security, (encryption), on the memory cards. Maryland sought to ascertain whether their Diebold Touch Screen machines were, in fact, safe for Maryland voters to use. Maryland, along with Georgia, was one of the two original “showcase states” to implement Diebold’s new proprietary touch-screen DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines.

In short, what Brad describes is a report which was limited by Diebold before it began, and then further edited down so that that discussion of the most serious security flaws and criticisms were eliminated from the copy delivered to the State of Maryland.

First, Diebold did not permit the independent company reviewing its machines to examine any of the software and source code used to run the machines, including the crucial software necessary to tabulate votes. Diebold also reserved the right to edit the final report to eliminate anything which might threaten disclosure of its proprietary rights in the hardware and software.

Then, Diebold exercised its editorial rights to essentially re-write the final report, eliminating most of the references to the numerous security flaws and recommendations made by Scientific Applications International Corporation’s (SAIC) staff in their report. It’s a travesty.

Even worse, the Maryland official, Linda Lamone, who approved Diebold machines for use in Maryland elections, then participated in the cover-up by Diebold regarding the full SAIC report, which helped Diebold promote the sale of those machines in other jurisdictions.

It seems that Maryland’s State Board of Elections (SBE), under orders from Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, hired another firm, Freeman, Craft and McGregor, to review the vulnerabilities identified in the SAIC Report, the real, unredacted version, in order to confirm to the Governor and the State that all of the issues addressed had been corrected by Diebold.

The Freeman report has been completed but Linda Lamone, despite briefing her own staff about it on August 11, 2006, refuses to disclose its contents to Governor Ehrlich and even refused to release it to her board, saying it was “proprietary” until this past Monday.

Lamone’s dictatorial control over information in Maryland doesn’t stop there.

Remarkably, Lamone didn’t even allow Giles Berger, the Chairman of the Board of Elections, to see the original, un-redacted SAIC report. He and his staff — the people who were charged with oversight over the execution of elections and the training of local boards on these machines — have only been allowed to see the much smaller report, redacted and altered by Diebold.

This is most certainly the proverbial “smoking gun” that those of us who have long sounded the alrm about Diebold and its fatally flawed voting machines have been waiting for. It clearly demonstrates the lies and pattern of deceit practiced by both Diebold and complicit government officials who had an interest in promoting these highly insecure voting machines to an unsuspecting public.

If you care about the future of our democracy, and the integrity of our elections, go read the full story. It will be well worth your time.