ACCENTURE HITS BBV WITH CEASE AND DESISThttp://blackboxvoting.org/ Amazingly, Accenture, which sold its crap-on-a-stick high-school sophomoric completely insecure malfunctioning voter registration software to a bunch of states, so unsuccessfully that Colorado refused to pay and others, like Wisconsin and Shelby County, bought out the source code in order to try to bandaid it into a functional system, has decided to issue a DMCA protective order against Black Box Voting for exposing its flawed software.
Last time a voting system company did a DMCA takedown notice (Diebold, in 2004) it got socked with punitive charges for abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, trying to use it to block distribution of material clearly published in the public interest.
If you want a copy of the voter registration software I posted Thursday, might as well get it -- and mirror it, torrent it, dropbox it, or whatever -- today. I'll probably pull it down by June 27, not because their claim is valid, but because there are higher priorities for spending my time during this election season and thanks to Slashdot and some pals in Europe, this software has now been widely mirrored elsewhere.
Here is the DMCA issued to Black Box Voting:
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:17:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Rackspace AUP Team
Subject: Please Review Immediately - DMCA
Hello,
We have received a notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") from Accenture Global Services Ltd regarding certain content appearing at the above-referenced website (the "Website"). A copy of this notice has been sent to you via email at [redacted]. This company alleges that material posted on your company's website infringes on their copyright. Please remove the content claimed to be infringing from the Website and confirm to me in writing that you have done so by 8:00 A.M. Central Time, 6/27/2012. If the allegedly infringing content is not removed and/or I have not received your written confirmation by that time, Rackspace will suspend network access to the server(s) hosting the Website.
Please note that you may provide a counter notification, stating that the posted material is not infringing the alleged copyright, in accordance with the provisions of 17 U.S.C. §512(g)(3) to Rackspace's designated agent:
Director of Compliance
Rackspace Hosting
(Note that Rackspace is only doing what it's required to do. They are a superb web hosting company, and have helped keep the Black Box Voting sites up and secure for many years now.)
After releasing it into the wild, we can all see that the system is hardly worth the $20 MILLION Accenture tried to charge the state of Colorado, with equally exhorbitant fees hitting taxpayers in other states and counties.
There are multiple possible explanations for how this system doubles and triples reported votes for some voters (oddly, in White Republican suburbs), and for why it likes to alter people's political party and erase their voter history.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ON ACCENTURE'S VOTER REGISTRATION SYSTEM
Accenture's "ESM" voter registration / voter history system is really just a bunch of Microsoft Access tables riddled with faulty joins, lacking referential integrity, and also open to malicious play using easily written hidden Visual Basic or Java scripts residing on any computer linked into it. It cannot be made secure without completely redesigning the architecture.
Watch "Hacking Democracy" (search it on YouTube) for a real-life example of how simple it is to bypass all passwords using a VBA script, to implement anything you want with hidden code commands in systems built on this platform, which is also used for the Diebold GEMS system.
Yah, so where is "Accenture Global Services" based out of anyway? Cayman Islands? Or is it now another tax-evading corporate secrecy haven, used not only to avoid paying taxes but to prevent the American public from knowing anything about the creepy white men who control corporate ownership.
PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO
http://www.blackboxvoting.org POSTSCRIPT: This software was originally election.com, a Cayman Islands-based company owned by unnamed Saudi businessmen. Accenture bought election.com, shifting ownership to Accenture Ltd, which was located in Bermuda (another tax haven); according to the Wall Street Journal, due to the current US crackdown on tax dodging corporations, Accenture has now relocated to Dublin, Ireland. More
