Techdirt. Stories filed under "ohio" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "ohio"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 6 Nov 2012 11:28:55 PST Cause For Concern: 'Experimental' Patches Applied To Ohio Voting Machines Without Certification Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121106/11124920951/cause-concern-experimental-patches-applied-to-ohio-voting-machines-without-certification.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121106/11124920951/cause-concern-experimental-patches-applied-to-ohio-voting-machines-without-certification.shtml Update: Just as this post went out, the ruling was released—the judge has rejected the claims.

While we've covered e-voting issues for years, it really did seem like the issues with e-voting machines were less this year than in the past. Except... maybe not. ES&S, the largest vendor of e-voting machines, who has a long and scary history of problems with their machines, is embroiled in yet another controversy, in which Ohio's Secretary of State, Jon Husted, had the company install "experimental" software patches on ES&S vote counting machines (not the voting machines themselves, but the tabulators). The software is uncertified and likely violates the law.

Husted's office has not inspired confidence with its responses to these charges:
The Secretary of State’s office has been evasive and contradictory in response to questions about the minor seeming change that involved converting results from xml to csv format. Apparently, by calling the software “experimental,” Husted was attempting to avoid any approval, review or testing of the new software. But as the federal Elections Assistance Commission titled a memo back in February , “Software and Firmware modifications are not de minimis changes.”
In the meantime, a court is set to rule on the challenge to the software any time now, and a ruling against the software patches could make counting the votes tonight a more complicated process -- but considering the concerns, a reasonable solution. Today, the judge rejected the challenge to the software.

Oh, and while this story is making the rounds, we have no idea what to make of the video of an e-voting machine that votes for Romney if you click on Romney or Obama. There have been some questions as to whether the video was real, but reporters have confirmed that the machine (in Pennsylvania) has been "taken off line." The writeup on that one suggests it's not just a touch screen calibration issue, because the guy who filmed it said that if you touch other candidates, the same offset doesn't happen.


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]]> seriously? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121106/11124920951 Thu, 1 Sep 2011 16:15:33 PDT Court Tosses Out Ridiculous Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110901/14553415771/court-tosses-out-ridiculous-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110901/14553415771/court-tosses-out-ridiculous-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google.shtml details were particularly odd. First, myTriggers set up a line of credit with Google to buy AdWords advertisements. Then... it didn't pay. The company claimed that a rejiggered algorithm made the ads much more expensive than it expected. But that doesn't explain why it racked up a $335,000 bill that it refused to pay. You can put limits on your spend. Either way, Google went to court in Ohio to try to collect on the money owed.... and bam, myTriggers suddenly used that as an excuse to launch a giant antitrust lawsuit against Google in Ohio. And, on top of that, this tiny company in Ohio that no one had heard of somehow magically hired Microsoft's chief antitrust counsel, Rick Rule, who does not come cheap. As Eric Goldman noted at the time:
Assuming myTriggers even has the money, writing a $335k check to Google (and I bet Google would have taken less!) is almost assuredly cheaper than paying three law firms to mount an antitrust assault on a $20B/year behemoth. Assuming that myTriggers wants to maximize profits, then either (1) myTriggers thinks its odds are good enough that it will win AND make enough money to pay the 7 lawyers on the counterclaim's signature page plus their teams, or (2) the law firms struck an unbelievably sweet deal on fees.
Or... you know, perhaps someone else was financing the whole thing. Google has been pretty vocal about the fact that it suspects Microsoft is behind this. But, the bigger issue is that the case itself is a joke. Google can set up its ad ranking algorithms however it likes, and while this case was purposely filed in response to Google's attempt to collect in Ohio, since whoever was behind it knew that would keep it in an Ohio state court rather than a federal court, it turns out that the court might not have been as clueless as those who filed the lawsuit expected. That's because the case has been dismissed.

You can read the full ruling below. It consists of two key issues. First, Google tried to have the case dismissed under Section 230 of the CDA, claiming that as a service provider, it's not responsible for blocking or demoting ad content. This is a slightly different part of Section 230 than we usually discuss. This is the part that is designed to encourage companies to voluntarily filter "objectionable" content, and to not face liability for doing so. Here, the court ruled that ads don't qualify as objectionable content. The caselaw it relies on here is a little murky, but for the most part, this did seem like a bit of a stretch as an argument. So that wasn't very effective.

However, the case was still dismissed on a much bigger issue: which is that myTriggers failed to properly allege an antitrust violation. You would think that with all those big, fancy and expensive lawyers, they would have done a bit better. The problem, of course, is that to show antitrust you have to show harm to competitors. But, as the court notes, all myTriggers did was show (potential, possible) harm to myTriggers. In fact, part of myTriggers' own argument was to show how other vertical search engines performed much better in Google, which undermines myTriggers' argument:
"[T]o prove antitrust injury, the key inquiry is whether competition--not necessarily a competitor--suffered as a result of the challenged business practice."

Here, the counterclaim only alleges harm to myTriggers itself. In addition, myTriggers' counterclaims contain allegations that other competitive vertical search sites were indeed favored by Google. In paragraph 12 of its counterclaim, myTriggers alleges that "Google has entered these favorable agreements with Shopping.com, shopzilla.com, PriceGrabber.com, bizrate.com, NexTag.com * * *." Such an allegation undercuts myTriggers' argument that competition as a whole within the relevant market is being injured.
The court also notes that just because myTriggers thinks its been blacklisted, that's not a real claim. It's just a random guess by myTriggers.

There are a few other claims by myTriggers, and in each and every case, the court points out that it failed to establish a legitimate claim. It's a pretty complete rejection of the lawsuit, though you have to expect it'll be appealed/amended. This marks the second of a trio of such cases that has been tossed out by courts. One wonders if grandstanding politicians using these silly claims as evidence of Google antitrust violations may start to quiet down.

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]]> nice-try,-redmond http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110901/14553415771 Fri, 8 Oct 2010 07:24:05 PDT Bogus DMCA Takedown Knocks Out Yet Another Political Ad Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101008/02431711330/bogus-dmca-takedown-knocks-out-yet-another-political-ad.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101008/02431711330/bogus-dmca-takedown-knocks-out-yet-another-political-ad.shtml interferes with political speech, and the EFF brings up another example. Apparently, John Kasich, who's running for governor in Ohio, put out a commercial that purported to show a local steelworker talking about how unhappy he was with the current governor, Ted Strickland. Strickland's campaign folks apparently realized that the "steelworker" was really an actor, and put together the following video, mixing in clips of some of the actor's other work:
The video was put up on YouTube... and then it was taken down via a DMCA notice. Now, it wasn't by Kasich's campaign. Instead, it was by Arginate Studios, one of the studios that had used the actor in a film. That particular clip is exceptionally brief in the ad. As the EFF notes, this is so blatantly a case of fair use as to be ridiculous. Beyond the fact that it's a tiny snippet, for political speech, used in a way that doesn't compete with the original movie (at all), apparently the film in question is already available for free online, as it was a part of a film festival, where the entries are viewable online.

What's troubling, yet again, is that this form of political speech has been removed from YouTube in the heat of an election battle. Even if the takedown was not political, it's clearly a case of copyright law being used to stifle political speech. The EFF asks Arginate to withdraw the takedown and asks YouTube to put the video back up (without waiting for the whole 10 to 14 day period in the DMCA).

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]]> politcal-speech http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101008/02431711330 Wed, 1 Sep 2010 13:22:52 PDT Ohio Senator Introduces Bill That Would Let Ex-Convicts Try To Erase Online Information About Their Arrest Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100901/12400010860.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100901/12400010860.shtml demand Wikipedia remove all information about him, such as his murder conviction. Apparently, some US politicians think something similar is a good idea. Thomas O'Toole points us to a report of an Ohio state senator who has proposed a bill that would allow repeat offenders the ability to "delete their record" from public view, which (stunningly) might also require newspapers to remove all old articles about their arrests and convictions:
Under threat of a $250,000 fine, the bill would require individuals, newspapers and other news media to delete stories from the Internet and their archives about the arrests and convictions of those who win expungement orders.

If a party knowingly released information about a sealed conviction, they would face a $500,000 fine. The damages would double to $1 million if the banned information was available on the Internet.
As the article notes, this almost certainly violates the First Amendment and the concept of prior restraint. The state senator in question, Shirley Smith, claims that people are misinterpreting the bill, and it was not intended to apply to news stories (even though, as written, it certainly appears to do exactly that). Smith says that language requiring "business organizations" to not publish such information is actually targeted at former employers of individuals, saying they cannot disclose a conviction to potential new employers. The idea behind the bill is to make it easier for ex-convicts to get jobs. Of course, it's still difficult to see how disclosing factual information like that should ever be considered illegal.

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]]> the-internet-never-forgets http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100901/12400010860 Wed, 9 Jun 2010 09:47:58 PDT Court Says Police In Ohio Can Just Guess How Fast You Were Going And Give You A Ticket Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100604/0954169688.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100604/0954169688.shtml faulty speed cameras. Don't worry about police just guessing when they can't quite make out your license plate on a red light photo. Fear not the police who misread driving through a green light as running the red. Over in Ohio, apparently a court has said that police don't need any real evidence at all to charge you with speeding. They just need to make a "visual estimate" in their own judgment as to whether or not you were speeding:
In a 5-to-1 ruling, the court said an officer's "unaided visual estimation of a vehicle's speed" is strong enough to support a ticket and conviction. A radar speed detector, commonly used by patrolmen, is not needed, the court concluded.

"Independent verification of the vehicle's speed is not necessary to support a conviction for speeding," assuming the officer has been trained and certified by the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy or similar organization, Justice Maureen O'Connor wrote for the court's majority.
That won't be abused at all...

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]]> evidence,-please? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100604/0954169688 Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:35:03 PST AdWords Collections Attempt By Google Mutates Into Antitrust Lawsuit Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100218/1835208230.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100218/1835208230.shtml antitrust lawsuit against Google by a company named TradeComet. The lawsuit was a joke. Basically, the company was an arbitrage player that tried to create spam-like pages that people would find on Google searches, and would make money by then getting people to click on pay-per-click ad links to get where they really wanted to go. Google properly classifies sites like this as spam, and its ranking methodology punished the site accordingly. It had nothing to do with being "anti-competitive," it was just Google making sure its search results were better for users. That lawsuit is basically in a holding pattern right now, as the judge considers Google's motion to dismiss.

However, a similar lawsuit has popped up, and it's a bit strange. Eric Goldman has all the murky details, of how a shopping search engine named myTriggers apparently got a line of credit from Google and used it to buy a bunch of AdWords search ads to drive traffic to its site (and then raised money based on the resulting traffic). Once again, Google rejiggered its algorithm, and suddenly the ads for myTriggers were a lot more expensive (by one to two orders of magnitude). The company couldn't pay its bill to Google, so Google hired a local lawyer (in Ohio) and went to court to try to get myTriggers to pay the $335,000 it owed. Simple enough.

Except that myTriggers returned fire by claiming antitrust violations by Google, and even went out and hired three separate lawfirms, including (conspiracy theory time) the same law firm that represented TradeComet and which is closely connected to Microsoft. As Goldman notes:
I am struggling to make sense of myTriggers' litigation choices. Assuming myTriggers even has the money, writing a $335k check to Google (and I bet Google would have taken less!) is almost assuredly cheaper than paying three law firms to mount an antitrust assault on a $20B/year behemoth. Assuming that myTriggers wants to maximize profits, then either (1) myTriggers thinks its odds are good enough that it will win AND make enough money to pay the 7 lawyers on the counterclaim's signature page plus their teams, or (2) the law firms struck an unbelievably sweet deal on fees.
Goldman also notes that Google probably wishes it hadn't filed a claim in a local Ohio state court, as the antitrust battle might now need to be fought there, rather than in a friendlier federal court closer to home:
Whatever the case, I suspect the antitrust claims caught Google flat-footed. A simple and low-stakes collections matter has blown up into a potentially significant lawsuit in an undesirable forum. Google chose Ohio state court for the collections matter despite its AdWords contract, so now it will have a tough time extricating itself from that court. But I suspect it would rather have an antitrust case in federal court, not state court--often (but not always) federal judges are more sophisticated than state judges and less susceptible to hometown bias. And I'm sure Google would rather fight antitrust claims on one of the coasts than in the Rust Belt, especially if myTriggers argues that Google's evilness cost Ohioans jobs. Google probably didn't mean to offer battle in this venue, but someone did a really good job of seizing the opportunity and forcing Google to fight the battle in a suboptimal setting.
As with the TradeComet case, the antitrust claim from myTriggers sounds incredibly weak, and it probably should be thrown out, but given the uncertainties of it being filed in the local court, Google may have to take it a bit more seriously. And, of course, the possibility of a secret Microsoft connection makes this even more interesting. Still, I can't see this getting that far in the long run. I hope that the judge recognizes the basic weaknesses of the case: here's a company that relied entirely on a single supplier who had every right to change its policies if it felt it didn't deliver a good customer experience, and it did so. myTriggers now seems to be suing as some sort of sour grapes for its own business failings.

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]]> didn't-expect-that,-did-you.. http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100218/1835208230 Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:30:53 PDT Ohio Legislator Wants To Criminalize Kids Taking Nude Pics Of Themselves Carlo Longino http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090327/0938464274.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090327/0938464274.shtml threatened to bring child-porn charges against some kids for taking their own pictures, Steve L left a comment noting that a politician in Ohio plans to introduce legislation that would make sexting a misdemeanor offense. He says he wants to criminalize the activity to protect kids from the "extra burden" of being charged with felony sex offenses. It's bizarre, though, as he says that teen sexters "did something stupid, but I don't think anyone wants for them to be called sex offenders," and "I think what these teens need is education about how this type of behavior could affect their lives." So the way to educate them is to make them criminals?

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]]> too-much-free-time http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090327/0938464274 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:05:00 PST Oh Look: Even More Lost Votes By Diebold/Premier Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081215/0331133122.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081215/0331133122.shtml votes lost in California thanks to Premier (better known as Diebold) and its voting equipment, The Register points us to even more votes lost by Premier/Diebold machines in Ohio. Again, it was only because of a special, rare, spot check, which isn't commonly done with these machines, that the lost votes were noticed. And, as usual, Diebold... er... Premier downplayed the discovery:
"We have not seen this particular condition anywhere else in Ohio or anywhere else in the country."
Is it really that difficult for the company to admit that it screwed up? For quite some time now, pretty much every investigation and every more detailed look at any kind of e-voting equipment have turned up similar failures. For the company to brush it off because it hasn't seen "this particular condition" anywhere else is ridiculous. It does make you wonder, though, why anyone would ever buy such equipment and use it in an actual election.

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]]> counting-votes-is-soooo-hard http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081215/0331133122 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:28:29 PDT Premiere/Diebold: You're Doing It Wrong Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080815/1102151994.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080815/1102151994.shtml lawsuit against Premiere Elections Systems -- better known by its previous name, Diebold -- where we noted Premiere's claim that the problems were the fault of antivirus software. That didn't make much sense, as we noted, but Randall Munroe has explained just how ridiculous this is (in a way that only he can) with his latest xkcd comic:
Voting Machines


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]]> a-little-Friday-humor http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080815/1102151994 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:24:03 PDT Ohio Sues Diebold/Premiere Over Lost E-Voting Votes Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080812/0206421955.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080812/0206421955.shtml all e-voting machines used in the state during the 2004 election had malfunctioning problems. Earlier this year, officials declared machines from that election a crime scene to be investigated, and now Ohio has filed a lawsuit against Premiere Election Solutions, the company better known as Diebold (it changed its name after tons of bad press).

Premiere/Diebold, of course, were at the heart of early stories about e-voting machine flaws, and the company consistently fought against anyone who suggested there was anything wrong with its machines, despite overwhelming evidence. Instead, it tried to bully those who spoke out against the company, or paint them as extremist kooks. Yet, with each passing story, it appears that the concerns were very, very real. As per usual, Premiere/Diebold is doing little to actually address the issues in this particular lawsuit, claiming:
"We certainly feel strongly that we, in fact, have fulfilled the contract with the state of Ohio. It's a high-quality voting system that continues to operate in many, many Ohio counties with great success."
I'm not sure if the "contract" allowed for completely dropping votes, but assuming it did, that's hardly something to brag about. Also, pointing out that other states use the same machines isn't a defense -- it should be an alarm for those other states to start investigating as well. Other than that, Premiere/Diebold has relied on its usual defense: "It wasn't our fault!" Instead, the company claims that antivirus software interfered with the voting tabulation system. That's a pretty weak excuse -- especially since (as Ohio points out) the system was certified with antivirus software installed. Besides, what kind of software is Premiere/Diebold building if antivirus software causes it to lose votes? Not the type of software I'd want running my elections.

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]]> instead-of-a-fine,-the-lost-votes-would-be-great http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080812/0206421955 Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:36:00 PDT Ohio E-Voting Machines Declared A Crime Scene? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080317/162504563.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080317/162504563.shtml declared some of the machines used in the '04 election as a crime scene to be investigated, but everyone admits that there's little to no chance of being able to recreate what actually happened on election night, and no way to tell if the machines acted properly or if they malfunctioned. And, if they did malfunction, there's no way to tell if it was due to an accident or something underhanded. In other words, whether or not everything worked great or everything worked terribly, there's simply no way to tell. That is why so many of us have trouble with the concept of e-voting machines. Even if they work perfectly, there's no way to confirm that -- and it just leads to more speculation and conspiracy theories about "stolen" elections.

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]]> good-luck-trying-to-pull-out-the-evidence http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080317/162504563 Mon, 17 Dec 2007 04:19:24 PST Ohio Finds All E-Voting Machines In The State Had Serious Flaws Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071216/154915.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071216/154915.shtml all sorts of problems with e-voting machines used in the state. Now, Ohio, home to some of the more controversial stories surrounding presidential elections, has also found serious flaws in every e-voting machine used in the state. It's the usual stuff that has been pointed out for years: it was easy to pick locks on the machines, introduce fake votes, and load up dangerous unauthorized software onto the machines. Not much new there -- just another confirmation. What's much more interesting is the reaction of the firms involved.

First up is "Premier Election Solution," who you probably would recognize better under its old name: Diebold. The company changed its name a few months ago, hoping people would no longer associate Premier with all of the ridiculously bad history associated with Diebold. A Premier official said that all of the problems noted in the report have been fixed in its new machines. While that's a better response than Diebold's typical response of trashing any researcher who points out a flaw or cracking jokes about the flaws, it's one of the few times we've ever seen Diebold/Premier admit that older machines actually did have significant flaws. Of course, the few times that's happened in the past, it's always come with the same sort of "but everything is fixed now!" clause. And... every time a Diebold/Premier representative says something along those lines, it's only a matter of months until new flaws are announced. So, given Diebold's history, it's pretty difficult to take the company's word that all the flaws have now been fixed.

Even worse, though, is the response of ES&S, who has become even more Diebold-like in its responses to various problems found in its machines. On the Ohio report, ES&S responded: "We can also tell you that our 35 years in the field of elections has demonstrated that Election Systems and Software voting technology is accurate, reliable and secure." Note that this doesn't actually respond to any of the specific criticisms in the report. As for that history, let's take you back to a few of ES&S's greatest hits: this is the company that was caught providing uncertified software to California, while also failing to disclose foreign manufacturing partners (as required by federal law). It's also the company responsible for the well-known case in Florida where thousands of votes went missing and the election in Texas where votes were counted three times. And, of course, let's not forget the internal memos at ES&S which showed the company knew about problems with its software, while publicly stating that the machines were perfectly fine. So, sorry, ES&S, you can try to pretend those things didn't happen, but the history you point to hardly shows that your machines are "accurate, reliable and secure." It shows a company that will say anything to avoid admitting that its machines have problems.

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]]> no-surprise-there http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20071216/154915 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:31:00 PST Recounting Touch-Screen Elections In Ohio Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071128/173150.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071128/173150.shtml Joseph Beck writes "Here in the Cleveland area there are a few election races that must be recounted because the final results were close. The county uses touchscreen machines from Diebold. The machines print a paper ballot that is reviewed by the voter. State law calls for those paper ballots to be used for the recount. The problem is, some of those ballots did not print properly because of paper jams and malfunctions, and are not readable. The Ohio Secretary of State has declared that those votes can be counted by simply reprinting the paper ballot from the memory card. Of course that defeats the purpose of a voter-verified audit trail, but she says it is acceptable. The next day the news came out that the number of unreadable ballots was actually 20% of all ballots. A spokesman for Diebold said "That is a percentage that prompts us to do further investigation." I'm sure they'll get right on it."

Anyone want to take odds on how long it will take before Diebold or another e-voting supporter uses this failure as an example of why they were better off without a voter-verifiable paper trail in the first place? Diebold and others have always used the "well, paper receipts jam" excuse in the past, meaning the companies have little incentive to come up with ways to prevent such paper jams.

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]]> problems-galore http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20071128/173150 Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:37:41 PDT How Much Taxpayer Money Is Wasted By Grandstanding Politicians On Unconstitutional 'For The Children' Laws? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070925/175707.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070925/175707.shtml ridiculous it is that state after state after state passes "for the children" laws which clearly are unconstitutional. These laws are always thrown out by the courts. It's a total waste of taxpayer money, as the state needs to go to court to defend the law, only to have it thrown out (it's even worse when they go on to appeal). The politicians don't care. They just want to pass the law so they can show voters in their district that they're "protecting the children." Who cares if they're not actually protecting any children and actually really just wasting taxpayer money? The latest state to go through this process is Ohio -- and now reporters are finally starting to ask how much are these bogus laws costing taxpayers to defend in court? It probably won't stop politicians from passing these laws, but it's about time the press started asking this question directly to the politicians.

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]]> way,-way,-way-too-much http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20070925/175707 Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:36:00 PDT E-Voting Ballots May Not Be So Secret; Paper Trail Takes Away Anonymity Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070820/113332.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070820/113332.shtml have security procedures slapped on as extras.

In this case, some Ohio activists discovered that the paper trail coming from e-voting firm Election Systems and Software (ES&S) happen to have time and date stamps on them. Those ballots are available for anyone to look at, based on election law in Ohio. Also available for anyone to peruse are the voter sign-in logs. With both of those in hand, it's not hard to put together a pretty decent list of who voted for what. You just match up the names in the order they signed in with the timestamp on the ballots.

Of course, rather than responding to this as they should, by admitting it was a bad idea, ES&S sends out their PR people to say it's no big deal. While ES&S is right that it might not always be possible to do an exact match person to person, you can come pretty close -- and that should be seen as a huge concern. Furthermore, as Ed Felten points out, the other e-voting firms aren't much better, and Diebold (or Premiere, or whatever its new name is) appears to be outright lying skirting the truth when it claims that its paper trail doesn't include timestamps (update:: Ed Felten points out that the Diebold ballots don't have a time stamp, but the electronic records do). It's not hard to see how this happened, but the continued denial and stonewalling from the e-voting companies, rather than admitting a mistake was made and explaining how they're going to fix things, really is troubling.

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]]> line-'em-up,-match-'em-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20070820/113332 Fri, 27 Jul 2007 18:34:00 PDT Ohio Data Leak Gets Pinned On The Intern Carlo Longino http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070727/091555.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070727/091555.shtml a million or so people was lost, after a storage device containing it was stolen from an intern's car. The intern, who apparently took the device home with him as part of a security protocol, has now been fired by the state, and says he's being made the scapegoat for the loss. Despite the governor's claims to the contrary, of course the intern's being scapegoated, even though he apparently was just doing what he was told. That's how things work with data leaks: the buck is passed, and responsibility shirked. In this instance, the state can say the responsible party has been fired, glossing over the fact that he was apparently just following directions he'd been given, and that the real problem here was a flawed security plan that was either devised by an idiot, or, more likely, by somebody who didn't take the security of other people's personal info very seriously. That's the problem here: nobody seems to care when it's other people's data. There are never any real ramifications from these leaks, as long as companies or governments are seen to have some security plan in place, even if it's not a good one. Until that changes -- and the scapegoating and responsibility shirking stops -- data leaks and breaches are going to keep on coming.

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]]> passing-the-buck-eye http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20070727/091555 Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:31:00 PDT Ohio State Data Leak Now About 16 Times Worse Than Initially Disclosed Carlo Longino http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070711/135658.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070711/135658.shtml was stolen from an intern's car -- which, apparently according to its security protocols, was a suitable off-site storage location. The state dutifully followed the usual plan of releasing another announcement raising the number of people whose information was lost, putting it at 500,000. Turns out that was a little conservative; the state now says the figure is closer to one million, nearly 16 times the original claim. The governor and his staffers claim that nobody appears to have used the stolen information yet, and that it would take somebody with "special knowledge and understanding" to access it. Of course, coming from a place where storing stuff in an intern's car is regarded as secure and safe, that claim doesn't carry a lot of weight -- nor does it make up for the egregious breach that occured.

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