Nice job of connecting several dots re eVoting:
: August 25, 2003 ::
Connecting the Dots
I spent the weekend pondering what I heard at the ITAA/E-voting secret phone conference Friday. I then went and did a little checking into names and people and came up with some interesting facts and even more interesting questions.
1) The Elections Systems Task Force was the major lobbyist for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The ESTF's main purpose was to get congress to foot the bill for e-voting machines ($3.9 billion) and moving the country away from an auditable system, to a system that has no credible auditibility.
Questions: How much money did these companies spend getting HAVA enacted? Who got the money?
2) The ESTF was comprised of Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, EDS and Accenture. These companies all have major government contracts, most with the Defense Department.
Question: Why are defense contractors mucking about in our voting process?
3) Accenture bought Election.com from Osan Ltd., a private Saudi Firm. Election.com, described as a cash-starved company, has never made money, yet two different companies stepped in to rescue it. First the Saudis, then Accenture.
Question: Didn't anyone wonder about a Saudi firm owning a company that makes voting machines for American elections?
4) Accenture used to be Andersen Consulting, formally part of Arthur Andersen of Enron fame. According to the Canadian Polaris Institute, Accenture is heavily involved in projects to privatize public services, especially welfare programs in the US, Canada and the EU. The company's short history is rife with cost overruns and scandals, the most recent being a possible violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Accenture's political contributions (2000-2002) totaled $220,000, with the GOP getting 57%. Soft money contributions were $86,000, with the GOP enjoying a 3:1 advantage in contributions.
5) No techs or programmers were present at the meeting as far as I could tell. I have yet to hear any credible computer scientist come out in favor of digital voting systems.
6) One of the members of ITAA's enterprise division board of directors is Ronald J. Knecht, who is also senior VP at Scientific Applications International, Corp. (SAIC). Why is this important? Because SAIC has been hired to assess the security of Diebold's voting software for the state of Maryland.
So, ITAA is trying to get hired by Diebold et al, to lobby congress and elections officials to buy into e-voting, plus launch a PR campaign to convince the public the machines are safe. At the same time, a member of ITAA is working for the company hired to assure the trustworthiness of the same machines.
One of the principle issues discussed at the Friday meeting was "establishing certifications standards", or more specifically aggressively lobbying the independent testing authorities (ITAs) with "input" on what the standards should be.
Question: Isn't SAIC acting as a de facto independent testing authority for the state of Maryland, and thus ITAA would be in the position of providing "input" to SAIC, who have a VP on ITAA's board of directors?
Question: In any case, isn't it a conflict of interest, and at the very least rather improper for there to be a tie between ITAA and SAIC?
Question: Has SAIC disclosed this conflict to the state of Maryland?
Question: Has ITAA disclosed the conflict to its prospective clients in the e-voting industry?
7) Accenture is incorporated in Bermuda as a tax dodge, and as one of the top 100 federal contractors ($279 million in 2001), has been criticized for this. Half the partners in the firm are not U.S. citizens.
Accenture was recently awarded a contract to provide internet voting to the military. Internet voting is the least secure and the most prone to fraud. Accenture refused to reveal how much it was paid for the contract.
Question: Why is the price of the contract a secret?
Question: Why is an offshore company, run by non-citizens, allowed to handle something as sensitive as military voting?
Question: Why is the military being given a voting process highly vulnerable to fraud or disruption?
8) R. Doug Lewis, head of the Election Center, apparently was the prime instigator of Friday's meeting with the BBV crowd.
Question: Isn't it rather improper for Lewis to be helping the e-voting industry form a lobby?
:: David Allen
thoughtcrimes.org |
