Thom,

I hope the hacktivists do something as obvious as making Lady GaGa president. All that would do is ensure a re-vote "the old-fashioned way", on paper. The danger lies in subtle changes of the tally in swing districts, where nobody would suspect tampering.

There are technological solutions that would allow safe electronic voting, even on the Internet. Stockholders meetings have been using one for many years. Each eligible voter receives a random two-factor ID/password to a secure website where their vote is cast. They can subsequently log in to verifiy their vote online, if they wish, to be sure it was registered and not altered. There is no conceivable way to hack such a system, except at the facility housing the servers, which can be made as secure as one would like.

-- Dean

The Twain Report

All the News That Mark Twain Says He Would Report If He Was Alive Today

9-28-2011

It has come to my attention that there is a movement afoot to elect Lady Gaga to replace President Obama. Don't get me wrong, I think that Lady Gaga would be a fine president- she's smarter than any fifty republicans and she stands up for the underdog. But she already has a job, and besides, why elect someone who stands up for the underdog, when you could cut to the chase as it were, and simply elect a dog? I bring this up because the other day my dog Jojo told me that he really, really wants to be president of America. And because Jojo is also smarter than any fifty republicans and he's been such a good dog lately, I just think he should be given the chance to be our first canine president, although if he hadn't voiced such a preference for being president I would really have wanted him on the Supreme Court. He could replace Clarence Thomas, so instead of having a Justice who "reads" Penthouse magazine while the court is in session and wants to turn America into roadkill, we would have a Justice who freely admits that he can't read and who rolls in roadkill, and who growls when republicans come into the room- (he says they smell bad). Jojo has a drivers license and social security card, and when we lived in Chicago he voted in several elections and even served a few terms as an assemblyman. There shouldn't be any problem interpretting his executive orders- I think that Thom Hartmann, Noam Chomsky, and Bernie Sanders can do it easily.

In closing, I want to reassure Wall Street and the other corporate types that Jojo is fair. In spite of the fact that he has always been a progressive, Jojo will tap republicans for at least seven cabinet positions. On Mondays, Governor Christie will pick up Jojo's poop; on Tuesdays it will be Rick Perry- and every time he executes someone he won't get to use the pooper scooper for a month; Wednesdays are reserved for Bill O'Reilly; thursday is Scott Walker's day, and on Fridays Ann Coulter will chase down Jojo's poop while wearing 15" high heels and a 4-inch mini skirt, with her adam's apple bobbing in the wind. We are holding back on assigning the higher-status weekend poop duty until we see which republicans show the most patriotism where it really counts, in terms of getting flag tatoos on their foreheads, and only using hookers and recreational drugs that are made in America.

I thought a rabid conservative owned the private co that has control of the computer code.. I can see the future, because it has already happened (proved beyond any resonable doubt by exit polls), that either the more criminal element of the conservative base, or perhaps people right at the top, will hack these elec voting machines as needed in contested states to steal elections.. It is obvious..

Minnesota's issues were with ballots that were duplicated and not marked as duplicates. Many were counted twice. Every system has flaws. I.D. voters and mark them off as they show up at the polls. NO same day registration and the counts should match.

Voting machines can be hacked- manipulated. .GOP is hard at work trying to stop blacks , Hispanics , poor, old, from voting. How ? They are closing some DMV offices to make it harder to get an ID They are closing earlier and givng fewer days to vote early in many Dem leaning areas. If thats not voter tampering Nothing is . Bush's bro Gov Bush & his Fla con court gave the Preidency to Bush so yes they are capable of anything to break Obama and Get back in power. Lobbyists and Goldman Sachs RULE US congress, our law making, our courts- US economy & Wall St ! We the people have been ENRONED ROYAL !

The Hacktivist Smackdown:

(But first, MN has a paper ballot system and will as long as Mark Ritchie, the best Secretary of State in the nation, is in office.)

Here's what Hacktivists, or anyone who knows how to do this stuff, should publicly declare:

"We, the concerned Hactivists of America, vow to hack electronic voting machines of our choosing during every election, changing the results to one vote for each candidate, and letting you know which ones we hacked, until there are no more in use."

How long do you think it would be before voters in hacked districts would demand they all be destroyed?

Minnesota has a paper ballot and the system works fine and speedily. You get a long ballot on stiff paper with the names and issues to be voted upon, make your selections with a provided pen, and push it into the electronic counter (I don't know what to call these things), which registers it and gives a count to date.Results are fast. It makes it relatively easy to check each ballot and the numbers. It's simple and easy to manage and it's reliable. I think any errors that were found by ballots being "lost," or in someone's car, or something.

do you really think puch cards are what is meant by "paper ballots"?

It's not only possible it has already happened, at least in Ohio in 2004. George W. Bush was never legally elected to be President. First the Supreme Court made him President in what may be the most evil and most politically driven decision in the history of the Court. I offer that the ability to manipulate machine votes is the only plausible reason we have been forced into using these machines. Congress ought to act, but then they ought to do a lot of other things too. This is just one example showing how our corrupt Congress has gone insane and actively works against the common good and best interests of our country.

You are right on Mr. Hartmann. In the 2008 senatorial election in Minnesota, Al Franken beat Norm Coleman by some 325 votes. It is still argued that there were more votes than voters in some precincts. Regardless of the outcome. Photo I.D. and a good strong paper ballot could have eliminated all this furvor. The paper ballots went through very smoothly in Florida in 2000 Bush v Gore.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html

Hacking voting machines is one thing but hacking into our bank accounts is something that the banks try to keep quiet. This is something you don't read in the papers...but the FBI is very concerned: Hackers Take $1 Billion a Year as Banks Blame Their Clients...and the bankers have the support of the courts.

I wonder how many people are having problems...like I have..of paying your bills on time..even though you mailed the check as early as 20 days before the due date....using the USPS and then being informed by...say your credit card company that they did not receive payment from last billing cycle and so they must charge you interest and late fees?

In fact, for many years, I have made a point to carefully record the dates I received the bills, the dates I wrote the checks, and the dates I mailed the bills through the USPS...and made my payments well before the due date. I never wanted to get into the rut of having to pay interest or late charges...and I imagine, aside from the yearly dues for the card, they didn't make very much money on me...I was, surprisingly enough, considered a "dead beat" because they didn't make any money on me.

When I first started having problems...I suspected that someone stole the letters out of the rather full mail box in front of the local post office. I got a bad feeling the moment I put the letters in because I could tell how full the box was....it was just preceding a holiday...Christmas, I believe it was. 3 bills turned up not being received by the creditors...so I put a stop payment on those checks and wrote new ones. Since that time, I made it a point to never put mail in the outside mail boxes, even though they were right in front of the post office, and began to mail them inside the post office.

Then I was again notified, by my credit card company, that they had not received payment even though I wrote the check and mailed it a couple of days after receiving the bill in the mail and the due date was about 20 days after I mailed the check. This particular bill was larger than most others but I paid it in full as I always do.

I called up the credit card company and told them I had mailed it 20 days prior to the due date but they still persisted in wanting to charge me interest. I again had to do a stop payment on the check and write a new one including the interest.

Since I pay all my bills in full and never let a revolving charge happen I suspect that the credit card company just held on to the check, or misplaced it, in order to rack up interest charges and late payment charges. It is either that or it was the post office that either lost the letters or postal worker in that local branch has got something going for him or her that is not on the up and up.

I no longer use my local branch post office but I still suspect foul play on the part of the credit card company. I also suspect that the credit card company, along with banks and other financial institutions would love it if the post office was privatized and more people are herded into using the internet to pay their bills and their banking transactions on-line....and so will do whatever they can to blacken the reputation of the post office. There is a push on now to privatize the USPS and I strongly oppose privatization. Can you imagine what the rates will be when they have to pay off the ridiculously compensated executives and especially the CEO? And if the courts now side with banks against the depositors for a breech in banking security then they can lose your letters even easier than the current USPS can and maybe even cash them on the side...and blame you for it.

So if we are all forced, so to speak, to either do business with a profit-greedy private postal service or do our business through a highly suspect and insecure internet we are all caught between a rock and a hard place. Even banking that uses encryption (as I'm sure they all do) for their ON-LINE BANKING is NOT SECURE...not really...because even if there is encryption between your computer and the bank's computers you could easily have trojans and keyboard loggers on your computer that have been buried in the kernal using a rootkit installer which will steal your bank account numbers, your passwords that you typed in when you connected to your account, and any other personal data you have in your computer. Your virus checkers and firewalls will not keep them out. If they can hack into the DOD and CIA they can get into your computer.

And if you think that you will have redress with the bank after your accounts are wiped out just check into the matter of Patco Construction Company that lost their court claim against their bank, Ocean Bank, when they lost something like $350,000 when someone from overseas hacked into their bank account. The courts would not hold the bank responsible for the security of the transactions. Seems the bank, unlike most other banks, changed their policy to allow more and smaller transactions that increased the traffic between the company and the bank which helped the hackers glean the information they needed to gain access to the account.

And if you haven't yet heard of the Komodo Hacker (possibly Iranian) who not only, many months ago, managed to compromise the Komodo Certificates of Authority (CA) that are needed to maintain encryption but has just recently compromised over 200 CAs from other issuers of security certificates including the DigiNotar CAs. And unlike Komodo issuer, the DigiNotar issuer tried to cover up their breach...leaving a lot of time for hackers to compromise their systems.

Some executive in DigiNotar had used a rather weak password and the Komodo Hacker got in and stole the CAs. DigiNotar has gone belly up over this and most companies and other computer users have deleted or put up flags against accepting DigiNotar CAs.

The internet is broken, my friends! Not to be trusted...especially for financial things. But this is the model that the banks and creditors want you to blindly accept. And the courts seem to back the banks, as per the Patco/Ocean fiasco.

I believe, as well as do many others, that the problems with the USPS are manufactured by interests in the private sector.
http://www.savethepostoffice.com/

Patco Construction Co/Ocean Bank:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/bank-ach-theft/

Hackers Take $1 Billion a Year as Banks Blame Their Clients...and they have the support of the courts...here are lots of scare stories you probably never heard of in the press..because the banksters want to keep it under the table so you don't get freaked out and withdraw:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-04/hackers-take-1-billion-a-year-f...