Smells like Vineland

[Toby G Levy]

Gee Whiz, this reads like it could have come right out of the pages of
Vineland!

extracted from http://www.blackboxvoting.org      :

Thursday April 29 2004 
The Secret Service Wants Your Name: Will "subpeona" this web site? 

by Bev Harris 
And by the way, they read every word. Hi, agent Mike. This
"investigation" no longer passes the stink test. 

He says not to tell folks about the "investigating" they are doing. 

I have cooperated ad nauseum to this absurd investigation of the
"VoteHere hack" which looks to me like it is something entirely
different. I'll tell you what it looks like to me: 

A fishing expedition. 

It appears that they may be using the Patriot Act to circumvent some of
the civil rights protections laid down in the 60s. You see, it is illegal
for a government agency to go in and demand the list of all the members
of a group. And you can't investigate leaks to journalists by going in
and grabbing the reporter's computer. 

After the Diebold memos were leaked, and my web site was shut down,
around the time of the California recall election, I started getting
solicited to accept VoteHere software. I didn't bite, because it was
obvious that this was an entrapment attempt. 

Okay, a word about VoteHere: This is the company that has no visible
means of support. It doesn't seem to sell anything. Its board is heavily
infested with defense industry types -- a former CIA director (Robert
Gates, now heads George Bush School of Government); it had Admiral Bill
Owens, also Vice-Chairman of SAIC and a member of the Defense Policy
Board with Perle and Wolfowitz, a very close friend of Cheney; currently
headed by former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro. 

VoteHere announced that it would be releasing its software for review,
back in July 2003. It was planning to release it in September, and was
supposed to do so to Dr. David Dill's web site. It never released the
code, just a bunch of literature about its product. (It did release some,
but not all, of its code this month, making a big splash about it). About
a week into October, I got solicited with an email "click this link" for
VoteHere software. 

Now who would fall for that? Why would anyone in their right mind grab
the stuff in some clandestine manner when it was being released into the
open momentarily? And this is a company that never sells anything. Who
gives a shit anyway, what its software does? It now is trying to peddle
yet another alternative to a voter verified paper ballot, an idiotic
solution where we turn over auditing of the vote to a handful of
cryptographers who work for a private company with defense industry ties.
No one I know thinks that is even a viable concept, so why would we care
to examine the software these cryptographers make up? 

I was in the ending stages of writing my book, putting new chapters
online every few days, at that time. Like I'm going to hack into VoteHere
(those who know me realize that I couldn't hack my way out of a paper
bag) -- this was just dumb. 

I turned down the software. In early January this year, VoteHere does a
press release that it was "hacked" in October and tries to blame it on
the activism community. I published an article expressing doubt that we'd
gotten the whole story. 

Now, I have been interviewed by the Secret Service on this VoteHere
"hack" story about five times. They never spend much time on the hack.
Most of the time is spent on the Diebold memos, which they claim they are
not investigating. 

Here's the deal: The leaking of memos to journalists is not something the
government can come in and demand to investigate very easily. 

Under the Patriot Act, "hacking" crimes were turned over to a new
division, called the CyberCrimes division, and placed under the auspices
of the Secret Service. And let me tell you what they want from me now:
They want the logs of my web site with all the forum messages, and the IP
addresses. That's right. All of them. A giant fishing expedition for
every communication of everyone interested in the voting issue. This has
nothing to do with a VoteHere "hack" investigation, and I have refused to
turn it over. 

So, yesterday, they call me up and tell me they are going to subpeona me
and put me in front of a grand jury. Well, let 'em. They still aren't
getting the list of members of BlackBoxVoting.org unless they seize my
computer -- which my attorney tells me might be what they have in mind. 

Also, Agent Mike told me he just "happened" to be on the plane with me a
couple weeks ago. What's that supposed to do? Scare me? "You were going
to Oakland," he said. Yeah, and Diebold lawyer's memos appeared in the
Oakland Tribune, but guess what, Mike: That was the first hop of three on
my way to Dallas. I left that morning for a speech at the Dallas
Democratic Forum that evening. Never even got off the plane. Better luck
next time. 

And if they were really investigating what they said -- a VoteHere "hack"
can someone explain why they want the logs from the web site
BlackBoxVoting.org -- it was SHUT DOWN due to Diebold cease & desists
during the period of the supposed "hack." 

And (you know who you are) -- consider this a heads up: If you start
bumbling around in my house with U.S. marshalls, the very first thing
that will happen is mainstream news coverage that you are misusing the
Patriot Act to get at membership lists and private correspondence for a
fishing expedition on stuff that isn't even the subject of a legitimate
investigation. 

Yeah, I'm not a happy camper. Taking the pulse of our democracy nowadays,
it doesn't feel very healthy, does it? 

Bev Harris 

P.S. Everyone say hi to Mike

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