Monday, November 03, 2008
Maui lawsuit was to protect Hawaii's vote against "Man in the Middle" attacks
by Larry Geller
A "Man in the Middle" is a simple way that computers can be used to alter the vote.
Do you think it can't happen here? Here's a description of the "Man in the Middle" from a segment on today's Democracy Now program. Mark Crispin Miller is professor of media culture and communication at New York University and the author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008. Stephen Spoonamore, according to Miller, is a conservative Republican, a former McCain supporter, and a renowned and highly successful expert at the detection of computer fraud.
The Maui lawsuit I wrote about earlier won't be in time to stop similar shenanigans in Hawaii. Unlikely? Perhaps, but why not follow Hawaii's election law and avoid the possibility?
A "Man in the Middle" is a simple way that computers can be used to alter the vote.
Do you think it can't happen here? Here's a description of the "Man in the Middle" from a segment on today's Democracy Now program. Mark Crispin Miller is professor of media culture and communication at New York University and the author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008. Stephen Spoonamore, according to Miller, is a conservative Republican, a former McCain supporter, and a renowned and highly successful expert at the detection of computer fraud.
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, it’s a system—if people go to the website for Velvet Revolution, particularly www.rovecybergate.com, they’ll find the documents that Spoonamore has filed describing the setup that’s known as “Man in the Middle.” This happened in Ohio in 2004.
It involves shunting the data that comes from the website for the Secretary of State—I mean, the election returns—taking those election returns as they come to the website in real-time and shunting them to a computer somewhere else. What happened in 2004 was the election returns from Ken Blackwell’s website were shunted to a computer in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee, under the control of a very partisan private company to which Connell was connected. The data was shunted to this strange computer in Chattanooga and then directed back to the Secretary of State’s website. As Connell—I mean, sorry, as Spoonamore has said, the only purpose of doing this Man in the Middle thing is to commit crime.
Bev Harris of Black Box Voting has lately reported that there are similar Man in the Middle setups in Colorado, Illinois and Kentucky. So it’s very important that tomorrow, when we’re out there engaging in election protection and working to make the turnout as large as it possibly can be, because the larger the turnout, the harder the theft, people have to be paying very close attention to the numbers. They have to be watching the traffic at different precincts, and so on.
The Maui lawsuit I wrote about earlier won't be in time to stop similar shenanigans in Hawaii. Unlikely? Perhaps, but why not follow Hawaii's election law and avoid the possibility?
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