http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00078.htm

Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines and
The Truth About the Rob-Georgia File

By Bev Harris *
* Bev Harris is the Author of the soon to be published book " Black
Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century " Pre order at
http://www.blackboxvoting.com

Scoop.co.nz has now revealed for the first time the location of a
complete online copy of the original data set. As we anticipate
attempts to prevent the distribution of this information we encourage
supporters of democracy to make copies of these files and to make
them available on websites and file sharing networks.

http://users.actrix.co.nz/dolly/
Download the Diebold files

(See also... http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm
Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
and
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00064.htm
Sludge Report #154 Bigger Than Watergate!**)

--------------

Someone needs to get their story straight.

Diebold voting machines are used in 37 states. The entire state of
Ohio is considering dumping its old system to buy Diebold. Georgia
already did.

The Diebold files, supposedly secret voting machine files left on
an unprotected web site for nearly six years, are unlocking the
truth.

Official stories about voting machine security, acceptance testing
and last-minute program changes are beginning to slide around like
hot grease on a Georgia griddle.

What was the program patch known as rob-georgia.zip used for? What
were they doing with that ftp site, anyway? Hang in for the first
part of this article, the finger-pointing and obfuscating part,
because it concludes with a straightforward explanation of what
went on in Georgia that has never been made public before.

**************

DO ANY OF THESE PEOPLE TELL THE TRUTH?

"We protect the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration
of Independence. We protect the Hope Diamond," [Diebold CEO Wally]
O'Dell told The Plain Dealer in May 2002. "Now, we protect the most
sacred treasure we have, our secret ballot."

If they can't tell us the truth about simple things like "does it
connect to modems," can we really be confident that they are
protecting our vote?

CNBC asked Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell this question on election day,
Nov. 5, 2002: "How tamper proof are these voting machines? That
seems to be a concern of some who feel that it only takes one person,
one hacker who can screw up an entire election. How valid is that
criticism Mr. O`Dell?"

"Well, there`s always risks," replied O'Dell, "but, you know, these
things are not connected to the Internet. They`re individual precinct
by precinct, location by location. They`re double checked before
they`re sent out. We think the technology is fabulous and very
bulletproof. (Come back here after reading rob-georgia, ask him to
repeat this.)

"The GEMS computers are not connected to any communication system,
including the Internet, and contain no software other than the
Windows operating system and the Global Election Management System
object code," wrote Dr. Brit Williams on Apr. 23, 2003. He is the
official voting machine certifier for the state of Georgia, and a
key member of the panel that chooses national Independent Testing
Labs for voting machines.

Lies.

"The central host system (GEMS Software) is generally a stand-alone
system so that no physical access via network is allowed...This
computer can download files for the Internet with dial-out only
capability, but is generally not allowed to be linked to the Internet
for obvious security concerns." This, in documents submitted during
a purchasing decision, answering questions from Santa Clara County,
California on Feb. 7, 2003.

If the GEMS computer isn't connected to anything, why is the following
diagram found in a file named GApresentation3-02.zip, found on the
Diebold ftp site? This diagram depicts the GEMS computer connecting
directly to the Internet on election night.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/image...2315e48ae.jpeg

Not connected to any communication system are they, Dr. Williams?
I spoke with James Rellinger, the technician who installed all 159
GEMS host computers in Georgia.

Harris: "I understand that you worked for Diebold Election Systems
in Georgia. Can you tell me what you did?"

Rellinger: "They contracted us here in Georgia to basically follow
a recipe book and we ran down and built these things."

Harris: "By 'build these things' -- I think of build, like a hammer
and a screwdriver -- What do you mean by build, what were you
building?"

Rellinger: "Oh, that's a good point. There were 159 of these servers
that went out. All we did was run through a series of tests to make
sure they could log on and communicate and make sure everything
jived with the touch screen.

"When you say build they were actually just a Dell server and we
added some hardware to it for instance CD burners, a tape came in
them already, but we'd add things to make them modem capable.

"When you say build a server it's not physically assembling a
hardware. We added a component or two to make it do what we needed
to do, modems, we load the Windows 2000, put the software in then
we test it against their touch-screen machines."

Let's look at just how big a whopper Dr. Williams told when he said
they aren't connected to anything: Sandy Baxter, Elections Supervisor
for San Juan County, Washington, also says she had modems and
Internet capability:

"I think it was about 1999 we bought a new server. They gave us
recommendations for servers, like Dell. They had Dell ship them to
McKinney, Texas and they loaded the systems on and various modems,
digiboards and stuff...The server can handle multiple PCs, but I
only have one at this time, so my PC is also my server...I have two
modems. I have a modem that is for going out and it is not connected
to the GEMS system. So I can go to the web. I have what's called a
digiboard on my server that allows multiple modem connections. I
have a second modem on the GEMS system but its only for the AccuVote
systems. My precincts modem me the results on that. The second modem
is the only one that goes to my GEMS system. It doesn't have the
capability to go in and out. I just plug it in when I use it."

The User Manuals are filled with references to modems, ports,
uploading, downloading, TCP/IP protocols, transmissions, and ways
to use "JResults" to upload to the web continuously on election
night. Technical specifications, including manufacturer's components
lists, show that not only are there modems, but wireless communications.

All right, so they lied to us about modem hook-ups. Shall we let
this cloud our trust in everything else they are telling us? Consider
this:

Diebold's official spokesman, Joseph Richardson assures us that the
open ftp site was inactive. In interviews with Salon.com and the
Baltimore City Paper, he said the site was old and the files were
out of date. Was this the truth?

Not at all. The site was taken down on Jan. 29, 2003. The most
recent file on the ftp site is dated Jan. 23, 2003. How much
information was in the files? See for yourself by visiting the
download site at the top of this article.

Michael Barnes, of the elections division with the Georgia Secretary
of State's office, said "That ftp site did not affect us in any way
shape or form because we did not do any file transferring from it."

Let's have Dr. Brit Williams weigh in. In Feb. 2003, he said "I'm
not familiar with that site." On April 23, he wrote a letter that
was a bit more precise:

"Apparently, there was an FTP site that Diebold employees used to
store and transfer versions of the system that were under development.
The contents, or even existence, of the 'rob georgia' folder has
not been established. However, for the sake of this discussion, we
will assume that the FTP site existed... This would have had
absolutely no effect on the election system as implemented in
Georgia. The State does not obtain its election system code from
an FTP site or even from Diebold."

Dr. Williams went on to outline an elaborate scheme whereby he
claimed that the program files are obtained solely from ITAs
(Independent Testing Labs).

What about the Secretary of State? A memo by Chris Riggall,
spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox, stated that
last minute "patches" were installed on all 22,000 voting machines
in Georgia. Dr. Williams admitted to me that they were never examined
-- not by a testing lab, not by him, not by anyone outside of
Diebold. Suddenly, no one could get their stories straight on the
patches either.

The patch was from Microsoft and it was for Windows, said the
Secretary of State's office. But wait -- Dr. Williams says it came
directly from the ITA. What does Diebold say? Diebold says they
have no indication there ever was a patch.

We're going to meet one of the guys who actually installed that
patch in a minute, but first let us observe the art of evasion from
Diebold's Joe Richardson:

Harris: "Did you say, when interviewed by Salon.com, in reference
to whether patches were put on the machines in Georgia, "We have
analyzed that situation and have no indication of that happening
at all."

Richardson: "Well, that is what I said at the time, however, we
have continued to investigate the matter and (very, very long
pause) Yes that is what I said to Salon.com."

Harris: "Do you stand by that now?"

Richardson: "We have continued to look into the matter."

Harris: "As you have continued to investigate this, do you have any
new information as to whether patches were put on in Georgia?"

Richardson: "No."

Harris: "Has anyone thought to just call them up and ask? The
Secretary of State's office?"

Richardson: "I can't say."

Harris: "What was the rob-georgia file? Who is responsible for it?"

Richardson: "I'm not privy to that information."

Harris: "Who would be able to answer that question?"

Richardson: "I can't tell you. I can look into it."

Harris: "Yes, could you do that please? In two publications, you
are quoted as saying that the information on the open FTP site was
old and out of date. Yet, I can tell you the most recent file on
it was dated January 16, 2003. Did you do any checking to see whether
the site had been used recently when you made that statement?" (A
more recent file, dated Jan. 23, was later discovered.)

Richardson: "The site had already been taken down."

Harris: "Surely Diebold has access to its own site?"

Richardson: "I'm saying I didn't have access."

Harris: "Did you ask anybody?"

Richardson: (sound of shuffling papers) "Our ongoing investigation
has found no merit to the insinuations of security breaches in our
election solutions."

Harris: "So if there were up to 20,000 files including hardware,
software specs, testing protocols, source code, you do not feel
that is a security breach?" (more files have since been discovered
inside a mammoth zipped directory, bringing the estimated total up
to nearly 40,000 files)

Richardson: "Our ongoing investigation has found no merit to the
insinuations of security breaches in our election solutions."

And now, Dr. Brit Williams on the Georgia patch:

Harris: What was the security around the creation of the cards used
to implement the patch?

Williams: "That's a real good question. Like I say, we were in the
heat of the election. Some of the things we did, we probably
compromised security a little bit -- Let me emphasize we've gone
back since the election and done extensive testing on all this."
Dr. Williams latest 180 degree reversal (This link leads you to a
forum discussing files from the ftp site, which contains several
absurd statements from Dr. Williams).

And now, Michael Barnes on the Georgia patch:

Barnes: "Wyle said it did not affect the certification elements.
So it did not need to be certified." (at the above-referenced link,
you can also find information from a Freedom of Information Act
request, in which officials admitted they did not have any certifying
documents on the patch).

Harris: "Where's the written report from Wyle on that? Can I have
a copy?"

Barnes: "I'd have to look for it I don't know if there was ever a
written report by Wyle. It might have been by phone."

**************

The Truth About Rob-Georgia

Everyone assured me they knew of no one named Rob. Move along. But
I received an e-mail: "I think I may be the Rob in rob-georgia,"
it said. And now I know why they didn't want us to interview him.
I think you'll agree that his interview is worth the length, for
the picture you get of what was really going on. If you prefer to
skim, check the sections in italics. Citizens, meet Rob Behler,
straight talker:

Harris: What was the FTP site for?

Behler:One of problems we had was an issue with the GEMS database.
They had to do an update to it, so they just post the update to the
web site.

Harris: What was rob-georgia?

Behler: I believe what that file was for, I did a -- well, there
were a ton of holes with the programs on those machines. When they
all came into the warehouse, I did a quality check, this was something
I did on a Saturday. I found that 25% of the machines on the floor
would fail KSU testing --

Harris: "What is KSU testing?"

Behler: "Kennesaw State University. We knew basically what they
would be testing and the trick was to make sure the machines would
pass the testing. So I went and checked a pallet and found it was
bad. And I checked another, and another, and I knew we had a problem."

Harris: "Was that both you and James Rellinger?"

Behler: "James dealt with the network, but I was dealing with the
touchscreen machines themselves.

Harris: "What kind of problems were you seeing?"

Behler: "One of the things we had wrong was the date wasn't sticking
in the Windows CE. The real time clock would go to check the time
on the motherboard, and it would have an invalid year in it, like
1974 or something, and basically the machine would continue to keep
checking. Every time it checked, it saw that the date was not right
and this put it into a loop.

"They had to do an update in CE to fix all those dates. So the way
we did that in the warehouse was, they would post whatever the
update was on the FTP site. James would go get the file and put it
on the [memory] cards. Because you load everything through the
PCMCIA cards. You boot it up using the card and it loads the new
software.

"This was done in the warehouses -- once the machines were sent out
to the county, these updates were done just to make sure the machines
were running correctly. I went over to Dekalb [County]. We updated
1800 machines in basically a day and a half. I still remember ol'
Rusty, down at the warehouse, we ended up touching every single
machine off the pallet, booting 'em up, update it, we had a couple
hundred machines done when in comes a new update over the phone.

Harris: "You mean you used a modem or they called you on the phone?"

Behler: "No. A phone call. They'd say 'Oh no no, the way we had you
do, that's not going to work, here's another thing to do. Okay, we
just did a few hundred machines, now we gotta do it this way -- But
we got it done.

Harris: "Did you personally ever download anything at all from the
FTP site?"

Behler: [it was] mostly James.

Harris: "Did you work for Diebold, or James Rellinger?"

Behler: "I worked for ABSS. So did James."

Harris: "What about the rob-georgia file?"

Behler: "I think they put it out there for me when we were doing
the Dekalb thing, but I was busy managing the whole crew so, I had
my laptop out, and one of the engineers used my laptop -- or maybe
it was James -- one of them had to go in and get it from the FTP,
put it on a card, make copies of the cards and then we used them
to update the machines."

Harris: "So one of the people downloaded the patch and then made
copies of it?"

Behler: "They use my laptop. It was not secure, either. They just
used the laptop to repro the cards. Diebold never gave us anything
with a PCMCIA slot, then they'd tell us, 'Go download this,' so
we'd have to get out our own laptop to do it."

Harris: "Who instructed you about the FTP site? Was it a Diebold
employee?"

Behler: "It was Diebold."

Harris: "Was it the people in Ohio or the people in Texas?"

Behler: "The people in McKinney [Texas]."

Harris: "Who were some of the Diebold people? Do you remember any
names?"

Behler: "Ian. I remember one of the guys, Ian, I can't remember his
last name. One of the main guys we dealt with was a guy named Ian.
He was actually involved in the design of the motherboard. He was
very much involved in trying to figure out how to fix the problems.
So they sent us upgrades, but then after we did it KSU still failed
a ton of machines."

Harris: "As I understand it, they send the system to Wyle labs for
certification, and also to Ciber to test the software. But from
what you are describing, I can't understand how the machines got
through what they are telling us is 'rigorous testing.'"

Behler: "From what I understand they ended up figuring out that the
cards that we were loading that fix that Diebold provided for us,
well they were never tested, they just said 'Oh here's the problem,
go ahead and fix it.'

Harris: "So what is your opinion about the certification testing?"

Behler: "No, it's not just that. NOBODY even tested it! When I found
that out -- I mean you can't not test a fix -- I worked for a billing
company, and if I'd put a fix on that wasn't tested I'd have gotten
FIRED! You have to make sure whatever fix you did didn't break
something else. But they didn't even TEST the fixes before they
told us to install them.

"Look, we're doing this and 50-60 percent of the machines are still
freezing up! Turn it on, get one result. Turn it off and next time
you turn it on you get a different result. Six times, you'd get six
different results."

Harris: "Can you give me an example of different results?"

Behler: "Meaning the machine does something wrong different each
time you boot it up. One time and it would freeze on you, next time
it would load the GEMS program but have a completely different type
of error, like there'd be a gray box sitting in the middle of it,
or you couldn't use a field."

Harris: "Was this all due to the clock?"

Behler: "I don't know for sure. They [the machines] were not
originally doing it. Then they fixed the real time clock, and it
was supposed to make it work normal. It fixed the clock problem --
the clock problem had caused it to come up and not show the battery
at one point. It was supposed to say either 'low battery,' 'high
battery' or 'charging.' But when the real time clock was messed up,
you'd boot the machine and it would say 'No battery!' I mean, you
don't have the machine plugged in, you boot it up, and it starts,
and says it 'has no battery.' That's like saying, 'this morning I
got out of bed and I stood up and I had no brain.'

"And that's how they ended up finding it, the problem. What it was
doing was it was checking for the right time, and kept going back
trying to get a better time, and while it was doing that, it was
supposed to get the battery status but it was still busy trying to
get the time.

"And then when we loaded the software to fix that, the machines
were still acting RIDICULOUS!

"I was saying, 'This is not good! We need some people that know
what this stuff is supposed to do, from McKinney, NOW! These machines,
nobody knows what they're doing but Diebold, you need some people
to fix them that know what's going on! They finally brought in guys,
they ended up bringing in about 4 people.

"When they left, they still did not know why it was still sporadic.
My understanding is, after I was dismissed, they came back the
following week. That's when they figured out what the real problem
was. But they'd already had us do their 'upgrade' on thousands of
machines by then."

Harris: "How did this work? Did Dr. Brit Williams get the machines
first and do acceptance testing, or did you guys get them first?"

Behler: "When the machines came in, they came to us first. They
were in the warehouse. We assembled them. They'd come in a box with
a touchscreen, and another box with the booth. We assembled the
machine and we ran it though series of tests. We'd check the power
cord, boot up the machine, check the printer, bar code it, update
Windows CE, then send it on to Brit. He did the KSU testing the L&A
[Logic & Accuracy] was done at the county level, right before the
election."

Harris: "Sothe L&A was not done at acceptance testing?"

Behler: "It got so there wasn't time. They did it before the
election."

Harris: "How long does it take to do a Logic & Accuracy test? Doesn't
it take like, 15 minutes per machine?"

Behler: "When we did the updates in Dekalb, they kept saying it
would take a really long time. But they don't think about the
different overlapping things. You can update a bunch of machines
simultaneously. Same thing with an L&A test. You have a whole group
of cards, they have to touch every machine. What we had done before,
we had 10 material handlers throw the machines up there, use the
key to open it up, stick 10 cards in, boot 'em all up which installs
the patch."

Harris: "But what about the L&A testing?"

Behler: "The L&A testing -- You would just enter, like, one vote
and -- you just choose one -- you don't need to be specific on which
one. When they did this L&A testing, that's when they did the FINAL
update to the software."

....
Harris: "So the touchscreens came and had to be assembled?"

Behler: "Of course you have to have the touchscreens assembled in
the warehouse, and do some testing. It turned out that there were
a lot of problems that needed to be dealt with, and they simply
weren't dealing with them."

Harris: "How long did you work there?"

Behler: "They let me go only one month into it. The Project Manager
let me go. He didn't like my management style. I'm very matter of
fact. If this is wrong, fix it. I'm a simple person -- if something
is broke, do you stand around and talk about why its broke for a
month, or do you solve the problem?"

Harris: "After your experience with Diebold, how confident are you
that the machines count votes accurately?"

Behler: "If you were to ask me to tell you how accurate I thought
the vote count was, I'd have to say 'no comment' because after what
I saw, I have an inherent distrust of the machines.

"I was absolutely astounded that they functioned at all in the
election. Here's me, I'm at the polling place looking around, waiting
for someone to get frustrated...

"I took this because of James, who is my friend, and because I'm
A-plus certified. But when I came in there was a bunch of internal
bickering. They had no inventory control in the warehouse. I guarantee
you that the state of Georgia can't accurately reflect where each
machine is.

"Diebold was impressed with what I accomplished, and asked me if I
was available for some other states they'd be doing...

"The problem, what they were doing with the inventory on the machine
was this: Inside the case is the serial number. They would hand
write the serial number on a post-it, stick it to the front of the
machine, and there would be a sheet hand-written from that list.
Now, you've got 20 machines sitting on a pallet. The guy making the
list would look at the post-its and he'd record all the post-it
numbers on a list. Look, if you're writing numbers by hand, twice,
by two different people, there is a real good chance you'll transpose
some numbers.

Then, they used the list for bar codes, but I would say probably
1-2% of the machines are incorrectly bar coded. They couldn't track
them in the Access database, because they'd punch in and it would
say 'that number's already been used.' Then they'd check the machines,
and they had the right number, so the wrong bar code was sitting
on some machine that had already been shipped out to the counties.

"Ironically, they would send a spreadsheet of all the numbers of
the machines that they shipped straight from the factory. This was
from the same computer that generated the labels. They had copies
of it all along. I said, 'Hey guys, if you check these when they
come in the door you'll never miss a label.'"

"I was very down on Diebold, because they were very sluggish and
didn't move well. I worked there from mid-june to mid-july. The
whole time they were upgrading the software and doing some sort of
fix to it. This was supposed to be prior to KSU testing."

Harris: "What about the program patches begun in August?"

Behler: "Aug 20, they started to put these teams together and go
out and update the machines. You have to understand that the patching
all started when I did the first quality check that Saturday. They'd
never have done it. They had shipped us 6,000 machines and NO ONE
had ever done a quality check. I'd come in on a Saturday, I had two
of my sons with me, and I thought I'm going to just look. And it
was bad.

"Then first thing Monday morning I raised the question, I said,
'Hey guys, we've got a problem -- there's 20-25% of the machines
that are palletized that are failing, and then they had a new update
come out and I was doing an update, and then they sent a new one.
I updated a whole bunch of machines. Then they finished about the
time I left. But later they put in another one, I guess. In August.

"You've gotta go take care of this JS [junk shit] equipment, I told
them. Finally, I raised it as high as you go, I raised it to Bob
Urosevich, he's the head of it. I told him personally, 'This is
bad, I don't see us putting an election on with these machines!'

"That's where they finally assembeld the teams. They got some big
ol' vans we loaded up as many people as could fit in.

"They were actually swapping parts out of these machines that were
on site. They'd cannibalize a machine with a bad printer or whatever,
they'd grab the screen off of that to put on another machine with
a failing screen, they'd retest it. They were not just breaking
them down, they were taking pieces off and putting it back together.

"Even the machines that are updated, that had the right release of
the software, exactly like the company wanted it, you'd boot it up
and all kinds of crazy things would happen. That led to my belief
that when voting took place, there would be problems."

Harris: "Do you remember what release number it was? What version
of GEMS?"

Behler: "Release -- I don't remember the number because what they
did was it was always the date. I had to take it to the level of
these testers, they knew that the machine either did pass the test
or didn't. We'd check the date to make sure it was the right version.

"The date waslet me seeJune 28. No, the last one, the date that was
supposed to be on there was July 5. (Note: a patch labeled
Georgia062802.zip is on the ftp site, and when you review it, you
will see that it contains much more than just the "Windows updates"
claimed by Georgia officials.)

"There was about three updates, the CE software, the date that would
come up would be the last. After that they came up with another
fix, that's the August one at that point.

"I told Darryl Graves, the Project Manager, I told everyone at
Diebold, 'I have zero confidence in the ability of these machines
to perform.'

Harris: "I understand that they go through Wyle testing labs and
so forth. How in the world do so many critical errors get through
certification?"

Behler: "When I was handling these machines, they were coming
straight from a factory in North Carolina. That's where the actual
touch screen was manufactured. Booths came out of California. We
assembled the booth with the machine. That's all I know."

Harris: "What do you know about the ROM chip, or whatever?"

Behler: "There's the eprom, or the flash as they call it. A lot of
the fixes they did they could do in the flash memory.

"If they said they tested it I'm going to tell you right now the
software that I installed on the machine myself, they found out
that that was NEVER tested. Okay, I don't want to get other people
involved, but you should talk to Rellinger.

"Anyway, that they had never tested it, that made complete sense
to me, watching what was going on.

"This is an example we did: We would plug it in, boot it 3 times,
unplug it, boot it three more times. I wrote a sheet on this. This
guy came in from McKinney, he was about the second in command. He's
a good friend of Bob Urosevich. About second to Bob, at least now,
he got a promotion. Greg? Something like that. He flew in and I
went to Dekalb and I tested and together we went through, and we
wrote down every single error, and he booted them himself, and was
looking at the results and seeing how sporadic they were. and we
found out of the machines we tested, about 75% of the machines had
different sporadic things. He was working with me and we were writing
them down, we literally wrote everything down."

Harris: "Do you have a copy of that?"

Behler: "I don't think I have it. I have some email. I'd have to
look. I know we came back and he copied it and he -- Greg Lowe
(spelling?) is his name. I drove him out there. Brit was there, KSU
was doing their testing. They were bombing these machines out left
and right."

"I'm telling him, 'They're all like this.' At this time I was working
150 hours in 2 weeks I was there all the time with these machines,
that's the reality of it. The techs were working overtime trying
to fix them. We couldn't get enough from the factory because so
many were bad. You'd get a shipment of 300, but 75 were bad, they
couldn't put them out fast enough to replace all the defects.

"It was the software, not the hardware, that's where the problem
was.

"If they're telling you they tested that, well they did NOT test
the fixes that they did to the windows CE software.

Harris: "Do you know who was writing the fixes?"

Behler: "He had a weird name. He came out of Canada."

Harris: "Guy Lancaster? Josh Talbot Iredale?"

Behler: "That's it! Talbot Iredale would actually fix it and say,
'Oh, here's the problem,' and stick it on the FTP site we'd grab
it stick it on the card and make a bunch of copies and use it."
(NOTE: You'll see the initials "tri" in the source code files.
Talbot R. Iredale is one of the main programmers, and has been a
stockholder.)

Harris: "So you took the patches right off the FTP site and installed
them on the machines?"

Behler: "That's what we did, he'd FTP it, and tell us to grab it,
we'd put it on a laptop, copy it and when you boot the machine --
it's just like a computer that looks at the "A" drive -- these
machines look at the card and then erase the flash, reprogram with
whatever they said needed to be fixed -- I say, erase it and reprogram
it with crap -- and then the whole thing would start all over again.

"My understanding was that they figured out what was conflicting
and James told me that Tab, well the team that came out after I
left, they figured out what was going on, they figured out that
when they fixed the real time clock problem they had never tested
their fix.

"The only people that that cost was Diebold, who had to pay all
kinds of extra expenses. The rumor around the office was that Diebold
lost maybe $10 million on the Georgia thing. I mean, they only sold
the machines for what, $2,000, or $2,500, and then you have to build
them and then you're paying people $30 an hour and you are out
touching 22,000 machines FOUR TIMES -- there's no way they didn't
lose money on this deal.

Behler: "You know one of the main things that really just made me
so upset, they were just like, 'This Brit guy, don't even speak to
him, it's a political game, you've gotta play the politics.' Well,
he walks in and says 'What are you guys doing?'

I said, 'We're putting in an update.' He said, 'Will it change what
it does?' We said, 'Just do your normal test, we're supposed to get
the machines ready for you.'

He tells someone at the office and they freaked out. They were like,
'What the heck are you doing???'

"I wasn't supposed to talk to him at all, I guess. The guy had a
flannel shirt on, he was kicking it and he was very genuine and
open and there we are in the same room together, but because I
actually spoke to him I got reprimanded. They said, 'If they ask
you any question, you gotta say 'Talk to Norma, to one of us.''

"And then you know, ironically, later on right before I exited,
they were scrambling for a date, they were trying to get us, the
teams, into Fulton County to do Fulton County's 1,900 machines.

"They were in the most horrific spot. The place they warehoused
them was like 1900 machines in a little office space, there was no
way we could get at them. The machines are like 58 pounds, and they
had to bring them in unstack them off the pallet, restack on the
pallet, talk about labor, talk about wasted money! It's like a
warehouse and offices off 75, in Atlanta, I'm talking to this guy
he's a great guy, he's from Fulton County. Him and I were scheduling
this, figuring it out how to get to these machines and do the update
before KSU has to test them. We cannot be doing this at same time
as KSU because there was NO ROOM for that.

Brit had been down there, he knew this. I'm talking to the Fulton
County guy. He opens this one last door and here's this huge giant
empty warehouse. Why didn't they put the machines out here?

He says, 'Well you see over there's these boxes of county material,
you can't be out here because there may be some sensitive stuff in
these files. They don't want anybody near 'em. His name was Barney,
the only Barney I've met who's black. He said, "Yeah, they were
talking about putting a fence out here."

"We could just get all the testing done at once, I thought. Whatever.
Maybe someone could just get a security guard to watch us and make
sure we don't get into the boxes. I go back to the office. Brit was
there, and he says 'What's it look like for Fulton?'

I said 'There's no way were going to able to get to Fulton County
by Thursday.' I said we could probably be out there by Friday or
Saturday. He said 'There's no way we can do it at the same time,
you know that.'

Behler: "I think a lot of the problems they had ---- I've worked
in billing software, and it's common to have this little thing wrong
-- a simple little hardware change, you have to put some little
line of code in Windows CE to make it work better. But the thing
that blew me away was when I'm told me they'd NEVER TESTED THE FIX.

"They produced it and got it to us in 24-48 hours. If I'd known
they hadn't tested it I simply wouldn't have installed it! My
background tells me that's a no-no.

"I went into this Diebold thing with no real knowledge of the voting
industry. When I left, I not only had a complete grasp, but I had
a complete disrespect for these machines.

"And with the folks in the office who were so -- you know, 'I'm the
political person, you have to know how the system works' -- they
were so much more concerned about their own self importance, they
were losing track of DO THE MACHINES COUNT THE VOTE PROPERLY!

"Because that's what the people in Georgia need. And I'm one of
them!"

Harris: "Who are some of the names working in that office?"

Behler: "Norma Lyons and Wes Craven -- they're from Diebold, and
Keith Long. Norma and Wes live in George, Keith was in Maryland
before, then here, I think.

"They sat in the weekly meetings on Monday. Norma had been a county
worker doing voting for 10 years. She knew all these people in
several counties. She was the liason between Diebold and the counties.
They [Diebold] would tell you something important, and she may or
may not tell you because she wouldn't know how important it was.

"Wes was the kind of guy who needs to work for Sprint or a big
company..."

Harris: "How secure were the machines, from what you saw?"

Behler: "I'll tell you something else -- we didn't have badges --
people could just walk right in and get to the machines."

Harris: "And that FTP site, anybody could walk right into it also.
Even Diebold's competitors."

Behler: "Anybody who's in voting, you leave one company you go over
there. Ooh yeah, we'll take you on. Someone comes in and says, 'By
the way, I uploaded the source code, want to grab it?'"

Harris: "Were there any protections to keep you from duplicating
memory cards, or to have them serial numbered or whatever?"

Behler: "The memory cards, you can just duplicate them. You have
to have the proper info on the card, for the machine to boot up,
but you can just make copies of the cards."

Harris: "Were there any passwords on those FTP files?"

Behler: "No."

Harris: "Any passwords on the files themselves? Or the site?"

Behler: "What we got never had passwords. You just pick it up and
use it."

Harris: "Do you still have any records?"

Behler: "Emails. And James downloaded to his personal laptop, it's
probably still on his. And probably still on mine too. Diebold
didn't provide us with anything with a PCMCIA slot so we had to use
our own laptops to transfer the files when they told us to.

Harris: "When I asked Diebold if there was anyone named Rob in
Georgia, they said no. Did they know about you?"

Behler: "They knew me and they knew me well. I met Bob Urosevich a
couple different times, and Ian, and then Greg Lowe, he got promoted
to like almost the DFO, he was basically Bob's right hand man."

"If you would have realized the scolding I got for actually speaking
to Brit. The whole quality control issue, I kept having to remind
them, I'm the one that pointed this out -- we want this to be right
-- my goal is to just get it fixed and move on.

....
Harris: "Do you think anybody could have tampered with a machine,
if they wanted to?"

Behler: "Well, when we did the quality control check we'd open it
up, they have a little box for the printer. We would find the key
still in the printer. Someone could literally take that. We found
cards left in the machine. I wondered what would happen if the wrong
person got it."

Harris: "I understand they did a big demonstration during the summer,
with the machines."

Behler: "I was there when they told me I needed 1100 machines for
a demo. I thought, 'The trick is coming up with 1100 machines that
actually work.

# # ENDS # #

http://www.blackboxvoting.com