Bharat Rakshak

BJP demands EVMs with paper audit trail - Election Commission dodges demand

GVLNR's blog - http://www.indianevm.com/blogs/?p=440

Good interview. Read the rest at: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/interview ... 433611-all

Hmmph, listen to the illustrious CEC speak:

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-a ... n/677372/0

http://news.in.msn.com/national/article ... id=4346372

SC dismisses petition on EVM

What was the reason cited by the Supreme Court in dismissing the case?

I think that another petition should be filed with the court, citing the lack of responsiveness by the EC on the concerns raised over the EVMs.

Uhh, what the hell kind of disgustingly crooked argument is that? Intellectual property rights??

"Hi, we of the Nehru clan are not going to allow anybody else to run for Prime Minister, because our grandaddy Jawarlal, being the first PM, therefore has a patent on that title, and therefore nobody else can hold that title without infringing on our property rights."

I am not allowed to say it by the moderators, but a country with this kind of politics looks to be more and more like a certain primitive continent nearby. This is not valid politics, and I'm stunned that more people aren't reacting to this. If this happened in a Western country, it would bring people out onto the streets. We want to boast of ourselves as the "world's largest democracy" for bragging purposes, but then we don't care to even see whether we even have what we're bragging about. It's like a guy who brags that he has a fancy car, even though he doesn't even drive it and it belongs to his uncle - he only wants it for show.

To me, if theft of a national election really has occurred by the ruling govt, then this is worse than 26/11, or Kargill, or 1948.

How can the EC get away with these kinds of comments??? They're not even clever lies - they're lazy 3rd-rate bald-faced lies. They don't even think highly enough of the Indian public to make the effort to come up with some high-quality lies. Instead, they're reflexively babbling about a "colonial mentality", "intellectual property infringement".

If you're going to illegally steal my organs, at least pump me up with some potent drugs - not some cheap whisky and some paan.

Some times I wonder what sort of "Independence" have we actually gained? . From the Royals of Buckingham palace to the royals of Nehru- (renamed) Gandhi clan. Every thing which worked perfectly for the British empire, now works in similar fashion for this empire as well .

Here's a current story on NYC elections:

NY's new voting machines debut, with problems

Pune engineer held, cops say gave EVM to researcher - http://www.indianexpress.com/news/pune- ... er/681607/

The crooked cronies are coming out to defend their masters:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home ... 621117.cms

Methinks they doth protest too much. If every other developed democracy in the world is against Electronic Voting Machines, I don't know why our babus are desperately defending them. Why are they so afraid of having the same kinds of ballot-counting processes that the rest of the developed world uses? Why these crazy, contrived arguments about "conspiracies", "colonialism" and "gora envy"?

Something smells very rotten here. There's no reason for them to be arguing so desperately in defense of methods that nobody else around the world values - unless of course they're hiding something. I don't feel I'm being paranoid in the slightest. Indian corruption has amply demonstrated its ugly presence throughout India's history - and in fact has been the culprit for many dark turns in India's history.

The prime goal in the conduct of elections is in authenticity and credibility, not in convenience or technical wizardry. If people have to stand in line a little longer on election day, then that's an unfortunate but necessary compromise.

There is something wrong with the arguments and attitudes being displayed by the Election Commission officials. Methinks they doth protest too much. They seem more attached to their EVMs than to the Indian electorate. I haven't seen other election officials in other countries so overzealously asserting the need for electronic voting.

When in doubt, do it the way that the rest of the world does it.
Do Not Trust the Man Behind the Curtain.

I hope the case against Mr. Hari Prasad gets dismissed to cap the RJB decision.

Six Gujarat municipal corporations, Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar go to polls Oct 10. The counting of votes would be taken up Oct 12.

Rahul Mehta, the starter of this thread, is contesting the two wards- Bodakdev ward and Stadium ward in Ahmedabad Municipal Elections with a symbol "Torch". Best wishes.

The EVMs used will permit the voters to select 3 candidates, as per Rahul Mehta.

EC agrees to add printers to EVMs

http://www.eenadu.net/panelhtml.asp?qry ... panel6.htm (Eenadu Telugu News Paper)

^^^
Is there a timeline for prinitng the votes or is it just a hawa promise with no interest to implement?

^^^^
Does the voter get to see the vote being printed via a plastic window or something?

sorry for OT.

Las Vegas Slot Vs American EVM

Don't know.

This probably means the box is incorporated into the machine, which is problematic. What if the machine prints and drops into the box more votes than voters. There are also other concerns about the paper path ... whether genuine votes can be diverted, whether non-genuine votes can be inserted into the path.

Therefore one is skeptical of anything less than the voter dropping the ballot with his own hands.

^^^
Not necessarily. What if the voter drops more than one vote into the box? It's been done before.

An paper trail which cannot be seen by the voter who caste his vote is going to be as meaningless as the in the case of an EVM where a person does not know what happened to his vote . We feel that an EVM may manipulate the votes, how long does it take to make an electronic printer also work in tandem with the EVM. If EC is hell bent on adding a printer, let them have printers like in Credit Card swipe machines. One copy for the voter, and one can go back to a box fitted to the Voting device (or it can be retained by the presiding officer). With thermal papers and suitable printers available, the print outs also can be generated quickly. Only catch here would be that candidates can trace who casted their vote for whom, by doing a receipt by receipt tracking.

This can't happen undetected if agents of candidates are observing the voting at all times, as they should be.

^ in the article I read it says that a paper receipt will be given to the voter.

If true, it means that the loser will have to collect all print receipts to challenge the outcome.

Gujarat civic polls: After defeat, Cong alleges EVM tampering

So EVMs will get changed now that Modi figured out the trick

This news are completely unrelated with EVMs per se, but do talk about general nature of how porous and carefree Indian administration has become.

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http://www.hindu.com/2010/06/09/stories ... 800500.htm

Karwar: The Forest Department in Ankola has lodged a police complaint against port officials, some export companies and some handling agents in Belekeri for allegedly exporting about five lakh tonnes of iron ore seized by the Forest Department. Assistant Conservator of Forests Narendra Hittalamakki filed the complaint on Monday.

In April last,forest officials seized about eight lakh tonnes of iron ore stored in various jetties at Belekeri Port on the charge that they were brought to Belekeri from Bellary district without valid permits. But of the seized cargo about six lakh tonnes were exported to China by different export companies. The case of seizure by forest authorities is pending in the Karnataka High Court.

Mr. Hittalamakki has, in his complaint, said that about six lakh tonnes of the seized ore were stolen by some people in connivance with the handling agents and port officials to cheat the Government and the tax authorities.

Mahendra Biliye, Belekeri port officer, Satish Sail, Managing Director of Mallikarjuna Shipping, B.N. Shukla of Adani Shipping, Ramachandra Nayak of Salgoankar Mining Industries, Ravi Selvaraj of ILC, Vaz Ahamad Anwar of Ashapura Mining, Mangaladas Kamat of Overseas Limited, Amar Saranobat of DB Company, Pramod Shet of Lal Mahal Limited, Javed Jialan Saab of Lakshmi Venkateshwara Minerals and Shivaprakash of Metachem Manufacturing have been named in the complaint.

Mr. Hittalamakki, whose house and business premises were raided by the Lokayukta officials last month, blamed the mining lobby for the raid and said that the mining lobby had given a wrong impression of his to the Lokayukta. He said he had been made a scapegoat.

Ankola police are investigating the case.

======end of news=====

We also saw a similar news wherein some 50 trucks containing RDX vanished into thin air. Neither truck driver, nor RDX nor trucks could be traced back.

The same policemen guard EVMs and security staff of BEL is not order of magnitude different.

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So consider a truck which is taking EVMs from BEL to Collector's office in some district. The journey could be at least a day long. How difficult it is for CIA to bribe the truck driver and guard, and allow four CIA agents to add dishonest display in EVMs? It is trivially easy. So one CIA agent can can get into truck containing say 1000 EVMs and replace display in 2 minutes per EVM = 2000 minutes. Four agents can replace display in 500 minutes = say 10 hours. So BEL can ship honest EVMs, and CIA can convert a big portion of them into dishonest EVMs.

Or better, CIA can send its agents in the warehouse which stores EVMs and get display replaced in the warehouse itself. Or CIA agents can put a cap on memory inside EVMs in warehouse. That cap can be capable of taking candidate number via radio waves, and thus alter the contents of memory after voting ends.

Or much better, if BEL had outsourced the manufacturing of display, CIA can "convince" BEL chief to outsource the display manufacturing to a CIA outfit in India. So no agent needs to be sent to warehouse of truck.

Or better, just replace the chips after lock bits are set. One box will contain about 2000 chips. So by replacing 50 boxes, one can rig 100,000 EVMs.

There are simply too many ways to rig EVMs (dishonest display, putting cap on memory which can candidate number via radio waves, putting chip which favors CandidateNo = (nCandidates mod 5) + 1 and adjusting nCandidates in DC's office) The beauty of all these ways and means is that it needs much much fewer people. In case of paper ballots, one needs at least 2 LOCAL criminals per booth. The leaders dont have 1000s of criminals to spare, and so booth capturing can at worst happen in 500-600 out of 750,000 booths across India. Whereas remote rigging can reach as many 100,000 booths across India.

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If someone has rigged EVMs in India or Gujarat, it is not Congress nor BJP nor Sonia nor Modi. It is CIA (CIA = covert operations body of MNCs and Christianists). Congress and BJP dont have ability to rig EVMs. And Congress and BJP are too weak to hide the scam. The leaders of BJP, Congress, CPM etc are all cowards and have no courage to pull such a scam. Only CIA is capable of pulling this scam, and only MNCs are capable of controlling media-owners and judges to hide the scam. MNCs today own most media-owners and can tell all media-owners to support EVMs by ridiculing anti-EVM people. And MNCs can also force all HCjs and SCjs to dismiss all petitions against EVMs, and not to issue orders to sell EVMs to public.

So judges, policemen, EC, Sonia, MMS etc have taken a clear stand -- no activist will get an EVM and if he tries to touch and EVM, we will throw him into prison !! Now try proving that displays in existing EVMs are dishonest without touching an EVM !! See, you can prove that displays are dishonest. Hence all the displays are honest !! Hence EVMs cant be rigged !!

(Added later : Last I heard, policemen are summoning employees of Hari Prasad's company and also summing the family members of employees of his company. AFAIT, CEC via IPS is forcing key employees to leave the company so that Hari Prasad gets financially ruined. If this is true, it is important that we citizens expel CEC from his position).

^ to get an idea on how this is possible, read the article posted today/yesterday on foreclosure scam in USA and how/why the govt would want to keep the scam under wraps.

I can't post the reference from my ifone. I will do that tomorrow or TIA to anyone who does that.

On Page-36 of this thread, on Aug-14-2009, I had written


One rarely gets chance to say "see, I said you so", and sadly, my sayings became true. Sadly, Hari Prasad was indeed actually thrown into police custody, because he opened EVM and proved that it is easier to rig 1000s of EVMs than 1000s of paper ballot by putting dishonest displays in factories!! And it is warning to all --- worse will happen if you dare to open EVM and prove that it is easier to hack EVMs than paper.

HP's act of getting (or stealing as EC accuses) EVM was ethical hacking. Further, if CIA is running EVM hacking, then Election Commissioners may be hiding it for bribes. This jeopardizes our elections and our lives. So proving that EVMs are easier to rig than paper ballots is necessary to keep our freedom intact. Thus "stealing" EVM was an act of self defense.

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Finally, what is the solution to the EVM-mess? The anti-EVM folks have cited and shown several method that show that rigging 1000s of EVMs inside factory or warehouses before of after election is easier than rigging 1000s of paper ballot booth. The pro-EVM folks maintain that processes inside factories and inside various warehouses make it impossible for people to access parts of EVMs. No pro-EVM folk has seen BEL warehouses, DC's warehouses and I bet they have no clue about exact processes BEL follows. Nor do they know if BEL has outsources parts of manufacturing, which would make putting compromised circuits easy.

How honest and vigil is administration, police and courts in general? Some 500,000 tons of iron ore gets stolen. Some Rs 20000 cr of fake stamp papers get sold before people even come to hear. Some 50 trucks of RDX vanish and drivers, trucks and RDX cant be traced. Supreme Court judges openly give bail to +convicted pedophiles in broad day light. Star witness against 25 corrupt judges (Ghaziabad Court's PF scam) commits "suicide" in prison. The endless list of corruption and sloppiness by rank and file keeps growing and even I have now lost interest in updating it. .

So how we decide whether we should continue with EVMs or go back to paper?

I propose we BRites and non-BRites should arm twist PM to issue following Govt Notification

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1. Any citizen if he wants, can ask District Collector (or his clerk) to put his affidavit on PM's website for Rs 20 per page fee

2. Any citizen can go to patwari's office, show voter card, give Rs fee and register YES/NO on any affidavit filed in clause-1

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If PM agrees to sign above Govt Notification, and then someone can submit affidavit demanding cancellation of EVMs, and those who hate EVM can then walk to Patwari's office and register YES for Rs 3/- fee. This will atleast give a objective number on lower bound on people who hate EVMs. Once some real information on "number of people who hate EVMs comes", we can talk more sensibly on the thread topic.

Now should we discuss above GN in this thread? Some demand that this thread should be confined to technical issues only. They have no case anymore --- given that EC is imprisoning people who show technical flaws in EVMs. EC has made big part of EVM issue legal, political and non-technical So we must now focus on legal, political aspects of EVM issue as well.

You may be right. We don't know if Congress has stopped taking CIA money after 1974. It is not beyond reason that CIA would prefer that party in power, since it was reportedly the USA's preferred Indian government only a generation back.

CIA funded Indira Gandhi govt, claims book by former US envoy

^ RM ji and others,

A humble suggestion!

It may not be in anyone's best interests to use CIA word.

- It gives unnecessary press to CIA (after seeing its successes in Af-Pak and Iraq arena)
- It gives others a reason to divert the discussion in the name of CTs
- It makes the entire Indian system to look like a Banana

We can call it anything we want, but not things like CIA/KGB/FBI etc.,

Security of India's electronic voting machines is questioned

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 07602.html

The blessed ones (i.e. those who can read Gujarati) can read the news. The rest can read my partial translation

EVM's magic - press any button , vote goes to BJP !!

http://gujaratsamachar.com/20101022/head/head1.html

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Press any button, LED next to BJP will blink !!

http://gujaratsamachar.com/20101022/head/head2.html

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In Vaghodia, in a demonstration, the officer gave 50 votes to BJP and 50 votes to Congress. The machine showed 60 votes to BJP and 40 to Congress !!

http://gujaratsamachar.com/20101022/head/head3.html

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The returning officer and presiding officer accepted that all votes are going to BJP !!

http://gujaratsamachar.com/20101022/head/head4.html

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Transparency Activist, Public Domain Scholar, Legal Blogger, and Imprisoned E-Voting Researcher Win Pioneer Awards http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/10/19

EFF to Honor Steven Aftergood, James Boyle, Pamela Jones and Groklaw, and Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru at San Francisco Ceremony
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is pleased to announce four winners of its 2010 Pioneer Awards: transparency activist Steven Aftergood; public domain scholar James Boyle; legal blogger Pamela Jones and the website Groklaw; and e-voting researcher Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru, who was recently released on bail after being imprisoned for his security work in India.

The award ceremony will be held at 7:30 p.m., November 8, at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Author, blogger, and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow will host. A VIP event with Cory and the Pioneer winners -- as well as EFF founders, board members, and other luminaries -- will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Steven Aftergood directs the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy, which works to reduce the scope of official secrecy and to promote public access to government information. He writes and edits Secrecy News, an email newsletter and blog that reports on new developments in secrecy and disclosure policy. Secrecy News also provides direct public access to various official records that have been suppressed, withdrawn, or that are simply hard to find. In 1997, Mr. Aftergood was the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency that successfully led to the declassification and publication of the total intelligence budget for the first time in 50 years.

James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. Professor Boyle is recognized for his exceptional scholarship on the "second enclosure movement" -- the worldwide expansion of intellectual property rights -- and its threat to the rich public domain of cultural and scientific materials that the Internet might otherwise make available. An original board member of Creative Commons and co-founder of Science Commons, Professor Boyle has worked for over 20 years as both an academic and institution builder to celebrate and protect the values of cultural and scientific openness.

When Pamela Jones created Groklaw in 2003, she envisioned a new kind of participatory journalism and distributed discovery -- a place where programmers and engineers could educate lawyers on technology relevant to legal cases of significance to the Free and Open Source community, and where technologists could learn about how the legal system works. Groklaw quickly became an essential resource for understanding such important legal debates as the SCO-Linux lawsuits, the European Union antitrust case against Microsoft, and whether software should qualify for patent protection.

Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru is a security researcher in India who recently revealed security flaws in India's paperless electronic voting machines. He has endured jail time, repeated interrogations, and ongoing political harassment to protect an anonymous source that enabled him to conduct the first independent security review of India's electronic voting system. Prasad spent a year trying to convince election officials to complete such a review, but they insisted that the government-made machines were "perfect" and "tamperproof." Instead of blindly accepting the government's claims, Prasad's international team discovered serious flaws that could alter national election results. Months of hot debate have produced a growing consensus that India's electronic voting machines should be scrapped, and Prasad hopes to help his country build a transparent and verifiable voting system.

"These winners have all worked tirelessly to give critical insight and context to the tough questions that arise in our evolving digital world," said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele. "We need strong advocates, educators, and researchers like these to protect our digital rights, and we're proud to honor these four Pioneer Award winners for their important contributions."

Tickets to the Pioneer Awards ceremony are $35 if purchased in advance or $40 at the door. Tickets are available online at http://www.eff.org/pioneerfundraiser. Sponsors of the 2010 Pioneer Awards ceremony include the Computer Electronics Association (CEA), JibJab, and Junk Email Filter.

Awarded every year since 1992, EFF's Pioneer Awards recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. Past honorees include World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, security expert Bruce Schneier, and the Mozilla Foundation and its chairman Mitchell Baker, among many others.

Pioneer Award candidates are nominated by the public. The winners were chosen by a panel of judges including Kim Alexander (president and founder, California Voter Foundation), Jim Buckmaster (CEO, craigslist), Cory Doctorow (award-winning author and activist), Mitch Kapor (Kapor Capital; co-founder and former chairman EFF), Drazen Pantic (co-director, Location One), Barbara Simons (computer scientist, IBM Research [retired] and former president ACM), and James Tyre (co-founder, The Censorware Project and EFF policy fellow).

From what I heard is that every year, DCs routinely purge EVMs which are 10 years old. These EVMs are destroyed.

So best way to rig EVMs would be to put a hack in 1999, and then activate that hack only May-2009 election. These EVMs will be kept for 1 year after counting, and then, since they are now older than 10 years, they will be destroyed. Hence no traces of proof are left. The hack could have been in display or in chip or in firmware. Now everything is destroyed - ashes to ash.

Also, best place to put "dishonest display" is factory. I am sure that display must have been outsourced to some outside private company. CIA can either convince that factory to implement the hack AFTER testing is over, and it would go unnoticed during assembly. For assembly, very junior staff is used, and they have no clue of what circuit should look like. So if these dishonest displays were placed by CIA in 1999, then these EVMs have now been destroyed and there is no proof left !!

.

EVM maker central govt firm BEL denies possibility of rigging - http://deshgujarat.com/2010/10/22/evm-m ... f-rigging/

No re-poll in Padra, votes of ‘faulty’ EVM to be counted - http://www.indianexpress.com/news/no-re ... d/701371/0

Oh so what if it is not an election year. What if an election is pulled forward??

This is starting to get into Alice in wonderland territory.

Starting? Haven't you read the past pages of this thread?

How does that matter? If election is pulled forward in 1998, then also one can decide whether he wants to rig or not. Problem will be only if machine becomes obsolete before election comes.

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When someone said that "It is impossible for BEL Charmain et al to replace even 10-20 boxes full of CPU chips inside BEL, because BEL is a fortress", the thread had crossed all limits. That too, I bet that someone has never stepped inside BEL and seen how rigid (or lax) BEL's warehouses are.

==

Dear All,

I have been showing the "EVMs can be easily rigged" video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlCOj1dElDY ) . Almost all said that they have never seen this video on TV !! I myself never watch TV, and so I cant be sure. So I want to ask you all if TV channels have shown above video. If not, this is strange. TV channels are hungry for TRP rating and anything sensational is something they will show again and again till everyone is fed up. In that case, why didnt they show how easy is to fix displays in factory and thus rig 100,000 EVMs?

I do know that TV9-Telugu has aired this video. But except TV9-Telugu, has any channel aired it? What about AajTak, NDTV? I guess RSS too has one TV channel. Has that channel aired this video?