Hacking Democracy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hacking Democracy
Directed by	Simon Ardizzone Russell Michaels
Produced by	Simon Ardizzone Russell Michaels Robert Carrillo Cohen
Starring	Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, Harri Hursti, Ion Sancho
Release date(s)	November 2, 2006 DVD released March 27, 2007
Running time	82 minutes
Language	English
Official website
IMDb profile

Hacking Democracy is the 2006 documentary film by Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels, produced by Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels, shown on HBO. Filmed over three years it documents anomalies and irregularities with 'e-voting' (electronic voting) systems that occurred during America's 2000 and 2004 elections, especially in Volusia County, Florida. The film investigates the flawed integrity of electronic voting machines and culminates dramatically in the on camera hacking of a live election in Florida.

1 Demonstrated flaws
2 Reaction
3 DVD Release
4 References
5 See also
6 External links
- 6.1 Reviews

[edit] Demonstrated flaws

The documentary follows Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson, activists for Black Box Voting, as they attempt to discover whether Diebold voting machines could be tampered with and if their use in the previous election had produced any irregularities. During the course of the documentary, multiple methods of tampering with the votes are shown.

The first is through editing the database file that contains the voting totals. This file is a standard Microsoft Access database, and can be opened by normal means outside of the encompassing voting program. This file is later shown in a password-protected state, disallowing the easy opening of the file shown earlier in the documentary. This protection, however, was bypassed through a program that searched for a string of text and edited the file through external means. It was not tested whether this method would create discrepancies with the tabulation software when checked against the voting machine.^[1]

The second is through the program that tabulates the votes, named GEMS, coded by Diebold. The documentary revealed that through the use of the tabulation software, you would be able to reassign votes to different candidates. This hack was demonstrated to be easily detected, as the voting machines themselves would have inconsistent records with the tabulation software.

The last is through hacking the information on the Accu-Vote card to keep bad records. This method was discovered by Harri Hursti. The final method was tested by the Florida Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, on the actual voting equipment used by Tallahassee, Florida in their prior elections. This method demonstrated, contrary to a previous Diebold statement, that a person attempting to rig the votes of a precinct would need access to only the card, not the voting machine or tabulation software. This method, when cross-checked between the voting machines and tabulation software, appears legitimate, and further produces a proper zero-vote print out to verify the card is correct before voting begins.^[2]

[edit] Reaction

Even though no one from Diebold Election Systems admitted to have seen the film,^[3] Diebold President David Byrd suggested that Hacking Democracy was "replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting", and demanded that it not be aired.^[4]^[5] His criticism was based on an earlier film made by the same directors. However, HBO refused to remove it from their schedules.

In addition Diebold wrote a letter to HBO referring to the famous vote changing 'Hursti Hack' featured in the film, stating that - "Harri Hursti is shown attacking a Diebold machine in Florida. But his attack proved later to be a complete sham." California's Secretary of State commissioned a special report by scientists at UC Berkeley to investigate the Hursti Hack. Page 2 of their report states - "Harri Hursti's attack does work: Mr. Hursti's attack on the AV-OS is definitely real. He was indeed able to change the election results by doing nothing more than modifying the contents of a memory card. He needed no passwords, no cryptographic keys, and no access to any other part of the voting system, including the GEMS election management server."

One of Diebold's objections to the film was that it failed to mention that Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins computer science professor and vocal Diebold critic, may have a conflict of interest. Rubin at one point owned stock options in VoteHere, which sells auditing software and systems for voting machines. However, Rubin disposed of his stock options and withdrew from the VoteHere advisory board in August of 2003, and says he has not had any meaningful contact since joining over 2 years ago, except occasionally receiving press clippings.^[6]