presence
11-06-2013, 12:51 PM
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82513.html?1383673160
Posted on Monday, November 4, 2013 - 6:09 pm:
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You may have noticed we've been quiet of late. That's because Black Box Voting is doing a complete redo of our huge Web site, updating it with visuals, video, social media, and general coolness. We are also expanding our direction. I hope you will bear with me, because it won't be long before the "new BBV" appears.
[]
The "New BBV" focuses on four major areas of coverage: Election Transparency, Ballot Privacy, Money, and Corruption, illustrating the important interactions between these four areas.
BALLOT PRIVACY
A blockbuster story has been widely reported in Colorado but not much elsewhere; this is reminiscent of the surprise many people felt when learning that the government was harvesting their e-mails and phone calls. As Black Box Voting has been reporting for several years now, the government is also harvesting data connecting voted ballots to voter names; now, THEY ADMIT IT. Black Box Voting has been a sponsor for Colorado privacy lawsuits in connection with The Citizen Center, and there are more to come. A current case in the Colo. Supreme Court, with a decision expected any day now, requests a court decision to enforce secrecy of the ballot. Government officials now acknowledge that they can see how you voted, but claim it's "just" the government, no worries. Similar cases have been filed in Washington State by Alan Rosato, Tim White, and the Green Party; there, the court sidestepped the privacy issue ruling that the ballot tracking software was uncertified. Black Box Voting has also obtained admissions from officials that secrecy of the ballot is being breached in Indiana for early voting on DRE machines. The stripping away of ballot privacy is a trade secret among election officials.
Ballot privacy is a growing area of concern, and merits its own section in our upcoming Web site. We will explore not only historic reasons for enacting ballot privacy laws, but new, digital erosion of the secret ballot which are not yet well understood by the public.
BIOMETRICS IN ELECTIONS AND EVERY DAY LIFE
One of our upcoming Special Reports concerns the truth about election biometrics. While the US is having disputes about voter ID, the rest of the world is involved in a much more questionable election ID trend: in country after country, with support/arm-twisting from the IMF and various national security agencies, in order to vote you must now submit to biometric profiling, including five-finger fingerprinting and capture of homeland security-grade facial recognition images. Not disclosed to voters is that between countries there are data sharing agreements for biometrics; not explored is whether it violates human rights to require you to submit to a national security biometrics profile in order to exercise your right to vote; and not talked about at all is the potential for misuse, since some biometrics locations are among the most violent and repressive in the world -- for example, Sierra Leone, where, if you saw the movie "Blood Diamonds", you probably noticed the scene where they were cutting off people's hands for voting for the opposition. In fact, in an unspeakable irony, a challenge Sierra Leone voter ID biometrics collectors are facing is how to get fingerprints from people whose hands were cut off.
Mandatory election biometrics collection has spread throughout Latin America, Mexico, Africa, Pacific Islands like Fiji and The Solomon Islands, the Middle East, and is now encroaching on Europe. Magnificent for law enforcement, to be sure, but also off-the-radar for most people. In countries like the USA where biometrics is still too controversial for election ID, it is being collected voluntarily en masse on the new iPhones, which have a fingerprint scanner on the HOME button, and in many laptops. Biometrics are also now being used by some universities to check in students, and by some employers in place of time cards.
Black Box Voting has accumulated reports from all over the world documenting use of mandatory biometrics in elections, and even more important, the expansion and sharing of the use of this data. (The Electronic Privacy Information Center - EPIC - has filed a freedom of information suit over the refusal of the United States to respond to records requests about contracts with private corporations and biometric data sharing.) This is all very sci-fi, except that it's real; there are already companies, like IDair, that are collecting fingerprints from up to six feet away, with no physical contact. Some multinational voting machine companies, like Smartmatic, are running both voting machines and biometric data harvesting programs.
Thank you very much for your support over the years. I think you will find the new direction both original and important, and I can hardly wait till we go live with it.
Bev Harris
Executive Director - Black Box Voting, Inc.The public must be able to see and authenticate these four essential steps for an election to be public, democratic, and valid:
(1) Who can vote (voter list);
(2) Who did vote
(3) The original count;
(4) Chain of custody...
Posted on Monday, November 4, 2013 - 6:09 pm:
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You may have noticed we've been quiet of late. That's because Black Box Voting is doing a complete redo of our huge Web site, updating it with visuals, video, social media, and general coolness. We are also expanding our direction. I hope you will bear with me, because it won't be long before the "new BBV" appears.
[]
The "New BBV" focuses on four major areas of coverage: Election Transparency, Ballot Privacy, Money, and Corruption, illustrating the important interactions between these four areas.
BALLOT PRIVACY
A blockbuster story has been widely reported in Colorado but not much elsewhere; this is reminiscent of the surprise many people felt when learning that the government was harvesting their e-mails and phone calls. As Black Box Voting has been reporting for several years now, the government is also harvesting data connecting voted ballots to voter names; now, THEY ADMIT IT. Black Box Voting has been a sponsor for Colorado privacy lawsuits in connection with The Citizen Center, and there are more to come. A current case in the Colo. Supreme Court, with a decision expected any day now, requests a court decision to enforce secrecy of the ballot. Government officials now acknowledge that they can see how you voted, but claim it's "just" the government, no worries. Similar cases have been filed in Washington State by Alan Rosato, Tim White, and the Green Party; there, the court sidestepped the privacy issue ruling that the ballot tracking software was uncertified. Black Box Voting has also obtained admissions from officials that secrecy of the ballot is being breached in Indiana for early voting on DRE machines. The stripping away of ballot privacy is a trade secret among election officials.
Ballot privacy is a growing area of concern, and merits its own section in our upcoming Web site. We will explore not only historic reasons for enacting ballot privacy laws, but new, digital erosion of the secret ballot which are not yet well understood by the public.
BIOMETRICS IN ELECTIONS AND EVERY DAY LIFE
One of our upcoming Special Reports concerns the truth about election biometrics. While the US is having disputes about voter ID, the rest of the world is involved in a much more questionable election ID trend: in country after country, with support/arm-twisting from the IMF and various national security agencies, in order to vote you must now submit to biometric profiling, including five-finger fingerprinting and capture of homeland security-grade facial recognition images. Not disclosed to voters is that between countries there are data sharing agreements for biometrics; not explored is whether it violates human rights to require you to submit to a national security biometrics profile in order to exercise your right to vote; and not talked about at all is the potential for misuse, since some biometrics locations are among the most violent and repressive in the world -- for example, Sierra Leone, where, if you saw the movie "Blood Diamonds", you probably noticed the scene where they were cutting off people's hands for voting for the opposition. In fact, in an unspeakable irony, a challenge Sierra Leone voter ID biometrics collectors are facing is how to get fingerprints from people whose hands were cut off.
Mandatory election biometrics collection has spread throughout Latin America, Mexico, Africa, Pacific Islands like Fiji and The Solomon Islands, the Middle East, and is now encroaching on Europe. Magnificent for law enforcement, to be sure, but also off-the-radar for most people. In countries like the USA where biometrics is still too controversial for election ID, it is being collected voluntarily en masse on the new iPhones, which have a fingerprint scanner on the HOME button, and in many laptops. Biometrics are also now being used by some universities to check in students, and by some employers in place of time cards.
Black Box Voting has accumulated reports from all over the world documenting use of mandatory biometrics in elections, and even more important, the expansion and sharing of the use of this data. (The Electronic Privacy Information Center - EPIC - has filed a freedom of information suit over the refusal of the United States to respond to records requests about contracts with private corporations and biometric data sharing.) This is all very sci-fi, except that it's real; there are already companies, like IDair, that are collecting fingerprints from up to six feet away, with no physical contact. Some multinational voting machine companies, like Smartmatic, are running both voting machines and biometric data harvesting programs.
Thank you very much for your support over the years. I think you will find the new direction both original and important, and I can hardly wait till we go live with it.
Bev Harris
Executive Director - Black Box Voting, Inc.The public must be able to see and authenticate these four essential steps for an election to be public, democratic, and valid:
(1) Who can vote (voter list);
(2) Who did vote
(3) The original count;
(4) Chain of custody...