‘voting machines can be hacked by remote control’

Brad Friedman (Salon): ….. Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education …. experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.

The new findings echo long-ignored concerns about e-voting vulnerabilities  ….. “This is a national security issue,” says Roger Johnston, leader of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. “It should really be handled by the Department of Homeland Security.”

…. Almost all voters in states like Georgia, Maryland, Utah and Nevada, and the majority of voters in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Texas, will vote on DREs on Election Day in 2012 … Voters in major municipalities such as Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh will also use DREs of the type hacked by the Argonne National Lab.

…. In what John Warner (VAT) describes as “probably the most relevant attack for vote tampering,” the intruder would allow the voter to make his or her selections but when the voter actually attempts to push the Vote Now button, which records the voter’s final selections to the system’s memory card, he says, “we will simply intercept that attempt …. change a few of the votes,” and the changed votes would then be registered in the machine…..

Full article here

Thanks Tally – this is scary as hell.

piers morgan: obnoxious amoral rupert murdoch-worshiping turd.

Three Rupert Murdoch stooges: Piers Morgan with Rebekah Brooks (disgraced former editor of The News of the World) and Andy Coulson (disgraced former editor of the News of the World and recently arrested former communications director for Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron)

Daily Beast: Members of Parliament are calling on the CNN host to return to the U.K. and disclose what he knew about phone hacking at his former paper, the Mirror.

…. Piers Morgan is certain to face official questioning in the U.K. about alleged phone hacking at the Daily Mirror while he was editor.

He will be required to answer claims by a former Mirror journalist, James Hipwell, and by Paul McCartney’s ex-wife, Heather Mills, that Mirror group reporters illegally accessed mobile-phone voicemails in the same manner that prompted the closure last month of Rupert Murdoch’s London Sunday tabloid, News of the World. But his questioners will have bigger, more general suspicions in mind as well.

… Morgan was editor of the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004 …. The new allegations leave him on the defensive, but other, more circumstantial evidence has long raised serious suspicions about what went on at the Mirror.

… Morgan is not known as a pillar of journalistic ethics. In 2000, while editor of the Mirror, he was censured by the Press Complaints Commission for his share-buying activities …. And in 2004 he was sacked after publishing photographs of British soldiers abusing Iraqis that turned out to be fake:

At the time, he was criticized for failing to make appropriate checks; later he would mount the curious argument that publication had been justified because later evidence showed that some British soldiers, in different circumstances, did abuse Iraqis.

… The allegations of the past few days make close scrutiny of Morgan’s record a certainty. James Hipwell, a former financial journalist who was jailed in 2004 in the same scandal over share dealings for which Morgan was criticized, told the Independent newspaper that hacking was common at the Mirror. Heather Mills described on BBC television a conversation with a senior Mirror Group reporter, at the time that Morgan edited the Mirror, in which the reporter admitted listening to her voicemails.

If Morgan is not already in close consultation with his British lawyers, he will be very soon.

Full post here

AP (July 20): After remaining on the sidelines of Britain’s phone hacking scandal, Piers Morgan was finally drawn into it, defending himself and his former boss Rupert Murdoch.

While Murdoch testified in London before Parliament, Morgan took to Twitter.

A former editor of the News of the World the CNN host has largely declined to address the scandal on his CNN nightly prime-time show, but he tweeted frequently in support of Murdoch throughout Tuesday’s inquiry.

….Morgan has backed Murdoch during the scandal. He said he was a “big admirer of” Murdoch and he would not “join in the kind of witch hunt that’s been going on”.

While following Tuesday’s hearing, he wrote: “Strong finish by Rupert. Love him or hate him, does anyone genuinely think he’s a crook or condoned crime? Because I don’t.”

*****

Piers? Go hack a murdered kid’s phone. Truly, that’s your ‘journalistic’ level 😉

‘the most incredible thing fox news has ever done’

James Fallows (The Atlantic): …. via Erik Wemple of the Washington Post, the simply unbelievable Fox and Friends segment. It’s about the News of the World hacking scandal.

…. they present their (now closed) UK sister publication News of the World as a victim of the hacking problem, rather than as a perpetrator …. They roll out Bob Dilenschneider to say how hacking is a big problem. It’s happened at the Pentagon. It’s happened at Citibank. It’s happened at the News of the World. When are we going to get serious about it?

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!!! Citibank and the Pentagon were the hackees – the objects of hacking, by criminals or spies. Murdoch’s News of the World was the hacker – the perpetrator, the criminal-or-spy counterpart.

I submit that this could not happen at any other news organization. Rather, it could not happen at a news organization. It happened at the agitprop operation known as Fox News.

Update: As several readers have suggested, I should have pointed out the way the segment ends. Steve Doocy of Fox and his expert agree that it’s terrible that the mainstream media are wasting so much time on this old-news London hacking story rather than paying attention to what really matters. Which is the segue to … Casey Anthony.

Full post here (and an updated post here)

a loyal fox

Just a couple of corrections to the CNN report – Murdoch’s (UK) Times all but ignored the story until they had no choice but to cover it the last few days; Murdoch’s (UK) Sky News’ presenters have been busy attacking The Guardian newspaper for exposing the scandal, thereby causing the closing down of the poor old News of the World and putting people out of work. Yep, it’s all The Guardian’s fault 🙄 And Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has been busy writing its usual comically pro-GOP crap through the debt limit talks (see here). So, business as usual. You wonder where Murdoch’s people find the time to hack the phones of murdered schoolgirls.

gosh, why isn’t fox reporting this stuff!?