DIEBOLD GOES POSTAL!

Subject: Fwd: All Black Box Voting files confiscated, including personal info on activists by Diebold.

From: Bev Harris
Subject: All Black Box Voting files confiscated, including personal info on activists
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 02:11:26 -0700 (PDT)

Here's what you can do to help: Get the word out far and wide that Diebold has done this thing.

1. Diebold issued a pull-down demand under DMCA for the BlackBoxVoting.org web site, citing a link posted on a forum in the site, claiming that the link allowed web visitors to visit an unrelated page which contained items they say they own the copyright to.

2. Not only was BlackBoxVoting.org pulled down, but ALL of the documents, databases and programming for approximately 500 pages of material, most of which did not relate to Diebold at all, was confiscated. Dozens of web pages were pulled down which had nothing whatever to do with the disputed information. AIT Inc. has indicated that it believes it has the right to pull down the entire web site including unrelated pages. It then confiscated all of the material.

3. The confiscated pages included personal contact information for 200 activists, and the private strategy sessions for voting machine activists. BlackBoxVoting.org has yet to receive any explanation at all as to what authority was claimed to confiscate them. We demand their immediate return.

4. Most of the memos in question were written in Canada, and resided on a server in Canada up to and including 2003 after Diebold bought a Canadian company called Global Election Systems. In Canada, company correspondence, even internal memos, is not protected by copyright. To date we have been unable to find evidence, other than a claim in a letter, that Diebold even owns the copyright to these memos.

5. These memos are more properly termed "Evidence," because they contain evidence of a pattern of lawbreaking that dates back at least to 1999.

6. Lexis-Nexis would be a worthwhile exercise now for every one of these search terms pertaining to the origins of Global Election Systems: This firm was a wholly owned subsidiary of North American Professional Technologies, Inc., which was in turn a wholly owned subsidiary of MacroTrends Ventures International, Ltd. Charles Hong Lee is one of the principals with these firms; He has been tied in the press to participation in a scheme to bilk immigrants out of some $47 million; he is also connected with a scandal in which a Mr. Graye was prosecuted, relating to Vinex Wines. Charles Hong Lee was also involved with something called "The Vancouver Maneuver," a stock pump & dump scheme that bilked investors out of millions in connection with an entertainment company and something called Beverly Development. Charles Hong Lee was a principal with Global Election Systems, along with the late Clinton Rickards. Talbot Iredale, currently the V.P. for Research and Development for Diebold Election Systems, began with the company in 1991, right around the time the Vancouver Maneuver was exposed in Barron's magazine. This is the pedigree from whence the Diebold Memos arose.
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Here is a contribution originally from Slashdot, made available for the Black Box Voting book by Donald Way. (Diebold: This is satire and meant for entertainment purposes only. If you would like to spend several more $500 per hour lawyer fees suing us over satire, go right ahead.)

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

Pending: your vote is now the property of Diebold, Inc. Any attempt on your part to ascertain the disposition of your vote is hereby declared to be in violation of federal law, e.g., the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

You have the right not to vote. Any vote you make can be used against you in a court of law. The judge presiding in such a court of law may be appointed by Diebold, Inc., and need not require a jury, but if a jury is summoned, it need not be a jury of your peers.

By acting to vote you consent to our determining whether your vote is valid, and in the event it is judged not to be valid, you consent to our voiding your vote and further voiding your right to vote in the future. You furthermore acknowledge that owing to storage and bandwidth limitations that Diebold, Inc., may experience, your vote may be digitally compressed in a way such that your true intent in casting the vote may be lost. If such an eventuality should occur, your vote may be determined using statistical data derived from any source we deem appropriate or convenient.

You have the right to protest if your vote is cancelled, altered, or in any way modified as the result of such action on our part, however, you hereby acknowledge that in such an eventuality, Diebold, Inc. may determine that your right to vote is deleterious to democracy as implement by Diebold, Inc., and therefore may be considered to be an overt act against the national security of these United States. You have 10 seconds to comply.

God Bless America
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