Diebold postings spur legal concerns

An electronic campaign initiated two weeks ago by Why War?, a national student activist group, has sparked students from 50 universities nationwide to host copies of 15,000 internal company memos from the Diebold Election System which demonstrate insecurity and unreliability of their voting machines. As Diebold launches a legal battle against schools with participating students, citing copyright laws and demanding that colleges remove these postings from their servers, Hopkins, too, must now deal with whether to accept these postings on the University server.

Following press attention this week of Swarthmore University students who may no longer join their university server to this campaign, Hopkins took action yesterday to remove the download option that was posted last weekend on the University server by sophomore Asheesh Laroia.

The civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a Stanford cyber law group have both taken stances in support of the Swarthmore students. These copyright wars are expected to have "broad [legal] implications," The New York Times reported yesterday.

Laroia received an email yesterday afternoon from Student Technology Services (STS) requesting that he meet Friday with Lockett and Deborah Savage, STS Coordinator. Laroia said that the email offered no details aside from the subject heading, which read "Misuse of accounts." However, given the recent press on the Diebold suit at Swarthmore, he figured that it was in relation to his Diebold posting, which he acquired from the Why War? Web site, http://why-war.com. When he checked his Hopkins FESTER account yesterday, he said that access has been revoked.

"When it comes to situations like this, where the University can possibly be liable, then we have to take precautionary measures until we see what the situations is that we're actually in," said Brandon Lockett, Network Coordinator at Hopkins Information Technology Services (HITS). HITS has appealed to the University Office of Legal Counsel.

He said that HITS expects to hear back from Counsel today, but that until then "There's nothing much we can do." He added that it is a possibility that a link to a Diebold download provider may be permitted back on the server, but perhaps not the download itself.

Laroia, who is a cognitive science major, joins the campaign of both students and professionals who are protesting Diebold's insecure voting machines and the company's recent suit against freedom of information.

"I took interest [in the Diebold case] because our voting machines are how a democracy happens. It is essential that they work," he said. "It's important that somebody stand up to Diebold because these files [corporate memos] are an essential part of understanding."

Laroia contacted Avi Rubin, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, yesterday for support in representing his case to HITS. Rubin responded to Laroia last night in a supporting email which he carbon copied to University Spokesperson Dennis O'Shea.

Rubin wrote that he thinks the Hopkins case is "pretty serious" and that, "This has the possibility of getting a lot of press of the wrong kind. My opinion is that this student's access should be restored, and he should be allowed to post the memos if he wants."

Rubin was one of three Hopkins computer engineers, including Tadayoshi Kohno and Adam Stubblefield, to research the Diebold system. The resulting "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System," published July 23 on the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute Technical Report TR-2003-19, http://www.avirubin.com/vote, concluded that the Diebold system "is far below even the most minimal security standards" and that "as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk."

A security breach of the Diebold company account by a hacker in March released a slew of company memorandums that revealed serious employee concerns with the security of their voting machines, which were implemented in four Maryland counties in 2002 elections and will now spread to the remainder of the state following a recent $56 million agreement, according to a July 21 Diebold press release.