Sequoia Threatens Over Voting Machine Evaluation 221
enodo writes "Voting machine manufacturer Sequoia has sent well-known Princeton professor Ed Felten and his colleague Andrew Appel a letter threatening to sue if New Jersey sends them a machine to evaluate. It's not clear from the letter Sequoia sent whether they intend to sue the professors or the state — presumably that ambiguity was deliberate on Sequoia's part. Put another clipping in your scrapbook of cases of companies invoking 'intellectual property rights' for bogus reasons." Sequoia seems to be claiming that no one can make a "report" regarding their "software" without their permission.
Update and more details on this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The ambiguity is a dead giveaway. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm wondering "how thay can threaten their customer?" Who do they think they are, the RIAA and that New Jersey is a mom on food stamps?
But perhaps they can. This cynical old man thinks there's a lot more here than meets the eye - Sequoia may surreptuously funnel cash to the campaigns of some of the high ranking New Jersey goons, er, excuse me, lawmakers/bureaucrats.
But then I'm in Illinois where the last Democrat Governor [wikipedia.org] went to prison, and the last Republican Governor [wikipedia.org] then went to prison. I'm thinking if a Republican wins the next Governor election, Blago [wikipedia.org] will join Ryan in a cell.
Rich powerful people don't play nice. You don't get to be a rich, powerful man by giving a rat's ass about anyone or anything except your money and power.
-mcgrew
(background on Illinois Politics): [wikipedia.org]
Re:History lesson (Score:5, Informative)
See http://www.constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm [constitution.org]instead.
Re:Let's call a spade a spade: (Score:4, Informative)
Also unconscionable is the notion that the underlaying software algorithm would essencially boil down to a very simple statement that looks something like the following:
You could argue that there is some finesse involved in getting that data from the machine it was cast at to the central tallying point where it is counted and tabulated, but NOTHING in that process is any more complicated than the Automated Teller Machines which function in a similar way to take data from client nodes and send it up to the hub... so "prior art" in the realm of basic concepts of networking makes those patents unattainable.
Re:Ok, I RTFA, but still... (Score:4, Informative)
See the "Major Actions" section of this address
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:HR02281:@@@L&summ2=m& [loc.gov]
So, if your congresscritter was in office in 1998, you really have to assume he/she voted for it. I suppose you could troll the attendence logs for the day in question and see if they were absent, but I don't know how much that washes their hands. And potentialy, House reps may have voice voted against it, but it's unlikley.
So, Pretty much any Senator/Rep who's been in office for more than 10 years is responsible.
Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
This just doesn't fit with their actions back then. Has there been a change in management?
Re:History lesson (Score:2, Informative)
Re:handy though (Score:5, Informative)
In the past, less than one hundred years ago, it was extremely difficult to investigate dangerous products or workplaces. The government just didn't feel it was important enough to get involved in. There had to be major media effort to bring these problems to the public eye before there was enough pressure on the government to put pressure on companies. Such as hair products that could cause blindness and disfigurement, sometimes death (the reason that we have animal testing for cosmetics today). Companies didn't care if customer's were hurt, as long as they got their money first; but bad publicity made them at least pretend to care.
Or the use of radium on watch dials; a company where the chemists would use lead shields to deal with radium would suggest to the factory workers that they could lick the brushes used to pain the dials. That took a media campaign to publicize slow painful deaths of young women before the public demanded change. It's interesting here that US Radium threatened to sue to prevent publication of a damning report, since the author had signed a confidentiality agreement (deja vu).
But in this case, the danger is to elections, not someone's health. The question is whether this rises to the same level of concern. In the health cases, people had to die or become disfigured before the government and the public took any action. Do we have to wait for a stolen or hacked election before the people decide that the public's interests in this matter overrides intellection property? ("intellectual", hah, there's nothing so special about the technology here; shoddy hardware, shoddy software, slick marketting)
Re:I Agree with Sequoia on this (Score:3, Informative)
In this case, I'd say just basic consumer protection laws would apply. The consumer has the right to determine if the product they purchased does what it claims to do. No "contract" can forbid that. That'd be like an auto maker forbidding the customer in a signed sales agreement from looking under the hood to see if there's an engine present.
I suspect the contract doesn't forbid verifying that the device performs as claimed, but that they disallow giving the device to a third party. Thus they may be relying on the elections board themselves, without the help of consultants, having enough technical knowledge to tell if the device meets their needs.
But I do agree with you on the point that New Jersey should just ship the product back and say "this does not meet our needs at this time". Or if they want the money back, say "since we are forbidden from determining if the device is the same one as described in the contract, we have to declare the contract void, so kindly send us back our citizens' money."
Re:Open Source Secure Voting Application (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't trust one. Even if I had something that purported to be the source, how am I to know that that's exactly what was loaded into the machine? How am I to know that the combination of software and machine does something the software alone doesn't?
The only solution is a paper trail. The voting machines used around here have paper ballots that are scanned for counting. Quick returns, and actually verifiable.
Re:The ambiguity is a dead giveaway. (Score:1, Informative)
DemocratIC. "Democrat" is a noun. "Democratic" is an adjective or adverb.
Re:Here is Sequoia's response from their website.. (Score:2, Informative)
The reports are publicly available: source code review [ca.gov], red team review [ca.gov].