I apologize to readers for the down time. An improved RealConspiracyTheories.com is coming soon!
There was a problem with the database (sometimes referred to as PEBCAK by computer geeks), so I republished some older articles and they are appearing as June articles even though they are from last year.
Stay tuned…
ComputerWorld.com is running an article about how Maryland has voted against Diebold electronic voting machines:
"The state House of Delegates this week voted 137-0 to approve a bill prohibiting election officials from using AccuVote-TSx touch-screen systems in 2006 primary and general elections. . . .
If the bill becomes law, the state’s Diebold systems will be placed in "abeyance" and the vendor will be required to equip them so that they provide the requisite paper trail, she said.
Healey said the law would require that the machines provide a paper trail before the 2008 elections or Diebold would risk losing its contract with the state."
Spying on your email without evidence has been officially approved by the US government.
NewsForge reports on the movement to make the US election voting machines open-source.
Successful open voting systems that are cheaper, easier to manage, and more transparent than proprietary systems can be found in Australia, Canada, Estonia, and other places. In the US, however, the effort to bring open source systems — and other aspects of trustworthy voting, including voter verified paper receipts — is made more difficult by the entrenchment of the major vendors: Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, and others.
BlackBoxVoting.org continues to investigate the electronic voting machines used in the 2004 Presidental Election. They found that:
"The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.
After investing over $7,000 and waiting nine months for the records, Black Box Voting discovered that the voting machine logs contained approximately 100,000 errors. According to voting machine assignment logs, Palm Beach County used 4,313 machines in the Nov. 2004 election. During election day, 1,475 voting system calibrations were performed while the polls were open, providing documentation to substantiate reports from citizens indicating the wrong candidate was selected when they tried to vote."
RealConspiracyTheories.com previously covered the news about how the UK is planning mandatory biometric identity cards, with a punishment of a £2,500 (US $4,350) fine for not registering.
The Guardian reports that the battle is not over yet:
The government suffered another defeat on its controversial ID cards bill tonight when peers voted by a sizeable majority in the Lords to ensure the planned identity cards were voluntary.
Soon you may not be able to post anonymous comments in online forums. This is from a new bill in the State of New Jersey:
The operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider shall establish, maintain and enforce a policy to require any information content provider who posts written messages on a public forum website either to be identified by a legal name and address, or to register a legal name and address with the operator of the interactive computer service or the Internet service provider through which the information content provider gains access to the interactive computer service or Internet, as appropriate.
This means that you would not be able to surf the Internet and post anonymous messages. You would have to provide your legal name and address before posting your free speech online.
The Register has an April Fools story about China buying Google.
Although it is just a joke, the article does illustrate the dangers of Internet companies that gather your personal data.
Knowledge is power. Your personal data in the wrong hands is power over you. Your personal data is being aggressivly harvested by these companies and will probably never be deleted, even after you push the delete
button. Someday Google won’t be run by two college kids from Stanford anymore.
I found a post on discourse.net about how police are trying to get deleted email from Google (Gmail).
Google has archived usenet newsgroup posts going back to the early 1980s. How long will Google store your deleted email?
