blackwater's prince cuts & runs from danger room: The rebranding of Blackwater continues. First, the mercenary firm expands beyond its core, guns-for-hire business. Then, the company changes its name - to the inscrutable, barely-pronounceable "Xe." The latest: Outspoken and controversial firm founder Erik Prince announces he's stepping down as CEO. "I'm a little worn out by the whole thing, the politics of it all," Prince tells the Wall Street Journal. "Me not being part of the equation reduces the 'X' on the thing." I guess that means the company is now called "e?"
report: diebold system has 'delete' button for erasing audit logs from threat level: After three months of investigation, California's secretary of state has released a report examining why a voting system made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold) lost about 200 ballots in Humboldt County during November's presidential election. But the most startling information in the state's 13-page report [156kb PDF] is not why the system lost votes, which Wired.com previously covered in detail, but that some versions of Diebold's vote tabulation system, known as the Global Election Management System (Gems), include a button that allows someone to delete audit logs from the system. Auditing logs are required under the federal voting-system guidelines, which are used to test and qualify voting systems for use in elections. The logs record changes and other events that occur on voting systems to ensure the integrity of elections and help determine what occurred in a system when something goes wrong. "Deleting a log is something that you would only do in de-commissioning a system you're no longer using or perhaps in a testing scenario," said Princeton University computer scientist Ed Felten, who has studied voting systems extensively. "But in normal operation, the log should always be kept."
finland's parliament passes 'lex nokia' bill from yle: Parliament has passed the controversial reforms to the data protection law, the so-called "Lex Nokia" bill. The vote was 96 for, 56 against. The hotly debated reforms caused arguments within the government coalition, but also caused a crack in the Green League. Notably, three Green MPs who had previously voted against the bill abstained from the vote: Johanna Karimäki, Ville Niinistö and Kirsi Ojansuu. They were just three of the 47 parliamentarians who decided not to cast a vote. The bill, dubbed "Lex Nokia" because of the mobile phone giant's perceived advocacy for the law, angered unions and privacy rights advocates.
army pitches 'future' killers as job-savers from danger room: In late January, the Air Force's defense contractor buddies started pushing their pet project, the Raptor stealth fighter jet, as a jobs program. "Without it, more than 95,000 jobs are at risk," proclaimed one online ad. (The New America Foundation figures the real number is more like 35,000. You get the idea, though.) But at least the Air Force had the good sense to step back and let its industrial partners make the case for their weapons-as-stimulus. The Army wasn't so slick, alas. The Army is trying hard to keep Future Combat Systems - its massive effort to make the force lighter, more-lethal, and better-networked - away from the budget axe. During the presidential campaign, both the Obama and McCain camps talked about slowing down or killing the project. Despite some successes, FCS has become a poster child in Washington for Pentagon bloat and overreach.
russian general says US may have planned satellite collision from ria novosti: A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said. According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a U.S. telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia. However, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the U.S. satellite involved in the collision was used by the U.S. military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007... Shershnev claims the U.S. military decided to continue with the project to "develop technology that would allow monitoring and inspections of orbital spacecraft by fully-automated satellites equipped with robotic devices." The February collision could be an indication that the U.S. has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating 'hostile satellites,' including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.
a billion over budget, nasa gets a bilion more from stimulus from ap: NASA can land a spacecraft on a peanut-shaped asteroid 150 million miles away, but it doesn't come close to hitting the budget target for building its spacecraft, according to congressional auditors. NASA's top officials know it and even joke about it. This week auditors found that on nine projects alone NASA is nearly $1.1 billion over cost estimates that were set in the last couple of years. Congress' financial watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, reviewed NASA's newest big-money projects and found most were either over budget, late or both. That doesn't include two of NASA's largest spending projects whose costs have wildly fluctuated and still aren't firm - replacements for the space shuttle fleet and Hubble Space Telescope. Historically, overruns have caused NASA to run low on money, forcing it to shelve or delay other projects. Often, the agency just asks taxpayers for more money. In fact, NASA got $1 billion from the new stimulus package. It's to be spent on climate-watching satellites and exploration among other things. "Getting an extra infusion of money doesn't necessarily mean you have a capability to spend it well," said Cristina Chaplain, GAO's acquisitions chief who wrote the study [2.8mb PDF].
task force urges broader role for nuclear labs from washington post: The nation's nuclear weapons laboratories would be spun out of the Energy Department and become the center of an independent Agency for National Security Applications under a proposal to be released today by a bipartisan task force formed by the Stimson Center, a research organization devoted to security issues. Changing the status and making wider use of Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories for other research would help reestablish and assure "the nation's global science and technology leadership in the 21st century," said the task force report. At present, the labs are directed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semiautonomous part of the Energy Department. "This action would enable the laboratories to remain trusted third party advisors as well as providers of capabilities, but it would initiate a full transformation from a Cold War, industrial age mindset and culture," according to the task force, which was chaired by Francis Fragos Townsend, who was an assistant to President George W. Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism, and retired Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, who was deputy national security adviser to President Bill Clinton. The proposal comes at a time when the future of the nation's multibillion-dollar nuclear weapons complex is under review.
video: robo-beast & human troops march together from danger room: We've seen BigDog, the military's alarmingly-lifelike robotic quadruped, climb over hills, stomp through snow, and survive swift kicks to the chops. Now, for the first time, we're seeing it on patrol, with human soldiers. Mass High Tech uncovers this video of the BigDog going through exercises at Ft. Benning, Georgia. It comes on the heels of the robo-beast's longest walk yet - a 12.8 mile hike, following a series of GPS waypoints. Soldiers at Ft. Benning seemed intrigued by the idea of a mechanical pack mule that could one day carry some of their load.
mccain guarantees victory from politico: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he can “guarantee” a win on Nov. 4 in a squeaker victory that won’t be clear until late that night. McCain spoke amid signs of a tightening race, and reports of renewed determination among his staff, which is badly outgunned in both money and manpower. “I guarantee you that two weeks from now, you will see this has been a very close race, and I believe that I'm going to win it,” McCain told interim "Meet" moderator Tom Brokaw. “We're going to do well in this campaign, my friend. We're going to win it, and it's going to be tight, and we're going to be up late.” McCain was down just 5 points in the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released Sunday, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) leading by 49 percent to 44 percent among likely voters in the daily tracking poll, which has a margin of error of 2.9 points. Reuters reported that Obama's lead has dropped over the last three days after hitting a high of 12 points on Thursday. Pollster John Zogby said: "Things are trending back for McCain. His numbers are rising and Obama's are dropping on a daily basis. There seems to be a direct correlation between this and McCain talking about the economy."
scare tactics mark final election days from washington times: In these last desperate days of the 2008 presidential campaign, we must suffer visions of "divas," plumbers, skinheads and Karl Marx dancing before our disbelieving eyes. Karl Marx? Has it come to that arcane scare tactic? We've been promised that this election would be different: It would be about character, experience, qualifications and maybe even issues, such as our tanking economy. But in this final week, the telebabble is going to be about stupid stuff, speculative stuff and scary stuff.
war or peace? the world after the 2008 US presidential election from richard c. cook: World war or world peace is the blunt choice that will face either Barack Obama or John McCain when one of them is elected president of the United States on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. For a major eruption of violence to be averted, the new president must deal positively with the reappearance of Russia on the world stage, the emergence of China as an economic force, and the aspirations of all the nations on earth for a decent and secure way of life. Making matters much more dangerous are the ongoing financial crisis, along with what appears to be the start of a worldwide economic recession of as yet undetermined depth and duration. It is Europe, not the U.S., from which proposals are emerging for a transformative approach to the most compelling issues. But will it be enough? ... Those with eyes to see knew the present crisis was coming long ago. That vision now has spread to more people. What is increasingly clear is that positive change, as opposed to the change that is just a drift to disaster, will only happen when people who love freedom demand it, work for it, and sacrifice for it. Will the next president of the United States facilitate such change or stand in its way?
wv gives es&s an award while their machines malfunction from threat level: A day after West Virginia secretary of state Betty Ireland held a press conference to address vote-switching problems with touchscreen voting machines made by Election Systems & Software, she presented an award of merit to an ES&S vice president, who had abruptly and mysteriously left the company in May after 11 years of service, according to the Charleston Gazette. Gary Greenhalgh, as ES&S's vice president of sales, helped the company win a $17-million contract to supply machines to West Virginia in 2005 and was the company's point person for dealing with election officials until he left ES&S. Last week, Ireland gave him a Medallion Award from the National Association of Secretaries of State at a special ceremony. The award came the same week that voters in several West Virginia counties reported that ES&S's iVotronic touchscreen machines were flipping their votes from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to Republican rival John McCain. Ireland addressed the problem by directing the 34 West Virginia counties that use the touchscreen machines to re-calibrate them each morning during early voting and on election day.
groups warn election officials about diebold voting machine 'flaw' from threat level:Several election watch dog groups have sent an advisory to election officials warning them about a problem with Premier Election Solutions' vote tabulating software that could cause the system to lose votes. Premier (formerly called Diebold Election Systems) disclosed the problem in August after officials in Butler County, Ohio, discovered that 150 votes were dropped from a memory card during the state's March primary. Ten other Ohio counties discovered their system had dropped votes as well when vote totals on the memory card were uploaded to a county server. The problem occurred when officials tried to upload multiple memory cards at once. All of the votes were recovered, but Ohio officials had to expend considerable time and energy to retrieve them and make sure all were accounted for.
up to 30,000 voters illegally purged in colorado from raw replay: CBS 4 in Denver reported that election watchdog groups have accused the Republican Secretary of State of illegally purging up to 30,000 voters from voter rolls. The Denver Post reported that 20,000 voters may have been illegally purged.
I see dead people...voting from 620kpoj: A Portland think tank says Oregon voter rolls include 6,000 dead people. Secretary of State Bill Bradbury says most are just inactive voters. The Cascade Policy Institute reported last week that state voter rolls include the names of 6,000 dead people. Secretary of State Bill Bradbury says not to worry, dead people can't sign a ballot and forging a ballot is a Class "C" Felony. Bradbury says election officials investigated the charges and found of the 6,000 names over 4900 were inactive registrants. A voter may be deemed inactive if they have moved and not updated their info or have not voted in 5 years. Inactive voters do not recieve a ballot by mail. Bradbury says of the remaining 1100 active voters a random sampling revealed about half of those were alive and kicking.
attorney: voter fraud as likely as alien abduction from raw replay: CNN’s Susan Roesgen reported that the Wisconsin Attorney General is fighting to have voters registrations purged from the rolls if their registration information does not match with other government databases. Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s case was dismissed last week but he plans to file an appeal.
this is the 2nd coup: a blistering interview with james cromwell from suicidegirls: "Put Cheney in jail. That would be more appropriate. I do believe that if that woman wins in Vermont, the attorney general, she will. Bugliosi's book is the blueprint for how. I believe that what happened on September 11th was a crime against the American people and should have been pursued by law enforcement in a rational way. Then we would have Osama bin Laden -- if in fact Osama bin Laden is responsible -- behind bars. It was used as an excuse for a coup -- the second in my lifetime, the first one being at the death of JFK. This is the second coup, the destruction of American democracy. We need the men who have perpetrated this coup behind bars where they belong, as a lesson to other despots, that they cannot behave this way!"
from judicial watch: An influential Democratic donor who has given Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign the federal limit and has been indicted for illegally practicing law, had his offices raided by authorities who say he launders money for Mexican drug cartels. Renowned in ritzy Corpus Christi circles, Mauricio Celishas for years been one of Texas’ most generous Democratic donors, but the millionaire businessman has been the center of an ongoing criminal investigation that involves his deep-rooted ties to Mexico’s lucrative drug-smuggling industry.
diebold failures found throughout new hampshire primary from brad blog: Early research into New Hampshire wards and towns which used Diebold's AccuVote Optical-Scanvoting machines during last week's Primary reveals that chronic problems continue with the company's infamous paper-ballot voting machines. As well, the preliminary investigation reveals a great deal of confusion and conflicting information from local election clerks and a high-ranking official in the state Attorney General's office regarding protocols and security procedures for voting systems and memory cards, and how they are to be handled during Election Day failures.
paul beats rudy & fred, again from los angeles times: Well, he's hanging in there. Not only that, but Rep. Ron Paul thumped two reputed Republican heavyweights in the Michigan primary - former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani... Paul's website and new campaign blog claim to have quietly organized more than 7,800 precinct captains around the country. Meantime, Giuliani's top staff is going unpaid this month to save dwindling funds. Is there a pattern here?
ron paul: the mysterious US candidate
from russia today: The lack of media coverage has turned Ron Paul into the ghost candidate in this race for the White House. And one can't help but wonder why the Texas Congressman doesn't get much air-time, despite all the hype? ... his supporters say it's not that Paul is not presidential material but that the American system no longer values freedom as much as it used to.
combined primary percentages put paul in 4th place from lew rockwell: Here are the combined vote totals for IA, NH, and MI:
Romney - 443,139 Total Votes – 36.89% McCain - 361,546 Total Votes – 30.10% Huckabee - 207,308 Total Votes – 17.26% Paul - 84,554 Total Votes – 7.04% Giuliani - 50,925 Total Votes – 4.24% Thompson - 49,198 Total Votes - 4.10% Hunter - 4,567 Total Votes - 0.38%
Paul is in a solid fourth, increased his percentage lead over Giuliani by 300% in Michigan, and should stay in fourth through SC and NV, where Thompson and Giuliani will close the gap in each state. In other news, the latest CNN/Politico/LA Times California poll has Paul at 8%, with no candidate garnering more than 20% in the poll. The poll had a huge margin of error (6%), which makes Paul and four other candidates technically tied in the Golden State.
who do the kids of america want to be president? from raw replay: Legendary newsperson Linda Ellerbee takes a closer at what the kids of America think about the 2008 presidential race. The following video is from Nickelodeon’s The Kids Primary, broadcast on January 13, 2008 (jump to the 13m mark for the ron paul segment)
kucinich decries general electric/media conspiracy from las vegas sun: At 5:25 p.m., shortly after the Nevada Supreme Court (262kb PDF) refused to give Dennis Kucinich a seat at the debate, a small band of his supporters marched to a far corner of a parking lot outside the Cashman Center, where supporters of the three major candidates had gathered. Spectators soon realized that Kucinich was among them. He said: “The fact of the matter is, NBC is owned by General Electric. General Electric makes power plants. General Electric wants to make sure there is a place to dump the waste.”
US elections: just like the movies from the peoples voice: The United States political process bears an uncanny resemblance to mainstream filmmaking. Elections and speeches are scripted to the letter, politicians put on a tirelessly rehearsed act, catering endlessly to the whims of the target audience. A successful Hollywood filmmaker can't afford to risk raising issues in a way that don't immediately reflect audience sympathies. Good politicians vying for votes are similar in that they speak according to the already existing expectations - and prejudices - of the voting public.
obama, brzezinski & aq khan from across the aisle: My fellow blogger David Isenberg noted below that Senator Obama should reject the advice of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser. The basis for David’s statement is the advice Brzezinski gave Carter in the 1970’s on U.S.-Pakistan relations. Brzezinski urged Carter to prioritize Pakistani assistance for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan over nuclear proliferation concerns. related: obama & his warmonger cabinet
from wired: On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.
In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.
Wikipedia Scanner - the brainchild of CalTech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith - offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.
Inspired by news last year that Congress members' offices had been editing their own entries, Griffith says he got curious, and wanted to know whether big companies and other organizations were doing things in a similarly self-interested vein...
The result: A database of 5.3 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization's net address has made.
Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material.
Voting-machine company Diebold provides a good example of the latter, with someone at the company's IP address apparently deletinglong paragraphsdetailingthe security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President George Bush.
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from corbett report: In late 2008, the GOP’s theft of the 2004 presidential election via vote machine rigging in Ohio was on the verge of being exposed. An insider had been identified and deposed, and he was ready to be sworn in as a star witness in a major trial… but on December 19, 2008, the small Piper airplane he was piloting crashed on approach to the Akron-Canton Regional Airport. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we start connecting the pieces of the Michael Connell puzzle.
