http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/12/ale04096.html
It is about a programmer who claims Rep. Tom Feeney (R, FL) had him write vote altering software. Go ahead and check it out, but be careful. The following lines in the article caught my attention as being suspect:
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Curtis says that Feeney "was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program."
" He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (
the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment © the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected."Though there was no problem with the first two requirements, Curtis explained to the Congressman that it would be "virtually impossible to hide such code written to change the voting results if anyone is able to review the uncompiled source code"
Nonetheless, he was asked at the meeting by Mrs. Yang to build the prototype anyway.
Curtis, "a life-long Republican" at the time, claims that it was his initial belief that Feeney's interest was in trying to stop Democrats from using "such a program to steal an election". Curtis had assumed that Feeney, "wanted to be able to detect and prevent that if it occurred."
Upon delivery of the software design and documentation on CD to Mrs. Yang, Curtis again explained to her that it would be impossible to hide routines created to manipulate the vote if anybody would be able to inspect the precompiled source code.
Mrs. Yang then told him, "You don’t understand, in order to get the contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in South Florida." [emphasis in affidavit]
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What I find suspect is the following:
Why in the world would someone limit themselves to a program that would only run via touch screen? This makes no sense at all. Even most Republicans know how to use computers these days, and the extremely limited functionality of a touchscreen makes no sense when anyone could plug in a laptop anywhere, get access to an intranet via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and hack away at a voting database with a mouse, keypad, and the all the other functionality of a full computer.
It would not be that hard to write vote altering software. Even a freshman having taken a single programming class could probably do it. Why all this mystery and intrigue and secret programmer stuff in this article?
Yes, it would be virtually impossible to hide source code that altered votes. But guess what? You don't have to REVEAL source code to make a program work. Do you all get the source code for all of your Microsoft products? No. How about Netscape, or Adobe Acrobat Reader? No. How about Turbo Tax, or Symantec Anti-Virus? No. Because all you need are the compiled binaries. This stuff about hiding the source code intent is rubbish.
But guess what? Given enough time, even the BINARY code could be reverse engineered to figure out what the source code was.