More Roadblocks to More Verifiable and Honest Elections
PPP’s newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately…. Belief in the ACORN conspiracy theory is even higher among GOP partisans than the birther one, which only 42% of Republicans expressed agreement with on our national survey in September.
After issuing an oral ruling in May, 2nd Circuit Court Judge Joseph Cardoza sided with five plaintiffs to bar the state Office of Elections from using electronic voting machines or transmitting election results over the Internet or telephone lines. How the ruling might affect the 2010 elections was not immediately known. Chief Election Officer Kevin Cronin said his office was reviewing Cardoza’s decision and was not prepared to comment on specifics. However, in prepared testimony last week, Cronin says budget cuts and other fiscal restrictions by Gov. Linda Lingle have left the Elections Office with insufficient funds to “successfully execute” the 2010 elections, which include races for governor and Congress.
While many states are moving toward the use of optical-scan ballot systems, which create a paper trail for voters, 17 states and the District of Columbia will be using paperless systems to some extent in November, according to the Verified Voting Foundation. Voters in six states — Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina — will use entirely paperless machines. The majority of machines are paperless in seven other states — Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. And four states – Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi and Wisconsin — have only a small number of paperless systems in place; the majority of voters in these states will use systems that create a paper trail.
An Internet security expert says there's no way Internet voting can reliably replace paper ballots to ease the expense of election day. John Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin spoke one day after Lake County, Ind., sat out a transit referendum because county commissioners didn't have a spare half million dollars to fund the election. Professor Rubin says there are several problems with Internet voting. He says voters do not know if their votes have been counted, if the vote was private, if others cast votes in the name of someone else. He says it's just not possible to secure elections property. Rubin is author of the book "Brave New Ballot". He says there's no way to tell if a voting system has been hacked, if someone is watching the votes roll in.
On Nov. 3, hundreds of thousands of New Jersey voters will slip behind the voting-booth curtains and secretly decide which man they want to be governor for the next four years. They’ll tap the screen on the electronic voting machine and wait for the lighted "X." They’ll cast their vote and go on their way, content that they have exercised their most basic democratic right. But when the polls close and the votes are counted, can we trust the result? Sadly, we can’t be sure. Because New Jersey still doesn’t require its electronic voting machines to produce a paper record to verify their results. Paper-ballot proponents are trying to get the law changed. They charge that elections without paper-verified ballots are unconstitutional and illegal, but their lawsuit — Gusciora vs. McGreevey — has dragged on in state court for five years. A ruling is expected soon, but not soon enough for this year’s contests. Meanwhile, a plan to retrofit 10,000 electronic voting machines with paper printers was delayed by the Legislature this year for lack of funds. So for yet another major election, New Jersey will use the same unacceptable election policy: We’ll cross our fingers and hope nothing goes terribly wrong. Here’s why paperless electronic voting is a crap shoot: Voters hit a button and send a signal that the specially programmed computer must interpret. The computer then decides, for instance, is this a vote for Jon Corzine or Chris Christie or Chris Daggett? The vote is recorded, and when the polls close, the machine spits out the results. But there is no way to be certain that a computer glitch or malicious hacking hasn’t corrupted the outcome. We must take the computer’s word — even though most of us don’t have a clue how a computer works. Think about it: How many times have computer glitches messed up another part of your life? How many times has your laptop or personal computer been infected with a virus? Computers are not infallible, they break down. And even computers with the most sophisticated firewalls can be breached.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- The New Jersey Supreme Court has reinstated a ban on exit polls, surveys taken of people as they leave their voting places. It also has kept in place a ban on distributing leaflets or other materials within 100 feet of polling places. It said Wednesday prohibiting such activities will ensure voters feel no obstructions to casting their ballots.
(Washington, D.C.) – Rep. Rush Holt today reintroduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, legislation that would create a national standard of voting to help ensure that every vote is recorded and counted as intended. The bill would require paper ballot voting systems accompanied by accessible ballot marking devices and require routine random audits of electronic voting tallies. The bill has 75 cosponsors. “It is time we stop using elections as beta tests for unreliable electronic voting machines,” Holt said. “The ability to vote is the most important right as it is the right through which citizens secure all other rights. Voters shouldn’t have any doubts about whether their votes count and are counted. Congress should pass a national standard ensuring that all voters can record their votes on paper and requiring that in every election, randomly selected precincts be audited.” In every federal election that has taken place since the Help America Vote Act was enacted in 2003, citizen watchdog groups have gathered and reported information pertaining to voting machine failures. In the 2004 election, more than 4,800 voting machine were reported to the Election Incident Reporting System, from all but eight states. In the 2006 election, a sampling of voting machine problems gathered by election integrity groups and media reports revealed more than 1,000 such incidents from more than 300 counties in all but 14 states. And in 2008, the Our Vote Live hotline received reports of almost 2,000 voting machine problems in all but 12 states.
NARRATOR: As dusk fell on election night, one official noticed something very strange: a sign that the heart of America’s democracy was in danger. In Volusia County, Florida, an election computer counted Al Gore’s totals backwards. He had negative votes. DEANIE LOWE: It was showing a minus sign in front of the votes that it had subtracted from Gore. I mean, it wasn’t like it was trying to hide it. It says there’s minus-16,022 votes here. NARRATOR: How could a computer that is supposed to protect the votes of you and me count backwards to give a candidate negative votes? Either it was an error or someone had tried to rig the election. ...
... And the public records, I can’t emphasize enough how important they are. In San Diego in the June 6 election, the event log, the audit log that was obtained by a citizen named Bruce Sims, shows the voting machine dialing out to Diebold at 9:31 p.m. during the count on election night. These are the kinds of things that show up. AMY GOODMAN: Wait, explain that. BEV HARRIS: Yes. It’s difficult to explain. AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, the machine dialing out? BEV HARRIS: The machine dialed out and made a remote connection to Diebold at 9:31 p.m. during the count. And when you say, “Explain it,” I don’t know of any legitimate explanation.
MR. CURTIS: Oh, the exit polls should not be significantly different than the vote. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: And if they were, you would conclude what? MR. CURTIS: I would conclude someone is playing with the vote. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Not with the exit polls? MR. CURTIS: That's possible, too. Something is definitely skewed. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Something is definitely skewed in one or the other? MR. CURTIS: Right. To select which one, you'd have to see where the problem is. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Let me ask you one further question. Assuming for the moment that such software -- that's what called it, such software to rig a vote was used in one or more machines in Ohio or in Florida, could you, today, detect that if you' looked at the source code? MR. CURTIS: If you get the machines and they have not been patched yet -- once they get in and touch them, anything can happen. You could also set timers to do that, but then you'd see the timers. Then you'd have to take those machines, decompile them, which I couldn't do, but possibly Microsoft, an MIT something could do, you might, you might be able to see it. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: You might? MR. CURTIS: It depends on how good they are at destroying what they had. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Destroying what they had by tampering with the machine afterwards or by programming them to destroy instructions in the first place? MR. CURTIS: Right. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Either or both? MR. CURTIS: Either or both. You didn't actually see what's in there, so you don't know if the code is running as a single executable or running in various modules. If it's running in modules, you can make the code actually eat itself.
On November 22, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) announced that they had sent letters to voting officials in eight counties around the country urging them to allow independent testing of their electronic voting machines. The two groups were among the 60 organizations in the Election Protection Coalition (EPC), which ran an Election Day hotline and the web-based Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS). The Coalition received 40,002 reports of election irregularities, including 2,242 incidents concerning voting machines. Click here for an analysis of some of these incidents by a team of computer scientists. (This link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.) According to EFF and VFF, the most serious problems were reported in Mahoning and Franklin counties in Ohio, Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida in Florida, Mercer and Philadelphia counties in Pennsylvania, Harris County in Texas and Bernalillo County in New Mexico. Florida and Ohio were the big swing states that gave the election to George Bush. While any form of voting fraud or interference is bad, a malfunctioning voting machine can prevent hundreds of people from casting their votes -- or change the votes of those who do. Most computer experts who have studied electronic voting do not consider the systems used in the 2004 election to be secure or reliable. The state of California has successfully sued Diebold, the manufacturer of one touchscreen voting machine over this very issue, after machines that were purchased for California turned out to be unusable. According to programmers and engineers who have investigated the security of electronic voting machines, touchscreen machines can be set up with a default choice for any candidate that would not be visible to the voters. (The Black Box Voting site explains some of the ways in which this can be done.) Their votes would automatically be cast for the default candidate -- such as George Bush -- unless they could successfully override the hidden default choice programmed into the computer. For example, if a voter deliberately chose not to vote for any Presidential candidate, the touchscreen voting machine would count the non-vote as a default vote for George Bush. Reports from voters in Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, and elsewhere (especially other swing states) documented that many touchscreen voting machines appeared to have been set with a "Default to Bush". The "Default to Bush" could be changed only if a voter successfully selected another candidate. But it appears that in many cases the voters did not successfully override the "Default to Bush," in some cases because they did not notice the problem and in other cases because it was difficult or impossible to get the machine to accept another candidate. This was a major problem in New Mexico and Mahoning and Franklin counties in Ohio. There were also problems with "Default to Bush in the "Big Three" Florida counties: Palm Beach, Broward and Dade, and elsewhere in Pinellas, Hillsboro, Pasco, Sarasota and Lee. In fact, Florida was the state with the most reported incidents in the Election Protection Coalition/Election Incident Reporting System database. (There are state-by-state links below.) Election officials had to replace some of the machines in Mahoning County (Ohio) after repeated attempts by technicians to "recalibrate" them failed. This also happened in Florida and New Mexico. The EIRS system also identified patterns of default away from Kerry and the minor party candidates elsewhere. The same pattern was also found in some U.S. Senate races, including the race in Florida, which elected Republican Mel Martinez over Betty Castor. ... Computer security experts and engineers from the International Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) found evidence that the manufacturer's technicians or representatives have remote access to some vote machines while they are in service, and can change defaults and other settings remotely. Furthermore, some of the voting machine manufacturers monitored the election results remotely on election day. ... Many computer systems are designed so that service technicians are able to make changes to the software through a remote connection, but this is not an appropriate feature for a voting machine. The actual security of electronic voting machines is difficult for the general public to determine. Voting machine designs are certified by two highly-secretive consulting firms which have refused to disclose their procedures for testing machines for accuracy and security. Even when they certify a machine, the certificate applies only to the design of the hardware and software -- any individual machine may be altered before an election.
The fallibility of such systems are well known by now. They are hackable as well as prone to error, and if they were hacked, there is no way to trace by whom because there is intentionally no evidence (except by statistical analysis, hardly a smoking gun) and no way to verify without a paper trail, that a wrong result had been given or that it would not have occurred that way anyway. But 'painful' recounts of close elections such as Florida in 2000 and an even closer Minnesota Senatorial election of 2008 can now be simply waved away where these machines dominate or have influence. Nothing to recount. Take the machines word for it because that is all you will ever get, and how it works is as classified as any Honduran death squad's relations to the US government could ever be. But there is another aspect of this which is clearly criminal. Though I would state that anyone who is responsible for having built or ordered such machines which INTENTIONALLY produce results, election results for who controls the government no less, which cannot be independently verified have committed crimes against the state or treason, many would consider that an extreme position. Get over it. Mistakes happen all the time. There is no such thing as an error free election anyway so what is the big deal if these new machines are not perfect? That is the price of progress! Heck, it can even be funny too.
Literally we now have made stealing elections in plain sight no longer a crime. Though we have many many FBI and other officials who will state otherwise, that such actions are still in fact illegal, how can that stand when those running the elections are purposely making it possible for such things to be done, to hide the evidence that any election was indeed 'stolen' and such future investigations, if any, will be hampered by a preemptive 'shredding' of any evidence of such a crime? And even if one were to state that such things are merely 'bad judgment' such as creating a system of confinement or 'interrogation' based upon torture, sexual assaults, raping of relatives or threats to do so to elicit cooperation, then how can they explain away a doubling or tripling of doubt in the public of the fairness in their elections, that the person 'elected' to represent them actually won the most votes honestly? The last poll I saw, more than 30% of Americans doubted the fairness of the electoral process, in a large part due to unchallengeable, unverifiable electronic voting machines. That politicians and electoral boards can flagrantly put in systems of voting counting that completely and provably severely diminish the public's faith in the honestly of their elections shows such laws against tampering clearly do not extend to giving people valid reasons to not wish to vote at all. Why vote if you don't think it will be counted fairly? And if that is the intent after all, you have a completely legal way to disenfranchise millions simply because of 'bureaucratic bad decisions' which can create the exact same conditions as riggable voting machines without actually having to rig them except when one thinks simply turning people off to the idea of voting has not worked well enough this particular time. Once the evidence came out that such machines could be rigged, leaving them in place and not recalling them should have been prosecuted for the crime that it was, conspiracy to continue to make possible the rigging and theft of an election. And beyond that, even if such machines are not 'provable' to be 'hackable' simply putting in systems which do not have or severely diminish the public's confidence in the honesty of their elections, that alone should make it a crime. For that which undermines the public's desire to vote because such elections are purposely being held up as possibly being or having been tainted, with evidence quite enough to back that suspicion up, should itself be enough to make it a crime, as conspiring to suppress legitimate voters from having reason to vote.
In the 6 months since my last post, Pulling the trigger on the Anti-Democracy gun, nothing much has changed in giving most people reasons to think American elections are completely honest and fair. As with the years before that, when Congressman Holt put forward bills requiring the elimination of unverifiable electronic election machines, such notions and bills died along the way or were held up in committee.
Still, we have come a long way since November 2000 when most people were first given reason to have suspicions or were even made aware that such machines and vulnerabilities were even present in the election process. Many states since have put forth laws requiring a paper trail, yet nothing has been done on the federal level to give Americans as a whole, assurances that their elections are not being rigged by the companies making the machines, or anyone else.
As I mentioned in the last post, I don't think you have to actually rig an election's voting machines to rig an election. Even casting doubt on the veracity of the process to the extent that a significant number of people will stay home and not bother to vote at all I believe can be a valid method to sway elections. It may not rise to the level of outright voter intimidation which was used in Ohio in 2004, but it is subversive to any notion of democracy as well.
The worst danger after the public became aware that their election processes could be manipulated was a push to ban exit polling. If the election results and the exit polls did not match, and a recount was not possible or could be embarrassing, a good number of Congressmen and the press floated the idea of simply getting rid of any independent verification or checks of unverifiable results from electronic machines which produced no backup methods except their own accounts. Of these producing externally unverifiable results, many have repeatedly and demonstrably have shown they could be easily rigged.
It is nice to think we have moved away from that, that exit polling would continue to be an indication of fraud, but that is hardly the case. The fact that following the evidence of massive fraud in the Florida 2000 election, the major news networks were suddenly convinced to suspend their independent and thus cross verifiable exit polling, and pool their results into one common set of poll numbers was unconscionably stupid if not criminally suspect. This led to the simple fact that there were no exit polls given at all because they were declared tainted or suspect. Without creating a new law expressly forbidding exit polling from being conducted, the exact same outcome was achieved without the embarrassment of looking like a country which more or less openly rigs, or attempts to rig its own elections.
Anyone who has studied elections of other countries, close, disputed, "colored" revolutions, and so forth, as I have may agree it is a good rule of thumb that an opposition party must win big to win at all. How big depends on the country, whether or not the US or news organizations will quickly accept your results, how quickly you can dampen street demonstrations, and how committed or desperate the demonstrators are, and the amount of funds available to keep them fed, as well as funds to provide sanitation services for thousands of people constantly in the streets. Obviously, getting enough people to have recounts is very expensive, as well as the recount process or revotes.
A similar knee-jerk reaction to the close votes in Congressional districts in 2008 led to calls to ban recounts. As some have argued bizarrely in Obama's decision making in regards to the Afghanistan morass, that it is better to make a quick decision than the right one, they have put forth that a quick count of votes is more important than an accurate one. No "as long as it takes," just a repeat of "I am ahead now, so please stop counting now." And if that doesn't work, appeal, appeal, appeal. All of this is hardly conducive to getting people to wish to vote, but then how much of what the government does these days actually makes people feel their votes count, if not that they literally were not counted at all?
In regards to the "must win big to win at all" rule I mentioned for challengers, it was fairly clear that Obama did succeed in meeting that threshold. Over 9 million votes, and more than enough states to have many states and even many combinations of states excluded completely if tainted or "flipped" by fraud, and still he would have won. Yet a majority of Republicans supposedly, according to one poll, think he might have won by fraud, or that, by that logic, he did not really win the Presidency at all.
That fits neatly in with the many other competing memes that he is not the legitimate President of the United States because: a) he was not born in this country; b) his father was not an American; c) he is or may be the Anti-Christ; d) he is a time-travelling Nazi Moslem Manchurian Candidate;
... and other similar but less plausible theories. Such a majority response to that question may be also an answer given to balance or get back for the many who claimed that George Bush did not legitimately win the 2000 and/or the 2004 elections. Given that many might use the opportunity to vent frustration about that when asked the same exact question of Obama's victory's legitimacy, one could think such an answer might not be a 100% reflection of what they really think.
However, even if they really truly think that, despite the evidence that Obama won by a substancial margin, it is not even surprising. It is doubtful that many who think that Obama did not win would be necessarily swayed by greater election safeguards, recounts, and independent verifications or outside checks or monitoring, but that does not excuse the fact that in many states and in many cases there are (and CAN BE by design) none at all. We do not invite international observers to monitor our elections, despite the fact that in many instances some fail to live up to international standards. In too many instances, there is rampant evidence of attempted rigging, and often non-existent investigations.
And that is only to speak of outright clearly defined election crimes. Strategic malfunctioning of machines, longer lines in some districts over others, uneven placement of machines of varying reliability in successfully recording votes, these are just a few of the harder to prove methods which are allegedly used. But in my mind, none of these is so open, so flagrant, as to continually allow such elections with tainted and suspect machines and methods to go forward year after year, election cycle after election cycle. People are getting rich off these machines, others possibly by hacking or rigging them, and "our public servants" are continuing to place these slot machine (for them) versions of voting machines in place of ones which would accurately record votes with verifiability to their results to actually being provably demonstratively correct. And doing by doing so, continuing to buy them, win or lose for them, is always a win for the companies making them, and always losing more credibility in the results, and losing reasons for people to vote in the first place the more these abominations to democracy spread and are allowed to potentially poison the results, and absolutely, to poison their credibility.
Voteprotect.org has a good listing of which states have more verifiable counting methods in place, yet even in paper-trail verifiable states like my own, there can be legislation pending to overturn court decisions requiring paper trails or forbidding results from traveling over the Internet. My own state legislature has begun considering reversing course now, so even the "good" or "more verifiable results" states on Voteprotect's map may not be that way next week, or in the next election cycle. And attempts at banning exit polling are always right around the corner too, not to mention the fact that such polls, when conducted now, are not always publicly released. It is said the price of democracy is eternal vigilance. To what degree can we say our current legislators or electors try to live by that motto?
Sorry, we would like to have open, fair, and completely verifiable elections, but you know, they are just so dang expensive...
Below is map of current states which have verified voting and/or mandatory checks (green yes, red no, yellow partial)... (Image via Verifiedvoting.org)
“Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.”
They landed on a wild but narrow scene, Where few but Nature's footsteps yet had been; Prepared their arms, and with that gloomy eye, Stern and sustained, of man's extremity, When Hope is gone, nor Glory's self remains To cheer resistance against death or chains,-- They stood, the three, as the three hundred stood Who dyed Thermopylae with holy blood. But, ah! how different! 'tis the cause makes all, Degrades or hallows courage in its fall. O'er them no fame, eternal and intense, Blazed through the clouds of Death and beckoned hence; No grateful country, smiling through her tears, Begun the praises of a thousand years; No nation's eyes would on their tomb be bent, No heroes envy them their monument; However boldly their warm blood was spilt, Their Life was shame, their Epitaph was guilt. And this they knew and felt, at least the one, The leader of the band he had undone; Who, born perchance for better things, had set His life upon a cast which lingered yet: But now the die was to be thrown, and all The chances were in favour of his fall: And such a fall! But still he faced the shock, Obdurate as a portion of the rock Whereon he stood, and fixed his levelled gun, Dark as a sullen cloud before the sun.
'Every government assumes deeds and misdeeds of the past," writes Hannah Arendt in Eichmann and the Holocaust. "It means hardly more, generally speaking, than that every generation, by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the sins of the fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors." ... In short, by acknowledging the crimes while refusing to pursue the criminals he has promised to rectify America's grim recent history without ever reckoning with it. Events over the past few weeks have shown just how ethically and politically untenable this situation really is. His first term looks as though it may be consumed by these issues anyway - and not on his terms. Having released the torture memos, Obama then reversed his position on releasing photographs that accompanied them on the grounds that to do so would endanger US troops. Having opposed trying Guantánamo prisoners under military commissions, he now supports it. ... This should leave us in no doubt as to where the ultimate responsibility lies. "Where all are guilty, no one is," wrote Arendt. "Confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing." ... But in the absence of moral leadership the national conversation has morphed seamlessly from human rights to national security, where the issue of torture and detention is debated not on the grounds of morality but efficacy. With the former vice-president Dick Cheney leading the charge, the right has managed to mount a spirited defence of torture in which America's rights as the potential, abstract victim of terrorism supersede detainees' rights as actual victims of torture. ... Conventions are devised precisely to set boundaries in moments of crisis - in periods of relative harmony there is not much need to refer to them. The Geneva convention, in particular, was devised to establish the rules of engagement during times of war. If the very fact of being at war is reason enough to discard it, then it has no meaning. And finally, if showing the world what America has done would inflame anti-American sentiment then maybe America shouldn't do it in the first place.
Whatever we were, we have degenerated into a nation that finds glory in deploying the most advanced high-tech, high-explosive weaponry against some of the world’s poorest people, that justifies killing women and children, even by the dozens, even if by doing so it manages to kill one alleged “enemy” fighter. A nation that exalts remote-controlled robot drone aircraft that can attack targets in order to avoid risking soldiers’ lives, even though by doing so, it is predictable that many, many innocent people will be killed. A nation that is proud to have developed weapons of mass slaughter, from shells laden with phosphorus that burns to death, indiscriminately, those who are contacted by the splattered chemical to elaborately baroque anti-personnel fragmentation bombs that spread cute little colored objects designed to look like everything from toys to food packages, but which upon contact explode, releasing whirling metal or plastic fleschettes which shred human flesh on contact. ... But we Americans are irrational, panicky cowards. We worry that the terrorists will come and get us. My guess is that a lot of this is mass guilt. Whether people admit it or not, I suspect most people know on some subconscious level that we Americans have been living off the rest of the world’s misery. We know we’re stealing oil from the people of nations like Iraq and Nigeria. We know that our toys, our electronics devices and our fancy name-brand running shoes are being made by people who cannot afford to buy them themselves. We know that for decades we have been overthrowing elected governments and propping up fascist dictatorships to keep the exploitation going so that we can buy cheap goods and extract cheap resources (As Marine Medal of Honor hero Smedley Butler long ago admitted, [Reference is to "War is a Racket", see Wikipedia.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler] that’s what our “heroes” in uniform are generally doing overseas). ...
After granting the ‘untouchable’ status to all involved in this shameful chapter in our nation’s dangerous downward slide, he now refuses to release the photos, the incriminating evidence, and is doing so by using the exact same justification used repeatedly by his predecessors: ‘Their release would endanger the troops,’ as in ‘the revelation on NSA would endanger our national security’ and ‘stronger whistleblower laws would endanger our intelligence agencies’ and so on and so forth. Not only that, he goes even further to shove his secrecy promotion down other nations’ courts throat. In the case of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and a legal resident in Britain who was held and tortured in Guantanamo from 2004 to 2009, and filed lawsuits in the British courts to have the evidence of his torture released, Mr. Obama’s position has been to threaten the British Government in order to conceal all facts and related evidence. This case involves the brutal torture and so very ‘extraordinary’ rendition practices of the previous administration, the same practices that ‘in words’ were strongly condemned by the President during his candidacy. Today he and his administration unapologetically maintain the same Bush Administration position on extraordinary rendition, torture, and related secrecy to cover up. Here is Ben Wizner’s, the attorney who argued the case for the ACLU, response “We are shocked and deeply disappointed that the Justice Department has chosen to continue the Bush administration’s practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition and torture. This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course.” Yes indeed, President Obama has chosen to protect and support the course involving torture, rendition and the abuse of secrecy to cover them all up. ... The report also includes the disagreement over the exact number of ‘Civilian Casualties’ in Afghanistan by our military airstrike: >>“Government officials have accepted handwritten lists compiled by the villagers of 147 dead civilians. An independent Afghan human rights group said it had accounts from interviews of 117 dead. American officials say that even 100 is an exaggeration but have yet to issue their own count.”<< Does it really matter - the difference between 147 and 117 or just 100 when it comes to children, grandmothers…innocent lives lost in a war with no well-defined objectives or plans? If for some it indeed does matter, then here is a more specific and detailed report: >>“A copy of the government's list of the names, ages and father's names of each of the 140 dead was obtained by Reuters earlier this week. It shows that 93 of those killed were children -- the youngest eight days old -- and only 22 were adult males."<< Maybe releasing the photographs of the nameless unrepresented victims of these airstrikes should be as important as those of torture. Because, from what I see, they and their loss of lives have been reduced to some petty number to fight about.
When doctors started reporting that some of the victims of the US bombing of several villages in Farah Province last week—an attack that left between 117 and 147 civilians dead, most of them women and children—were turning up with deep, sharp burns on their body that “looked like” they’d been caused by white phosphorus, the US military was quick to deny responsibility. US officials—who initially denied that the US had even bombed any civilians in Farah despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including massive craters where houses had once stood—insisted that “no white phosphorus” was used in the attacks on several villages in Farah. Official military policy on the use of white phosphorus is to only use the high-intensity, self-igniting material as a smoke screen during battles or to illuminate targets, not as a weapon against human beings—even enemy troops. ... C.J. Chivers, writing in the May 14 edition of the NY Times, in an article headlined “Korangal Valley Memo: In Bleak Afghan Outpost, Troops Slog On,” wrote of how an embattled US Army unit in the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan, had come under attack following a morning memorial service for one of their members, Pfc. Richard Dewater, who had been killed the day before by a mine. Chivers wrote: >>After the ceremony, the violence resumed. The soldiers detected a Taliban spotter on a ridge, which was pounded by mortars and then white phosphorus rounds from a 155 millimeter howitzer. What did the insurgents do? When the smoldering subsided, they attacked from exactly the same spot, shelling the outpost with 30-millimeter grenades and putting the soldiers on notice that the last display of firepower had little effect. The Americans escalated. An A-10 aircraft made several gun runs, then dropped a 500-pound bomb.<< It is clear from this passage that the military’s use of the phosphorus shells had not been for the officially sanctioned purpose of providing cover. The soldiers had no intention of climbing that hill to attack the spotter on the ridge themselves. They were trying to destroy him with shells and bombs. In fact, the last thing they would have wanted to do was provide the spotter with a smoke cover, which would have helped him escape, and which also would have hidden him from the planes which had been called in to make gun runs at his position. Nor was this a case of illuminating the target. The incident, as Chivers reports, took place in daylight.
At the week-end Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, a Fellow with the Center for a New American Security, published an op-ed in the The New York Times going one step further. Their basic argument: ‘End the drone attacks’. Why? One of their arguments is pretty compelling (irrespective of the validity of the data): >>While violent extremists may be unpopular, for a frightened population they seem less ominous than a faceless enemy that wages war from afar and often kills more civilians than militants. Press reports suggest that over the last three years drone strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent — hardly “precision.”<< Kilcullen and Exum suggest: >>Expanding or even just continuing the drone war is a mistake. In fact, it would be in our best interests, and those of the Pakistani people, to declare a moratorium on drone strikes into Pakistan. A moratorium on drone strikes in Pakistan? Surely a step too far? The authors readily accept that: The appeal of drone attacks for policy makers is clear. For one thing, their effects are measurable. Military commanders and intelligence officials point out that drone attacks have disrupted terrorist networks in Pakistan, killing key leaders and hampering operations. Drone attacks create a sense of insecurity among militants and constrain their interactions with suspected informers. And, because they kill remotely, drone strikes avoid American casualties.<< But, they argue, on balance the costs outweigh these benefits for 3 reasons: >>First, the drone war has created a siege mentality among Pakistani civilians. This is similar to what happened in Somalia in 2005 and 2006, when similar strikes were employed against the forces of the Union of Islamic Courts. While the strikes did kill individual militants who were the targets, public anger over the American show of force solidified the power of extremists.<<
"We need to call off the drones," testified David Kilcullen, who masterminded Iraq's surge for Gen. David Petraeus, to Congress last month. One problem is a dismal precision rate—Pakistani officials claim that as many as 50 civilians die in Predator attacks for every insurgent killed. "The moral requirement is a commitment ... not to strike unless you're sure who you're hitting," says Just and Unjust Wars author Michael Walzer. Peter Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know, also argues that drones "might fatally undermine U.S. efforts" as people on the ground feel besieged. A poll last year bore this out: 52 percent of Pakistanis blame the U.S. for rising violence; only 8 percent blame Al Qaeda. But the argument is falling on deaf ears: President Obama recently increased Predator flights, and the CIA says attacks are up 30 percent from last year.
Imagine a gun or bullets that could automatically decide who to kill. One could point it in the general vicinity of the person who one intended to kill, but the choice of who to kill would ultimately be left to the machine. Sometimes it would lock on and kill the one who it was supposed to, sometimes it would hit someone else, a random pedestrian, woman, child, elderly person, baby in a carriage, the ultimate decision would be not a person's but a machine's.
Now imagine the consequences. No police officer or person using such a device could be held liable for shooting an innocent bystander. Such distinctions between innocent and guilty, victim or criminal, they would be ultimately irrelevant. No one would or could be held liable if the machine hit the wrong target, and no crime or mistake would be made, so long as it fell within acceptable parameters of suggested probability error. And if it went beyond those parameters killing far more innocent bystanders than intended criminals or other targets, still, whose fault could it be? If such deaths, possibly huge numbers of people, were not crimes but merely 'errors', flaws in an otherwise laudable system of unaccountability, freeing those whose consciences would otherwise be burdened by guilt or feelings of remorse of killing an innocent person from losing any sleep over what they do, or who they killed or maimed unnecessarily, would this be not a good thing? They could increase exponentially their 'targets' without fear of ever being held accountable for 'mistakes' since they would not be 'their' mistakes at all, just another unaccountable untraceable part of 'the system'.
The blame, if any, for these 'errors' which are not crimes anymore, not even misjudgments, certainly nothing to lose any sleep over, would be with those who made the police or other military group to carry and use such weapons of unaccountability instead of regular, judgment-required ones in which someone would ultimately held responsible for their misuse or 'wrongful deaths'. But then such people would be doing so only because they were told to do so by the authorities, elected representatives of the legitimate government, if the government is elected or legitimate. Thus the blame would not be on them either, nor even the company which invented or manufactured them, nor even on the person who invented them. They were simply making a proposal, it was not their fault the government decided to purchase them. And if they did not invent or make them and the government would have found them useful, they might have bought them instead from a competitor.
In such a system of shared blame or fault, clearly no one would ever be held responsible for any 'accidental' deaths because, literally, there would not be any definition of such a thing. Such things will happen, it is to be expected, and the benefits of their use are thought to outweigh the costs, especially since now if all are responsible, or a large enough section of society are guilty, then no one is.
We actually have instituted nationally a system of such fallible systems which can 'accidentally' destroy, or create the exact opposite of what they are supposedly implemented to correct, fairness and the public good. Paper-trail-less voting machines. Machines that can be hacked, can be used to totally subvert democracy or any election, and it is all legal. Such untraceable and unaccountable errors which can put a wrongly decided 'victor' into office more often than the Supreme Court can, are simply not anyone's fault. Not those who designed the machines, not those who purchased them, not those who authorized the funds to purchase them.
The fallibility of such systems are well known by now. They are hackable as well as prone to error, and if they were hacked, there is no way to trace by whom because there is intentionally no evidence (except by statistical analysis, hardly a smoking gun) and no way to verify without a paper trail, that a wrong result had been given or that it would not have occurred that way anyway. But 'painful' recounts of close elections such as Florida in 2000 and an even closer Minnesota Senatorial election of 2008 can now be simply waved away where these machines dominate or have influence. Nothing to recount. Take the machines word for it because that is all you will ever get, and how it works is as classified as any Honduran death squad's relations to the US government could ever be.
But there is another aspect of this which is clearly criminal. Though I would state that anyone who is responsible for having built or ordered such machines which INTENTIONALLY produce results, election results for who controls the government no less, which cannot be independently verified have committed crimes against the state or treason, many would consider that an extreme position. Get over it. Mistakes happen all the time. There is no such thing as an error free election anyway so what is the big deal if these new machines are not perfect? That is the price of progress! Heck, it can even be funny too.
Literally we now have made stealing elections in plain sight no longer a crime. Though we have many many FBI and other officials who will state otherwise, that such actions are still in fact illegal, how can that stand when those running the elections are purposely making it possible for such things to be done, to hide the evidence that any election was indeed 'stolen' and such future investigations, if any, will be hampered by a preemptive 'shredding' of any evidence of such a crime?
And even if one were to state that such things are merely 'bad judgment' such as creating a system of confinement or 'interrogation' based upon torture, sexual assaults, raping of relatives or threats to do so to elicit cooperation, then how can they explain away a doubling or tripling of doubt in the public of the fairness in their elections, that the person 'elected' to represent them actually won the most votes honestly? The last poll I saw, more than 30% of Americans doubted the fairness of the electoral process, in a large part due to unchallengeable, unverifiable electronic voting machines. That politicians and electoral boards can flagrantly put in systems of voting counting that completely and provably severely diminish the public's faith in the honestly of their elections shows such laws against tampering clearly do not extend to giving people valid reasons to not wish to vote at all. Why vote if you don't think it will be counted fairly? And if that is the intent after all, you have a completely legal way to disenfranchise millions simply because of 'bureaucratic bad decisions' which can create the exact same conditions as riggable voting machines without actually having to rig them except when one thinks simply turning people off to the idea of voting has not worked well enough this particular time.
Once the evidence came out that such machines could be rigged, leaving them in place and not recalling them should have been prosecuted for the crime that it was, conspiracy to continue to make possible the rigging and theft of an election. And beyond that, even if such machines are not 'provable' to be 'hackable' simply putting in systems which do not have or severely diminish the public's confidence in the honesty of their elections, that alone should make it a crime. For that which undermines the public's desire to vote because such elections are purposely being held up as possibly being or having been tainted, with evidence quite enough to back that suspicion up, should itself be enough to make it a crime, as conspiring to suppress legitimate voters from having reason to vote.
One would think that the Democrats, more than the Republicans who would benefit from such machines, would act to correct this and put in place laws that would ban machines which produce vote counts not verifiable by manual recounts after the fact, but that does not seem to be the case. Corruption in both parties by corporate interests may indeed stall action on this long enough for those who make and profit from this ability to steal elections to remain in business to once again be in a position to keep or expand such electronic systems, which not only may be hackable, may be able to be illegally used to benefit one candidate over another, but also to corrode the public's faith, shaky as that is, that their government is not completely corrupt already.
When I voted in 2008, it was on a machine that counted the votes electronically, yet it was required to produce a printed ballot as well which could be used in the event of a recall to verify the computers tabulation. Such machines provide all the benefits of electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper trail except one, they cannot be used to steal an election. States that purchased, never mind those that continue to purchase, such machines that do not produce a paper trail can claim that they do not have funds to purchase new machines, and going back to older more verifiable systems is not practical. That is to admit that it is too expensive to have a system of voting that does not without due reason corrode the public's image of the honesty of their government and its elections, and that a system with a built-in potential to be made to give the completely wrong result than what it was intended to do, (if it indeed was ever intended to produce results accurate to how people voted,) is not valuable enough, or that completely verifiable honest machines are not where the most profits, kickbacks, contracts, or bribes, are to be found. Is that not after all, how government contracts for things like voting machines or anything else are awarded?
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When I first thought of writing this a year ago, I had elections primarily in mind. However the US governments use of drones in 'targeted killings' (read assassinations) in Afghanistan and Pakistan show that the idea of unaccountability in the use of 'smart' weapons that I wanted to start with, have a much more real life meaning than in how it relates to election theft, real, potential, or the threat of which.
Never mind the overwhelming disproportionate killing of innocent civilians (I know, there are no 'innocent' people over there, or the argument which carries the day stating that), more than 50 men, women, children (mostly women and children) killed for every 'terrorist' killed, it is wholly and completely being done in defiance of international law, treaties, and common sense.
Before Christianity meant those who go to church regularly in the United States are 50% more likely to approve of torturing people than those who do not, it meant a religion based upon the principle of reciprocity. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Beyond 'American Exceptionalism' or that we are killing people in forwarding 'God's plan', what we are doing by such assassinations is completely what we have determined only the United States is justified in doing.
We have been operating completely outside of international law so long now that many to most Americans cannot even recognize that there is or ever was such a thing, or that if there was, that it should not apply to us or our nations actions equally as to others.
The 'justification' for these killings, some in countries we are not even at war with, and doing it in an 'extrajudicial' (read 'completely illegal') way, is that if we asked the governments in which whose territory where they are located to hand them over to us for extradition, that they would be unable or unwilling to do so. This also is limited by the fact that we often do not have any or enough evidence to justify them complying, other than simply handing over anyone we ask them to to be held without trail on evidence we do not have or are not willing to divulge. In such instances as to demand complete trust that we are not acting in error, bad faith, or in haste, in complete contradiction by the way to how we have acted in the past in this manner and are continuing to do so, we do not think such governments would comply with such requests. So we simply kill them all. In their houses, in their churches or mosques, wherever we think they are regardless of who may be around them at the time so long as we say we did it at a time when we think we killed the fewest numbers of innocent people possible, or a least tried to that effect or made some effort in that direction.
The mirror that the American government cannot see in yet is visible to the entire world outside of the United States is 'What if other nations tried to do that as well? Are we the only nation that has people they want, but that they are in countries unwilling to turn them over to them?”
The United States has many people living in it that China wants. We even house the leader of the Falon Gong movement which China not only considers a subversive, but the head of a movement who considers himself Jesus Christ reincarnated, has tens of millions of followers, and is considered a threat to their governments existence. Far more so than some Afghan or Pakistani holed up in some remote village we may or may not have any clear evidence against, certainly not with means to destabilize or overthrow our government. What would we think if China were to wipe out his US residence, killing everyone in the building, could they be that precise, whether he were home at the time or not being unimportant, but its OK because they tried at the time of day to kill the least amount of 'innocent' people. They could even make the case as we have, that his servants, followers, lawyers, in his house at the time, not to mention his family could hardly be described as wholly 'innocent' anyway. Not when after torturing a chauffeur for years after holding him without charges, and again torturing him (Enhanced Interrogation ® TM, Newspeak aside) for years, convicted him of terrorism by virtue of being the driver of a terrorist. How innocent can a maid or housekeeper really be? Of course they have it coming to them.
The British have given asylum to at least one Russian billionaire who has called for the overthrow of the Russian government. Russia very much would like to extradite him so they can charge him for things they say he has done in the past, and I am sure they take him admitting in interviews that he would like to see the government of his country overthrown and is willing to pay to have it done, to be somewhat, at least to the Russians, a criminal with evidence or reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing which is documentable. In Afghanistan or Pakistan the US has supposedly wiped out at least one small village to kill one person, yet we tell the world to trust us, a bad person may have been there, or at least we have some evidence he may have been bad but its classified. Imagine Russia blowing up the billionaire's English estate because they thought that the billionaire was there, or might have been, or could have been, but its OK because they only took out that one home, and those working for him who were helping him, or could have been, and are equally guilty or are 'regrettable accidental deaths'.
As these two reverse mirror examples of how the US or British would react or think if anyone dared to do anything remotely similar to them to what the US is doing week after week in violation of international law: war crimes, and crimes of aggression, (but since Obama is better than Bush, the world is just supposed to give it a pass), both of those examples are of people from those countries who fled and are charged with real crimes.
Image if China or Cuba or North Korea was to say to the US government, "there are Americans living in your country (America) who may be terrorists based on secret evidence we have but we can't tell you about. Please hand them over to us so we can torture them or ship them off to a third country where we can have them tortured for us, yet escape accountability for the torturing of them. If the torture, I am sorry, the interrogation of these Americans, who we admit could quite very well be perfectly innocent, but that is hardly the point, is successful, then we will have confessions from them to justify our suspicions about them, even if completely unfounded. And if you do not comply, you really should not be surprised if we level their villages or their homes instead."
And that is how we treat Pakistan, a democracy,(as if can remain one long if we keep doing this to its people, showing them often that their own government cannot protect them from us.) and supposedly is our ally. The rest of the world can and does expect even harsher requests of them. And all of this is for what? Our own generals and security experts say such attacks make us far more enemies than they kill, not to mention hundreds and hundreds of women and children dead, and many more crippled, disfigured, and will suffer for the rest of their lives. And this is to give President Obama his street cred with the CIA? To prove that the US can be every bit as barbaric as any dictator, warlord, or religious maniac? If that is so, they bravo, mission accomplished. Now is a good time to stop then.
5/25/09 - Rep. Ron Paul Speech- Torturing the Rule of Law
Torturing the Rule of Law, by Ron Paul, 5/25/09 (See original page by clicking here)
While Congress is sidetracked by who said what to whom and when, our nation finds itself at a crossroads on the issue of torture. We are at a point where we must decide if torture is something that is now going to be considered justifiable and reasonable under certain circumstances, or is America better than that?
“Enhanced interrogation” as some prefer to call it, has been used throughout history, usually by despotic governments, to cruelly punish or to extract politically useful statements from prisoners. Governments that do these things invariably bring shame on themselves.
In addition, information obtained under duress is incredibly unreliable, which is why it is not admissible in a court of law. Legally valid information is freely given by someone of sound mind and body. Someone in excruciating pain, or brought close to death by some horrific procedure is not in any state of mind to give reliable information, and certainly no actions should be taken solely based upon it.
For these reasons, it is illegal in the United States and illegal under Geneva Conventions. Simulated drowning, or water boarding, was not considered an exception to these laws when it was used by the Japanese against US soldiers in World War II. In fact, we hanged Japanese officers for war crimes in 1945 for water boarding. Its status as torture has already been decided by our own courts under this precedent. To look the other way now, when Americans do it, is the very definition of hypocrisy.
Matthew Alexander, author of “How to Break a Terrorist” used non-torture methods of interrogation in Iraq with much success. In fact, one cooperative jihadist told him, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate." Alexander also found that in Iraq “the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Alexander’s experiences unequivocally demonstrate that losing our humanity is not beneficial or necessary in fighting terror.
The current administration has reversed its position on releasing evidence of torture by the previous administration and we must ask why. A great and moral nation would have the courage to face the truth so it could abide by the rule of law. To look the other way necessarily implicates all of us and would of course further radicalize people against our troops on the ground. Instead, we have the chance to limit culpability for torture to those who were truly responsible for these crimes against humanity.
Not everyone who was given illegal orders obeyed them. Many FBI agents understood that an illegal order must be disobeyed and they did so. The others must be held accountable, so that all of us are not targeted for blowback for the complicity of some.
The government’s own actions and operations in torturing people, and in acting on illegally obtained and unreliable information to kill and capture, are the most radicalizing forces at work today, not any religion, nor the fact that we are rich and free. The fact that our government engages in evil behavior under the auspices of the American people is what poses the greatest threat to the American people, and it must not be allowed to stand.
