A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424
Your contribution today helps us continue to champion online freedom. Every day, EFF attorneys, activists and volunteers defend your basic rights and freedoms by:
Take Advantage of Year-end Charitable Deductions - Lower Your 2003 Income Taxes!
The last quarter of the year provides an excellent opportunity to take advantage of provisions in the tax laws that can make it financially rewarding for EFF and for you by reducing your income taxes through a charitable deduction.
Details are available at: http://www.eff.org/campaign/endofyear.php
Your support of EFF enables us to continue the fight to secure online freedom for all. And don't forget to tell your friends and family to join, too! Thanks, and here's wishing you and yours a joyful holiday season.
A 19th century voting expert said that voting machines should "protect the voter from rascaldom and make the process of casting a ballot perfectly plain, simple and secret." But what if the rascal *is* the voting machine?
That question is being asked more frequently as the public learns about the risks of electronic voting (e-voting). Unfortunately, answers are hard to find. Voting companies don't release their code for public security reviews. The machines are certified in independent labs, but the reports are sealed. Election officials get to look under the hood, but they are gagged by nondisclosure agreements. The next presidential election is on the horizon, but voters are in the dark.
One thing we do know is that many e-voting machines are simply PCs. Fortunately, we understand PCs: we understand that users break them, evil-doers break into them, and sometimes they malfunction without anyone's help. Ignoring this is naive at best.
But what about unscrupulous vendors who not only ignore this, but also attack whistle-blowers with groundless legal threats?
That's exactly what Diebold Election Systems - America's largest voting machine supplier - did this September when an embarrassing email archive was published by citizen activists. In response, Diebold sent over a dozen threatening letters, forcing many Internet service providers (ISPs) to take down information about security flaws in Diebold voting machines.
Why was Diebold able to keep these important documents out of the public eye? Diebold found a surprising tool: copyright - a set of laws that is supposed to reward creativity.
At least that's what copyright used to stand for. However, since the passage of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), copyright has another purpose: suppressing dissent and silencing criticism. At issue is the DMCA's "notice and takedown" procedure. Under this procedure, anyone can write to an ISP claiming to be an infringed-upon rights holder and the ISP is encouraged, by a limitation on liability, to "expeditiously remove" the disputed material. No judicial review, no court order. The result is the same in almost every case: censor first, ask questions later. These tools - wrought by Hollywood lobbyists - are just as effective for companies like Diebold.
Some of Diebold's targets, however, are fighting back. Two Swarthmore College students and a San Francisco ISP (with representation from EFF and Stanford Law School) are suing Diebold for misusing copyright. We're fighting for the overwhelming public interest in the integrity of our elections through the fair use doctrine, the First Amendment's home in copyright.
Diebold is already backing down. Two weeks after our first court appearance, Diebold told the judge that it will stop sending threatening letters and withdraw its current threats. EFF continues to press its case to show Diebold, and other companies thinking of following in its footsteps, that the law has penalties for such abuses. This is the kind of signal that would give other would-be censors second thoughts.
EFF's pro bono representation of Diebold's victims helped ensure the open discussion of voting machines. With your help, we'll be back to save the day next time as well. EFF is a member-supported nonprofit. Get more information about how you can support EFF's work at http://www.eff.org.
EFF will be at Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco on January 6-9. We'll have a booth with a wide range of EFF paraphernalia and other goodies, and we'll be spreading the message to all attendees. We hope to see you there!
MissionFish, together with eBay Giving Works, has launched a new program to help people who sell items on eBay donate to their favorite nonprofit organizations.
Here's how it works:
EFF is now one of the nonprofits to which you can give through the program - check it out!
Deep Links features noteworthy news items from around the Internet.
For a complete listing of EFF speaking engagements (with locations and times), please visit: http://www.eff.org/calendar/
EFFector is published by:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco CA 94110-1914 USA
+1 415 436 9333 (voice)
+1 415 436 9993 (fax)
http://www.eff.org/
Editor:
Donna Wentworth, Web Writer/Activist
donna@eff.org
To Join EFF online, or make an additional donation, go to:
https://secure.eff.org/
Membership and donation queries: membership@eff.org
General EFF, legal, policy or online resources queries: ask@eff.org
Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of EFF. To reproduce signed articles individually, please contact the authors for their express permission. Press releases and EFF announcements and articles may be reproduced individually at will.
To change your address or other information, please visit: http://action.eff.org/subscribe/
If you have already subscribed to the EFF Action Center, please visit: http://action.eff.org/login.asp/
To unsubscribe from the EFFector mailing list, send an email to alerts@action.eff.org with the word "Remove" in the subject.
(Please ask donna@eff.org to manually remove you from the list if this does not work for you for some reason.)
Back issues are available at:
http://www.eff.org/effector/
You can also get the latest issue of EFFector via the Web at:
http://www.eff.org/effector/current.php
Return to EFFector Newsletters Index
Please send any questions or comments to webmaster@eff.org
