BBV: Demactivist....the info you asked about

[shirlden]

From the Ohio Sec. of State RFP for electronic voting machines.


Page 39 of 59
Escrow Agreement for Voting Systems Software Source Code
Offerors must provide a sample escrow agreement. At a minimum the agreement must:
• Identify an escrow agent located in the State of Ohio;
• Provide the software source code in a minimum of two formats (one human
readable and one machine readable) to the escrow agent;
• Provide the software documentation to the same escrow agent;
• Contain a statement stating that if anything happens to the company or the
company decides that it cannot or will not complete the terms and conditions of
the contract, the state of Ohio shall, within one week, receive full access to the
source code and unlimited rights to continue using and supporting the
software, at no cost to the state of Ohio;
• Contain a statement stipulating that the state of Ohio shall gain full access to
the source code to resolve an election related challenge, such as, but not
limited to election tampering, etc;
• Contain a statement, agreeing to send a letter to the ITA that qualified the
system, giving the state of Ohio full access to “final build”, records and test
results related to the qualification tests at no cost to the state of Ohio; and
• Contain a statement, agreeing that the escrow will stay in place throughout the
contract and option year periods, as well as the warranty and post-warranty periods.


DA....does this mean that we could subpoena this info on the source code if someone filed a law suit over an election and claimed tampering ??
IMHO having just the source code would prove nothing. Would appreciate your opinion on this.

:bounce:

[DEMActivist]

1. Actually, no...and...

here's the reason I asked. Georgia's documents also had those paragraphs - until the last minute. After the deal was done verbally, Diebold filed an addendum to the contract rescinding the Software Escrow Agreement.

Georgia never GOT the source code. It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens in Ohio.

Now, back to your first question. This is how it would work - IF there were an escrow deposit and there were allegations of tampering, a judge would appoint "experts" who would then take the compiled software, compare it's actions to the source code to see if it behaved properly according to the code, and then allow the expert(s) to reverse engineer the compiled code to do a comparison.

We'd likely see at least 2 experts appointed - one of each parties' choosing. If there were multiple parties, each would get to designate an expert or split the cost on one agreed upon expert.

It is highly unlikely a judge will release the source code into the wild and allow just anyone to see it.

[shirlden]

2. I will keep a watch our for this.

Would be willing to bet that this happens and also willing to bet that Diebold gets the contract in Ohio. Each county Board of Elections is allowed to pick from the list of four approved, but Diebold managed to get the highest rating so how could the locals not pick them from the list.
We have to make a stink in Ohio. The SOS who is behind all this double dealing has announced that he intends to run for Gov. Guess he wants to make certain that he gets "elected"

:argh:

[ConsAreLiars]

3. If GA contract was (legally?) violated ...

Whether Diebold outright reneged on the Source Code clause or did some backroom renegotiation after the legislature(?) approved the contract, this should raise two red flags. One regarding the level of trust that can be placed in the "approved" contract's terms being honored, but also another as a signal that some extra effort was made to keep this stuff hidden away from the public eye.