18 Oct 2003
Diebold and Electronic Voting Systems

Let's see - our company's electronic voting system is fatally flawed - it allows folks to modify election results after the fact, and has no real audit trail. Of course, our engineering team knows this, and has been trying to warn management for months. But we know who pays the bills, and we've got to have those system sales to make next quarter's projections! So we tell the engineers to shut up....

One (or more) of them then leaks a series of memos or emails documenting this internal debate. What to do!?! Soon the public will know we're selling shoddy merchandise, and well, our name is nearly a synonym for security! We must protect it!

Wait! I've got it! Let's sue the bastards on the Internet distributing this stuff! After all, anything written by our staff, on our time, is copyrighted by us. And the DMCA makes it easy to shut down sites for copyright infringement ....

"What topic could be more important to our democracy than discussions about the mechanics and legitimacy of electronic voting systems now being introduced nationwide?" said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "EFF won't stand by as corporations like Diebold chill important online debate by churning out legal notices to ISPs that usually just take down legitimate content rather than face the legal risk."

Diebold Issues Cease and Desist to Indymedia [Slashdot]

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