Computerized Election Theft

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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 18, 2017 4:09 am

Counting votes is not brain surgery.

Jonathan Simon, Author of "Code Red: Computerized Election Theft and the New American Century"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLJwwl8pHdw



15 2 - Election Theft in the 21st Century with Dr. Jonathan Simon


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZR9NOp4YSA
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 18, 2017 4:20 am

Detailed report utilizing screen captures of "unadjusted" exit polls before they disappeared:


E2014: A Basic (Chilling) Forensic Analysis

by Jonathan Simon
December 16, 2014



About the Election Defense Alliance
http://electiondefensealliance.org/about_us_0

Election Defense Alliance (EDA) is a participatory organization of citizens collaborating at the local, state, and national levels to defend against electoral theft, establish transparent vote counting, and ensure that governments accountable to the people are legitimately elected.

Our Mission

Election Defense Alliance (EDA) seeks to expose election fraud and restore electoral integrity as the foundation of American democracy.

We work to alert the citizenry to the illusions and dangers of privatized, computerized, fraud-prone voting machines, and we work to replace this illegitimate system of secret vote-counting with hand-counted paper ballot elections, conducted by citizens in the precincts in public view, so that the vote-counting process is transparent, secure, verified, and fully accountable to the voters.

Ultimately, America's citizens will achieve electoral integrity and overcome overt voter suppression and covert fraud and manipulation, by reviving traditions of citizen-conducted, precinct-based, hand-counted paper ballot voting, and establishing these principles and methods in state and federal election law to ensure electoral integrity and the legitimacy of government.

Election Defense Alliance is a program of Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS Code. Donations to Election Defense Alliance are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:58 am

Can U.S. Elections Really Be Stolen? Yes.
Mark Crispin Miller

Published on Nov 4, 2016

Is election theft possible in the United States? And might the suspects live closer to home than the Kremlin? Professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of numerous books and articles on computerized election fraud, explores the very real possibilities.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxXKr2hKCz0
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 18, 2017 9:10 am

Harvey Wasserman

Strip & Flip Voter Suppression Exposed

Published on May 12, 2016

Harvey Wasserman, Solartopia/forthcoming book, STRIP & FLIP SELECTION OF 2016: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft, joins Thom. Nearly 80% of the votes that will be cast in the 2016 general election will be cast on electronic voting machines - which can have their records altered by a governor or secretary of state with just a few keystrokes. Election rigging is easier than you think. How we can stop it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2bh_XbT7E8


Wasserman, a hero of our age, recalls that Ireland bought a bunch of U.S. voting machines and when they realized how horrible they were, they sold them as scrap by the pound. :lol:
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Belligerent Savant » Sun Jun 18, 2017 9:46 am

.

Disregarding the false narrative of the opening paragraph ('cybersecurity' as the sole factor in vote rigging; the use of the phrase "could try" as opposed to "actively engaged in for years"; ignoring U.S. agency involvement as a 'foreign actor' in rigging elections outside the U.S.,etc.), Blockchain tech is increasingly being raised as an alternative solution, which should* remove human manipulation from the voting process.

*we are dealing with adepts in the black arts, after all, and can not discount their ability to conjure up a work-around (or back door, or ruse, etc.)

There are numerous other articles along these lines available for perusing via the interwebs.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/venturebea ... ng-it/amp/


Blockchain tech could fight voter fraud — and these countries are testing it

Cybersecurity issues continue to remain one of the hottest topics of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections as the November 8 showdown draws near. And fears have been raised that domestic or foreign actors could try to skew the results of the election.

While many see a solution in dumping all forms of electronic voting and defaulting back to offline, paper-based systems — especially as electronic voting machines have proven to be extremely vulnerable — others are hoping new technologies can make elections more secure. Blockchain technology, especiailly, is drawing a lot of interest on this front.

Because a blockchain is a distributed ledger of transactions — in other words, the information it records isn’t stored once in a single system but many times across many independent nodes — it could store votes in an immutable and tamper-proof way. Once a vote has been secured and linked with hashing algorithms and stored across thousands, millions, or perhaps one day billions of nodes, modifying it is theoretically impossible and would require a huge amount of resources and computation power that no single party could effectively bring together.

While blockchain was invented with monetary transactions in mind, its characteristics make it an ideal solution to support voting systems and register votes. Its provisions for preventing double spending of digital currencies can also ensure there is no double voting, and its transparency and public availability make it auditable.

To use the digital currency analogy, the blockchain model of voting would issue each voter a “wallet” (a user credential) and a single “coin” (one opportunity to vote) and have them cast their vote by transferring their coin to the wallet of their candidate of choice. Voters can only spend their coin — or cast their vote — once, although they would have the flexibility to change their vote before the deadline.

As for security, the decentralized nature of blockchains and the fact that they have no single point of failure makes them extremely resistant to denial of service attacks and other types of threats that are usually conducted against client/server architectures.

Moreover, blockchain-based voting can eliminate some of the fraud scenarios that are possible in paper-based voting systems, such as switching or replacing ballot boxes with fraudulent ones.

Who are the players?

Many blockchains currently exist, and a number of these could serve as possible platforms for voting services. Follow My Vote is a Virginia-based startup hoping to move people toward blockchain-based voting. The firm’s platform, based on the BitShares blockchain, will enable voters to cast their votes online using a unique voter ID and their private key; they will use webcams and government-issued IDs to authenticate themselves. The system uses cryptography and end-to-end encryption to keep votes anonymous and immutable. A publicly available ledger will make it viable for everyone to directly follow the results as the election unfolds, and at any stage of the voting process, voters will be able to verify their own votes and make sure they haven’t been modified.

Follow My Vote will be testing its platform in a mock online election that will run in parallel with the U.S. presidential election.

There’s also NYC-based Blockchain Technologies Corp., which is taking a hybrid approach of a blockchain-powered voting system coupled with paper ballots that use QR codes to ensure each vote is only cast once.

But we’re seeing more movement in blockchain voting outside the U.S.

The government-owned Australian Post service, for example, is using blockchain technology to create a location agnostic, tamper-proof voting system that is traceable and anonymous, and would prove to be resilient against denial of service attacks.

The system grants users permission to vote through secure digital access keys, and “voting credits” are doled out, which users can “spend” to cast their votes. It preserves voter privacy through encryption and digital signatures.

Counting votes would be as simple as compiling the results of the blockchain.

For the moment, the service is testing the waters with corporate and community elections. But the directors of the project hope to one day be able to handle full parliamentary elections.

Russia’s central securities depository, NSD, is also dabbling in blockchain with a fully functional e-proxy voting system, a ledger on which voting instructions are transmitted and counted. The technology has already been used at bondholder meetings and will be extended to other business areas of the NSD.

Another country looking to leverage blockchain technology for voting is Estonia, which is already a leader in politics technology with its e-residency program, an electronic identity platform that enables foreigners to do business and access government services. The country is now complementing previous efforts with a blockchain-based e-voting system that enables both Estonian nationals and e-residents to securely vote in company shareholder meetings.

Blockchain voting is also making its debut in the Middle East at Abu Dhabi’s Stock Exchange, which just this week announced it has started using blockchain to enable stakeholders to participate and observe votes in their general annual meetings.

And in Denmark, the Liberal Alliance political party chose to use blockchain for its internal voting back in 2014.

Other efforts are in the works around the world. Ukraine-based e-Vox, for example, offers blockchain-based voting services.

Blockchain isn’t yet a perfect solution

While a promising technology, blockchain isn’t infallible and still has a ways to go and obstacles to overcome before it can fully manifest its potential.

For instance, while the blockchain itself is very secure, the private keys and passcodes that ensure the security of user accounts (or wallets) can become a point of compromise if they are lost or if they fall into the hands of malicious users.

Ease of use and convenience can also be a point of contention. Voting must be accessible to an entire nation, not just a tech-savvy minority, so election technology will have to be intuitive and easy to use. The concept of blockchain and private key handling might yet be too much to stomach for many users.

And then there’s the question of government involvement in setting up blockchain voting. The premise of blockchain is that no third party is involved and every user is anonymous. Trying to tie that technology to voting, where identities must be confirmed, could present fundamental problems.

If those obstacles can be overcome, perhaps we’ll eventually move to blockchain voting the same way so many of us have moved to online banking and mobile payments, despite all our fears 20 years ago.

What’s for sure is that the electoral process is lagging far behind technological advances. Sticking to paper-based ballots isn’t the strategic and long-term answer to cyberthreats against the elections. Will blockchain evolve to become the answer?

Ben Dickson is a software engineer and the founder of TechTalks, a blog that explores the ways technology is solving and creating problems. He writes about technology, business and politics. Follow him on Twitter: @BenDee983.

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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:04 am

Belligerent Savant wrote:Because a blockchain is a distributed ledger of transactions — in other words, the information it records isn’t stored once in a single system but many times across many independent nodes — it could store votes in an immutable and tamper-proof way. Once a vote has been secured and linked with hashing algorithms and stored across thousands, millions, or perhaps one day billions of nodes, modifying it is theoretically impossible and would require a huge amount of resources and computation power that no single party could effectively bring together.


Thanks, BS, on to the answers—because this is one very serious problem (under-recognized as it is) that can be fixed and the blockchain idea is indeed an elegant solution. A few years ago a programmer friend described such a system to me, and it's crazy to me that people don't demand it.
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:19 pm

Here I would like to bring in a good example of the popular MSM view of electronic vote theft that is blind to the mere possibility of corrupt American election workers and/or contractors compromising voting machines—while wringing their hands and shouting alarms over dreaded "state sponsored" foreign vote hacking. (link below)

The Politico writer, Ben Wofford, has no special knowledge about digital voting systems, indeed he admits to being "dumbfounded" by some of the techies' explanations.

That said, it's actually a somewhat thorough rundown of the serious problems with e-voting, even some history—but Wofford never mentions, for instance, the Ohio election workers who went to prison for vote hacking in 2004.

The article, rather, begins and ends with concern over foreign, state sponsored vote hacking, mentioning the spectre of "foreign," "state sponsored," "overseas," "Russia," "terrorists" etc.—anybody but Americans—17 times.

Despite going on and on about how easy it is—"child's play"—to alter the machines (and the votes), domestic insider rigging of e-votes is never mentioned. The possibility just doesn't exist in Wofford's mind, or his lengthy article about vote security in the United States.

In other words, in the face of all the glaringly obvious, technically proven vulerabilities of the currently deployed U.S. e-voting systems, the article completely ignores the culprits most likely to exploit those vulnerabilities: Americans, in America. A curious, almost surreal omission.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... tes-214144

How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes

With Russia already meddling in 2016, a ragtag group of obsessive tech experts is warning that stealing the ultimate prize—victory on Nov. 8—would be child’s play.
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby fruhmenschen » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:31 pm

We brought Leonard Gates to speak at Bates College in the mid 1990's
He was committing voter fraud for the FBI.
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:35 pm

another piece in the election subverting puzzle is the substantial likelihood that the vote counting in the 2016 election was manipulated in favor of Trump. An ongoing Twitter feed, @mikefarb1, Mike Farb, has been reviewing the election results precinct by precinct, collecting voting anomalies, and linking to sites that detail how machines can be hacked.

https://davidhemond.wordpress.com/2017/ ... n-hacking/
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:38 pm

fruhmenschen » Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:31 am wrote:We brought Leonard Gates to speak at Bates College in the mid 1990's
He was committing voter fraud for the FBI.



Heya Fruh...can you elaborate on that?—what, more exactly, did he do for the FBI and why did the FBI want him to do it?

tanx
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby fruhmenschen » Sun Jun 18, 2017 2:21 pm

fruhmenschen » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:31 pm wrote:We brought Leonard Gates to speak at Bates College in the mid 1990's
He was committing voter fraud for the FBI.




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kept tapping blank space where edit tabs should be until
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http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-14/ ... nnati-bell


Police, Phone Company Implicated : Alleged Wiretap Scheme Investigated in Cincinnati
January 14, 1989|ERIC HARRISON | Times Staff Writer




CINCINNATI — Bob Draise never cared much for black militants and drug dealers.

So, he says now, when a Cincinnati police sergeant asked him in 1972 to wiretap the local Black Muslim headquarters, and later the homes of people the police said were criminals, Draise, a telephone installer for Cincinnati Bell, readily agreed.

He even gave the police the name of a co-worker he said would help. Soon, however, the two phone workers claim, they were tapping the lines of congressmen, federal judges, defense contractors, city officials, businessmen, news reporters, lawyers and even top local FBI and police officials--all at the direction of either the police intelligence unit or their Cincinnati Bell supervisors.

Now, a federal grand jury is investigating charges of illegal wiretapping by the police and the telephone company. In testimony before it, Draise and Leonard Gates, the other Bell employee, claim to have tapped more than 1,300 phones from 1972 to 1984.





article25news

Privacy Died Long Ago


In Uncategorized on 06/03/2013 at 9:12 pm


The great forgotten Cincinnati wiretap scandal

By Gregory Flannery

Americans no longer assume their communications are free from government spying. Many believe widespread monitoring is a recent change, a response to terrorism. They are wrong. Fair warning came in 1988 in Cincinnati, Ohio, when evidence showed that wiretapping was already both common and easy.

Twenty-five years ago state and federal courtrooms in Cincinnati were abuzz with allegations of illegal wiretaps on federal judges, members of Cincinnati City Council, local congressional representatives, political dissidents and business leaders.

Two federal judges in Cincinnati told 60 Minutes they believed there was strong evidence that they had been wiretapped. Retired Cincinnati Police officers, including a former chief, admitted to illegal wiretapping.

Even some of the most outrageous claims – for example, that the president of the United States was wiretapped while staying in a Cincinnati hotel – were supported by independent witnesses.

National media coverage of the lawsuits, grand jury hearings and investigations by city council and the FBI attracted the attention of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).

As Americans wonder about the extent to which their e-mails, cell-phones and text messages are being monitored, they would do well to look back at a time before any of those existed. Judging by what was revealed in Cincinnati, privacy died long before anyone had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or al Q’aeda.

Turbulence

In 1988 Leonard Gates, a former installer for Cincinnati Bell, told the Mount Washington Press, a small independent weekly, that he had performed illegal wiretaps for the Cincinnati Police Department, the FBI and the phone company itself.

A week after the paper published his allegations, a federal grand jury began hearing testimony.

Gates claimed to have performed an estimated 1,200 wiretaps, which he believed illegal. His list of targets included former Mayor Jerry Springer, the late tycoon Carl Lindner Jr., U.S. District Judge Carl Rubin, U.S. Magistrate J. Vincent Aug, the late U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the Students for a Democratic Society (an anti-war group during the Vietnam War), then-U.S. Rep. Tom Luken (D-Cincinnati) and then-President Gerald Ford.

A second former Cincinnati Bell installer, Robert Draise, joined Gates, saying he, too had performed illegal wiretaps for the police. His alleged targets included the Black Muslim mosque in Finneytown and the General Electric plant in Evendale. Draise’s portfolio was much smaller than Gates’s, an estimated 100 taps, because he was caught freelancing – performing an illegal wiretap for a friend.

Charged by the FBI, Draise claimed he had gone to his “controller” at Cincinnati Bell, the person who directed his wiretaps, and asked for help. If he didn’t get it, he said, he’d tell all. When the case went to federal court, Draise didn’t bother to hire an attorney. He didn’t need one. In a plea deal, federal prosecutors dropped the charge to a misdemeanor. Found guilty of illegal wiretapping, his sentence was a $200 fine. The judge? Magistrate J. Vincent Aug.

If Gates and Draise had been the only people to come forward, they could easily be dismissed as cranks – disgruntled former employees, as Cincinnati Bell claimed. But some police office officers named by Gates and Draise confirmed parts of their allegations, insisting, however, that there were only 12 illegal wiretaps. Other officers not known to Gates and Draise also admitted to illegal wiretaps. Some of the officers received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. Others invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves.

“Due to the turbulent nature of the late ’60s and early ’70s, wiretaps were conducted to gather information,” said a press release signed by six retired officers. “This use began in approximately 1968 and ended completely during the Watergate investigation.”

The press release, whose signers included former Police Chief Myron Leistler, listed 12 wiretaps, among them “a black militant in the Bond Hill area” and a house on either Ravine or Strait streets rented by “the SDS or some other radical group.”

The retired cops’ lawyer said there were actually three Cincinnati Bell installers doing illegal wiretaps, but declined to identify the third.

The retired officers denied knowledge of “any wiretaps involving judges, local politicians, prominent citizens and fellow law enforcement officers or city employees.”

Getting rid of Aug

Others had that knowledge, however.

Howard Lucas, former security chief at the Stouffer Hotel downtown, said he caught Gates and three cops trying to break into a telephone switching room shortly before President Gerald Ford stayed at the hotel.

“I said, ‘Do you have a court order?’ and they all laughed,” Lucas told the Mount Washington Press.

The four men left. But they returned.

“A couple days later, in the back of the room, I found a setup, a reel-to-reel recorder concealed under some boxes,” Lucas said.

Ford stayed at the Stouffer Hotel in July 1975 and June 1976 – two years after the Watergate scandal, when Cincinnati Police officers claimed the bugging ended.

Then there was the matter of a former guard at the U.S. Courthouse downtown. He said he had found wiretap equipment there in 1986 and 1987, just a year before the wiretap scandal broke.

“I heard conversations you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “I heard a conversation one time. they were talking about getting rid of U.S. Magistrate Aug.”

The wiretapping started with drug dealers and expanded to political and business figures, according to Gates. In 1979, he testified, he was ordered to wiretap the Hamilton County Regional Computer Center, which handled vote tabulations. His handler at the phone company allegedly told Gates the wiretap was intended to manipulate election results.

“They had the ability to actually alter what was being done with the votes. … He was very upset through some of the elections with a gentleman named Blackwell,” Gates testified.

J. Kenneth Blackwell is a former member of Cincinnati Council, and 1979 was an election year for council.

Something went wrong on Election Night, Gates testified. His handler at the phone company called him.

“He was panicking,” Gates testified. “He said we had done something to screw up the voting processor down there, or the voting computer.”

News reports at the time noted an unexpected delay in counting votes for city council because of a computer malfunction.

Cincinnati Bell denied any involvement in illegal wiretapping by police or its own personnel. Yet police officers, like Gates, testified the police received equipment – even a truck – and information necessary to effectuate the wiretaps. The owners of a greenhouse in Westwood even came forward, saying the police stored the Cincinnati Bell truck on their property.

‘Say it louder’

Gates claimed that his handler at Cincinnati Bell repeatedly told him the wiretaps were at the behest of the FBI. He named an FBI agent who, he said, let him into the federal courthouse to wiretap federal judges.

Investigations followed – a federal grand jury, which indicted no one; a special investigator hired by city council, the former head of the Cincinnati FBI office; the U.S. Justice Department, sort of.

U.S. Sen. Paul Simon asked then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to look into the Cincinnati wiretap scandal. Federal judges, members of Congress and even the president of the United States had allegedly been wiretapped. Simon’s effort went nowhere. His press secretary told the Mount Washington Press that it took three months for the Attorney General to respond.

“The senator’s not pleased with the response,” Simon’s press secretary said. “It didn’t have the attorney general’s personal attention, and it said Justice (Department) was aware of the situation, but isn’t going to do anything.”

The city of Cincinnati settled a class-action lawsuit accusing it of illegal wiretapping, paying $85,000 to 17 defendants. It paid $12,000 to settle a second lawsuit by former staffers of The Independent Eye, an underground newspaper allegedly wiretapped and torched by Cincinnati Police officers in 1970.

Cincinnati Bell sued Leonard Gates and Robert Draise, accusing them of defamation. The two men had no attorneys and represented themselves at trial. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Fred Cartolano refused to let the jury hear testimony by former police officers who had admitted using Gates and Draise and Cincinnati Bell equipment. In a 4-2 vote, the jury ruled in the phone company’s favor, officially adjudging the two whistleblowers liars.

During one of the many hearings associated with the wiretap scandal, an FBI agent was asked what the agency would do if someone accused the phone company of placing illegal wiretaps. He testified the FBI would be powerless; it needed the phone company to check for a wiretap.

“It would go back to Bell,” the agent testified. “We would have no way of determining if there was any illegal wiretapping going on.”

The FBI agent was the person Gates had accused of opening the federal courthouse at night so he could wiretap federal judges.

One police sergeant offered no excuses for the illegal wiretapping. Asked why he didn’t bother with the legal niceties, such as getting a warrant, as required then by federal law, he said, “I didn’t deem it was necessary. We wanted the information, and went out and got it.”

At one point, covering the scandal for the Mount Washington Press, I received a phone call from a sergeant in the Cincinnati Police Department. He invited me to the station at Mount Airy Forest, where he proceeded to wiretap a fellow police officer’s phone call. I listened as the other officer talked to his wife.

“Say hello,” the sergeant told me.

I did. There was no response.

“Say it louder,” the sergeant said.

I did. No response.

“You can hear them, but they can’t hear you,” the sergeant said. “Any idiot can do a wiretap. You know that’s true because you just saw a policeman do it.”

Privacy is dead. Its corpse has long been moldering in the grave.
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby fruhmenschen » Sun Jun 18, 2017 2:23 pm

fruhmenschen » Sun Jun 18, 2017 2:21 pm wrote:
fruhmenschen » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:31 pm wrote:We brought Leonard Gates to speak at Bates College in the mid 1990's
He was committing voter fraud for the FBI.




still cannot see tabs to edit this post
kept tapping blank space where edit tabs should be until
the edit page opened




http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-14/ ... nnati-bell


Police, Phone Company Implicated : Alleged Wiretap Scheme Investigated in Cincinnati
January 14, 1989|ERIC HARRISON | Times Staff Writer




CINCINNATI — Bob Draise never cared much for black militants and drug dealers.

So, he says now, when a Cincinnati police sergeant asked him in 1972 to wiretap the local Black Muslim headquarters, and later the homes of people the police said were criminals, Draise, a telephone installer for Cincinnati Bell, readily agreed.

He even gave the police the name of a co-worker he said would help. Soon, however, the two phone workers claim, they were tapping the lines of congressmen, federal judges, defense contractors, city officials, businessmen, news reporters, lawyers and even top local FBI and police officials--all at the direction of either the police intelligence unit or their Cincinnati Bell supervisors.

Now, a federal grand jury is investigating charges of illegal wiretapping by the police and the telephone company. In testimony before it, Draise and Leonard Gates, the other Bell employee, claim to have tapped more than 1,300 phones from 1972 to 1984.



https://article25news.wordpress.com/201 ... -long-ago/

article25news

Privacy Died Long Ago


In Uncategorized on 06/03/2013 at 9:12 pm


The great forgotten Cincinnati wiretap scandal

By Gregory Flannery

Americans no longer assume their communications are free from government spying. Many believe widespread monitoring is a recent change, a response to terrorism. They are wrong. Fair warning came in 1988 in Cincinnati, Ohio, when evidence showed that wiretapping was already both common and easy.

Twenty-five years ago state and federal courtrooms in Cincinnati were abuzz with allegations of illegal wiretaps on federal judges, members of Cincinnati City Council, local congressional representatives, political dissidents and business leaders.

Two federal judges in Cincinnati told 60 Minutes they believed there was strong evidence that they had been wiretapped. Retired Cincinnati Police officers, including a former chief, admitted to illegal wiretapping.

Even some of the most outrageous claims – for example, that the president of the United States was wiretapped while staying in a Cincinnati hotel – were supported by independent witnesses.

National media coverage of the lawsuits, grand jury hearings and investigations by city council and the FBI attracted the attention of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).

As Americans wonder about the extent to which their e-mails, cell-phones and text messages are being monitored, they would do well to look back at a time before any of those existed. Judging by what was revealed in Cincinnati, privacy died long before anyone had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or al Q’aeda.

Turbulence

In 1988 Leonard Gates, a former installer for Cincinnati Bell, told the Mount Washington Press, a small independent weekly, that he had performed illegal wiretaps for the Cincinnati Police Department, the FBI and the phone company itself.

A week after the paper published his allegations, a federal grand jury began hearing testimony.

Gates claimed to have performed an estimated 1,200 wiretaps, which he believed illegal. His list of targets included former Mayor Jerry Springer, the late tycoon Carl Lindner Jr., U.S. District Judge Carl Rubin, U.S. Magistrate J. Vincent Aug, the late U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the Students for a Democratic Society (an anti-war group during the Vietnam War), then-U.S. Rep. Tom Luken (D-Cincinnati) and then-President Gerald Ford.

A second former Cincinnati Bell installer, Robert Draise, joined Gates, saying he, too had performed illegal wiretaps for the police. His alleged targets included the Black Muslim mosque in Finneytown and the General Electric plant in Evendale. Draise’s portfolio was much smaller than Gates’s, an estimated 100 taps, because he was caught freelancing – performing an illegal wiretap for a friend.

Charged by the FBI, Draise claimed he had gone to his “controller” at Cincinnati Bell, the person who directed his wiretaps, and asked for help. If he didn’t get it, he said, he’d tell all. When the case went to federal court, Draise didn’t bother to hire an attorney. He didn’t need one. In a plea deal, federal prosecutors dropped the charge to a misdemeanor. Found guilty of illegal wiretapping, his sentence was a $200 fine. The judge? Magistrate J. Vincent Aug.

If Gates and Draise had been the only people to come forward, they could easily be dismissed as cranks – disgruntled former employees, as Cincinnati Bell claimed. But some police office officers named by Gates and Draise confirmed parts of their allegations, insisting, however, that there were only 12 illegal wiretaps. Other officers not known to Gates and Draise also admitted to illegal wiretaps. Some of the officers received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. Others invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves.

“Due to the turbulent nature of the late ’60s and early ’70s, wiretaps were conducted to gather information,” said a press release signed by six retired officers. “This use began in approximately 1968 and ended completely during the Watergate investigation.”

The press release, whose signers included former Police Chief Myron Leistler, listed 12 wiretaps, among them “a black militant in the Bond Hill area” and a house on either Ravine or Strait streets rented by “the SDS or some other radical group.”

The retired cops’ lawyer said there were actually three Cincinnati Bell installers doing illegal wiretaps, but declined to identify the third.

The retired officers denied knowledge of “any wiretaps involving judges, local politicians, prominent citizens and fellow law enforcement officers or city employees.”

Getting rid of Aug

Others had that knowledge, however.

Howard Lucas, former security chief at the Stouffer Hotel downtown, said he caught Gates and three cops trying to break into a telephone switching room shortly before President Gerald Ford stayed at the hotel.

“I said, ‘Do you have a court order?’ and they all laughed,” Lucas told the Mount Washington Press.

The four men left. But they returned.

“A couple days later, in the back of the room, I found a setup, a reel-to-reel recorder concealed under some boxes,” Lucas said.

Ford stayed at the Stouffer Hotel in July 1975 and June 1976 – two years after the Watergate scandal, when Cincinnati Police officers claimed the bugging ended.

Then there was the matter of a former guard at the U.S. Courthouse downtown. He said he had found wiretap equipment there in 1986 and 1987, just a year before the wiretap scandal broke.

“I heard conversations you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “I heard a conversation one time. they were talking about getting rid of U.S. Magistrate Aug.”

The wiretapping started with drug dealers and expanded to political and business figures, according to Gates. In 1979, he testified, he was ordered to wiretap the Hamilton County Regional Computer Center, which handled vote tabulations. His handler at the phone company allegedly told Gates the wiretap was intended to manipulate election results.

“They had the ability to actually alter what was being done with the votes. … He was very upset through some of the elections with a gentleman named Blackwell,” Gates testified.

J. Kenneth Blackwell is a former member of Cincinnati Council, and 1979 was an election year for council.

Something went wrong on Election Night, Gates testified. His handler at the phone company called him.

“He was panicking,” Gates testified. “He said we had done something to screw up the voting processor down there, or the voting computer.”

News reports at the time noted an unexpected delay in counting votes for city council because of a computer malfunction.

Cincinnati Bell denied any involvement in illegal wiretapping by police or its own personnel. Yet police officers, like Gates, testified the police received equipment – even a truck – and information necessary to effectuate the wiretaps. The owners of a greenhouse in Westwood even came forward, saying the police stored the Cincinnati Bell truck on their property.

‘Say it louder’

Gates claimed that his handler at Cincinnati Bell repeatedly told him the wiretaps were at the behest of the FBI. He named an FBI agent who, he said, let him into the federal courthouse to wiretap federal judges.

Investigations followed – a federal grand jury, which indicted no one; a special investigator hired by city council, the former head of the Cincinnati FBI office; the U.S. Justice Department, sort of.

U.S. Sen. Paul Simon asked then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to look into the Cincinnati wiretap scandal. Federal judges, members of Congress and even the president of the United States had allegedly been wiretapped. Simon’s effort went nowhere. His press secretary told the Mount Washington Press that it took three months for the Attorney General to respond.

“The senator’s not pleased with the response,” Simon’s press secretary said. “It didn’t have the attorney general’s personal attention, and it said Justice (Department) was aware of the situation, but isn’t going to do anything.”

The city of Cincinnati settled a class-action lawsuit accusing it of illegal wiretapping, paying $85,000 to 17 defendants. It paid $12,000 to settle a second lawsuit by former staffers of The Independent Eye, an underground newspaper allegedly wiretapped and torched by Cincinnati Police officers in 1970.

Cincinnati Bell sued Leonard Gates and Robert Draise, accusing them of defamation. The two men had no attorneys and represented themselves at trial. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Fred Cartolano refused to let the jury hear testimony by former police officers who had admitted using Gates and Draise and Cincinnati Bell equipment. In a 4-2 vote, the jury ruled in the phone company’s favor, officially adjudging the two whistleblowers liars.

During one of the many hearings associated with the wiretap scandal, an FBI agent was asked what the agency would do if someone accused the phone company of placing illegal wiretaps. He testified the FBI would be powerless; it needed the phone company to check for a wiretap.

“It would go back to Bell,” the agent testified. “We would have no way of determining if there was any illegal wiretapping going on.”

The FBI agent was the person Gates had accused of opening the federal courthouse at night so he could wiretap federal judges.

One police sergeant offered no excuses for the illegal wiretapping. Asked why he didn’t bother with the legal niceties, such as getting a warrant, as required then by federal law, he said, “I didn’t deem it was necessary. We wanted the information, and went out and got it.”

At one point, covering the scandal for the Mount Washington Press, I received a phone call from a sergeant in the Cincinnati Police Department. He invited me to the station at Mount Airy Forest, where he proceeded to wiretap a fellow police officer’s phone call. I listened as the other officer talked to his wife.

“Say hello,” the sergeant told me.

I did. There was no response.

“Say it louder,” the sergeant said.

I did. No response.

“You can hear them, but they can’t hear you,” the sergeant said. “Any idiot can do a wiretap. You know that’s true because you just saw a policeman do it.”

Privacy is dead. Its corpse has long been moldering in the grave.
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Tue Jun 20, 2017 4:09 am

As the host points out, the election officials in this video seem about as worried about election fraud as they'd be if their bathtub drain was clogged. Probably less.


VIDEO EVIDENCE The Voting Machines Are WRONG! (and It’s Being Covered Up)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_mJ5KutY8s

Published on Apr 30, 2016

Some might be disappointed by our primary elections, but they should be furious. The Chicago Board of Elections is seen in this video either covering up or turning a blind eye to fraud.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby cptmarginal » Mon Jul 31, 2017 6:14 pm

Relevant here:

Kenyan election IT head Chris Msando found dead

July 31, 2017

Image

Chris Msando said the electronic voting system he had helped develop could not be hacked


The man in charge of Kenya's computerised voting system has been found dead just days before the 8 August elections.

Chris Msando, an electoral commission IT manager, had gone missing on Friday.

"There was no doubt he was tortured and murdered," said the commission's chairperson, Wafula Chebukati.

Tension is high as the presidential election is expected to be a close race between incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta and long-time opponent Raila Odinga.

Police said on Monday that the bodies of Mr Msando and an unidentified woman had been found in the Kikuyu area on the outskirts of Nairobi and taken to the city mortuary.

Mr Chebukati, chair of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), said: "In our mind as a commission, the only issue is who killed him and why, and that is the question that must be answered."

Mr Chebukati demanded that the government provide security for all of his staff. He is now being protected around-the-clock, local media report, with six more police officers assigned to protect him from Monday.

Kenyan newspaper The Star reports that Mr Msando's body was found with one arm missing.

Shock and disgust

Dickens Olewe, BBC News, Nairobi

Today was supposed to big a day for Chris Msando - he was to oversee the public testing of the voting system, which has been vaunted by the IEBC as key to eliminate vote rigging and to deliver a credible election.

The Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System (KIEMS) will be used to identify voters and transmit results.

A similar electronic system that was used in the 2013 election failed spectacularly, leading to manual counting of votes which some have argued allowed for voter manipulation.

Mr Msando had only been on the job for two months, having taken over after his predecessor was suspended for refusing to cooperate with an audit firm which was cleaning the voters' register.

His death will do little to assuage growing concerns about the IEBC's election preparedness and questions about its credibility.

On Twitter, his name and #RIPMsando are trending, with many expressing shock and disgust at what to them looks like a targeted elimination.

This news also comes at a time when the government has denied allegations by opposition parties that it is planning to deploy the military to swing the election to its favour.

With only a week to the election, this is no doubt another testing time for Kenya and it can only emerge from this tense moment by holding credible elections and arresting and prosecuting Mr Msando's killers.

The main opposition National Super Alliance, which Mr Odinga is representing, said the "heinous murder" was an attempt to "drive a dagger in the heart" of the upcoming election.

It said the killers wanted to send a "chilling message that they will stop at nothing to ensure the outcome they desire".

Some fear there could be violent clashes between rival supporters after the election result is announced, with the losers refusing to accept defeat.

However, few expect the type of violence which killed more than 1,200 people in ethnic, post-election violence 10 years ago.

Following the clashes, the International Criminal Court charged President Kenyatta and his deputy with instigating violence, but the charges have since been dropped due to a lack of evidence.

The government has denied ICC accusations that its witnesses had been intimidated to prevent them from testifying.
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Re: Computerized Election Theft

Postby Elvis » Mon Jul 31, 2017 7:55 pm

Yes very relevant, thank you!
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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