Indian EVM researcher jailed by UPA, rewarded in US

First they choose a puppet Election Commissioner. Then they manipulate EVM to win elections. The puppet Commissioner vouches that EVM are not tamperable. That is despite the known fact that many countries including Germany, Netherlands and several US states have banned EVM use. Then when independent scientists prove that EVM can indeed be tampered they arrest him on flimsy grounds. That’s the level of corruption , nepotism and ‘demonocracy’ of the dynastic CONgress party.  

India needs another revolution to gain independence from this ‘rulers’.

Ironically the same CONgress, when they lose in Gujarat  cry fowl that EVMs are tampered 

 

Jailed by India, EVM researcher honoured in US

 

Hari Prasad Vemuru, a jailed Indian e-voting researcher, is one of the four winners of the 2010 Pioneer Awards of San Francisco headquartered Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a leading civil liberties group.

The three other winners are transparency activist Steven Aftergood; public domain scholar James Boyle; and legal blogger Pamela Jones and the website Groklaw.

Vemuru, who was recently released on bail after being imprisoned for his security work in India, is a security researcher who recently revealed security flaws in India’s paperless electronic voting machines.

“He has endured jail time, repeated interrogations, and ongoing political harassment to protect an anonymous source that enabled him to conduct the first independent security review of India’s electronic voting system,” EFF said.

“Prasad spent a year trying to convince election officials to complete such a review, but they insisted that the government-made machines were ‘perfect’ and ‘tamperproof.'”

“Instead of blindly accepting the government’s claims, Prasad’s international team discovered serious flaws that could alter national election results. Months of hot debate have produced a growing consensus that India’s electronic voting machines should be scrapped, and Prasad hopes to help his country build a transparent and verifiable voting system,” EFF said.

“These winners have all worked tirelessly to give critical insight and context to the tough questions that arise in our evolving digital world,” said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele.

“We need strong advocates, educators, and researchers like these to protect our digital rights, and we’re proud to honor these four Pioneer Award winners for their important contributions.”

Awarded every year since 1992, EFF’s Pioneer Awards recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier.

Past honourees include World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, security expert Bruce Schneier, and the Mozilla Foundation and its chairman Mitchell Baker. 

 

Also read:

Lok Sabha Election, Congress and EVM fraud

 

 

Arrested for proving faulty EVM use in elections

It is not too difficult to figure out who has been benefitted from use of ‘easily hackable’ EVMs in recent elections, who is the strength behind the Election Commission and who will stand to lose most if EVM use is banned. Specially now that the manipulating time to prepare for the crown prince is round the corner.

 

India arrests hacker who exposed electoral fraud

Protecting corruption wherever it is found

By Nick farrell, Mon Aug 23 2010, 09:59

 

Hackers who prove how India’s corrupt politicians use electronic voting systems to get elected can expect to be arrested.

While many countries would have praised Hari Prasad for exposing a weakeness in a computerised voting system that allows corrupt politicians to steal votes, it seems that India takes a rather dim view of it.

Inspector Knacker of the Maharashtra Yard showed up at Prasad’s house and arrested him on the somewhat flimsy charge of theft of an electronic voting machine (EVM). The machine was used in a vulnerability demonstration by Hari Prasad and a team of security researchers that included Alex Halderman, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan and Rop Gonggrijp, a security researcher from the Netherlands, along with a team of their colleagues.

Earlier coppers had gone to Hyderabad in the first week of August and taken a statement from Prasad about the EVM used for exposing the vulnerability. They had asked him to show up in Mumbai for further questioning. Hari Prasad could not go as he was busy so the Indian plod arrested him.

The voting machine vulnerability exposed by Prasad has made idiots out of the Election Commission of India (ECI). It has been pushing the use of EVMs at all costs and has been telling the world plus dog that they are “totally tamper proof, perfect, fail safe and requiring no improvement”.

Prasad had agreed to meet the Commission’s challenge to demonstrate how easy it was to hack the EVMs, but the Commission backed out so Prasad did it on a machine that was provided by an anonymous source. This is exactly the same method as is used by the media where public interest is paramount, and the fact that Prasad refused to tell the coppers where he got the machine seems to have been the reason for his arrest.

There is a move within India to ban the electronic voting machines. More than three political parties had written to the ECI in April expressing concerns about the reliability of EVMs and urging the ECI to organize an all-party meeting. According to an Indian EVM blog the Commission has ignored them.

 

EVM’s can be tampered; the question is, was it?

EVM’s can be tampered, ‘proves’ Hyderabad’s engineer

Jul 17, 2009

Nagpur As the debate on reliability of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) is going on, an election watch-dog and an NGO from Hyderabad demonstrated ‘tampering’ of EVMs and claimed that these machines could be easily manipulated.

Explaining the possibilities of manipulations and insertions of pre-programmed chips, Hari K Prasad of NetIndia and the NGO Election Group’s Convenor V V Rao said the chips are imported from Japan and there is a possibility of giving 60 per cent of total votes polled through the EVMs by one particular candidate (party) if the chips are programmed in such a manner.

Elaborating his point, Prasad told a gathering including reporters that in such a case, the first 10 voters who cast their votes can be the basis of manipulations. The particular party will get 60 per cent votes by manipulations as per the programme, they added.

The only way for making tamper-proof use of EVMs is using a verification tool which the EVM manufacturing companies should bring in.

Moreover, there should an automatic slip coming out immediately after the vote is cast like the transaction slip which bank ATMs gives after the use, he said.

Also read:

Lok Sabha Election, Congress and EVM fraud

 

Lok Sabha Election, Congress and EVM fraud

There is a subdued ripple going around in news, articles  and blogs that all was not fair and square in the recent Loksabha Election 2009 which brought the Congress again into power. There are numerous refrences that EVM machines are not fraud proof and can be easily manipulated. Several countries have banned use of EVM.

It is interesting that Congress party would now complain about manipulation in the state where they did not do well. The question does arise whether the reverse is true. Was it manipulated in their favor in places where they had unexpected victories and their chosen oppositions were routed?

Does it call for some inquiry?

 

Voting machines ‘manipulated’ in Orissa polls, claims Azad

 

Bhubaneswar, June 18 : Congress general secretary in charge of the party’s affairs in Orissa Ghulam Nabi Azad Thursday alleged ‘manipulation’ of electronic voting machines (EVMs) had led to the party’s defeat in the assembly and parliamentary elections in the state.

“EVMs were manipulated during the poll which resulted in defeat of many Congress candidates,” Azad said in a press conference here.

The Congress won only 27 of the state’s 147 assembly seats and six of the 21 Lok Sabha constituencies in Orissa. The ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD), led by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, bagged 103 assembly and 14 Lok Sabha seats.

Azad met the candidates in the twin polls and reviewed the reasons of dismal show, constituency wise. After the review meeting, he also charged the BJD with misusing the official machinery during the polls.

“There was a wide-scale misuse of official machinery by the ruling BJD, which led to the debacle of the Congress party in the poll,” he alleged.

Azad blamed the BJD for converting the flagship schemes initiated by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) into other schemes of state government, extracting all the mileage. He conceded the “last minute changes in leadership and failure to choose the right candidate” were also responsible for the Congress’s defeat.

The meeting was attended by all the candidates, district level office-bearers and other senior leaders of the party. However, Azad did not say anything about any likely change in the state unit leadership following the poll debacle.

— IANS