Premium access channel HBO will release a documentary film entitled Hacking Democracy on November 2, five days before elections are held across the United States. The 80 minute documentary follows Seattle writer Bev Harris on a frightening investigation into the security of America’s electronic voting systems.

It will come as no surprise to readers of this site that Hacking Democracy concludes that “the top-secret computerized systems counting the votes in America’s public elections are not only fallible, but also vulnerable to undetectable hacking, from local school board contests to the presidential race.”

The concept of electronic vote tampering has largely been advanced by left-wing voices who are quick to point out that electronic voting equipment manufacturer Diebold has strong Republican supporters sitting on its board of directors. The highly partisan nature of this commentary can be off-putting, and it obscures the true issue. Insecure voting systems are not of unique concern to Democrats. Their insecurity is a flaw that could enable cheating by anyone for any purpose.

Google launched a service on Thursday for consolidated searches of U.S. Government websites. The site, which can be accessed at http://usgov.google.com/, searches “a huge index of U.S. Federal, state and local government websites,” according to a post on Google’s blog. The entry advertises the site as a way to quickly find government-related forms, phone numbers and mailing addresses.

Searches on the site seem to return more results and execute much more quickly than the U.S. Government’s own consolidated search site and portal, FirstGov.gov, which is powered by MSN Search.

As for the accuracy of the Google results, “corruption” returns 988,000 results, but “civil liberties” returns only 404,000.

Seems to be working flawlessly.

The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Friday in favor of upholding a Federal Communications Commission policy that treats interconnected VoIP providers and broadband Internet service providers the same as traditional POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) providers with regards to government wiretaps.

Traditionally, the Internet has been considered exempt from the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which contains language specifically excluding “information services” from its provisions. In 2004, the FCC tried to change that by issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that claimed that interconnected VoIP providers, those which allow people to make calls to and receive calls from ordinary telephones via the Internet, are offering a service which acts as a replacement for a traditional phone line, so they should be subject to the wiretap provisions of CALEA.

It doesn’t take a lawyer to see that CALEA specifically excludes sound information sent by an information service.

Judge Harry Edwards was the lone dissenting voice in the decision. “The commission apparently forgot to read the words of the statute,” he wrote. “Calea does not give the FCC unlimited authority to regulate every telecommunications service that might conceivably be used to assist law enforcement.”

During the presentation of arguments in May, Judge Edwards called the FCC’s argument “gobbledygook,” adding “it’s utter nonsense.”

The most disappointing thing about this ruling is that one of the two judges who upheld the FCC’s rule change was Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a judge who has a reputation for her radically libertarian views. Et tu, Janice?

A solution for privacy-minded individuals is to encrypt your VoIP communications.

On May 31 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security allocated $1.7 billion in grants to state and local governments (PDF) using a new “risk and effectiveness-based approach to allocating funding.” Since September 11, 2001, $10 billion has already been spent on these grants.

“This approach aligns federal resources with national priorities and targets capabilities established by the Interim National Preparedness Goal to generate the highest return on investment in increasing the nation’s level of preparedness,” according to a DHS news release.

[...] it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity [...] — A Tale of Two Cities

Under the new risk-based formulas, the targets with the highest risk are supposed to be given more money. This is logical, but it puts state and local government officials in a strange position: If they want to get their hands on that loot, they have to be high risk targets. This has led to the following incredible situation in Erie County, PA:

The Department of Homeland Security just released its list of cities that are most likely to be the targets of terrorism. Although Erie didn’t make the list, emergency management officials say it would have been very helpful. — WICU

Read that again. They’re expressing regret over being deemed a low risk target. They’re so addicted to the idea of federal funding that they’d rather be considered a terrorist target and get the money to attempt to combat that terrorism than not be a terrorist target to begin with.

A short two hour drive away, in Erie County, N.Y., in a region which includes Buffalo and Niagara Falls, Erie County Executive Joel A. Giambra said that the 48.6% cut from the amount they got last year was “the wrong region at the wrong time.” But he doesn’t stop there. Giambra, outraged at the lack of funding, is doing his best to market the area as an attractive place for terrorists.

Specifically, Giambra said the Department of Homeland Security did not consider the following facts:

• The Niagara Power Project, linked to more than 400,000 jobs statewide, was not within the geographic area Washington considered.
• In assessing the local area’s risk calculation, Homeland Security failed to include the five international bridges, with their 13 million passenger crossings each year.
• The Erie and Niagara population was understated by 20 percent and the visitor population vastly underrepresented.
• The Homeland Security data reflects only 30 chemical and hazardous-material facilities, out of 648 such places in the two counties.
• And the list of special events doesn’t include Bills or Sabres games, the Allentown Arts Festival, America’s Fair in Hamburg or other such events.

– The Buffalo News

In one breath, Giambra pitches the region as a terrorist’s playground, and in another, he demands that the Federal government come and pay save them.

It’s a truly disgusting display of voluntary reliance on the federal government and another reminder of the depths to which politicians will go to control more American taxpayer money.

There used to be a time where I could, without guilt, vote for Republicans as the lesser of two evils. The thought of John Kerry sitting in the White House frightened me, and I was able to vote for Bush in 2004 and be reasonably certain that I did the country a favor. I don’t regret that vote, but I certainly won’t be repeating it.

It’s not that I’m on a high horse and consider voting for the lesser of two evils to be weak-principled. Until we get a better system that allows for preference voting, I recognize that voters will have to compromise. It’s not even that I think that either party has a great advantage in the polls, so my vote won’t matter. The country is as divided now as it has ever been.

The reason I can no longer vote for Republicans as the lesser of two evils is that I’ve begun to seriously doubt that they are the lesser of two evils.

I’ve come to see that Republicans are two-faced. On paper, Republicans are easily more favorable than Democrats to a libertarian-minded person such as myself. On paper, they support lower taxes, less socialism, limited government, a rigid interpretation of the Constitution, property rights, parental rights and gun rights. In practice, they do little to permanently relieve the tax burden, they support wealth redistribution in a variety of forms, they’ve bloated the government to an unprecedented degree, they’ve made a mockery of Amendments One, Four, Six, Eight and Ten, they’ve been slow and inadequate in their response to the Supreme Court’s eminent domain decision. That leaves parental rights and gun rights. So if all you want to do is to teach your kid that God created the world in seven 24-hour periods or shoot empty beer cans for fun, the Republican Party has your back. Otherwise, it’s time to wake up and realize you’ve been duped.

It’s largely the Republicans [who] have vamped up the Drug War, and who have regretfully expanded it even into doctor’s offices, where drug warriors now decide what courses of treatment are and aren’t acceptable. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez [sic] recently stated that under his watch, eradicating pornography will be a priority on par with fighting terrorism. And several members of Congress are now pushing to expand FCC regulation to include cable TV, satellite radio, and perhaps even the Internet, all in an effort to protect Americans from bad words and dirty pictures. — FOX News

Not only do they abandon their principles and encroach upon American freedoms, Republicans have also shown themselves to be active members of the culture of political corruption.

Steve Verdon over at Outside the Beltway, upon hearing that Bush acted to seal documents seized from the office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) in connection with a bribery investigation, put it bluntly: “all I have to say is, only 971 days till Bush is history.”

In response to Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) completely transparent defense of Rep. Jefferson, Jim Geraghty at National Review Online wrote, “At this moment, I completely understand the anger of the Tapscottians, those who are content to see a GOP majority fall. Although honestly, at this moment, I don’t want to wait until November to see this kind of behavior punished.”

Republicans had a chance to use their majority to advance the cause of freedom. I don’t know if they merely squandered it or if they were lying from the start. Either way, our country deserves better.