DIEBOLD GOES POSTAL!

Subject: Fwd: All Black Box Voting files confiscated, including personal info on activists by Diebold.

From: Bev Harris Subject: All Black Box Voting files confiscated, including personal info on activists
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 02:11:26 -0700 (PDT)

Here's what you can do to help: Get the word out far and wide that Diebold has done this thing.

1. Diebold issued a pull-down demand under DMCA for the BlackBoxVoting.org web site, citing a link posted on a forum in the site, claiming that the link allowed web visitors to visit an unrelated page which contained items they say they own the copyright to.

2. Not only was BlackBoxVoting.org pulled down, but ALL of the documents, databases and programming for approximately 500 pages of material, most of which did not relate to Diebold at all, was confiscated. Dozens of web pages were pulled down which had nothing whatever to do with the disputed information. AIT Inc. has indicated that it believes it has the right to pull down the entire web site including unrelated pages. It then confiscated all of the material.

3. The confiscated pages included personal contact information for 200 activists, and the private strategy sessions for voting machine activists. BlackBoxVoting.org has yet to receive any explanation at all as to what authority was claimed to confiscate them. We demand their immediate return.

4. Most of the memos in question were written in Canada, and resided on a server in Canada up to and including 2003 after Diebold bought a Canadian company called Global Election Systems. In Canada, company correspondence, even internal memos, is not protected by copyright. To date we have been unable to find evidence, other than a claim in a letter, that Diebold even owns the copyright to these memos.

5. These memos are more properly termed "Evidence," because they contain evidence of a pattern of lawbreaking that dates back at least to 1999.

6. Lexis-Nexis would be a worthwhile exercise now for every one of these search terms pertaining to the origins of Global Election Systems: This firm was a wholly owned subsidiary of North American Professional Technologies, Inc., which was in turn a wholly owned subsidiary of MacroTrends Ventures International, Ltd. Charles Hong Lee is one of the principals with these firms; He has been tied in the press to participation in a scheme to bilk immigrants out of some $47 million; he is also connected with a scandal in which a Mr. Graye was prosecuted, relating to Vinex Wines. Charles Hong Lee was also involved with something called "The Vancouver Maneuver," a stock pump & dump scheme that bilked investors out of millions in connection with an entertainment company and something called Beverly Development. Charles Hong Lee was a principal with Global Election Systems, along with the late Clinton Rickards. Talbot Iredale, currently the V.P. for Research and Development for Diebold Election Systems, began with the company in 1991, right around the time the Vancouver Maneuver was exposed in Barron's magazine. This is the pedigree from whence the Diebold Memos arose.

What Really happened