www.bigbrother.gov

The feds want to know who’s been visiting the Web site of voting watchdog Bev Harris, and they’re likely to get what they want.

by George Howland Jr.
May 19 - 25, 2004

In the past 20 months, Harris has become America’s leading critic of electronic voting (see “Black Box Backlash,” March 10). Her reporting on the problems with new computer voting machines has been a key component in a national, grassroots movement to safeguard voting. Her astounding discoveries have resulted in important studies by distinguished computer scientists. She has been leaked thousands of pages of internal memos from Diebold Election Systems, one of the country’s leading electronic voting companies. She is frequently cited by newspapers across the country and is a guest on national and local television and radio stations. Thousands of people visit her Web site and participate in its reader forums. Now, Harris claims, the government wants our names, forum messages, and computer addresses.

--snip

Harris sounds the alarm about what the government wants her to turn over. “They want the logs of my Web site with all the forum messages and the IP [Internet protocol] addresses.” IP addresses are unique, numerical pointers to one or more computers on the Internet, making it possible to identify, or narrow the search for, a computer that has visited a given Web site. Writes Harris: “This has nothing to do with a VoteHere ‘hack’ investigation, and I have refused to turn it over.

“So, yesterday, they call me up and tell me they are going to subpoena me and put me in front of a grand jury. Well, let ’em. They still aren’t getting the list of members of blackboxvoting.org unless they seize my computer—which my attorney tells me might be what they had in mind.”

Read More...