Diebold Whistleblower Criminally Charged, Pleads Not Guilty
The Law is strange. A woman in Kansas City was once prosecuted for practicing "random acts
of kindness," by putting money in parking machines about to run out of
time. Apparently it's a crime to do that for other people and of
course the city loses out on the revenue for all those parking tickets.
It's the same sort of twisted logic. They make an example, in this
case, squeal and you will be prosecuted.
Two Years ago Stephen Heller, an actor in LA who worked part time for
the law firm of Jones Day, discovered that one of the firm's clients,
Diebold, was possibly going to disenfranchise thousands of voters in
the next election.
Heller did the honorable thing, and provided this information to the
California Attorney General and then Secretary of State Kevin Shelley -
which ultimately resulted in the decertication of Diebold in California.
But last year Kevin Shelley was forced to resign as Secretary of State due to a fundraising scandal. Ah-nald promptly appointed a new Republican Secretary of State who has proceeded to Temporarily certify Diebold despite the information provided by Stephen Heller, and Heller himself is now facing criminal charges.
Stephen
Heller is alleged to have exposed documents in Jan. & Feb. 2004
which provided smoking gun evidence that Diebold was using illegal,
uncertified software in California voting machines. The docs also
showed that Diebold's California attorneys (the powerful international
law firm Jones Day) had told them they were in breach of the law for
using uncertified software, but Diebold continued to use the uncertified software anyway.
Heller is alleged to have come across these docs while temping as a
word processor at Jones Day, and he is further alleged to have taken
the docs and exposed them to the bright light of day. Now, after
sitting on this for 2 years, the Los Angeles District Attorney, under
pressure from Jones Day, is going after this whistleblower with 3
felony charges, each of which carries the potential of time in state
prison.
So tell me is it a crime to report the commission of crime now?
Apparently it is if the criminals include a large and powerful law
firm like Jones Day.
Let's make this clear, folks. The docs Heller is
accused of exposing were important evidence. First, they show that
Diebold and their attorneys, Jones Day, conspired to mislead the
California secretary of state, and that the lie they told was material,
and resulted directly in the disenfranchisement of voters. Second,
another document demonstrates that Diebold lied to the secretary of
state when it represented that certain problems with its software were
"fixed." This document, the release notes for the new software, showed
that the problems were not fixed. Third, the documents showed that
Diebold had been advised by Jones Day that what it had been doing with
its uncertified software was illegal. Fourth, the documents show that
Jones Day advised Diebold that it was subject to criminal prosecution.
So in a nutshell, Diebold was defrauding the state government and
taxpayers of California, and disenfranchising the voters of California.
And the documents PROVE it.
And I think this is the precisely point. This prosecution is a scare tactic.
My feeling is that sometimes it just may in fact be neccesary to risk
legal punishment in order to accomplish a far greater good. This is
doctrine behind all acts of Civil Disobedience from sit-ins to marches.
Those people who abuse the law, and the color of authority to
accomplish their ends frequently exploit the of the law to intimidate and silence dissenters.
If CBS and Dr. Jeffrey Wigand hadn't taken the legal risks facing them, we probably still wouldn't know that nicotine is addictive.
If people like Russell Tice hadn't spoken out about the NSA domestic spying program, we still wouldn't know a thing about it.
I'm not saying the "ends justify the means", I'm simply saying there's
a reason we have whistle-blower laws, there are reasons these people
need to be protected from retalitation. IMO The fact that someone can
be a witness and source for the California Attorney General only to be
trashed by the LA District Attorney is a loophole that needs to be closed to protect all future efforts by people to speak Truth to Power.
If Linda Tripp can get immunity from Ken Starr, Steve Heller deserves a decent and robust defense.
Naturally, reasonable minds may disagree.
By the way, while looking about a bit on this... I find some interesting speculation on InfraRed abilities of Diebold machines at thebradblog. In fact, I get the feeling the Diebold story is SO BAD, it's hard to tell the fact from the fiction.
The electronic voting technology in the field is utterly broken,
susceptible to the most puerile attacks. In fact, their only real
defense is attacking whistleblowers and threatening or intimidating
others with legal action if they make "unsubstantiated" claims about
vulnerabilities. Do we really believe that the likes of Tom Delay,
Randy Cunningham, Abramoff etc., aren't going to resort to exploiting
these vulnerabilities. Gimme a break.
Don't forget, "Dieb" is the German word for "Thief".
And the irony is, if Heller is convicted of a felony for exposing
Diebold's crimes against the California voters, he'll lose his right to
vote. Diebold will win. We can't let that happen!
