[supercat]

You see multiple cuts of button pushing (without seeing the card being used btw), then more cuts, then ta-dah! A tape with printing on it, which the voice tells us is the result of their Magic Software.

The video itself is not proof of anything; it is merely an illustration of the points made in their white paper.

Some essential facts gleaned from the white paper were that, at least in the version tested...

1. Someone could boot the machine off a memory card, and have that card alter other software contained in the machine.
2. The machine itself ran code from a medium which was rewritable under program control.
3. Physical security for the machines consisted of a relatively generic low-security lock. Many cheap file cabinets, mini-bars, and other such things use simple locks from a number of vendors. Such locks often have less than 100 different keys across all applications and keys are hard neither to get nor to duplicate.
4. While you are correct that a virus' attempt to spread could be detected if someone examined an infected memory card, this does not imply that it would be detected before an election. Further, infected machines could remove all trace of the virus from themselves after the election. If the virus isn't detected until after an election, it may be impossible to tell which machines were infected and whether such infection affected the election.
5. Although Diebold claims these flaws are fixed, that they exist in the first place is evidence IMHO that Diebold was never serious about security.
6. Nothing I have read gives any indication that Diebold has added any security against insider attacks, which are an even more insidious problem than the outsider attacks noted by the observers. Any machine with such clear weaknesses against outsider attacks will almost certainly have worse weaknesses against insider attacks.

A good voting system should be at least as secure as paper ballots against both outsider attacks and insider attacks. Diebold is perhaps clueless about preventing the latter, since ATMs face very different risks from voting machines (among other things, since ATMs log every transaction, any funny business will be detected and tracked down).

[Ramius]

A good voting system should be at least as secure as paper ballots against both outsider attacks and insider attacks.

You're kidding, right? Paper ballots are secure? Like the ones in Chicago? The ones in Seattle? LOL... yeah, right...

[DBrow]

Physical security also consists of tamper seals and locked rooms.

How does the program delete itself without a trace? This is "Magic Software" that can on paper or in specs do anything.

The machine booted its election program from an embedded eeprom. Details about the election was loaded from a card- not the operating program, according to Diebold.

As for Diebold not releasing any info about hacks, you never read info about LoJack, and Master does not sell lockpick manuals. I wonder why...

The infection could also be detected after an election, during an investigation. The claim that the virus is undetectable and deletes itself tracelessly is unproven. If true, it would be a first in the virus world, especially for such a magic virus that has so many features.

A good voting system must be much better than paper ballots. Many want a return to paper just because it was so insecure; all the hacks for the paper system have been worked out for years and people are good at it by now, with occasional problems like 99% or even 115% turnouts.

I'll believe the Princeton "experts" when they conduct a real demo, with FBI, James Randi, FEC, and maybe Jimmy Carter watching.