Students sue over voting vulnerability
Two students from Swarthmore College have filed suit against one of the nation's largest makers of electronic voting machines, alleging that Diebold, Inc. had abused copyright laws to keep information from the public that is crucial to the health of America's democracy.The students used the Internet to post Diebold's internal memos and emails, saying the documents show the company knew its voting machines were vulnerable to tampering and that it knowingly violated election laws.Diebold issued cease-and-desist letters to Swarthmore, the students' service provider, claiming the emails are protected under copyright law.Though Swarthmore shut down the students' network connections until they had removed the disputed material, other students across the country, including three at Princeton, have begun to post ? or "mirror" ? this information on their University websites in what some call an act of civil disobedience."This legal system is being used as a tool of the corporations ? in a sense, people like Diebold just want to protect their own interests," Bryan Cattle '07 said regarding his decision to mirror the company's emails.