This affair provids an amazing example of how Diebold manages security problems internally, and seeks to abuse copyright law to silence its critics. It also demonstrates the threats to the civil liberties of all americans posed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which gives corporations dangerous tools to control speech on the Internet. As interpreted by some courts, the DMCA can even be used to control references (web links) to what other people are talking about.

A number of Diebold's internal email messages leaked out. They show evidence of security flaws in their systems, as well as discussions about how to resolve, or in some cases, obfuscate those problems.

As the email archive, and links to it, spread around the Internet, Diebold threatened ISPs under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). For example San Francisco Indymedia had links to the archive (not the archive itself). Online Policy Group (OPG) provides bandwidth to the Indymedia web site. Diebold threatened OPG with legal action. But OPG had no control over the archive, or even over the Indymedia website with links to the archive.

A Swarthmore student organization, focussed on advocating a bottom-up participatory structure for society, hosted the Diebold email archive. Diebold threatened Swarthmore under the DMCA.

In response, OPG and 2 Swarthmore students, assisted by the EFF and Stanford Law Clinic, sued Diebold for, among other things, abuse of copyright law, citing the public's right to fair use of the documents because of their importance to the public debate over the accuracy of electronic voting machines. Diebold withdrew all their legal challenges. The lawsuit to obtain declaratory relief and recover damages continues.

http://www.eff.org/Legal/ISP_liability/OPG_v_Diebold/

http://www.why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.html

http://wiki.volitant.net/diebold-cd

Wired: "Students Fight E-Vote Firm": http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,60927,00.html

Wired: "E-Vote Protest Gains Momentum": http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61002,00.html

http://www.house.gov/kucinich/issues/voting.htm

http://www.house.gov/kucinich/issues/Jud-Cmte-Invstgn.pdf

Walter Mebane's Diebold bibliography for his political science course at Cornell: http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/gov317/diebold/diebold.html