A story about what happened after the 2008 election that needs to be told long before November 2012.
A few years ago; maybe about 2005, I wrote an edition of Inspection about Diebold. You see I tour and pass by their headquarters in North Canton, Ohio twice a year. I usually stay around the area for at least a week or two. I remember remarking in that column about the parking lot and how I never saw a squirrel, a bird or even a branch move with the wind. Cars would stay there all day long. The place seemed scary to me: a cold edifice of glass and steel with no evidence of life.
That mystery was solved when I discussed Diebold with my client a few months ago…
According to my client, who gets a lot of her business from Diebold, they have very long shifts and aren’t allowed to go out. They have to stay there. Not sure about the squirrels, the birds or the tree limbs that never moved but, hey, maybe I just wasn’t there at the right time. Or maybe Diebold has some “deal” with the squirrels: with all the energy squirrels have maybe the plant is self sufficient due to squirrel-powered generators.
I did swear I caught a whiff of fur burning one year when I passed by. Maybe that was sulfur.
So, otherwise, I was glad to find out ghouls or zombies weren’t their main source of employment. I felt that Diebold’s headquarters in North Canton, Ohio: a source for a good portion of America’s electronic voting equipment, was spooky: haunted. Perhaps because I felt like I was being watch every time I passed by.
Maybe I was. Since I never see them, maybe the squirrels are stuffed, tied to the branches after they have cameras installed for “eyes.” Hey! No stranger than Thom Hartmann’s pigeons from the planet Zenu, or whatever, theory.
One mystery solved, but one bigger mystery added. For without any prompting she told me a story about how they lost a lot of business right after the election of 2008 and Diebold employees were scared witless about what would happen next.
Right after Obama won, members of Diebold management, according to her clients, started, at random… or so it seemed… to walk up to desks, or cubicles, and tell employees they had five minutes to collect all their possessions and leave the building: they were fired. The member of upper level management would have security in tow. The employee would be told if they weren’t out in five minutes they would be arrested for trespassing, and emphatically told that Diebold would press charges.
Her clients told her this went on for several weeks and they came to fear the sound of footsteps behind them. No one knew when it would happen, or why it was happening. It seemed as if they were being selected at random. It seemed as if the only purpose was to terrorize employees.
Now those who have read this column for a while know I am no fan of electronic voting. They also know that I believe if you wish to steal elections, or influence them when they’re, oh, so close, electronic voting is the easiest way to do it, and the easiest way to do it and leave no footprint. It’s all in the programming and that’s proprietary: affecting many, many votes, nation wide. There have been many examples of how hacking electronic voting machines is far too easy, like those provided Argonne National Lab researchers. We have also read, and I have heard in person, Clint Curtis tell how he was asked to write a program that would shift votes, skew the vote… stealing votes from one party and giving it to another: especially if an election’s close.
So when you read that Diebold management was so furious after the election of 2008 that they terrorized their own employees, why do you think they would do that?
I suspect you already know what I think.
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
©Copyright 2011
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved
"I felt that Diebold’s headquarters in North Canton, Ohio: a source for a good portion of America’s electronic voting equipment, was spooky: haunted. Perhaps because I felt like I was being watch every time I passed by."
You *were* being watched. There is a security bunker underneath Diebold (and every other secretive company of that ilk) that is filled with computer equipment and a couple of rent-a-cops. The computer equipment isn't there to run the company accounts. The computer equipment is there to watch the security cameras — *hundreds* of security cameras. The computers take pictures of the license plates of every car that drives by and if they see a car drive by repeatedly within a short period of time, flag it for the security officers, who then bump it up to the security company HQ for further investigation — expect your complete driving record, credit report, and any criminal record to be on someone's desk there the next day, and a knock on your door by a couple of folks in dark suits if they don't like what they see. The computers look at places that aren't supposed to have people, and if they see people there, like by a fire exit door, flag it for the security officers. The computers monitor people's desks to make sure that people are there when they're supposed to be there, and not there when they're not supposed to be there, and alert security in the case of the latter and supervisors in the case of the former. The modern corporation is a security state that would make the East German STASI proud, with computers playing the role of all-knowing Big Brother.
How do I know this? I design the specialized computer equipment that runs the software that does this. Diebold is not one of our customers, but I know they're one of our competition's customers. I know this because, in this day and age, a company like Diebold *has* to be, because only a secretive Stalinist police state reign of terror can keep its employees so terrorized that they don't even *think* of dropping a dime on exactly what it is that their employer actually does inside that corporate HQ…
Very interesting. Modern corporations were headed that way back when I didn't work for myself. That was over 20 years ago.
Very interesting. Modern corporations were headed that way back when I didn't work for myself. That was over 20 years ago.