Not Quite a Blog

Truly sad. I wish he had had the right criminal defense to wash his hands of this. Whistleblowing has to be done right. Jones Day is a bunch of really scummy lawyers.

E-voting `hero' pleads guilty to computer crime in Diebold case

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

A Van Nuys actor who became a hero to electronic-voting critics and digital-rights activists pleaded guilty this week to a felony computer crime, paid $10,000 restitution to lawyers for Diebold Election Systems and tried going back to his quiet life. [...]

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the outcome of the case was "a miscarriage of justice."

"I think it's vindictive. It's unfortunate that the lawyers of Jones Day think they can push people around like this and marshal the forces of the legal system to do so," Cohn said. "They should be giving this guy a medal. The secretary of state should be writing him a letter thanking him very much, for helping the people of California and showing a light on what Diebold was really about. Instead what we saw was the prosecutors being really an arm of Jones Day." [...]

One memo warned that Diebold could be prosecuted for illegally handling votes on Election Day. In one draft letter, Jones Day attorneys suggested that California elections officials did not have jurisdiction to test a voting system component that ended up failing in presidential elections. In another document, Jones Day advised Diebold of the need for sweeping civil and criminal defenses, billed at up to $450,000 a month.