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Los Angeles Daily Journal reports that AlamedaCounty spent nearly $12 million in taxpayer dol-lars on Diebold machines that were ultimatelyunable to serve their intended purpose. (Ala-meda County was awarded $100,000 as part ofthe settlement mentioned earlier.) In San Diego,where Diebold’s machines also malfunctioned,some 40,000 people were reportedly unable tocast their vote, disenfranchised by Diebold be-cause there was no Plan B in place whenmachines failed on Election Day.

The thanks Heller got for speaking up andtrying to protect Americans’ votes was a full-

out smear campaign designed to ruin his lifeand send a clear signal to any other prospec-tive whistleblowers.

The Oakland Tribune published several ofHeller’s smoking-gun Jones Day memos afterreceiving them from activists working withBlackBoxVoting.org. The Tribune reported thatJones Day counselor McMillan told prosecutorshe was distraught over the incident.

“He now has a hard time trusting others,”the D.A.’s investigators wrote in a report.“McMillan’s 20-year legal career is in jeopardydue to the act of the criminal [Heller] who wasworking at Jones Day.” McMillan claims Hellerendangered his posh legal job by making himlook bad to his clients, who were understand-ably upset that their attorneys were unable tokeep confidential information secure.

Many see this so-called criminal as a hero.Heller detractors point to the attorney-clientprivilege, a sacrosanct bond.

But how holy is the attorney-client privilege?The California Labor Code §1102.5 states: “Anemployer may not make, adopt or enforce anyrule, regulation or policy preventing an employ-ee from disclosing information to a governmentor law-enforcement agency, where the employ-ee has reasonable cause to believe that theinformation discloses a violation of state or fed-eral statute, or a violation or noncompliancewith a state or federal rule or regulation.”

The California Whistleblower Protection Act§8547.1 further stipulates: “The Legislaturefinds and declares that state employeesshould be free to report waste, fraud, abuse ofauthority, violation of law or threat to publichealth without fear of retribution.”

Yet the 44-year-old Heller now faces crimi-nal prosecution because “whistleblower sta-tus” only protects one from retribution by em-ployers. Criminal prosecution is another matterentirely. Little did Heller know that powerfulforces were working against him.

Heller first learned he was under investiga-tion early one morning in August 2004, when acontingent of police officers and investigatorsshowed up at his home with a search warrant.Eighteen months elapsed before officialcharges were finally brought against him inFebruary 2006. The L.A. County District At-torney’s office charged Heller with felonyaccess to computer data, receiving stolen

property and commercial burglary. Heller haspleaded not guilty.

According to a blog written by Heller’s wife,Michele Gregory, during the search, officialsconfiscated the couple’s belongings, such ascell phones, computers and address books—even Gregory’s favorite shoes. (She and herhusband were unable to speak to us on therecord while the case was ongoing.)

“You have to have a sense of humor whenyour world is crumbling all around you, and youcan’t seem to stop it,” she wrote.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Stephen Heller toldThe Oakland Tribune about the raid. “I thoughtit must be a mistake.…I kept thinking theyhad the wrong house, that they were aftersomeone else.…It was just very frightening; itwas so surreal.”

Federal and state authorities declined toprosecute Heller, but the L.A. County DistrictAttorney’s Office was all too happy to catch this“thief,” who, by all accounts, had never evenbeen a political activist.

Now, as Heller fights to regain control of hislife, Diebold machines continue to fail elsewherein the country. In December 2005 its optical-scansystems were hacked in a mock-election test inLeon County, Florida. The results were flippedwithout a trace. Diebold would eventually admitthat its software contained code banned by fed-eral Voting System Standards. It was this codethe hackers had exploited. As of this writing, thebanned code has still not been purged.

Shortly after the Leon County simulated hack,an independent study commissioned by Cali-fornia’s new Secretary of State, Bruce McPher-son, a Diebold supporter at the time, found anoth-er 16 bugs in just one portion of Diebold’s votingsystem. The analysis described the bugs as a“more dangerous family of

“THIS IS A VERYRARE INSTANCE,”said Michael Kohn, gener-al counsel to the NationalWhistleblower Center. “In fact, the onlyone of which I’m aware, in which awhistleblower has been charged with a felony.I find it outrageous.”

Welcome to George W. Bush’s United Statesof America, Mr. Kohn.

Kohn was speaking to the Cleveland PlainDealer about a citizen doing what he felt washis civic duty. In 2004 Stephen Heller alertedofficials in California that Diebold, Inc.—theinfamously partisan, right-wing manufacturerof hackable electronic-voting machines—hadbeen using illegal software in the state’s votingmachines. Furthermore, he aired allegationsthat Diebold had planned to lie about using thesoftware just prior to one of our nation’s mostcontentious Presidential elections.

Heller’s reward for alerting authorities toDiebold’s crime-in-progress? Three felonycounts and the prospect of almost four years inthe slammer.

Yes, being a whistleblower is usually a riskyand costly proposition.

Contrary to what many of Bush’s sycophantapologists in Congress and at the CIA have tosay, the bulk of whistleblowers don’t gaincelebrity status with big-ticket book advancesand screenplay deals. Most lose their jobs andoften have trouble finding another.

Such is the case with Heller, who received no

financial windfall forhelping to bring Diebold’s nefarious plot to an

end (at least for the time being) in California. Hisallegations led to the decertification of the com-pany’s touch-screen voting machines in 2004and to an eventual $2.6-million settlement paidby Diebold to the state. Having filed a false-claimslawsuit against the manufacturer, electronic-vot-ing watchdogs Bev Harris and Jim March ofBlackBoxVoting.org were delegated $152,000.

BlackBoxVoting.org, a Progressive electionintegrity group, has since donated $10,000 toHeller for his legal fees, but he is still trying toscrape together the staggering sums required infighting for his freedom. Heller also needs to findfull-time work, which has proven to be difficult.After all, having “whistleblower” on your résuméis not a big draw for prospective employers.

Michael Kohn compares Heller to the Nixon-era’s Daniel Ellsberg, who blew the whistle onthe so-called Pentagon Papers, which exposedthe U.S. military’s flawed strategy in Vietnam.Heller detractors—the Los Angeles CountyDistrict Attorney, Diebold’s law firm and, ofcourse, Diebold itself—disagree. They arguethat Heller is actually a thief.

In 2004 Heller, a struggling actor, took a tem-porary graveyard-shift job as a word processor,transcribing audiotapes in the L.A. office of Jones

Day, a high-powered,international law firm repre-

senting Diebold in California. Afterreading case documents from Daniel McMillan,the lead attorney tending to Diebold matters,Heller realized that Jones Day had informed itsclient in 2003 that Diebold was breakingCalifornia law by using uncertified software onmany of the company’s touch-screen votingmachines in the state. Jones Day then went on toadvise Diebold on how the law firm might offer“legal” explanations about the transgressions tothe state if caught.

Familiar with Diebold’s dubious past andquestionable practices in the field of electronicvoting, Heller copied some 500 pages of whathe perceived to be damning documents fromJones Day. According to the prosecution, mak-ing the privileged attorney-client documentspublic is considered to be criminal theft.

It has been accepted that Heller exposedDiebold’s violations of state law. These viola-tions were described by then CaliforniaSecretary of State Kevin Shelley as “deceitful”and “fraudulent” when he decertified all ofCalifornia’s Diebold touch-screen votingmachines in May 2004 due to security risks,lack of voter confidence and most notably,Diebold’s deceptive practices in the state.

The company’s machines had alreadycaused misery earlier that year. In AlamedaCounty, California, Diebold machines failed inthe March 2004 Presidential primary elections,forcing voters to use backup paper ballots. The

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BY BRAD FRIEDMAN

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Whistleblower Stephen Heller faces years inprison for exposing voting machine manu-facturer Diebold’s possible criminal activities.

Whistleblower Stephen Heller tried to hold DieboldInc. responsible for breaking California law. He’snow looking at 3 possible felony counts.

Heller’s arrest warrant.

One of the many Smoking Gun documentsHeller brought to public attention.

NOVEMBER HUSTLER 85

vulnerabilities” that “go well be-yond” what was discovered in Leon County.

In March 2006 Bruce Funk—a county clerk in EmeryCounty, Utah—allowed independent computer securityexperts to inspect Diebold’s newest line of touch-screenvoting machines. Not surprisingly, the experts foundnew security vulnerabilities that surpassed what hadbeen found previously. The stunning new vulnerabilitieshave been described by computer scientists and securi-ty experts as “the nuclear bomb for E-voting systems”and “the most serious security breach that’s ever beendiscovered in a voting system.”

Funk, who held his elected position for 23 years,has been forced out by Diebold and state officials.BlackBoxVoting.org is currently providing funds for legalsupport as Funk battles to retain his job.

BlackBoxVoting.org described these latest discover-ies in Utah as “a major national security risk.” The rev-elation eventually led Pennsylvania to lock down andsequester all Diebold touch-screen machines just daysbefore the May 2006 primary elections. Caught offguard, voting officials scrambled to find a solution.

The defect is said to be extremely severe, affectingevery Diebold touch-screen voting machine in the coun-try. It was unclear at press time if the flaw—which couldallow a malicious individual to completely overwrite thesoftware without a password—will ever be remedied. Asolution would require a complete reinstallation of allfirmware and software on every machine.

Diebold purposefully built this high-security risk“feature” into its voting machines for “easier updates,”but apparently the company never thought it noteworthyto alert officials. Even after the problem was revealed inUtah, it failed to notify the state of Ohio, which wasabout to use the very same machines just weeks later in41 counties as part of the 2006 primary elections.Cuyahoga County was eventually plagued with failingDiebold tabulators, the malfunction resulting in some17,000 absentee ballots having to be counted by hand.

The corrupt, untrustworthy Diebold is now using Heller’scase to send a clear message: Fuck with us; pay the price.

Luckily, election-integrity advocates continue to take astand. BlackBoxVoting.org and other groups—notablyVoteTrustUSA.org, VotersUnite.org and VelvetRevolution.us(all of whom have minimal resources and little more thanthe truth on their side)—maintain the faint glimmer ofhope that democracy might be restored in the UnitedStates. For the courageous Stephen Hellers out there, sav-ing America from tyranny is what it’s all about.

The gravest irony in this matter is that if StephenHeller is convicted of any one of the three pendingcharges, even if handed a suspended sentence due tohis having no prior criminal record, as a felon he wouldbe stripped of his right to vote.

And may God bless America.For additional information, or to assist the beleaguered

whistleblower financially, visit HellerLegal Def-enseFund.com.

(continued from page 79)

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