Report a Crime, Go to Prison
Imagine this: you call the police to report a robbery-in-progress. Police arrive in time, the robbery is prevented, and the police arrest YOU. And then they let the robbers go.
If you think that’s too far-fetched, check this out.
The infamous Diebold Company was using illegal, uncertified software in their California voting machines. There were documents proving that Diebold’s lawyers had informed them that they were violating the law.
These documents were discovered by a temporary employee, Stephen Heller, of Diebold’s attorney’s office. Heller made the documents public. And now the Los Angeles District Attorney is going after this whistleblower with three felony charges.
No charges have been filed against Diebold for trying to derail our government.
Please contact the L.A. District Attorney’s office and ask them not to prosecute Stephen Heller. He’s a whistleblower and should not be prosecuted. Diebold is attempting to hijack our democracy. The whistleblower who exposed their crimes is a hero, not a criminal.
The L.A. District Attorney’s e-mail address is: lada@co.la.ca.us.
Their mailing address is:
District Attorney's Office
County of Los Angeles
210 West Temple Street, Suite 18000
Los Angeles, CA 90012-3210
Phone: 213-974-3512
Fax: 213-974-1484
And thanks to Backsplash for posting about this.
posted by Tom Harper @ 7:01 PM
11 Comments:
WTF??
Why do they hate freedom so much?
Man, I cannot tell you how much this pisses me off.
Mike V.: Yeah, WTF is right. Maybe this will be the new trend -- prosecuting the whistleblower. After all, Bush is ready to investigate and prosecute whoever leaked the information about secret CIA prisons, and the massive domestic wiretapping. They're not interested in the crimes themselves, just in catching whoever spilled the information.
Uh, Tom, who hijacked our country?
Will link to this tomorrow, and will get in touch with the LA DA
Why am I not suprised? And thanks for the support
Hey, the Gov is getting quite aggressive in trying to figure out who leaks the evidence of their crimes at a Federal level, too.
Welcome to the "integrified" Gopper way of doing things.
Pia: Yeah, that's the trouble. Things like this, that should be shocking, just aren't surprising any more.
Jolly Roger: Yup, it's pretty grim when they prosecute the whistleblower and ignore the criminal that the whistleblower was exposing.
Okay, I have a different perspective on this. While I agree that Diebold should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, I concurrently don't have a problem with the prosecution of Stephen Heller (though 3 felony charges is a bit extreme).
He was not authorized to make the documents public. Heller broke the law by stealing them. He did so for a worthy purpose, but that doesn't change the fact that he stole them.
One thing that MLK spoke of was that, if you feel a law is unjust, break it but accept the penalty. By accepting what the system dishes out, you are showing your respect for law, even an unjust one.
Let Heller have his day in court. Let Heller and his attorney's have the opportunity to show the jury that this prosecution is unjust. If the jury disagrees with his position, he can still hold his head high.
Trey: You do have a point. It's true that civil disobedience means being willing to take the penalty for breaking the law. But I just can't get over the screaming irony that Diebold committed what I consider treason, and they're not even being prosecuted; only the whistleblower.
Hopefully Heller's trial will bring lots of undesirable publicity to Diebold in particular, and those electronic voting machines in general. I didn't go into much detail in the post -- there's a lot more information in the link -- but this incident happened before the '04 election. Diebold and their attorneys kept everything quiet until after the election. They're probably hoping that it's safer now to have the trial and withstand the publicity. I hope they'll be proven wrong.
i love mlk, and i'm down with his message...and yet i could totally get on board with a late-night torching of diebold.
no human injuries, mind you, just burn their manufacturing capacity to the ground.
call me crazy...but if we're not going to have free and fair elections, anything goes.
Spaceneedl: I hear you. Diebold is a threat to our form of government. If tampering with votes isn't treason, I don't know what is.
Destroying their equipment would be a lot less drastic than the civil war that would result if our democracy gets derailed.
Riding on Taois Comments.
Martin Luther Kings remarks referred to Legal Segregation and he was speaking to the guidelines of Civil Disobedience.
Here we have Federal Whisleblower Protection (and I would like to know why it doesn't apply) and the Spirit is that you have a duty to report anything that is wrong just like a crime is being committed. Especially for a Constitutionally hot subject such as voting.
Who's Prosecuting this case Marcia Clarke?
Erik
Erik: I guess technically this whistleblower broke the law by publicizing confidential documents, but still...
Tampering with voting machines (which means sabotaging our democracy) is about as treasonous as you can get, and Diebold isn't even being prosecuted. There are some powerful people working behind the scenes.
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