Just how powerful is Diebold, anyway?!

[NotThatNolan]

I can't believe it took me over a year to notice this. On my campus, many doors (especially into dorms) have a card key entrance that opens with a valid student ID. I didn't realize that one of the back doors to my dorm won't unlock from midnight until eight in the morning for security reasons, so I was trying to unlock it for a minute and thinking something was wrong with my card. Anyway, this caused me to pay more attention to the card swipe device than usual, and for the first time I noticed the word DIEBOLD on it.

This surprised me at first, but it didn't bother me too much until I started trying to see where else I could find Diebold on campus. Apparently they produced everything that uses a student ID. Basically, Diebold is the company behind a form of my personal identification. Every time I use my ID to pay for food (we have dining accounts as a part of our tuition) I'm plugged into some sort of Diebold system. What I wasn't expecting is that even the scale used to weigh food for value had a big DIEBOLD logo. I don't know that I trust Diebold enough to have them decide the price of my purchases, and I certainly don't trust them enough to be behind my most important form of identification for the next three years; the ID that I need to sign up for classes, take exams, purchase food, and do just about anything on compus.

Am I being paranoid to be bothered by the fact that my main form of ID on campus is run by Diebold?

[valerief]

1. That's funny. In Iraq, it reads Halliburton on everything.

Only kidding. It is pretty creepy.

[WA98296]

2. They are powerful enough to deliver an entire democracy to the

Culture of Crime.

[The Doctor.]

3. "If I were a corporate magnate...

with such information gathering potential, then by all means I would love to have a database on everyone identified by my system. Heck, I'd probably make sure to put some innocuous looking verbage into any documents a would-be college student might sign, thereby releasing stewardship of said info to my company for "marketing purposes" or some other such nonsense.

What do you think?

[bullimiami]

4. funny how they can keep track of everyones dining accounts and

identification but cant seem to make decent voting machines.

hmmm. how odd.

[RagingInMiami]

5. The fact that you are inquiring about them online right now

Probably means you are being added to their list of people to watch.

[NotThatNolan]

6. I hope that would be difficult.

I'm on my dorm computer, which is on the same server with every other computer within a mile.

[RagingInMiami]

7. Do you have to type in a user name?

Or log in with a student ID?

[BeFree]

9. Question

Wouldn't the diebold data be on the same server? Could someone hack that data?

[AndyTiedye]

8. ATM Machines Too!

So they can look at/fiddle with your bank account with whatever maintenance hooks they left in.

As if being able to control our elections was not enough.


"committed to helping to deliver the electoral votes of Ohio to the President"
Walden O'Dell, CEO

[alfredo]

10. At this time I'd say they are as powerful as the amount of

power their "contributions" can buy.

[shenmue]

11. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you

Diebold is indeed evil. I used to work down the block from one of their office buildings. I discovered this during a lunchtime stroll around the office park. When I saw their logo sign, I went into shivers like I'm Dracula in a garlic field.

They own everything. They own you.

They have rigged every election since the pharaohs.

Seriously, if we don't go back to old-fashioned big-ass paper ballots like we used to have when I was a kid, we will no longer have the right to call this a legitimate country. It'll be like in Risk when you have two troops and the other guy has 570 in the country bordering you. Why even roll the dice?