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For Immediate Release
August, 26 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Don Owens, dowens@citizen.org, (202) 588-7767
Mike Stankiewicz, mstankiewicz@citizen.org, (202) 588-7779
Congressional Committees Must Require Voting Machine Vendors to Explain Poor Security Record & Practices
Bipartisan Group Calls on Congress to Hold Vendors Accountable
WASHINGTON
Today, election security advocates from across the political spectrum called on the U.S. Senate Rules and House Administration Committees to hold the nation's largest voting system vendors to account in a hearing on election security.
The groups sent a letter signed by Public Citizen, FreedomWorks, the National Election Defense Coalition, the NAACP, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the League of Women Voters, Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and several others, and calls on the U.S. Senate Rules and U.S. House Administration Committees to bring major national voting system vendors to Capitol Hill for hearings to answer for their continued practice of selling insecure voting systems to states and localities.
Both The New York Times Magazine and McClatchy Co. have extensively reported on the questionable practices and sales conduct of voting systems vendors. Questions abound about new machines with Windows operating systems that expire before November 2020, voting machines that connect to the internet and non-disclosure of the vendors' owners and major investors.
In February 2018, the Times Magazine reported that one of the largest voting system vendors, ES&S, pre-installed remote-access software on its voting machine systems. The company then denied the software's existence in press reports. Remote access software which operates over the internet allows for backdoor entry by hackers into voting systems. Later, the company responded to a letter of inquiry from U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and reversed itself, admitting that it did install remote-access software on some of its voting machines, but did not detail how many.
The letter notes that the last hearing the Senate held to which the vendors were invited, only one of the largest vendors agreed to testify. The letter closes by urging the Committees to "require participation by the voting system vendors" to ensure that a hearing can be held.
To speak with an expert, please contact Don Owens, dowens@citizen.org, (202) 588-7767.
Read the joint-letter here.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
(202) 588-1000LATEST NEWS
'Astonishing' Study Shows Infant Deaths Rise in US When Bat Populations Fall
Experts hailed the study as "groundbreaking" and "sobering" for the connections it draws between ecosystem and human health.
Sep 06, 2024
Bat die-offs in the U.S. led to increased use of insecticides, which in turn led to greater infant mortality, according to a "seminal" study published Thursday that shows the effects of biodiversity loss on human beings.
Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, authored the study, which was published by Science, a leading peer-reviewed journal.
Bats can eat thousands of insects per night and act as a natural pest control for farmers, so when a fungal disease began killing off bat populations in the U.S. after being introduced in 2006, farmers in affected counties used more insecticides, Frank found. Those same counties saw more infant deaths, which Frank linked to increased use of insecticide that is harmful to human health, especially for babies and fetuses.
The study was greeted by an outpouring of praise from unaffiliated scientists for its methodology and the important takeaways it offers.
"[Frank] uses simple statistical methods to the most cutting-edge techniques, and the takeaway is the same," Eli Fenichel, an environmental economist at Yale University, toldThe New York Times. "Fungal disease killed bats, bats stopped eating enough insects, farmers applied more pesticide to maximize profit and keep food plentiful and cheap, the extra pesticide use led to more babies dying. It is a sobering result."
Carmen Messerlian, an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard University, told the Times the study "seminal" and "groundbreaking."
The study shows the need for a broader understanding of human health that includes consideration of entire ecosystems, said Roel Vermeulen, an environmental epidemiologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "It emphasizes the need to move from a human-centric health impact analysis, which only considers the direct effects of pollution on human health, to a planetary health impact assessment," he toldNew Scientist.
Reporter Benji Jones echoed that sentiment in Vox, calling Frank's findings "astonishing" and writing that such studies could help us fight chemical pollution by corporations.
"When the link between human and environmental health is overlooked, industries enabled by short-sighted policies can destroy wildlife habitats without a full understanding of what we lose in the process," Jones said. "This is precisely why studies like this are so critical: They reveal, in terms most people can relate to, how the ongoing destruction of biodiversity affects us all."
NEW: This is one of the more stunning (and sobering) studies I've covered in a while:
It found that a decline of bats in the U.S. had come at a deadly cost to human babieshttps://t.co/M82FXxBrtO
— Dino Grandoni (@dino_grandoni) September 5, 2024
Frank, who said he started the work after stumbling on an article about bat population loss while procrastinating, happened upon an excellent natural experiment. The spread of white-nose syndrome, the fungal disease, was well tracked on a county-by-county level, leaving him with high-quality data that is hard to find for researchers who study the intersection of human and animal life.
The benefits of biodiversity on humans, and the drawbacks to its loss, are normally very difficult to quantify.
"That's just quite rare—to get good, empirical, grounded estimates of how much value the species is providing," Charles Taylor, an environmental economist at Harvard Kennedy School, toldThe Guardian. "Putting actual numbers to it in a credible way is tough."
Taylor himself is the author of a somewhat similar study that showed that pesticide use and infant mortality rose during years in which cicadas appeared; the insects do so at 13-17 year intervals.
David Rosner, a historian based at Columbia University, said the new bat study joins a large body of evidence dating back to the 1960s that links pesticide use with negative human health outcomes. "We're dumping these synthetic materials into our environment, not knowing anything about what their impacts are going to be," he said. "It's not surprising—it's just kind of shocking that we discover it every year."
Frank's claim about the cause of increased infant mortality should be taken with some caution, said Vermeulen, the Dutch researcher. He said the loss of agricultural income caused by bat die-offs could be connected to the increased deaths in complex ways.
The exact causal mechanism isn't known, Frank told media outlets, but the data shows the rise of infant mortality didn't come from food contamination by insecticides—rather, it's more likely it came via the water supply or contact with the chemicals.
Frank's other research extends beyond pesticide use. He and another researcher recently estimated that hundreds of thousands of human beings have died in India due to the collapse of the country's vulture population, as rotting meat increased the spread of diseases such as rabies.
Frank is not the first to study the impacts of white-nose syndrome on humans. Other studies have shown a reduction in land rents in counties hit by the bat plague and documented the billions of dollars that farmers have lost as their natural pest control disappeared.
The syndrome attacks bats while they hibernate. It was first identified in New York in 2006 and has since spread to much of North America. It's believed to have been brought over from Europe. It doesn't affect all bat species, but it's killed more than 90% of three key species, and bats also face a myriad of other threats, including habitat loss, climate change, and the dangerous churn of wind turbines.
Frank's bracing study should be a call to arms, experts said.
"This study estimates just a few of the consequences we suffer from the disappearance of bats, and they are just one of the species we're losing," Felicia Keesing, a biologist at Bard College, told The Washington Post. "These results should motivate everyone, not just farmers and parents, to clamor for the protection and restoration of biodiversity."
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Brazilian Judge Orders Slaughterhouses and Ranchers to Pay for Harming Amazon
"The invaders and their main business partners—loggers and meatpacking companies—make the profits their own while passing on to society the costs of environmental damage," notes one of numerous lawsuits.
Sep 06, 2024
A Brazilian judge on Thursday ordered two slaughterhouses and three ranchers to pay $764,000 in combined penalties for trading cattle raised in a protected area of the Amazon rainforest.
The decision by Judge Inês Moreira da Costa in Rondônia—the most severely deforested state in the Brazilian Amazon—came in response to a flurry of lawsuits filed by green groups seeking millions of dollars in damages from defendants including Distriboi and Frigon, two meat processing firms accused of trading cattle in the Jaci-Parana protected zone.
"When a slaughterhouse, whether by negligence or intent, buys and resells products from invaded and illegally deforested reserves, it is clear that it is directly benefiting from these illegal activities," the plaintiffs' complaint states. "In such cases, there is an undeniable connection between the company's actions and the environmental damage caused by the illegal exploitation."
The slaughterhouses and ranchers are but two of numerous parties being sued, including other ranchers and JBS, the Brazilian meat giant that bills itself as the world's largest protein producer.
According toThe Associated Press—whose reporting on the cattle trading documents prompted the lawsuits:
Brazilian law forbids commercial cattle inside a protected area, yet some 210,000 head are being grazed inside Jaci-Parana, according to the state animal division. With almost 80% of its forest destroyed, it ranks as the most ravaged conservation unit in the Brazilian Amazon. A court filing pegs damages in the reserve at some $1 billion.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuits are seeking to put a price on the destruction of old-growth rainforest, asserting that "the invaders and their main business partners—loggers and meatpacking companies—make the profits their own while passing on to society the costs of environmental damage."
The Amazon rainforest is one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems and is a crucial carbon sink, meaning it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The world lost around 3.7 million hectares of primary tropical forests last year—a rate of approximately 10 soccer fields per minute, according to data from the University of Maryland's Global Land Analysis and Discover laboratory. While this marked a 9% reduction in deforestation compared with 2022, the overall deforestation rate is roughly the same as in 2019 and 2021. Felling trees released 2.4 metric gigatons of climate pollution into the atmosphere in 2023, or almost half of all annual U.S. emissions from burning fossil fuels.
In Brazil, the government of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has taken steps to combat deforestation, resulting in a more than one-third reduction in forest loss. Progress in reversing the rampant forest destruction wrought by the previous far-right administration of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—who was nicknamed "Captain Chainsaw"—were partially offset by a 43% spike in deforestation in the Cerrado region last year.
Earlier this year, Marcel Gomes—a Brazilian journalist who worked with colleagues at Repórter Brasil to coordinate "a complex, international campaign that directly linked beef from JBS... to illegal deforestation"—was one of seven winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
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Jayapal Slams Israeli Government After US Activist Killed in West Bank
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, she said, "has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank, often encouraged by right-wing ministers."
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U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal blasted Israel's government on Friday after Israeli forces reportedly killed American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi while the 26-year-old was protesting the expansion of settlements in the illegally occupied West Bank.
"My heart goes out to Aysenur's family, friends, and loved ones," Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in a statement. "This is a terrible tragedy, and I extend my condolences to all those in mourning today. My office is actively working to gather more information on the events that led to her death."
Eygi, who had dual citizenship in the United States and Turkey, graduated from the University of Washington earlier this year.
"I am very troubled by the reports that she was killed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers," said Jaypal, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Citing witnesses, AJ+reported that Eygi was killed by a "deliberate shot to the head" in the town of Beita, near the settlement of Evyatar.
"The killing of an American citizen is a terrible proof point in this senseless war of rising tensions in the region."
The congresswoman charged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government "has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank, often encouraged by right-wing ministers of the Netanyahu government."
"The killing of an American citizen is a terrible proof point in this senseless war of rising tensions in the region," added Jayapal, a critic of Israel's 11-month assault of the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 40,878 Palestinians and led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
The U.S. government has provided Israel with diplomatic support and billions of dollars in military assistance since it launched the assault on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas-led attack, in which more than 1,100 people were killed and over 240 others were taken hostage.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in Congress and a fierce critic of the Israeli government, responded to Eygi's killing by calling out American diplomats in a series of posts on social media Friday.
Matthew Miller, a spokesperson at the U.S. State Department, said that "we are aware of the tragic death of an American citizen, Aysenur Eygi, today in the West Bank. We offer our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones. We are urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death, and will have more to say as we learn more. We have no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens."
Noting his statement, Tlaib said: "Hey how'd they die, Matt? Was it magic? Who or what killed Aysenur? Asking on behalf of Americans who want to know."
The congresswoman slammed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for his "complete and utter failure in keeping Americans safe," and urged him to "do something to save lives!"
Tlaib also reposted Zeteo News reporter Prem Thakker's list of Americans killed by Israeli forces. In addition to Eygi, they include teenagers Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar; World Central Kitchen worker Jacob Flickinger; journalist Shireen Abu Akleh; and peace activist Rachel Corrie.
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