It’s going to be a rough couple of months for the wireless industry.

As expected, the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved a broad inquiry into the wireless market. In a unanimous vote, the agency’s five commissioners–three Democrats and two Republicans–approved two so-called notices of inquiry, one that will examine competition and innovation and another that will evaluate truth-in-billing practices.

“I can’t think of a more important moment to be considering these issues,” FCC chairman Julius Genachowski told a hearing in Washington. “Many Americans are learning to do more with less. A surprise charge on a monthly bill, or a new service that does not perform as advertised, can be a major budget-buster, especially as household spending on communications grows ever larger. This FCC will have a relentless focus on innovation and investment, on competition and consumers.”

Genachowski added that these inquiries could lay the groundwork for the examination of other industries such as cable and Internet. “I hope the new wireless competition report will help set a standard for fact-based, analytically deep analysis of the mobile industry,” he said. “It is essential that the commission develop policies that encourage a new generation of innovators, working with new tools, on new platforms, and having an extraordinary impact on our economy and society.”

The wireless industry’s trade group, CTIA, welcomed the inquiry through gritted teeth, saying it “appreciates the opportunity to respond” to the FCC’s questions. “The wireless ecosystem–from carriers to handset manufacturers to network providers to operating-system providers to application developers–is evolving before our eyes and this is not the same market that it was even three years ago,” said president and chief executive Steve Largent. “In this industry, innovation is everywhere.”

A man who reportedly believed Republicans were conspiring to steal today’s election entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash the screen of one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said.

‘He smashed it with the cat’s ears,’ said volunteer Jim Govostis.”

–Morning Call, Nov. 7, 2006

Fantastic. Here we are, just two weeks before the 2008 presidential election and the integrity and accuracy of some of the electronic voting machines that will determine its outcome are in question.

Again.

According to new research from the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, the Sequoia AVC Advantage machines used throughout New Jersey and Louisiana, and in a few counties in Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well, can be hacked in eight minutes to manipulate vote tallies.

From the Princeton report:

The AVC Advantage contains a computer. If someone installs a different computer program for that computer to run, it can deliberately add up the votes wrong. It’s easy to make a computer program that steals votes from one party’s candidates, and gives them to another, while taking care to make the total number of votes come out right. It’s easy to make this program take care to cheat only on election day when hundreds of ballots are cast, and not cheat when the machine is being tested for accuracy. This kind of fraudulent computer program can modify every electronic ‘audit trail’ in the computer. Without voter-verified paper ballots, it’s extremely hard to know whether a voting machine (such as the AVC Advantage) is running the right program.”

Damning allegations and ones which Sequoia categorically denied after unsuccessfully attempting to suppress them. According to Sequoia, its voting machines are vulnerable only in a classroom setting. In real-life election scenarios, they’re just fine. “…Simple, established, and previously used accuracy and security protections–removed from the Advantages studied in the report published by the plaintiffs–make the items in their report next to impossible,” Sequoia said in rebuttal to Princeton researchers’ claims. “In fact, many of the scenarios painted by plaintiffs depend on the existence of crooked, malicious, and corrupt pollworkers, while the success of some scenarios depends on both corrupt pollworkers and inattentive voters.”

How reassuring.

Well, at least they’re not switching votes between candidates like some of those touchscreen systems in West Virginia, right?

PREVIOUSLY:

• Got a “Verifiable Paper Trail” for Those Phantom Voters?
• Premier Continues Proud Tradition of Diebold E-Voting Screw-Ups
• Make the E-voting System’s Password “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8″? That’s so Obvious It’s Genius!
• Diebold: A New Beginning (to the First Step in E-Voting Terror)
• AccuVote? Bit of an Oxymoron, Don’t You Think?
• What Did You Expect? They All Run Windows…

[Image Credit: Diebold Variations]