Sequoia Systems sent Princeton professor Ed Felten an e-mail, warning that if Felten's lab proceeded to analyze the security and/or hackability of Sequoia's voting machines, the company would consider its intellectual property infringed. The move followed disturbing reports about Sequoia voting machines in New Jersey, for instance that 10,000 voting machines were uncertified by the state, that February primary officials noted irregularities in the vote records, and that Princeton professor Andrew Appel bought a few Sequoia machines at a state auction site and managed to program them to misappropriate votes.
The Sequoia Systems' letter warns that the company "retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis". Felten produced a demo last year showing how to hack a Diebold machine in one minute, and recently published a paper on the Diebold machines' vulnerabilities.
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Acronym Required also mentioned voting machines in this post.
