Diebold, the electronic voting company and the subject of a recent Loose Wire column, have confirmed that they’ve decided not to sue folk who published leaked documents about the alleged security breaches of electronic voting. AP reports (no URL available yet) that a Diebold spokesman promised in a conference call Monday with U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel and attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that it would not sue dozens of students, computer scientists and ISP operators who received cease-and-desist letters from August to October.
Diebold did not disclose specifics on why it had dropped its legal case, but the decision is a major reversal of the company’s previous strategy. Ohio-based Diebold, which controls more than 50,000 touch-screen voting machines nationwide, had threatened legal action against dozens of individuals who refused to remove links to its stolen data.