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Diebold Audit Released, BlackBoxVoting.Org Shut Down
Chris Soghoian writes "The State of Maryland requested an audit of the Diebold electronic voting system by SAIC, after a report released by Johns Hopkins University and Rice Researchers (disclaimer: I'm one of Dr Rubin's students) noted several security issues. A condensed, from 200 to 40 pages, and censored version of the report has been released online (PDF link). The report notes that 'SAIC has identified several high-risk vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could have significant impact upon the AccuVote-TS voting system operation.'" However, Diebold says Maryland are moving forward with installation with "new security features" included, and elsewhere, Badgerman points out "Diebold has shut down blackboxvoting.org, apparently with copyright claims made to their ISP. But you can still go to the blackboxvoting.com site."
We are f**ked. If a political system is so broken that it can't keep this from getting through then... well...
We are f**ked.
I really am an IT Auditor for a living and this is exactly the kind of work I do (although I mostly work for Utility Companies like water or electricity) and I know how these reports are created. There is HUGE pressure to "build assurance".
What that means is that you find an risk that is not addressed by a suitible control - and try to find a control - something, anything, that you can call a control to cover that risk. That's all fine and good, but what it means is that the risks that actually make it into the report are the really big, bad, completely unaccounted for ones. Put another way, for every risk that gets in, three didn't that a normal person would have thought should have.
Long and short, I write reports like this for a living and this is way, way, way worse than it looks.
With all the problems with electronic voting, punch-card voting, hanging chads etc, why even use machines for vote counting? Why not just have paper and pencil and hand-count?
Federal elections in Australia with a population of 20 million are run this way with no problem.
Before you say, "but America has many more voters", well, they can also have many more vote counters.
Great, I live in Alameda County, CA where I remember Diebold machines being used in the last election. Now we have the recall coming up, so I guess we will just have to have some kind of blind faith that our votes are counting. I suppose if the results are other than to be expected from this more liberal area, it will raise some eyebrows.
The horrible thing is, that this is really far below the general public's radar. I find it extremely amusing that we had a court battle over how reliable punch cards are, when electronic voting may be far worse.
The problem is that the general public is very computer illiterate, and have been pretty much been conditioned to accept bugs and viruses as normal. At the same time, strangely, computers seem to be viewed as infallible.
It is very importaint for Democracy that people are able to be able to see and verify that their votes are counted.
My previous experience with the Diebold machines left me more puzzled than anything. Where was my vote counted, on the card that I put in the machine, in the machine itself, or both? Were the votes transmitted via phone, wireless, or physically transported to a centeral location? I don't know for sure, and I'm sure regular people off the street were more puzzled. Then again, maybe the thought never crossed their mind.