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VeriSign and Secure Internet Voting
Bucky Katt writes "VeriSign announced Monday that it will provide key components of a system designed to let Americans abroad cast absentee votes over the Internet."
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So we won't have to have physical access to log in and change votes with MS Access and no password? For the love of God, when is the mainstream press going to pick up on this?!?!?!?
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
$ telnet election.verisign.com
Trying 123.123.123.123...
Connected to election.verisign.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
Please cast your vote,
1) John Doe
2) Jane Smith
> ABSTAIN.
Error, redirecting you to electionfinder.verisign.com...
So if you misspell the name of your candidate, Verisign will use its * wildcard to vote for its CEO automatically!
If I type in "Arnnold", will it pop up "Arianna" as the one it thinks I should be voting for?
The USA is handing over democracy (in a small but growing way) to a no-vision for-profit firm that has a proven lack of ethics.
This is going to get worst before it gets better.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Verisign has pulled a suprise victory in the California recall election.
But hey, with an electoral system where the guy with the most votes loses (i.e. Al "Internet" Gore) then maybe it might even be an improvement. Hmmm.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
... some haXXors could become a president!
(Post-election News: Windows prohibited! William Gates arrested for sabotauging gov. operations with his lousy OS)
Isn't verisign owned by one of the big military industrial complex companies?
If the write-in candidate I choose isn't found, will verisign redirect me to a page of their 'favoured' candidates?
Yes, the algorithms for secure anonymous fraud-proof voting exist, but I don't think the implementations are up to the task yet - in particular, if they cannot be independently verified before, during and after the elections.
There's just too much potential for a fraud to justify dropping the good old pencil-in-the-number-of-your-candidate method.
I really hope that with all this e voting stuff we don't with another fiasco like the last presidental election.
And, for our next trick, we absolutely won't replace the electoral college with internet voting. Even if it were secure, it would take the power out of the hands of the elite and give it to the people.
However, wouldn't it be nice if we (the US, if you can forgive my inclusive pronoun) were a democracy instead of a republic? If internet voting is good for the goose, then shouldn't it be good for the gander? We just need to replace those old and moldy voting booths with shiny new internet-enabled booths.
Of course, as a programmer, I'll believe the voting scheme is "secure" when monkeys fly out of my butt.
As I recall, none of the absentee ballots made any difference in the 2000 presidential election.
Someone must have thought, "Lets let absentee voters vote electronically, we're just going to throw out their votes anyway!"
Nothing lost, nothing gained.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
Just great, now I can guarentee my vote won't count.
Interestingly enough, if you type the candidates name wrong, it will pop up an advertisement to search for the candidates you meant to pick!
Of course, all candidates are expected to vie for the valuable ad space of all misspellings of "Bush", "Gore", and "Asshat".
Verisign: We'll donate the necessary components to allow for Internet voting!
State Govt: That's brilliant! Thanks! So, you're gonna give us a cluster of servers, provide bandwidth, and the programming and administration time to get it setup right! Wonderful!
Verisign: Well...no we were thinking more along the lines of this...[V passes the verification for a what...$70 SSL certificate over]
Stage Govt: Umm...thanks.
...you'll be redirected to a site for entering into the elections?
First one to register eChad.com is the winner.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Naturally most /.ers are going to complain about this for various reasons generally involving security. However, this could be a good thing IF a GOOD system is actually developed (now or in the future). I for one would love to be able to vote from the comfort of my home/work/cafe without having to wait in lines. Overall voter turnout could be boosted.
Chances are though that this first pass will not be great, which will slow/stop future development due to cries of the public for and end to insecure online voting.
We didn't find: "local candidate"
There is no such candidate on this ballot.
Search the polls:
|===============|
Did You Mean?
Stratton Sclavos, CEO
Terry Kremian, Executive Vice President
Copyright(C) 2003 VeriSign, Inc. All Rights Reserved
.. making people IN the country vote?
last vote less than 50% or something voted
what about fixing that problem first?
geez..
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
As a side benefit.. if the voter isn't capable of filling out the form correctly, they then will be forwarded to a page where you can vote for verisign's preferred candidate. A security expert has noticed a tracking bug implanted into a cookie offered by the page, but ICANN and the federal government really don't seem to see a problem with the system as it really gives internet uses a better experience.
In other news, Versign has partnered with SCO and the republican party to bring you a better internet experience. All your traffic is now monitered by the government to protect you from terrorism using the new SCO openClosed linux.
If a majority of eligible voters actually voted, would we even be bothering with all this crap about electronic voting?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Oh god, somebody please startup some form of petition website against this. Verisign is evil. Verisign wants to ensure their eternal control over the internet and now our government. Why are we letting them do this? And why has nobody started up an open source alternative yet?
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
While I have no love for Verisign, they have the political clout to make this a reality. As long as the system is open, fair, and available to public scrutiny, it is a good thing, and thus improves democracy.
Merlin
Too many articles to mention on this. "Stupid White Men" - Michael Moore explains how Bush still managed to get himself placed in office... thanks to a little help of his friends; Brother Jeb,Campaign Manager on the Florida ballot tallying board, 1st Cousin at Fox News to break the story about Bush's "win", and Neo Cons on the Bench of Supreme Court, to stop a recount that had been steadily taking the "win" away from Bush.
~~I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank...~~
However, wouldn't it be nice if we (the US, if you can forgive my inclusive pronoun) were a democracy instead of a republic?
Absolutely not. The kind of democracy to which you refer is also known as "mob rule".
...Oh, you mean VeriSign. Oops!
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
[sarcasm]
;-)
We have to love them them now. Put sitefinder behind us. Verisign is an American company helping America.
IF we complain about sitefinder being an abuse of power... the terrorists win.
BTW: heard those servers are going to be powered by SCO software
[/sarcasm]
a use for One Click(tm) technology here.
As I recall, some of the overseas ballots (mostly from military personnel, who tend to vote republican) were "misplaced" in the 2000 election in Florida. This was in a county with Democrats running the election. Now, were the election managers incompetent, or was it a conspiracy? I'd guess incompetent, but who knows. Now, if people can't figure out how to COUNT, what makes anyone think that they will be able to run an election electronically without screwing something up?
Keep in mind that millions of Americans can't leave their house if it were on fire.
While I'm usually skeptical of Internet voting, I'm actually in favor of it in the limited case of American personnel overseas, because it is better than the current system. Presently, most absentee votes don't even get counted, unless the margin of victory is less than number of absentee ballots. While this is technically accurate and efficient, it kinda sucks to be one of those people who's vote is never even considered.
On the security side, I hope that VeriSign avoids Diebold's mistake (with electronic voting machines, which is different from Internet voting) and makes the source code and security procedures public for scrutiny.
How do you think things will get better? There are few if any local independent news papers because they have all been crushed by big coroprate owned national broadcasters and "news" services like MSNBC. The same people have made sure that individuals have a hard time publishing on the internet, so everyone has to go through providers or portals where they can be shut down. Now the loop is being closed with black box voting, which is impossible to audit. Even if you could tell people the truth, they won't be able to do anything about it.
Vote against this kind of thing NOW.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
dunno who it was, but someone once said...
Democracy is two hungry wolves and one sheep discussing what's for dinner
bah!*@%!
They have also announced that the system will feature presidential vote wildcarding. If you click anywhere on the screen except exactly in the center of a candidate box, your vote will be automatically given to Verisign CEO Stratton Sclavos.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
who says terrorism doesnt work!
They will help all those people who try to vote for 3rd-party candidates using their patented Vote-Finder "service".
Chris
www.talkingtoad.com
great now Iraqi hackers can choose our president
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
is that a pun?
At this point I'm voting none of the above, but maybe some of you can come up with some better options below.
I tried their voting, and screwed up and it redirected me to a friendly page that said
"We did not find your candidate, did you mean...
Ralph Nadar?
William Clinton?
Fred Durst?
Bugs Bunny?
"
I'm sure they're still working out the bugs though.
VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos voted in as next President, earning 100% of the absentee votes. More at 11....
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
nsi? secure? trust? voting? georgewellian fuddite corepirate nazis? the won & only fuddles.con?
yikes!@#$%
Now're going to become further dependant on Verisign? I understand this project has been in development well before Verisigns latest screw ups, but at this point, it would be rather foolhardy to become tied to Verisign and any software they make; they've proven they choose profiteering over everything else. So why put this sort of responsibility in their hands when history proves that they may abuse it?
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Has anyone started fuckeddemocracy.com?
I think it might be about time.
Verisign... You can trust it us
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Surely it can get no worse than handing it over to the Florida Supreme Court!
"VeriSign and Secure Internet Voting" makes as much sense as "Military Intelligence"...
Here is an excerpt from an email notification you will get after using the Verisign absentee system in 2004: "Valued Voter, At VeriSign we care deeply about freedom, democracy, and your right to privacy. Due to this fact, we are informing you of a change to our privacy policy. Line 428 which formerly read:
"Verisign will in no circumstances share your personal or voting information with 3rd parties."
now reads:
"In some cases, Verisign may share personal and voting information on customers with Verisign partners. This is standard business practice, and will lead to a more enjoyable voting experience for our users. In addition, it represents Verisign's commitment to capitalism, which is the sole foundation the United States was built upon. God Bless these United States, fellow patriot."
While most users will enjoy the benefits of this sharing (like customized Donkey or Elephant themes on parter sites, or voting record targeted product newsletters), some may wish to opt out. If you wish to opt out, please send your request to:
U.S. Department Of Justice
c.o. Sec. John Ashcroft950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Please look out for infromation on new MyDemocracyBuilder features in the coming months, including our exciting new "AutoVote" system!
Sincerely,
Verisign Support "
"Life is life." --Laibach
If you don't touch in the exact center of the canidate's button, your vote is automatically redirected to the highest paying advertiser.
I guess it doesn't really matter though. Now your vote is just as unreliable as the canidates.
And thanks to Verisign's new technologies, votes which cannot be read properly will be redirected to a candidate that Verisign has chosen. How nice of them to help us out...
it would take the power out of the hands of the elite and give it to the people.
That only works if the people are informed.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
VeriSign has announced that votes cast for a candidate whose name isn't on the ballot will result in a redirect to VeriSign's new "Candidate Finder" service.
:)
My blog
I was sitting here looking for a comeback to that, but I've come up with nothHOLY SHIT IM BURNING! must.. post..
There's lots of the usual (and appropriate) concerns about the technological security of internet voting systems, but I wonder if there's been much thought about the general effects of making absentee voting easier and thus more common.
My concern is that a lot of votes might be coerced when people fill out a ballot (internet or otherwise) in private, where it is not guarenteed to be secret who you vote for. The more of these votes there are, the more the system is undermined.
Thoughts?
(Ass-Enter) is that this whole initiative is a bloody mess:
* The costs have more than doubled
* The project timeline has slipped
* The number of States bailing out of the pilot is steadily increasing
On the other hand, I suppose that's no different than any other project outsourced to a big consulting firm by the United States Govt.
Electrionic voting is fundamentally flawed. The purpose of voting is to demonstrate the will of the collective masses. If we as society decide that we vote via absentee ballot, web, smartcard, carrier pigeon, etc, we fail to do the one thing that makes it valid - we fail to demonstrate in force that the people have spoken. For some of us, we live in the luxury of only fearing which 'lesser of two evils' will preside, but some of us have to fear vote tampering, rigging, etc. Assuming the United States went to absentee ballots 10 or 20 years ago, if voting used the same rules as today, voters could not be certain of the validity of the outcome. There are many reasons, for example, the ballots are not sent to confirmed addresses, the letters are not certified, the voter does not know when the completed ballot has been received, etc, etc. The strength of going out to vote in public is that it demonstrates, by the numbers, that the people have spoken, and not only does the current regime see it, there are other witnesses present as well.
I will, I shall keep that in my mind. It was very kind of you to bring it to my attention. What exactly does it have to do with computerised voting systems though?
</confused>
Get your own free personal location tracker
why should the rest of US suffer even further embarrassment/become even more peaced off, by subjecting ourselves to yet another phonIE ?pr? ?firm? scriptdead, stock markup execrable buyassed "vote"?
the evile wons are self-deleting buy their owned misintentions/deeds. the issue becomes the time wasted while the planet/population remains in crisis mode.
the lights are coming up now. lookout bullow.
verisign is heavily connected politically, i remember someone telling me they are connected heavily with the pentagon(military wise)
they basically got handed over the rights to manage com net and previously org domains. do you know that EVERY com net domain on this planet registered pays verisign about 6$?
registrars like godaddy that register domains for 8$ to people like us are actually paying 6$ to verisign.
it's like a notorious company that you imagine only in the movies, they have an almost monopoly, screw competetitors, manipulate regulatations most people are against and actually get away with it with minor payback, etc..
Verisign does not deserve to be a "trust company". This sitefinder issue is just the latest in a series of unethical moves by verisign, dating back at least the "godaddy domain expiration letter" scam.
The sooner we slay this beast, the better.... With that said, I recently found out about a heck of a deal "Everyone's Internet" is running: "$25 SSL certificates". It's obvious that as a reseller for GeoTrust and as a webspace provider for small biz, they know that a ton of Mom & Pop shops that would jump at one of these in a second, even if profits from online sales were small, because a "secure order" page is great for their image.
On the other side, I've been using GoDaddy for years.
Down with Verisign.... We don't need you anymore.
Notice that the article only talks about using Internet voting as an alternative to absentee voting for citizens abroad and only in U.S. government agencies where secure Internet-enables voting stations can be set up. This is good .
Internet voting on a large scale will never take place due to logistical [for lack of a better word] rather than technical reasons. Electoral law requires that your vote be made in a manner that is free from influence (intimidation or vote buying). This is controlled by ensuring that voting goes on in select locations where campaigning is not permitted. Even campaign posters within sight of a voting station must be taken down.
With Internet voting, essentially anyplace could be a voting station. I could set up a little voting party for my friends and let them vote on my computer. Don't mind that there is paraphernalia all around for my candidate, or that I'm looking over your shoulder. After the party, laptop and cell in hand, I could help all the little old ladies in my neighborhood vote too.
[Your sig here]
...courts in Florida appoint our Presidents, don't they ?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Even better, if Verisign running your elections worries you, why not see if you can help the project. With a secure, trusted and freely available alternative, Verisign will find it more difficult to convince audit committees that their software is the best option.
Because the government is virtually owned by big-business.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
So typically American... everything is for sale and nothing is off limits.
And you are still wondering why people are driving airplanes into your buidlings and blowing up your troops overseas...
Maybe you could buy them off... oh wait you tried that already and they just bought better guns to shoot at you with!
Did we mention terrorists... ok good.
How do people anywhere trust Verisign?
;-) ))
This company has a proven track record of bad security, unethical behaviour, and well.. I just don't get it, they are the main "TTP" of the web, and yet aren't worth anyone's trust really, then a Domain controller that abused it's power as such, and now they are going to run elections for Americans...
*/me shakes head in total astonishment*
Well... G'luck to ya guys. Here's hoping for once they'll maintain their ethics. (Or assign the project to Dilbert (for those who've seen that episode of Dilbert TV.
~ kjrose
Your vote doesn't count, here or from abroad.
In the UK I think the average voter turnout for the general elections is hovering around the 35% mark and falling.
This is a huge problem for a democracy IMHO. Considering we've fought 2 world wars for the right to determine who governs us, it's pathetic that a majority of people cannot be bothered to get off their arses and vote.
However, I have a confession. I'm one of the majority and ashamed of it. I always intend to vote, but when the time comes I always seem to have something important to do instead. If we had an easy electronic voting system then I for one would always cast my vote.
OTOH Do we really want to encourage EVERYONE to cast a vote? If there was no effort involved (like actually having to travel to vote) then would we be encouraging people with no real political views to vote 'just because they can' Maybe then the result of the election would be decided by the lazy jobless who had nothing better to do than vote?
This is purely bad principle. This is outsourcing voting. Elections should be handled as much as possible by regular people. Companies should provide paper, pencils, and maybe some refreshments.
Now I RTFA and I understand this is for military absentee ballots. But this will set precedence. Who will get the job next year? Don't you think the standards applied here will eventually be used for absentee ballots for State Department personnel? And then eventually the general public?
If the government is not capable on its own of running a fully electronic election, then they should not be doing it. Period. Forget the cost of alternative systems or even the impossibility. If the DOD cannot handle this internally (they should, they handle billions of dollars of secrets) then I think it is a step to far to outsource it.
"The sanctity of the vote can't be compromised nor can the integrity of the system be compromised"
Doesn't that line make you feel worried. At least they could say,"we have the best security and experience." But no, "the integrity of the system [can't] be compromised."
If I wanted to give a company (who does support open source) some possible IP, what's the proper way to do this? Is there any legality of (C) 2003, Sun Microsystems., for example written here at ./? Just something simple to generate a modest income. If in the giving include a declared percentage in writing if say the intention was stressed that after 6 months, say 0.5% of profits generated were to be meeted out to FSF or the like for developement (where there is lack of funding) and such? Will doing so be respected by other corporations/individuals.
Doing so through email would likely be dismissed as spam (and harm my privacy). Posting here is as a "take it or leave it" scenario seems less bothersome in wasting a corporations valuable time.
By making it brainlessly easy for someone to vote, are we not making it so the voter does not have to plan to vote. And if a person doesn't plan to vote, how informed is their choice going to be?
Many states have already implemented "motor voter" systems where folks don't even have to explicitly register to vote -- it's just attached to their drivers license registration. Literacy tests & poll taxes -- once of which helps ensure that the voter can read the ballot & the other further forces voters to plan to vote -- were thrown out long ago as infringements on the civil rights of unschooled procrastinators.
I believe whole-heartedly that the political establishment of the United States does not want voters to be informed or to pre-plan the act of voting. The reasons for this ought to be self-evident to those of us who are capable of reading a ballot or planning our activities more than 10 minutes into the future.
Turning briefly to "secure" online voting (so this comment stays "on topic"), maybe the Verisign system couldn't be decrypted but it would be very possible for a determined attacker to simply mangle the packets so the votes wouldn't count.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
I'm jumping at the opportunity to have verisign provide infrastructure for casting ballots, given that they've proven themselves to be sooo trustworthy and full of integrity.
Naturally Verisign gets to do what they please with ballots that are not cast.
Who will it vote for if I misspell the candidates name on the ballot?
We're already under mob rule now - it's just a much smaller, more sinister version.
My other option here in the UK is a proxy vote whereby I designate someone to place my vote for me. This sort of get's rid of the secret part of a secret ballot to me so I've never looked into.
Incidentally have been, and are going to be more, trials of all postal ballots in some areas of the UK. The percentage of people taking part in the elections was significantly higher than for traditional voting.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
So you propose that it's preferrable to have one hungry wolf and two sheep decide what's for dinner.
I don't see much difference other than increased carnage.
How long before people are faking whatever "trusted" voting credentials there are, and creating all sorts of political havoc?
stuff |
The PM of Malaysia is quoted as saying the duty of the democracy is to better the majority. Strictly speaking, that is true in that form of government.
That is why I support the Republic form is government. Republic is representative rule, not majority rule. Each stakeholder in the US system should be represented. Arguments about the rights of any minority make sense only in a Republic. In a democracy, who cares about minorities? We all vote in self-interest, and majority rules.
To repeat an oft repeated quote, Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Stop pretending to be him.
The real supporters of electronic voting want such a system so they CAN rig it! Why do we use mechanical voting machines? Why do we use electronic ballot counters? Why do we NOT count ballots at the polling place before we haul them to the court house? All of that is done to make elections EASIER to rig. It sounds like it is safer but it really is just a shell game designed to hide the methods behind trickery. Ask any magician. You hide your tricks with distractions and illusions that are just the opposite of what is really happening.
Most people can't understand computers so they think "Well it MUST be good. This is sophisticated and I'm too stupid to understand this so it must be well designed." Many people have problems with computers but they almost always think that THEY are the problem (I don't know how to use this, I must be doing something wrong.) not that the software is written badly. The American public loves gadgetry and we equate that with goodness and safety. We think we can build a better car or a building that can take a hit from a 767 or a tamperproof election.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Yes, yes, making sure that Evil Hax0rs can't get at the votes is important, as is making sure that the people that DO vote only do so once. But what's their plan for making sure that there's no internal muckey-muck going on?
Oh, right. We're supposed to TRUST them.
No, you retard. A republic would have laws in place that had the interests of ALL parties deciding what's for dinner.
And if someone clicks a little outside the box, Verisign with automatically cast a vote for them based on their VoteCaster(TM) service search results...
However, wouldn't it be nice if we (the US, if you can forgive my inclusive pronoun) were a democracy instead of a republic?
...
I think the jury is still out on that one. However, if California is any example of direct democracy in action (Referendum/recall/petitions)
You can draw your own conclusions.
-> Ron Legere I can never think of anything clever to put here.
I live abroad and frankly, I'm just not quite prepared to trust my vote to the internet. I'll be sending my vote by mail and would encourage other expats to do the same.
I certainly don't trust Verisign. I think the first few elections using this technology should be limited to say, a few thousand votes so as not to have a significant impact on the results (of course, given what happened in Florida, a few thousand votes might have a significant impact). Maybe it would be even better to run the electronic voting at the same time, requiring mail-in ballots and compare the results and not count the electronic voting until it's proven itself. Mail-in ballots aren't anonymous votes, so it should be easy enough to compare.
Even then, I don't know that that would work. I'd eventually like to see secure internet voting, but I'm just not sure the implementations are there yet.
And I'm sure if you accidently select the wrong candidate, or mistakenly select multiple candidates; rather than get an error message, Verisign will redirect your vote to a candidate of their choice at candidatefinder.verisign.com.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
is that it is too easy to sell your vote.
With normal voting you go inside the curtaion alone, you can't do this with online voting.
Other than that it is easy to make a system that is secure and anonymous.
It will cast my vote for an advertiser if I misspell the candidate's name... let's see, which presidential candidate has the biggest pile of cash to spend on ads...
Any Canadian Slashdoters semi-familiar with the laws for me to get a work permit there?
It always seems that nobody gets it.
I never post; am too afraid. But let me tell you what "secure overseas voting" is all about...
How about absentee military voters, a huge republican block...yep, you guessed it. Don't remember in Florida where Katherine Harris pushed for otherwise unpostmarked and illegitimate overseas military votes to tip the balance?
"Vote call, vote call," and everyone is directed to the mess hall to vote on the ships...for Georgie Bush, God and the American way...
Now do you understand why this *really* is a threat?
and the will of the majority tends to trample that which it can. We are republic for that very reason, to prevent majorities from taking away the rights of the non-majority.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
you already are one; lets not forget how many presidents we have that WERE NOT ELECTED BY THE POPULAR VOTE this is probably one of hte main reasons we have such low voter turn out; becuase no one feels like their vote matters the gov't does wahtever the fuck it wants to do anyway; even the Nazi's had kangaroo courts we dont' even have those we just deport people outside the country for tortu err questioning... we live in neither a democracy nor a republic; this is an oligarchy (yes it could be spelled oilgarchy at the moment)
can you imagine...
"We didn't find: Democrat"
Perhaps you meant Republican.
Why bother spending money to influence the election when you can control it.
Forget Credit Card List the next big scams will be selling voter ID's
Receive an email reminding you to vote with a link to the polling site. Instead of an actual polling site it is a fake page to steal your voter information. to be later resold. Talk about throwing your vote away. "you have opted in to let slick Sam be your voting proxy. to opt out email fakeemail@Yahoo.com. your bottle of Viagra will be sent to your registered address.
Also the same people who are going to be administering the voting machines are the same people who can't count a hole in a piece of paper.
Exactly how do we expect these people to administer computers?
?
And if you should misspell the name of your preferred candidate you will be sent to Votefinder which will offer suggestions. Preferred placement available: contact Verisign sales for pricing.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So when you dont hit the key correctly it'll do a wildcard vote.
Looks like bush will be in office another term
How? What is so special about a republic that ensures that those laws are put in place where they wouldn't be in another form of government?
A republic tends to give special interests more power to sway a small number of representatives. I don't see how this necessarily ensures more equitable laws.
And if you accidentally vote for a candidate who does not exist, or if you spell his/her name incorrectly, Verisign will assume you want their candidate in office.
I'm sure that by 2008, the CEO of Verisign will take a four-year sabbatical to hold office as the President of the United States. This administration will, among other things, abolish ICANN, IETF, IANA, etc. and simply hand all Internet authority over to Verisign.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
There is no political party at this address.
Did you mean?
We did find these similar political parties.
The Republican Party
Great! I long ago left VeriSign in the dust due to their desire to send me repeated spam, even after I asked them to stop.
To me, letting VeriSign handle voting is a great step towards ridding the country of any concept of privacy. Homeland Security must just love this idea.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
Absentee/remote voting should stay as it is now - a last resort for people who can't get to the polls on election day. Why? Because it's the best way to be sure that everyone can vote without coercion.
If you can vote from the comfort of your home, there's nothing to stop thugs from showing up at your home and asking you politely to vote for the candidate of their choice (and you get to keep your fingers unbroken in the bargain).
If you can vote from your office desktop, there's nothing to stop your supervisor from dropping in and watching you vote (with your job on the line if you vote wrong).
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Government is just a big protection racket anyway.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Mod the parent up! It's one of the most intelligent statements I've heard in /. (although that's not really saying much...).
To add to bladernr, having two senators per state give small states (i.e. NJ) equity against larger states (i.e. CA) as they will always have two senators at the congress no matter that their population levels are.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
I think you're assuming that I
what you're talking about.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
So, if you misspell your vote, will they point you to the "correct" candidate or suggest you register the domain?
Then Verisign will show you ads for their favorite.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Exactly, demoncracy is mobocracy. Just watch an episode of Jerry Springer. Mobs are easy to manipulate, and they are often extremely stupid. It is better to have a heirarchical structure that is democratic at the bottom, and relatively small at the top.
You recall falsely. However, it's true that some Florida election commissioners are incompetent
Just when I thought I had heard them all, dangit!
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
You have to know with whom you're dealing here. NetSol/VeriSign are now owned by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and have been for a few years now. Acronym sound tongue-in-cheek? It should. It's a bunch of ex-Black-ops guys who came out of long years of service with connections very, very high up the ladder and having been privvy to a lot of research info that usually only the likes of DARPA has seen. They have got to be, hands-down the most classified contractor ever. A few years back, just after FTC allowed the NetSol/VeriSign merger (hmm...), SAIC gobbled up both. About the same time, Carnivore/Eschelon was all the hype.
A whole lot of the combat techno you're seeing is courtesy of SAIC, but their forte is amalgamating disparate data sets and mining them for common threads (and some of the tech they use to do it is quite good, actually). Poindexter worships the ground they walk on and their claim is that several of the high-profile captures since the WTC bombing has been a result of their mining tech. I believe I even saw an article on C|Net about it but it escapes my search now (maybe if SAIC owned that media outlet as well I'd find it easier).
So yeah, I'm just super excited to have these guys with proven goon records and cloak-and-dagger managing both my DNS registration and my SSL communications, as well as making sure my vote got counted correctly. Stellar. Bye-bye freedom, hullo Big Bro...
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
The "open" TCPA might be a better choice than MS's Palladium, and would remove the need to trust MS. Palladium is basically just TCPA with a few extra-oppressive DRM features added (the kind required by the ultra-paranoid and powerful MPAA, not just the incrasingly desperate and marginalized RIAA). It's mostly intended to "protect" a PC against being connected to a device that isn't approved by MS --- thus plugging the "analog hole" and giving MS a monopoly on hardware as well as software.
TCPA can be used for all of Palladium's non-DRM applications, of which electronic voting could be one. It can even be implemented in a completely open way that doesn't require the user to trust any single company, though obviously the RIAA won't like this, and Intel seems to be moving away from it. (It's already announced that Verisign will digitally sign the Centrino.) Still, there are other TCPA-supporting chip companies out there, and Intel hasn't said anything about its other platforms.
Not saying that TCPA is good. It obviously has a huge downside, but it also has a few legitimate uses. Palladium has the same legitimate uses, but an even bigger downside.
Will Verisign CandidateFinder(tm) select the closest match for you?
If something I said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, I meant the other one.
Verisign is one of the nastiest companies ever to come to (not enough of) the public's attention.
After verisign tracked down people whose domain names were up for renewal some years ago and sent them fake bills asking them to reregister through verisign at a vastly inflated cost, verisign should have had nasty things happen to it. Verisign essentially worked a confidance trick on thousands of the internet users it's supposed to protect. Verisign is scum.
It's no surprise that they should somehow become involved in proposed electronic voting. It's just depressing.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
It would be nice to have a republic instead of a feudal system
Kind of similar to the title of the article. It spotlights VeriSign but only as an asside does it mention that VeriSign is just a subcontractor for the real magicians rigging...er, running the show -- Accenture! Formerly known as Arthur Anderson Consulting! Former book cooker for Enron! Now how do you like it?
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Two things will need to exist for a voting system or any other major community-type system to work on the internet:
1. Distibuted ownership or federations of ownership
2. Full or selective disclosures of data
With respect to a voting system, it would likely be better to show results as an informal poll that can viewed by the public and submitted to the appropriate congress person. The congress person could make the actual vote and use the constituent poll as data to base their vote on. The public could then view a history of the way they voted, the way the majority voted, and the way the congress person voted. This would start to provide a better political picture for the voters and better visibility on issues and how their congress is voting.
With respect to this system and other future systems like it the two rules above will provide a better enviroment for managing check and balances. Several sources for information can now exist and can be audited by other sources of similiar data to ensure that it is correct.
An application like this would work well for such systems as surveillance or sensor data. Imagine if cars all had cameras, recorded data, and were owned by their respective car owners. We could get 7 or 8 different data sources to confirm what really happened when car accidents occur.
Browse the Information Directory
A single court in Washington D.C. appoints Presidents now.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
if you aren't living in the US, why should anyone make it easier for you to vote here? This sounds like a really bad idea and begs for another Florida-type fiasco.
"Incidentally I find it really interesting that everyone seems to assume from the start that any ballot tampering would be directed by the GOP."
Especially since it was mainly done by the Democrats in Florida in 2000 in their failed attempt to get the election loser declared President.
I don't see how this necessarily ensures more equitable laws.
It doesn't, as the United States of America has so deftly proven.
Dogs, cats, treestumps, and the deceased had a voter turnout of 100%.
In unrelated news, Darl McBride of the TriumverateOfEvil party is our new president.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Verisign and secure, isn't that an oxymoron based on what they did with DNS wild card resolution. It used to be you had to have a registered DNS server to get DNS resolution on domain names. Now anything works, including veri-slime-is-insecure.com
Don't forget MS-NPR now.
FUD. Lies.
http://www.saic.com/about/companies/
No netsol/verisign. And considering SAIC owns the Verisign, funny i can still buy it:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=VRSN
it has its own CEO, and funny, SAIC isnt mentioned in any of the SEC filings, kind of hard since SAIC seems very into SEC filings/holdings.
You must be a crackpot.
I'll admit I was overly broad with the word "owns". SAIC no longer owns NetSol outright [they did for five years] and they are only the largest shareholder in VeriSign. The article I mentioned before (I alluded but it eluded) was in Red Herring. From the article (June 2000 issue):
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
Sorry my bad. And I got the karma down-mod to show for it too...
Oh well time for a new nick so I can start flagrently flaming the Bush Administration with impunity and still have a hope of someone reading the posts for the first couple days because the filters won't let em' see any posts mod'd to -5
~~I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank...~~
Ahh, so they bought stock in a net company ad a good time way back when. (Like they do to this day). That must mean they are a secret cabal of technophiles ruling the world and watching you type. You having meglomania issues? Yes, they are watching you. Yes. There is no on else on the board of shareholders. There is no disclosure here. Netsol/Verisigns finances are a deep dark secret and EDGAR has no record for them
The assasinated kennedy.
The are even forcing me to type this now.
Give me a break. You couldnt even submit this as a chapter is a low grade conspiracy book. You are not scientifically inclined or trained, that is obvious. An idiot walks into a forest and points to on tree like a zealot and says. THIS IS THE ONE!
Warren Buffet owns a holdings company that is successful. He is a jack booted thug too! HE OWNS SEES CANDIES AND RUNS AN INSURANCE COMPANY! Oh no, a candy man and a re-insurer. Surely the sign of yet another evil CABAL!.
AHH!
Right, they made a smart purchase of a company destined to be allowed by the gov't to run a monopoly for years.
<sarcasm>Their ties up the ladder did nothing to perpetuate this.</sarcasm>
For those years they pump/dump all they can. Then when they've gotten all they need, they work out a sweetheart sale to the largest SSL cert provider that gives *them* the largest stake in *that* comapny, now the parent of the registrar! So my original assertion stands that they have heavy influence in name resolution, SSL and identity verification and now the voting system. And the membership of the ex-black-ops is pretty well known. Just google SAIC and CIA. But, you probably already know this. You, for one, welcome our new goon overlords.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
Living in a society where this is even possible is better than the alternative. Go take up residence in one ofyour beloved anti-technolgist state like Pakistan.
Oh, yeah.
the black helicopters followed me to work.
the pilot smiled at me as if he knew my name
wait
the pilot was george bush, but its not really him
its his clone.
why is a george W bush clone flying a black helicopter and smiling at me as if he knows me?
its simple with the internet voting: paper trail. you want to elimate fraud? get both sides of the isle to sign up, as it stands now, true elections are not desired by our representatives in this republic. and since all things start local/grassroots, looks like youll have to do a bit more than make up these fantasies and actually campaign to do something about it. others already are, who are are congressional advisory committees. anyone with a brain knows the elections are fraught with problems. this isnt some thrid world unsuccessful dump, you act as if things are coming apart at the seems and jackboots are pulling randoms people you know off the face of the earth.
you dont want someone peeking in on your SSL, sign your own certs - you should be doing this anyway. big fucking deal. and monopoly on registry? not really, there are hundreeds of registrars and several root servers. and i can bet you that if something "bad" happened, some of the root server admins would be in protest.
you know, just show me a way to make money or everyone else (writing a book for crackpots doesnt count). if your insights into conspiracy are profound, you would be espousing useful information, which you arent.
tell me your personal experiences with goons.
you know, welcoming my goon overlords. the fact you are convinced they exist is really amusing. clearly, information agencies are also engagd ni misinformation. you assume the other-worldian capabilities of the secret jackboot goon squad, without any real evidence. echelon: listens to foreign phone calls. NSA; keyword searches telephpone conversations easily defeated by talking about planning things in a vehicle, carnivore, poorly sifts though email probably with grep -v "viagra" ; and even then its mostly shit.
the assumption you make about information agencies capability is exactly what they want you to conclude if they given power levels that you claim they posess are in fact true. and if they arent as good as you assume, the delusion is even more useful into making you irrationally fear them.
meanwhile, local, solveable, manageable issues, like maintaining the rights to own guns, maintaining your rights in the face of "PC" insanity, maintianing protpery rights, all go down the toilet. you rent a house, and you dont vote. and you are busy having fantasies about orwellian illuminati cababls while they operate on an obvious, non-complex level to rob you of fundamental rights. start cleaning the government up in your own back yard first before you invent complex things to be alarmist about.
you might even be wrong and the victim of a ridiculous misinformation campaign.