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E-Voting Expert Testifies
Christopher Soghoian writes "Johns Hopkins University professor Dr. Avi Rubin (of previous e-voting fame) yesterday testified before the Maryland House Ways and Means Committee.
An article in the Baltimore Sun describes his testimony, as well as that of the director of the state elections board, Linda Lamone. Mrs. Lamone was highly critical of Dr Rubin's testimony, stating that he was doing 'a great disservice to democracy. They're telling the public: Don't trust them, don't trust the voting equipment.'
This begs the question: Is it better for security researchers to avoid publicly criticizing e-voting flaws? Is public faith in the system more important than overall system security?"
If Lamone is attacking the messenger, rather than the message, she is surely guilty of some flaw...
The E-Testifying company which handled his testimony, also owned by an E-Voting company, has changed what he said! The testimony now reads "E-Voting is great. We should all move to E-Voting now. I for one welcome our new E-Voting overlords."
Doubters have to be able to scrutinize the way the system works. So, in order to be trusted by as many people as possible, the system should be understandable by as many people as possible.
As soon as you have any kind of black box whose functionning cannot either be seen, or plainly understood by people, there is room for doubt.
This is why a hand-counted, paper-based ballot system is the most trustable one possible: it doesn't take a computer scientist to understand how it works and how it could be rigged.
Most people, like the poster, incorrectly assume that "begs the question" is the same as "answers the question". This describes the proper use of the phrase.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Public faith in the integrity of the electoral system is vital if democracy is to be successful. If one of the vital components of the electoral system is flawed then the public can have no faith and the system cannot work.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Is it better for security researchers to avoid publicly criticizing e-voting flaws? Is public faith in the system more important than overall system security?"
Is this a trick question? Is Slashdot being controlled by e-voting Nazi's who hope to find out those that are skeptical so they can come to their houses and force feed them e-voting propaganda?
Oh well, the answer is NO!!! Security through obscurity DOES NOT WORK!!!
Mrs. Lamone was highly critical of Dr Rubin's testimony, stating that he was doing 'a great disservice to democracy. They're telling the public: Don't trust them, don't trust the voting equipment.'
"Ignore that man behind the curtain."
(Or should that be "Ignore the guys sneaking up behind you with the net."?)
Yes, they're telling the public to distrust the voting machines. And in the short run that may destabilize the nation - slightly.
But distrust of something untrustworthy is appropriate - especially when letting it be corrupted can literally lead to tyrrany and war, while FIXING it so that it is verifiably trustworthy is trivial.
Of course that means the decisions of Mrs. Lamone's department (no doubt those of Mrs. Lamone) might be criticised, and her state be required to spend more money to upgrade or replace the devices they selected. Bad for her carreer path, eh?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This begs the question: Is it better for security researchers to avoid publicly criticizing e-voting flaws?
The answer is pretty straightforward: NO. Security researchers and other whistle blowers serve a valuable role in public. This isn't even an interesting question. A more suitable qustion for discussion is:
* Why is the incumbent party in power supporting untrustworthy voting machines?
* Why would someone oppose a simple request for accountability being built in to our democratic process?
* How is it so difficult to see there is an opportunity to create the worlds possibly first trustworthy election system? All we need is a paper backup...
-- $G
There's no reason not to perform an ordinary round of safety and reliability testing on this system. It's obvious they did nothing other than casual alpha and beta testing, with no code inspection, no robustness, no structural coverage, and no documentation of faults.
They don't even follow the laws when taking machines out of service to be repaired at the polls.
It's not worth discussing the merits of the current machines. They have none.
However, having a black box which can do anything with your vote it likes, provides no verification of vote cast, and is completely open to manipulation - THAT I have a problem with.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
This begs the question: Is it better for security researchers to avoid publicly criticizing e-voting flaws? Is public faith in the system more important than overall system security?"
Of course not. If they fix security, faith will follow. It really is that simple. This is like leaving your front door wide open while you go on holiday and then being upset when people worry that their house will be robbed while they are gone. Secure the door well and people will feel better. It really is that simple.
In a nut shell, it's Linda Lamone that's doing a great disservice to democracy, technology, and the people that elected and/or hired her to do what's best for the people in her distirct(s). I can't think of anything more un-American that ensuring democracy is easily manipulated and faith in the results is shaken. She needs to be beaten with a stick and replaced. She is either incompetent or actively wants a mechanism to minipulate election results.
"I don't think Diebold would allow it," she said. "It's their proprietary code."
Bam, there it is, she's put some kind of faith in IP above her elected duty to safegaurd elections. It's peposterous that elections officials don't have access to the actual method of vote counting and everything else the machines do. With transparancy you don't need faith in a system, you can have reasonable trust that what you saw and know will work.
Dibold has made themselves a proxy for voting. If you removed the electronic components the flaw becomes apparent. Imagine Dibold hired people to sit in a booth and write down your vote where you could not see what they wrote! After that, the representatives would take the votes in closed bags to a place where they would count them and give the results to the elections commisioners. The electronic system has even larger flaws because it's easier to comprimise thousands of computers than it is to comprimise thousands of people, but no one would trust the low tech analog. Defending faith is such a system over the actual integrity of the system is nuts.
You can have an electronic system with a publically inspected paper trail. If the system is not free or open it can't be trusted because you don't know how it works. It's that simple.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Is public faith in the system more important than system security?" Why on earth would any rational person ask such a thing? In a democracy the accuracy and integrity of elections are paramount. All the "faith" in the world counts for zip if the elections are rigged or so incompetently run that the results cannot be trusted. Should the truth about possibly dangerously skewed election results be suppressed in a free country? Again, this is a stupid question. Freedom is about NOT suppressing the truth, especially when it comes to the direct exercise of that freedom.
Is it better for security researchers to avoid publicly criticizing e-voting flaws? Is public faith in the system more important than overall system security?"
Ummm. No. An educated public is one of the foundations of democracy, withholding information about vital flaws to the election system for the mere purpose of public faith is precisely contrary to this goal! Of course this should be disclosed, withholding this information cannot have any benefit to the public and can only lead us to a situation were these inexcusable flaws will be forgotten.
I stole this Sig
I was under the impression that one could practically sue for almost anything in the US. Would it not be possible for someone to start a class action suit against the state election commission for willfully damaging the saftey of the democratic process in that state (MD)?
I like computers and technology - I really do.
However, unless computers will do a job better than previous methods, they shouldn't be used.
Voting systems are what I would have to call mission-critical systems. They should have all the rigor, analysis, and verifiability that can be brought-to-bear towards making systems accurate and robust. They should be very formally designed and tested, and placed under the most rigorous configuration management and control.
Why these sytems aren't being built (or required) to undergo what would have even been considered best-practices in the 1970s or 1980s eludes me. I consider the lure of the technology, coupled with a general apathy towards the genuine intracacies and consequences of failure, to be a big part of the problem.
There should be damned strong requirements on how any system used in any governmental election are designed, proven, built, etc... I would actually want to start with proven security/OS kernels in any such designs. This machine does not even have to be based on a commercially available OS platform - it has to perform a specific type of task very reliably.
Sam Nitzberg
http://www.iamsam.com