Experts Critique SERVE Internet Voting System

linuxwrangler writes "SFGate is reporting that a critique by four security experts claims that SERVE, a system being developed to allow US citizens overseas to vote via the Internet, is so vulnerable to attacks that it should be scrapped. The other six experts who examined the system declined to issue a report. Nevertheless, the Pentagon stands by the system and plans to use in in elections next month."

Comments

Important

[Mork29]

It's a shame that the government and these companies can't get their act together, and build a simple, secure voting system that includes a paper trail. Why is that so complicated. I'm currently serving in the US Army in Germany, and an online voting system would truly make life easier. It's a soldiers job to defend democracy, so it's a very sacred thing for us to be able to take part in it. To be able to vote right over the internet without much hassle is something has taken far to long to develop.

Re:Important

[Mork29]

When I joined the military I raised my right hand and swore an oathe to defend the constitution, and I take that very seriously. Now, I also swore to follow the orders of the president of the united states. He was elected in a democratic election. There may have been problems with that election, he may not have had the popular vote, but he was elected by a democratic proccess, and I've followed his orders and the orders he has given to the officers appointed over me. That is what democracy is. I'd appreciate you not insulting my profession, or that of the soldiers who have come before me. I'd like you to walk into a VFW hall and tell them what you've said.

Re:Important

[Mork29]

If they're illegal, we can justly refuse them. If they're not illegal in the purest sense of the word, we follow them. Our job is to say what's right and wrong. That's the job of congress, the president, and the voters. The voters willed President Bush into power. Congress voted for action in Iraq (even if they regret it). Then President Bush sent us to war. It was a democratic proccess.

Re:Important

[Mork29]

Where is the justification for your illegal war? The look on the Iraqi's school childrens faces when you give them a pack of markers to bring to school with them. The mass graves that were uncovered, because of Sadam's rath. That's what I personally think is the justification. The fact of the matter is my opinion doesn't matter. What I think is sad, is that I can post my comments with pride and my handle shown, but your forced to send out your forced to troll without saying who you are. I'll bite on your comments, but only because I believe in what I say.

Re:Important

[AtheismIsGood]

I'd like you to walk into a VFW hall and tell them what you've said.

A lot of people would like to be able to walk in those countries that have had the "pleasure" of hosting american soldiers.

Honestly, do you really think that all military interventions the US does abroad is good? I hope you know that the track record of supporting the democratic process of foreign countries isn't very good.

I hope that you will refuse to follow orders the day your heart tells you they are wrong.

Re:Important

[WegianWarrior]

A simple secure online system is anything but simple to develop. Now, I don't know how the US has arranged for citizents living or working arbroad in previous elections, but I know that we (ie Norway) has usually asked people to go a central location to register their votes (embasy, consulate, military barracs*). It should be relatively simple to set up a secure** server at each such location which collects the votes casted and contacts the central server once every day or so. The collected votes, complete with a papertrail, chould then be sendt in an encrypted form, possible utilizing a one time pad to prevent tampering.

However, if the system should include a 'log on anywhere' capability, not be reliant on installing a client on the users PC, and be reliant on sending the information over the internet... good luck making it secure. I seriously don't think it will ever be secure enought for this application.

__*) if you look at the number of soldiers on either NATO, UN or other mission*** abroad compared to the number of people living in Norway, we have more soldiers out there than the US have... but then, there are less people living in Norway
_**) Secure in this meaning could include a squad of soldiers making sure no one tampers with the server, if you're so inclined.
***) Like the people we have in Iraq right now, helping secure and rebuild that nation.

Re:Important

[John Hurliman]

The front page has a link to send them your feedback (javascript required). Let them know what you think.

http://www.serveusa.gov/public/aca.aspx

Re:Important

[dave420]

Defend democracy? Why didn't they all kick the living shit out of Bush when he visited Iraq then :) He's the biggest threat to democracy since Hitler.

Re:Important

[kfg]

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Following this sentence is the definition of what "the people" considered to be a more perfect union in order to secure the blessings of liberty.

Innate in that definition is that "the people" found pure democracy to be an abhorent tyrany to be avoided.

So I'm afraid I cannot refrain from bothering you with the weight of the states and representative republicanism.

It's Constitutional.

KFG

Re:Important

[tuxette]

He was elected in a democratic election. There may have been problems with that election, he may not have had the popular vote, but he was elected by a democratic proccess,

Please explain to me (and I'm sure many others here) how the electoral college system is "democratic." Because I don't think it is. Bush was elected by the electoral college, not by the people. Had it been an election by the people for the people, Gore would be president.

Re:Important

[ThePythonicCow]

The article seems to be saying that because the internet and the PC used for voting is insecure, therefore the voting system must be insecure.

That part I don't agree with.

It is fundamentally possible to have secure communications over an insecure link. For example, each voter gets a unique number, encrypts their ballot using a common public key inside a message encrypted using their unique number. At election headquarters, votes can be received by paper, email, or any other insecure means of transmitting a thousand bytes or so of data. Each received vote is printed out with the outside portion decrypted to identify the unique voter who sent it, so it can be checked off against voter rolls, but the inside ballot still as a cryptic number. A piece of verifiable software can repeatedly reread the cryptic ballot numbers off the pile of hardcopy ballots, to produce repeatable election results, and the pile of hardcopy ballots can be repeatedly checked against the voter rolls to ensure that each ballot was cast by a valid voter, and each voter voted at most once.

Re:Important

[ThePythonicCow]

However, regardless of whether a secure voting mechanism can be implemented over the internet, this one is in deep doo-doo:

1. I doubt that our institutions are capable of providing a secure voting mechanism without much trial and error (at the expense of our elections)
2. Those who make the most use of election fraud now have much to gain from claiming that this voting system is allowing the _other_ side to steal elections. It puts the heat on the other side, and tends to delay the acceptance of these new systems until the dishonest figure out how to hack them as well. Meanwhile, the same old systems are used as before, with well known ways of being stolen.
3. Elections are a public act, that depend on the public trust. Most of the public can be easily persuaded to distrust any electronic system that can be imagined, especially one that is actually subtle enough to be secure.

Re:Important

[Eivind]

It's Constitutional.

...and therefore beyond critisism. Seriously, I agree that the US constitution is not hopeless, indeed for the time it was written it was quite radical.

But today it *does* show it's age. And a few points are downrigth undemocratic.

Worst when it comes to the elections are not the Electoral College in itself, but rather the fact that even though multiple people are elected from each state for the college, it is winner takes all.

It's pretty obvious to most people that if the population of a state is split 50/50, and that state sends 8 representatives, the democratic option would be to send 4/4 representatives, not 8/0 in favor of whichever party happens to get 50.2%.

It's also pretty obvious that a system in which everyone living in a clearly-republican or clearly-democratic state has no reason at all to go voting is not exactly optimal. How much, exactly does my vote for the republican candidate count if I live in a state far away from the balance-point (in either direction!)

Re:Important

[lynx_user_abroad]

...encrypts their ballot using a common public key inside a message encrypted using their unique number....

I was wondering if you could explain this a little bit more clearly. I'm having a difficult time explaining to my grandmother why this "choose two three-hundred-and-eighty-four-bit prime numbers, multiply them together..." is a better system than "put an "X" into the box by your candidate's name, place it in the envelope.

Suse, we can write software to do all the dirty bits, but at that point how do we know if it's doing all the dirty bits correctly?

Re:Important

[Twylite]

1. Anyone can generate votes with "unique numbers" that don't belong to them. Some may be invalid, others are successfully forged. Unless the "unique number" is a randomly-generated 128+ bit number, forgery is quite possible.
2. It is trivial to trace the vote back to the voter. Method #1: decrypt the vote. Not supposed to happen in theory, but in practice not unlikely. Method #2: given a voter's unique number, generate all possible votes and match the results. Can be defeated by including a random number in the "clear" vote, but this is precisely why securing a system like this is hard.
3. No paper trail. I can make five votes and only send one out, then "prove" later that I voted for a different candidate. Actually there is no proof either way.

The basics of pen-and-paper voting are that you prove your identity and the fact that you haven't already voted in order to get admission to a voting booth. You then get one ballot paper and cast your vote, and put it into a box. There is no way to reconcile who you voted for.

It is very difficult to do this electronically. Once you prove your identity it is generally trivial to link the vote to the identity.

Re:Important

[drooling-dog]

I'm currently serving in the US Army in Germany, and an online voting system would truly make life easier.

Plus, it would be so much cheaper and easier for authorities to get the required results. No more trucking bags of ballots off to secure & undisclosed locations for selective overnight spoilage, etc. The efficiency of military planning would be enhanced by the greater predictability of elections on the national level, and the American Empire would be strengthened as a result. It would also help protect against any possibility that liberals could take control of the government merely by voting.

I only hope they have the good sense to use closed-source software and avoid any kind of reliable vote confirmation or paper trail.

Re:Important

[Catbeller]

Paper. Ballots. Count them. Works for everything.

Electronic ballots: enables cheating. Period.

We don't need systems with paper audit trails. We are just adding insane cost to a very simple process. We have systems that work, called "paper". The only people who claim they don't work were the ones who wanted an election to stop *

Why, oh why, do these "designers" insist on an unauditable system, when it is trivial to add a printout? **

And why have a even have a system with a paper backup for audits when we had the paper system working in the first place? At no extra cost? ***

* Bush, Cheney and Rove. And a gullible pack of journalists.

** Because they want to cheat, and make sure they never lose control of the United States government. Yes, the neocons.

*** Lots and lots of money, money, money.

**** We aren't in Iraq to "build democracy". We won't permit free elections, because they will vote to kick our asses out. And all the rebuilding money is coming to American Bush/Cheney connected firms -- the Iraqis and Europeans are frozen out. And our porkers are failing miserably at the task. And we are in Iraq because of a colossal series of lies. We are there to control the spigot the world's largest reserve of oil, to break OPEC's back, and usher in a new age of, well, not cheap oil, because the oil lords of the US will not permit that, but at least oil cheap enough to ruin OPEC's control of pricing. Period.

***** All the squads in the world can't guard a voting process that is controlled by coders not physically present. People are tippy-toeing around saying what they are really afraid of -- that right wing military officers will make sure they deliver the vote for their favorite candidates, one way or another. It would only take one rogue to swing a close election by twigging a few thousand votes. The 2000 election showed us that political pressure enabled the military to permit votes to be cast by overseas personnel AFTER THE ELECTION WAS OVER -- votes that conceivably give Bush the presidency. If voting after an election is over won't stonker right-wing fanatics, tweaking a few votes on a elctronic system would be downright honest.

Re:Important

[imadork]

Please explain to me (and I'm sure many others here) how the electoral college system is "democratic." Because I don't think it is.

The electoral college as it currently stands is "democratic" if you consider that the US President is not elected by a single election, but 50 separate elections held by each state. Each voter has an equal vote to determine the outcome in that state. It traces its origins to when the president was not directly elected by voters, but elected by people appointed by their individual states. Each state could use its own method for appointing these electors, which was seen as a good thing back then, to a people who were generally distrustful of central government. (There's a good paper on this here (PDF). I didn't have the time to read all of it before posting here, but I probably will before the next big Electoral College discussion heats up this November.)

So, the real issue is how the results of each election are combined to determine the winner. Whether or not the state results are a result of a popular vote, they still have to be combined. Weighting them equally is obviously not an option -- it gives too much power to the smalelr states. Weighting them proportionally to the number if voters in that election (which is essentially what you advocate) also has its drawbacks too: the votes of people in less populated regions would simply get lost in the noise. I think the current system works rather well, although I think the "winner-take-all" format of most states' electoral college votes needs some work.

Finally, if you thought that the 2000 election was a debacle, remember that Florida was not the only close statewide election, it was simply the election that was closest. If the President was elected by a true national vote, every ballot nationwide would have been opened up for scrutiny during thode few months, and there would have been much more of an opportunity for after-the-fact manipulation of votes in recounts. The Electoral College system neatly confines election problems to one state. I think this is a Good Thing.

Re:Internet voting

[Sarojin]

Given that the US can't seem to get in-person voting right (Goooo Diebold), I doubt they're really ready for remote voting.

Re:why sumthing new?

[Dak_x]

Seriously, There are enough problems with the E-voting systems in the US. Deploying insecure systems overseas just makes a bad problem worse.

NYTimes Link

[a.koepke]

Here is the no rego NYTimes link for the article mentioned in the report.

So for decision 04,

[gnu-sucks]

We'll be counting hanging TCP connections?

Why is this so hard?

[Corpus_Callosum]

If the U.S. govt would ask a University Comp-Sci department (any University) to initiate an open-source secure electronic voting system, this problem would solve itself very rapidly.

Why do these things continue to go out to bid instead of being handled in academia where they should be?

Re:Why is this so hard?

[Reivec]

If it were open source patches would come in from all over the place. The algorithm is the important part! The bugs can be worked out as you go. But if your algorithm is crap, no amount of debugging will make it better.

I totally agree with the parent here. It would be cheaper, it would be a good educational tool for universities to get their students in. It wouldn't be hidden from the public since this is such a public issue. Experts could inspect the code at will and provide patches. I can't even really think of a negative here. I simply think too many government officals are convienced that if the source is open that means anyone can figure out how to break it, which isn't really the case.

Plus any good NEW ideas that might come out of it would also be open and could be used in other applications. And if they did, they would make good standards since they would probably be under a BSD type license. Good all around I say!

Re:Why is this so hard?

[Daengbo]

Speaking... hypodermically...
So, you want your post to get under my skin? What is that, something like flamebait?
Dan

Re:Why is this so hard?

[Ckwop]

SSL is a secure channel protocol and the simplest of the standard cryptographic problems. It is monsterously complicated to code but the basic premise of how it works is fairly easy to understand..

However, Just the description of secure voting schemes is pretty monsterous.. In Applied Cryptography, Bruce takes a chapter to develop a secure voting protocol.A real world system is an order of magnitude more complicated..

I think the way to develop a secure voting system is to have an international competition much like the way AES selection process was run! Private companys can't solve this problem.. it has to be a community effort involving the world's experts.

Simon

Re:Why is this so hard?

[Lolox]

Please explain what the Comp-Sci department grad students can do about creating an e-voting system where you can vote from any PC, anywhere, and that is resistant to

• DoS attacks (SERVE's webpage says that they have something up their sleeves, but the experts in the article don't buy it)
• Trojans/Malware in the voter's computer
• Man-in-the-middle attacks
• Insider attacks once the system has been verified

(Acknowledged: having widely-reviewed source by academics across the globe would help guard against program backdoors -- but all the above still apply)

In fact, if you read the article -or, even better, the full review- (ouch! forgot this was Slashdot!), they say that *no* system can do the job of providing good voting from *any* internet-connected PC.

I think there are two problems here, and the only way about it is to drop requirements. First, "any internet-connected PC" opens itself to all kinds of man-in-the-middle and local malware attacks. Why not place a few trusted PCs connected by secure tunnels under supervision of ellection officials in the voting areas? This would fix [D]DoS, man-in-the-middle attacks, vote buying, and evil software in the voting end.

Second, as noted in the review (and other articles about secure e-voting), the voter-verified audit trail: unless there is something tangible and hard-to-tamper (like ordinary ballots, even the printed sort), mass fraud is way too easy. So have these overseas voting stations do printed ballots, and ship them after the encrypted votes in a secure fashion. When the ballots reach the homeland, check that everything matches - and if not, beleive the ballots and find the electronic fraudsters. This would make insider attack much more difficult

Of course, the only advantage of this is that you get a not-so-secure e-vote from controlled stations, speeding up initial vote count; a count that will need to be re-checked once the overseas ballot boxes arrive back home.

Re:Why is this so hard?

[mpe]

If the U.S. govt would ask a University Comp-Sci department (any University) to initiate an open-source secure electronic voting system, this problem would solve itself very rapidly.

No doubt the US government would get upset were the answer something along the lines of using a system which could be easily counted by hand or machine, without involving lots of computer hardware and software. Especially if "not invented here" syndrome was involved.

Why do these things continue to go out to bid instead of being handled in academia where they should be?

It's a political dicision. The claim is that putting things to "the market" (the criteria being such that only a very few businesses could even put up a bid in the first place) is "more efficent". Whereas in actual practice it could just as easily be "corporate welfare".

In other words...

[gid13]

...100% of respondents (in this case, all qualified) say the system sucks, and the people in power say "Nah, go with it!"

The optimistic interpretation: The pentagon is full of idiots.

The pessimistic interpretation: The pentagon is full of corrupt people.

My interpretation: The pentagon is full of corrupt idiots.

The defense department's response?

[gid13]

From the article:

"We've had things put in place that counteract the things they talked about."

Gee, thanks for being specific. I'm convinced.

How It Works

[stewwy]

1) Decide who will win

2) Allow Voting

3) Announce result

Using this task order means that 2) is redundant and therefore has no impact on the result, therefore you do not need a secure system and can save money by purcasing a system off your friends

Re:How It Works

[miguel_at_menino.com]

1) Decide who will win

2) Allow Voting

3) Announce result

4) Profit!!!!!

US Armed Forces

[Anonymous Coward]

There are thousands of troops overseas who'd like to vote. Given that an election's outcome could easily determine the amount of time that these men and women remain overseas, I say their opinion matters...

I'm not sure why there's a push to do this electronically instead of the absentee ballots that troops have been using for years, but it's probably something to do with "possible impropriety" in how soldiers' overseas ballots were counted (or not) in 2000.

Yea! EVERYONE gets to vote!

[narratorDan]

Most Americans don't vote, so I think it's only fitting that the people who are most effected by American policy now have a chance to have their votes counted!

NarratorDan

Pentagon??

[femto]

What is the Pentagon doing developing voting systems? As a major recipient of government money, with no funding guarantees, wouldn't it have a significant vested interest in election results?

Re:Pentagon??

[femto]

That's not a reason.

Soldiers can still vote if the overseas voting system is developed and run by an independent entity, with independent funding. Soldiers may have to trust the Pentagon with their well being, but hat trust should NOT have to extend to trusting the Pentagon with their vote.

vote

[edverb]

Vote by absentee ballot this year. I reckon the paper trail might be necessary (again).

Pentagon in the Democratic Election Space ?

[leoaugust]

An Internet voting system developed by the Pentagon for U.S. citizens overseas is so vulnerable to attacks that it should be scrapped, four computer security experts said in a report released Wednesday.

Forgive me for asking but why is the Pentagon involved in the conduct of Elections? Isn't there some more neutral organization ? It is like asking the Republican-leaning ("I am committed to delivering ...") Diebold to be in charge of conducting elections. If it was the State Department (Colin Powell) it would make sense but the Pentagon (Donald Rumsfeld) ? There is no democracy in the Defense Services and None at the Pentagon - what makes them so confident that they know what democracy needs.

Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood said the Pentagon was confident the system is secure. "We knew from the start that security would be the utmost concern," Flood said. "We've had things put in place that counteract the things they talked about."

Again forgive me for bringing it up, but they seem to be brushing off concerns like the did before attacking Iraq. (We have it all under control, and it will cost less than 1.5 billion dollars ...)

"We knew from the start that security would be the utmost concern ..."

Yes, but they said the same before attacking Iraq. Knowing something does not mean that they have planned for it. It is like a doctor who knows the name of the disease but that does not mean he/she knows how to cure it. And the Pentagon has not addressed the legitimate concerns.

But the Pentagon is standing by the system, which could get its first test Feb. 3 in South Carolina's primary election.

Bring 'em on.

Re:Pentagon in the Democratic Election Space ?

[karmaflux]

The Pentagon was ordered to create a voting system to replace the current mail-it-in absentee ballot system... because a shit-ton of soldiers in Korea, Germany, Iraq, and all the other myraid places we show up.

It's the Pentagon developing it because the soldiers will be using it. This is not intended to be John Q. Backwoods voting from his AOL.

This is their home page, and here is the here is the law that brought them into being.

Re:conclusiveness?

[CB-in-Tokyo]

The concnesus was a majority, 4 votes against; nil for.

They'll probably recognize that something's...

[Undefined Parameter]

... not working right when 700,000 Privates with the last name of Chen vote for the Communist party candidate. Who needs a Manchurian Candidate when you can just elect Chairman Jia Qinglin himself? :-P ~UP

Why Not use Soldiers?

[Linus Sixpack]

Considering the US military presence in so many countries (I think 145 at last count) whats wrong with a few polite soldiers, a few witnesses, and a paper trail.

Lightning fast counting with no paper trail seems too much like an adaptable magic wand to say whatever Bush wants it to say.

ls

Re:Internet voting

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good. Now us hackers will finally control the government.

A-A-A-WHOOP!

Re:Yea! EVERYONE gets to vote!

[andreMA]

Answer: Most Americans don't care enough to vote

Alternatively, some care deeply but think the candidates on the ballot all suck and stay away from the polls in disgust. Allowing them to vote "None of the Above" and having that total reported with the other results would likely increase turnout to fair degree, since their voice ould then be 'heard'.

I seem to recall that at least one state (Nevada?) does this and "NOTA" has on occasion 'won' in state-wide races.

Re:One idea

[Zontar The Mindless]

> I've heard the idea batted around that only those
> residents of the actual States should get the
> right to vote as they're vote has a direct bearing
> on the policies that will affect them, whereas
> expats are removed from such policies by living in
> foreign countries.

Yeah, I've heard lots of ignorant and unfair ideas batted around in my time, too...

We're just as American as you are, thank you very much. And it's not like we're unaffected by US Government policy... For example -- you think Americans living abroad are exempt from paying taxes? If the US declared war on Australia tomorrow (granted, that's an unlikely event, but nevertheless), do you think the Aussie would just let me hop the next flight out of Brisbane Internaitonal back to LA? Hell, no -- I'd be interned as an enemy national.

In addition, living abroad gives us a unique advantage in seeing just how US foreign policy affects other countries and US relations with them.

> This suggestion also leads to the debate about
> allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote.

Apples and oranges. And what, pray tell, is there to "debate"? Answer: Zero. Nada. Zilch.

If immigrants can qualify for US citizenship, then they get to vote in US elections. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote. I think that's pretty easy to understand.

As for me, I was born and raised in the USA of native-born American parents; my American ancestors fought in the Revolution, the Civil War, and both World Wars; I hold a US passport; I pay US taxes. I am definitely a US citizen, and I definitely am enitled to vote in US elections.

Some people obviously have very fucked up ideas about what "citizen" means and no clue as to what it's like to be considered a foreigner.

Switzerland and e-Voting

[Azurstorm]

In Switzerland, we have tested from some years now an online voting system (more than 4 years ago already). I can not assure that there is an absolute security but until today, it appears no problem at all. The last census in 2000 was on Internet and it was a great success, people were very happy and have for a lot of people, using the Internet way instead the paper.

Switzerland is in Europe the most developed country in Internet with more than 70% of people using Internet.

There is a LOT of security check (for me a little too much hehe), at least three codes on each page, but for what I've studied the system, it appears very good, strong and evolved.

Now it is used for some small votes until that it will be absolutely validated. After that, we will have the possibility to use it for national vote.

Perhaps you should have test SERVE on some small votes before to use it for a national election. From other countries, people were looking the last US election with a suspicious mind, it would not be very good that one time again USA will have huge problems with that!

But Internet is for sure the voting machine of the future !

Fundamemtally Insecure

[igaborf]

My problem with any such system is that it doesn't protect against coercion. One reason traditional polling booths are set up the way they are is to prevent anyone from knowing how you voted. If you're voting from home via the Internet, that's not possible. Imagine someone who has power over you standing behind you while you vote to ensure you vote "right." (If you're a leftie, you can think of that person as a representative of the evil corporation. If you're a rightie, you may want to think of a union shop steward.)

Note that this is not a computer security problem. Even if the voter's identity is established to a certainty, it doesn't ensure the voter is not being coerced.

There is simply no substitute for casting your vote in a manner that ensures your choice is unknown to those who might wish to coerce you. The only viable method for doing that is to have your privacy ensured in a public polling place, by poll watchers.

Bush? (was Re:Why Not use Soldiers?)

[cascadingstylesheet]

Lightning fast counting with no paper trail seems too much like an adaptable magic wand to say whatever Bush wants it to say.

Why Bush?

Those dead people in Chicago, the inner city residents who get bussed from polling place to polling place, and those who aren't, er, technically citizens, weren't voting Republican last time I checked.

Does you're side really want to start talking about voting fraud (as opposed to metaphysical "voter intent" and "hanging chads")?

simple, secure, anonymous

[slash.dt]

simple, secure, anonymous - if you chose only 2 it is easy, if you want all three it is hard.

Simple and secure online banking is commonplace - but there is no anonyminity involved.

Simple and anonymous vote counting is easy - but if you want to make it secure you have a whole extra set of problems

Did anyone read this report?

[digrieze]

I hate to ask, but did anyone besides me read the actual report? These comments were based on attending (sitting) through two 3 day meetings, not even noting if the authors actually bothered to ask any questions or just sat through the powerpoints. Does anyone think these were the only ones there? Even the authors acknowledge they were not.

The criticisms basically fall down on "computers are broke and can be exploited" - ain't that a newsflash. They fail to note that the system is being deployed in physically secure areas over a segment of the internet that is not accessible from non-military servers, the IP is not even available on standard DNS servers.

It is worth noting that they spent much space at the end telling the media how to get hold of them for interviews, is OPRAH listening?

Seriously, these are the days when you can register anyone as a .org, put out a press release and say anything to get your 15 minutes of fame. Maybe my age has soured me but I smell trolling for a morning news segment.

Incidently, for those wondering what interest the Pentagon has in elections, just ask all the military personnel stationed out of port and overseas that had their votes tossed out by party challenges in the 2000 elections. If they HAD been counted then the Supremem Court wouldn't have been involved in that year. Then again, maybe that's what really scares people about this whole idea.