EFF Announces 2004 Pioneer Award Winners

Christopher Soghoian writes "In an announcement earlier this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has revealed the winners of the Thirteenth Annual Pioneer Awards. Focusing on the area of electronic voting security and accountability, they have highlighted the work of Kim Alexander, the president of the California Voter Foundation, David Dill, a Stanford Professor and founder of VerifiedVoting.org, and Avi Rubin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored the highly publicized Diebold report of 2003."

Comments

Historians note

[RedOregon]

More power to 'em. Individuals like these will be the people our grandchildren study (I hope!).

Re:Historians note

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of the EFF is to point out people that our grandchildren will study.

Maybe you should have been modded "-1 Whore" instead

Re:Historians note

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that be +1 Whore?

What do they get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they get to pick the next President?

BENEDICT ARNOLDS OF THE OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT

[Anonymous Coward]

• Marc Andreessen made 100s of millions of dollars shortly after graduating from UIUC. Today's graduates of the same university face moving back in with their parents. "Fuck that, I got mine!"
• Brian Behlendorf decided he'd rather go to India to recruit software engineers than help out the graduating classes of 2001-2004 here in the US.
• Robert Malda stood idly by and said NOTHING while his company offshored its flagship product.

Miguel de Icaza, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds all got rich off the Open Source Movement. What do you have to look forward to?

Re:BENEDICT ARNOLDS OF THE OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

This is offtopic (mod me down, karma-bonus isn't working anyway), but I'll bite:

What do you have to look forward to?
Following in their footsteps: creating a wildly successful capitalist business that uses others' open-source to reduce costs, in the process possibly contributing back in minor amounts. It worked for Apple, it worked for Google, it worked for countless others I won't bother to name, it'll work for me.

Re:BENEDICT ARNOLDS OF THE OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT

[Zeinfeld]

Err Benedict Arnold decided to join the US revolution, decided that the revolutionaries were going to lose and that the sooner the war was over the better so returned to supporting the crown. Sounds a reasonable decision to me.

Marc Andressen a 'Benedict Arnold' of open source? Err when exactly did Marc do anything in the open source movement. The NCSA Mosaic program was always license restricted to educational use only. Netscape was set up to exploit the web as a commercial enterprise.

Same with the rest of the guys mentioned. Very few ever promoted open source as the religion currently held by some on slashdot.

It seems somewhat odd for folk who are trying to reduce the cost of software to zero to start complaining about offshore programming.

Come to that it is pretty rich for IT workers whose entire business is helping companies displace workers in blue collar jobs to start complaining about the same thing happening to them.

Dichotomy of Voting

[mfh]

There is a distinct dichotomy between the way voting should be handled, and the reality of the situation. Voting should be handled by the elderly ladies, with all their honesty and good faith, yet the gravity of the situation is that these ladies have become obsolete, due to the fact that they can easily be fooled now by those with a great deal of technological prowess. Sadly, these bastions of hope can't possibly keep up with the weasels who abuse power.

We need to utilize the honesty from these wonderful proctors, and harness that in whatever system of voting is brought forward. We need an auditing system that is open to the public, so that the votes can be quickly check-sum'd and factored by poll. Our votes should be accessible online so that we can check to make sure our vote has not been changed by wrong-doers.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[DarwinDan]

The reality of the situation is the fact that "e-Voting" technology will continue to progress and these ladies you speak of will continue to disappear.

It really is a sad fact (highlighted by the Diebold debacle) that there is little honesty left in the world of electronic voting. And, for that matter, even if a company is "honest" how can we be sure they aren't just doctoring their checksums or other statistics? *sigh*

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[gid13]

"Our votes should be accessible online so that we can check to make sure our vote has not been changed by wrong-doers"

People will almost invariably respond to this with "But this opens the potential for people to abuse those with different votes than theirs". However, I've been in agreement with you for quite a while anyway. Those that are afraid to stand up for their vote simply wouldn't get one. Unfortunate, but I think it has a chance at making people appreciate their vote MORE rather than less.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[FsG]

This could be abused to death, by major employers who could "strongly encourage" their employees to vote for the pro-big-business candidate. So far, we've been safe from such abuse because there has been no way to verify whether any particular person voted for the "right" candidate; as soon as that changes, expect problems.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[sould]

It is possible to preserve anonymity and have votes accessible online.

Have the voting machine print you a receipt with a unique ID on it.If you are so inclined, you can look up the UID on the net and ensure your vote was tallied correctly.

If you are concerned about your privacy, simply leave your receipt in the polling station and your vote is untraceable.

And there you have it - a simple, user auditable system for e-voting that preserves privacy.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[stienman]

The problem with this is that the thugs can simply threaten to beat you in one of two cases:

1) You didn't get a receipt or
2) Your voting didn't please them

By allowing people the opportunity to check on themselves, you are also allowing others to check on them.

The only way to provide this kind of check and balance is to allow people to observe their paper ballot inside the voting place, but not allow them to leave with it.

This requires that the voting machines and operators are secure.

But then, this has always been the case. We've always relied on the operators and the machines we've used. This isn't as new a problem as you might think. The only reason people are up in arms is that the machine hides so much of the process that it's difficult, if not impossible, to verify. This is why so many people are pushing for voter receipts that the voter does not leave with. The receipts are collected, and if an audit is needed then the receipts are what gets counted since the voter ostensibly checked the receipt after voting.

The problem with this is that you get very large receipts since they have to be human readable.

But these are not insurmountable problems, and I'm quite certian that after another 12 years we'll be happy with our machines and the process. As long as we can audit the machines, any and all offenses can be punished accordingly when caught, just as they are now.

Besides, voting was never meant to be fool-proof. It's simply the best way that is currently practical to run a republic. Eventually this will change.

-Adam

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[AuMatar]

And how do you know the machine doesn't store your real vote for diisplay but doesn't actually count it?

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[Shakrai]

We need an auditing system that is open to the public, so that the votes can be quickly check-sum'd and factored by poll.

What's wrong with a paper ballot system that can be audited by the old ladies that you speak of? Place an "X" next to the candidates you wish to vote for. If we really must have e-voting then have it print a stinking paper ballot that is dropped into a drop-box. Don't even keep a running total on the PC -- count the damn paper ballots.

Failing that what's wrong with the old style mechanical voting machines (we still use them in my district -- I just got a huge training manual on them because I volunteered to be an elections inspector this year)? Pull a lever for your candidate and it increments a counter. Completely mechanical -- no electric or software needed. A fairly complex machine but it's certainly more resistant to tampering then software (and don't give me a lecture about OSS being the solution -- unless John Q. Public has root access to the e-Voting machine how do you know that OSS is really running on it?) -- and it's at least as reliable.

With the setup that my state has (again this is coming out of the handbooks that I got from my local Board of Elections after volunteering) you have two election inspectors from both major parties and observers from any interested candidate that can watch the voting and auditing process -- that's as tamper proof as it's going to get. And the old ladies can understand it! We don't need to be held hostage by a friggen company whose CEO has stated that "He will deliver Ohio's electoral votes to the President". Where's the damn outrage from the general public?

Our votes should be accessible online so that we can check to make sure our vote has not been changed by wrong-doers.

Doesn't that defeat the point of anonymous voting?

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[mehtajr]

The problem with this is that you get very large receipts since they have to be human readable.

The receipts are no larger than today's paper ballots, which have, for the most part, served the purpose in elections. I think we can handle generating paper receipts and storing them.

People don't have perspective on e-voting; they expect it to be perfectly secure and foolproof. The system will never be wholly secure. Just like an election of entirely paper ballots will never be wholly secure; there is always room to manipulate the results, no matter what system is used. We always have to have a level of trust in the integrity of the people (the little old ladies parent wrote about) and the machinery (both in its fairness and technical soundness).

The key to improving the integrity of e-voting is to have verifiable paper trails, and perform sampled audits of all electonically counted races. If the numbers match in every race, that constantly reaffirms both the integrity and technical soundness of the electronic process.

The worst thing for e-voting is to advocate UIDs and audit trails that allow votes to be tied to specific voters, even if you try to sell it as not being name-specific. People don't react well to the idea of having their votes monitored, and in the long run it will only hurt the cause of trustworthiness.

Further, all the secure electronic technology in the world is useless if you don't enforce the rules before voters ever reach their polling place. Florida in 2000 was a clear indicator that misapplication of official powers can swing the outcome of an election (cutting people off the eligible voter list because they are wrongly identified as felons, etc.). We haven't solved anything until we ensure that things like that don't happen.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[JoeBuck]

Here's how you do it: first off, electronic voting software must be open source, and furthermore it must be inspected by qualified computer security experts. The software developers and security inspectors would be paid for their work, of course, but they would need to either assign their copyright to the state or at least assign unlimited distribution rights to the state.

Then, when the voter votes, a printout of that vote is produced, and the voter is asked by the machine to confirm that he or she has inspected the paper record and agrees that it matches the voter's intent. In the security inspection, particular attention is paid to ensuring that the printout will match the submitted vote. Nevertheless, the paper record is then deposited in a locked box, watched over by experienced little old ladies, one per political party per polling station the way things are done today. For a randomly selected sample of polling stations, all the paper ballots are counted and compared to the electronically reported figure. In very close races, all of the paper records can be counted. To make recounts more efficient, the paper printouts can be designed to be optically readable and machine counted if need be.

"But that will be expensive", some will whine. Big deal: assuring that the voters' will is respected is the #1 priority in a democratic society.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[sould]

And how do you know the machine doesn't store your real vote for diisplay but doesn't actually count it?

Because you can count everyone's votes online.

Everyone's vote is online anonymously. So they can be independantly counted (by anyone with the inclination).

Individuals can check to ensure that their vote was recorded correctly.

Pretty foolproof I think.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[Anonymous Coward]

And there you have it - a simple, user auditable system for e-voting that preserves privacy.

Grandparent post, though, implied that THE problem is that since YOU can access it, someone can coerce you to prove you voted certain way. Currently they can not, because there's no way you can check it.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[prshaw]

>>fairly complex machine but it's certainly more resistant to tampering then software

Do you really believe this? Could you tell if the machine had been tampered with to skip a vote every 100 or 1000? Could you tell if the counter always incremented the correct way?

Not saying that eletronic voting is the answer, but it is no easier to fix an election with it then with mechanical or any other voting means.

And, remember, dead people still vote. And they can do it just as easy with any method.

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[AuMatar]

Only if everyone checks their vote. And you still have major privacy problems, because all you need is to match an id to a person. This is unacceptable, if you study history, there was a huge problem with people being fired for who they voted for before we instituted anonymous elections. The only way to make that approaching alright is to make it so only the person who voted can check their vote. That STILL isn't enough, because it can be traced back to a requesting IP, and from there to the ISP and the individual. And if you think the two major paries wouldn't check, welcome to reality. They already keep massive databases of salaries, car brands, etc to try and guess people's political affiliations.

The real way to do it is to make the vote have multiple ways of being counted (electronic, OCR, hand count), and that each way is counted independantly by totally separate commisions, with automatic recall elections if the counts are not within a percent or two of matching (and that the difference is less than the difference between candidates).

Re:Dichotomy of Voting

[Shakrai]

Do you really believe this? Could you tell if the machine had been tampered with to skip a vote every 100 or 1000? Could you tell if the counter always incremented the correct way?

Actually yes, for two reasons.

A) The election inspectors keep track of the total vote counter on the machine to make sure that it tallies up with the number of people who have voted. Of course this isn't the individual canaidate counters but this brings us to point B...
B) What's going to be easier for an election inspector to see? That a mechinial machine has been tampered with (how would you set it to skip votes? You'd have to sabotage the internal mechinisms) or software has? Last time I checked the Board of Elections didn't even have friggen access to the guts of the Diebold voting machines because it is a "trade secret".

The Future: bright, beautiful, and not here yet.

[LithiumX]

While electronic voting may be the way of the future, I'm a lot more inclined to be conservative about the entire process. We're in far too great a rush to revolutionize a system that has always had problems, and always will (in one form or another).
The recent near-tie's and questionable results are more a matter of our own political divisiveness and extreme political stances.
That, and a publicly-audited voting system dashes all my hopes of winning the 2012 elections by underhanded means.

recognition where it's due

[quelrods]

It's good to see those who work heard to protect our freedoms receiving proper recognition. With the various problems closed source electronic voting has had we can cheer on those who are fighting for us.

The question everyone askls

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's Seth Finkelstein and Michael Sims with the Censorware project?

Re:oh yeah?

[MikeXpop]

Well hey, at least it's not the Grammy's.

thanks, EFF

[the arbiter]

Just grateful that someone, anyone, is trying to defend the rights of the individual nowadays. Doesn't seem to be in vouge anymore.

Thank you, EFF!

Johns Hopkins University

[JackPo]

I am going to stick my neck out there and congratulate Professor Rubin while condemning hopkins... Avi Rubin's name has been thrown around quite a bit recently due to the Diebold controversy and the shutdown of bell labs. However, I'm sure many of you know about the leaked Diebold memoes that were hosted by members of academia throughout the united states. It is probably most ironic that it was @ Hopkins that the administration FORCED a student to remove the memoes even over Professor Rubin's very vocal support of the student....

Re:Johns Hopkins University

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, and 75% of students agree that The Johns Hopkins University sucks.

Re:oh yeah?

[platypibri]

Two Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award Winners walk into a bar......

Re:oh yeah?

[AnotherFreakboy]

It's not hard to score a +5 funny, you just have to use the right lines:

In Soviet Russia beowulf cluster of internet voting machines running BSD imagines you, and dies like Steven King.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week, try the buffet.

Which country are you referring to?

[Anonymous Coward]

>The recent near-tie's and questionable results >are more a matter of our own political >divisiveness and extreme political stances

Two parties with the same agenda backed by the same people.
I guess if you see 'extreme political stances' then actually having a multi-party system would scare you to death.

Its almost as sad as Canada. Here we have one business owned party. Another slightly more to the right but regional so no chance of winning an election. Another party which is again regional and whose main goal is the end of the french- english farce and separation from Canada. And the lovable lefties who are around to remind us why we're the 'bestest' country in the world and to give the illusion that people have a choice.

This sham of a democracy gives us the moral authority to criticize Americorp Inc. down south and their twiddly dee and dummer options.

That's why we love the US; next to them we always seem like the good guys. They make us look good.

I personally love all the BS in US politics, hearing your president Georges Kerry Jr. speak is fascinating.

zack

Re:oh yeah?

[xSquaredAdmin]

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week, try the buffet.

In Soviet Russia, the buffet tries you.

Pioneers? Not really.

[bartwol]

It strikes me as odd that these people would be awarded and celebrated as "pioneers." Rather than act as creaters, they serve as opposers to those who create. Now, I'm not trying to suggest that their criticism is invalid, nor that they play a less than a valuable role. But let us not celebrate these people as models of human potential; it is far easier to play the tear-it-down role than it is to play the build-it-up role. A world lead by the critics, however valid their reasoning, could only find purpose at the expense of true pioneers.

<bart

Re:Pioneers? Not really.

[Lars Arvestad]

Huh? It is not like these people are movie or art critics getting recognition! What do you think they are awarded for? "Insightful utterings in front of the 9-o'clock news"?

These people are actively working on changing things in society (primarily US). They are actually putting their reputation at risk, spending a lot of time and effort, and are trying hard to make things better! To spearhead change must not be confused with deconstructionism.

I have incidentally been fortunate enough to chat with Kim Alexander and her husband on an airplane trip (Hi guys, I know you are reading this), and it is clear to me that Kim is spending her career on trying to ensure that things like the Florida debacle does not happen again, that democracy will be guaranteed, and restore people's faith in elections. Kim and the others are definately good role models and creative people! Who would you like to reward if you want to highlight electronic voting? The creators of the Diebold machines perhaps?

Don't hold your breath

[Intocabile]

Thanks to Bush clone, George W. Bush Jr. Junior and his revisionist history for lower taxes policy your grand children will be able to learn about technological visionaries like Darl McBride. Oddly Al Gore, while long dead is also rightfully credited for the creation of the Internet.

balackboxvoting

[r.future]

Anyone who is really wants some great info on Dibold, and the many flaws with electronic voting should IMO check out the following sites...

blackboxvoting.com, and blackboxvoting.org.

One of the sites is alwys up, one is often down because Dibold has been doing everything that it can to shut down the sites.

The .com site has a free PDF version of a great book called blakbox voting by Bev Harris PhD. (I'm shocked the EFF did not mention her.)

post hoc, ergo proctor hoc

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to utilize the honesty from these wonderful proctors, and harness that in whatever system of voting is brought forward.

However, if the Diebold system of voting is brought forward, we need to utilize the services of wonderful proctologists, and put their asses in a harness!

Unfortunately...

[stienman]

Unfortunately the ceremony was marred by an apparent 'wardrobe malfuntion' in the Diebold voting system during the final tally. During the brief time the code was naked many were shocked and offended by what they saw. One sobbing professor commented, "I took my students to see an innocent american tradition, only to have to explain to them afterwards what an 'access database' was, and how easy it was to change their votes. I'm quite certian the incident scarred them."

Diebold denied having planned this event, while the EFF solemnly vowed to prohibit Diebold from hosting any future votes. Google indicated that this was the most replayed cache during the ceremony.

-Adam

YUO AM IN TEH WEEDS!!!~!1` OLOLOLOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:No way!

[Anonymous Coward]

shockerfan@bellsouth.net

History is a bit wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Benedict Arnold decided to join the US revolution, decided that the revolutionaries were going to lose and that the sooner the war was over the better so returned to supporting the crown. Sounds a reasonable decision to me.

Arnold changed over to the British because he was disgruntled over not getting promoted to General. Considering his exploits before turning traitor, a promotion he richly deserved.