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Microsoft Moves To Change NY State Election Law
myspace-cn sends us to Bo Lipari's blog where it is revealed that Microsoft has moved forcefully into New York State with proposed changes to NY state election law drafted by Microsoft attorneys. A document has been circulating (PDF) among the legislators for a while now. The proposed changes would gut the source-code escrow and review provisions in current law that were hard-fought-for and passed in New York in 2005. Microsoft is siding with the makers of voting machines that run on Windows — the company doesn't want its code inspected by outsiders. From the article: "Now the software giant has gone a step further, not just saying 'we won't comply with your law' but actively trying to change state law to serve their corporate interests... Adding insult to injury, these changes are being slipped into a bill that may be voted on Monday or Tuesday, June 18 or 19."
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Any form of eVoting will raise trust issues. Without source code there cannot be trust of a complex computer program - testing won't work. E.g. maybe only when sysdate is 15.May.2009 will a particular "feature" manifest. Microsoft are a closed source firm so they shouldn't go near eVoting.
Companies lobby all the time to get laws changed in their favor. This is just "business as usual."
The real cure is electoral reform, including campaign financing. As long as "lawmakers" (I use the term liberally) can be tempted by companies with deep pockets and the hope of a seat on the board of directors after the bums are thrown out, this will just keep happening.
This is a symptom, not the disease itself.
Kevin Smith on Prince
* Voting machine manufacturers want their code closed so that they can take bribes for deciding the winner.
* Microsoft wants their code closed in order to protect lock-in.
* Those in power take bribes from Microsoft and the voting machine manufacturers, and moreover, they want to be able to hand their offices to friends and supporters when their own terms are up.
Summary: things are happening that appear to be motivated by agendas antithetical to democracy.
When the used car salesman if performing gymnastics to guide your eyes away from some aspect of the car, that's where you'd BETTER look if you don't want to be ripped off.
What we have here is a salesman who is desperate to keep us from examining the source of the OS.
I think having full "cvs blame" on ALL legislation would be a great start to complete overhaul.
Currently we can see some of the evolution of a bill into law, but much of the direct personal responsibility is masked by committee changes. A lawmaker would be far, far more careful if he knew everyone (media, citizens, etc) could see exactly what changes he made, and when.
The "when" is important, for instance, a change of a bill a day before being voted on should be a major red flag.
This is the company that sells software to Automatic Teller Machines, which are very important pieces of machinery in how they can effect a person's life. We've all read horror stories about ATM's running windows crashing, but MS expects people to put their trust in them when deciding who runs the country?!? This is lunacy!
I'm a student. I write iPhone apps.
The real cure is electoral reform,
And a very significant part of the electoral process is haveing a voting system you can count on. From the proposed changes to the law, it looks like MS would like to make voting software from "off the shelf" Windows components. Why would they push for a differentiation between primarly-for-voteing or not, unless they were not going to be building this 100% custom? Do we really want our voting software to be compatible with home PCs? Do we want that software even based on a system that many many people have years of experience in finding weaknesses? Hell, if we are going to vote that way, just make the presidential election a web survey.
We are all just people.
"Could you name one issue where current law diverges from majority opinion, backed by some recent survey?"
Totally irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is that companies have more "access" to legislators than the electorate does.
Electoral laws need reform.
But since you asked - the current war in Iraq. Current law funds it - current public opinion is that the invasion was a mistake and to get out.
Another one - the deficit. Current law says its okay to run huge deficits, and to keep raising the legal deficit ceiling. public opinion is WTF
The debt ceiling was raised just over a year ago. It's going to have to be raised again in the VERY near future.
Ten trillion or bust? More like Ten trillion AND bust!
Kevin Smith on Prince
Here in Soviet Amerika, Microsoft and Haliburton write our laws. This is Corporatism, its Mercantilism, and its evil.. If we let it continue we will find ourselves homeless in the country our forefathers conquered.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Which almost never happens. It happens so rarely that it makes the news when it does, and even then, these guys spend years out on bail while they appeal. Then they go to a country club "prison", and get out early anyway, when they aren't out on "work release". They are almost never punished to begin with, and the few times they get busted are not a deterrent to the rest of them.
Given that voting is (generally) considered quite an important activity, with natinal security implications, I see no reason why the relevant software/hardware combination should be held to lesser standards than, say, software in avionics on our planes or on-board software on our satellites, both of which seem to work "just fine" (relatively speaking, yes, you get thousands of newspaper articles when there is a single failure).
:)
Or, (google for the story) apparently writing the e-voting bill was really easy in Nevada, they said "Hey, we'll use the same audit standards that we already have for our slot machines" -- and all the Diebolds decided to skip NV as a customer...
Paul B.
otally irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is that companies have more "access" to legislators than the electorate does.
I'd say it's completely relevant -- if the law currently already does what "the people" want, what's the "value-add" of more stringent campaign financing rules?
But since you asked - the current war in Iraq. Current law funds it - current public opinion is that the invasion was a mistake and to get out.
No, it isn't. The Democrats control both houses and would have already done this if they didn't think it would get them kicked out of office at the next election.
Another one - the deficit. Current law says its okay to run huge deficits, and to keep raising the legal deficit ceiling. public opinion is WTF
I couldn't read the link (after trying some variants), but I suspect it simply says the public doesn't like deficits. But it's one thing to favor reducing debt in the abstract; it's quite another to accept the tradeoffs that that would require. Is the public willing to curtail lots of programs or raise taxes to pay down the deficit? Apparently not.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The Democrats control both houses and would have already done this if they didn't think it would get them kicked out of office at the next election.
No, that's a balance of power issue. Pulling the troops won't hurt the Democrats in the next elections -- not as a whole, anyway -- but Bush will veto any bill that contains a deadline, and Congress doesn't have a veto-proof majority on the topic. What ends up happening (theoretically) is that the troops eventually don't get supplies, and due to that the Democrats get hurt. The president simply has the upper hand on this issue, regardless of the feeling of the populace or the majority party in Congress.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Which is why I think we should return to traditional paper ballots, honestly. The field of computer security is simply too new and too fast paced to trust with the foundation of our democracy: elections.
At the very least, I feel that any software used in the election process should have its source viewable by the public. It doesn't necessarily have to be free/open source (though I think it would be beneficial), but people should at least be able to audit the code used to determine the nation's elections.
This is just one more reason we should have stuck with the paper ballot. Despite all the complaints about the 2000 election, there was a clear paper trail to follow. I do not believe that there is any way to make an electronic ballot that there is a way to make it so that the average person could be confident that the vote wasn't rigged. Even with open source software, unless you compiled the code yourself (or at least were present when it was compiled), how do you know that the "open" code is actually what they installed on the machine?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Shya. The public would go on a rampage alright.. to lynch hackers. That's the way it works. Hackers are the bad guys, the idiots who make software with big security holes in it because they can't practice well known techniques are the victims.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why an OS for an appliance computer? (Because a voting machine is basically an appliance computer).
I mean, what does a voting machine needs to do? Read a keyboard (or touch screen), write to a display device, print a receipt/results, read and write to a RAM card (to get the candidates and put the results).
So why do you need a whole goddammed operating system to do that? Are programmers becoming sufficiently incompetent to be unable to do those basic I/O tasks from scratch???
What's so difficult in booting from ROM? Set stack pointers, memory access registers, jump to start of POST routine and go.
It's not very hard at all.
So why do you need schwindoze (or schlinux) to do all those basic things????
I don't think a survey should be necessary in the case of the DMCA. It was passed through unscrupulous means and measures. It is abused more often than it's used and it definitely does not reflect the interests of the public at large. And without resorting to a poll, I think it's safe to say that nearly 100% of all people in the US would like to be able to back up their movies and record any given TV show or movie for later viewing whether the recording device is a tape, a DVR or a DVD+-R.
Because Microsoft isn't a citizen, and corporations don't have the same rights to representation as citizens. Or shouldn't have. In these plutocratic times they actually appear to have more representation than citizens, but that's not the way it should be. Not if you want to pretend you live in a democracy.