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Voting Machine Attacks Proven To Be Practical
An anonymous reader writes "Every time a bunch of academics show vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines, critics complain that the attacks aren't realistic, that attackers won't have access to source code, or design documents, or be able to manipulate the hardware, etc. So this time a bunch of computer scientists from UCSD, Michigan, and Princeton offered a rebuttal. They completely own the AVC Advantage using no access to source code or design documents (PDF), and deliver a complete working attack in a plug-in cartridge that could be used by anyone with a few private minutes with the machine. Moreover, they came up with some cool tricks to do this on a machine protected against traditional code injection attacks (the AVC processor will only execute instructions from ROM). The research was presented at this week's USENIX EVT."
What these "intellectuals" and "researchers" have to keep in mind, is that in reality, no one would ever dream of committing election fraud.
We all live in a utopia, where everyone has equal say, no one would ever coerce others and there's a kitten on every lap. That's why there are no such things as secret ballots. In every voting booth there will be three heavily armed guards who will watch you vote to ensure that you won't be doing anything you shouldn't do.
Have a cotton candy, drink your beer and turn on the TV. The shiny shiny is on again, you like that. You have always liked that.
</sarcasm>
The problem is our elections are supposed to be transparent by law.
The problem is our elections are supposed to have public oversight.
The problem is a private company can not provide public oversight.
The problem is electronic vote tabulation devices use invisible signals which no human (especially a poll watcher) can see.
The problem is China or North Korea could decide our elections and we wouldn't know.
The problem is there is no electronic vote tabulation device (or electronic vote registration poll book device) which can be validated with public oversight.
The problem is without public oversight, no election can be validated.
The problem is if our elections can not be validated, we can not hold our representatives responsible.
The problem is if our representatives can not be held responsible, they tend to ignore the rule of law.
The problem is if our representatives ignore the rule of law, they tend to ignore protecting the US Constitution against all enemies.
The problem is when the US Constitution is ignored, we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic.
The problem is when we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic, we slip into fascism.
The problem is we have slipped into fascism.
The problem is ignorance is no longer an excuse for corruption.
Electronic bits do not have the quality of being static. Electronic votes can be changed without obvious physical evidence, and as long as they're purely electronic, it will always be like that.
Even an optical disk is more static than electronic bits that live in a database.
People need to demand paper ballots until electronic voting machines are all enhanced with built-in paper trails.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
That seems to have gone right over your head.
The irony here is palpable.
From TFA:
"The attacker does not need to remove any tamper-evident seals; in particular, he does not need to remove the circuit-board cover."
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The only problem with this is that you aren't going to get a few "private minutes" with the machine
Surely that depends on the standards of voting privacy in your district, like whether you get a three-sided screen block or a complete booth with ceiling-to-floor curtains.
And an election can be thwarted by leaving evidence of tampering in a district you want to disenfranchise.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Here's a several trillion bucks and counting glaring example about how most reps and senators give not crap one what their constituents want: Public opposition including phone calls, faxes, emails, snail mails and buttonholing was running well over 90% against the casino bankers bailouts. Yet it passed, both under the shrub admin and continues today under the yomama admin. People just wanted normal bankruptcy to occur, let the real free markets sort out those ludicrous collateralized debt obligations and hedged derivatives bets and all those other pseudo financial "products" and other forms of mass leechery from the real working folks. People said in huge numbers "No, we don't need to offer millionaires and billionaires welfare when they bet wrong, they should eat their own megacapitalist dogfood..we'll deal with whatever happens, but don't subsidise those people". But nope, the US public got put on the hook to bail them out.
GM and Chrysler, again, decades of getting it wrong in the auto industry, all the chance in the world for management, unions and investors to get it right..nope, they kept screwing up. People really didn't want to bail them out, again in huge numbers, just let them go bankrupt like normal, but, the quasi bailout happened anyway, and now we have some precedent that the executive branch can just seize corporations and run them. Seems like we fought a big fat war over that economic and governmental "blend" two generations ago, we were against that back then, and actually hung some of the high level proponents after that war. Now, it is *policy*, despite most folks being against it.
Look at the dumb wars..I sincerely doubt there is even close to a majority opinion anymore to continue these wars....but they still go on.
The bottom line is "government" doesn't give a rat's ass what "the people" want, they just go ahead and do whatever they want to do, or what they have been bribed and blackmailed into doing.. I can't give you an exact date when it happened, but voting and "representative democracy" has been broken on many levels for a long, long time now.
Now I still vote, inertia mostly and all, but I think it stopped having much meaning at the larger scales. Local elections I think your vote can make a little difference, at state and above levels though, you have your choice of the globalist screw the middle class party that subsidizes a.b and c over there at your expense, or the globalist screw the middle class party, who subsidizes x,y and z over thataway, again at your expense.
I *wish* it was different, really, I sincerely do, but not seeing it. Until such a time as the two corrupt major parties are abandoned or outlawed for major racketeering, just not seeing things getting any better. Just way too corrupt, for way too long now, it is just "business as usual", and neither party has any incentive to eliminate themselves or the other party, because they are equally corrupt, so they just are never going to go there.
My big hope, really..I hope the USA does a USSR and just dissolves as a bad idea, past prime, with no bloody revolutions. I want some real honest choice. If a regional bloc or state wants joe government to run all aspects of their lives, cradle to grave, and stay taxed at 90% with a herd of commissars overseeing them all the time...swell, let them try that, see how it works. If another wants just about no government at all, private everything, no rules except ferengi "profit at all costs!", fine, let them try that and see what happens.
Somewhere, some state or group of previous states will go "gee..ya know..the original Constitution and bill of rights actually seems well thought out..wonder what will happen if we really, REALLY follow those guidelines and not just lie about it all the time??". THAT place I *will* move to, even if I have to fight every step of the way there.