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Brazilian Breaks Secrecy of Brazil's E-Voting Machines With Van Eck Phreaking
After the report last week that Brazil's e-voting machines had withstood the scrutiny of a team of invited hackers, reader ateu writes with news that a hacker has shown that the Linux-based voting machines aren't perfectly safe; he was able to eavesdrop on them (translated from Portuguese) by means of Van Eck phreaking.
"Listening in" and actually breaking the security of the machine are two entirely different things. What's the most someone could do with this exploit? Basically it just allows for a more accurate exit-poll. As far as I see it, the machine's security has still yet to be bested.
Easy. Take the machine, hollow them out, put a board in and use their shell as a guard from prying eyes for pen&paper voting. The manufacturers of the machines get the money and we get secure and anonymous voting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If an attacker were able to access the voting location enough to install an unnoticeable antenna, I'd be more concerned with small cameras. Even a large antenna in a nearby building would require somebody watching to see who was using which voting machine, in order to pose any real threat.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Low-contrast fonts are probably right out, since you don't want to disenfranchise old folks and others with vision problems.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Not to say that secrecy isn't important, but once it requires a certain level of technology to eavesdrop then surely you just pick some random people and rough them up anyway telling the people you are intimidating that you have this "magic" eavesdropping technology.
Don't be silly.
Secret ballot is one of the cornerstones of democracy.
In a secret ballot, you don't get bribed to vote for a particular person because you can
always say you voted for him while voting for him.
Likewise, about getting pressured about voting for someone.
This is why I love the Canadian method: paper with circles, make an "X" in the circle you want, fold the paper and put it in the ballot box. Good luck hacking that on a large scale (what with scrutineers from multiple parties watching the election and the count and each other, plus the people there as independent scrutineers watching everyone else), and monitoring it (little cardboard voting booth on a table, voila, privacy. The only argument I could imagine is finger prints on the ballots, but you can wear gloves if you want.
Exactly. It's pretty safe. This shows that a random citizen is unlikely to give an election to Mickey Mouse on a whim.
Instead it would take someone with significant knowledge and even serious funding to sway an election. Probably not just a someone, but even an organization.
So the only way this could ever effect elections would be if there were an organization or group of conspiring individuals with significant monetary resources - AND for that group of people to feel that swaying an election would be in their interest - AND for that group of people to then be so immoral as to decide to do so.
Clearly such a confluence of conditions is so wildly improbable that we can effectively rule out its possibility.
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