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Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested In India
whatajoke writes "Hari Prasad, a security researcher in India who had demonstrated the vulnerability of electronic voting machines used in all elections in India, was arrested by the police on charges of stealing an electronic voting machine. The election commission of India has maintained that EVM are non-hackable. The election commission had previously provided access to the device to the security researchers for a day and asked for a hack in only that time."
off. thief.
It doesn't matter where you are, there is a government there, some are worse than others, but all of them have evolved into similar structures with the relationship between a citizen and government of a country is very abusive, and the government is the one doing the abuse.
Name a country, any country, there are people there abused their governments, it is what it is. Feels like terrorism against governments is the only meaningful life pursuit at this point.
You can't handle the truth.
Surely this will increase the security of electronic voting in India.
It looks like somebody may have violated the time-honored "never embarrass overconfident idiots, however tempting it is" rule...
I keep reading story after story of how easily hackable these machines are and my only question is why do they keep making easily hackable machines? Who are the geniuses making a voting machine that can be hacked? Why aren't they contacting these professors and researchers while they're creating the machine and say "Hey you're good at hacking. We're trying to create a voting machine that can not be hacked, can you help us?"
I just don't understand, it's like building a car that explodes at the slightest impact and then arresting people that expose it. Wouldn't it be easier just to make a better voting machine?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Will these also receive the BBC and Voice of America on short wave too?
The hands free folk will also mandate an FM transmitter to enable the speakers in the car to be activated. And since my 77 Ford F150 only has AM we also need an AM transmitter.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
bearded t-rex establishes a numbers station colony on planet jupiter
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
AFAIC fighting governments in any way is fighting against oppression for freedom.
You can't handle the truth.
http://topsport.ge/ :)
http://topsport.ge
1) The voter gets to see the vote being cast.
2) Auditors and manual re-counters get to see the exact same thing the voter saw. This means it must be a tangible artifact.
3a) Audit all elections "to 5%" or "to the margin of victory" whichever is less. This provides a very high confidence any fraud wasn't enough to sway the elections nor was it enough to sway more than 5% of the tally. Do the same if any candidate is "close" to a significant threshold number, such as the number of votes needed to avoid a runoff.
3b) Random audits "to 0.5%" or some other high confidence interval sufficient to expose and deter general game-playing by a candidate who lost so bad that the cheating didn't help him. If a losing candidates know they have a 1 in 10 chance of getting a "very close audit" they won't try to play games.
4) Automatic recounts using different equipment PLUS a more thorough audit on any close election.
5a) Manual recounts on any close election on the request of the candidate who is within the "margin of possible error/fraud" that the audits show could exist.
5b) Manual recounts on any election where any candidate is very close to a significant threshold number.
It's not hard folks. Machine-readable paper ballots typically meet 1 & 2. The rest is a matter of spending money after the votes are initially tallied, not a function of the voting machines.
Auditing an election of, say, 3M voters where one candidate allegedly beat the other 50.5% to 46.5% to 3% for minor candidates need only determine that there's less than a 5% chance that the true election result had the winning candidate with 50%+1 votes to avoid a runoff. With a paper ballot satisfying #1 and #2 and generally accepted statistical analysis, this won't require a recount of nearly the entire pool of votes, only a random sample from each ballot box sufficiently large to rule out the need for a runoff.
If on the other hand the alleged winning amount was exactly 1,500,001 out of 3M votes, or if it was 1,499,499 and the winner wanted a recount to avoid a runoff, a full manual recount would likely be necessary.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"The arrest was made on the flimsy charge of 'theft of EVM' used for vulnerability demonstration by Hari Prasad and a team of security researchers that included Alex Halderman, professor of computer science, University of Michigan and Rop Gonggrijp, a security researcher from Netherlands along with a team of their colleagues".
For more info see http://www.youtube.com/user/ropgonggrijp
Hack-tic times.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Its beyond offensive and disgusting that any post that defends and advocates terrorism like the above does is moderated insightful.
The moderators should be ashamed of themselves here.
Who's advocating terrorism?
This is what was said:
Feels like terrorism against governments is the only meaningful life pursuit at this point.
Notice the "Feels" part? The poster was expressing feelings of outrage and his frustration with his inability to stop Governments from abusing their power. He was expressing the frustration that Democracies or Republics still do not prevent a Government from abusing its citizens. No matter how we vote or who we vote for, what letters we write that fall on deaf ears, or protest and get our asses kicked by the cops, it seems as though, we the little people get shit on. People who are trying to show how possible finagling of the voting process gets done and hopefully prevent some of those injustices end up being victims of the powers that be.
I'm sure with events in the present and past, many of us had fantasies of disintegrating Congress (See "Mars Attacks!"). Would we do it? No. The only thing we can do is express our outrage and impotence with regards to controlling a government.
The rich and powerful have been doing this since time began. They manipulate the populace with jingoism, bogus issues to distract us, and in the background, they're taking their power to boost their own pathetic (much wealthier) little life.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Machine-readable paper ballots have three major flaws:
1) cost and bulk
2) not usable without assistance by blind and those who can't use a marking pen
3) High waste or too costly with multi-precinct ballots or multi-language ballots, where a single voting station may have hundreds of different ballots and keeping a sufficient supply of each is difficult.
To help with #2 and #3, you can use a machine that prints the ballot "on-demand," either blank or, if the voter wants to use the touch-screen or other machine-input to indicate his vote, filled out.
The voter fills out the ballot if he didn't have the machine do it for him, examines it for correctness, and puts it in the ballot box as you would with a machine-readable paper ballot today. From here on out the system is identical to today's machine-readable paper ballot system.
This would allow those who cannot mark a ballot but who can read the filled-in ballot the ability to cast their vote unassisted.
Blind people could use on-site "reading" machines to verify the ballot unassisted or, if they didn't trust the government, they could bring their own document-reading hardware, or bring a trusted sighted friend to verify the ballot is accurate.
By printing non-common languages or outlying precinct ballots only "on demand" or only as needed to have a small supply of each at any given time, it would save paper.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...is a crook or a fool. You can reduce the probability of hacking... by an amount that is not easy to quantify.
I heard an interview with an enthusiastic Indian programmer/marketer (sorry, I don't recall if I heard his exact job description), in which he claimed that very soon Indians would be vote via mobile phones. What a recipe for disaster. It's difficult to think of a less reliable and verifiable voting mechanism-- though it would certainly destroy anonymity for honest voters. It's not impossible that someday an open source, mobile voting platform will be more secure than existing mechanisms. But that will be many years in the future, and not developed quickly and cheaply in a nation overrun with corruption (so our best bet is somewhere in Scandinavia).
Where there is a large incentive to cheat (to gain money, power, women), many people will try to cheat. Especially in societies with more habitual defectors than habitual cooperators (such as the US and India). Anybody who says otherwise is trying to cheat you.
Fighting governments in any way is beneficial for freedom? That's terribly simplistic and downright false.
Would you consider fighting a democratically elected, egalitarian government, in order to replace it with a tribalistic theocracy, to be fighting for freedom??
Would you consider working to bring down a government, which then gets replaced by a multitude of corrupt fiefdoms with the local rulers deciding the fate of anyone they don't like, to be fighting for freedom??
The world is not black and white, it's not ones and zeroes and short boolean expressions. Every action has consequences that even the smartest of us cannot predict.
Hell, I'm the first guy to follow the entire Bill Of Rights to the letter, and I'm not even American, but you have to realize that the only thing more oppressive than an oppressive government, is a complete lack of government, when the powerful are given complete free reign over the rest.
If history teaches anything is that all governments eventually become unbearable and then they are replaced by a violent event of some sort. This has happened enough time for us to draw the correct conclusion, which is that people cannot set up a good government that will remain good forever.
I bet on eons of history being more right than you are.
You can't handle the truth.
They can make slot games that can't be hacked that easy and why can't they use the guys who code them to make voteing systems?
Repeating that paragraph doesn't contribute anything as far as I can tell to the details of how they obtained the machine. What's your point?
I follow you, but somehow I'm leery of handing this responsibility to the gambling industry. Once there's a casino on every corner, we'll know we've been had.
The key phrase here is "...that easy".
ANY machine can be hacked if you can get at the system board or an open console, and if you have enough time.
The thing about the slots is that they watch them pretty closely. If it looks like you're using a tool on a slot machine, well, I wouldn't want to be you.
people cannot set up a good government that will remain good forever
You are right about that. However, there have been hundreds of revolutions. How many of those have set up good governments? I can only name one: The American Revolution. All others have only replaced a bad government with another one. The French revolutions, the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war, the numerous Marxist revolutions and Juntas in Central and South America etc etc have all accomplished only more oppression.
Good government is always an evolutionary process. Western Europe and North America are a clear example of this, and the sorry state of the rest of the world only proves the point.
The answer to your question lies on page two of your own link.
http://www.indiaevm.org/qa.html
Q: How did you get the EVM you studied?
A: It was provided by a source who has asked to remain anonymous.
My point was that he had been charged with theft for refusing to reveal a source.
If you click the link I provided you'll hear an interview with the scientist in question, by telephone, after his arrest.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
So, they had an EVM, not provided by the government when the government owns every EVM. "No officer, I didn't steal it, I was just holding it for a friend." Pfft.
Many revolutions set up Good Government, it was only after a period of time that they became Bad Government. The only real measure is of fitness is how long it took. You're living in the waning times of the US government, it has been going down hill ever since it was founded. The same is true for every government.
If anything, US and Europe is showing the signs of the once OK governments becoming unbearable. Sure, revolutions change government and rarely set up ones that are better, the reason is that revolutionaries themselves make for terrible peace time governments, the revolutionaries should take down one government and replace it with a new one that is NOT part of the revolutionaries. Of-course this is a rarity.
However, all the governments that exist today are all going to be replace probably within the next 50 years.
You can't handle the truth.
So the person who wrote the article called it flimsy. I'm not sure that qualifies as an explanation of where the machine came from.
Ah yes, the old "Guilty until proven Innocent beyond any reasonable doubt" aka "Shut up, Peasant".
You wouldn't happen to be in Law Enforcement?
What part of "Provided by an anonymous source for scientific purposes" equates to "No officer, I didn't steal it, I was just holding it for a friend"?
As an aside, governments don't own anything, they're just taking care of stuff for the real owners, their bosses. Which would be "We, The People" (hypothetically anyway ; ).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
This should have happened to Rubin at John Hopkins. Pretty much stole code of voting machines. Didn't get a slap on the wrist.
India is to democracy as Russia was to socialism. automotive analogy: they both make pretty unfortunate cars
While you're correct as a matter of principle, the legal theory of "innocent until proven guilty" (while self-evident) is only valid (again, from a legal point of view) in the United States (which is why I'm glad I live here now - the justice system sucks balls in India). I assure you that things are quite excellent in the US when you compare it to the rest of the world.
A blanket shout-out to everyone in this thread - this is a different country we're talking about. Check your US-centric legal opinions at the door before posting ;)
Please name one other revolution that set up a good government? A revolution that sets up a _seemingly_ good government that in short order ends up rotting is still a bad revolution.
the Indian governments appreciates your suggestion
English only is a GREAT idea!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I'm a professor at the University of Michigan, and I coauthored the voting study at issue with Hari Prasad. I've posted part of a phone call with Hari while he was in the police car, along with more details about the arrest.
No, the legal theory of "innocent until proven guilty" stems from ancient (pre-Roman) times, and is in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 11).
If you're interested http://www.talkleft.com/story/2003/01/12/153/23800
ps I'm Dutch ; ).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The fact that at the moment the parent post is modded Flamebait shows what an utter joke the moderation system is.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Thanks for your comments... they are appreciated. There is a lot of room for improvement in the ole USA but having lived all over the world from China to Australia... I agree with you... there is a lot right with the USA too when compared to most other systems around the world.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
In other words, the passage you repeated contributed no new information, as I suspected. And now you repeat the information I provided. Weird.
She became blind as an adult.
It took her several years to learn to read Braille.
In the meantime, she was illiterate.
Before becoming blind she earned a 4-year college degree.
The late CEO of Wendy's Restaurants, Dave Thomas, was illiterate until well into adulthood.
By the way, we had literacy tests in America for decades. They were fraudulently used to keep non-whites and other "undesirables" from voting. Even if they had been used in an objectively fair manner, they would've had the effect of keeping the uneducated voiceless by keeping them out of the political process.
http://www.tartanhen.co.uk/ebooks/ygg/title.htm
Maybe because as soon as the whole voting-process is done inside a black box, it is impossible to ensure any security for the VOTERS.
Of course, it ensures the corrupt politicians gets another term in the office, or whoever bribes the right people..
Electronic Voting is just bad, mmkay?
You're living in the waning times of the US government, it has been going down hill ever since it was founded.
Wait a second. Maybe there were some good moments and some bad ones, in the last two centuries.
But in many key dimensions it has indeed become a more perfect Union over time.
(Unless of course you consider a "white males club" to be your ideal government, I believe you don't.)
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
There are two aspects to the article:
1. A security researcher arrested for possession of an EVM machine
2. The security researcher establishing the fact that EVMs in India are vulnerable to security attacks
As per 1, why is the Indian police wrong? If a stolen object is found with you, its you who are liable. Whether it was given by "unknown resources" is not important.
For 2. Is that something new? Is there any software system that is 100% secure? But don't we still use them - in banks, in flights and everywhere. The question is benefits vs risks. Now before someone argues about that here, I would say, please stop trolling and be reasonable. Indian election scenario is nowhere close to US or Europe or any developed country. If there is any real Security expert out here, he can vouch that security vulnerabilities are 90% because of humans and processes, and only 10% because of machines.
So what's the Indian voting scenario? We are talking about over 700 million voters spread across thousands of constituencies, in more than 5 phases, spread across more than 20 days, that involve more than 100 thousand administrative personals that are managed by an autonomous body called "Election Commission of India". During the election, the Election Commission has absolute powers. It can suspend bureaucrats, order an arrest, or re-voting in a particular constituency. Fortunately this is one of the few agencies in India that are widely respected (by all parties) for its non-partisan role. These EVMs just make it a bit easier for these election commission guys to administer a free and fare election. But still the entire operation is a no less a challenge...
Compare this with just 10 years back. When booth looting was a common story in some of the disconnected country side regions. You heard it right - booth looting refers to some armed men storming the election room, stamping ballet papers for their own candidates; and all it required was mere 20 minutes to alter the result. But these machines ensure that only "1 vote can be cast in 1 min". So even if there is any forced capture, in one hour these guys can cast at the max 60 votes. And one hour is enough for the security to arrive and take remedial action.
Also unlike US, the scale is huge in India. In order to really affect the elections one needs to rig a lot many machines, which is not very practical.
What these security researchers are suggesting is to dump the machines and go back to paper based ballet. What we must also consider is the cost of doing that. India spent around $1 billion for its last electronic voting based election. My question is that by spending N times the amount, and introducing paper based ballet, can someone ensure a free and fare election? If not, why rob this huge amount from poor people.
"Provided by an anonymous source for scientific purposes"
So their "friend" provided them with something they had no legal right/reason to have and they were holding it when the officer arrested them.
Seems like a pretty accurate example of "I was just holding it" to me.
I was using hyperbole, trying to imply that any government is destined to fail. I wasn't saying it isn't better now than it may have been at some point, what I was trying to say is that the actions that are being taken now, whether they seem good or bad will lead to eventual ruination.
Oh, so when John Wilkes Booth decided to shoot Lincoln, it was to fight the oppression of emancipation, for the freedom to own slaves? Do you have any idea how dangerously stupid you sound?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I'm not a student of history, I was more talking about the general subjective idea that the new government is good because the revolutionaries feel they are right. Obviously sometimes this works (US V England, France V French Nobles, India V England, Scotland V England) and sometimes the decay sets in faster (Russia V Russian Nobles, many South American contries) my point was exactly that revoultions set up, as you say, seemingly good government that inevitably decay, only the time frame of that decay is variable.
I dunno, I think we had a second peak after Reconstruction, although, in a very real sense the "Civil War" was itself a revolution...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Slot games *can* be hacked, which is why there are multiple levels of brutes, pit bosses, etc. watching to make sure you don't have the opportunity to.
The thing that makes slot machines secure is the layers and layers of people watching the process.
But even all that only protects the owners of the machines from hacking by you. It doesn't go the other way around. Now, how do you suggest building the analogous into the voting system while still keeping voting anonymous?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
My suggested tag- soitwasatrap
the nv gaming control board does the other way part. Why can't they do the same with voteing systems.
That's the point. To remove those uneducated people, because often they are easy manipulated.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
That means not only do you permanently have inexperienced people running everything, you also never get to do anything.
Most country- or state-wide projects take decades to develop and bring to fruition. And the bigger the project, the longer it takes.
And lets not even start with international agreements and treaties once you decide to DROP TABLE on the government every 20 years.
The constant system change (I assume you mean something like replacing republic with democracy, democracy with feudalism, feudalism with communism...) would only bring confusion and disorder.
Not to mention erode ANY country as no two generations would be born in the same country and under same laws.
Or did you actually just mean "a different political party" in power every 20 years?
Cause... isn't that just extending the current mandate of most governing parties in the world?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
An admission that the machines are flawed would undermine the reputation of experts going back 20 years - and the corresponding elections. From http://www.cse.umich.edu/~jhalderm/pub/papers/evm-ccs10.pdf :-
Furthermore:-
No taxation without representation. It is only acceptable to bar illiterates from voting if they are excused from paying tax.
In 2002 Dutch government resigned as they have accepted partial responsibility for Srebrenica Massacre.
Mind you, this was a government resigning over something that happened long before they were in office and over an act that they did not instigate.
So not only did the government step down, it took on their shoulders what they felt was NATIONAL shame.
Sort of like what should the current US government resign over the My Lai Massacre.
Except US soldiers actually massacred the civilians there, while Dutch soldiers only failed to protect the civilians.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
He probably read V for Vendetta once.
So naturally, now he thinks he understands and knows EVERYTHING.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Of course when you say only in the US you do in in fact mean only in the Western World as most of Europe has had this principle enshrined in law for the past thousand years. In fact we are where your ancestors got the basic idea from.
Still, the irony of an American trying to tell other American's that there is a world outside of America but getting the important details wrong is not lost on me.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
If history teaches anything is that all governments eventually become unbearable and then they are replaced by a violent event of some sort. This has happened enough time for us to draw the correct conclusion, which is that people cannot set up a good government that will remain good forever.
I bet on eons of history being more right than you are.
If history teaches anything is that all food once eaten eventually becomes unbearable and then it is thrown out by a violent event of some sort.
This has happened enough time for us to draw the correct conclusion, which is that people can never be fed. Ergo, food and eating is utterly meaningless and without merit. UTTERLY!!!
I too bet on eons of history being more right than you are.
It also works with breathing, wearing clothes, sleeping, fucking...
Shit, you can replace ANY action in your statement and it would still be true and its conclusion would be equally inane.
Nihilism baby... Nothing never is not wrong.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The entire attention on this arrest and the research itself is mis-guided. No machine is ever foolproof or fully secure by itself. For it to have a semblance of reasonable security, factors outside of the machine itself need to be controlled - such as physical access/security. This physical security has been one of the primary factors the Election Commission had been banking on for the security of the election process itself. This researcher had taken questionable actions which threatened that physical security aspect - no wonder he got into trouble. From the researcher's own words here http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jhalderm/electronic-voting-researcher-arrested-over-anonymous-source, the authorities are only interested in getting to the anonymous source who provided him the machine and have no interest in harassing him. EVMs are supposed to be the sole property of Election Commission (for a good reason) and anyone possessing one without authorization is a criminal - simple as that.
has the problem that the actual counting of the votes can not be done in public for the purpose of monitoring the counting process.
The counting process is not transparent when it takes place inside a computer chip.
I would say the the fall of the USSR in 1991 makes a decent example. It was a good revolution - for the people, by the people, and the first elected government was 'good'. Sadly the worst parts of democracy seem to have taken over (greed, corruption, etc). Regardless of how bad the current government is, the revolution itself stands independently as a very good thing not only for the then Soviet citizens, but for the world.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
The fact remains that the government has presented no evidence that he, himself stole the voting machine. It could be as others have stated - Mr. Prasad is guilty of receiving stolen property, but not stealing the property itself.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
You're not understanding. "Innocent until proven Guilty," implies that its the prosecutor's job to prove that Mr. Prasad actually stole the voting machine. He or she can do this via direct evidence (showing video footage or securing eyewitness testimony) or via circumstantial evidence (fingerprints and the like). The one thing he or she cannot do is just say, "Well, obviously he's lying. Look at the flimsiness of his alibi!"
The fact that he had no legal right or reason to hold the property does not mean that he his automatically guilty of theft. For example, if I find a wallet on the street, I have no legal right or reason to pick it up. That does not mean, however, that I necessarily stole the wallet. The evidence we have only indicates that he is guilty of receiving stolen property. That may or may not be a crime, depending on the particular Indian statutes and the circumstances of the transaction with which he got the voting machine. But out and out theft? The Indian prosecutors haven't proven it yet.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Um, if there is no legal way to get something, then, yes, it was ipso facto stolen by someone if someone ends up with it. And if the person possessing it knows there's no legal way to get it, they are knowingly in possession of stolen property.
Don't go inventing a lack of crime because you approve of the crime. I think electronic voting machines are profoundly undemocratic, and everyone who has ever promoted them or sold them in, any way, should be charged with treason. (Although those charges would be hard to prove.)
But that doesn't change the fact someone stole the machine. Yes, he might not be the thief, and he's not guilty of anything until it's proven, but it was stolen.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Correct in theory. However, in practice is doesn't work that way. If your accuser is affiliated with the government (in the US or elsewhere), the accusation is taken as proof of guilt unless you can prove otherwise.
You're not understanding. The accusation was made by the government, therefore they don't have to prove anything; they can simply make declarations. Have you been living under a rock?
And American.
Ah. My apologies about the US-centric jab then :). I wasn't aware of that history and that it was in the UN UDHR.
With all due respect to the UN however, my original statement stands - other countries are not obliged to abide by the UN guidelines (and most simply don't, especially when it comes to human rights). I can tell you from experience that in this particular aspect (innocent until proven guilty), India is not a good place to get arrested. There are many people languishing in prison just waiting for a trial, for several YEARS. For all practical purposes, the absence in Indian law of the "right to a speedy trial" (found in the US constitution and VERY strictly enforced on US soil - in domestic cases at least) automatically means that anyone charged of a crime can be published with an unofficial prison term prior to a trial. Therefore, the judicial system there really does go with "guilty unless proven innocent" with no legal theory to oppose it.
Mea Culpa :). A bit late to clarify now but I really was operating under the assumption that the person I replied to was a USian (and hence put it in those terms). I was aware that the basis for it went as far back as the Magna Carta (though it's even further back in time than that, as I now understand from OP's reply to my post).
:)), my relative ignorance in that respect (the details of European history) shouldn't be extended to "Americans in general" since I'm a (recently) naturalized citizen (originally Indian).
To clarify even further (regarding your comment about "your ancestors"
Actually, they (includes me as of last year) are not. This is the most welcoming country I've ever been in with a general level of intelligence that is hard to find elsewhere. It's just that living here is just so damn ... nice :) that I find myself ignoring the wider world more and more. When you're sitting at a warm fire in your living room, looking out into the cold, dark wilderness, wouldn't you find it difficult to care very much about what was going on outside? I'm not saying that's always the correct attitude to take, just putting things in perspective. The rest of the world knows so much about America because they ... kinda have to :). The reverse was not true for a long time - that's changing now and the people here are adapting accordingly.
I assure you that things are quite excellent in the US when you compare it to the rest of the world.
Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.
Glorious failures
Rough justice
Too many laws, too many prisoners
I would pay particular attention to the third article which shows the depths of illogicality to which the American Justice system has plummeted. Justice is often depicted as a blindfolded woman - the idea being that justice is impartial to everything else except the law.A corollary might be that the Judge delivering the ruling isn't important, same cases before different judges ought to produce the same result.The US Supreme court has too much power in terms of the individuals that make it and not so much as an institution. After all its the election / rejection of individual judges that results in endless conjecture about the overturning of the abortion judgement , the outcome of cases before the court etc.
If you consider the President of the England And Wales Supreme Court, Lord Igor Judge, people other than the parliamentary circus , the legal profession and a handful of Times and Telegraph readers don't know him from adam. After all , if personalities were important, One would hardly have a Lord Chief Justice called Judge Judge!!
Wanted : A Signature.
No worries :) we "non-usians" like to group all the usians together anyway. Makes 'em easier to count.
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The government has presented evidence that he is an accessory to theft, and so can be charged with theft.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.
Glorious failures
Rough justice
Too many laws, too many prisoners
1. July 2010
2. July 2010
3. Aug 2010
Yes, they are news to me :p
Thanks for the articles though, they are good reads. And your points are also well-taken. I can now honestly amend my original statement to
"better than nearly all the countries in the world (except for some of the ones in the list given in the first article)".
Which means that a newly born person is still much more likely to be born in a place with a justice system that's a fucking joke. Of course, that's not to say that it's perfect or even tolerable in some cases. But it does put things in perspective about every idiot in every tinpot nation (not referring to you - I'm sure you've seen people like these all the time) who feels entitled to put down the US and then use that to bolster his own sorry excuse of a country. So, yes - not everything is relative, but it's a sad fact that there are VERY few countries in the world (some of them are on that list) that actually have the moral right to look down upon the US in regards to the fair rule of law. That is not to say that things are just hunky-dory over here (I realize that), but if there's ever a fix, it's also going to be self-generated.
By the way, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan do appear to be better than the US in this regard - I fully admit that. What's laughable is that the Economist had the audacity to quote numbers about closed regimes like China and Iran (I don't know enough details of the current political situation in Russia so I'll take their word for it in that instance, subject to later review). For all I know, the reason those two have such low numbers is because of too many secret executions.
Consider something else, just for fun. I'll say explicitly that the following is not meant to support my earlier arguments but should be taken on its own (just as something to think about). In a country with disproportionally harsh punishments for crimes, would you expect a lot of incarceration? Refugees from North Korea tell an extraordinary tale of a populace so dominated by the state that crime is actually quite low. Fear is enough. Raw numbers on incarceration are necessary but not sufficient indicators of the fairness and "justness" of a justice system.
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