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DARPA Is Building a $10 Million, Open Source, Secure Voting System (vice.com)
samleecole writes: For years security professionals and election integrity activists have been pushing voting machine vendors to build more secure and verifiable election systems, so voters and candidates can be assured election outcomes haven't been manipulated. Now they might finally get this thanks to a new $10 million contract the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched to design and build a secure voting system that it hopes will be impervious to hacking.
The first-of-its-kind system will be designed by an Oregon-based firm called Galois, a longtime government contractor with experience in designing secure and verifiable systems. The system will use fully open source voting software, instead of the closed, proprietary software currently used in the vast majority of voting machines, which no one outside of voting machine testing labs can examine. More importantly, it will be built on secure open source hardware, made from special secure designs and techniques developed over the last year as part of a special program at DARPA. The voting system will also be designed to create fully verifiable and transparent results so that voters don't have to blindly trust that the machines and election officials delivered correct results.
The first-of-its-kind system will be designed by an Oregon-based firm called Galois, a longtime government contractor with experience in designing secure and verifiable systems. The system will use fully open source voting software, instead of the closed, proprietary software currently used in the vast majority of voting machines, which no one outside of voting machine testing labs can examine. More importantly, it will be built on secure open source hardware, made from special secure designs and techniques developed over the last year as part of a special program at DARPA. The voting system will also be designed to create fully verifiable and transparent results so that voters don't have to blindly trust that the machines and election officials delivered correct results.
That is very important and didn't see that listed in there in the top level checkoff marks.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Vote by mail is growing rapidly and in many places exceeds polling place voting. VBM increases voter turnout and solves so many problems that polling place voting probably isn't worth salvaging.
This special 'secure' open hardware: Will you actually ensure there is a reference platform available, for less than say 500 usd to the average consumer, so that we can develop on, test, diagnose, and verify this hardware ourselves, or use it to ensure the security and authenticity of our own application code?
If not, then it is just a 10 million dollar sham. The software, even if perfectly secure by itself, is not trustworthy unless the underlying hardware is trustworthy, and the underlying hardware isn't trustworthy unless everyone can buy an example of it, ideally right off the production line, and swap/not swap their example for one of the government units, helping to ensure that the entire government run hasn't been compromised itself since they knew the start/end manufacturing serials for their own batch of units.
Obviously they would still need to verify some number of those units to make sure they weren't backdoored (although doing it at the assembly location/warehouse on one big event day would handle it nicely. Once that step is done and the traded serials can be verified in the field, we will have almost trustworthy electronic voting. Particularly if each machine cryptographically signs its voting lists when finished, and ideally provides the voter a hash to verify their vote matches what they input while retaining their anonymity until and unless they need to contest a miscast vote.
What's next, letting EVERY citizen vote?
Having studied this issue for a very long time I'm perpetually frustrated with the Computer scientists constantly injecting overly clever desiderata that can only be implemented at the sacrifice of core requirements of voting systems.
the core requirements are
1. Secret ballot so no one can tell how you voted.
2. Secret ballot so you cannot prove to anyone how you voted even if you want to. (too often ignored)
3. transparency at a level where an ordinary person can reasonably see how the security works
4. Robust against operator errors. Mistakes happen, power gets lost, protocols are not followed.
5. Resistant to cheating.
6. in the event of a failure, Ballots must be re countable-- preferably at a precinct level
What the computer scientists is inject nice-to-have but unnessassary desiderata, like "crytpographic proof your vote was counted" and encrytption. These, to date, always sacrifice one of the requirements. For example, many (not all) proof of vote systems will violate 2, allowing you to prove how you voted. indeed many touch screens allow proving how you voted using a video inside the voting booth (whereas paper ballots have to be publically deposited and videos can be prevented). Many (not all) cryptosystems reduce the number of people who know the keys but this comes at the price of concentration where a few people can change all the ballots without detection, whereas distribnuted precint counting makes whole sale attacks hard.
Serial numbers on ballots, to the voter, appear to offer a way to track their ballot to them. Even if you tell them the cypto prevents this an ordinary person cannot possibly tell that. Ballots need to be indistinguishable.
Thus I worry that people doing this are trying to "improve" something with "more features" that already has a good solution. namely hand marked paper ballots and optical scan.
when an optical scanner breaks down you can still collect the ballots. People can still vote. And you don't get long lines when you are short on equipment or the power goes down because all you need is more pens and desks. Optical scans are easy to recount by humans at a precint level.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Do you prefer $50 to vote for who I tell you or a bullet in the knee of your daughter?
It's frankly none of your or anyone else's business who someone else votes for. You don't have to look much further than the hate mob that social media has devolved into to see why this would be a terrible idea. Never mind all of the little situations like a spouse threatening their partner if they don't vote a certain way and now being able to verify that outcome.
The US wants stability (because it is more profitable) so it promotes freedom and democracy around the world. A secure voting machine sounds like exactly what is required. Without some way of maintaining a democracy after the fact, what point is there in military intervention?
Good luck getting these machines used in the US. There is too much money pushing for existing proprietary solutions. So I think one should not assume that this system is designed solely for us. Their target will be global.
Apparently they have an open source secure computing initiative and were casting about for a non-classified application to show off their new toys. I guess?
I've posted this before, but it's worth saying again.
In the early 2000s, there was a GNU project to build a secure online voting system. They ceased work in 2002, citing the project as being at best difficult and at worst, impossible. They quoted Bruce Schneier, one of the foremost experts in computer security as saying "a secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers... [B]uilding a secure Internet-based voting system is a very hard problem, harder than all the other computer security problems we've attempted and failed at. I believe that the risks to democacy are too great to attempt it."
I see no evidence that Schneier has changed his mind or that any other comparably qualified expert has suggested he's wrong.
The real issue with electronic voting isn't even the hackability of the system. Or the fact that an exploit scales to an entire country. The real problem is that there's no assurance anymore. A very simple process turns into something opaque.
For you americans who don't understand how voting is done properly in the rest of the world, it goes like this:
You put an X in the circle or box of your choice (sometimes several X in several boxes, but nothing too complicated). Then you seal that paper in an envelope or you simply fold it. Then you drop it into a box. That box is watched over by volunteers from all the major parties and basically everyone who cares to spend his time checking that the election is done properly. These same people at the end of the day open the box and count the votes.
At no point is anything not accounted for. At no point is there an attack vector. The whole thing is so simple that an idiot can understand it and that's the point - because it means that every idiot or non-idiot can check it and verify that all is well. Think the box has been tampered with? Go and check the box. Think the paper is special? Go and check the paper. Think some votes were thrown into the box at the beginning of the session? Check the box at the beginning, then seal it, and at the end count the number of paper slips against your very simple tally sheet of people who voted.
There are ways to fuck with the system, of course, there always are. But the low-tech approach also means they are low-tech and can be spotted. Tell me how you'll find the kernel-level backdoor in the voting system that knows which bits to flip in-memory without leaving any traces on the disk. And the number of people capable of validating a system at such a level are low enough to be pressured or bribed.
A highly distributed low-tech system is exactly what we want for something like elections.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
1. There is very little evidence of illegals voting.
2. How is this stealing if it's done by the states?
3. Enfranchising citizens is bad?
Oh, it's much, much worse. You really need to look at the big picture. It is a known fact that their chemtrails trigger enzymes they injected into your bloodstream when they vaccinated you, that turn you into a mindless drone who will vote for any candidate the deep state Ivy-league Fake News Illuminati tells you to. Our only hope is that the courageous Russian freedom fighters will oversee our elections from outside the left wing mind control zone and ensure that saviors like Trump get elected. They are trying to stop this with their "secure voting" nonsense, but it's a desperate last-ditch attempt that will surely fail.
Or maybe they're just trying to make voting systems more resistant to tampering. But only the crazies believe that.
States also joined with the arrangement at the time that they could keep slavery. Things change.
Even so, it was always possible for the populous states to have a popular-vote covenant. So the small states should have known that when they ratified the constitution.
What, you actually believe that paper ballots are secure? Apparently you've never lived in a place where, now and then, a box full of ballots is replaced with another box full of ballots. With different votes....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You didn't mention "blockchain", no funding for you. ;-)
1. First machine is a touch screen. Voters make selections on screen.
2. Once done a paper ballot with their selections is spit out, and they can visually check the ballot
3. Second machine is a optical reader from a different vendor, and must use a different OS from the 1st machine. Paper ballot is inserted and read.
4. Results from both machines are fed to a computer to be compared. If they match, vote goes through. If they do not match, vote is scrubbed and voter asked to try again.
You have verification from two independent systems AND a paper ballot at the end.
You are welcome.
Holy shit, SCORES? Literally DOZENS? Obviously this is a clear and present danger to our democracy! Yikes!
Yeah, because a handful of votes at the "correct" time and place can't have disproportionately wide ramifications ... oh wait
... oh wait.
Now replace parent with employer, phone pics of paper ballot or paper verification for a "bonus".
Or replace employer with a political operative paying out cash.
Its not like these weren't problems in America's past
Statistical noise.
We literally just had to throw out an election in North Carolina over vote-buying (via paid workers tampering with absentee ballots)
In addition, there's no reason why a law (which frankly probably already exists) couldn't prohibit vote coercion
We know about the problem in North Carolina because people are getting charged with a crime. Didn't stop them from doing it in the first place.
Also, there's really good evidence that this is the second election where this particular consultant did this.
How many people vote completely randomly?
Exceptionally few. There's no incentive to show up when you're just going to vote randomly. So you don't go out of your way to go to a polling place.
Tell your abusive husband about your "law" prohibiting coercion. Tell the "volunteers" that go to the retirement home that it's illegal.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I mean, I would go for the actually legally determined example from 2018, not the rumor from 1960, personally. You know, the one in North Carolina that was so bad they are re-running the election.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The Department of Defense does a lot of things that are designed to promote democracy, under the theory that democratic countries just don't declare war on one another (or at least, are far less likely.) Notably, they were (are?) heavily involved in TOR.
Also, current voting machines are a clear threat to the US,and their job is to deal with those threats.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Source?
Evidence?
After two years of this unbelievable extensive investigation, so you a shred of evidence to back up your absurd conspiracy theory?
and witnesses to watch over the local count.
Candidates suggest some of their own trusted witnesses, gov has a few witnesses, civil society has some witnesses.
Then count the nations votes in front of many witnesses.
Everything adds up as each vote is seen and counted in front of many people.
No code, computers to vote with are needed.
Computer systems are liked by failed nations governments that want to subtly flip votes.
Use paper to vote and photo ID every citizen.
Enjoy some democracy without computers and illegal immigrants voting.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You're overreacting. There's a vaccine for chemtrails.