[E-voting] FW: [IP] (wiith comments by djf) NYTimes.com Article: Why We Fear the Digital Ballot

[adam beecher]

[The comments by Dave more than the article. --adam]


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ip at v2.listbox.com 
> [mailto:owner-ip at v2.listbox.com] On Behalf Of David Farber
> Sent: 27 September 2004 23:38
> To: ip at v2.listbox.com
> Subject: [IP] (wiith comments by djf) NYTimes.com Article: 
> Why We Fear the Digital Ballot
> 
> This is another of the endless articles that says computer 
> based voting systems are not to be trusted. , Computer 
> systems are untrustworthy IF THEY ARE BUILT without a clear 
> cut understanding of how to build trusted systems along with 
> a quality assurance system and a clear set of procedures and 
> requirement that support such goals There are examples of 
> development processes that support such goals.
> 
> For example banks which develop smart money cards designed to 
> operate "offline" seriously worry about  the hardware and 
> software and development process that is used. If one can 
> compromise the integrity of the devices they would have a US 
> Treasury printing press.
> 
> I would claim that utilizing recent developments in trusted 
> hardware systems (like the Intel LT effort) backed by what we 
> know about quality and security assurance and utilizing well 
> known but often neglected software methods, we could and 
> should research, design and then build a prototype system 
> that would yield a trusted verifiable software system that 
> would be embedded in a tamper resistant hardware environment.
> 
> No great magic but lots of difficult study, research and development.
> 
> This should all be done in an open public manner with the 
> results open to any company to use..
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> Why We Fear the Digital Ballot
> 
> September 26, 2004
>   By TOM ZELLER Jr.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> WASHINGTON - It was a bit of gorilla theater.
> 
> At an event meant to highlight the dangers of electronic 
> voting, a smattering of reporters and voting-rights advocates 
> at the National Press Club last Wednesday watched a film of 
> Baxter, a chimpanzee, poking the "Delete" and "Enter" keys on 
> a computer keyboard. This was presented as evidence that even 
> a chimp could tweak an election.
> 
> Breathless accounts of "secret back doors" and "hidden 
> triggers" embedded in election-tabulating software were cited 
> as indications that democracy was endangered. A man 
> protesting computerized voting marked the 15th day of his 
> hunger strike.
> 
> In fact, while most experts appear to agree that electronic 
> voting has real problems, few argue that they could 
> completely undermine the November election, or that they are 
> products of a dark conspiracy. "The people who designed these 
> systems just weren't thinking enough about security,"
> said Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns 
> Hopkins University and one of the first people to point out 
> major flaws in electronic voting systems.
> 
> But the burlesque and passion on display last week may 
> indicate a simpler truth: Voting has always required a leap 
> of faith - one that, after the 2000 election debacle, and in 
> a culture grown hip to the fallibility of technology, is 
> proving harder to make.
> 
> For over a century, as election technology moved from the 
> tactile (paper, ballot boxes) toward the invisible (the 
> hidden workings of lever machines, optical scanners, touch 
> screens), each upgrade was touted as a bulwark against 
> manipulation or human error.
> 
> "A device for registering votes without possibility of fraud 
> has been patented by Albert Snoeck, a Belgian inventor," The 
> New York Times reported on Aug. 20, 1896.
> "It is called the Perfected Voting Machine."
> 
> While Mr. Snoeck's particular innovation didn't quite catch 
> on, New York State did introduce mechanical lever machines at 
> the end of the 19th century. By the 1930's most major cities 
> had followed suit, according to Stephen Ansolabehere, a 
> professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute 
> of Technology and a member of the Voting Technology Project, 
> which studies election systems.
> One of the machine's best security features: its size. "You 
> couldn't just walk away with it," Professor Ansolabehere said.
> 
> But rumors of tampering swirled around mechanical voting 
> through much of the early- to mid-20th century, and by the 
> 1960's, mechanical devices were yielding to the magic of 
> I.B.M.'s computerized systems.
> 
> "Could a skilled technician set a vote counting computer to 
> switch a candidate tally ... ?" another New York Times 
> article asked in 1969. "Recently, six local computer experts, 
> after pitting a computer against a set of tests they devised, 
> declared it was possible to rig the machines to cheat." 
> I.B.M. countered that "a crooked technician couldn't get 
> close enough" to the computers "without attracting the 
> attention of others."
> 
> Despite such debates, the culture quietly absorbed the new 
> technology, as it did optical-scan voting in the late 1970's, 
> push-button electronic voting in the 1980's and touch screens 
> in the 1990's. In the context of a culture flooded with 
> compact discs, DVD's, personal computers, the Internet and 
> MP3's, digitized voting made sense.
> 
> And after the election breakdown of 2000, the solution, to 
> many, was plain: electronic voting machines. "In the 
> immediate post-2000 era, enthusiasm for the machines was 
> pretty high," said Doug Chapin, the director of 
> Electionline.org, a nonprofit group monitoring election reform.
> 
> But the 2000 election also occurred just as the dot-com 
> bubble was bursting, and as words like "hacker," "virus,"
> "worm" and "pirate" were becoming commonplace. If everyone 
> needed anti-virus protection, spam filters, 128-bit 
> encryption and firewalls, even the most ardent technophiles 
> had to wonder, could electronic voting machines be hacked?
> Infected? Hijacked?
> 
> Many voting-rights advocates are now demanding a return to 
> paper ballots, as a means of restoring transparency to the 
> voting process. Others insist that the major manufacturers of 
> electronic voting systems, like Diebold and Sequoia and 
> Election Systems and Software, release their source code to 
> the world for inspection.
> 
> The fear that electronic voting represents a corporate 
> conspiracy is probably overblown, experts say. Too many 
> people would have to cooperate on too many levels - from the 
> programming labs at each company to the warehouses where 
> machines are stored to precinct floors on election night. "It 
> would be a heist on the order of 'Ocean's Eleven,' " said 
> Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at 
> Carnegie Mellon University who spent 20 years testing the 
> integrity of election systems. "It would make for a 
> fascinating movie, but it's not reality."
> 
> But that's no longer likely to satisfy everyone. Even some 
> middle-of-the-road voters, whether they submit punch cards or 
> poke an electronic screen, will pause to wonder what's going 
> on under the hood of their voting system.
> 
> "Even in places that don't have new technology, the voters 
> are different now," Mr. Chapin of Electionline said.
> "They've been exposed to the process. They're thinking about 
> it more. Even in those places where the only upgraded moving 
> part is the voter, there's still change."
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/weekinreview/26zell.html? 
> ex=1097223377&ei=1&en=8793c6956b7dbaf2
> 
> 
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