[ale] Its over. Maybe

[James P. Kinney III]

On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 21:25, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 20:55, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> > On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 20:31 -0500, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> > > The two concepts are not in any way, shape, or form analogous to one
> > > another.  
> > 
> > Yes they are.  Both are machines, both count/control critical functions,
> > both produce data that is analyzed by an external device.
> 
> Are you blind to the notion that on one hand you have a computer that is
> used to determine how much fuel to shoot into a car engine's cylinders
> and the other you have a massive system of computers whose combined
> output is used to decide who the President of the United States is? 
> Perhaps if the role of the computers in our cars expanded to, say, guide
> the car itself and were all under central control, you'd have a better
> analogy, because then you'd have a situation where the computers could
> be commanded to simply make everyone stop right where they were, or to
> even slam all the cars into each other.  If you do not think that a
> single person or organization can build and command machines to kill
> tens of thousands of people at once, I direct your attention to two
> since-rebuilt cities in Japan.

Jeff hit on a crucial point. The scale of effect with vote machines is
so much greater than that of a car computer. We are putting our blind
trust in a machine to select who will act on our behalf, in our name.

I have pretty good trust in a fork getting food from my plate to my
mouth.

I'm a bit more leary about the brakes on my car as there is no
"pre-failure detection system" that warns me befoer the pedal goes to
the floor.

"Ah", you say, "you could have the brakes inspected by a qualified
mechanic!". Which is _precisely_ the point here. So far, the "mechanics"
that have seen the voting machine prototypes and/or older models have
all said the system is crap. And the mechanics have been systematically
denied access to "under the hood".

So if one vote out of ten for candidate A were swapped to be for
candidate B in close race states and there was no way to detect the
change since the mechanics are not allowed access, it is not hard to
envision that the final outcome could be suspect. 
>   
> 
> > 
> > > The Diebold machines hide the voting process from their users
> > > and even their operators, 
> > 
> > No more so than a calculator hides the process by which mathematical
> > calculations are achieved.  One could argue that the Diebold box does
> > even less than a calculator.
> 
> Utterly wrong.  A calculator can be subjected to arbitrary tests.  A
> calculator's results can be independently verified, even by hand if
> desired.  Everyone's calculator is not inscrutably connected with every
> other calculator (yet).  My worst-case scenario for the Diebold machines
> is that all they really do is have the outward appearance of a voting
> machine but actually pass no data on for tabulation; their controllers
> simply report whatever numbers they wish.  
> 
> > 
> > > putting the company and parties unknown into a position to subvert
> > >  the election process with little fear of detection.
> > 
> > Sure, if you want to believe that.  I don't. That is just too extreme
> > for me to think that a company would willingly produce something that
> > could ruin itself.  You are just grasping for straws by suggesting such
> > a possibility.
> 
> History is full of such companies and in each case, the company hoped
> that secrecy and misinformation would be the key to survival.  Such
> companies depend on a never-ending supply of incurious, uncritical,
> passive, and blindly trusting people.  
> 
> > 
> > > OSS voting machines and the means to prove that the OSS in question is
> > > really running on the machines is the only way to computerize the
> > > process with integrity.
> > 
> > What about the hardware and the firmware that the OSS runs on?  If
> > Diebold's black-box solution won't satisfy you how can some OSS app on
> > some other black-box?
> 
> It wouldn't.  My hope is that any means used to count votes uses a
> process that is transparent to enough people that it would be extremely
> unlikely that all such people could or would conspire to subterfuge. 
> Any process that is too complex or too opaque for this should never be
> adopted.  
> 
> 
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> !DSPAM:4189936c209634214416917!
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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