[ale] OT: man in the middle on diebold machines

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Wed, 2011-09-28 at 15:38 -0400, Cameron Kilgore wrote: 
> I still wonder the need to complicate and put at risk the reliability of our
> one measure of democracy. Paper ballots seem more reliable and less prone to
> a politician's whim.

On that, we may have to agree to disagree.

On one hand, there have certainly been sufficient examples of "hanging
chads" and misplaced bags of ballots and ballot count mismatches to
argue that paper ballots are neither reliable nor less prone to a
politician's will.

OTOH, there have been proposals for voting protocols down through the
years which can insure authenticity and authorization while preserving
anonymity while still providing end to end verification and auditing
confirmation.  I've seen some such proposed at security conferences such
as NDSS, Usenix Security Symposium, and RSA over the last decade or so.
We know how to do it right.

The problem is that these protocols are "open" and, as such, can not be
held for ransom by companies wanting to leverage the maximum number of
tax dollars out of pockets for their proprietary solutions and they are
too good for those people who don't want something that good...

We can agree that the current field of voting machines are an abysmal
and embarrassing lot of junk that should have been rejected out of hand
by anyone with any respect for the institution.  Trouble is, that's not
those with the vested interests.

Regards,
Mike

> --Cameron <http://ghostfreeman.net>
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Geoffrey Myers <lists at serioustechnology.com
> > wrote:
> 
> > Anyone else catch this?
> >
> >
> > http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/28/0241201/man-in-the-middle-remote-attack-on-diebold-voting-machines
> >
> > --
> > Later, Geoffrey
> > Sent from my iPhone
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Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
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