[TriLUG] OT: www.hexblog.com - a fix for the WMF vulernability.

[Greg Brown]

Must have been about a year go that I blogged about getting a group of
luggers together to from "OpenVote" (or was it eVote?), a
not-for-profit venture to create a multi-language touch-screen
open-source voting system that would write votes to a central database
but also print out encrypted bar code paper ballot that could would be
scanned in as a double-entry right after the ballot was printed that
could also be tabulated later in case of a re-count.

But the all-import wireless helmet cam got in the way again.. perhaps
I should have continued to push down the OpenVote path.

At least Diebold, for now, has pulled out of the NC race.  I had a
SERIOUS problem with the then-CEO of Diebold "promising to personally
deliver the Ohio electorate to President Bush".  I'm still left to
wonder about that.

Greg

On 1/4/06, Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/06, Tanner Lovelace <clubjuggler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Rick, you mention "programs", but didn't go any further.  Let me elaborate
> > on that a bit. :-)
> >
> > Not only are there "programs" on the Diebold flash cards, but they are
> > written in an interpreted language called AccuBasic.  This is a serious
> > problem because the Federal Election Commission standard
> > specifically stipulates that interpreted code in a voting machine is
> > absolutely not allowed.  The interesting thing on this is that these
> > machines were FEDERALLY CERTIFIED!  You've got to wonder just
> > what that means now that it has been shown that the Dielbold machines
> > should have in no way, no how been passed.
>
> Well, they probably got around this because it depends on the meaning
> of interpreted.  AccuBasic is compiled in the same sense that Java is
> compiled.  I'm not sure that interpretation is really that much less
> secure anyway. Sure you can hide stuff in the interpreter, but as Ken
> Thompson pointed out in his Turing Award lecture
> http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/ you can hide stuff in the compiler
> as well.
>
> And as far as I know, the federal government doesn't actually certify
> voting machines, this is done by the state and local governments under
> federal guidelines.  The recent lawsuit over the illegal certification
> of Diebold DRE machines was against the state of North Carolina.
>
> There's seems to be quite a bit of decertification activity lately,
> and some jurisdictions are already looking for new money to buy
> replacements for the machines they purchased under the Help America
> Vote Act.
>
> And I'm surprised and concerned that the test last month in Leon
> county FL, shows that the optical scan machines might not be as good a
> solution to verifiable voting as many open voting advocates, including
> me, thought they were.
>
> If any of you have seen George Carlin recently, and in particular his
> recent "Life is Worth Losing" HBO concert, he opines that democracy is
> just an illusion.  I fear that he might have a point.
>
> --
> Rick DeNatale
>
> Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site
> http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/
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