On Tue, Sep 28, 1999 at 09:52:41AM -0700, Andrew Neff wrote:
> We acknowledge that our web site does not accurately reflect the protocols
> on which we have built our products, and we will make the
> appropriate changes. However, in creating the site, our intent was
> only to provide marketing literature to the general public.
Why would you build a marketing site which did not accurately reflect
the technical underpinnings of your products? Misrepresentation of your
products seems likely to place you afoul of laws against common-law
fraud, unfair or misleading business practices, and securities law if
you've also been soliciting or accepting investment.
Given that you've already started doing business in a dishonest fashion
(e.g., creating marketing literature which is known to be incorrect),
why in the world would voters, candidates, or registrars of voters ever
choose to trust you in the future?
When will the inaccurate marketing materials be removed from your
website?
> Regarding our voting and encryption protocols, the techniques used in our
> products are based on the established literature in secure voting
> protocols. For competitive reasons, we have chosen not to publish the
> algorithms or even release specific references to the literature at this
> time.
If your work is based on established literature, what's to be lost in
making the details public?
> We want to assure the cryptographic community that we will publish
> all technical details relevant to the security of our system at the
> appropriate time.
How will you determine what the appropriate time is? How could an
outsider determine that independently of your judgement, so that we can
check to see if your assurance proves to be reliable?
> In the
> mean time, we ask that judgment about whether or not our products
> are "snake oil" be deferred until our technical specifications are
> published.
"Snake oil" is an apt description of a product which is marketed as
having certain characteristics (e.g., security) but whose ingredients or
properties are hidden from potential purchasers.
If you don't want your product to be called snake oil, don't offer sales
literature without technical literature to go with it.
--
Greg Broiles
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
