Re: Lucrative update mail flood
Sorry about the mail storm. Someone at monash.edu.au has apparently set up a mail loop that was resubmitting cpunks mails. Eric
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Tuesday 25 November 2003 01:21 pm, Trei, Peter wrote: [snip] All I want is a system which is not more easily screwed around with then paper ballots. Have some imagination - you could, for example, set things up so the voter, and only the voter, can see the screen and/or paper receipt while voting, but still make it impossible to use a camera without being detected. Peter I was thinking of those boxes with viewing ports that you look into to get your eyes tested when you renew your drivers license. You could have those out in the open, that way you'd have the privacy (only turn the display on if the viewing port is completely covered), but if you tried to use a camera it would be pretty obvious (or you could design the lens of the port to make it impossible to discern the ballot except with the human eye(s)). Here in the sticks we just use the ole' number two pencil to fill in the oval. Some fancy polling places run the ballot through a reader to verify that there aren't any problems (missing ovals, multiple votes, etc.). They'll let you have three tries at it. However, there doesn't seem to be anything to stop me from going back in a few hours later and claiming to be someone else at a different address other than the if the person has already voted or by relying on steel-trap memory of the volunteer elderly ladies than man the poll (of course in our small town that can be pretty effective) :) . -Neil -- Neil Johnson http://www.njohnsn.com PGP key available on request.
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 03:26:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote: (I fully support vote buying and selling, needless to say. Simple right to make a contract.) What's your take on this situation, then: BOSS: Get in that booth and vote Kennedy or I'll fire you. Take this expensive camera with you so you can't pull any funny business. If it were illegal for me to bring the camera, this would be an unenforceable order. I'll do whatever the hell I want when I get into the booth, thank you very much. Good for me. Good for everybody. He with the most slaves should not automatically win the election. Right Tim?
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 25, 2003, at 11:21 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: Tim May [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 25, 2003, at 9:56 AM, Sunder wrote: Um, last I checked, phone cameras have really shitty resolution, usually less than 320x200. Even so, you'd need MUCH higher resolution, say 3-5Mpixels to be able to read text on a printout in a picture. Add focus and aiming issues, and this just won't work unless you carry a good camera into the booth with you. 1. Vinnie the Votebuyer knows the _layout_ of the ballot. He only needs to see that the correct box is punched/marked. Or that the screen version has been checked. I realize you big city types (yes, Tim, Corralitos is big compared to my little burg) have full scale voting booths with curtains (I used the big mechanical machines when I lived in Manhatten), but out here in the sticks, the 'voting booth' is a little standing desk affair with 18 inch privacy shields on 3 sides. If someone tried to take a photo of their ballot in one of those it would be instantly obvious. All I want is a system which is not more easily screwed around with then paper ballots. Have some imagination - you could, for example, set things up so the voter, and only the voter, can see the screen and/or paper receipt while voting, but still make it impossible to use a camera without being detected. But how could a restriction on gargoyling oneself be constitutional? If Alice wishes to record her surroundings, including the ballot and/or touchscreen she just voted with, this is her business. (I fully support vote buying and selling, needless to say. Simple right to make a contract.) I wasn't endorsing the practicality of people trying to use digital cameras of any sort in any kind of voting booth, just addressing the claim that cellphone cameras don't have enough resolution. Even 320 x 240 has more than enough resolution to show which boxes have been checked, or to mostly give a usable image with a printed receipt. As for creating tamper-resistant and unforgeable and nonrepudiable voting systems, this is a hard problem. For ontological reasons (who controls machine code, etc.). I start with the canonical model of a very hard to manipulate system: blackballing (voting with black or white stones or balls). Given ontological limits on containers (hard to teleport stones into or out of a container), given ontological limits on number of stones one can hold, and so on (I'll leave it open for readers to ponder the process of blackball voting), this is a fairly robust system. (One can imagine schemes whereby the container is on a scale, showing the weight. This detects double voting for a candidate. One lets each person approach the container, reach into his pocket, and then place one stone into the container (which he of course cannot see into, nor can he remove any stone). If the scale increments by the correct amount, e.g, 3.6 grams, then one is fairly sure no double voting has occurred. And if the voter kept his fist clenched, he as strong assurance that no one else saw whether he was depositing a black stone or a white stone into the container. Then if the stones are counted in front of witnesses, 675 black stones vs. 431 white stones is a fairly robust and trusted outcome. Details would include ensuring that one person voted only once (usual trick: indelible dye on arm when stones issued, witnesses present, etc. Attacks would include the Ruling Party depositing extra stones, etc. And consolidating the distributed results has the usual weaknesses.) Things get much more problematic as soon as this is electronified, computerized, as the normal ontological constraints evaporate. Stones can vanish, teleport, be miscounted, suddenly appear, etc. Designing a system which is both robust (all the crypto buzzwords about nonforgeability, satisfaction of is-a-person or one-person constraints, visibility, etc.) and which is also comprehensible to people who are, frankly, unable to correctly punch a paper ballot for Al Gore, is a challenge. I'm not sure either Joe Sixpack in Bakersfield or Irma Yenta in Palm Beach want to spend time learning about all-or-nothing-disclosure and vote commitment protocols. I know about David Chaum's system. He has gotten interested in this problem. I am not interested in this problem. Moreover, I think working on electronic voting only encourages the political process (though implementing wide computer voting and then having more of the winning totals posted before polls close exposures of shenanigans might be useful in undermining support for the concept of democracy, which would be a good thing.) I don't say it's not a security problem worth thinking about. It reminds me a lot of the capabilities stuff, including Granovetter diagrams and boundaries. Probably a nice category theory outlook on voting lurking here (e.g., voting as a pushout in an appropriate category, or something whacky like that). Electronic
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:10 AM, BillyGOTO wrote: I have no problem with this free choice contract. You can't sell your vote for the same reason that Djinni don't grant wishes for more wishes. A silly comment. I take it you're saying Because the rules don't allow it. Or something similar to this. The rules are precisely what we are discussing. And vote buying is much more widespread than what happens at the lowest level we happen to be talking about here, where Alice is paid $10 to vote for some particular candidate. In fact, vote buying is much more common and more dangerous at the level of political representatives. Appealing to the rules (what your Djinni state as the rules) is nonproductive. Payoffs and kickbacks can be declared illegal, but they continue to happen in various ways. You, in the rest of your comments, show yourself to be one of the many tens of millions who probably need to be sent up the chimneys for their crimes. Liberty's a mental chore, isn't it? Maybe I just don't understand Liberty. I need to meditate on it for a while. I'll use your image of tens of millions of criminals going up in smoke (myself included) as a starting point. PS: Is support of vote buying consistent with rejection of Democracy? Liberty is characterized in the .sig below: Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! -- Ben Franklin
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
All I want is a system which is not more easily screwed around with then paper ballots. I think it's called OCR. Paper ballots, marked by the voter, not by software, then counted by software: - the ballot and the audit document are one and the same - no opportunity for software to mess with the printed record - option for a quick and dirty recount by feeding the ballots through a different counting machine (maybe with different software, from a different vendor) - further option for a manual recount of the original ballots (which are probably more legible than any machine-printed receipts) Oh, and by the way, these are the only kind of electronic voting machines approved, so far, in Mass. Miles Fidelman ** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: I Want My Internet! **
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
Miles Fidelman wrote: - option for a quick and dirty recount by feeding the ballots through a different counting machine (maybe with different software, from a different vendor) or indeed constructing said machines so they *assume* they will be feeding another machine in a chain (so every party could have their own counter in the chain if they wish to, and each gets a bite at the cherry in sequence)
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Dave Howe wrote: Miles Fidelman wrote: - option for a quick and dirty recount by feeding the ballots through a different counting machine (maybe with different software, from a different vendor) or indeed constructing said machines so they *assume* they will be feeding another machine in a chain (so every party could have their own counter in the chain if they wish to, and each gets a bite at the cherry in sequence) GREAT idea! Sort of like the Space Shuttle computers - 5 operating in parallel, one from a completely different hardware and software vendor.
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 09:18:42AM -0800, Tim May wrote: On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:10 AM, BillyGOTO wrote: I have no problem with this free choice contract. You can't sell your vote for the same reason that Djinni don't grant wishes for more wishes. A silly comment. I take it you're saying Because the rules don't allow it. Or something similar to this. The rules are precisely what we are discussing. In this case, the rules are implemented as the design requirements for the ballot box under discussion. A snoop-resistant ballot box can give the rules some huevos. If I sell you my Kennedy vote and then go into a Snoop-Proof(tm) box and cast it, you won't really be able to tell if I've ripped you off. And vote buying is much more widespread than what happens at the lowest level we happen to be talking about here, where Alice is paid $10 to vote for some particular candidate. In fact, vote buying is much more common and more dangerous at the level of political representatives. And their ballots are generally not cast behind moldy blue curtains.
RE: C3 Nehemia C5P with better hardware RNG and AES support
.. delayed response From: Peter Gutmann Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ... I fail to understand why VIA bothered adding AES support into the CPU. When was AES last the bottleneck on a general-purpose CPU? Apart from the obvious what cool thing can we fit in - - this much spare die space?, the obvious target is SOHO routers/firewall boxes. My spies tell me that it's already being used in a number of products like this, and the addition of AES will help the process. I am working on a linux distribution that is using the hardware RNG for seeding/rng in number of things (IPSEC, ssh, ssl, gpg, etc) and this is definitely the angle I am excited about. A 1Ghz proc goes a long way, but in a media intensive system (video, audio, streaming over wireless) you want to keep CPU load as light as possible so that latency is minimal. With the C5P you can now do VPN with AES, rng via the hardware entropy, and video offload via the CLE266. This leaves the CPU free to handle various interrupts for the wireless network, disk i/o, etc. Very nice move, I think. I have written some poor code and info regarding the C5XL (nehemiah) and linux: http://peertech.org/hardware/viarng/ [ I'll be cleaning code up and releasing new patches/srcs soon ] Hardware SHA-1 in the next rev makes it even better, since you can now do IPsec and SSL tunneling purely in hardware (and then you lose it all again in the crappy Rhine II NIC, but that's another story). A lot of peer networking applications use SHA digests for securely identifying resources in a network. The overhead of this for large volumes of content will make this a welcome addition :-) Also, Centaur indicated that with the SHA on die, they can produce statistically perfect RNG output. The von neumann whitener does let a small bias through for very large data sets IIRC (i.e. a statistical bias is detectable in 1G or more data) If you are using the hardware rng via a user space daemon feeding /dev/random then this is no longer an issue. The bottleneck tends to be modular exponentiations, yet VIA failed to include a modular exponentiation engine. Strange. Not for SOHO use it isn't, the initial handshake overhead is negligible compared to the constant link encryption overhead. The alternative is to do the crypto externally, for which you're paying for an expensive and power- hungry crypto core capable of doing a zillion DH/RSA ops/sec that gets used once every few hours. The alternative is to load or load your standard firewall firmware into a Nehemiah and offload all the crypto and RNG stuff. I am also curious about crypto-loop file system acceleration / CPU offload. There are a number of uses I am anxious to try with this hardware. Best regards,
RE: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
Miles Fidelman wrote: Peter Trei wrote: All I want is a system which is not more easily screwed around with then paper ballots. I think it's called OCR Actually, I think its called 'Optical Mark Sense'. Paper ballots, marked by the voter, not by software, then counted by software: - the ballot and the audit document are one and the same - no opportunity for software to mess with the printed record - option for a quick and dirty recount by feeding the ballots through a different counting machine (maybe with different software, from a different vendor) - further option for a manual recount of the original ballots (which are probably more legible than any machine-printed receipts) Oh, and by the way, these are the only kind of electronic voting machines approved, so far, in Mass. Miles Fidelman Indeed, thats where I live, and the tech we use. It pretty much fits all the requirements. The only complaints I've heard are: * It doesn't randomize the order of candidate presentation. * No provision for dealing with the blind.
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
Cameras in the voting booth? Jesus Christ, you guys are morons. If you want to sell your vote, just vote absentee. The ward guy will even stamp and mail it for you. Happens every election.
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
Doesn't make sense. Votes are already bought and sold, but there's so many middle men taking their cuts in the form of military bases or whatnot that the enduser barely gets some. -TD From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 09:18:42 -0800 On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:10 AM, BillyGOTO wrote: I have no problem with this free choice contract. You can't sell your vote for the same reason that Djinni don't grant wishes for more wishes. A silly comment. I take it you're saying Because the rules don't allow it. Or something similar to this. The rules are precisely what we are discussing. And vote buying is much more widespread than what happens at the lowest level we happen to be talking about here, where Alice is paid $10 to vote for some particular candidate. In fact, vote buying is much more common and more dangerous at the level of political representatives. Appealing to the rules (what your Djinni state as the rules) is nonproductive. Payoffs and kickbacks can be declared illegal, but they continue to happen in various ways. You, in the rest of your comments, show yourself to be one of the many tens of millions who probably need to be sent up the chimneys for their crimes. Liberty's a mental chore, isn't it? Maybe I just don't understand Liberty. I need to meditate on it for a while. I'll use your image of tens of millions of criminals going up in smoke (myself included) as a starting point. PS: Is support of vote buying consistent with rejection of Democracy? Liberty is characterized in the .sig below: Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! -- Ben Franklin _ Has one of the new viruses infected your computer? Find out with a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee. Take the FreeScan now! http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
