Great John, now if you can convince the fools who buy systems for the
voting public to use your method, we might be saved from a disaster in
November.
Ed
On Sep 11, 2008, at 4:32 PM, John Berry wrote:
I don't have time to go into it at this moment but I believe I have
found a way to have online voting secure and cheat proof if anyone
is curious, it's not really hard.
On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Edmund Storms
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
You all would fail at solving murder mysteries. Consider the facts:
1. Diebold makes ATMs, which are secure. Therefore, they know how to
do a good job.
2. Diebold is owned by people who are strong supporters of the
Republican party. Therefore they have a self interest in gaming the
system.
3. In the last election, many examples of miscounts favoring the
Republican candidates were discovered.
4. Only a complete fool or a person looking for an advantage would
design a voting machine that did not have a paper trail. The Diebold
company has never shown any signs in the past of being run by fools.
What more evidence do you need?
Ed
On Sep 11, 2008, at 4:06 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
By the way, Diebold is in the ATM business. Readers here did not
know that would miss my point. I am sure there are plenty of
programmers at Diebold who know how to do secure touch-screen
transaction processing. It is an old, long established company. You
can bet your boots that no Russian hacker can break into a Diebold
ATM, despite what you see in thriller movies.
Here is a 2007 tech article describing some of the problems. This
should keep you awake a night:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/58572.html
Rick said, "funny that technophiles like us would object to these
the way we do. I guess it's because we know easily computer systems
can often be defeated even when they're touted as being rock solid."
As I see it, technophiles are used to working with buggy first-gen
or Beta-release computer systems. So we know there is a lot of
crummy stuff out there. Normally it does not matter. We take it in
stride. For example, I got a first-gen television DVR. It used to go
out to lunch in the middle of program, spontaneously erase all
files, and so on. I figured it's just a television program so who
cares? Hey, it is better than no DVR.
You expect unreliable software in a cheap gadget. You DO NOT expect
it in an ATM, a cash register system or a voting machine!!! Such
things are supposed to be held to much stricter standards. If
Diebold had released an ATM with the problems their voting machines
have, they would have been buried under lawsuits and driven out of
business in no time. Apparently, Americans are much more concerned
about the security of their cash than their democracy.
(Plus, as I said, the DP people at banks understand computers and
computer security, whereas election officials do not have a clue.)
Diebold just did not bother to do a professional job on their voting
machines. As I said, my impression is that they hired some college
kids and gave them a couple months to throw something together,
running under with Windows CE (pronounced "Wince"). I consider Wince
the second worst version of that operating system -- Win ME took the
prize for unreliability. Either they threw it together carelessly or
they deliberately made the machines full of holes in order to steal
elections, if you believe the conspiracy theorists. It hardly
matters to me. The effect is the same. Culpability seems the same to
me, although I suppose the law would come down harder on someone who
did this deliberately.
- Jed
