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On open source vs. disclosed source voting systems
,----[ Quote ]
| On Tuesday, the Election Technology Council (a trade association of four
| major American voting system manufacturers) put out a white paper on
| open-source and voting systems. It's nice to see them finally talking about
| the issue, but there's a distinctive cluelessness in this paper about what,
| exactly, open source is and what it means for a system to be secure. For
| example, in a sidebar titled "Disclosed vs. Open: Clarifying Misconceptions",
| the report states:
|
| ... taking a software product that was once proprietary and disclosing
| its full source code to the general public will result in a complete
| forfeiture of the software's security ... Although computer scientists
| chafe at the thought of "security through obscurity," there remains some
| underlying truths to the idea that software does maintain a level of
| security through the lack of available public knowledge of the inner
| workings of a software program.
|
| Really? No. Disclosing the source code only results in a complete forfeiture
| of the software's security if there was never any security there in the first
| place. If the product is well-engineered, then disclosing the software will
| cause no additional security problems. If the product is poorly-engineered,
| then the lack of disclosure only serves the purpose of delaying the
| inevitable.
`----
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/dwallach/open-source-vs-disclosed-source-voting-systems
Open-source misperceptions live on
,----[ Quote ]
| The enterprises, vendors, developers, analysts, and journalists I speak with
| regularly are mostly pretty savvy about the basics of open source at this
| point. Even if they're not licensing geeks or otherwise expert in all the
| minutiae and subtle implications of open-source development, community, and
| usage, they generally have the important basics down.
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13556_3-10221280-61.html
Recent:
Open source could fix e-voting flaws, California secretary of state says
,----[ Quote ]
| California Secretary of State Debra Bowen argued Thursday that open source
| software can help fix some of the flaws in electronic voting systems, which
| have proliferated throughout the country since the 2000 election yet been
| criticized as unreliable.
`----
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/092508-open-source-electronic-voting.html
The brazilian Election Supreme Court migrates 430 thousand voting machines to
GNU / Linux
,----[ Quote ]
| The brazilian Election Supreme Court announced at April 4th 2008, that the
| 2008 elections at Brazil will use GNU / Linux electronic voting machines with
| software digital authentication.
|
| The Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (the brazilian Election Supreme Court),
| officially announced on April 4th, 2008, that the brazilian 2008 elections
| will use 430 thousand electronic voting machines migrated from VirtuOS and
| Windows CE to GNU / Linux and open source softwares for security and auditing
| defined by proper law.
`----
http://techforce.com.br/index.php/news/linux_blog/tse_migrates_to_linux
Hacking a voting machine
,----[ Quote ]
| This kind of makes you question the whole e-voting system. I am not
| suggesting you try this, but I am suggesting you question the reliability of
| these systems. Are any of these machines safe? Don't forget to check out the
| other, equally disturbing, video on the web site.
`----
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/09/hacking_a_voting_machine.html
Diebold Finally Admits its Voting Machines Drop Votes
,----[ Quote ]
| Premier Election Solutions, formerly called Diebold Election Systems, has
| finally admitted that a ten-year-old error has caused votes to be dropped.
|
| [...]
|
| In other news, election officials sometimes take voting machines home for the
| night.
`----
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/08/diebold_finally.html
Open-source gadgets at LinuxWorld
,----[ Quote ]
| Bug Labs was also on hand, showing off a few new updates to its Bug Base
| gadget platform. The hardware is essentially the same, but the software
| interface for the Lego-like gadget prototyper has been improved. The device
| now runs Poky Linux--which is intended for small devices--and now has a Web
| browser and window environment. The software update, available in either late
| August or early September, will also support Wi-Fi. Also, we hear the
| MMCmicro card slot will be switched out in favor of microSD in the next
| version.
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10008707-1.html
Open-source e-voting gets LinuxWorld test run
,----[ Quote ]
| The system, which was set here at LinuxWorld for show attendees to view and
| vote in mock elections, runs on PCs loaded with Ubuntu Linux and the free,
| open source e-voting application created by the consortium.
`----
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9111820&intsrc=hm_list
LinuxWorld gets an open source voting tryout
,----[ Quote ]
| The Open Voting Consortium is giving its open source based voting machines a
| trial run at LinuxWorld, currently being held in San Francisco. In a mock
| election ballot for the 2008 Presidential election, attendees will be able to
| vote and see the votes tallied on a half hourly basis and see how the system
| supports recounts.
`----
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/open/LinuxWorld-gets-an-open-source-voting-tryout--/news/111243
Open-source electronic voting
,----[ Quote ]
| An election worker would then scan the bar code to record the vote. At the
| end of the election or at choice points during the day, a tally sheet could
| be printed, also with a barcode. The barcode uses Open Source PDF-417, a
| standard that is also used in identification cards and inventory systems and
| can be read by most scanners. Within the two-dimensional bar code is a
| numerical-coded sequence that shows how a person voted. There is also a
| unique identifier so that the ballot cannot be counted a second time. The
| printed ballot cannot be linked with a specific person, but the ballot can be
| associated with the electronic tally stored in the computer.
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-9999555-83.html
Could Linux Change Democracy?
,----[ Quote ]
| These Linux machines started me thinking about the ideals behind Linux (and
| open source) and how they could be put to work within the workings of
| government. The ideals I’m referring to are its process: transparency,
| accountability and meritocracy based on contributions. Last year I was quoted
| in an article about Open Legislation.
`----
http://www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/amanda/2008/08/05/could-linux-change-democracy/
Voting machine gets LinuxWorld tryout
,----[ Quote ]
| On Tuesday their machine will be put to the test at LinuxWorld in San
| Francisco, where the 10,000 people who are expected to attend the conference
| will get to vote in a mock presidential election pitting Barack Obama against
| John McCain.
|
| "The voting system in the U.S. is still not sufficiently accurate to
| determine the winner in a very close election," said Dechert, who has worked
| at Borland International and Intel developing and testing software. "By the
| time we're done (with the mock election), nobody will have any doubt."
|
| The LinuxWorld conference is held every year in San Francisco to discuss
| open-source software - software whose code is designed and maintained by
| volunteers. The conference takes its name from Linux, a computer operating
| system designed by Linus Torvalds in the 1990s that has a passionate
| following. It competes against Microsoft Windows and has spawned software for
| numerous devices, including voting machines.
`----
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/02/BUFD1224UC.DTL
Are You Ready for Open Voting?
,----[ Quote ]
| They're putting their money where their mouth is, too: they've developed a
| prototype system in Python on Linux that is open source and designed for ease
| of use, as well as to preserve a paper trail. The current goal is to get the
| system adopted by California in time for the 2008 elections.
`----
http://ostatic.com/165237-blog/are-you-ready-for-open-votingss#rss
Voting 2.0, Part 2: The Open Source Proposition
,----[ Quote ]
| As designed, however, the Ubuntu-based system is also voter-verifiable
| because the public can review in advance the screens they'll see on Election
| Day, presented as pre-rendered picture files.
`----
http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/63202.html
Related:
Microsoft Muscles the NYS Legislature
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft’s proposed change to state law would effectively render
| our current requirements for escrow and the ability for independent
| review of source code in the event of disputes completely meaningless
| - and with it the protections the public fought so hard for.
`----
http://nyvv.org/blog/bolipariblog.html
,----[ Quote ]
| Problems found in an audit of Diebold tabulation records from an Ohio
| November 2006 election raise questions about whether the database got
| corrupted during the tabulation of election results...
|
| The database is built from Microsoft's Jet database engine. The
| engine, according to Microsoft, is vulnerable to corruption when a lot
| of concurrent activity is happening with the database, such as what
| occurs on an election night [and Microsoft advises againt using Jet in
| a complex environment]...
|
| The report mentions that election staff had trouble with the server
| crashing and freezing on election night....
|
| The report notes that with punch card machines election officials used
| to be able to determine definitively if all ballots had been counted
| in the results....
`----
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/diebold_vote_da.html
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