On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, Jeremy Epstein wrote:
(1) I agree that source code should be inspected by someone truly independent and competent, and that the standards for approving voting machines should be stronger. However, that's NOT the same as open source. And I'd strongly discourage folks from calling for open source, as it plays directly into the hands of folks like Diebold, who claim that the people (like me) who want Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) are really trying to kill free enterprise.
Free enterprise is not the issue here. Audit trails are. If it means that somewhere someone cannot make a profit, then so be it. Unless you declare democracy dead, and instate the Corporate Republic. The 'free market' should not be a main consideration in voting security. If you cannot relay that message to your government, then either you or your government is not the right one for its task.
the VVPAT groups with the open source community. So rather than putting your energy into trying to get Diebold et al to move to open source, it
Diebold has proven to not earn the trust of the public. It deserves to lose money, or even go bankrupt. That's capitalism. You screw up and your product no longer sells and you go do something else. Perhaps Diebold can go into the playing cards business.
(3) WRT requiring that the technology protect itself in case the users don't, that's simply unrealistic. In *any* real computer system, there are expectations about the environment (e.g., the administrators aren't hostile to the functioning of the system). It's important to state what those expectations are, but there will ALWAYS be some that rely on non-technical means. The important part about election systems is that they be explicitly stated, and they be enforceable using non-technical means (e.g., by having locks on doors). The problem today is that some of the assumptions (e.g., the vendor provided software doesn't have any bugs) are clearly unrealistic.
We are talking about voting machines here, not general purpose operating systems! They should be able to restrict and properly (and provably!) secure a reasonably simple dedicated single purpose voting computer.
(4) WRT getting one set of software approved, and then installing another... that's an old problem in any environment. The way it's supposed to work in election systems is that a particular version is approved, and it's illegal for the vendor to install something different. If there are teeth in the law, and the vendor can be fined for installing illegal software, then it's
A fine? No. They just be blacklisted from ever supplying voting machines to the government again. Screwing up elections is not like hitting a red light when there is nobody around.
Bottom line, election systems are no different than any other systems in that the security of the whole system is based on risk management.
But I guess no one trusts the US government itself anymore if even Europe is sending officials to watch over the elections:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3666898.stm
And to counter your arguments, the Netherlands has open sourced its voting system. You can download and verify it at http://www.ososs.nl/
Paul -- "Non cogitamus, ergo nihil sumus"
