Reading about stuff getting included in programs, secretly, I am
reminded of something that is close to ancient history:
I bought a disk, accepting the restriction that I was not allowed to
make copies.
Curious as to what they might do for protection, more than making an
idle threat, I looked at the code and found nothing.
So I did a trial copy of the disk, which KNEW it was not at home, and
refused to do more than complain. Looked closer at the code - there
really was no instruction code to be so smart, meaning we were into
magic.
Magic being a bit much to accept, I looked still closer and now know
it was doable with normal disks - have fun thinking on this.
BTW, I believe there are good tasks for computers in election work -
we just do need to get away from the excessive misuse and find and
punish the worst of that.
Dave Ketchum
On Feb 21, 2010, at 5:08 PM, WarrenS wrote:
Re: [RangeVoting] Tallying ballot images is "trivial"? NO worries
about e-voting?
Tallying the ballot images is trivial, and can be done
independently by numerous parties. I suspect even you could do it.
--this assumes that all the "numerous parties" HAVE the (true, not
false)
"ballot images."
There are two problems with that:
(a) how do they get them? In very, very few IRV races so far in
world history, have all the ballot data been distributed to
"numerous parties." In the vast majority they were kept secret.
(b) And even assuming the government is willing to do that, how do
we know they did not fake the data? How do we know it is real data?
The concerns of those concerned about computers is, it is very easy
for a very small conspiracy to mess with stuff secretly and
massively. E.g. the entire Greek government was wiretapped by
unknown parties messing with phone company hardware/software.
Google says it is going to pull out of China due to attacks. The
Israelis supposedly managed to corrupt hardware manufacturers of
Syrian radar system components so they could shut down their radar
when they wanted. SONY implanted a virus in thousands to millions
of computers via music CDs. Microsoft spied on millions of computer
owners via software which transmitted data about their computer back
over the net to microsoft. The head of Mexico election authority
admitted to the press they'd frauded a a presidential election via
computers (which had already been fairly obvious), Etc. Etc.
For this reason, many are very concerned about computers in
elections and feel they should either be outright abolished, or only
used in very restricted ways. Unfortunately,
I have so far never encountered or heard of any lawmaker savvy
enough to understand what the latter meant.
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