Bureau van Dijk - Bureau van Dijk's comprehensive Orbis company database. Contact the Prime Minister. In Theory And Practice, Why Internet-Based Voting Is a Bad Idea. A few countries, like Estonia, have gone for internet-based voting in national elections in a big way, and many others (like Ireland and Canada) have experimented with it.
For Americans, with a presidential election approaching later this year, it's a timely issue: already, some states have come to allow at least certain forms of voting by internet. Proponents say online elections have compelling upsides, chief among them ease of participation. People who might not otherwise vote — in particular military personnel stationed abroad, but many others besides — are more and more reached by internet access. Online voting offers a way to keep the electoral process open to them. With online voting, too, there's no worry about conventional absentee ballots being lost or delayed in the postal system, either before reaching the voter or on the way back to be counted.
The downsides, though, are daunting. (Read more for more, and look for a video interview with Halderman soon). To D.C.' Hgsvn 0.1.9. Layer 8: DARPA set to develop super-secure "cognitive fingerprint" Developers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency want to build information technology security that goes beyond simply recognizing complex passwords but rather gets in your head to confirm your identity before you get access or continue to have access to important information. Specifically, the agency's Active Authentication program looks to develop what DARPA calls "novel ways of validating the identity of the person at the console that focus on the unique aspects of the individual through the use of software-based biometrics.
" More security news: From Anonymous to Hackerazzi: The year in security mischief-making Biometrics is defined as the characteristics used to uniquely recognize humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits. Active Authorization focuses on the computational behavioral traits that can be observed through how we interact with the world. More news: 25 tech touchstones of the past 25 years Layer 8 Extra Check out these other hot stories: Tor Operations Security. 13 December 2011 Tor Operations Security Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:39:22 -0500 From: wakeupneo555[at]Safe-mail.net To: tor-talk[at]lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-talk] Tor OPSEC - Operational Security - Great Resource of Information!
What began as a simple reply to a Tor user on the subject of downloading PDF files through Tor, turned into a wealth of information on Tor OPSEC. I am adding this post to the list because others might find it as useful as I have. Origin of discussion: @querent: "First, I want to use TOR to download .pdf files" First, how have you setup Tor? Have you installed the Tor Browser Bundle? My preferred method of handing PDF files when using Tor is to load them remotely via this free web service: I don't see that website as having any ads, but I block ads anyway, nor are there any posts begging for money, nor do they push an application to download in order to view the PDFs. Sudo nano /etc/wgetrc or. Hand counts of votes may cause errors. Hand counting of votes in postelection audit or recount procedures can result in error rates of up to 2 percent, according to a new study from Rice University and Clemson University.
"These procedures are intended as a safeguard against computer and human error, but until recently, no research existed to tell whether these efforts helped or hurt the accuracy of the vote," said Michael Byrne, associate professor of psychology at Rice. "Post-Election Auditing: Effects of Election Procedure and Ballot Type on Manual Counting Accuracy, Efficiency and Auditor Satisfaction and Confidence," will appear in an upcoming issue of the Election Law Journal. In the study, participants simulated two types of group-counting procedures commonly found in U.S. elections.
The first procedure, the "read-and-mark" method, utilizes four election officials who count the ballots sequentially as they are taken from the top of an unsorted stack of ballots. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making: The CODM Model for Facilitating Groups to Widespread Agreement eBook: Tim Hartnett. Pragmatic Source: Open-source voting technology is the cure for what ails democracy. Washington, D.C., has decided to go with open-source voting technology in a pilot project to, basically, speed up the process of getting back absentee, military and oversees ballots.
The results on election night are always unofficial, as they need to be certified by elections commissioners. But even then, other votes need to be counted - and one need only to look at the 2000 Presidential election to know how much those extra ballots can mean for the outcome of a race. Problem is, it can take weeks for those ballots to be returned from a war zone. Even fax or e-mail can be dodgy, and neither form is particularly secure - at least as secure as one's ballot need be. The thing that's interesting about the project being open-source technology is that many have expressed concerns about the proprietary software used in electronic voting. Look at what just happened in the South Carolina primary. Independent professionals. Said Rokey W. Helios Voting. Jxta-jxse. Open-source voting. November 03, 2003 Open-source voting You may have been following the “Diebold memo” scandal, but if you haven’t, here’s a quick recap: 1) In the wake of the “hanging chad” Florida fiasco, the feds decide to start looking at computerized voting machines.2) One of the main contenders is Diebold Election Systems.
The only problem is …3) Diebold is run by fiercely partisan Republicans, who donated boatloads of cash to the GOP in the last election; the CEO once said that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year”. So now you’re caught up. As the Diebold scandal illustrates, it’s incredibly dangerous to let a private company develop proprietary voting software. So why not just develop voting software in open-source mode?
So perfect, in fact, that Australia has already thought of it. (Cool debate alert: Over at his blog, Barry Brigs wrote a post pointing out the dangers of open-source development, as well as a post in the boards here.) Open Source Voting: Accurate, Accountable | Open Voting Consortium. Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV) Open-Vote.org. Open-Source Voting. In the aftermath of the Florida recount debacle of the 2000 presidential election, the U.S. Congress appropriated billions of dollars for state and local governments to buy electronic voting systems. But in the years since, a string of problematic elections has led much of the voting public to join early critics in concluding that available machines are buggy, easily subverted, and impossible to accurately audit. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before members of the open-source movement would enter the fray, with the claim that their kind of technology can guarantee free and democratic elections.
Already, two bellwether states, California and New York, have taken notice. This spring, California’s state assembly considered a bill mandating that new voting systems be based on open-source software. The bill didn’t pass, despite support from the California secretary of state, whose office certifies voting systems. Nation's First Open Source Election Software Released | Threat Level. LOS ANGELES — A group working to produce an open and transparent voting system to replace current proprietary systems has published its first batches of code for public review. The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV) announced the availability of source code for its prototype election system Wednesday night at a panel discussion that included Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus 1-2-3 and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; California Secretary of State Debra Bowen; Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan; and Heather Smith, director of Rock the Vote.
The OSDV, co-founded by Gregory Miller and John Sebes, launched its Trust the Vote Project in 2006 and has an eight-year roadmap to produce a comprehensive, publicly owned, open source electronic election system. “We believe we’re catalyzing a re-birth of the industry … by making the blueprint available to anyone who wants to use it,” Miller said. “That was unexpected,” Miller said. Gov 2.0 Summit 2010: Bryan Sivak,"Why We Need Open Source Electronic ..." Open Source Voting Software Concept Released.