Description: Invited talk by David Dill of Stanford University at the 16th USENIX Security Symposium, on the topic of computer security and voting. It is now quite clear that most electronic voting systems were designed with only minor concern and rudimentary knowledge of computer security. Over the past five years, people with more in-depth knowledge of computer security have helped tremendously in appraising the security of current systems and, to a lesser extent, in improving the security of voting systems. This talk will highlight the ways a computer security perspective might be able to contribute to more trustworthy voting systems, as well as some of the ways that voting is different from other computer security problems. David Dill is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. He has over 25 years of research experience developing new formal verification technologies for hardware, software, and protocols, including co-founding 0-In Design Automation in 1996. In 2003, Prof. Dill wrote the "Resolution on Electronic Voting," which called for voter-verifiable audit trails on all voting systems and has been endorsed by over 10,000 individuals, including many leading computer scientists. He is also the founder of VerifiedVoting.org, which champions reliable and publicly verifiable elections in the United States. He served on California's Task Force on Touch-Screen Voting, and has testified before the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the Carter-Baker Commission, and the U.S. Senate on the security of electronic voting systems.
Stanford computer science Professor David Dill says that the man behind the curtain should show you the ballot. He uses this metaphor to illustrate his grievance with completely paperless electronic voting machines, such as touch-screen machines.
"If the machine silently loses or changes the vote, the voter has no clue that that has happened," says Dill. He argues that electronic voting machines should print a paper copy of the ballot, which the voter can inspect and which can be used in the event of a recount. Dill made the case for this "voter-verifiable paper audit trail" in a Feb. 15 symposium on voting technology at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
While many, including Dill, think that optically scanned ballots are the cheapest and most reliable method of collecting votes, there has been a rush to invest in electronic voting machines instead. States must decide quickly how to use a rare gift of matching federal funds (allocated in the aftermath of the 2000 election debacle) to upgrade outdated equipment. Touch-screen machines are an attractive option because they're easy to use and handicapped accessible, can be programmed in multiple languages, and allow for quick tabulation of election results. No hanging chads. But most electronic voting machines are paperless, with only an on-screen display. Even an ATM machine gives a receipt, and for obvious reasons. Even in a morally perfect world, technology can fail. Machines can make mistakes.Tags: fun ,
Disclaimer: We are a infosec video aggregator and this video is linked from an external website. The original author may be different from the user re-posting/linking it here. Please do not assume the authors to be same without verifying.