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Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

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Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#11

Post by jacquesm »

desigooner wrote: post #8
jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should have thought this one through a bit better. A fair number of people will take a refusal to strengthen the system as proof that the system is already being tampered with. That may or may not be the case but the head of the election committee should be happy that outsiders are showing the flaws, not arrest them. After all everybody benefits from a solid system, right? This is also going to draw a lot of int…

Actually, I hope this one draws a lot of international scrutiny. Unfortunately, the way things work in India, there's way too much bureaucracy with these sort of things and a bunch of old people running the show who are very much resistant to change (not to mention the potential $$$). Unless the matter is really played up by the media (which in itself is another animal to be wary of), this would have gone through wit…

Shooting the messenger is still wildly popular in plenty of places.

Does India have whistleblower protection written in to law?

(that would not help Hari directly but it could help him in his defense to not reveal his source)

Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#12

Post by senthilnayagam »

jacquesm wrote: post #7
senthilnayagam wrote: post #3

very unfortunate to arrest the researcher. Indian election commission ideally should open source the hardware design and the software, and let there be debate on how to make the system foolproof. but going back to paper vote should not be a option, we have enough backward thinking regional parties who are opposed to gender equality, education and technology

They should have thought this one through a bit better. A fair number of people will take a refusal to strengthen the system as proof that the system is already being tampered with. That may or may not be the case but the head of the election committee should be happy that outsiders are showing the flaws, not arrest them. After all everybody benefits from a solid system, right? This is also going to draw a lot of int…

India is a model democracy with transparent election process.

India is litigation prone, and courts take decades to deliver justice.

Everyone who has lost a election in the last 20 years is going to claim election was rigged.

the few bad things we have inherited in, Parliament and legislative assemblies can be not allowed to function by a small group of irritant elected representatives.

hope sanity prevails with civil servants and he get released soon, and we have a open debate at various levels

Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#13

Post by jacquesm »

senthilnayagam wrote: post #12
jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should have thought this one through a bit better. A fair number of people will take a refusal to strengthen the system as proof that the system is already being tampered with. That may or may not be the case but the head of the election committee should be happy that outsiders are showing the flaws, not arrest them. After all everybody benefits from a solid system, right? This is also going to draw a lot of int…

India is a model democracy with transparent election process. India is litigation prone, and courts take decades to deliver justice. Everyone who has lost a election in the last 20 years is going to claim election was rigged. the few bad things we have inherited in, Parliament and legislative assemblies can be not allowed to function by a small group of irritant elected representatives. hope sanity prevails with civi…

Now why on earth would that get voted down?

Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#14

Post by senthilnayagam »

ramki wrote: post #9

what is so wrong with paper-ballot voting? even most of the developed countries are relying on paper.

results now are declared within hours of counting starts

for a country of our size with 120 crore people, it already takes multiple days of voting in phases, due to security and administrative difficulties

if we go back to paper ballots, counting will take many days, error prone, we would have large number of invalid votes

booth capture used to be norm in UP bihar in 1980's early 1990's

Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#16

Post by ugh »

jacquesm wrote: post #5

Rop Gongrijp is the guy behind wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl and was instrumental in getting the Dutch government to abandon electronic voting and use the famous red pencil again. He's also one of the co-founders of xs4all.nl, one of the first ISP in the netherlands. Great quote right there from the Chief Election Commisioner: "are practically totally tamper proof.", so, effectively he's actually admitting they'r…

You can't be 'practically' tamper proof, you're tamper proof or you're not, just like you can't be a little bit pregnant or slightly dead.

I don’t think that’s correct. I have a hard time imagining any system that is ever really tamper proof. Much is possible with enough resources, even tampering with the paper ballot. Tamperability doesn’t seem like a binary property to me.

When changing one vote costs you a few thousand Euro and the likelihood of the tampering being detected is still substantial (that would be my ballpark estimate for the paper ballot) the system is practically tamper proof and that’s good enough.

Sometimes we may even increase tamperability just to get the result we want. Absentee ballots are much easier to tamper with than paper ballots but we have them to allow as many people to vote as possible. That goal trumps the easier tamperability.

The problem is not that tampering with voting machines is at all and somehow possible – that’s just the same with paper ballots – the problem is that tampering with voting machines has the potential to scale much better than tampering with the paper ballot. The cost per vote is substantially lower as is the probability for detection.

Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#17

Post by vimalg2 »

zaph0d wrote: post #2

Security through obfuscation... not a very good idea.

Sadly, the general population is not familiar with the concept and its inherent sanity.

Imagine the first time you read the phrase, coming from a un-informed background.

Thats pretty much the way, the everyman is going to back the government on this arrest -> for being a traitor to the government.

Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#18

Post by jacquesm »

ugh wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Rop Gongrijp is the guy behind wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl and was instrumental in getting the Dutch government to abandon electronic voting and use the famous red pencil again. He's also one of the co-founders of xs4all.nl, one of the first ISP in the netherlands. Great quote right there from the Chief Election Commisioner: "are practically totally tamper proof.", so, effectively he's actually admitting they'r…

You can't be 'practically' tamper proof, you're tamper proof or you're not, just like you can't be a little bit pregnant or slightly dead. I don’t think that’s correct. I have a hard time imagining any system that is ever really tamper proof. Much is possible with enough resources, even tampering with the paper ballot. Tamperability doesn’t seem like a binary property to me. When changing one vote costs you a few tho…

Tamper proof means that you can detect that something was messed with, not that you can't mess with it.

And that is definitely something that can be done I think.

Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#19

Post by ugh »

jacquesm wrote: post #18
ugh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't be 'practically' tamper proof, you're tamper proof or you're not, just like you can't be a little bit pregnant or slightly dead. I don’t think that’s correct. I have a hard time imagining any system that is ever really tamper proof. Much is possible with enough resources, even tampering with the paper ballot. Tamperability doesn’t seem like a binary property to me. When changing one vote costs you a few tho…

Tamper proof means that you can detect that something was messed with, not that you can't mess with it. And that is definitely something that can be done I think.

Well, then paper ballots are not tamper proof.

Re: Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested

#20

Post by jacquesm »

ugh wrote: post #19
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tamper proof means that you can detect that something was messed with, not that you can't mess with it. And that is definitely something that can be done I think.

Well, then paper ballots are not tamper proof.

Nothing is tamper proof by itself.

Being tamper proof is a thing that you address in a systemic way, with information, analysis, materials and procedures.

So a paper ballot is not tamper proof but a box that is viewed by many that is opened in the presence of many and counted, and re-counted by many can yield a result that all will likely agree on to a degree that the democratic process can be executed.

You could try to exchange the box, but there would be many witnesses, you could try to put extra ballots in it, but it would be detected and so on. The witnesses make all the difference, they turn a tamper prone piece of paper in to a tamper proof election device.

A computer in stead of that box with paper ballots is open to any number of ways of tampering that would go undetected, both locally and remotely as well as from the outside before the election has even been started.

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