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How Estonia became a leader in technology

economist.com

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Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#71

Post by marcosdumay »

mvanvoorden wrote: post #51
trymas wrote: post #27

One little critique I have, is about Estonia's e-voting. That's a total black box technology. Basically what they did is said "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true". They do not know is someone hacked them, etc. Voting data from the servers was transferred using personal computer and flash drive of some random sysadmin. It's horrible. In my opinion, they do e-voting for the sake of doing…

It's not black box technology, they're entire government systems are open source. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/estonia-publishes...

So what? How do you know that's the code actually running on their servers?

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#72

Post by marcosdumay »

bgarbiak wrote: post #62
belZaah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of it would you consider a black box? The protocols are open (you can write your own voting application), the source code is largely open, there are numerous reports on it, you are most welcome to become an observer (and many do) etc. An informed critique of the system would actually be very welcome, just stating "random guys with flash drives are bad" is not that helpful

I wonder how any e-voting system could provide both anonymity of the vote and a secure access ("one person, one vote")? To provide the latter you've got to login somewhere, right? And to stay anonymous you can't leave any identity trace. In Estonia the voter has to login using her/his personal ID card so there's no anonymity at all?

You can make pseudonyms by letting people carry a public key to be signed by the same kind of organization that currently oversees voting (around here, 5 randomly chosen people per urn).

That'd be completely useless for preventing people from proving how they voted, but is sufficient obfuscation for preventing the votes from becoming public.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#73

Post by patrickmn »

mvanvoorden wrote: post #51
trymas wrote: post #27

One little critique I have, is about Estonia's e-voting. That's a total black box technology. Basically what they did is said "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true". They do not know is someone hacked them, etc. Voting data from the servers was transferred using personal computer and flash drive of some random sysadmin. It's horrible. In my opinion, they do e-voting for the sake of doing…

It's not black box technology, they're entire government systems are open source. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/estonia-publishes...

Not sure what to think about this: https://github.com/vvk-ehk/evalimine/blob/098ff93f9f159c977d...

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#74

Post by imre »

patrickmn wrote: post #73
mvanvoorden wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not black box technology, they're entire government systems are open source. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/estonia-publishes...

Not sure what to think about this: https://github.com/vvk-ehk/evalimine/blob/098ff93f9f159c977d...

geeez, they should really start using python 3 instead, python 2 is so last decade

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#76

Post by belZaah »

makeitsuckless wrote: post #63
belZaah wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? The electronic voting is modelled exactly based on mail-based voting that is widely used globally. You put your ballot into an envelope, add another one and off it goes. To a public mailbox. Transported, sorted and delivered along with open-back postcards. To be manually handled by volunteers in a way most voters even do not realise exists. We put your e-ballot into two envelopes making sure cryptographically…

Mail based voting is also extremely dubious. We allow it in some exceptional cases for a small minority. Personally I'm against the concept. Also, I never mentioned "secure". That's a red herring when it comes to any form of electronic voting. It's about democracy, which includes the guarantee that each vote is cast in absolute freedom. Nobody can hold a gun to a voters head, and no voter can be forced to justify the…

That guarantee of no gun is there in Estonian case. If somebody has a gun to your head you can go to a physical polling station and vote there overriding your forced vote.

Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology

#77

Post by makeitsuckless »

belZaah wrote: post #76
makeitsuckless wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail based voting is also extremely dubious. We allow it in some exceptional cases for a small minority. Personally I'm against the concept. Also, I never mentioned "secure". That's a red herring when it comes to any form of electronic voting. It's about democracy, which includes the guarantee that each vote is cast in absolute freedom. Nobody can hold a gun to a voters head, and no voter can be forced to justify the…

That guarantee of no gun is there in Estonian case. If somebody has a gun to your head you can go to a physical polling station and vote there overriding your forced vote.

That's the complete reverse of a guarantee. The person with the gun can stop met from going to a polling station.

Hence, in a true democracy, the only free way to vote is at a polling station, in a voting both constructed in such a way that I have total privacy from the moment I vote to the moment I put the vote in the ballot box, yet transparant enough so it can be observed by anyone (hence, short curtains, box in the same open space, etc).

We even put polling stations in hospitals, care homes, embassies abroad, military bases etcetera to ensure voting happens in total freedom, transparency and anonymity. This principle also applies to the counting of the votes.

All of this did not come about by accident, and the fact that it's being abandoned by people who do not wish to even argue why they want to remove fundamental democratic safeguards should be met with extreme suspicion.

The arguments in favor of electronic voting are extremely weak, and in many instances e-voting has already been found to be subject to deliberate manipulation.

There is no excuse for lowering our standards for the most essential element of a democracy.

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