
Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested  - randomwalker
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jhalderm/electronic-voting-researcher-arrested-over-anonymous-source
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jacquesm
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're
broken.

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.

If they set up a defense fund I'll definitely contribute.

This is a just cause, India is the largest democracy on earth, they're an
example for the whole region.

~~~
ugh
_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.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
ugh
Well, then paper ballots are not tamper proof.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
ugh
I don’t disagree with you in general, I just think that the whole process of
the paper ballot is not tamper proof. It is much more tamper proof than voting
machines, sure, but not wholly immune.

I think the statement ‘The paper ballot process is practically tamper proof’
is essentially correct and as such don’t think that the statement of the Chief
Election Commissioner with regard to voting machines in itself is
incriminating. All I want to say is that saying something is ‘practically
tamper proof’ is a meaningful statement.

~~~
jacquesm
It's been proven _trivial_ to mess with electronic voting machines, so that
statement is patent nonsense.

The security (I use the term lightly) of electronic voting relies on not
having knowledge about the system.

~~~
ugh
I don’t disagree with you about that, never said I did.

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motters
Once again a demonstration that if such voting machines are to be used with
any confidence then their hardware and software design needs to be open source
for independent inspection. With closed source electronic voting the
industrialization of election fraud becomes possible, and where it's possible
a few individuals with power or money at stake will seek to exploit the
vulnerabilities.

------
Eliezer
Well, that fixes the problem.

There is a sense of despair that comes from reading news about people who have
no discernible motive for what they do except deliberately trying to be as
stupid as possible. I have started to disbelieve in Hanlon's Razor. It's _not_
stupidity. It's malice. In this case, very clearly malice, but I'm starting to
wonder if it's malice more often than that.

Oh, and most people shrugging and going on with their lives - _that's_
stupidity.

~~~
randomwalker
Huh?

1\. The motive here is fairly straightforward -- they are trying to silence
the researcher. (Edit. There is of course also the fact that they want to find
the identity of the source; I don't know which of these is the primary
motivation.)

2\. 10 years ago or probably even 5 years ago this would have absolutely
worked. The Indian government just hasn't woken up to the fact that news
travels fast these days due to the Internet, and they can't control it.
Indeed, the Indian media aren't even covering this. That's probably what they
were counting on.

3\. It is also clear to me that it is not malice. Their point of view is that
if these pesky security researchers didn't go around poking flaws, then no one
will find them and exploit them. Regrettably, that is a surprisingly common
view. For example, many commenters right here on hacker news criticized my
research on those grounds (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193417>)

4\. Yes, most people are going to go on with their lives. What else would you
expect -- there are dozens of these minor atrocities happening around the
world every day, there simply isn't enough time to do something about all of
them. A good many people in India and elsewhere _are_ doing something about
this, and I believe it is making a difference. Police brutality (let alone
random arrests) used to be common in India; things have gotten dramatically
better in the last decade due to activism.

You often throw out these terms from philosophy/logic; that doesn't make your
arguments more logical. Just an observation.

------
todayiamme
The most unfortunate thing is that the machines won't be replaced before
crucial elections. If they are ever replaced at all. It's in the interest of
the political parties to let them continue and the executive branch of the
government is too myopic to deal with something like this. Their documents
think that it's the greatest machine on Earth (I kid you not) and others are
begging a piece of their action. The judiciary in the other hand is already
bogged down and it will be many years before the higher courts hear this case
and several years for the deliberation to come out.

What alarms me is that this is a country where parliamentary votes can be
bagged for money (see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash-for-votes_scandal> )
and politicians try to buy the people through thinly veiled bribes. What
happens if you remove the last pillars of belief in the system? The ballot has
been sacred ground in India and it has been a symbol that everything can be
fixed. What happens if you take that away?

------
known
According to a BBC survey, 80% of the population live on 20 rupees (25p) a day
in India i.e. with a $500 million investment politicians can _buy_ their
votes. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6946800.stm>

------
abecedarius
Interesting to hear of a 'hot debate' on voting-machine security -- in the
U.S. the issue gets little attention. Does India have saner media and
politics?

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senthilnayagam
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

~~~
jacquesm
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 international scrutiny.

~~~
desigooner
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 without a question. With the public
outcry and the coverage of this arrest, there might be Public Litigations
coming in which can atleast halt the process and get due diligence.

~~~
jacquesm
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)

~~~
desigooner
Now I'm not too familiar with the Indian Penal Code and Law in general, but
there have been instances of whistleblowers being silenced in the past one way
or another if the spotlight or public movement momentum is slow to follow. The
chances of this happening are more in certain parts of the country like Bihar
and UP etc.

It's unfortunate but the situation is slowly improving as time goes by and
connectivity and access of information improves.

------
bbk
unfortunately none of the indian media are covering this news.

~~~
jdc
They'd probably rather not get arrested.

------
loewenskind
Why does every country create their own electronic voting solution (or worse:
just use paper)?

In Brazil it is the law that everyone must vote. It is also the case that the
vote must be anonymous because it could be dangerous for voters if it could be
found out how they voted. Because of this Brazil has an electronic system that
both verifies that everyone has voted and ensures that a vote could never be
tied to the person who cast it. As far as I know it's the best voting system
in the world. Why don't other countries just buy this one instead of
maintaining their own?

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zaph0d
Security through obfuscation... not a very good idea.

~~~
vimalg2
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.

------
senthil_rajasek
Another article that presents a perspective from the Election Commission of
India <http://www.hindu.com/2010/08/11/stories/2010081156342000.htm>

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

~~~
vimalg2
Honest elections DO require a paper trail, even with EV-machines

I found :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Verified_Paper_Audit_Trai...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Verified_Paper_Audit_Trail)

