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Subject: [ISN] Analysts call for hold on military e-voting
From: William Knowles <wk () c4i ! org>
Date: 2004-01-23 16:05:16
Message-ID: Pine.LNX.4.44.0401231004590.9759-100000 () idle ! curiosity ! org
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http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0119/web-evoting-01-22-04.asp
By Michael Hardy
Jan. 22, 2004
A group of computer scientists is urging the Defense Department to
abandon a plan to let overseas personnel cast absentee ballots over
the Internet.
The system, called Secure Electronic Registration and Voting
Experiment (SERVE), will be implemented in time for November's
election, said DOD spokesman Glenn Flood.
Although security analysts who studied the system believe it could be
vulnerable to hacking and alteration of results, DOD officials do not
intend to change their plans.
"We have confidence that it will be safe and secure for the general
election in November," he said. "We respect the work the team did, but
these are issues we knew about."
The analysts include Avi Rubin, the Johns Hopkins University professor
who publicized potential security hazards last year in electronic
voting machines. They concluded that because SERVE uses Microsoft
Corp.'s Windows operating system and standard Internet technologies,
there is no way to make it secure.
Some states could potentially use the system for primary elections,
although it won't be ready in time for the Feb. 3 primaries, he said.
"It's their call," he said.
"The flaws are unsolvable because they are fundamental to the
architecture of the Internet," said David Wagner, an assistant
professor of computer science at the University of
California-Berkeley, and one of the researchers, in a written
statement. "It's simply not secure enough for something as serious as
the election of a government official."
The researchers are worried that if the early trials of SERVE are
successful, federal and state governments will rush to expand its use,
assuming that it will be secure.
"That's like saying you don't ever need to wear a seat belt because
you drove to work without crashing the car this morning," Rubin said.
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