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Mainstream media has finally picked up on the Diebold story and the related issues of electronic voting systems. All I can say is it’s about time. This issue has been brewing in the geek community for quite a while now, growing more intense since the release of the SAIC report (PDF) in September.
Thankfully, Newsweek and CNN are both beginning to cover the issue now.
“The best minds in the computer-security world contend that the voting terminals can’t be trusted. Listen, for example, to Avi Rubin, a computer-security expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University who was slipped a copy of Diebold?s source code earlier this year. After he and his students examined it, he concluded that the protections against fraud and tampering were strictly amateur hour. ‘Anyone in my basic security classes would have done better,’ he says. The cryptography was weak and poorly implemented, and the smart-card system that supposedly increased security actually created new vulnerabilities. Rubin’s paper concluded that the Diebold system was ‘far below even the most minimal security standards.’”
The voting system manufacturers are opposed to creating paper trail systems and naturally have largely refused to open their systems for scrutiny. Voting, no matter how skeptical one is about it’s ability to produce change, is a citizens fundamental duty—voting systems must be open and auditable. This should not be open for debate, it should not be an option—it must be a requirement. .