As a long time reader of comp.risks, and having a professional interest in security (as a sysadmin), I'll take this opportunity to say that anyone who is promoting online voting as a replacement for paper ballots is (in my opinion) one or more of a)Hopelessly naive, b)Frighteningly optimistic, c)Woefully ignorant of the problems of authentication combined with anonymity, d)Ignoring the problems of coercion, or (worst of all) e) Willing to accept vote tampering. I do not seriously think that the Electoral Commissioner would be willing to accept vote tampering, but every electronic or online system has been demonstrated to be vulnerable to it. Worse, such attacks can occur at any point, be it in corrupt coding, interference with the ballots, or by injecting forged ballots. All of these have be proven to be possible in every practical and theoretical system proposed to date. This is ignoring the problem of d) - if the voting is not occurring in a public place, how do you prove that t...
Privacy is an interesting subject. My Kid's pay lip service to privacy they will share everything and anything to each other over the net. if you say something to them it will get shared and discussed by all their friend's.
ReplyDeleteWhen you pull em up about it they just shrug. when i say whatever you say is gonna be recorded and could be used against you they just laugh.
I wonder if our generation's paranoia about privacy will survive. i certainly don't share private things over the net.
Governments are secretive but only about their own stuff, companies are secretive but only about their own stuff.
But the new generations are being groomed to be not worried about privacy, it's a concern for me but maybe not for them.