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...
Very true
ReplyDeleteI find a persons view of Good or Bad journalism mine included is defined by your own views first, Personal social influences second then facts if at all.
ReplyDeleteGarry Winterton I'm thinking the more objective sort of good/bad. If you are doing a report on the effects of ... oh... spaghetti tree blight, and you give equal time to a botanist, a spaghetti tree farmer, and an agricultural economist - that would be good journalism. If, instead, you gave equal time to the same botanist, a structural engineer with a specialization in bridges who once saw a spaghetti tree on TV, and Edward J. "Spang" Wrotfingler (the local trout molester) who once heard a rumour that spaghetti trees are purple (when they are clearly green and white), then that would be bad journalism.
ReplyDeleteSimilarities to this and the vaccination 'debate' are completely co-incidental.
yes but facts are not important to ones Perception of good or bad journalism.
ReplyDeleteIf you like the stories from the murdoch or fairfax crowd then you are not going to like the ABC or the guardian for example.
It wouldn't matter if the stories were perfect in their facts your inner bias skews things in your mind.
The Vaccination debate shows this clearly. The facts mean nothing to those who perceive them to be evil or bad and the threat seems too distant for them to change their mind.
For example when i explained to a vaccination skeptic i knew. That when my father and his siblings were vaccinated just after such things became available. secretly as my grandfather was a naturist and that they were the only family in the street not to have someone suffer from one of the dread diseases. that experience is written of as pure luck by those i know who oppose vaccination.