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...
I'd like to report that when I go near a wind farm I always feel happy and energised and I feel brighter!
ReplyDeleteYou can hang out around a wind farm, even have a picnic under one.
ReplyDeletePower stations are an eyesore and are surrounded by razor wire fences
Coal mines increase my blood pressure, even if I'm not near them! Ban them!
ReplyDeleteI think part of the reason that "You can't choose your own facts" gets ignored is that people think that scientists are "choosing their own facts". For most people science is a synonym for technology with no other connotations. For them science is a thing not a process.
ReplyDeleteThis is not helped by the total failure of the education system to ever describe what science actually is or how it works.
It is also not helped by the ignorant media who like to poke fun at the funny people in white coats who do things that they don't understand but sound pretty out there.
Nor is it helped by the way that the advertising industry is allowed to slap "scientifically proven" over any dodgy claim they want to promote.
Once your ideology narrows the function of science down to "only functions to support industry" it is only a small step to "science must support the government" and then it is a small step to "publishing science that contradicts the government 'truth' is treason" because the government is the country and attacking one obviously attacks the other.
:( now I'm really depressed.