April 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Meshing costs, the price of RAH's battery
by Major Variola (ret) 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

At 05:34 PM 4/10/04 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: >On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 09:03:35PM -0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > >> One can run a P2P app from mains-powered home machine >> and incur only a minor bandwidth penalty, which you can >> possibly throttle when you're busy. But my > >Most P2P clients don't support this, Morpheus, KaZaa etc. supports this, although you have to use the GUI manually to change this. Perhaps you meant other apps, or you meant automatic QoS of the voice-before-email type. >> understanding of *mobile* devices (where meshing matters) is that they >> are severely power constrained. To the extent that >> boozohol power cells and various semiconductor/logic >> tricks are being used, despite the difficulties they require. >Some nodes are power constrained (mobile phones), some are not (cars, >planes). Yes. I just posted a message clarifying this. >All power management issues are irrelevant for immobile nodes and for >energy-glut nodes. Yes >> Meantime, uncompensated altruism is maladaptive. >> >> But that's economics/physics applied to resource usage, nothing new, >> despite the neologisms and extrapolation. > >I stopped using geodesic routing a while ago, because I found out the proper >term is geographic routing. Yep, and its obviously important for 1/R^2 "last mile" techs using RF, but otherwise a metric that accounts for how bits actually get around is what matters. A postcard or a phone call to my neighbor still go far away, then back. A globally optimized market (aka RAH's geodesics) might require checking an authoritative (but voluntary) clearinghouse on the other side of the planet. PS look up "caida" they do IP & geography for fixed nodes.

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RE: Gmail as Blacknet (legally required forgetting)
by Tyler Durden 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

>I don't know about your anecdote, but Mr. May's original point >was that the law *requires* companies to forget. Which is >of course an illegitimate intrusion of the state into private affairs. Well, this is not well understood by those outside the credit world. What the law actually states is (basically) a defaulted loan must be forgiven after seven years. In other words, it is illegal to continue to attempt to collect on a loan, 7 years after the default. However, it is perfectly legal to remember that an individual failed to pay back a loan. In practice, this means that a large brand-name Credit Card company can choose not to send an offer to someone that defaulted 10 years ago. Of course, they can't dunn that person anymore, but they don't have to offer a card. I know without any doubt that there is at least one that does this, and it's not like the Feds wouldn't notice! >And the responsibles need killing. Well, in a lot of cases I agreed with May's sentiment, even if I'm not entirely sure this would do much. However, as for putting the Jews and blacks up chimneys, well add to that what appears to be an almost State Corporatism stance, and there's a discernable vector there...look up "Boehrman Flight Capital Organization" and I'm still not convinced the resemblance is coincidental. But those are side issues. At least, aside from the technical content, I still view May's harshest rantings as a sort of Fredom of Speech acid test...if one would try to forcibly or legally shut him down, then one probably "needs killing". -TD >From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> >To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: RE: Gmail as Blacknet (legally required forgetting) >Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 20:35:47 -0700 > >At 05:16 PM 4/9/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: > >(As an aside, although debt has to be -forgiven- after 7 years, >contrary to > >popular belief it is not true that a debt has to be -forgotten-...I >know of > >one credit major card company that will not accept 'new' cardmembers >that > >didn't pay back what they owed, even if that's 15 years ago. That's >actually > >perfectly legal.) > >I don't know about your anecdote, but Mr. May's original point >was that the law *requires* companies to forget. Which is >of course an illegitimate intrusion of the state into private affairs. > >And the responsibles need killing. > >Ahhh, that feels better. > >----- >"When I was your age we didn't have Tim May! We had to be paranoid >on our own! And we were grateful!" --Alan Olsen > > _________________________________________________________________ Get rid of annoying pop-up ads with the new MSN Toolbar FREE! http://toolbar.msn.com/go/onm00200414ave/direct/01/

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Re: Meshing costs, the price of RAH's battery
by Major Variola (ret) 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

At 11:32 AM 4/10/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: >"So, get a clue. When your battery runs out, you >get *zero* benefit from the mesh. Or even your local >device *sans network*." > >Well, as usual I don't think I'm understanding you here. In my example I'm >imagining I'm a livery cab driver or something. In that case, instantaneous >micro-traffic-conditions can be very valuable in NYC. A car represents abundant power. RF issues aside, may as well be fixed & mains powered. A car is not what's meant by "mobile". Think handsets, laptops, PDAs with self-contained power.

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Fortress America mans the ramparts
by R. A. Hettinga 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3559809> New Zealand Herald Online - Newspaper Sunday April 11, 2004 [An American flight crew member (left) is photographed and fingerprinted with by an immigration official. Picture / Reuters] Fortress America mans the ramparts 10.04.2004 - Travellers to the US face fingerprinting and being photographed. CHRIS BARTON investigates if terrorism is reducing us all to numbers I am not a number, I am a free man!" So cried "Number 6" (Patrick McGoohan) in the 1967 cult TV classic The Prisoner as he fled Rover, the sinister white balloon that patrolled The Village - sort of Shangri-La meets the Gulag - in which he was contained. Fast forward to 2004. A husband, wife and their young daughter - numbers 19841016400042911666 ... 7 and ... 8 respectively - are arriving at LA airport en route to Disneyland. At immigration the family hand over their New Zealand passports. Each is photographed and then fingerprinted. The 8-year-old begins to cry. "Mummy, are we going to prison?" "Don't worry, darling," comforts the mother. "This is how Americans welcome visitors." This is not some TV programme, but a reality facing all travellers to the United States. From September 30, tourists from 27 countries, including New Zealand, who have long travelled to the United States relatively hassle-free and without a visa will be digitally fingerprinted and photographed every time they enter the country. The move has drawn criticism and some retaliation. The Travel Industry Association (TIA) of America is concerned "negative reactions" may mean already declining tourist numbers may fall further. "Visitors," says Swiss centre-right Christian Democrat parliamentarian Eugen David, "will be treated like criminals." As for retaliation, China, whose citizens are required to have visas to travel to the United States, is barring Americans from applying for emergency visas at Chinese airports and requiring some to be interviewed before receiving tourist visas. Similarly, Brazil announced in January it would fingerprint and photograph American visitors. New Zealand reaction has been muted - except for Green Party MP Keith Locke: "Fingerprinting is for people accused of a crime, not law-abiding citizens." The Americans are unmoved - responding with a reverse spin: "Every country has to take the steps necessary to ensure the security of their borders - so if Brazilians and Chinese feel safer having fingerprinted Americans we can hardly object to that," says consular chief Richard H. Adams at the US Consulate in Auckland. "Yes," he concedes. "In a way the fingerprint is connected to the whole criminal justice process in peoples' minds and if it was something else maybe they wouldn't feel that way." Alternatives to fingerprinting include retina scanning or facial-recognition technology, but Adams maintains they're not as quick or reliable. But as he later acknowledges, the real reason for fingerprint scans is to check against police databases for prior criminal convictions in the United States. The fact is they want to know you're not a criminal. The fingerprinting regime began in January for visitors from nations other than the visa-waiver countries. According to the Department of Homeland Security about 2.6 million people have been processed so far and 200 with prior or suspected criminal or immigration violations have been stopped. The visa-waiver countries will add an estimated 13 million visitors a year to the processing queue. Like Number 6 in The Village, all visitors ashore in the United States will now be a specific number in Homeland Security's database. This is the price travellers have to pay for September 11. Or are border control and security agencies around the world using the spectre of that event to curb and control individual freedoms? Otago University computer security and forensics professor and cryptography expert Hank Wolfe, who is also an American citizen, sees liberty under threat. "If you look at America I don't think it's the land of the free, home of the brave any more. It's more appropriately called Fortress America." Wolfe is also scathing of steps taken post September 11 to protect airports. "It's not real security. This is eyewash security. This is for public consumption so that people think that they are doing something." His point is underlined by the fact that travelling American citizens will not be subject to fingerprinting or photography processing when returning home. Neither will Canadians or Mexicans carrying border cards. Adams recognises the exemptions are a double standard - enabling terrorists either to get Americans to do their bidding or to use fake American passports themselves. "As far as passing for Americans, we are somewhat better at telling real Americans from fake ones than we are dealing with other nationalities as a rule." But as Wolfe points out, America's vast coastline means border security is always going to be problematic and the new measures mean terrorists will find other entry points. "The fact is any reasonably intelligent terrorist who wanted to do something bad on an aeroplane could do it - none of the measures they have in place are going to stop them." The United States also requires all countries that wish to remain in the visa waiver programme to start issuing "biometric passports" containing information encoded on a computer chip by October 26. Homeland Security has recognised the deadline is impossible for most and is asking Congress for a two-year extension. Interestingly, the United States won't begin issuing biometric passports until the end of 2005. Meanwhile New Zealand is in a position to meet the current deadline. "The Government took the decision so as not to inconvenience New Zealanders that it would be better to stay in the visa waiver programme," says Internal Affairs passport office manager David Philp. In light of the extension the department may review the start date, but is also likely to award the first biometric passport contract later this month. Philp declines to say how much the new passports will cost, but says New Zealanders will only need to get them when their current passports expire. "I think that when you improve the security of a document, people need to understand there will be an additional cost." A similar scheme in Britain indicates travellers could pay almost twice the price of a traditional passport. Philp says the New Zealand passport will employ the minimum standard set down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, or ICAO - namely a 32 kilobyte microchip embedded in a "polycarbonate" (plastic) page inserted in the book. The chip will contain the same information on the passport. Except that the photograph will be a digital image and, along with the biographical and issuing data, will be encrypted (scrambled) - requiring a special "key" to unlock and read the information. The "biometric" bit occurs at the border where the scrambled digital photo is sucked out of the chip via radio waves into a special reader. It's then computer processed to give a code or number representing the uniqueness of the visitor's face and compared with the biometric derived from another photo taken on the spot. If the two biometrics match, then you are who you say you are on your passport. Free to go, Number 19841016400042911666. Philp says while other countries may implement larger chips that can contain more information, New Zealand doesn't see the need. "We don't see any significant reason to put other data in there. We don't have any intention of collecting people's fingerprints or any other biometric for that matter." But biometric passports are just one aspect of the hi-tech arsenal now being levelled against the travelling public to combat the terrorist threat. Some of the most effective happen without their knowledge. New Zealand Customs chief financial officer John Kyne says while the department is looking at all the technology - facial recognition, iris and fingerprint scanning - no decisions have been made. He says Custom's main focus is on understanding people's travel intentions as early as possible - "so we can develop a picture of the travelling public - particularly those people who might pose a risk". How? By linking into airline booking systems and other border organisation databases and cross checking and matching that information. "We're applying some rules across certain pieces of information to try and extract the people whom we want to interact with." In other words "mining" data for irregularities and profiling the individuals that show up. New Zealand's part in what some privacy advocates are calling "the emergence of a global system of travel surveillance" begins with Immigration's advanced passenger screening solution. The $3 million system which costs about $2 million a year to run has been operational with five New Zealand carriers since August. It provides automatic verification at check-in that the traveller has all the necessary New Zealand visas. It can also give back the message "Do not board", stopping undesirables before they get on the plane. Or when they land. "Advanced information gets sent, advising us who is on the plane so we can do further profiling of those people while in flight," says Immigration chief information officer Rob Bolton. The system will be mandatory for all New Zealand carriers when the Border Security Bill, currently before parliament, is passed. But the swapping of information about passengers and the vast databases of information being built up - largely without people's knowledge or permission - are causing concern. Pressure group Privacy International, along with other privacy groups, has written to the UN-based ICAO calling on it to stop development work on biometric passports, which it says "will have disproportionate effects on privacy and civil liberties". The effects stem from abuse of the information held - by accidents or mistakes that become difficult to correct, or by corrupt officials in charge of the information. Or by governments using the information for other purposes - perhaps initially to control the travel arrangements of dissenters and protesters, and potentially those of entire populations. To which the most common reply is that law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear. But when law-abiding citizens need to be fingerprinted on their way to Disneyland, one can't help wondering whether the terrorists' greatest victory is not the destruction of the Twin Towers, but what we have now become. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Meshing costs, the price of RAH's battery
by Major Variola (ret) 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

At 07:06 PM 4/9/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: >RAH wrote... > >>At 10:43 AM -0700 4/9/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> >Meshnets (everyone's a router) is cool, admittedly. But are you going >> >to spend *your* battery life routing someone else's message? >> >>Only if they pay me cash > >Someone enlighten me here...I don't see this as obvious. I might certainly >be willing to pay to route someone else's message if I understand that to be >the real cost of mesh connectivity. One can run a P2P app from mains-powered home machine and incur only a minor bandwidth penalty, which you can possibly throttle when you're busy. But my understanding of *mobile* devices (where meshing matters) is that they are severely power constrained. To the extent that boozohol power cells and various semiconductor/logic tricks are being used, despite the difficulties they require. So, get a clue. When your battery runs out, you get *zero* benefit from the mesh. Or even your local device *sans network*. >Of course, the battery lifetime acts as the "weighting" factor here...if >only a small % of the traffic I'm routing belongs to me, then I may not be >so willing to route it if my battery lifetime is short. As battery time >lifetime increases however (though this sorely lags behind Moore's law) then >more and more people will be willing to route. The traffic-fraction and the extrapolation of Moore's 'law' are largely irrelevant for the next decade. In fact, given that standby usage will *decrease* relative to transmit usage only makes the relative proportions worse. I don't care if you use a picoamp on standby/listen, you'll still need a few milliwatts to forward a packet. Or more, if there are no nearby cooperative nodes. Sure, in the distant future, mobile power may so vastly dominate power usage that meshes become practical. (There's even positive feedback, the more meshnodes the less transmit power.) Meantime, uncompensated altruism is maladaptive. With something like soldier-radios, or smart dusts, meshes will happen sooner, since the Many eat the Few. For *your* cellphone, you have a *long* time to wait for it to be Rational to share your battery with randoms. In RAH's defense, mesh-everything is not necessary for the disintermediation, which he idiosyncratically calles 'geodesic' info flow, to have big effects. Neither is a geodesic (in any physical or otherwise meaningful sense) net important. Just cheaper info to more people. And that's been happening since before ponies carried dead trees with stamps. Re-reading RAH's "if they pay me enough" reply, it is also right that a price can be set on the wattage you've sherpa'ed, perhaps so that you can pay off your usage of said mesh by letting others use your batteries. And the micropayments will be feasible thanks to real cheap info + crypto, what RAH's undiagnosed brain tumor labels geodesic info flow. Perhaps the price of being a meshrouter to others will even depend on the wattage you have left. Your phone will negotiate with Fred's phone (has 10 Joules left but is 1000 m away) and Joe's (has 5 Joules but is 100 m away). But that's economics/physics applied to resource usage, nothing new, despite the neologisms and extrapolation.

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Re: Meshing costs, the price of RAH's battery
by Tyler Durden 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

"So, get a clue. When your battery runs out, you get *zero* benefit from the mesh. Or even your local device *sans network*." Well, as usual I don't think I'm understanding you here. In my example I'm imagining I'm a livery cab driver or something. In that case, instantaneous micro-traffic-conditions can be very valuable in NYC. In that environment, a cabbie will quickly understand that the network will collapse if all of the wireless nodes act to conserve power by not re-transmitting information. So even though it costs you something to route a packet you yourself will not use, if you're even reasonably smart you'll pass some on until you're nearing your batteries exhaustion, then perhaps go into a listening mode. (And of course, it may easily be possible to form spontaneous VLANs that deal only with traffic, and then only route those packets...but that doesn't change my argument any.) -TD >From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> >To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: Re: Meshing costs, the price of RAH's battery >Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 21:03:35 -0700 > >At 07:06 PM 4/9/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: > >RAH wrote... > > > >>At 10:43 AM -0700 4/9/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > >> >Meshnets (everyone's a router) is cool, admittedly. But are you >going > >> >to spend *your* battery life routing someone else's message? > >> > >>Only if they pay me cash > > > >Someone enlighten me here...I don't see this as obvious. I might >certainly > >be willing to pay to route someone else's message if I understand that >to be > >the real cost of mesh connectivity. > >One can run a P2P app from mains-powered home machine >and incur only a minor bandwidth penalty, which you can >possibly throttle when you're busy. But my >understanding of *mobile* devices (where meshing matters) is that they >are >severely power constrained. To the extent that >boozohol power cells and various semiconductor/logic >tricks are being used, despite the difficulties they require. > >So, get a clue. When your battery runs out, you >get *zero* benefit from the mesh. Or even your local >device *sans network*. > > >Of course, the battery lifetime acts as the "weighting" factor >here...if > >only a small % of the traffic I'm routing belongs to me, then I may not >be > >so willing to route it if my battery lifetime is short. As battery time > > >lifetime increases however (though this sorely lags behind Moore's law) >then > >more and more people will be willing to route. > >The traffic-fraction and the extrapolation of Moore's 'law' are largely >irrelevant >for the next decade. In fact, given that standby usage will *decrease* >relative >to transmit usage only makes the relative proportions worse. I don't >care if you use a picoamp on standby/listen, you'll still need a few >milliwatts to forward a packet. Or more, if there are no nearby >cooperative nodes. > >Sure, in the distant future, mobile power may so vastly dominate >power usage that meshes become practical. (There's even >positive feedback, the more meshnodes the less transmit power.) >Meantime, uncompensated altruism is maladaptive. > >With something like soldier-radios, or smart dusts, meshes will happen >sooner, since the >Many eat the Few. For *your* cellphone, you have a *long* time to wait >for it to be Rational to share your battery with randoms. > >In RAH's defense, mesh-everything is not necessary for the >disintermediation, >which he idiosyncratically calles 'geodesic' info flow, to have big >effects. >Neither is a geodesic (in any physical or otherwise meaningful sense) >net important. >Just cheaper info to more people. And that's been happening since >before >ponies carried dead trees with stamps. > >Re-reading RAH's "if they pay me enough" reply, it is also right that a >price can be set on the wattage you've sherpa'ed, perhaps so that you >can pay off your usage of said mesh >by letting others use your batteries. And the micropayments will be >feasible thanks to >real cheap info + crypto, what RAH's undiagnosed brain tumor labels >geodesic info flow. Perhaps the price of being a meshrouter to others >will >even depend on the wattage you have left. Your phone will negotiate >with Fred's phone (has 10 Joules left but is 1000 m away) and Joe's >(has 5 Joules but is 100 m away). > >But that's economics/physics applied to resource usage, nothing new, >despite the neologisms and extrapolation. > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ Watch LIVE baseball games on your computer with MLB.TV, included with MSN Premium! http://join.msn.com/?page=features/mlb&pgmarket=en-us/go/onm00200439ave/dir…

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Re: Meshing costs (Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies)
by Tyler Durden 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

RAH wrote... >At 10:43 AM -0700 4/9/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > >Meshnets (everyone's a router) is cool, admittedly. But are you going > >to spend *your* battery life routing someone else's message? > >Only if they pay me cash Someone enlighten me here...I don't see this as obvious. I might certainly be willing to pay to route someone else's message if I understand that to be the real cost of mesh connectivity. In other words, say I'm driving down the FDR receiving telemetry about the road conditions downtown of me by a few miles. If I'm a router, I'm also sending that info behind me (which is routing I'm paying for basically), but I will understand that the reason I am getting my telemetry is precisely because there's a string of "me's" in the cars in front of me, routing info down to me. If I insist on getting paid, so will they, and the whole thing breaks down. Actually, this reminds me of the prisoner's dilemma. I remember (I think) Hofstaedter doing an interesting analysis that showed that smart 'criminals' will eventually realize that it pays to cooperate, even if that doesn't optimise one's chances in this particular instance. Of course, the battery lifetime acts as the "weighting" factor here...if only a small % of the traffic I'm routing belongs to me, then I may not be so willing to route it if my battery lifetime is short. As battery time lifetime increases however (though this sorely lags behind Moore's law) then more and more people will be willing to route. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Tax headache? MSN Money provides relief with tax tips, tools, IRS forms and more! http://moneycentral.msn.com/tax/workshop/welcome.asp

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cryptography@metzdowd.com
by Major Variola (ret) 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

At 01:47 PM 4/9/04 -0400, Adam Fields wrote: >On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 12:46:47PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >> I'm a technophile. I've loved technology all my life. I'm also a >As the supposed experts, how do we get the idea out of people's heads >that making everything electronic and automated is somehow >intrinsically better, regardless of the actual risks and benefits of >doing so? Wait until the first fly-by-wire Airbus goes down because some doofus turned on his cell phone. (More a comp.risks answer, but I think it makes the point.)

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RE: Gmail as Blacknet (legally required forgetting)
by Major Variola (ret) 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

At 05:16 PM 4/9/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: >(As an aside, although debt has to be -forgiven- after 7 years, contrary to >popular belief it is not true that a debt has to be -forgotten-...I know of >one credit major card company that will not accept 'new' cardmembers that >didn't pay back what they owed, even if that's 15 years ago. That's actually >perfectly legal.) I don't know about your anecdote, but Mr. May's original point was that the law *requires* companies to forget. Which is of course an illegitimate intrusion of the state into private affairs. And the responsibles need killing. Ahhh, that feels better. ----- "When I was your age we didn't have Tim May! We had to be paranoid on our own! And we were grateful!" --Alan Olsen

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RE: voting
by Trei, Peter 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

"privacy" wrote: [good points about weaknesses in adversarial system deleted] > It's baffling that security experts today are clinging to the outmoded > and insecure paper voting systems of the past, where evidence of fraud, > error and incompetence is overwhelming. Cryptographic voting protocols > have been in development for 20 years, and there are dozens of proposals > in the literature with various characteristics in terms of scalability, > security and privacy. The votehere.net scheme uses advanced cryptographic > techniques including zero knowledge proofs and verifiable remixing, > the same method that might be used in next generation anonymous remailers. > Our anonymous corrospondent has not addressed the issues I raised in my initial post on the 7th: 1. The use of receipts which a voter takes from the voting place to 'verify' that their vote was correctly included in the total opens the way for voter coercion. 2. The proposed fix - a blizzard of decoy receipts - makes recounts based on the receipts impossible. > Given that so many jurisdictions are moving towards electronic voting > machines, this is a perfect opportunity to introduce mathematical > protections instead of relying so heavily on human beings. I would > encourage observers on these lists to familiarize themselves with the > cryptographic literature and the heavily technical protocol details > at http://www.votehere.com/documents.html before passing judgement on > these technologies. > Asking the readers of this list to 'familiarize themselves with the cryptographic literature', is, in many cases, a little like telling Tiger Woods that he needs to familiarize himself with the rules of golf. We know the 'advanced cryptographic techniques' you refer to. We also know what their limitations - what they can and cannot do. This is not the appropriate forum to try to say "trust me". Answer this: 1. How does this system prevent voter coercion, while still allowing receipt based recounts? Or do you have some mechanism by which I can personally verify every vote which went into the total, to make sure they are correct? 2. On what basis do you think the average voter should trust this system, seeing as it's based on mechanisms he or she cant personally verify? 3. What chain of events do I have to beleive to trust that the code which is running in the machine is actually and correctly derived from the source code I've audited? I refer you to Ken Thompsons classic paper "Reflections on trusting trust", as well as the recent Diebold debacle with uncertified patches being loaded into the machine at the last moment. This last is an important point - there is no way you can eliminate the requirement of election officials to behave legitimately. Since that requirement can't be done away with by technology, adding technology only adds more places the system can be compromised. Based on the tone of this letter, I'd hazard a guess that 'privacy' has a vested interest in VoteHere. If this true, it's a little odd that they are willing to expose their source code, but not their name. We don't bite, unless the victim deserves it :-) Opening your source is an admirable first step - why not step out of the shadows so we can help you make your system better? I fear a system which does not have a backup mechanism that the average voter can understand. While it's true that non-electronic systems are subject to compromise, so are electronic ones, regardless of their use of ZK proofs, or 'advanced cryptographic techniques". I do think electronic voting machines are coming, and a good thing. But they should be promoted on the basis that they are easier to use, and fairer in presentation, then are manual methods. Promoting them on the basis that they are more secure, and less subject to vote tampering is simply false. Peter Trei Cryptoengineer RSA Security Disclaimer: The above represents my personal opinions only.

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