To be fair, of course, although bug reports show voting software testing
is mind-bogglingly lax, all any software testing process can do is find
problems that testers know to look for and report honestly. There are
countless billions of internal states within all but the simplest of
programs. Both practically and theoretically, it is impossible through
testing to determine that any computer system has no flaws - much less, to
rule out the existence of secret backdoor functions to be triggered on a
future date. (This is no science fiction; see
htttp://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/BBVreportIIunredacted.pdf ).
Voting software is software distributed through use of software, vouched
for by other software, that itself vouches for other software. Surely
nothing can possibly go wrong with such a system.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_bruce_o__061025_pull_the_plug_on_e_v.htm
In one classic paper Ken Thompson, the recipient of an award from the
Association of Computing Machinery, Reflections on Trusting Trust,
concluded:
The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create
yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No
amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using
untrusted code. In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I
picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling
program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the
level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect.
A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect.
And Howard Strauss, Director of Advanced Computer Applications at Princeton
University says:
"When it comes to computerized elections, there are no safeguards. It's
not a door without locks; it's a house without doors."
Apart from the possibility of e-fraud, Bev Harris and others are known to be
concerned about the possibility of vote-counting machinery being linked into
national databases. In this connection it is interesting that, after the
(entirely predictable) faisco of postal voting in Birmingham and elsewhere,
Tony Blair is known to have promoted ID cards as a solution to problems of
his own making.
For this and many other reasons the introduction of electronic machinery in
Scotland should be seen as part of an overall Statist coup against the
people being carried out also in England and Wales, where more and more
e-pilots are being introduced, and across the world (e.g. massive evidence
of pro-corporate computer fraud in Mexico
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2010.html ). Activist pressure has
recently led to some belated tightening of the line against e-technology in
elections on behalf of the Electoral Reform Society, whose favoured option
of STV is complex to count and hence the Society may well be thought to have
a special responsibility to see that the introduction of its favoured system
is not used as an excuse to foist corporate e-technology on us all. See
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/Electronic%20voting%20POLICY.pdf
where the ERS concludes that 'the use of internet, text message and
telephone voting seriously compromises the security of an election', but
fails to come out against e-counting, nor does it apply its critique to use
of internet, etc in 'private' elections, such as its cash-cow, ERServices
Ltd, makes millions a year from running.
Conclusion:
The coming weeks provides a unique window of opportunity for people in
Scotland to declare our independence from the blue pill matrix 'reality'
where if something (like global frame-ups, or computer-aided coups) isn't
talked about in the posh papers and on the TV news reviews then it can't be
happening. A time to recover our cultural traditions of wary scepticism. Its
time - as they say - to take the red pill and to declare not that we know
that one party definitely was cheated from a more comprehensive victory on
May 3rd, but that we can't know that that didn't happen and that moreover we
are entitled to a country in which we can be sure that any such electoral
swindling doesn not and cannot ever happen.
Alex Salmond must be supported and held to his pledge of a full Independent
Inquiry into the election, not just one conducted internally by the
Electoral Commission, a government appointed 'independent' quango which in
Scotland has prominent ex-Cosla ex-Scottish Labour figures on board, and
which in the UK has consistently worked to implement the broad e-tech
friendly thrust of the New Labour project. All of us who are awakening to a
world outside the Anglo-American bubble must unite to insist that the terms
of reference of the Inquiry must include looking into not just postal votes
and the designs of the ballot papers, but the whole question of electronic
counting machines (not just their 'glitches' and 'delays' , or cost, etc).
Keith Mothersson
Member of ERS (personal capaicity)
keith[dot]mothersson{at]phonecoop[dot]coop
www.keith-mothersson.co.uk
This draft: May 7th, 2007
[PS In Ohio they tried to stave off criticism with random recounts, only
these were weren't random but the 'randomly chosen' ones had been prechosen
and thus were relatively clean. ]
is mind-bogglingly lax, all any software testing process can do is find
problems that testers know to look for and report honestly. There are
countless billions of internal states within all but the simplest of
programs. Both practically and theoretically, it is impossible through
testing to determine that any computer system has no flaws - much less, to
rule out the existence of secret backdoor functions to be triggered on a
future date. (This is no science fiction; see
htttp://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/BBVreportIIunredacted.pdf ).
Voting software is software distributed through use of software, vouched
for by other software, that itself vouches for other software. Surely
nothing can possibly go wrong with such a system.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_bruce_o__061025_pull_the_plug_on_e_v.htm
In one classic paper Ken Thompson, the recipient of an award from the
Association of Computing Machinery, Reflections on Trusting Trust,
concluded:
The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create
yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No
amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using
untrusted code. In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I
picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling
program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the
level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect.
A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect.
And Howard Strauss, Director of Advanced Computer Applications at Princeton
University says:
"When it comes to computerized elections, there are no safeguards. It's
not a door without locks; it's a house without doors."
Apart from the possibility of e-fraud, Bev Harris and others are known to be
concerned about the possibility of vote-counting machinery being linked into
national databases. In this connection it is interesting that, after the
(entirely predictable) faisco of postal voting in Birmingham and elsewhere,
Tony Blair is known to have promoted ID cards as a solution to problems of
his own making.
For this and many other reasons the introduction of electronic machinery in
Scotland should be seen as part of an overall Statist coup against the
people being carried out also in England and Wales, where more and more
e-pilots are being introduced, and across the world (e.g. massive evidence
of pro-corporate computer fraud in Mexico
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2010.html ). Activist pressure has
recently led to some belated tightening of the line against e-technology in
elections on behalf of the Electoral Reform Society, whose favoured option
of STV is complex to count and hence the Society may well be thought to have
a special responsibility to see that the introduction of its favoured system
is not used as an excuse to foist corporate e-technology on us all. See
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/Electronic%20voting%20POLICY.pdf
where the ERS concludes that 'the use of internet, text message and
telephone voting seriously compromises the security of an election', but
fails to come out against e-counting, nor does it apply its critique to use
of internet, etc in 'private' elections, such as its cash-cow, ERServices
Ltd, makes millions a year from running.
Conclusion:
The coming weeks provides a unique window of opportunity for people in
Scotland to declare our independence from the blue pill matrix 'reality'
where if something (like global frame-ups, or computer-aided coups) isn't
talked about in the posh papers and on the TV news reviews then it can't be
happening. A time to recover our cultural traditions of wary scepticism. Its
time - as they say - to take the red pill and to declare not that we know
that one party definitely was cheated from a more comprehensive victory on
May 3rd, but that we can't know that that didn't happen and that moreover we
are entitled to a country in which we can be sure that any such electoral
swindling doesn not and cannot ever happen.
Alex Salmond must be supported and held to his pledge of a full Independent
Inquiry into the election, not just one conducted internally by the
Electoral Commission, a government appointed 'independent' quango which in
Scotland has prominent ex-Cosla ex-Scottish Labour figures on board, and
which in the UK has consistently worked to implement the broad e-tech
friendly thrust of the New Labour project. All of us who are awakening to a
world outside the Anglo-American bubble must unite to insist that the terms
of reference of the Inquiry must include looking into not just postal votes
and the designs of the ballot papers, but the whole question of electronic
counting machines (not just their 'glitches' and 'delays' , or cost, etc).
Keith Mothersson
Member of ERS (personal capaicity)
keith[dot]mothersson{at]phonecoop[dot]coop
www.keith-mothersson.co.uk
This draft: May 7th, 2007
[PS In Ohio they tried to stave off criticism with random recounts, only
these were weren't random but the 'randomly chosen' ones had been prechosen
and thus were relatively clean. ]
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