Ut Humiliter Opinor

From Martin McKeay’s Network Security Blog: Do you still trust electronic voting machines. Martin points to a recent entry at Brad Blog which is just frightening.

Now we get an insider’s view of the Diebold machines, and it’s not encouraging. An undocumented backdoor exists in the program that allows the modification of voting results, and it doesn’t appear to be a way to detect the modification. Why wasn’t this enough, by itself, to cause the electronic voting machines to be pulled?

It should be enough. If, as Brad Blog suggests, this backdoor was known, then Diebold will lose a lot of credibility. Looking at Brad Blog, I don’t agree with a lot of his politics, but that’s irrelevant when we’re talking about the security of our vote being controlled/manipulated by parties unknown.

Paranoid? Maybe. However, unlike Florida, there’s no paper trail, no hanging chad - just bits and bytes of data begging to be manipulated. Do you really want to trust Diebold and the federal government to somehow “fix this”?

A paper trail is a must in an election.

Tonight I saw this really fun commercial for IBM on their biometric Thinkpad. The commercial was really creative and got a chuckle from me - and should from anyone who grew up in the 70s. Click on this link and watch the one called “Biometrically secured wireless”.

Microsoft announced today that their next operating system (previously codenamed “Longhorn”) would be called “Windows Vista”.

Vista?

The common definition is sweeping view. To me, though, vista has a different meaning, and it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. In my younger days my parents owned an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser:

(courtesy: Vista Cruisers & Cutlass Wagons)

Somehow, I’m going to have a hard time getting this picture out of my head. On the positive, side, though, it’s better than burnt orange.

Is this really the best they could come up with?