Finnish e-voting system loses 2% of votes

[Penguin]

Yeehay. The PROPRIETARY (TietoEnator provided) system that hasnt been OPENLY AUDITED, dismissing demands by Electronic Frontier Finland, and DEFENDED by our GREEN PARTY Justice Minister Brax - in its first real life situation, loses 2% of cast votes. Fuck you. This was the first test - if, IF they go forward with this, I hope there will be pissed of people with EMP generators on polling day in 2 years.

This system is provided by TietoEnator, the software is SECRET, a TRADE SECRET, which has been reviewed by just a handful of EXPERTS, and EFFI was not allowed to review it because they REFUSED to sign an agreement that would have disallowed ANY DISCUSSION OF WHAT THEY FIND IN THE SOFTWARE.

Fuck you assholes. Paper ballots work just fine, and if you insist on cheating machines, I insist on citizen disobeyance and utilization of destruction of illegal vote stealing machines.

http://www.effi.org/blog/2008-10-28-fin ... -lost.html
"Finland piloted a fully electronic voting system in municipal elections last weekend. Due to a usability glitch, 232 votes, or about 2% of all electronic votes were lost. The results of the election may have been affected, because the seats in municipal assemblies are often decided by margins of a few votes. Unfortunately, nobody knows for sure, because the Ministry of Justice didn't see any need to implement a voter-verified paper record. The ministry was, of course, duly warned about a fully electronic voting system, but the critique was debunked as 'science fiction.' There is now discussion about re-arranging the affected elections. Thanks go to the voting system providers, Scytl and TietoEnator, for the experience.""
"

Note: Evoting was used in just 3 municipalities, as a test. Finland has a population of 5 million, and counting the votes usually takes a WHOPPING DAY using volunteers from ALL PARTIES, meaning that cheating would be prohibitively difficult.

[MacCruiskeen]

Finland has a population of 5 million, and counting the votes usually takes a WHOPPING DAY using volunteers from ALL PARTIES, meaning that cheating would be prohibitively difficult.

Time is money, hadn't you heard? In the US, election campaigns last A WHOPPING TWO YEARS, so it's understandable that they need the results within eight milliseconds.

[JackRiddler]

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EIGHT milliseconds? Are you mad, man? Do we live in the 13th century? Would you have accumulation pause on a dime during the six millisecond difference, risking trillions in growth? Think of the (name vulnerable group with high sympathy quotient here), you lout.

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[MacCruiskeen]

cheating would be prohibitively difficult.

That's why it's not prohibited. Cheating is another name for free private enterprise. (Are you a socialist or something? I believe the Finns can see Russia from where they live...)

Would you have accumulation pause on a dime during the six millisecond difference, risking trillions in growth?

I would have accumulation arrested, flogged and clapped in irons, sir. For I am (whisper it) a socialist.

(Think of the (name vulnerable group with high sympathy quotient here), you lout.)

Six point eight billion humans?

with high sympathy quotient

Oops, sorry. Then the animals. And I'm increasingly feeling sympathy with the plants, not to mention the water and the soil.

[JackRiddler]

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Another issue on which those who have common underlying cause as a democratic opposition to injustice and incipient tyranny conduct separate dialogues (generally positioned as "the left") as though they were in alternate realities, mutually unaware of each others' existence. What do I mean, you ask? Well, here's your black-box crowd talking about secret proprietary software in privately owned machines and demanding paper ballots with check-off boxes, which after all is justified based on the empirical evidence of e-fakery in 2000 and since; and there are your formal advocates of equal rights and social justice like the ACLU, thinking of the chaotic conditions that allowed conventional election stealing tactics in 2000, therefore suing election boards to implement efficient touch-screens with large print and audio help for the disabled in the (falsely imputed) spirit of HAVA. The latter especially blind to any factor that might justify paranoia and thus look bad in PR terms. The simple solution of paper ballots with double the compensated and trained poll workers from all parties to help smooth the voting and counting process along being too hard to "fund."

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[MacCruiskeen]

The latter especially blind to any factor that might justify paranoia and thus look bad in PR terms.

This crippling fear of being called a "conspiracy theorist"! I really think it's impossible to exaggerate the damage that term has done to left thinking, or to underestimate its usefulness to the ruling class. It's Thoughtstopper Number One. Even the most critical of writers are terrified of the imputation that they suspect our governments of plotting against the people in secret. Yet that italicised phrase is practically a definition of government today, at least in large nation-states under capitalism. (And it's certainly a definition of business.)

Again and again, you see good journalists flinching away from the consequences of what they themselves have just written. Fisk and Monbiot, for example. Or the guy who wrote that recent article about insider trading and the FOIA Act.

[Penguin]

Luckily Im not a consprinklancy theorisht.
Im just an open source advocate and a nerd who doesnt know how to code in much else but TI-80 Basic, and Bash scripts
And one who has the basic knowledge of what all can go wrong by just mishap, and how hugely more can go wrong by even minor malice, when electronics and software are involved...And one who is politically somewhat active too. So far, we have quite honest elections, even thou people still vote for idiots, but that could quickly change with such new spanking technologies.

Theres nothing wrong with a large number inside a circle, written with a pen of your choice. Then dropped into a box, and then counted by the regular people, with anyone wanting to supervise, allowed to do so. No need to introduce any more variables to this. (I can see how there could be problems if there were just 2 major parties..... ahem)

[RocketMan]

I became aware of the "trial" e-voting two days before the election. It certainly seems fishy and the Finnish justice minister has made some ostensibly naive noises about how it would demand an implausibly wide conspiracy in order to rig the e-vote. I'm seriously taking action if this thing goes forward in Finland.

[Penguin]

We can get together for some demonstrating action then, RocketMan...
I joined EFFI already around the "child porn censorship" and Matti Nikki thing with Police and ISPs...

[MacCruiskeen]

The bastards are trying to sneak them in here in Germany too:

27.10.2008

Electronic Voting Machines Leave Room For Manipulations, Warns Europe's Biggest Hacker Group

Electronic voting machines used for the U.S. presidential election on November 4 are easy to manipulate and pose major security risks, warns Europe's largest hacker group. "The electronic voting machines by all manufacturers still have major security gaps," Constanze Kurz, spokeswoman for German-based Chaos Computer Club (CCC), told AFP.

According to Kurz, paperless voting machines, i.e., systems that don't record the results on paper as well, are especially problematic since neither voters, nor the election commissions have a reliable way of controlling the outcome. It is to be feared that the election result announced in the U.S. "hardly reflects the true intention of voters," Kurz said.

The security gaps affect both the hard- and software of voting machines, Kurz, who is writing her Ph.D. thesis on voting machines, told AFP. Memory cards, whose data is distorted when uploaded to the central election computer, are one example of the problems facing electronic voting machines, according to Kurz.

The spokeswoman for Chaos Computer Club criticized the manufacturers of voting machines who normally oppose the disclosure of their concepts and thus "give the trade secret a higher priority than the demand for transparent elections." She expressed the hope that electronic election machines could be phased out by the next presidential election in 2012, due to increasing public criticism and a looming lack of trust for politicians. Until then, however, manipulations are possible, said Kurz.

One of the goals of the Chaos Computer Club is to expose security risks to the public, not just in Europe, but internationally. Most recently, it has acquired and published the fingerprint of German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to protest against the use of biometric data in German passports.

Michael Knigge 27.10.2008, 21:39

1 Comment


Hi Michael,

I certainly agree with Constanze. Even if the machines were secure, it is absolutely insane to have an unauditable voting process. I can't understand how this happened. Whatever the 'black box' says will determine who is President. There is no trace of the voters' original intent--just the bare fact of the computers' memory registers. It's like believing in magic.

When you add to that the possibility of manipulation, it's even worse.
Remember, in the US, our State voter registrars and Secretaries of State are often committed party people themselves--they have ample motivation to cheat. In Ohio, in 2004, the fellow (Ken Blackwell) who directed the voting process was also the Chairman of the Bush-Cheney effort in Ohio! There were numerous irregularities in this decisive election, all favoring Bush-Cheney and delivering them the White House.

At the least, we need an auditable voting process. At best, we should have non-partisan voter registrars.

http://blogs.dw-world.de/acrossthepond/ ... .7275.html

Penguin & Rocket Man, if you're computer nerds (and even if you're not), CCC might well be worth getting in touch with. (I love the way they acquired Schäuble's fingerprints.)

[Penguin]

Ive read of their stunts before, and they are the kind of hackers that are dear to me. Cant say to be one myself, I lack the enthusiasm for all things that click and whirr and give a zap and send morse code...A high five to all you phone phreaks, hardware hackers and modders, radio amateurs and home solder iron owners - you are the gist of what "to tinker is to know" means. And without you guys, wed have a bloody corporate internet already instead of a bastardised freewheeling kinda operation being desperately reined in by said absolutists. I count in your bunch many of the people who say that code is like thought or air - its meant to be shared and circulated or its not much use at all in living. And those guys who agree and say that the same ideas should be applied to all politics, society, arts and work too. You can dream, can you, even if you liked the glow of a tv set and the blink of the cursor ever since you just learned to walk

And with that mindset, usually comes a kind of Thoreau-type freedom of thought from conventions - to see how stuff can be made and broken and used in ways never intended or realized - or simply by using the old game of trust and social interaction to gain the same access - people like computers authenticate with trusted credentials, be it a workers vest, a work buddys name, a guessed password or using a two year old security vulnerability in your web browser...

[Penguin]

[MacCruiskeen]

This is very good:

Diebold in Florida - "I Saw It Hacked"

Susan Pynchon, in Counterpunch, January 23, 2006:

I was one of ten people present at the "hack" of the Leon County, Florida voting system, which took place on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 around 4:30 in the afternoon at the county elections warehouse. Leon County's voting system is the Diebold Accu-Vote OS 1.94w (optical scan). The Leon County Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, authorized a "test" of his Diebold voting system to see if election results could be altered using only a memory card. Harri Hursti, a computer programmer from Finland facilitated the test, and it has come to be known as the "Harri Hursti Hack."

[...]

And there, on the central tabulator screen, appeared the altered results: Seven "Yes" votes and one "No" vote, with absolutely no evidence that anything had been altered.

It was a powerful moment and, I will admit, it had the unexpected result for me personally of causing me to break down and cry. Why did I cry? It was the last thing I thought I would do, but it happened for so many reasons. I cried because it was so clear that Diebold had been lying. I cried because there was proof, before my very eyes, that these machines were every bit as bad as we all had feared. I cried because we have been so unjustly attacked as "conspiracy theorists" and "technophobes" when Diebold knew full well that its voting system could alter election results. More than that, that Diebold planned to have a voting system that could alter results. And I cried because it suddenly hit me, like a Mack truck, that this was proof positive that our democracy is and has been, as we have all feared, truly at the mercy of unscrupulous vendors who are producing electronic voting machines that can change election results without detection.

Beyond this, however, what is the real significance of the "Harri Hursti hack?" There are several answers to that question...

Link

Rocket Man and Penguin, is Harry Hursti well-known in Finland? Sounds to me like he should be a celebrity.

[RocketMan]

Yes, he is.

[MacCruiskeen]

Glad to hear it, RM.