INTERNET VOTING: THE GREAT SECURITY SCARE.

Hi Folks!

I have just posted a draft of my essay on the security of Internet voting. It can be secure! Here is the Abstract:

"This paper will present a social science paradigm for critically evaluating the security concerns most often expressed by opponents of Internet voting. In 2003, these concerns were so effectively expressed that they resulted in the US government ceasing all efforts to even experiment with voting from overseas via the new technology. However, when examined within a context of social scientific reasoning, the arguments that stopped the progress of Internet voting in the US appear as mere appeals to fear, bereft of rationality.

First, the problem of how to think about e-crime in general will be discussed. Secondly, the framework that emerges from that discussion will be applied to the arguments against Internet voting. The conclusion will suggest that Internet voting can be conducted with a degree of security similar to an online purchase, a million dollar bank transfer, or a secret military communication. As shown in the essay, the technology already exists, and has been honed over many years of use. While there are differences between the military uses of the Internet, e-commerce, and Internet voting, this paper will argue that the degree of security for each need not vary significantly."

As a progressive, I want to change our Big Money dominated election system.

Internet voting can be used to filter out the influence of rich contributors. It can make the elected representatives directly dependent upon the voters for their job.

I believe that Internet voting in US national elections is as inevitable now as the rise of the automobile was 100 years ago.

I have posted the draft on SSRN.com. It is available for free viewing or download at:

INTERNET VOTING: THE GREAT SECURITY SCARE
http://papers.ssrn.com/s....cfm?abstract_id=1420344

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
UCSB 1985

So far, not even Bill Gates has found a way to "secure" the internet. Aside from the unsolved security risks, internet voting puts voters at risk of coercion. Internet voting creates a barrier to voting for certain groups of voters. IV could disproportionately disenfranchise the the poor, the elderly, or those who are not technically savy. These groups would more easily vote at polling places or through voluntary absentee ballots. We saw that internet voting depressed turnout in Honolulu's first internet election. The turnout was only 6.3% which is a drop of 83%.

See Is Internet Voting Safe? Vote Here by former black hat hacker Kevin Poulsen, now senior editor of Wired News.

...Some individual counties have experimented with allowing online voting for overseas citizens, and the Pentagon considered its own system in 2004, before abandoning it because of security issues.

...Threat Level can imagine someone writing a bot that infects unpatched PCs en masse, watches for interactions with the voting website, then changes the votes in the PDF to whatever the malware writer wants. Reading and interpreting the ballot would require some skillful engineering, but no more than what hackers have already shown in breaking CAPTCHAs like peanut shells, among other things. Conficker’s author could code this in his sleep.

Speaking on the panel here, computer scientist Avi Rubin pointed out that phishing attacks could also lure voters onto a fake election website, where the black hats could have their way with the vote....

There are alot of black hat hackers whose exploits are never caught, or if caught, are caught long long after the fact.

Come on, Joyce, these are the same old anti-Internet voting formulas that people have been using for half a decade. You need to catch up on your reading. Internet voting is coming!

Why not read my paper and make an informed comment on it?

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Bing me!