Buenos Aires Censors and Raids the Technologists Fixing Its E-Voting System

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/buenos-aires-censors-and-raids-technologists-fixing-its-flawed-e-voting-system

by DiabloD3 • 11 years ago

143 76 11 years ago

quibit• 11 years ago

So they put a paper ballot with an RFID chip inside into a machine which then puts your vote into the chip, then you drop the ballot into a box? How is this any different from a regular paper ballot?

de_Selby• 11 years ago

I guess it would be easier to automate the counting. Still seems an odd solution though.

demian4• 11 years ago

And even that's not happening.

The machine also prints the vote on the ballot, and because of the known bugs in the system people are still counting them by hand.

lucio• 11 years ago

This: http://www.laizquierdadiario.com/IMG/arton15789.jpg vs this: http://ondabaires.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Voto-ele...

pmouzo• 11 years ago

One of the problems in Argentina's elections is that volunteers of political parties steal the ballots of smaller parties from the voting room, and since these small parties don't have the man power or monetary resources to restock the ballots, they lose votes. A better solution would be single paper ballot, but the ruling parties don't want this because they are who benefit for the current system.

That said, this system prevents chain voting (a mechanism to make sure the votes that parties buy from low-income people are not changed).

demian4• 11 years ago

This is first and foremost a PR stunt by the BA City's goverment to push a goverment "innovation" bullet point.

mahouse• 11 years ago

As anything the EFF writes, this article is heavily biased. There is a huge difference between "technologists fixing a voting system" and "technologists irresponsibly leaking the source code and private certs of a voting system"

wslh2• 11 years ago

That's true but the local government and the company were terrible in how they handled the issues. Even the University of Buenos Aires who did the security review couldn't find basic issues.

llazzaro• 11 years ago

UBA did not review the security. however the security issues were so obvious that it seems strange that they say nothing

eis• 11 years ago

I don't agree with publishing the private certs but if anything ever ought to be open source, then it's a public voting system.

If we can't have complete transparency and confidence in voting systems we might as well just give up.

demian4• 11 years ago

I don't agree about publishing the certs, but that's not the main issue.

The main issue was a security flaw that allowed somebody to directly download the SSL certs of the voting system from an URL.

emergentcypher• 11 years ago

Irresponsibly? If this vulnerability exists to download the certs, it should be assumed that somebody else has already downloaded them. Thus, it should be assumed that the voting system is already compromised. Its use should be immediately halted.

Voting systems are sacrosanct.

frandroid• 11 years ago

Wow, advocacy organization that supports freedom of speech and democracy writes about freedom of speech and proper use of electoral systems. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.

harry82• 11 years ago

Covering up the ability to manipulate an election is irresponsible.

Disclosing an election can be rigged with all the supporting evidence is your absolute duty. Doing anything else is not just irresponsbile, it's morally evil.

Covering it up by not disclosing is the action of someone who is LITERALLY an enemy of democracy and freedom.

coldcode• 11 years ago

Any e-voting system that is not entirely open for inspection is inherently open to alteration. Of course if the intent is to allow the existing political leadership to manipulate the results in their favor it is working as intended.

yummyfajitas2• 11 years ago

Any paper voting system that is not entirely open for inspection is inherently open to alteration. Software systems are hardly unique in this respect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJfj9ySYg0Q

danmaz742• 11 years ago

The difference is that making paper voting systems entirely open for inspection is inherently much easier than doing the same for an electronic voting system. Especially for non-experts in engineering and cryptography, that is, like, 99.9% of the population.

Lawtonfogle• 11 years ago

Electronic systems make manipulation data on a small scale harder but on a large scale easier. A large scale attempt to alter paper ballots is far harder to keep under wraps just because of there being more people involved.

pvdebbe2• 11 years ago

I'm just thinking, this e-voting fad will make it really easy for the modern-time hitlers and stalins.

halviti• 11 years ago

e-voting does not necessarily mean "100% digital"

it's a relatively trivial matter to use a printer attached to a voting machine to create a paper-trail.

even something like "choose your candidate, get a receipt, verify it yourself, and put it in the box"

the election results would be instantaneous, and the paper trail would still exist for irregularities.

pvdebbe2• 11 years ago

Agreed -- when done right, it's very secure.

But pretty much all the software suffers from shortcuts one after another, ridden with bugs and backdoors. Someone will most certainly get to exploit the state of affairs before these systems are solid enough for good.

CyberDildonics3• 11 years ago

Only if it continues to be done wrong. A cryptographically open voting system with private keys would be much more difficult to rig.

snuxoll3• 11 years ago

Public key cryptography in my eyes is the only proper way to do electronic voting, but it has a severe cost - the lack of secrecy. As anyone knows, the lack of secrecy comes with even more severe ramifications, the purchase of votes, pressure from friends/family/employers, the potential to be arrested in a fascist government, the list goes on.

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

We're at least decades away from making secure digital voting (if something like that is ever going to be possible). I also believe it will be somehow based on blockchain technology that can't be easily altered to fraud the votes. We mainly need to do authentication in a secure way that can't be spoofed or hacked (easily).

rm_-rf_slash• 11 years ago

So is arresting people who charitably disclose vulnerabilities gonna be a thing now? I find it hard to believe any society fifty years from now is going to effectively function by shooting itself in the foot to prove how much blood it doesn't need.

tomjen3• 11 years ago

Well this is a pretty unique opportunity - if they can keep their mouths shut they can just elect a better government.

marcosdumay• 11 years ago

Did they get a way to insert new candidates into the system?

pjc50• 11 years ago

It's been a thing for a long while, including in the US and Europe.

But this is Argentina. The vulnerabilities were most likely put there deliberately by the security services, of course they don't want them exposed.

iwwr• 11 years ago

This is not a unique thing for that country and current government. It's illegal to challenge the validity of government-provided statistics and even the "Big Mac Index" is manipulated by forcing McD to sell something called "Big Mac" at a lower price. Basically, the IMF and other institutions were using unofficial data to make their estimates since the official data was so obviously bogus. The government responded by cracking down on those reporting the unofficial data. (As an aside, Argentina is also selling inflation-adjusted bonds, so it kind of makes sense to promote large underestimations of that number).

So when the government put forward a voting machine, it became illegal to question the validity of its workings.

edko• 11 years ago

"This is not a unique thing for that country and current government". The city's government and the Nation's government are from opposing parties. This shows that they are both just as corrupt. "This is not a unique thing for that country" (alone) would have been more accurate.

bernawil3• 11 years ago

There're some big oversimplifications there.

1. It's not illegal to "challenge" goverment statistics, everybody does it: private agencies do it, provincial goverments challenge the federeal goverment's stats, etc. Some official said some time ago they'd prosecute some agencies that provided statistics but nothing happend.

2. Goverment kind of "forced" (and not really directly) many companies to leave the price of some products fixed amidst inflation and devaluation, so Big Mc were pretty cheap for a while (that's been over since like 1.5 years).

3. The goverment didn't really crack private agencies from reporting data, they kind of tried and the courts didn't follow. There are lots of agencies reporting inflantion, just check it up.

4. Yes, they fixed the inflation data to fix the inflation-tied bonds (look for "cupon pbi"). But argentina isn't "selling those bonds". Those bonds where issued to funds after the 2002 default, it's a little messy but most funds like these have been nationalized by now, the only people who trade those bonds now are high risk gamblers.

gosukiwi• 11 years ago

Beeing from Argentina, this sadly does not surprise me.

rebootthesystem2• 11 years ago

Sad yet not surprising. Argentina, sadly, continues to devolve into a complete joke of a country. I lived there for over ten years. I love the people and the beauty of the country. However, Argentinians seem to suffer from a cancer that causes them to be easily manipulated into voting the absolute worst politicians into power. These politicians proceed to rape and pillage the country and make a circus out of the whole thing. When you can watch this from the outside and see it for what it is It is down-right sickening. You want to yell: Wake the fuck up! Will they for the upcoming elections? If history is any indication, no, they'll vote in the same pandering socialists criminals who seem to always be able to convince the masses money will rain from the sky. And nothing will change.

What's even worst is to see the parallels between what happens in Argentina and the US political system only to see Americans fall prey to some of the same sick politics and not see the reality of what politicians are doing to us. That's another topic.

wslh2• 11 years ago

convince the masses money will rain from the sky.

Indeed, the money rains from the sky to a lot of people. This is basic clientelism and works very well for the politicians.

cag_ii• 11 years ago

... manipulated into voting the absolute worst politicians ...

I've never really followed an Argentine election closely, but I'm curious is they have options. In other words, Is there often a significantly better political representative that is overlooked, or is it more of a "lesser of all evils" situation?

rebootthesystem2• 11 years ago

The culture of crime and corruption in politics has such deep roots that it is hard to answer your question. Not sure. I mean, people quite literally get arrested, attacked, destroyed and even killed for opposing the powerful forces at the top. It's a slow motion tragedy being played out for the world to see.

a_c_s2• 11 years ago

The best thing about paper ballots is their simplicity: even children can understand how to count and monitor them. Nearly any citizen has the skills to participate and to spot fraud.

In comparison only a small percentage of the populace understands programming, fewer still would be able to write a secure voting system and fewer still would be able to debug such a voting system (code is harder to debug than to write).

Given the above and the high stakes of government elections I think we have yet to find a technology superior to simple paper ballots.

slapshot• 11 years ago

even children can understand how to count and monitor them

Except they have no error correction and admit ambiguity as to a voter's intent. That's all great and theoretical, but the inability of some voters in 2000 in Florida to fully punch a paper ballot led to a recount that under some scenarios would have led to President Al Gore rather than President George W. Bush.

Maybe the occasional hanging chad is worth the other positive attributes of paper, but don't write off all the advantages of an electronic system (error correct, instant results, etc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

harry82• 11 years ago

With the utmost respect, you can screw up anything. The florida voting paper and damn hole punching was and remains utterly crazy. Obviously so to the overwhelming majority of people in a way that anything electronic isn't and will never be.

"This is really bad form design, look at this layout" - she said pointing to the piece of paper she was holding. Most people can assess the merit of that argument, and in the case of Florida, have done so in a reasonable manner - whatever their conclusion.

"This is a bad electronic system" - 99% of people have to trust an authority to even begin to form a view on that which makes disinformation and propaganda of the usual kind, ie advertising and lobbying, more effective than it deserves to be based on merit alone. Now that's fine for soda purchases but not good enough to trust your democracy to.

specialist4• 11 years ago

the inability of some voters in 2000 in Florida to fully punch a paper ballot

Blame the user?

The fault lies with the election administrator who had not followed procedures and properly cleared the voting machines of chads from prior elections.

don't write off all the advantages of an electronic system (error correct, instant results, etc)

None of which are true. The sole advantage to electronic voting systems is to expedite the transfer of public monies to cronies. Well, a second advantage is to obfuscate the whole process.

fapjacks2• 11 years ago

This is an incredibly salient point, because the conspiracy theorist in me screams that it was intentional in order to sway public opinion in favor of electronic voting machines, in order to let Them fix elections. I truly believe the whole scheme of electronic voting is intended to defraud the public of their right to vote.

a_c_s2• 11 years ago

You can simply and easily do instant results by using an optical scan voting system: ballots are scanned as they are submitted by the voter to the ballot box.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_scan_voting_system

nosuchthing2• 11 years ago

Why not both — several copies of paper receipts can be provided with serial numbers. One goes to the voter, the others would go to the vote counters.

Digital can be used for a quick count, if there are any questions or need for verification the paper trail is there.

*Archival quality, not thermal paper.

dublinben• 11 years ago

One of the most fundamental requirements of the ballot is secrecy. If you are provided with a receipt, you can be coerced to demonstrate that you have voted a certain way.

bernawil3• 11 years ago

These article refers to 2 vulnerabilities showed.

1. The ssl certificates for the transmission of vote counts where leaked.

2. PAPER ballots, which have an rfid chip to HELP the automatic vote counting could be used to duplicate a PAPER ballot.

I don't know about point 1, and I'd like someone with experience in that to check it up, but point 2 is just not an issue.

This is because this isn't really electronic voting, this is an electronic assisted paper ballot. It's just a paper ballot which is printed with the help of a touchscreen. People are supposed to check each ballot in each voting table, but know they have rfid readers to make it faster. When they read a ballot as containing a double vote they just declare it invalid. Also, vote numbers must be equal to the amount of people that voted, you just can't duplicate votes.

_lce0• 11 years ago

This is wrong. And I have read this argument so many times. This needs to stop.

1. First, a "white vote" is just an empty ballot

Nothing prevents the card being printed later, and used as if you voted in the first place.

2. there's no way to void your ballot.

You are supposed to write "void" in the card, but nothing prevents the authorities from reading from the chip, or worst writing down "void" to your non-void ballot.

3. The chip can hold multiple votes

Which the software will count, but will raise no warning whatsoever.

Also, in the case of a difference between the chip counter and the paper count, which one should be trust?

Should we throw away the entire table? if so, then a simple vote could then nullify the entire table

rwallace4• 11 years ago

The push to e-voting actually surprises me - if it was just one country, I'd write it off as just one of those things, but the fact that it keeps happening in country after country. Generally speaking, most human behaviour can be explained by assuming that people value status and power above all other things. So you can expect those in power to try to keep that power.

But e-voting surely does the reverse: it throws open the playing field, putting power up for grabs to whoever can hack the system, with no way to predict who that will end up being. So why do those currently in power want that to happen? (Not a rhetorical question: I'm actually curious about the answer.)

evook2• 11 years ago

There is no thing such as an unexpected outcome by e-voting for those in power.

rwallace4• 11 years ago

How not? Sure, the people who ordered the system installed might have planned to arrange a hack themselves, but once it's in place, anyone can hack it.

rinon• 11 years ago

Probably because politicians seem to think that these systems are perfectly secure.

rwallace4• 11 years ago

But why? Usually when people believe untrue things despite being informed otherwise, it's because at some level they see social status in it. Is there any status to be gained by claiming e-voting to be secure?

galago• 11 years ago

I like how this can be read both ways. It could mean that the system is 'secure' in providing an accurate tally of voter intentions, or that it is 'secure' in assuring the desired outcome for whoever is in control. The latter possibility makes more sense to me.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

One form of hacking or another, prevention must occur in both types. Old school is busing people you want to vote a certain way to the booths and leaving others behind, having some vote at multiple stations, even through absentee votes for people who you know won't vote or cannot; the dead being an example.

I would say than an effective electronic system would need to be open from code to monitoring. There is no reason to have the voting machines nor machines which accumulate the vote to be connected to any external network.

You have to start trusting somewhere.

specialist4• 11 years ago

You have to start trusting somewhere.

Sorry, I'm fresh out of trust. I made the mistake of learning the mechanics of election administration.

The only "trust worthy" system is one based on mutual distrust. If two or more belligerents (aspirants) agree to the final count, then it's probably satisfactory.

specialist4• 11 years ago

Follow the money. All the new voting systems are about enriching cronies at public expense.

Now that HAVA's touch screen fiasco has played out, the next big push is for vote by mail (postal balloting) requiring all new gear and enabling exciting new business models.

That these new systems are unverified, unreliable, and easy to subvert (undetectably) is just a happy side effect.

robertnealan• 11 years ago

Has nobody created an open-source, non-tamperable e-voting platform yet (could give the blockchain a solid purpose)? It seems like something that would make for a great project - a voting system for the people by the people.

abecedarius• 11 years ago

http://zesty.ca/voting/ was a nice start.

Buenos Aires Censors and Raids the Technologists Fixing Its E-Voting System

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