3 ms·

That is just an idiotic idea, especially the voting part.

markdown 10y ago
Wonderful. A downvote and a "that's stupid" comment. Is there a reason you can't articulate your views on a system that is live and working successfully?
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  I can, and it isn't. It cannot be. First of all, I wrote above you in this thread, regarding smart cards for government ID: > That's not really a good solution either, though, because that requires trust in an essentially unverifiable system and the entity producing it. So, maybe you want to address that instead of just pointing out that people are in fact using a system that obviously has this problem that I already mentioned. As for why electronic voting or electronic counting of votes is a terrible idea (I would have thought everyone on here knows that by now): It's impossible to audit. Elections are the failsafe of a democracy that has to be able to remove a government from power that tries to prevent being removed, and they are about the control of huge amounts of recources. Therefore, you cannot have trust in a small minority as the basis for its reliability, you have to have a system that is very hard to corrupt even by the government. A government server counting votes is the exact opposite of that. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI The fact that, so far, noone has seen any problems is completely missing the point. First of all, the whole system is set up such that it's really difficult to find out if something went wrong/was manipulated (that's just the nature of electronic voting). Secondly, most elections aren't all that problematic. In times of peace and prosperity, there usually isn't much contention over the results of an election. What makes a voting system good is when it's able to stay reliable and trusted in times of political unrest.
  - markdown 10y ago
    Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to explain your view. Further, I concede that you are correct as far as voting goes. That doesn't mean the card is useless. It serves other purposes quite well, even if imperfectly.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
      Well, but does it? How do you know? Voting obviously is the biggest problem, but other uses have similar problems. Especially in terms of how you could ever figure out if it's actually not working well. You say that it serves other purposes quite well--how do you actually know that? Is it just because noone has demonstrated yet that, I dunno, the smartcards have a backdoor that is actively being used to sign stuff in other people's names? How would you know if that were the case? How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign some document when they ask you to explain how it comes that their computer tells them that you signed it?
      - markdown 10y ago
        > How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign some document when they ask you to explain how it comes that their computer tells them that you signed it? How would you convince a judge that someone was holding a gun to your head as you signed a document? How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign something when they ask you to explain how it comes that the signature on the document matches yours exactly?
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
        The thing is that both of those scenarios are things judges can be expected to understand perfectly well, and have some clue how to approach evaluating the claim, and also, in both cases, there generally is a reasonable risk that any such attempts leave some form of evidence, deterring people from even trying it. With a smartcard, there is nothing of that sort. It's just a bunch of electronic numbers and "the blackbox says you signed it!", there isn't really anything there to investigate, plus judges can in general be expected to not have even the slightest clue how to evaluate claims about IT security, so more than likely you'll end up with a situation where judges simply accept the government-mandated assumption that what the blackbox says is to be trusted. It's the same fundamental problem as with electronic elections: The actual process is necessarily completely removed from human perception/observation, and therefore ultimately must be trusted blindly if it's not to be rejected outright.

Wonderful. A downvote and a "that's stupid" comment. Is there a reason you can't articulate your views on a system that is live and working successfully?

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
I can, and it isn't. It cannot be. First of all, I wrote above you in this thread, regarding smart cards for government ID: > That's not really a good solution either, though, because that requires trust in an essentially unverifiable system and the entity producing it. So, maybe you want to address that instead of just pointing out that people are in fact using a system that obviously has this problem that I already mentioned. As for why electronic voting or electronic counting of votes is a terrible idea (I would have thought everyone on here knows that by now): It's impossible to audit. Elections are the failsafe of a democracy that has to be able to remove a government from power that tries to prevent being removed, and they are about the control of huge amounts of recources. Therefore, you cannot have trust in a small minority as the basis for its reliability, you have to have a system that is very hard to corrupt even by the government. A government server counting votes is the exact opposite of that. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI The fact that, so far, noone has seen any problems is completely missing the point. First of all, the whole system is set up such that it's really difficult to find out if something went wrong/was manipulated (that's just the nature of electronic voting). Secondly, most elections aren't all that problematic. In times of peace and prosperity, there usually isn't much contention over the results of an election. What makes a voting system good is when it's able to stay reliable and trusted in times of political unrest.
- markdown 10y ago
  Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to explain your view. Further, I concede that you are correct as far as voting goes. That doesn't mean the card is useless. It serves other purposes quite well, even if imperfectly.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
    Well, but does it? How do you know? Voting obviously is the biggest problem, but other uses have similar problems. Especially in terms of how you could ever figure out if it's actually not working well. You say that it serves other purposes quite well--how do you actually know that? Is it just because noone has demonstrated yet that, I dunno, the smartcards have a backdoor that is actively being used to sign stuff in other people's names? How would you know if that were the case? How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign some document when they ask you to explain how it comes that their computer tells them that you signed it?
    - markdown 10y ago
      > How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign some document when they ask you to explain how it comes that their computer tells them that you signed it? How would you convince a judge that someone was holding a gun to your head as you signed a document? How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign something when they ask you to explain how it comes that the signature on the document matches yours exactly?
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
        The thing is that both of those scenarios are things judges can be expected to understand perfectly well, and have some clue how to approach evaluating the claim, and also, in both cases, there generally is a reasonable risk that any such attempts leave some form of evidence, deterring people from even trying it. With a smartcard, there is nothing of that sort. It's just a bunch of electronic numbers and "the blackbox says you signed it!", there isn't really anything there to investigate, plus judges can in general be expected to not have even the slightest clue how to evaluate claims about IT security, so more than likely you'll end up with a situation where judges simply accept the government-mandated assumption that what the blackbox says is to be trusted. It's the same fundamental problem as with electronic elections: The actual process is necessarily completely removed from human perception/observation, and therefore ultimately must be trusted blindly if it's not to be rejected outright.