4 ms·

I didn't think anything could amaze me anymore, but when the same people who shop talk day to day about how SHA1 is broken or some NIST curves look suspicious a

by keyme 6y ago

I didn't think anything could amaze me anymore, but when the same people who shop talk day to day about how SHA1 is broken or some NIST curves look suspicious are mostly A-OK with unauthenticated plaintext voting by snailmail, I finally figured that humanity has went fully off the rails. And of course "there is no evidence that any large scale voting fraud took place". Uttered to me by multiple people who I know understand that there can't be any evidence.

threeseed 6y ago
> unauthenticated plaintext voting by snailmail You needed to provide your signature which was matched against voting records. Also no-one has said that mail voting isn't full proof only that it's very difficult to exploit it in the volumes you need to swing an election.
- newfriend 6y ago
  > You needed to provide your signature which was matched against voting records. This is not correct in many cases. > “We conclude that the Election Code does not authorize or require county election boards to reject absentee or mail-in ballots during the canvassing process based on an analysis of a voter’s signature,” the state Supreme Court wrote in an opinion https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-ballot-signatures-431794 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-... > it's very difficult to exploit it in the volumes you need to swing an election When the margins of victory in several states are so small, this seems to be merely conjecture.
  - rualca 6y ago
    > When the margins of victory in several states are so small, this seems to be merely conjecture. Your conspiracy theory is based on the assumption that tens of thousands of votes can be cast fraudulently and matching records without anyone noticing, let alone leaving any trail, and that this can be pulled off on such a massive global scale and so uniformly and stealthily that it just resembles real votes cast by real people. Isn't that a little bit incredible? I mean, the only objective statement behind that conspiracy theory is that you feel the wrong candidate won the elections. That's the whole basis of this whole election dispute. The rest of your argument derives from there. As the wrong candidate won then there must have been a conspiracy to get votes for that candidate. What really boggles the mind is that these absurd and totally idiotic conspiracy theories sprang up after we saw an incumbent openly sabotaging elections by barring people from voting, by putting up barriers to mail voting, by purposely degrading postal delivery services to force votes from being shipped, let alone counted, forcing votes out because of technicalities such as delays in delivery and counting, and more eggregiously arguing in public that votes on his competitor, and only those, should be simply thrown out. But somehow that doesn't raise questions. What raises questions is if voting normally could be trusted.
    - onecommentman 6y ago
      1. You sure like the phrase “conspiracy theory”. You must use it a lot. Its overuse doesn’t help your argument. Writers used to get paid by the word, but they had the chance to choose their own words. Perhaps that has changed. 2. Phrases like “absurd and totally idiotic” do not help you make your argument with this audience. 3. I don’t think the phrase “massive global scale” means what you think it means in the context of a US election. 4. This audience builds global IT systems that have improved in performance by several orders of magnitude over the last few decades. Other than 0-1 technologies like the birth of human flight, no other tech evolution compares. The minds of the audience are almost immune to boggling. The black hatters especially. Suggesting your mind is so easily boggled only generates pity. Address systematically the individual voting irregularities post-election as they arise and people will listen to you. As has been par for the course for US elections for over 250 years...
      - rualca 6y ago
        > You sure like the phrase “conspiracy theory”. That's exactly what you're pushing: a theory of how some people have conspired to do something. Is this not true? Is this not the essence of all these outlandish and baseless theories on how there were people conspiring to rig the US presidential elections? If you disagree, please do point out exactly which part of your argument does not involve neither a conspiracy nor theories.
vkou 6y ago
> unauthenticated plaintext voting by snailmail What really amazes me is folks who complain about mail voting being insecure, without even having an understanding of how mail voting works. Either explain to us the attack vector against mail-in voting that resulted in wide-spread fraud, or withdraw your claim. Your explanation needs to also explain how this attack circumvented the various defense-in-depth official and unofficial checks (Ballot status tracking, signature verification, voter pre-registration, sealed ballots, spoiled ballot tracking). > Uttered to me by multiple people who I know understand that there can't be any evidence. The purpose of these defense-in-depth checks is to identify tampering, if it took place. Explain how they were circumvented, or retract your claims. I feel that there's a corollary to Schneier's Law [1]. I'd phrase it as "Any person can think they can break a security system that they don't understand, or don't want to understand." [1] “Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can't think of how to break it.”
- keyme 6y ago
  "What really amazes me is folks who complain about SHA1 being insecure, without even having an understanding of how preimage attacks work. Either explain to us the attack vector against actual SHA1 certificates that could result in wide-spread faking of certificates, or withdraw your claim. Your explanation needs to also explain how this attack could cicumvent the various defense-in-depth official and unofficial checks (certificate transparency, certificate revocation lists, limited time validity)." I hope we can at least agree that this is not the way to argue about security protocols at least when it comes to crypto.
  - vkou 6y ago
    The difference between SHA1 and voting is that expert consensus is that SHA1 sucks, and that expert consensus is that systemic mail-in voter fraud has not taken place. Either be an expert on the subject, or defer to expert consensus, or provide clear evidence for why the experts are all wrong. You've done none of these. I can't believe that in 2020, I have to assert, on a technical forum, that people making technical statements about security should either know what they are talking about, or provide evidence to back up what they are saying.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
You're right on the money. The thing not said is that EVERY election has fraud. Too many people involved and people are going to cheat. So news agencies claiming there was no fraud are automatically lying. The answer to your rhetorical question is clearly that the news that it's 'most secure'. This claim is ridiculous at best. Also why news agencies like Fox News abandoned Trump is because you can't push the story of fraud. If people distrust the election system and then what? Coup? Another secession? What are you going to replace it with? The same problems still arise. The future looks good though. Direct democracy with optional representation or multi party proportional representation via single transferable vote. This can solve these problem.

by keyme 6y ago

threeseed 6y ago

> unauthenticated plaintext voting by snailmail You needed to provide your signature which was matched against voting records. Also no-one has said that mail voting isn't full proof only that it's very difficult to exploit it in the volumes you need to swing an election.

newfriend 6y ago
> You needed to provide your signature which was matched against voting records. This is not correct in many cases. > “We conclude that the Election Code does not authorize or require county election boards to reject absentee or mail-in ballots during the canvassing process based on an analysis of a voter’s signature,” the state Supreme Court wrote in an opinion https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-ballot-signatures-431794 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-... > it's very difficult to exploit it in the volumes you need to swing an election When the margins of victory in several states are so small, this seems to be merely conjecture.
- rualca 6y ago
  > When the margins of victory in several states are so small, this seems to be merely conjecture. Your conspiracy theory is based on the assumption that tens of thousands of votes can be cast fraudulently and matching records without anyone noticing, let alone leaving any trail, and that this can be pulled off on such a massive global scale and so uniformly and stealthily that it just resembles real votes cast by real people. Isn't that a little bit incredible? I mean, the only objective statement behind that conspiracy theory is that you feel the wrong candidate won the elections. That's the whole basis of this whole election dispute. The rest of your argument derives from there. As the wrong candidate won then there must have been a conspiracy to get votes for that candidate. What really boggles the mind is that these absurd and totally idiotic conspiracy theories sprang up after we saw an incumbent openly sabotaging elections by barring people from voting, by putting up barriers to mail voting, by purposely degrading postal delivery services to force votes from being shipped, let alone counted, forcing votes out because of technicalities such as delays in delivery and counting, and more eggregiously arguing in public that votes on his competitor, and only those, should be simply thrown out. But somehow that doesn't raise questions. What raises questions is if voting normally could be trusted.
  - onecommentman 6y ago
    1. You sure like the phrase “conspiracy theory”. You must use it a lot. Its overuse doesn’t help your argument. Writers used to get paid by the word, but they had the chance to choose their own words. Perhaps that has changed. 2. Phrases like “absurd and totally idiotic” do not help you make your argument with this audience. 3. I don’t think the phrase “massive global scale” means what you think it means in the context of a US election. 4. This audience builds global IT systems that have improved in performance by several orders of magnitude over the last few decades. Other than 0-1 technologies like the birth of human flight, no other tech evolution compares. The minds of the audience are almost immune to boggling. The black hatters especially. Suggesting your mind is so easily boggled only generates pity. Address systematically the individual voting irregularities post-election as they arise and people will listen to you. As has been par for the course for US elections for over 250 years...
    - rualca 6y ago
      > You sure like the phrase “conspiracy theory”. That's exactly what you're pushing: a theory of how some people have conspired to do something. Is this not true? Is this not the essence of all these outlandish and baseless theories on how there were people conspiring to rig the US presidential elections? If you disagree, please do point out exactly which part of your argument does not involve neither a conspiracy nor theories.

vkou 6y ago

> unauthenticated plaintext voting by snailmail What really amazes me is folks who complain about mail voting being insecure, without even having an understanding of how mail voting works. Either explain to us the attack vector against mail-in voting that resulted in wide-spread fraud, or withdraw your claim. Your explanation needs to also explain how this attack circumvented the various defense-in-depth official and unofficial checks (Ballot status tracking, signature verification, voter pre-registration, sealed ballots, spoiled ballot tracking). > Uttered to me by multiple people who I know understand that there can't be any evidence. The purpose of these defense-in-depth checks is to identify tampering, if it took place. Explain how they were circumvented, or retract your claims. I feel that there's a corollary to Schneier's Law [1]. I'd phrase it as "Any person can think they can break a security system that they don't understand, or don't want to understand." [1] “Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can't think of how to break it.”

keyme 6y ago
"What really amazes me is folks who complain about SHA1 being insecure, without even having an understanding of how preimage attacks work. Either explain to us the attack vector against actual SHA1 certificates that could result in wide-spread faking of certificates, or withdraw your claim. Your explanation needs to also explain how this attack could cicumvent the various defense-in-depth official and unofficial checks (certificate transparency, certificate revocation lists, limited time validity)." I hope we can at least agree that this is not the way to argue about security protocols at least when it comes to crypto.
- vkou 6y ago
  The difference between SHA1 and voting is that expert consensus is that SHA1 sucks, and that expert consensus is that systemic mail-in voter fraud has not taken place. Either be an expert on the subject, or defer to expert consensus, or provide clear evidence for why the experts are all wrong. You've done none of these. I can't believe that in 2020, I have to assert, on a technical forum, that people making technical statements about security should either know what they are talking about, or provide evidence to back up what they are saying.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

You're right on the money. The thing not said is that EVERY election has fraud. Too many people involved and people are going to cheat. So news agencies claiming there was no fraud are automatically lying. The answer to your rhetorical question is clearly that the news that it's 'most secure'. This claim is ridiculous at best. Also why news agencies like Fox News abandoned Trump is because you can't push the story of fraud. If people distrust the election system and then what? Coup? Another secession? What are you going to replace it with? The same problems still arise. The future looks good though. Direct democracy with optional representation or multi party proportional representation via single transferable vote. This can solve these problem.