March 18, 2008
E-Voting Vendor Threatens Princeton Computer Scientists With Legal Action
Sequoia Voting Systems, a company that manufactures electronic voting machines, sent an e-mail message last week to two computer scientists at Princeton University, warning them against dissecting Sequoia machines and software. The scientists, Edward W. Felten and Andrew Appel, are well known for exposing security flaws in electronic voting machines and warning the public against trusting them.
The scientists received the message because New Jersey election officials announced plans to send the men Sequoia e-voting machines for analysis. A Sequoia vice president, Edwin Smith, wrote that the plan would violate Sequoia’s contract for use of its machines. “Sequoia has also retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any noncompliant analysis,” the message read. Mr. Smith added that the company would “take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software.”
Last year Mr. Appel publicized weaknesses in Sequoia machines. In 2006 Mr. Felten helped to expose vulnerabilities in a Diebold voting machine. And in 2001 he received a threatening letter from the recording industry about a speech he planned to deliver on unscrambling encrypted digital music. —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Tuesday March 18, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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All the more reason to distrust electronic voting…
— Jim Shurts Mar 18, 05:12 PM #
So, Sequoia’s property rights trump our right to hold free and fair elections? Seems to me that they want to have their cake and eat it, too. I say, send them back their machines, revoke their corporate charter, and let them assert their intellectual property rights all they like. (On the other hand, no state should sign the kind of contract that Sequoia demands in the first place.)
— Bob Mar 19, 05:47 AM #
This points up the main weakness in electronic voting as compared to the “obsolete” voting machine, with its mechanical, i.e. physical registration of votes. Which system would be easier to falsify? The very convenience of the electronic systems, whatever their specific features, is precisely why they should be abandoned in favor of the old, but difficult to sabotage, machines.
The analogy to slot machines is telling. The old-fashioned slot machine was inefficient and prone, over the long haul, to wear and tear and thus needed periodic maintenance. The new electronic ones can easily be set to pay off at whatever rate the house desires.
Do we really want the entire electoral process to be in the hands of and thus at the mercy of a few technologists whose incorruptability may well be no greater than anyone else’s? The more electronic it is, the easier it is to steal votes, quarters, or whatever.
— Dan Kirklin Mar 19, 09:10 AM #
They don’t allow ‘noncompliant analysis’? Wow. How is that different from ‘it works be cause we say so’?
Utter nonsense. I can understand not allowing the scientists to publish schematics or other trade secrets, but not being able to perform an analysis? Ridiculous.
— Dan Mar 19, 09:18 AM #
Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think it’s sane for us to use ANY voting machine whose source can’t be inspected by the public. We have public records and open meetings laws to expose the workings of government. Surely the workings of the voting machines are due the citizenry.
— Debbie Mar 19, 01:22 PM #
intellectual properties take back seat to democracy, especially when said properties are at odds with democracy, and the laws that hold together said democracy.
the bottom line is that machines will be hacked, by good guys or bad guys one way or the other
— brinkley Mar 19, 03:16 PM #
People are becoming very fed up with a subverted media, subverted elections and a break down in the authority of the Constitution.
— Mayme Mar 19, 04:57 PM #