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Comment Re:What's the margin of victory? (Score 1) 159

by Weird O'Puns (#26683543) Attached to: Finnish Court Accepts E-Voting Result With 2% Lost

The article you linked has couple more points that are in my opinion more important than the problems with the interface:

Additionally, there is risk of a breach of the anonymity of the votes, because the electronic ballot box has been archived with information on who voted and how. The e-voting project had been strongly criticised by Effi from its inception for the lack of transparency both in the process and software.

First, the system is not anonymous. Right people can see from the archives who voted for who. In fact, right after the election they were telling those who asked if their vote had been cast or not.

Secondly, the system is completely closed. There was an audit, but the auditors were forced to sign a NDA. There is also no paper trace. The voter has no guaranties that his/hers vote has been cast to the right candidate.

Comment Re:Let me get this straight... (Score 1) 159

by Weird O'Puns (#26683501) Attached to: Finnish Court Accepts E-Voting Result With 2% Lost

The EFF says the system is flawed because it requires people to verify their vote once they selected it?

No, they criticize that it was possible to stop the voting process unintentionally. This could have been solved using card readers that took whole card inside the reader, so it wouldn't have been possible pull it out without voting. Other solution would have been to display clear message that the voting process was interrupted and no vote was cast.

You also don't yank out your card until you're told to.

ATM won't give you any money if you yank out the card too early. That means that there is a clear feedback when the transaction has happened correctly. With voting machines there was no such feedback.

A 2% spoilage rate although higher than the typical rate, isn't incredibly high.

Why spend money to switch to a system that is worse?

Comment Re:Usability Glitch? (Score 1) 366

by Weird O'Puns (#25556123) Attached to: Finnish E-Voting System Loses 2% of Votes

One of the biggest issues on the Finnish system is that you can connect the vote to a voter. Basically, a vote is stored in to the main database with voter identification. The database is encrypted, but anybody with right password and key can check who voted for who. The database, keys and passwords will be stored for years.

Compared to this the user interface glitch is just a minor issue.

More detailed criticism can be found from Effi's e-voting report.
Censorship

Finnish Censorship Expanding 196

Posted by kdawson from the as-it-always-does dept.
Thomas Nybergh lets us know about the secret list maintained by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, containing an estimated 1,700 foreign "child pornography'" sites. These are mostly in the US and the EU, and certainly not all of them contain child porn or even links to it. Finnish ISPs are required by law to block access to sites on the list, according to The Register. Finland's EFF has information about the block list, which reportedly includes a musical instrument store, a doll store, and a site of Windows tips in Thai. Recently added to the list — which by law should contain only child pornography sites — is the text-only site of a Finnish free-speech advocate who criticizes the censorship law. Evading the ISPs' block is trivial, of course.
Music

Submission + - EU Commissioner proposes 95 year copyright

Submitted by Albanach
Albanach writes: The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. He also wishes to investigate options for new levies on blank discs, data storage and music and video players to compensate artists and copyright holders for 'legal copying when listeners burn an extra version of an album to play one at home and one in the car.'
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - ACLU: Ohio voting switch may be illegal

Submitted by phorest
phorest writes: Oh the irony! Lawmakers decide to go one way, then the new ones take over and the fun begins! With so many decidedly against electronics in our elections, who would've thought the ACLU is looking to potentially sue the state of Ohio for switching away from Diebold touch-screen voting terminals.

CLEVELAND — The American Civil Liberties Union urged the elections board in the state's most populous county on Thursday not to make a switch to a new voting system for the state's March presidential primary, warning that the move could violate state law.


It appears to me that we'll never again get in our beds after the sweet feeling of democratic voting as when we awake from our slumber, the elections will be tainted from any lame excuse available. Go ACLU!
Biotech

Journal Journal: So Long, Baiji 175

Journal by ozmanjusri
After 20 million years, Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) are now officially extinct http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292932,00.html.

"It's a relic species, more than 20 million years old, that persisted through the most amazing kinds of changes in the planet," said marine biologist Barbara Taylor at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service. "It's been here longer than the Andes Mountains have been on Earth."
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - iD and Valve violating GPL

Submitted by frooge
frooge writes: With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release.
United States

Journal Journal: AT&T Co-operating with NSA 2

Journal by ozmanjusri
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFFF) has uncovered more documents detailing secret government surveillance of AT&T's Internet traffic.

Some of information was already publically available, but after negotiations with AT&T, EFF has found new documents describing a secret, secure room in AT&T's facilities that gave the National Security Agency (NSA) direct access to customers' emails and other Internet communications.

Sony

Submission + - Sony sued for Blu-Ray Patent Violation

Submitted by Jaidan
Jaidan writes: According to a gamespot article, a California-based company named Target Technology is suing Sony over patents it allegedly holds for silver based reflective surfaces. The suit claims that products marketed under the Blu-ray name infringe on a patent it owns for reflective layer materials in optical discs. Target is seeking a permanent injunction preventing Sony from violating its patent rights in the future, as well as damages with interest, multiplied due to what it characterizes as deliberate and willful infringement.
Networking

Submission + - CERN Collider ready; get ready for data deluge

Submitted by
slashthedot
slashthedot writes: "The world's largest science experiment, a physics experiment designed to determine the nature of matter, will produce a mountain of data. And because the world's physicists cannot move to the mountain, an army of computer research scientists is preparing to move the mountain to the physicists.
At universities across the United States and at other institutions around the world, teams of computer research scientists and physicists are preparing for the largest physics experiment ever.
The collider will give protons a pop hoping to catch a glimpse of the Big Bang, or at least the subatomic particles that are thought to have last been seen at the big event 10 billion to 15 billion years ago that led to the formation of the universe. The CERN collider will begin producing data in November, and from the trillions of collisions of protons it will generate 15 petabytes of data per year.
By comparison, 15 petabytes would be the equivalent of all of the information in all of the university libraries in the United States seven times over. It would be the equivalent of 22 Internets, or more than 1,000 Libraries of Congress. And there is no search function.
More at: http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1572567.html"
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft, Sue Me First

Submitted by corigo
corigo writes: Supporters of Free Open Source, Oasis Open Document, and other Free and Open Source solutions have asked Microsoft to throw down the guantlet. Sue Me First says Christian Einfeldt of Digital Tipping Point and he's not alone. More and more people are signing up and challenging Microsoft to put there lawyers where there mouth is. It sounds to me like the open source community is far from running scared. Will Microsoft have the cajones to step up to the plate, or is Microsoft just continuing to use a scare campaign with no real faith in their ability to leverage the patent control they claim the open source is infringing on?

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