CIA, FBI push ‘Facebook for spies’ – CNN.com

This is great.  ‘Social Networking sites’ for spies.   I wonder what the security implication is.  It sounds good to be able to share information with other intelligence agencies; however, what security risks does this present?

CIA, FBI push ‘Facebook for spies’ – CNN.com

What Happened to electronic voting machines?

It is election year again; yet, the fear of repeating the infamous 2000 presidential race debacle still hovers on most peoples mind. In 2000 congress passed the Help America Vote act, which eliminated certain voting technologies and provided over 3 Billion dollars to have electronic voting machines available. The voting machines, if they work as intended, will make tallying the votes easier, (especially in large populated areas where counting votes can take too long) they avoid discrepancies, and make voting experience fast and easier, and it provides flexibility by providing voting in multiple languages. Although it is believed that e-voting will smooth election, it hasn’t been fully implemented yet- at least not everywhere in states. IT personalities are faced with different challenges on the deployment of electronic voting machines, which are mainly caused by conflicting requirements. Some are privacy, security, budget, and simplicity, error correction/avoidance.

Privacy:

On August 20, 2007 news article, cnet reported the privacy nightmare caused by electronic voting machines. It stated that the e-voting machine designed by Election Systems and Software provided a time stamp paper trail, which can be matched to each individual voter. This induces pressure on the voters from interest groups and candidates. The idea of secret ballot is to make it just that: secret; however this machine seems to have lost its logic. Anonymity prevents not only intimidation, and manipulations of vote outcomes, but it also prevents vote buying. In the era where Internet has put voting on the open market, it is important voters remain anonymous. It is even more important that we protect voters’ identity in the coming election where an African American and a woman are contending to make history.

Security:

It needs to be close to impossible to tamper with voting machines; however, this happens to be difficult to prove. As information technology progresses and become more complex, the sophistication of hackers has also immensely progressed. In California many counties have abandoned the voting machines for fear of security. Besides hackers or viruses, there is also concern of the machines being manipulated by individuals who have access to the system at a given time such as system administrators.

A study led by UC Berkeley computer scientist David Wagner revealed that e-voting is not as secure and reliable as it should be. The fear of having voting machines tampered remains a constant threat to e voting. There have also been many other studies that show the security vulnerability of e-voting systems.

Simplicity:

Not everyone is adept with electronic technology; as such, it is important that voting machines are simple to use and easy to understand. It is important it accommodates the disable as well. It is important to remember that this is different than commercial software, where people have many choices to choose from. Deploying such systems requires lots of time and energy. The user interface has to be designed in such a way that millions of people will vote without issues emanated from misunderstanding of the use of the machine.

Accuracy/error avoidance

It should make it difficult for voters to mistakenly doing something they didn’t intend to do. For example, voting for two candidates at the same time.