Schneier On Self-Enforcing Protocols 207
Posted
by
timothy
from the visibility-rocks dept.
from the visibility-rocks dept.
Hollow Being writes "In an essay posted to Threatpost, Bruce Schneier makes the argument that self-enforcing protocols are better suited to security and problem-solving. From the article: 'Self-enforcing protocols are safer than other types because participants don't gain an advantage from cheating. Modern voting systems are rife with the potential for cheating, but an open show of hands in a room — one that everyone in the room can count for himself — is self-enforcing. On the other hand, there's no secret ballot, late voters are potentially subjected to coercion, and it doesn't scale well to large elections. But there are mathematical election protocols that have self-enforcing properties, and some cryptographers have suggested their use in elections.'"
Re:You need trust (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Show of hands not self-enforcing (Score:1, Interesting)
Turn off the lights and give everyone dim, coloured glow sticks.
If you want to vote for someone you raise the appropriate glow stick.
More elaborate methods of letting people see your choice without seeing you could also be used.
Voting needs to be transparent (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is the solution to all voting problems.
Goals:
1. Confirm your vote is collected correctly.
2. Try to assure the people that no votes were added.
3. Don't hide results.
4. Keep votes anonymous.
Solution:
1. Keep a large public vote database.
2. Be able to Look up votes by voter id, county, polling location and time.
3. Keep large visible clock and voter count at each polling station. Every time a person goes into the voting room, the count goes up. Voter counts can be confirmed online. Maybe even in a graph over time.
The voter should be able to go online and see his own vote. Since every voter can see every vote counted up in every polling location in the country and know that everyone else can, they'll be assured of the results. If they're paranoid, they can watch their local polling station's voter count and confirm the published results don't have added votes.
Note: Maybe instead of voter id's, it should be a random confirmation code thats generated on the spot. That should be even more anonymous.
Problems: Some people actually vote for the wrong person on accident. That's unfortunate, but the solution isn't to hide it from them.
If vote online doesn't match your vote, have a dispute process. Keep track of dispute counts over time, for the public to see.
Maddison Warned about this (Score:5, Interesting)
in the federalist papers:
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm [constitution.org]
They thought about it, but free speech trumped the elimination of political parties. Always floors me how much foresight they had.
Re:You need trust (Score:2, Interesting)
"Vere-a yuoo teeched tu vrute-a ingleesh tuu? Selff leemiting prutuculs ere-a useffool oonly fur smell scele-a sulooshuns vhee it is reesunebly pusseeble-a tu feleedete-a zee resoolts (ere-a yuoo gueeng tu be-a eble-a tu refeeoo zee futes ooff 1,000 ploos futers in a useffool teemescele-a) und vhere-a zeere-a is nu penelty tu hefeeng deceesiuns un ecturs deceesiuns beeeng poobleec knooledge-a."
I guess my comment came off an overly snarky and non-constructive (like all nitpicking comments are) and sorry for that.
It was more that it was a mistake in a sentence about what was learned in high school.
How do you know the original poster isn't a native speaker?
Re:Bruce Schneier once decrypted a box of AlphaBit (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the voting method you describe is more-or-less what optical-scan ballots are all about. While they aren't exactly "the old ways", they work extremely well, and give you an auditable vote in case of recount.
For instance, in the Franken-Coleman senatorial race, we had pieces of paper that could be gone through and understood. Yes, it took a really long time, yes, it produced votes for Lizard People, but the end result was something that independent observers could see as a correct reflection of the will of the people. With an electronic ballot, we wouldn't have had anything to recount, just a computer telling us a number.