Newsweek technology columnist Stephen Levy discusses the problems with Diebold and electronic voting: Black Box Voting Blues
The best minds in the computer-security world contend that the voting terminals can’t be trusted. Listen, for example, to Avi Rubin, a computer-security expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University who was slipped a copy of Diebold’s source code earlier this year. After he and his students examined it, he concluded that the protections against fraud and tampering were strictly amateur hour. “Anyone in my basic security classes would have done better,” he says. The cryptography was weak and poorly implemented, and the smart-card system that supposedly increased security actually created new vulnerabilities. Rubin’s paper concluded that the Diebold system was “far below even the most minimal security standards.” Naturally, Diebold disagrees with Rubin. “We’re very confident of accuracy and security in our system,” says director of Diebold Election Systems Mark Radke.
In the link above, there is a link to a Newsweek radio story which interviews Levy and Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) who introduced Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (HR 2239). Holt says: I’m sorry to say that some people see this as a partisan matter. There is no partisan intentions about this [legislation]. “It is very urgent [that the voting process is modernized]. [Voting] is the central act of a democracy… The level of suspicion, skepticism, distrust is really high… that has to be addressed.”
