Vikram singh
SPNer
- Feb 24, 2005
- 455
- 418
"Our research proved something which we really never doubted: with some preparation anyone with even momentary access to paperless voting machines can own the country."~
YouTube - India's EVMs are Vulnerable to Fraud
It’s great how it really is beginning to dawn on people all over the globe that paperless voting systems have a transparency problem. This last February I was invited to India for 9 days. It was good to get some sunlight, but again I was too busy to see many sights. I first went to Delhi to speak at the launch of a new book that is critical on Electronic Voting Machines (people there all call them EVMs). After that I went to Chennai for another conference. Then I went to Hyderabad and did … absolutely nothing that I was publicly talking about until today.
We spent a number of days hacking and filming an EVM (in various states of undress) that had fallen into precisely the right hands. In what qualifies as some of the crazier days of my life Alex Halderman, Hari Prasad and yours truly were finding ways around armed roadblocks, relocating parts on circuit boards, debugging code with teams in different timezones, testing electronics, meeting with political figures surrounded by guys with machine guns and shooting parts of the video embedded below. All of this against the backdrop of the hurricane of plan-resistant chaos that is India.
Our research proved something which we really never doubted: with some preparation anyone with even momentary access to paperless voting machines can own the country. If it wasn’t fun to do it would be depressing that something that obvious needs proving over and over again. Maybe some day we’ll skip the film and just own the country instead. (Just kidding…) Some parts of India definitely looked worth owning, those rare moments I had time to look.
Anyway: never got to see the Taj Mahal. Then again: when I go to India next time, it will probably still be there. Which is much more than one can say of these EVMs. Have a look for yourself.
YouTube - India's EVMs are Vulnerable to Fraud
It’s great how it really is beginning to dawn on people all over the globe that paperless voting systems have a transparency problem. This last February I was invited to India for 9 days. It was good to get some sunlight, but again I was too busy to see many sights. I first went to Delhi to speak at the launch of a new book that is critical on Electronic Voting Machines (people there all call them EVMs). After that I went to Chennai for another conference. Then I went to Hyderabad and did … absolutely nothing that I was publicly talking about until today.
We spent a number of days hacking and filming an EVM (in various states of undress) that had fallen into precisely the right hands. In what qualifies as some of the crazier days of my life Alex Halderman, Hari Prasad and yours truly were finding ways around armed roadblocks, relocating parts on circuit boards, debugging code with teams in different timezones, testing electronics, meeting with political figures surrounded by guys with machine guns and shooting parts of the video embedded below. All of this against the backdrop of the hurricane of plan-resistant chaos that is India.
Our research proved something which we really never doubted: with some preparation anyone with even momentary access to paperless voting machines can own the country. If it wasn’t fun to do it would be depressing that something that obvious needs proving over and over again. Maybe some day we’ll skip the film and just own the country instead. (Just kidding…) Some parts of India definitely looked worth owning, those rare moments I had time to look.
Anyway: never got to see the Taj Mahal. Then again: when I go to India next time, it will probably still be there. Which is much more than one can say of these EVMs. Have a look for yourself.
