This article in the Guardian tells of how a policeman took money from a Saudi diplomat to ferret out information about various persons from police databases. This is an excellent example of how databases can be misused to extend the ever encroaching surveillance society.
We'll probably never know for certain but this article in the Independent highlights the level of confusion we still have over basic facts. It also shows Putin's arrogance in continuously trying to present the story that suits him, not anything approaching the truth.
For quite some time Windows has been gaining ground in running non-critical warship systems. But Microsoft are pushing their operating system to the 'next level'… using Windows to run the complete operations of a warship. I don't think Windows or the world is ready for such developments.
The Register tells the tale of a poor guy at BAE Systems who lost his job trying to stop the move to Windows for Warships. It's a very interesting story indeed. It's incredibly worrying that a so-called engineering company accepts using Windows for mission critical operations without an even-handed analysis of the alternatives.
Further to my earlier entry that suggested that there might be email e-voting in this year's US presidential election. Slashdot has more on this story citing a New York Times oped piece on the matter which asserts that fax and email will both be allowable methods of returning votes from abroad.
Not only is e-voting by fax or email totally insecure but it completely undermines the secrecy of the ballot. How it can be legal for this to happen I'm not sure. It is also interesting to think what kind of conspiracy theory you can brew when one considers Republican ties to the military… hmm.
The Guardian has a valedictory interview with Andrew Pinder, the e-Envoy that was. Nice to hear he had a blog, even if it was for internal use only.
It's been a while since corrupt CDs have been in the news. But they haven't gone away… For those who don't know, record companies are intentionally breaking the CD standard, introducing errors, encryption and low quality alternative versions to try and prevent CDs being ripped on users' PCs. This ignores the fact that we all have a right to make a copy of the CD for personal use (such as on an iPod) and that these technologies actually break many non-computer CD audio players. It's another example of the music industry getting it horribly wrong and treating their customers like criminals.
The Campaign for Digital Rights latest update on what the record companies are up to highlights how bad the issue is getting.
E-voting is proving to be an expensive affair all over the world. Solano County, California has just spent $415,000 getting out of their contract with Diebold so they can get optical-scan systems from ES&S for the bargain price of $4.2 million.
Meanwhile in the Republic of Ireland, Martin Cullen (the minister responsible for trying to push e-voting) has several groups after his head for spending €42 million on e-voting and associated publicity costs. Yesterday there was a call to refer the spending to the Comptroller and Auditor General as a misuse of public money. Key to this is that:
The day before e-voting was halted, €1.1m was spent on PR and advertising, yet the final bill was €3.3m. The contract was awarded to a consortium led by a firm described as “friends of Fianna Fáil”.
All of Paris is absolutely covered with these primary colour Apple posters promoting the iPod and the Apple Expo next week. It's fun but what do they hope to achieve by covering the whole city in these posters? Half as many and we'd all still notice them. Is Mr Jobs perhaps going to make a surprise visit…?
Today the Electoral Commission published their report 'Delivering Democracy' along with a series of regional reports covering the regions that pilot all-postal ballots during the European elections in June.
The report is as refreshingly frank as one could ask from such a body. It starts by quoting some 2003 MORI polling that found that:
“There is a substantial segment of the population who make a decision not to vote for reasons of political disconnection… for this group, the mechanics of the voting process is not a critical factor, and even though they may recognise that the new arrangements offer advantages in terms of simplicity and convenience, this alone will not encourage them to vote.”
To cite such a comment shows how the Commission's attitude is changing. Not that long ago we had polls being cited showing how many additional people would vote if we introduced new channels, such as e-voting.
The report focusses on ensuring that voters feel confident in the security and accuracy of elections. As a result all-postal voting is not recommended but postal voting on demand is supported. The Commission makes some other excellent recommendations including that post-election audits of items such as declarations of identity should be mandatory under law. It's stunning that such audits aren't already required.
In gentle words the Commission also repeatedly chastises the government for the ridiculously short timescales that keep being forced on returning officers to implement these pilots. The report also surprisingly (in a good way) recommends further development of election markup language (EML) for postal ballot production. This is a usage we definitely envisaged when drafting the standard.
Overall an excellent report.
Additionally the Commission has released a short statement on the implications of their report for the regional assembly referenda. It's again quite tough on the way the government has been rushing things. To be fair on the returning officers who are already planning the all-postal North East referenda the Commission has recommended that they continue. But the commissioners wash their hands of any ensuing mess:
“Nothing in this statement should be interpreted as offering reassurance that, even if the actions above are taken, the referendum procewill be risk free or secure a high degree of public support.”
Other regional assembly referenda should not be conducted with all-postal ballots, the statement concludes.
The BBC Online has an article on the report which quotes Lib Dems gloating over how the government has been chastised. To be honest I think all local activists, no matter which party they come from, are happy to see the Commission support their doubts over all-postal voting. The article also has several parties up in arms about the recommendation to keep the North East all-postal but I just don't see any other option. The North East is a low risk, low population region and there's no time to change.
There's also quite a detailed article on Guardian Politics online.
If this anecdotal report via Boing Boing is true then things are much worse than we could have thought. Voting via insecure email is being proposed…[massive sigh]
Jason Kitcat 