Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control

http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/
Summary:
Millions of American voters use electronic voting machines.  A new study indicates that with minimal technical skills and materials, these machines can be untraceably hacked.
Stakeholders: Voters, hackers, the government
Area of Impact: Politics and Government.  This can be used to influence who wins elections and controls the country.
Social/Ethical Issues: Security, Privacy, Reliability, Control, Equality of Access.
If the voting machines are this easy to hack, it compromises security and the privacy of the users.  It also makes them unreliable, as they can be taken offline by anyone, and destroys equality of access, as voters in affected areas do not have equal access to methods of influencing the outcome of a vote.
Why we use them in the first place:
If they work right, electronic voting machines are more private, harder to compromise, and far more efficient than paper ballot voting.
Disadvantages:
As this issue shows, it is relatively simple to hack these systems, allowing one person to change the outcome of an entire election.
Possible Solutions:
Better security around voting booths, redundant systems to make hacking more challenging, signal jammers in voting booth to prevent remote signals from getting to the machines to change what they do.

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