Most vote machines lose test to hackers
Now are you worried? On Saturday, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer John Wildermuth, in an article entitled, "Most Vote Machines lost test to hackers", described how teams of computer security experts (aka "hackers") hired by the state were able to crack every model of voting machine that they tested -- including Sequoia, Hart InterCivic and Diebold. The UC's report/document dump is now on the CA Secretary of State's site. This obviously has national implications. Last week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey advanced H.R. 811, the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007," which amends the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent paper ballot.
State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California’s voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems’ electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday. The researchers “were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested,†said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who authorized the “top to bottom review†of every voting system certified by the state.BlackBoxVoting.org posted an open letter to CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen in which BBV board member Jim March said, "Please consider taking more aggressive action. Decertify everything, citing the obvious failure of Federal oversight as the primary cause." Feel free to contact California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen and let her know what you think of electronic voting machines. Continue reading
The House Floor a-Twitter
twitter.com/HouseFloor has live updates from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, updated every five minutes with any new information from: clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor.html . This is in beta testing mode... Continue reading
Less information about Iraq
What the New York times called the "banal bureaucracy of government information" is the day-to-day responsibility of government information professionals. In the last few years, we've seen more and more cases of the government hiding some of the most useful "banal" information. Here is the most recent example:
- U.S. drops Baghdad electricity reports by Noam N. Levey and Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2007.
As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on. ...The change, a State Department spokesman said, reflects a technical decision by reconstruction officials in Baghdad...Continue reading
Creative Commons for Education
Today Creative Commons -- a non-profit organization founded by Laurence Lessig devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others through copyright reform and the Creative Commons license -- announced ccLearn, a new division devoted to promoting the use of freely copyable materials for classrooms and education. The idea is that in order for Web technologies to truly have a revolutionary impact on education, there needs to be the development of "open educational resources (OER), which in their fullest form should be free, accessible, authoritative, and derivable." Makes perfect sense, no?
Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.[Thanks BoingBoing!] Continue reading
- With legal barriers, we advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. We also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education.
- With technical barriers, we promote interoperability standards and tools to facilitate remixing and reuse.
- With social barriers, we encourage teachers and learners to re-use educational materials available on the Web, and to build on each other’s contributions.
Version control of Congress?
What a great idea! Karl Fogel, an open-source software developer, writer and activist for copyright reform had this to say in a recent New York Times article:
Karl Fogel, president of the Subversion Corporation, which produces open-source version control software, He sees its power to shape public behavior. Think of what version control software could mean for the Congress, he was quoted as saying recently at Tim O’Reilly’s blog . If bills were created under a system where strike-throughs and additions were carefully tracked, the public would know which legislator made which change to a proposed piece of legislation as it made its way through the Capitol. At last, there would be transparency in the legislative process. Best-case scenario, it would shame legislators from inserting language against the public interest and only meant to reward political contributors; at worst, it would make such insertions public and allow the voters to punish the politicians who made them."Crossing Out, for Emphasis" by Noam Cohen. NYT 7/23/07. Continue reading