NY Legislature Rejects "Microsoft Amendment" 223
An anonymous reader writes "Finally, some good news on electronic voting. The New York state legislature rejected an amendment proposed by Microsoft's lobbyists which would have gutted New York's requirements for voting machine vendors to turn over their source code to the state Board of Elections. Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton commented: 'The voting machine vendors have known for two years what our laws said. Now they're saying that those parts of their systems using Microsoft software have to be proprietary? It's just wrong.'"
Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a deliciously satisfying way of transferring cold hard cash from Microsoft's wallet to Slashdot and Google.
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, you by yourself won't have much impact but there would be if 1% of Slashdot's reader base did.
Sorry, I missed that... (Score:2)
Was I the only one? (Score:2, Funny)
no its not (Score:4, Insightful)
But platform code that is obtained from a third party vendor should be acceptable provided that it is widely used as a general purpose platform and there is a reliable demonstration that the code has not been modified.
I would rather see voting platforms built on microsoft trustworthy computing platforms without code review of the platform part of the system than built on a platform where I cannot be sure what code is running.
The code reviews are useless unless I am sure that the machines actually run the code that was reviewed.
Of course paper and pencil requires no code review.
Re:no its not (Score:4, Insightful)
Paper ballots (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yeah? What about the honesty of the people who are counting those paper votes.
Ballot-stuffing and outright deliberate miscounts can and still do happen with paper votes. Even right here in the USA, and even right here in my home state of Texas [wikipedia.org] not that very long ago.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Informative)
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Oversight and complete transparency are the only weapons against corruption.
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The fact that you can point to clear cases of paper election fraud shows the resiliency of this system.
Meanwhile, it is within the realm of possibility that the elec
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Ok, it's GNU C Compiler. Do you have the blueprints for the chip so that you can tell it's not doing it's own routines whenever an interrupt is generated?
Oh, it's SPARC. Ok, here's one that'll get you - have you got at least two independant sources checking through the stack from top to bottom, making sure everything is ok? That's a shit-ton of code, I bet no-one does.
Trust no code you didn't write yourself. And even then, did you write *everything* -
Simplify the hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
Buy a batch of Z-80s or even 8080s; they are still being made. The design is so old that it's unlikely to have been compromised; but if you are really paranoid, the circuitry of an 8-bit CPU is simple enough that you could easily verify it by hand. Build a little voting box around one of those chips, and you're done.
The design would take half a year and cost less than a $1 million -- which is peanuts when the goal is to ensure the honesty of a democracy's most important event.
8-bit voting (Score:3, Funny)
Re:no its not (Score:4, Interesting)
Alternately, just use pencils and learn to be slightly more patient than usual. The whole desire for electronic voting is due to a desire for immediate gratification and a pointless requirement to have the votes tallied on the same day as the election. It's stupid; voting is the most important thing in our government, if it takes a week, it takes a week. Democracy functioned without e-voting; we're just making the system more opaque than it needs to be.
Re:no its not (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic voting machines are the solution to a problem that doesn't exist and only result in complicating things immensely and making the results less reliable. I don't see the benefits.
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Here in the midwest, we have you beat by an hour. We get it on the 10 o'clock news.
Re:no its not (Score:5, Insightful)
Touchscreen, vote, hit done, the machine prints a paper ballot. You review said ballot and deposit the paper ballot in the ballot box.
What could be simpler and less prone to manipulation or error?
In that scenario, you don't have to know jack shit about the voting machine or its source code. It doesn't matter. The voter reviews the output, not the internals. If people start noticing that a certain machine or certain brand of machines prints incorrect ballots frequently, well then steps can be taken to figure out why.
But the end to end system can't be gamed.
There is no level of code review or "trusted computing platform" specification that will provide anywhere NEAR that level of trust and confidence in the system. Add to that the fact that you have an incontrovertible source of paper ballots for recounts, what more does anyone want? why do we put up with anything less?
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However, if there are general "quality" problems (lost votes, machines crashing, etc.) it will be that much easier to place the blame after the fact. Imagine your voting machine crashes, and an independent commission can look at the source code and find the problem without your cooperation. If they find serious bugs or code quality problems, the vendor is going to be in a nightmare pos
Re:no its not (Score:4, Insightful)
how does that paper assure you the recorded vote is saved in the system is the same as what the paper says? it doesn't.
the only form of electronic voting i can see working is a system of electronic paper, which lets you press directly on the box you want and fills it. you deposit it in the secure box as normal and it's then counted by a machine, advantage being that it's digital so your counter won't run into false positive problems like with pencil, and it's still human verifible like paper.
Re:no its not (Score:5, Interesting)
Trust, then verify, is the solution in this case.
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It won't be in place until 2008, but it will be there.
Just make the database public (Score:4, Informative)
The voting machine has a public/private key pair. It generates a random public/private key pair in between votes which stays resident only in memory (is not written to disk). When you vote, your votes are coded. It's then encrypted with the voter's private key and the voting machine's public key. The voter's plaintext vote, an index number, the encrypted vote, his private key, and the voting machine's public key are then printed on a piece of paper the voter can take home. The voting machine then stores the encrypted vote and the voter's public key. Nothing else.
When tallying the votes, each machine runs through its stored votes, decrypting the record of encrypted votes using each voter's public key and the machine's private key. All this information is then sent to a central vote tallying database. The unencrypted votes are used for the official tally. The encrypted votes are used as proof against tampering. The index is used to allow voters to query the database.
Once home, the voter can log into the vote tally web site. He can query the database to make sure it's recorded his vote right. He asks it to send the vote recorded with his index number. It takes the unencrypted vote, encrypts it with the voting machine's private key and the public key associated with that index and sends it to him. His computer then uses the voting machine's public key and his private key to decrypt it. If all went well, it should match what's on his printout.
The only way I can think of to commit vote fraud against this system would be by stuffing the ballot box with false votes. And even there you could do a sanity check by comparing the number of votes cast by the number of voters the precinct operators counted (they mark off your name after you vote, so it's fairly easy to count how many names they've marked off).
That's all I can think of off the top of my head.
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How about: You vote the way I tell you to, and you bring your receipt home to prove it in front of me. If you can't prove it, I break your kneecaps.
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I like it - you're almost there, but you've got some problems. If I'm mistaken, feel free to correct me.
Re:Just make the database public (Score:4, Insightful)
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In the end the result is exactly the same in terms of how valid the vote is but without all the wasted time in feeding the votes into the vote counting machine.
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atleast with electronic paper, you know for sure that each ballot was marked by the person casting the vote. oh, and you never once mentioned that you'd use the paper ticket for counting, so you've only got yourself to blame for people not
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Touchscreen, vote, hit done, the machine prints a paper ballot. You review said ballot and deposit the paper ballot in the ballot box.
So, why even use the computer in the first place, if you're going to be counting paper anyway? Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper and more reliable to use pencil and paper?
What could be simpler and less prone to manipulation or error?
Marking a ballot manually with a pencil?
I'm not sure why you think this won't be prone to error. I'd bet that at least 50% of people won't even look at the printout. It could say "I vote to be enslaved by Satan" and they'll just blindly place it in the ballot box. At least with a manual method, the voter actually has to make the marks in
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Why is two-factor authentication marginally better than one-factor? Same principle applies. If you stuff the ballot electronically and also have to stuff the paper ballot, it's at least twice as hard to do it as only having to fudge the software or print up a bunch of extra ballots and punch or mark them.
IMHO, an ideal system would have several different protections:
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One of the big stated reasons for electronic voting is to make it easier for the disabled to vote.
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Widely used as a general purpose platform doesn't mean it's any good.
And "the code has not been modified" from what? There's no reason you couldn't have collusion between Microsoft [or any other vendor] and someone trying to hack the vote. The specific code to tamper with eVoting could be bu
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Since the family jewels were written in 1973 under the Ford administration it is not at all likely tha
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Well, that's not what I meant. What I'm saying is that it's clear that our government (what? no, surely, not ours!?) is continually engaged in skullduggery and dirty tricks, and such are also par for the course for presidential candidates. And just how many of our recent presidents have been members of Balls and Shaft? er, sorry, Skull and Bones. There's a reaso
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If the code base is small enough for someone to actually perform a review, that is fine. The problem here is that the systems are huge and performing a comprehensive review is not practical on a hundred thousand plus lines of code.
There's a warning sign right there. Why should these systems be "huge"? They only have to perform a very simple task. If you're using a complex system to do that, then that demonstrates that there's stuff in there that doesn't need to be, and could cause problems.
Ever heard of the "KISS" principle?
Don't stop at the code. Schematics too (Score:2)
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Here you are [fisher-price.com]. Point the arrow at your candidate and pull the handle.
Wait a minute; I LIKE it. (Score:2)
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Nathan Petrelli for President!
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So the only reason someone would disagree with your point of view is that they are paid to do so? That is some opinion of your abilities you have there. Would not have taken very much effort to follow the link to my blog and find out who I am.
Security is risk control, not risk elimination. In this particular case the risk of a trapdoor in the platform code is a lower concern than the risk of the
Re:no its not (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:no its not (Score:5, Interesting)
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e.g.
Prompt: An inbound missile has been detected that could hit your ship (time to impact: 15 seconds). Allow or Deny?
User: Clicks Deny.
Prompt: Are you sure (time to impact: 13 seconds). Yes or No?
User: Clicks Yes.
Prompt: Anti-Missile Counter Measures Application has encountered a problem and needs to close - we are sorry for your impending destruction. Send error report to
Re:no its not (Score:5, Interesting)
IANAProgrammer, But for this application neither is acceptable.
Given what the code is required to do (allow for the selection of a vote in each catagory, record said votes, provide totals for each catagory) shouldn't the code be blindingly simple? Give me ANSI graphics and no mouse driver. Give me three imputs: cursor up, cursor down, enter/select. Hell, it can print out on a dot matrix. It should be a requirement that the code be small enough to be reviewed completely, without excessive effort.
Risk analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
Without agreeing with the rhetorical gist of the GP, I believe the point being made was that the suggestion was so absurd that nobody would put it forward unless they were paid to do so.
I disagree with that premise, but I do agree that obscuring any aspect of a voting system that is being used to decide, among other things, the next president of the United Sates is the height of folly.
Risk is measured as a combination of:
In this case, the prize is political control of the most powerful nation in the world. So we need to ask ourselves: How much are fair and free elections worth? What, in effect, is the price of the democratic process in the US?
I think it's worth billions of dollars. That means stringent code review, impeccable chain of custody and constant supervision. Saving a few bucks by using an off-the-shelf operating system - especially one that is orders of magnitude more complex than what is actually required - that's absurd, in my opinion.
Sucks to be MSFT... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry Steve, Bill - but some of us want to see what these things actually do when we use 'em to cast a vote.
Meanwhile, I'm damned sure that somebody in Diebold went all Ballmer on the furniture... though I can't wait to see their source code ; I'm sure it's gonna be worth some huge laughs @ your nearest code-monkey pit, punctuated with lots of sounds along the lines of: "WTF were these asshats THINKING!?".
Re:Sucks to be MSFT... (Score:4, Informative)
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Not even with a FIOA - like request? I'm sure New York has to have some sort of public records transparency law.
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Glad to see NYS grew a pair... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is: What does Microsoft have to hide from election officials?
-Are they worrying that the source will be leaked?
-Due to the above fear, is MS afraid of getting crap from the DRM loving media cartels?
-Is there something in the code that MS doesn't want seen?
-Are they afraid this mentality hurts the "security through obscurity" idea?
Of course this is all speculation. I'm just so curious why Microsoft is so opposed to sharing their code with a state government.
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That said, sucks to be them. We need to see all the code that's in any computerized voting machine. If they can't afford to put their source code in escrow, sucks to be them. They can either write something from
Re:Glad to see NYS grew a pair... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the price of admission into the eVoting game is handing over their source code then they made a wise business decision. It's far too small of a market for MS to chance exposing Windows source (and all the security breaches that would soon follow). In the big picture of things, MS made the right decision. That aside, they still suck for trying to sneak that amendment in.
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I bet they do, because the more access to source code becomes a recognized priority in the public sphere (and while e-Voting is the hot area right now in the US, policies with a much broader scope, and requiring more than disclosure, have been implemented elsewhere, so MS certainly sees the threat that this could be a wedge in the US) the less advantage Microsoft is going to have over open source alternatives, wh
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Re:Glad to see NYS grew a pair... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are thinking way too small here.
The worst case for Microsoft is that this is the first step towards all government computers being forced to run freely auditable code. That means no Windows.
This is frankly the only responsible thing to do from a security standpoint, and barring illegal collusion we would probably be there already.
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Too bad we're even having this discussion in the first place. The devices are not necessary as pen and paper work just fucking fine. Since the morons at the state and federal levels believe these pointless machines are good then they should have been all open and presented to the public (even via BitTorrent) for comment.
That wouldn't make for good drama though.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What I want to know.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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B) Nobody has complained (much) before about it
C) They don't really posses the skillset to do it properly
D) Because someone ignorant of the above, probably paid them to.
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AFAICT, government officials - at least the ones tasked with dreaming up projects like this - don't know the first thing about technology. All they see is a magic black box that can count votes a lot more quickly and easily than a bunch of people can, so "magic black box takes votes and counts them" is about the only thing on their list of requirements.
You or I or anyone in IT knows full well that the "magic black box" that people consider their c
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I suspect the answer is "that's business." Companies don't always get the best programmers, and programmers use what they know. The technical requirement to be secure was likely never considered, but rather user friendly enough for the retiree old manning the machine and profitable enough to make a business out of it.
What I want to know is why the states don't band together, form a group to wr
Don't Trust Microsoft With Our Elections... (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft's security record has been dismal to put it politely. I certainly don't want to gamble my freedoms on a company that can't secure its own operating system and a company who has shown flagrant disregard for our laws.
As far I'm concerned Microsoft has shown that it will do almost anything to get what it wants. We don't need the fairness of our elections endangered by a company unwilling to provide transparency.
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The fact that a third party used a proprietary OS isn't Microsoft's fault. The fact that Microsoft came in with a resolution that would gut a bill designed to give transparency to the process IS Microsoft's fault. I find that action more offensive than the use of a closed sour
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Windows for Classified (Score:2)
Every AIS (Automated Information System, the NSA TLA for "computer") I've ever seen running a Microsoft OS that was also processing classified information ran in "system high" or "dedicated" mode -- where you treat the whole system as classified, only let cleared people touch it, and lock the whole thing up. The security of the OS is practically inconsequent
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"Appropriately", yes. For example, on Win XP, you need to enforce the use of strong passwords. But for, say, a Win 98 or DOS box, there's really not much to do, except make sure you lock it up when you're done. Which was my point: If a Win 98 box can be approved to operate in a classified environment (and it can), your original statement ("Microsoft's software can be configured for high security applications -- otherwise i
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I guess that depends on you definition of "high assurance products." If you mean products that are stable enough to be used in critical application I would say that embedded Linux is way more stable than Microsoft's offerings.
"We have trained the world to know and love GUI's."
If by "we" you mean Microsoft I have to disagree. XWindows on Unix and Apple products were doing the GUI
Open Source Voting Machine? (Score:2, Insightful)
It should be constructed of off-the-shelf parts and it should run open source code!
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It should be constructed of off-the-shelf parts and it should run open source code!
I'd be careful about what "off the shelf" means, given the requirements of the NY law. You can't really use modern processors - the BIOS, the firmware on the CPU and the firmware on all other components wouldn't be in escrow, would they? Anyway, if you want to be thorough the schematics of all versions of the voting machines, all the chip fabrication masks, the schematics o
Re:Open Source Voting Machine? (Score:4, Informative)
Up here in Canada, federal elections are administered by a single Federal body; Elections Canada. That means the ballot you get in Toronto is identical in structure to the ballot you'll get on Baffin Island. There's a single standard for marking and counting ballots. The provinces have control of their own elections, obviously, but tend to follow standards very close to that set out by Elections Canada. Only at the lower levels can things be a little different. In my city, they have vote-counting machines and those ballots where you color in the selections you want. Still, even with that automated system (which has been in use in many jurisdictions in North America for decades) there is still the key paper trail, so that if the election is contested, you can go back to a good ol' fashioned recount.
The only argument I've seen against pen and paper ballots for the US is that, unlike some countries, a lot of different elections get tossed on top of congressional, presidential or state elections. Various local positions, voter initiatives, referrenda and the like get tossed into the brew, so that paper ballots could get to be quite volumnious, and possibly confusing, and I guess there is some advantage there to an electronic voting system which can make display of such complicated ballots much easier.
But the US is a federation. (Score:2)
Given that Canada is a single republic and the provinces are divisions of it, that is easy to do.
But the US is a federation of separate republics - the "several states" - which banded together, creating a central mechanism to handle defense, for
That's great and all... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Now don't mod me troll, but remind me again, what is so horrific about paper ballots?
I'm sure there are many opinions on this but I believe a primary problem with paper ballots is: speed. We want the results now, now,
! We don't want to wait until tomorrow or the day after. I could blame the media or the internet or a few other things - but it comes down to all of us (well, not Linux users, their pretty cool, but the rest of us).
/. is a prime example (of which I too am guilty from time to time). Now
We live in an impatient society that doesn't want to wait. Not reading the articles on
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Basically vote counting has trivial to extract parallelism, and scales very well. The problem in Florida is having a stupid punched card system which is then tried to be counted by machines. A simple piece of paper with a cross, and counted by hand works much better.
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We use paper counting in Australia. We also have compulsory voting. If you don't vote, you get a fine so we tend to have high turnouts. We also get preliminary election results within a few hours of polls closing. Of course final results take longer, due to absentees, etc.
I mean I understand you're just trolling and all, but really, everything you posted was total bullshit. Even that bit about how Americans vote on issues, and Brits on personality! Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
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I don't want to rain on everyone's parade but..... (Score:4, Interesting)
students of the NYS legislature will also tell you that the "special" sessions tend to be when the sneakiest things go on in NYS because, in general, they garner less attention and most of the legislators just want to make it as quick as possible and get back to their families.
that being said, NY does have a very strong voting rights coalition with a number of very smart and talented people working very hard to make sure that this DOESNT go through.
one good thing did happen at the end of session. is that NYVV's (New Yorker's for Verified Voting) Bo Lipari (who's been leading the charge AGAINST microsoft's lobbyists) has been granted a seat at the table. the citizen's advisory board now has statutory authority. which means that when the board of elections makes decisions about this stuff he's got a seat at the table to help shape the outcome.
Not too far removed (Score:2, Funny)
Wouldn't be surprised if MS tried to consolidate voting procedures the same way they have tried to do with the entertainment market.
"New to the Xbox Live Marketplace, vote for your favorite U.S. Presidential Puppet in the new 'Red Vs. Blue' civic action feature."
Don't knw what version of Windows (Score:2)
Windows CE 6.0 source code is available under a shared source code license.
If they are indeed using CE 6.0 then vendors not releasing code are just using Microsoft as a ruse to protect access to their own code.
Australian e-voting (Score:3, Interesting)
Australia has some e-voting software that is open sourced, http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html [act.gov.au] also has a link to the source code.
Why is M$ software even on voting machines........ (Score:2)
Why is it on ATM systems as well at least there it is more
slot and video Casino games must have there source code turned over the NGC and if windows was being used as the os then that code may have be turned over well. Windows may not even pass the testing need for Casino games as it may crash in the middle of a game. I once had a slot slow down and crash on me and it still slowly finished the bonus round and printed out the ticket then it disable
This is funny... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure we want it to be secure and transparent which means Open Source has the best option for this to occur. Anything that is closed source should *NOT* be trusted. This includes the platform/OS the system runs on.
And is it *REALLY* that hard to ask that there be a god damn paper trail? I think just about every single person on
How complicated could it be? (Score:2)
I can't think of any reasons why Microsoft is being difficult here. I can't think of any complex algorithms you'd have to invent and therefore protect to display and count votes.
All you need functions for: Security Wrapper. ID voter. Display Choices. Input Choices Into Database.
How is that going to be so complicated that it needs trade secret protection? Or is the final fucntion like, Collect Choices and Vo
Re:How complicated could it be? (Score:4, Informative)
I can't think of any reasons why Microsoft is being difficult here. I can't think of any complex algorithms you'd have to invent and therefore protect to display and count votes.
If I understand the problem correctly (please correct me if not - but I did RTFA, and went to the source, Bo Lipari's blog as well, and also to his organization's web site), the requirement is not for MS to escrow the code for the *voting* software; MS aren't writing it anyway, Diebold and others are. The requirement is that, since some manufacturers of the above-mentioned voting software wrote it for Windows, MS is supposed to escrow all the *Windows* source code to NYC. This is very silly IMHO (from an engineering point of view), but of course reason needn't apply.
Obviously, MS doesn't want to escrow all the Windows source to a bunch of political hacks. This has been presented on Slashdot as an attack by Microsoft on democracy and mum' apple pie, but what I believe is really hapenning is just a local political maneuver, as follows:
The hullabaloo was started by a certain Mr. Lipari who seems to have a complete dislike for any kind of electronic voting. IMHO, he invented this specific requirement knowing it's totally ridiculous. He presented it as defending democracy, and managed to sell it to the public. His intention is rather, I believe, to torpedo the whole e-voting concept in NY by getting ignorant politicians to vote for impossible requirements. Well, good for him - he seems to have succeeded. And if e-voting companies switch to Linux of FreeBSD or Windows CE (or any OS with available source code) he'll then ask for the BIOS, and the CPU firmware, and so on, until they give up.
Still missing the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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IBM Wins (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM has won this battle. Possibly because it's a NY state based company (Armonk, NY). The trick will be seeing this victory applied elsewhere in the country.
NY is famous for being tough, smart and understanding security. I hope other people in other states are lucky enough to follow our lead.
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