October 16, 2003
Hacking democracy.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes in "Dare accepted on electronic voting machines" that Georgia state election officials have accepted Roxanne Jekot's dare that
she and a few expert friends could crack Georgia's $54 million touch-screen voting system in a matter of minutes.
Brit Williams, who is the retired university professor who help design the system and who has been one of its most staunch defenders, "put the odds of corrupting the software undetected at 1 billion to one."
One billion to one. And this guy is a former professor of computer science? This figure is simply absurd. Outside of certain heavily-secured systems owned primarily by the military (to which I alluded a couple of days ago) there is no system on Earth for which these odds would be appropriate. This is the kind of statement that only someone almost completely unfamiliar with the field would make.
Williams' absurdity notwithstanding, however, I see this as a very good thing. (Assuming, of course, that Jekot and her friends have appropriate access to the devices in question, that is, the access that an election official would have.) I'm virtually certain that Williams and the state of Georgia will end up being very embarrassed by this demonstration, but this will be a very good thing indeed for the voters of that state.
Go Roxanne!