Saturday 20 September 2003

IEEE members: save democracy from a broken standards-committee! Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing Blog makes an impassioned plea for IEEE members to take a  look at what's going on in one of the organisation's commitees, specificially the one looking at standards for electronic voting machines. The committee, he claims 'has gone off the tracks' and is trying to stifle dissent. Given the debate, or lack of it, on the use of such machines here, this is a very relevant topic. The IEEE, normally the sobersided epitome of integrity and accountability, has had one of its standards-committees jump the tracks. The people who are writing the IEEE standard for voting machines have been doing their best to rig their deliberative process ot exclude input from critics who want the standard to include performance metrics that will guard against electoral malfeasance. This is heavy stuff: the standard this committee produces will likely form the basis of the US goverment's voting-machine purchases (as well as those of governments abroad), and if there are holes in the standard today, they will be biting our democracies on the ass for decades. There's never been a clearer demonstration that "architecture is politics." IEEE is better than this. If you're a member of the organization, please take a moment to read up on this disaster-in-the-making and then use the form at the EFF's action-center to write to the IEEE and ask them to investigate this -- before it's too late. ...instead of using this opportunity to create a performance standard, setting benchmarks for e-voting machines to meet with regards to testing the security, reliability, accessibility and accuracy of these machines, P1583 created a design standard, describing how electronic voting machines should be configured (and following the basic plans of most current electronic voting machines). Even more problematic, the standard fails to require or even recommend that voting machines be truly voter verified or verifiable, a security measure that has broad support within the computer security community. To make matters worse, EFF has received reports of serious procedural problems with the P1538 and SCC 38 Committee processes, including shifting roadblocks placed in front of those who wish to participate and vote, and failure to follow basic procedural requirements.We've heard claims that the working group and committee leadership is largely controlled by representatives of the electronic voting machine vendor companies and others with vested interests. Link [Boing Boing Blog] 11:56:02 PM    comment []  Google It!

Galileo to bow out in a blaze of glory Tomorrow, the Galileo probe orbiting Jupiter will burn up in the Jovian atmosphere after 14 years of service. The probe has had a troubled life. Its main antenna refused to deploy meaning researchers had to use a secondary antenna which meant the bit-rate for sending back data was greatly reduced and the tape recorder used to store data proved to be tempramental. Nevertheless, Galileo made some amazing discoveries inlcuding a salt water ocean that may be capable of sustaining life below the ice on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. It is to avoid contaminating Europa through an inadvertant collision that mission controllers decided to destroy the probe rather than leave it in orbit. Those same mission controllers, however, hope to gain some clues as to the exact composition of Jupiter's upper atmosphere as the probe hurtles to its doom. 11:37:38 PM    comment []  Google It!

Old Hitler Article Stirs Debate It seems that the discovery of Homes & Gardens' coverage of Hitler's holiday retreat, which I noted below, has stirred up some controversy. Wired News has the story. 11:11:02 PM    comment []  Google It!

© Copyright 2003 David Stewart. Last update: 01/10/2003; 11:43:58.