[Tfug] Call for a volunteer or two...

[Jim March]

I think at this point all slots are full  If you got your
name/addy/phone in to me by now, you're in.

To answer the question though, "general geekiness" is enough.  Those
involved for the first time will get a briefing on what to look
for...and to be honest, part of what we're hoping for (among both
Libertarians and Democrats) is to get a pool of techies available
who've had at least minimal experience who can be sent out to other
counties prior to the really important elections of '08.  For a small
election, we'll really have too many people :) but we don't get too
many practice runs.

What we're looking for is three main things:

* Unsecure facilities;

* Extra network connections off to God knows where that could "back
door" an election;

* Extra software or hardware that ain't supposed to be there.  If you
ever go on one of these as lead, you'll get a detailed listing of
what's supposed to be there.

On that last, in this case, this is a Diebold system.  The city has
it's own central tabulator station...basically a server-grade Dell
running Win2k and the Diebold software (really an MS-Access front
end).  Key thing that must NOT be anywhere around: MS-Access.  It's
usable as a "hack tool" to directly modify the database of votes
without needing a password and without leaving an audit trail.  Very
bad mojo.  Extra network connections running off to a back room
running MS-Access are bad news as well.

Secondary mission: judge how accessible the whole process (including
physical location) is to observation on election night.  Are we going
to be able to watch and make sure monkey biz doesn't happen?

I'll post more on this tomorrow.  It's an interesting subject...

One important note: support for the worst voting systems possible is
coming in HARD from Microsoft lobbyists and megabucks.  They don't
want voting systems shifted over to open-source for max transparency,
because people would (rightfully) take it as a slam on Windows
security and the whole closed-source world.  So getting involved in
election integrity is a way to directly attack MS on a new front :).

Jim

On 8/10/07, christopher floess <skeptikos at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is this something for which someone needs a certain level of
> > training/expertise, or is a general knowledge of computers sufficient?
> > If the latter, I would definitely be interested; if the former, I may
> > not be qualified.
>
> ditto
>
>
>
> --
> Q: What did the zen buddhist say to the hotdog vendor?
>
> A: Make me one with everything ~ Dr. Jonathan Katz
>
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