Evm: Dangers Of Trusting Them Too Much

[BlessedAgni]

A Metropolitan court today extended the police remand of activist Hari Prasad, who claimed to have blown the whistle on how an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) can be tampered with, conceding prosecution's request for his further custodial interrogation.



While extending Prasad's police remand till August 28, Metropolitan Magistrate V B Srikhande refused to entertain his bail plea, saying it would be considered only after his police remand gets over and he is sent to judicial custody.



Hari Prasad (42), technical coordinator of VeTA ( Citizens for Verifiability, Transparency and Accountability in Elections), was arrested from Hyderabad on Saturday for allegedly stealing an EVM from the Mumbai Collector's office. He later used the EVM for demonstrating on TV how the machine can be tampered with.



The police sought further custody of Prasad, saying it needed to find out the identity of two other activists from Maharashtra who allegedly helped him.



"This is a very sensitive case with repercussions at the national level and police should be given time and Hari Prasad's custody for investigation," Srikhande observed while passing the order.



Claiming innocence, Prasad said he did not steal the EVM, which was given to him by two persons who took it back within two days.



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/...z0xp6GMmYR







If someone finds the truth, silence him! I wonder why BJP and other parties are not seeking for Hari Prasad to be released immediately.

[BlessedAgni]

the following is a good article!



http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news...oral-fraud



India arrests hacker who exposed electoral fraud



Protecting corruption wherever it is found

By Nick Farrell

Mon Aug 23 2010, 09:59



HACKERS WHO PROVE how India's corrupt politicians use electronic voting systems to get elected can expect to be arrested.



While many countries would have praised Hari Prasad for exposing a weakeness in a computerised voting system that allows corrupt politicians to steal votes, it seems that India takes a rather dim view of it.



Inspector Knacker of the Maharashtra Yard showed up at Prasad's house and arrested him on the somewhat flimsy charge of theft of an electronic voting machine (EVM). The machine was used in a vulnerability demonstration by Hari Prasad and a team of security researchers that included Alex Halderman, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan and Rop Gonggrijp, a security researcher from the Netherlands, along with a team of their colleagues.



Earlier coppers had gone to Hyderabad in the first week of August and taken a statement from Prasad about the EVM used for exposing the vulnerability. They had asked him to show up in Mumbai for further questioning. Hari Prasad could not go as he was busy so the Indian plod arrested him.



The voting machine vulnerability exposed by Prasad has made idiots out of the Election Commission of India (ECI). It has been pushing the use of EVMs at all costs and has been telling the world plus dog that they are "totally tamper proof, perfect, fail safe and requiring no improvement".



Prasad had agreed to meet the Commission's challenge to demonstrate how easy it was to hack the EVMs, but the Commission backed out so Prasad did it on a machine that was provided by an anonymous source. This is exactly the same method as is used by the media where public interest is paramount, and the fact that Prasad refused to tell the coppers where he got the machine seems to have been the reason for his arrest.



There is a move within India to ban the electronic voting machines. More than three political parties had written to the ECI in April expressing concerns about the reliability of EVMs and urging the ECI to organize an all-party meeting. According to an Indian EVM blog the Commission has ignored them.

[Capt M Kumar]

Hari Prasad denied allegations that he had stolen the EVM. He claimed somebody gave it to him and showed how it could be tampered with. He filmed the entire demonstration and then handed back the machine to that person.







The EVM number was telecasted on major TV channels. "We deliberately displayed the EVM number on the television in order to show that the original machine was tampered with. Until that time, ECI had been claiming that their EVMs were in safe custody", he said.







Hari Pasad urged the techies in the country to come forward and expose the glitches with EVMs. "I will continue to fight against the EVMs and will be in touch with the Election Commission to prove my point", he said. http://www.breakingnewsonline.net/techno...-evms.html

[Capt M Kumar]

Details gathered by The Telegraph revealed that the new EVMs could record the timing of the first and last votes cast.



The new gadgets will also display an in-built control unit number on the screen so that it can be tallied with the one that comes with the machine.



The EVMs also come with improved cable connection between the ballot unit and the control unit and a power saver, which ensures that the machines go into sleep mode when not in use.



“The first two features will further allay apprehension in certain quarters that the machines can be tampered with while the second two may appear very minor but are of great help to those associated with the polling exercise, like the presiding officer. The new and upgraded EVMs are definitely safer and better to handle than the ones used earlier,” a source claimed. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101013/js...052024.jsp

[Guest]

[url="http://www.hindustantimes.com/Jailed-by-India-EVM-researcher-honoured-in-US/H1-Article1-616236.aspx"]Jailed by India, EVM researcher honoured in US[/url]

Hari Prasad Vemuru, a jailed Indian e-voting researcher, is one of the four winners of the 2010 Pioneer Awards of San Francisco headquartered Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a leading civil liberties group. The three other winners are transparency activist Steven Aftergood; public domain scholar James Boyle; and legal blogger Pamela Jones and the website Groklaw.

Vemuru, who was recently released on bail after being imprisoned for his security work in India, is a security researcher who recently revealed security flaws in India's paperless electronic voting machines.



"He has endured jail time, repeated interrogations, and ongoing political harassment to protect an anonymous source that enabled him to conduct the first independent security review of India's electronic voting system," EFF said.



"Prasad spent a year trying to convince election officials to complete such a review, but they insisted that the government-made machines were 'perfect' and 'tamperproof.'"



"Instead of blindly accepting the government's claims, Prasad's international team discovered serious flaws that could alter national election results. Months of hot debate have produced a growing consensus that India's electronic voting machines should be scrapped, and [color="#FF0000"]Prasad hopes to help his country build a transparent and verifiable voting system[/color]," EFF said.

[dhu]

One thing Congress definitely does keep a careful watch on..



[url="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/us-prof-behind-evm-study-deported-on-arrival/723897/"]US prof behind EVM study deported on arrival[/url]



An American computer scientist, J Alex Halderman, who had co-authored a study titled “India’s EVMs are vulnerable to fraud”, was not allowed to enter the country after landing at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport here on Sunday evening. Airport sources said he would be deported, but offered no reason for the action.

[Guest]

[url="http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/30/researchers-hack-voting-machine-for-26/?test=latestnews"]Researchers Hack Voting Machine for $26[/url]

Researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have developed a hack that, for about $26 and an 8th-grade science education, can remotely manipulate the electronic voting machines used by millions of voters all across the U.S.



The researchers, Salon reported, performed their proof-of-concept hack on a Diebold Accuvote TS electronic voting machine, a type of touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting system that is widely used for government elections.

<img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[Husky]

www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Does GPLv3 require that voters be able to modify the software running in a voting machine? (#v3VotingMachine)

No. Companies distributing devices that include software under GPLv3 are at most required to provide the source and Installation Information for the software to people who possess a copy of the object code. The voter who uses a voting machine (like any other kiosk) doesn't get possession of it, not even temporarily, so the voter also does not get possession of the binary software in it.



[color="#0000FF"]Note, however, that voting is a very special case. Just because the software in a computer is free does not mean you can trust the computer for voting. We believe that computers cannot be trusted for voting. Voting should be done on paper.[/color]

When the (rebel) Brains say that *they* wouldn't trust computers for voting, it means it can't be trusted.

"The Brains have spoken. The rest is corollary."

[austinsteve]

I dont know but i dont have trust on evm's