Benlog

crypto and public policy

Archive for November, 2004

Voting Performance Standards

Posted: Thursday, November 11th, 2004 @ 12:41 pm in Publications & Press | No Comments »

Starting with some discussions at Crypto 2004, a few of us cryptographers discussed setting up new standards for evaluating voting systems.
We were specifically worried about the design-oriented, pass/fail nature of current standards. Instead, we want performance-oriented, multi-dimensional tests. Basically, instead of saying “machine X is good for voting because it uses DES encryption,” a fairly [...]

Harvard Law Talk

Posted: Thursday, November 4th, 2004 @ 1:08 pm in Publications & Press | No Comments »

This past Tuesday, just before election results, I gave a talk at Harvard Law School’s Digital Democracy class on “Secure and Fair Elections.” In my new attempt to teach as much as I can to as many people as I can, I’m posting all of my slides online in various usable formats.
Check out the slides.

Boston Magazine

Posted: Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004 @ 12:30 pm in Publications & Press | 3 Comments »

Boston Magazine’s Jake Halpern wrote an article about my work in this month’s Boston Magazine.
Overall, as a high-level overview, it’s a decent article. Of course, there are a number of exaggerations I’d like to correct:

I’m not a star PhD student. I’m just a normal PhD student.
I’m not sure about the supposed “nodding somberly”, [...]

It’s a Bush Country After All

Posted: Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004 @ 10:29 am in General | 4 Comments »

Lessig is right: John Kerry lost the election and we need to admit it [ah, it looks like Kerry is admitting it right now]. My friend Jon was right: I am woefully out of touch with how Americans think.
There will be many theories about this election. The Republicans brought out the vote by inspiring [...]

Way to Go, Florida Election Officials

Posted: Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004 @ 12:05 am in Security & Crypto | No Comments »

Bloggers – Atrios and Kos – are upset about an optical scan failure in Daytona Beach, Florida.
In fact, you have to give credit to the election officials who did exactly the right thing. With tens of thousands of voting machines out there, some are bound to fail. Apparently, as soon as the election officials detected [...]

 
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