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July 19, 2004
First eVoting Lawsuit by a Candidate
Linda Soubirous lost the March 2004 race for a seat on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors by 45 votes. She requested a recount and asked for 44 pieces of information pertaining to the recount, including the audit logs, the redundant memory stored in the machines, the results of "logic and accuracy" tests, and the chain-of-custody records for the system components. The Riverside Registrar of Voters, Mischelle Townsend refused to give the additional information saying it was "irrelevant." Now Soubirous is suing Townsend. I hope the Utah Voting Equipment Selection Committee is paying attention. I think that this suit is only the first of many if voting equipment is not selected in accordance with the highest possible standards (something the current RFP falls far short of).
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Quantum Cryptography Network Debuts
Until now, quantum cryptography has been a strictly point-to-point affair. Technology Research News announced today that a 6-node network connecting Harvard, Boston University, and BBN has been successfully deployed. Quantum cryptography uses the quantum state of photons to transmit one-time pads to a correspondent. Reading the state changes it. The benefit is that quantum-based cryptographic methods can be shown to be strongly secure without having to base those arguments on the intractability of certain mathematical problems as standard cryptography does. (read a tutorial).