I went on CBC radio in Halifax to discuss concerns about the security of their online election, and then was stunned to hear how an elections official went on the next day to patently dismiss all concerns. Consequently, security researcher Kevin McArthur has gone public with some of the background story, and some of the evidence, surrounding my recent video about the security vulnerabilities in the Halifax election.
I’m also posting the documents I obtained from the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre featured in the video: Public Safety disclosure halifax election A-2013-00029
Note that Kevin has posted some of the unredacted documents he submitted to CCIRC — very interesting, and the basics are understandable even to non-technical people.
I think the most interesting and important aspect of all this, though, is how it highlights the way the security of internet voting is so complex that the average person can only choose whether to believe any particular expert or authority or not. Why would we want to turn our elections into processes that are so complicated that we’re then requiring people just to accept on faith that they are fair and valid? It’s fundamentally undemocratic. Paper ballots, properly tracked and audited, work great and are easy to understand.