Re: Microsoft-backed Consortium, AeA, Opposing Open Voting Bill, AB 852 (Nathan L. Adams)

At 7:08 PM -0700 2007/4/26, ovc-discuss-request@listman.sonic.net wrote:
>
>Message: 3
>Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:00:52 -0400
>From: "Nathan L. Adams" <nadams@ieee.org>
>Subject: Re: [OVC-discuss] Microsoft-backed Consortium, AeA, Opposing
> Open Voting Bill, AB 852
>To: Open Voting Consortium discussion list
> <ovc-discuss@listman.sonic.net>
>Message-ID: <46314B44.8040604@ieee.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>Hamilton Richards wrote:
>> There's also a practical issue. If public disclosure becomes law, how
>> will we handle the argument, "OK, now you can inspect the code, stop
>> bothering us about ballot printers. ... Oh? Ballot printers are still
>> needed? Then what was all that fuss about public disclosure?"
>
>Public disclosure is but one piece of the puzzle, obviously.
>
>Although Bruce was referring to public disclosure of security exploits
>(as opposed to public disclosure of source code), his reasoning applies
>here as well when he said:
>
>"Full disclosure is the only thing that forces vendors to fix security
>problems. The further we move away from full disclosure, the less
>incentive vendors have to fix problems and the more at-risk we all are."
>
>Nathan

Fine, but as disclosure forces vendors to fix problems, the public
needs to be reminded that no matter how many problems are fixed,
there's no way to know how many remain undetected.

That leads naturally to a discussion of the most important part of
the puzzle, namely, the ballot printer.

Cheers,

--Ham

-- 
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Hamilton Richards, PhD           Department of Computer Sciences
Senior Lecturer (retired)        The University of Texas at Austin
ham@cs.utexas.edu                hrichrds@swbell.net
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ham/richards
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