"Things" to Decide the Next President

A review of the Pentagon's Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, (Serve), has concluded that the Internet-based system is inherently unsafe and liable to interference.

"The flaws are unsolvable because they are fundamental to the architecture of the Internet," says one of the 10 independent computer security experts involved in the review.

"Using a voting system based upon the internet poses a serious and unacceptable risk for election fraud.

"It is simply not secure enough for something as serious as the election of a government official."

In spite of the damning report, the Pentagon still plans to go ahead with the system, which is scheduled for use in South Carolina's primary elections in February.

"We knew from the start that security would be the utmost concern," said Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood. "We've had things put in place that counteract the things they talked about."

Things? Things? What things?

Security has always been a major dilemma for Internet-based software, and every new "killer" application has been exposed as vulnerable sooner or later. Of course, the US military has always been a leading researcher into new technology - if they have something new and unbreakable, let's see it! But if they are going to be secretive about it, there are two major problems:

1. How can independent observers (i.e. US) know the result is fair, if we do not know how it was achieved?

2. What is to stop Pentagon insiders abusing the system, if they are the only ones who know how it works?

On the other hand, maybe they're bluffing. Maybe these "things" they are talking about are just routine security traps, like firewalls or SSL encryption techniques, whose vulnerability has already been exposed. Either way, it doesn't look good...