Scytl Voting via Mobile Phone: iFraud

Scytl, the Spanish company which will famously be processing 2012 election results is claiming the ability to vote by iPhone and Android. 

Scytl has successfully implemented its online voting encryption technology on Google Android™  and Apple® iOS smartphones and tablet computers. By encrypting the ballot on the voter’s device before it is cast, Scytl is now able to guarantee end-to-end security - from the voter to the final tally - not only for computer-based online voting but also for mobile voting, setting a new milestone in the field of mobile election software security.

 BusinessWire, Scytl's PR firm, released more information:

By encrypting the ballot on the voter’s device before it is cast, Scytl is now able to guarantee end-to-end security - from the voter to the final tally - not only for computer-based online voting but also for mobile voting.

Encrypting the ballot on the voter’s device (computer, smartphone or tablet computer) before it is transmitted to the digital ballot box server to be stored is one of the critical security features offered by Scytl’s online voting systems. This prevents anyone, including system administrators, from violating voter privacy or jeopardizing the election results. Alternative solutions that encrypt the ballots only once they are received on the digital ballot box server open the possibility for malicious attackers or system administrators to intercept, read or modify the ballots while they are being sent or upon arrival at the server, before they are encrypted while they are still in clear-text.

“By leveraging its pioneering security technology with Google and Apple’s mobile device platforms, Scytl has become the premier election technology provider to offer an online voting system that guarantees the highest standards in terms of both voter privacy and ballot integrity both on personal computers and mobile devices”, said Gabriel Dos Santos, Scytl’s Vice President of Software Engineering.

As a programmer and someone paying attention of how political fraud works, the primary problem here is the black box. This is the same strategy used by the IPCC's Climate Research Unit and NASA who collected data, manipulated it and then distributed to scientists for research. The manipulated data led good scientists to garbage conclusions in efforts to "hide the decline" of global temperatures. The CRU and NASA controlled the data without transparency.

There is no check or transparency into the software black box collecting votes. Scytl will give their word and make self-serving pronouncements of security. No one will be in position to argue with what they proclaim to be the truth. Transparency is fundamental to the process of vote counting. There will be no transparency here.

Scytl’s specialized security technology has been internationally recognized by both industry and academia for protecting privacy and results integrity. Scytl’s security technology has been audited by independent international organizations and academic experts in the field of election administration that have consistently found its security and technology to be accurate and reliable. These organizations include the Florida Department of State, the Center for Advanced Security Research, the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology, the French Security Agency, Fribourg University in Switzerland and Trondheim University in Norway.

If a Scytl decides that the "encrypted" ballot is marked as for candidate A instead of candidate B, there is no one else to look at the ballot. It would be a security risk to give the decryption code to a secondary party. Individual voters will never know if their vote was correctly counted. If fraud is uncovered, Scytl will blame the end device. Mobile phones are not under the control of Scytl or poll watchers. Hacking of phones or transmissions can be blamed with plausible deniability for Scytl.

Now I understand how the inventor of this technology must have felt when he died at 35 in a traffic accident on March 11, 2006. Terrified.

Conclusion

We trusted scientists, so our would-be slave masters exploited our trust with Global Warming. We trust technology and now this is being exploited. This is a really bad idea unless voter fraud and Marxist-style control of voting is the aim.

Sometimes I think we are living in a James Bond movie. 

P.S.

This should have been titled "Phoney Votes" somehow...