Month: August 2010
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A Software License Agreement Takes it On the Chin
[Update: This post was featured on Slashdot.] [Update: There are two discrete ways of asking whether a court decision is “correct.” The first is to ask: is the law being applied the same way here as it has been applied in other cases? We can call this first question the “legal question.” The second is…
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Indian E-Voting Researcher Freed After Seven Days in Police Custody
FLASH: 4:47 a.m. EDT August 28 — Indian e-voting researcher Hari Prasad was released on bail an hour ago, after seven days in police custody. Magistrate D. H. Sharma reportedly praised Hari and made strong comments against the police, saying Hari has done service to his country. Full post later today.
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Update: Indian E-Voting Researcher Remains in Police Custody
Update: 8/28 Indian E-Voting Researcher Freed After Seven Days in Police Custody In case you’re just tuning in, e-voting researcher Hari Prasad, with whom I coauthored a paper exposing serious flaws in India’s electronic voting machines (EVMs), was arrested Saturday morning at his home in Hyderabad. The arresting officers told him they were acting under “pressure…
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It’s Time for India to Face its E-Voting Problem
The unjustified arrest of Indian e-voting researcher Hari Prasad, while an ordeal for Prasad and his family, and an embarrassment to the Indian authorities, has at least helped to focus attention on India’s risky electronic voting machines (EVMs). Sadly, the Election Commission of India, which oversees the country’s elections, is still sticking to its position…
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Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested Over Anonymous Source
Updates:8/28Alex Halderman: Indian E-Voting Researcher Freed After Seven Days in Police Custody 8/26Alex Halderman: Indian E-Voting Researcher Remains in Police Custody 8/24Ed Felten: It’s Time for India to Face its E-Voting Problem 8/22Rop Gonggrijp: Hari is in jail 🙁 About four months ago, Ed Felten blogged about a research paper in which Hari Prasad, Rop…
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The Future of DRE Voting Machines
Last week at the EVT/WOTE workshop, Ari Feldman and I unveiled a new research project that we feel represents the future of DRE voting machines. DRE (direct-recording electronic) voting machines are ones where voters cast their ballots by pressing buttons or using a touch screen, and the primary record of the votes is stored in…
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Assessing PACER's Access Barriers
The U.S. Courts recently conducted a year-long assessment of their Electronic Public Access program which included a survey of PACER users. While the results of the assessment haven’t been formally published, the Third Branch Newsletter has an interview with Bankruptcy Judge J. Rich Leonard that discusses a few high-level findings of the survey. Judge Leonard…
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Do Not Track: Not as Simple as it Sounds
Over the past few weeks, regulators have rekindled their interest in an online Do Not Track proposal in hopes of better protecting consumer privacy. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told a Senate Commerce subcommittee last month that Do Not Track is “one promising area” for regulatory action and that the Commission plans to issue a report…
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New Search and Browsing Interface for the RECAP Archive
We have written in the past about RECAP, our project to help make federal court documents more easily accessible. We continue to upgrade the system, and we are eager for your feedback on a new set of functionality. One of the most-requested RECAP features is a better web interface to the archive. Today we’re releasing…
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A Major Internet Milestone: DNSSEC and SSL
On July 15th, a small but significant internet event occurred. On that day, years of planning culminated in the deployment of a cryptographic signature on the root DNS zone. To simplify greatly, this means that internet users will soon be able to have a much higher degree of trust in the hierarchical Domain Name System…