Author: Andrew Appel
-
Tech@FTC
Professor Ed Felten, while on loan to the Federal Trade Commission for 2011 and Spring 2012, has a new Tech Policy Blog, Tech@FTC. When he’s in his role as Chief Technologist of the FTC, he’ll blog there; when he’s wearing his regular hat as Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Information…
-
ACM opens another hole in the paywall
Last month I wrote about Princeton University’s new open-access policy. In fact, Princeton’s policy just recognizes where many disciplines and many scholarly publishers were going already. Most of the important publication venues in Computer Science already have an open-access policy–that is, their standard author copyright contract permits an author to make copies of his or…
-
Appeal filed in NJ voting-machines lawsuit
Paperless (DRE) voting machines went on trial in New Jersey in 2009, in the Gusciora v. Corzine lawsuit. In early 2010 Judge Linda Feinberg issued an Opinion that was flawed in many ways (factually and legally). But Judge Feinberg did at least recognize that DRE voting machines are vulnerable to software-based election fraud, and she…
-
Corruption Bureau assigns fox to guard henhouse
Recently I wrote about my discovery that someone erased evidence on an election computer in Cumberland County, NJ. After something went wrong in a Primary Election in June 2011, the Superior Court (the Hon. David E. Krell) had ordered the County Board of Elections to make the computer available for me (the Plaintiffs’ expert) to…
-
Open Access to Scholarly Publications at Princeton
In its September 2011 meeting, the Faculty of Princeton University voted unanimously for a policy of open access to scholarly publications: “The members of the Faculty of Princeton University strive to make their publications openly accessible to the public. To that end, each Faculty member hereby grants to The Trustees of Princeton University a nonexclusive,…
-
What happens when the printed ballot face doesn't match the electronic ballot definition?
Part 4 of 4. Complete 4-part series available here. The Sequoia AVC Advantage is an old-technology direct-recording electronic voting machine. It doesn’t have a video display; the candidate names are printed on a large sheet of paper, and voters indicate their choices by pressing buttons that are underneath the paper. A “ballot definition” file in…
-
Will the NJ Attorney General investigate the NJ Attorney General?
Part 3 of 4 In my recent posts I wrote about my discovery that (apparently) a County employee tampered with evidence in a computer that the NJ Superior Court had Ordered the County to present for examination. I described this discovery to the Court (Judge David E. Krell); and then a County employee did admit…
-
Did NJ election officials fail to respect court order to improve security of elections?
Part 2 of 4 The Gusciora case was filed in 2004 by the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic on behalf of Reed Gusciora and other public-interest plaintiffs. The Plaintiffs sought to end the use of paperless direct-recording electronic voting machines, which are very vulnerable to fraud and manipulation via replacement of their software. The defendant was…
-
NJ election cover-up
Part 1 of 4 During the June 2011 New Jersey primary election, something went wrong in Cumberland County, which uses Sequoia AVC Advantage direct-recording electronic voting computers. From this we learned several things: New Jersey court-ordered election-security measures have not been effectively implemented. There is a reason to believe that New Jersey election officials have…
-
Why seals can't secure elections
Over the last few weeks, I’ve described the chaotic attempts of the State of New Jersey to come up with tamper-indicating seals and a seal use protocol to secure its voting machines. A seal use protocol can allow the seal user to gain some assurance that the sealed material has not been tampered with. But…