Author: Andrew Appel
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Bizarre Undervote on iVotronic in France
In France, most municipalities use paper ballots in elections, but a few places have begun using DRE (direct-recording electronic) machines. Pierre Muller, a French computer scientist, has recently sent me a report of a malfunction by an ES&S iVotronic machine in a recent municipal election. In this spring’s elections (and he believes this also happened…
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Eavesdropping as a Telecom Profit Center
In 1980 AT&T was a powerful institution with a lucrative monopoly on transporting long-distance voice communications, but forbidden by law from permitting the government to eavesdrop without a warrant. Then in 1981 Judge Greene took its voice monopoly away, and in the 1980s and 90s the Internet ate the rest of its lunch. By 1996,…
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AT&T Explains Guilt by Association
According to government documents studied by The New York Times, the FBI asked several phone companies to analyze phone-call patterns of Americans using a technology called “communities of interest”. Verizon refused, saying that it didn’t have any such technology. AT&T, famously, did not refuse. What is the “communities of interest” technology? It’s spelled out very…