A very important program!

• What's Really Wrong With Electronic Voting?
• Are Problems Fixable or Are Systems Fatally Flawed?
• What Needs to be Done....Why...How?
• What will be Vendor Defense?
• What Might Congress Do to Better Secure 2008 Elections?

Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Dr. Matt Blaze, Member of the California Research Team that Found Significant Security Issues in Several Electronic Voting Systems

This Week's Very Special Guests on "Voice of the Voters!" " Power and Responsibility of Democracy" 1360 AM, Philadelphia's Renaissance Radio, and the Internet ( http://wnjc.duxpond.com/ ) Wednesday, August 8 -- 8PM ET or through www.voiceofthevoters.org (archives, podcast; recent shows)

Note: To be completely prepared for tonight's show, be sure to check out Dr. Blaze's Security Problem Excuse Bingo Card http://www.crypto.com/bingo/pr as voting machine vendors' press releases flood the media.

"The California study was, as far as I know, the most comprehensive independent security evaluation of electronic voting technologies ever conducted, covering products from three major vendors and investigating not only the voting machines themselves, but also the back-end systems that create ballots and tally votes. I believe our reports now constitute the most detailed published information available about how these systems work and the specific risks entailed by their use in elections."

That's a quote from Dr. Matt Blaze, who for two months led one of the source code analysis teams in California's security review of its electronic voting systems. Here's more from Dr. Blaze:

"We found significant, deeply-rooted security weaknesses in all three vendors' software. Our newly-released source code analyses address many of the supposed shortcomings of the red team studies, which have been (quite unfairly, I think) criticized as being "unrealistic". It should now be clear that the red teams were successful not because they somehow "cheated," but rather because the built-in security mechanisms they were up against simply don't work properly. Reliably protecting these systems under operational conditions will likely be very hard. The problems we found in the code were far more pervasive, and much more easily exploitable, than I had ever imagined they would be."

Dr. Blaze will share his knowledge, experience and insights in a discussion of what was found, impact on our election system, what can and should be done to address the serious vulnerabilities. Can the architectural and operational as well as quality issues be addressed?

Then, Democratic presidential candidate, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, will explain why he believes DREs are a problem, what he thinks can be done in Congress to protect American voters from systems that are flawed quite possibly beyond repair and how we might better secure American elections systems in time for 2008.

He'll also discuss other key issues facing the country in this historic time and why he has chosen to run for the office of President of the United States of America..

****************************************************

Voice of the Voters, an hour devoted to voting rights and election reform, is the foremost voting rights radio show in the country . It is hosted every week by Mary Ann Gould and is ultimately an exploration of Representative Democracy itself and the responsibilities of citizens and their elected representatives. It airs every Wednesday night at 8:00 PM ET on 1360 AM and on the Internet. (http://wnjc.duxpond.com/)

Note: If you use dial up Internet, it is best to turn off all other programs in order to receive clearest broadcast.

Listeners can call in questions live at 856-227-1360 and submit questions in advance at the SaveOurVote website.

Voice of the Voters now also available as a podcast at iTunes.com under "Voice of the Voters" in the News & Politics category

Archived shows are available at http://mysite.verizon.net/resq4lzq/cvi/id267.html. Click here.

****************************************************

Dr. Blaze's Research Summary and Bio: Secure Systems and Cryptology

My research focuses on the architecture and design of secure systems based on cryptographic techniques, analysis of secure systems against practical attack models, and on finding new cryptographic primitives and techniques. This work has led directly to several new cryptographic concepts, including: "Remotely-Keyed Encryption," which allows the use of inexpensive, low-bandwidth secure hardware to protect high-bandwidth communication and stored data, "Atomic Proxy Cryptography," which allows re-encryption by untrusted third parties, and "Master-Key Encryption," which provides a systematic way to design (and study) ciphers with built-in "back doors."

I am especially interested in the use of encryption to protect insecure systems such as the Internet. I was a designer of swIPe, a predecessor of the now standard IPSEC protocol for protecting Internet traffic. Another project, CFS, investigated and demonstrated the feasibility of including encryption as file system service.

Recently, I've applied cryptologic techniques to other areas, including the analysis of physical security systems; this work yielded a powerful and practical attack against virtually all commonly used master-keyed mechanical locks.

Trust Management

I coined the term, and am one of the inventors of, Trust Management, which provides the abstract layer in which a system decides whether to allow some potentially dangerous action. This work has led to two trust management languages, KeyNote and PolicyMaker, that provide tools for specifying policy, delegating authority, and controlling access. In addition to providing a useful framework for studying and proving security properties of distributed systems, our tools have been used to build powerful policy control mechanisms into several important applications, including the OpenBSD IPSEC implementation.

Technology and Public Policy

Cryptology and computer security have important relationships to vital areas of public policy, and my work has touched on these in several ways. In 1994, I discovered a serious flaw in the US Government's "Clipper" encryption system, which had been proposed as a mechanism for the public to encrypt their data in a way that would still allow access by law enforcement. I have edited several influential reports on encryption policy, including the 1998 study of "key escrow" systems that demonstrated that such systems are inherently less secure and more expensive than systems without such a feature. This work contributed to the recent shift in U.S. encryption policy. More recently, I have been active in the analysis of the FBI's ``Carnivore'' Internet wiretap system. I have testified before various committees of the US Congress and European Parliament several times, providing technical perspective on the problems surrounding law enforcement and intelligence access to communications traffic and computer data.

Biographical Information

Education:

* Princeton University, Ph.D., Computer Science, January 1993. (Thesis: Caching in Large-Scale Distributed File Systems.)<./ul> * Princeton University, M.A., Computer Science, June 1989. * Columbia University, M.S., Computer Science, May 1988. * City University of New York (Hunter College) B.S., January 1986. Current Appointments

* University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science. Home page: http://www.crypto.com/

Blog: http://www.crypto.com/blog

**************************************

Congressman Dennis Kucinich's Bio

Education:

MA, Speech Communications, Case Western Reserve University, 1974 BA, Speech Communications, Case Western Reserve University, 1973.

Professional Experience:

Consultant, Publicly Owned Electric Systems, 1979-present President, Marketing and Communications Firm, 1985-1995 Teacher, Communications and Political Science, Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University, 1991-1994 Professor, Political Science, Case Western Reserve University, 1982-1992 Communications Entrepreneur, Software and Public Relations, 1982-1992 Clerk of Courts, Cleveland Municipal Court, 1976-1977 Sportswriter.

Political Experience:

Representative, United States House of Representatives, 1997-present Candidate, President of the United States, 2003-2004 Senator, Ohio State Senate, District 23, 1994-1996 Democratic Candidate, United States House of Representatives, 1972, 1988, 1992 Member, Cleveland City Council, 1970-1975, 1981-1982 Mayor, City of Cleveland, 1977-1979 Independent Candidate, United State's House of Representatives, 1974.

Organizations:

Member, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States Member, Croatian American Lodge Member, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Cameraman's Union Member, Moving Pictures Technicians Member, National Guard and Reserve Components Organization Member, Polish National Alliance Member, Pioneers Member, Saint Paul's Catholic Church Member, West Side Irish American Club.

Caucuses/Non-Legislative Committees:

Co-Chair, Baltic Caucus Children's Task Force Vice-Chair, Congressional Aerospace Caucus Chair, Congressional Progressive Caucus Vice-Chair, Executive Committee, Congressional Steel Caucus.

Coalition for Voting Integrity www.coalitionforvotingintegrity.org

Coalition for Voting Integrity