Rebecca mercuri has been referred to as one of the leading international experts on electronic voting. She has testified on the federal, state, and local level as well as to the u. May 28, 2015 software developers generally dont like warnings in their terminals or dev consoles. By rebecca mercuri page 1 of 2 pages view how many people read this 24 comments.
Mercuri argues that she believes the electronic voting machines cannot be audited, paper printouts notwithstanding. In 2000, mercuri provided expert testimony to the u. The challenge of applying protection to systems, software, and networks with intrinsic vulnerabilities is a lofty, but ultimately realizable, one. A technology specialist, rebecca defended her doctoral dissertation electronic vote tabulation. Read writing about software development in omarelgabrys blog. From that, she learned that the test is limited to casting a ballot for the first candidate for each race on the machine. Uncommon criteria rebecca mercuri the software development process can benefit from the use of established standards and procedures to assess compliance with specified objectives, and reduce the risk of undesired behaviors.
Not only does this testing lack rigour, but it only marginally complies with florida election law. See the complete profile on linkedin and discover lukes connections and jobs at similar companies. For the most part, the people who fill these positions. Social and ethical issues of computer science the goal of this project is to learn about some of the key social and ethical issues that uniquely apply to computer science in the modern world. Poll faulting recommended for risks folks baube, risks14. Election reform and electronic voting systems dres. May 2006 communications of the acm, volume 49, issue 5. Ai software is able to analyze previously unseen inputs by learning an underlying domain model from examples fed into the software. Luke mercuri backend software developer canva linkedin. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page.
Among others, peter neumann, principal scientist at sri internationals computer science laboratory and a leading expert on the risks associated with high technology, and rebecca mercuri, a. Her caseload has included matters from contraband, murder, viruses and malware, and election recounts most notably bush vs. Her management skills have been applied to daytoday operations as well as product development. If warnings show up, their users are slightly more likely to report issues with their product. Such firmware reprogrammability represents a major security and auditability risk. Overall, our results indicate that journalists mental model of information security can best be characterized as a type of security by obscurity.
Standards can provide an important component in the computer security environment but they should not be relied on blindly. Security computer security has been a consideration of computer designers, software developers, and users for virtually as long as the computer has existed. Rebecca mercuri is the founder of notable software and knowledge concepts. Court of appeals in the proceedings following the 2000 united states presidential election, and was mentioned in a brief presented to the supreme court for the bush v. But to pretend that the possibility of such attacks had not been wellpublicized by highlyregarded computer security experts, years before stuxnet, is foolhardy, since it perpetuates the illusion that systems developers need not keep abreast of all such advance warnings in the scientific literature. In 1981, mercuri founded the computer security and forensics consulting company notable software, where she continues to work. Cots and other electronic voting backdoors opednews. People see internet voting as a solution, says rebecca mercuri, an expert on voting security. The software development process can benefit from the use of established standards and procedures to assess compliance with specified objectives, and reduce the risk of undesired behaviors. Artificial intelligence software running on artificial neural networks anns is gaining regard for its ability to function in the world of unstructured domains, where logicbased software reaches its limit.
Rebecca mercuris dissertation 7, with its defense just one week before the 2000 us federal election, pointed out the risks of computerized vote counting, and proposed the mercuri method for counting ballots on electronic voting systems suggesting. Computer scientists and security experts generally were not engaged in the debate. With either the frog model or the mercuri model, we no longer have to trust the vendors of the voting system, we need not struggle to prove the independence of software developers and auditors, and we need not rely on apparently unrealistic assumptions about the care with which election officials carry out the rules we impose on them. Cots and other electronic voting backdoors in response to the growing concerns regarding h. The greatest advantage of opensource voting software, dechert says, is that anyone who can read computer code can inspect an ovc system to ensure its security. Critique of analysis of an electronic voting system document by rebecca mercuri, july 24, 2003 although i am a strong critic of selfauditing voting systems, the paper analysis of an electronic voting system by kohno, stubblefield, rubin and wallach makes claims and conjectures that are inconsistent with existing election and programming practices. As any internet 1 user knows, computer security is a critical factor in the webconnected eworld. The risks digest forum on risks to the public in computers and related systems acm committee on computers and public policy, peter g.
Rebecca mercuri is an energetic person who can be counted upon to carry through on any commitment she makes in a variety of fields, from computer music to computer security to computer forensics. Saltman rebecca mercuri how is technology used for crime in the posthacker era. Neumann, moderator volume 14 issue 11 friday 27 november 1992 contents re. Voter verifiable paper audit trail vvpat or verifiable paper record vpr is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. Verification and validation issues in electronic voting by. Americas voting fraud worst machines hanging chad vote fraud. The role of standards page 9 prev page top of doc tuesday, may 22, 2001 witness list dr.
Roy saltman consultant on election policy and technology dr. Software tools 12 1 mysql dbms it allows combination. Were upgrading the acm dl, and would like your input. It is supported on microsoft windows and unixlike systems, such as freebsd, macos and linux mercurials major design goals include high performance and scalability, decentralization, fully distributed collaborative development, robust handling of both plain text and binary files, and advanced branching and merging. Communications of the acm, volume 45, number 10 2002 rebecca t. If they know why they shouldnt use it, theyre less likely to ignore it. Join a community of over 250,000 senior developers. My name is ryan slobojan and i am here with doctor rebecca mercuri the owner and cto of notable software. Concerns over serious flaws in electronic voting prompt new examination by members of congress. Keynote address association for computing machinery. On the other hand, recent experience suggests that relying on computer software can be problematical, from the recent breakin at microsoft, to the rash of global email viruses, and even the hacking of candidates websites.
We are doing so by fulfilling our mission to accelerate the human side of software. Software tools 12 1 mysql dbms it allows combination extraction manipulation from com 014 at karatina university. Computer security act and computerized voting systems roy g. A recent study of software engineering concluded that the professional software engineer should. View luke mercuris profile on linkedin, the worlds largest professional community. Apr 01, 2008 in spite of not being able to patent code, there are methods available to programmers to prevent people from being able to verify that the code does what it is supposed to do. Bryn mawr college in pennsylvania and president of notable software inc. Apr 24, 2003 mercuri was able, however, to watch the machines being tested for the 2002 primaries. We use cookies to offer you a better experience, personalize content, tailor advertising, provide social media features, and better understand the use of our services. A vvpat is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored. Dec 04, 2007 verification and validation issues in electronic voting published on dec 4, 2007 electronic democracy edemocracy is a necessity in this era of computers and information technology.
Some travel assistance may also be available to ugrad and graduate student paper authors. The findings tell us exactly what some of us have been afraid of, that we have not made much progress, said arthur levin, director of the independent center for medical consumers and a member of an institute of medicine committee that wrote a landmark 1999 report on medical errors. Inside risks 9, cacm 45, 1, january 2002 uncommon criteria rebecca mercuri. Stephen ansolabehere professor of political science, massachusetts institute of technology.
A recently published study documenting a host of security flaws in a leading touchscreen voting system has caused elections officials across the united states to question the use of electronic voting machines. The solution to this problem that smit highlights is to make the software open source so that anyone can download it, submit patches for it, and so on. As in prior years, our sponsoring group, ieee princeton central jersey section, continues to encourage k16 students and k12 teachers and parents with heavily discounted registration fees. Synopsis the remote freebsd host is missing a securityrelated update. The computerized machines are not so flawless, said rebecca mercuri, president of notable software inc. The palm beach county machines were running new software too, since the firmware on each of their 3400 machines was reprogrammed just weeks before the fall primary. In the case of the danciu race, in which this was the first time the machines were used, he was third on the ballot, mercuri says.
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