[risks] Risks Digest 22.28

From: RISKS List Owner (riskoat_private)
Date: Mon Oct 07 2002 - 15:51:35 PDT

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    RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Monday 7 October 2002  Volume 22 : Issue 28
    
       FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
       ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator
    
    ***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
    This issue is archived at <URL:http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.28.html>
    and by anonymous ftp at ftp.sri.com, cd risks .
    
      Contents:
    Payroll fail-safes "didn't work" (J. Lasser)
    Bear Stearns' bare sterns: erroneous order (David Lesher)
    Raders of the Last Quark (Identity withheld by request)
    Too fast fingers, or bad shortcut design? (Pertti Huuskonen)
    Rep. Boucher --finally-- introduces bill to rescind part of DMCA 
      (Declan McCullagh)
    Defense Information System Agency leaves shopping list online (PGN)
    Quantum cryptography for secure global communications (NewsScan)
    Busboy pleads guilty to ID theft (Monty Solomon)
    "Trojan horse" music? (Matthew Anderson)
    Court will welcome e-mailed explanations of traffic tickets 
      (Dave Stringer-Calvert)
    Dewie the Turtle == Bert the Turtle (Jason T. Miller)
    Address change blocked by online entry validation (George N. White III)
    Batteries: More electronic voting risks? (anon123)
    Re: Electronic voting methods (David Hedley)
    Re: Paper ballots, no panacea (David F. Skoll, Jan C. Vorbrüggen)
    Re: Butterfly ballots (George Russell)
    Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
    
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 14:50:16 -0400
    From: "J. Lasser" <jonat_private>
    Subject: Payroll fail-safes "didn't work"
    
      http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/09/27/offbeat.teacher.paid.ap/index.html
    
    The only overpaid teacher, AP item, 27 Sep 2002
    
    A Detroit public school teacher's pay was enough to make Bill Gates or
    Donald Trump envious.  Thanks to a computer glitch, the teacher was paid
    $7.9 million before taxes for 18 minutes of work. The teacher, who wasn't
    identified, received $4,015,624.80 after taxes.  Someone alerted the school
    district earlier this month, and the money was returned after six days,
    chief financial officer Ken Forrest said in Thursday's Detroit News.
    
    The error occurred when a clerk entered an employee number in the hourly
    wage field for the teacher's wage adjustment check. The district's payroll
    software didn't catch the mistake.  "One of the things that came with (the
    software) is a fail-safe that prevents that. It doesn't work," Forrest said.
    The district has since installed a program to flag any paycheck exceeding
    $10,000, he said.
    
      [Gee, did they test the fix?]
    
    Jon Lasser  jonat_private
    http://www.tux.org/~lasser/  http://www.cluestickconsulting.com
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 23:34:42 -0400 (EDT)
    From: David Lesher <wb8fozat_private>
    Subject: Bear Stearns' bare sterns: erroneous order
    
    > Bear Stearns placed an erroneous order to sell $4 billion worth of stock
    > late Wednesday at the New York Stock Exchange, but most of the order was
    > canceled before it was executed.  The NYSE said a clerical error caused
    > the brokerage house to enter the order to sell $4 billion worth of
    > Standard & Poor's securities at about 3:40 p.m. -- 20 minutes before the
    > stock market closed. The order should have been for $4 million.  All but
    > $622 million of the $4 billion transaction was canceled prior to
    > execution, the NYSE said in a statement.  The NYSE had no further
    > comment. Officials at Bear Stearns were not immediately available for
    > comment.  [AP item]
    
    We have talked about sanity checking time after time.  You'd think that a
    major move would require MULTIPLE management approvals.....but..
    
    We have met the enemy and he is us...
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002
    From: [Identity withheld by request]
    Subject: Raders of the Last Quark
    
    A friend is being admitted to a respected eating-disorders clinic in
    Southern California, which I was interested to learn more about.  They have
    a fantastic supportive Web site at http://www.raderprograms.com/, mostly
    directed at individuals who have plucked up the courage to investigate
    treatment options.
    
    However, a small slip of the keyboard can destroy that courage.  Drop the
    "s", and http://www.raderprogram.com/ redirects you to the Web site of
    Nutri/System --- ``your online weight loss solution'' asking ``how much
    weight you would like to lose? 10-20 pounds? more than 40?''.  Changing
    `rader' to the more intuitive spelling `radar' gives the same results...
    
    The Nutri/System site seems quite legitimate, and of utility to a large
    percentage of the population (pun intended).  But to litter the `typo
    space' in this way is of potentially life-threatening consequence to the
    individuals seeking the Rader Programs site, and thoroughly immoral.
    
      [Weight!  Wait!  Don't Spell Me!  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 10:27:22 +0300
    From: <pertti.huuskonenat_private>
    Subject: Too fast fingers, or bad shortcut design?
    
    A colleague recently sent me an e-mail containing material that was clearly
    not supposed to reach me. Apparently the sender had copied some text from
    another e-mail, with the intention to sanitize out the unsuitable bits, but
    had accidentally hit "send" before having completed the edits.
    
    While this certainly happens all the the time and should be no news to any
    RISKS readers, it did stop me to think about e-mail client UI design.
    
    In our e-mail software, the keyboard shortcut for sending the message out is
    CTRL-Enter. In our word processing software (from the same manufacturer) the
    command to delete the last word is CTRL-backspace. The same word deletion
    method also works in our e-mail client, and seems to get frequent use by
    many people.
    
    The two keys are rather close together on most keyboards.  Composing e-mail,
    I sometimes accidentally hit CTRL-Enter instead of CTRL-backspace. The
    e-mail client then happily sends out the uncompleted e-mail.
    
    Acknowledging my bad keyboard technique, I have chosen to leave my e-mail
    client in an offline mode, so I will have time to go back to my Outbox to
    rescue any stray e-mail before synchronizing with our IMAP server. I have
    therefore had to change my working mode due to the design of keyboard
    shortcuts.
    
    The RISKS? Bad shortcut design coupled with too fast fingers can cause
    embarrassing situations, possibly exposure of improper material, and
    increased global demand for an UNDO feature in sendmail.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2002 09:02:54 -0700
    From: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private>
    Subject: Rep. Boucher --finally-- introduces bill to rescind part of DMCA
    
    Here's Boucher talking about this bill as far back as July 2001:
      http://www.politechbot.com/p-02308.html
    
    I've put the text of the Boucher bill here:
      http://www.politechbot.com/docs/boucher.dmca.amend.100302.pdf
    
    A similar bill, though not as widely supported, introduced by Rep. Lofgren 
    is here:
      http://www.house.gov/lofgren/press/107press/021002_act.htm
    
    News article on Lofgren bill:
      http://news.com.com/2100-1023-960531.html
    
    -Declan
    
      By Declan McCullagh, Staff Writer, CNET News.com, 3 Oct 2002
    
      A proposal to defang a controversial copyright law became public on
      Thursday, after more than a year of anticipation and months of closed-door
      negotiations with potential supporters.
    
      Formally titled the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, the new bill
      represents the boldest counterattack yet on recent expansions of copyright
      law that have been driven by entertainment industry firms worried about
      Internet piracy.
    
      The bill, introduced by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and John Doolittle,
      R-Calif., would repeal key sections of the 1998 Digital Millennium
      Copyright Act (DMCA). It would also require anyone selling copy-protected
      CDs to include a "prominent and plainly legible" notice that the discs
      include anti-piracy technology that could render them unreadable on some
      players.  [...]
    
        http://news.com.com/2100-1023-960731.html
    
    POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list.
    You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
    To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
    This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
    Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 11:12:29 PDT
    From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumannat_private>
    Subject: Defense Information System Agency leaves shopping list online
    
    Faulty access controls open DISA's technology requisition system to
    snoops. An improperly secured database operated by the U.S. Defense
    Information System Agency (DISA) allowed Internet surfers to view and
    place orders for computers, networks, cell phones, software, and other
    technology used by the military.  Before it was locked down over the
    weekend, visitors to the Web site of DISA's Requirements Identification
    and Tracking System (RITS) were able to peruse hundreds of requisition
    documents, such as a $310,000 order for "new generation STE crypto
    devices" in support of the Global Command and Control System.
    
    http://online.securityfocus.com/news/911
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2002 08:36:14 -0700
    From: "NewsScan" <newsscanat_private>
    Subject: Quantum cryptography for secure global communications
    
    British researchers have been able to use quantum cryptography keys encoded 
    in photons of light to communicate through air for 23 kilometers, and the 
    expectation is that by March of next year this capability will be extended 
    to 1000 kilometers -- far enough to reach all LEO satellites. Because any 
    measure of a photon will alter its quantum properties, quantum cryptography 
    guarantees that any attempt to intercept a message will be evident. (*New
    Scientist*, 2 Oct 2002; NewsScan Daily, 4 Oct 2002)
      http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992875
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 01:37:45 -0400
    From: Monty Solomon <montyat_private>
    Subject: Busboy pleads guilty to ID theft
    
    A 32-year-old restaurant busboy pleaded guilty on Thursday to pilfering
    personal and financial data belonging to America's rich and famous,
    including billionaire Warren Buffett.  Abraham Abdallah, a high-school
    dropout, entered his guilty plea in response to a 12-count indictment
    charging him with wire, mail, and credit-card fraud, identity theft, and
    conspiracy -- in what authorities believe is the largest identity theft in
    Internet history.  The federal case accuses Abdallah of using the
    information as part of a scheme to steal more than $80 million from
    individuals, corporations and financial institutions.  Although he pleaded
    guilty, Abdallah told U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska he was not driven
    by greed. ... Reuters, 3 Oct 2002 http://news.com.com/2100-1023-960754.html
    
      [This case was reported originally in RISKS-21.29.  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 08:35:07 -0400
    From: "Matthew Anderson" <MAndersonat_private>
    Subject: "Trojan horse" music?
    
    Per an announcement in from Steath MediaLabs, Inc.,
    http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/021003/32166_1.html, quote:
    
    "How many unpaid copies of music would you circulate if each contained your
    own credit-card number?...  Built upon a new MS Windows Media-compatible
    technology...  The StealthChannel is capable of stealthily embedding up to
    20 kb/s of data into almost any digital audio signal.  Embedded data can be
    anything from images to text to credit-card numbers...  In most cases, data
    hidden in the StealthChannel can be embedded without increasing filesize..."
    
    They go on to mention that this is intended to be used as a "carrot" for
    those that do authorized copying of music by providing "goodies" such as
    discounted tickets or a couple of chapters of books yet to be published...
    It doesn't take much imagination to see the risks of this technology...
    Music companies "releasing" singles that when executed, check for other
    "unauthorized" music files and then delete them or at least send a list back
    to the music company for legal prosecution, Songs released to Kazmaa or
    Gnutella that have viruses embedded in them, etc.
    
    The only limitation (currently, wait till future releases of MS Media
    players) is that you need the Stealth MediaLab plug-in to execute these
    "goodies".  Ah, to go back to the good old days of having to worry only
    about subliminal messages and what the music said when play backwards...
    
    M@ Anderson, Enterprise Architect, American Financial Group
    580 Walnut Street, Cincinnati, OH  mandersonat_private  (513) 412-4457
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 11:01:06 -0700
    From: Dave Stringer-Calvert <dave_scat_private>
    Subject: Court will welcome e-mailed explanations of traffic tickets
    
    Tell it to the judge - or better yet, e-mail it to the judge. County
    officials are setting up a program under which people who get traffic
    tickets can e-mail their excuses and explanations to a judge.  Until now,
    they'd have to sit for hours in court, waiting for a hearing. So far this
    year in the county, there have been more than 1,200 people who want to
    explain to a judge the circumstances surrounding their traffic tickets.
    After reading the e-mails, the judges will send their reply - either by
    e-mail, or an old-fashioned postcard.
      http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/555311p-4377123c.html
    
      [Mike Hogsett asked, 
        "How long until someone writes the automated excuse generator?  And
        starts collecting stats for them so that only the successful ones are
        used?"]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 08:56:42 -0500 (EST)
    From: jasomillat_private
    Subject: Dewie the Turtle == Bert the Turtle
    
    Looking at Dewie the Turtle (RISKS-22.27), I can't help but be reminded of
    Bert the Turtle from "Duck and Cover" (available at
    http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=prelinger&collectionid=19069
    ). As a matter of fact, looking at the "totality of security measures" 
    taken since September 11th, I can't help but be reminded of "Duck and 
    Cover"; "what has changed" since that fateful day is of no more importance 
    to the "security" of this nation or its people than the bombproof 
    school desks of yesteryear.
    
    In re Dewie, I notice the essential difference between cyber security and
    civil defense in light of the atomic bomb -- since there was nothing a young
    child could reasonably do to mitigate the risk of atomic attack, it is
    reasonable to "at least calm their nerves", at the very least it does no
    harm. In the case of cyber security, from the perspective of someone who
    sees so much of IT as _fundamentally_ insecure, providing such a "false
    sense" of the same seems ill-advised, as it encourages us to deny the causes
    of our problems rather than to fix them (standard practice in the computer
    industry, but practice that will have to change if we're going to
    _materially_ improve IT security) -- in other words, to "cure the symptoms"
    while leaving the disease untouched.
    
    The same could of course be said about US "antiterrorism" policy in general,
    but RISKS is of course not the place for such a discussion.
    
    Jason T. Miller, One View Engineering  317-915-9039 ext. 302
    
      [URL also noted by Richard Akerman.  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 22:16:48 -0300 (ADT)
    From: "George N. White III" <aa056at_private>
    Subject: Address change blocked by online entry validation
    
    Canada Post recently changed my home mailing address.  Previously my address
    involved a rural route number and mail was addressed to the town in which
    the post office was situated.  The new address has the same street and
    number, but omits the rural route designation and has a different town and
    postal code.  This change was first announced over a year ago, but the new
    postal codes were only announced a few weeks ago, and are "official" on
    Oct. 21, 2002.
    
    BC (before computers) I would simply have mailed change-of-address cards
    that take only minutes to fill out. Now I have a choice. I can spend minutes
    online trying to find an actual mailing address, or minutes filling out an
    online form, only to find that the new address fails the online entry
    validation when I submit the form.
    
    Many of the companies I deal with, including well-known online retailers,
    allow customers to update their personal information online.  In one case,
    when I clicked "submit", the result was an error page stating that my postal
    code was not valid for my street address.  After contacting customer
    support, I was told that I could bypass the checks by submitting the form a
    second time.
    
    The risks here are from data validation systems which assume that there is a
    unique mapping (e.g., between street address and postal code) and can only
    be updated at a single point in time, so users will be making updated
    entries before the database has been updated, or will fail to make the
    update so their records become "invalid" when the mapping is updated.
    During a transaction, a mailing address is required when the order is
    placed.  Credit card companies may check the shipping address when the
    charge is applied, hopefully not long before when the item is ready to ship.
    
    My new postal code is interesting, as it consists entirely of pairs of
    easily confused letters and numbers: "2Z", "3B", and "6G". Was this
    error-prone code rejected when postal codes were first issued, and then
    pressed into service when a new code was required? It will be interesting to
    observe how often errors are made by people manually transcribing the values
    I entered in WWW address forms into their mailing databases.
    
    George N. White III  <aa056at_private>
    Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 13:44:34 -0700
    From: anon123at_private
    Subject: Batteries: more electronic voting risks
    
    Office evacuated when box of batteries explodes
    
    A box of recycled nickel-cadmium batteries used in voting machines exploded
    at a county building Monday afternoon. No one was injured, but about 30
    employees were evacuated from the Elections Office at 40 Tower Road.
    
    Around 3:30 p.m., the box of about 1,100 button-shaped batteries blew up,
    scattering small metal pieces 10 to 15 feet in all directions of the
    warehouse where they were stored, according to Capt. Gary So of the
    California Department of Forestry.
    
    So theorized that some of the used batteries had charges left and when
    their negative terminals touched, heat built up and they exploded.
    
    http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/4187348.htm
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 11:06:05 +0100
    From: David Hedley <dhedleyat_private-net.com>
    Subject: Re: Electronic voting methods (RISKS-22.25 and 27)
    
    Re: Paper ballots, no panacea (Neff, RISKS-22.27)
    
    Andy Neff states in RISKS-22.27 "Paper ballots ... still have to be counted
    by machines in an election of any reasonable size."
    
    Not so. British elections still [mostly] consist of voters manually entering
    'X' in a box adjoining the candidate's name on a sheet of paper.  For each
    constituency [ranging from 1,000,000 eligible voters in a European election
    to 1,000 in town elections] these sheets of paper are then brought together
    and counted manually. Candidates (or their agents) are allowed to observe
    the process.
    
      [Also noted in the UK by T Panton. in provincial and federal elections
      in Canada by Charles Cazabon, and David Skoll (next).  PGN]
    
    Being a human process, mistakes will of course be made. If the finall totals
    are close, the losing candidate may request a recount. Manual recounts will
    continue until everyone is satisfied. In extreme cases where candidates are
    separated by 1 or 2 votes, there will be several recounts.
    
    It's old technology and not very flashy, but it's demonstrably accurate and
    foolproof.
    
    However the government is now going down the road of making voting sexier
    by trying out new-fangled (even online) voting methods. I fear the worst ...
    
    RE: Elections In America - Assume Crooks Are In Control (Landis, RISKS-22.25)
    
    Lynn Landis stated in RISKS-22.25 "As far as we know, some guy from Russia
    could be controlling the outcome of computerized elections in the United
    States."
    
    She is partially correct.  I say "As far as I know, some guy from the United
    States could be controlling the outcome of computerized elections in the
    United States."
    
    For many of us in Europe, the US voting system lost all credibility in the
    last presidential election.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 00:46:35 -0400 (EDT)
    From: "David F. Skoll" <dfsat_private>
    Subject: Re: Paper ballots, no panacea (Neff, RISKS-22.27)
    
      "Paper ballots, be they optical scan or punch card, still have to be
      counted by machines in an election of any reasonable size."
    
    This is manifestly not so.  Paper ballots can easily be counted by hand,
    providing enough people do the counting.  The proper way to count ballots is
    to have officers and witnesses count the ballots for each polling station,
    and then send their totals to regional tallying centers.  These regional
    centers add up the votes and send their totals to national centers.  By
    having a tree of counters, and officials from all interested parties at each
    stage, truly huge numbers of votes can easily be counted by humans.
    
    If the election is close or results are contested, then the paper
    ballots are available for recounting.  A human recount of all ballots
    may be slow, but it wouldn't be needed most of the time.
    
    Paper-based solutions can be badly designed, as Neff points out, but a
    well-designed paper solution is about the best we have, in spite of modern
    technology.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 18:11:07 +0200
    From: "Jan C. Vorbrüggen" <jvorbrueggenat_private>
    Subject: Re: Paper ballots, no panacea (Neff, RISKS-22.27)
    
    > 1) As most who witnessed the 2000 US Presidential Election agree, paper
    > ballots created problems. Paper ballots, be they optical scan or punch card,
    > still have to be counted by machines in an election of any reasonable
    > size. 
    
    There was a general election in Germany a little more than a week ago. From
    61 million eligible voters out of a population of a little over 80 million,
    79% or about 48 million actually voted, each having two votes. I think this
    qualifies as "reasonable size".
    
    The ballot is one piece of paper, on which one has to make a mark in each 
    of two columns. Thus, about 48 million sheets of paper were counted entirely
    by hand, although I'm sure the tallying above the level of the voting locale
    is done electronically (this is logarithmic in the number of votes counted 
    in any case). Usually, it takes about six to seven hours to arrive at the
    "vorläufige amtliche Endergebnis" - roughly, the "provisional official final
    result". This time, due to some of the election officials leaving their job
    when it was half done, it took almost ten hours to get to that point. Cost:
    about one Euro (approx. one US dollar) per eligible voter.
    
    I see no reason to believe that this isn't applicable to almost all types of
    election. Even the most complicated of elections in Bavaria, where the voter
    has a large number of votes he can distribute, or not, according to certain
    rules to those wanting to be elected, take at most two days to get to the
    final result - the main effect is that the number of invalid ballots is much
    larger than the usual ~1%, and here a computerized system would surely be
    able to help in filling out the form according to the rules.
    
    Jan Vorbrüggen - MediaSec Technologies, Berliner Platz 6-8, D-45127 Essen
    +49 201 437 52 52  http://www.mediasec.com  jvorbrueggenat_private  
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 13:43:21 +0200
    From: George Russell <gerat_private>
    Subject: Re: Butterfly ballots (Neff, RISKS-22.27)
    
    > Re: Paper ballots, no panacea
    > Remember the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida ...
    
    I think what the butterfly ballot problem indicates is that ballot papers
    should be designed for humans, not machines.  I have voted in both the UK
    and Germany, and I think I am not alone among Europeans in finding the
    current American debate surreal.  We all have systems where ballot papers
    have two columns, with the candidates' names and/or parties listed in the
    first column, and boxes next to these names in which you put a cross or (for
    STV systems) a number.  All votes are counted at least once, by humans, and
    (at least the UK) the candidates are entitled to send along representatives
    to watch every stage of the process.  Where there is a problem which might
    affect the result of an election it ends up in the courts; for example a few
    years ago a local election turned on whether someone who had put a gigantic
    cross over the entire ballot paper intended to vote for the candidate whose
    box contained the centre of the cross, or just intended to spoil the paper.
    But this is so rare it hardly ever happens.  The system is so obvious and so
    simple it is embarrassing to have to spell it in comp.risks, but I can't
    understand why American states instead seem addicted to mechanical solutions
    which will invariably go wrong somehow.
    
    Furthermore I just don't see the point of letting machines do the counting,
    but keeping backup paper ballots for humans to count just in case the
    machines go wrong or one of the candidates smells a rat.  Why keep paper
    ballots unless you have trained and experienced humans in place to count
    them?  And if you have that, why not just get the humans to count the papers
    in the first place?  In the UK if the candidates dispute the result of a
    close-run election they can call for a recount.  This is I think much
    quicker than the original count, since the ballot papers are already sorted,
    and it is only a question of checking that they are all correctly
    distributed.  I'd have to check the Guinness Book of Records for this, but I
    think the record number of counts in a British General Election is something
    like 7, and it took about 20 hours from when the polls closed.  A far cry
    from Florida in 2000, where it wasn't possible to count every vote even once
    in several months.
    
    I suppose American states choose to do counting by machines because it's
    cheaper.  But you'd think that given that we only vote once every few years,
    it might be worth spending a dollar or two per voter (I doubt if it costs
    anything nearly as much as that in the UK) to see that you get every vote
    counted properly.
    
    I don't want to pretend the British system is perfect; you have other issues
    like the security problems allocating postal votes in the 2001 General
    Election, and the risk that, because there is no British identity card, it
    is very easy to vote pretending to be somebody else.  But these are
    orthogonal to the question of how you actually vote and count the votes.
    
    I'm not an expert at all.  I feel incredibly naive.  But at least would
    someone be good enough to explain in baby-talk why it is necessary to have
    complex mechanical systems at all, when the simple paper one seems to work
    so well.
    
      [Incidentally, the butterfly ballot is apparently technically illegal 
      in Florida, but was approved anyway.  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: 29 Mar 2002 (LAST-MODIFIED)
    From: RISKS-requestat_private
    Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
    
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     which requires your ANSWERing confirmation to majordomoat_private .
     If Majordomo balks when you send your accept, please forward to risks.
     [If E-mail address differs from FROM:  subscribe "other-address <x@y>" ;
     this requires PGN's intervention -- but hinders spamming subscriptions, etc.]
     Lower-case only in address may get around a confirmation match glitch.
       INFO     [for unabridged version of RISKS information]
     There seems to be an occasional glitch in the confirmation process, in which
     case send mail to RISKS with a suitable SUBJECT and we'll do it manually.
       .MIL users should contact <risks-requestat_private> (Dennis Rears).
       .UK users should contact <Lindsay.Marshallat_private>.
    => The INFO file (submissions, default disclaimers, archive sites,
     copyright policy, PRIVACY digests, etc.) is also obtainable from
     http://www.CSL.sri.com/risksinfo.html  ftp://www.CSL.sri.com/pub/risks.info
     The full info file will appear now and then in future issues.  *** All
     contributors are assumed to have read the full info file for guidelines. ***
    => SUBMISSIONS: to risksat_private with meaningful SUBJECT: line.
    => ARCHIVES are available: ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks or
     ftp ftp.sri.com<CR>login anonymous<CR>[YourNetAddress]<CR>cd risks
       [volume-summary issues are in risks-*.00]
       [back volumes have their own subdirectories, e.g., "cd 21" for volume 21]
     http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/VL.IS.html      [i.e., VoLume, ISsue].
       Lindsay Marshall has also added to the Newcastle catless site a
       palmtop version of the most recent RISKS issue and a WAP version that
       works for many but not all telephones: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/w/r
     http://the.wiretapped.net/security/info/textfiles/risks-digest/ .
     http://www.planetmirror.com/pub/risks/ ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/risks/
    ==> PGN's comprehensive historical Illustrative Risks summary of one liners:
        http://www.csl.sri.com/illustrative.html for browsing,
        http://www.csl.sri.com/illustrative.pdf or .ps for printing
    
    ------------------------------
    
    End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 22.28
    ************************
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Oct 07 2002 - 16:49:51 PDT