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01/07/15

1378 & 1379 LESSONS 7115 & 8115 WEDNESDAY &THURSDAY FREE ONLINE E-Nālanda Research and Practice UNIVERSITY run by http:sarvajan.ambedkar.org chandrasekhara.tipitaka@gmail.com Please render exact translation in your mother tounge and all other languages you know for this Google translation practice and spread and become a Sota panna (Stream Enterer) to reach Eternal Bliss as Final Goal. SELF AWAKEN ONE’S WITH AWARENESS PRACTICE IN A NUT SHELL BUDDHISM IN A NUTSHELL ! DO NO EVIL ! ALWAYS DO GOOD BE MINDFUL ! - EASY FOR A 7 YEARS OLD BOY TO UNDERSTAND BUT DIFFICULT FOR A 70 YEARS OLD MAN TO PRACTICE ! TIPITAKA is of 3 Baskets - 1) Basket of Discipline (Vinaya), 2) of Discourses (Sutta) & 3) of Ultimate Doctrine (Abhidhamma) Pitakas. TIPITAKA Encyclopedia The complete Tipitaka is 40 volumes long The complete Tipitaka is 40 volumes long BEST PHYSICIANS DR. DIET ! DR. QUIET !! DR. MERRY AWAKEN ONE WITH AWARENESS THE MIGHT !!! Course Program 1. Kamma-Araha.m Sutta: The Arahant - in English Guest lecture presented by J. Chandrasekharan, Rector FREE ONLINE E-Nālanda Research and Practice UNIVERSITY on ELECTORAL REFORMS at Yogi Vedmana University KADAPA on 07-01 at 11;00AM-2015 Presided by the Vice Chancellor of the University and Introduction done by Dr. Satish Babu, Coorinator Dept. of Political Sciences, Full text of the lecture:

Filed under: General
Posted by: site admin @ 7:54 pm

1378 & 1379 LESSONS 7115 & 8115 WEDNESDAY &THURSDAY

FREE ONLINE E-Nālanda Research and Practice UNIVERSITY

run by

http:sarvajan.ambedkar.org

chandrasekhara.tipitaka@gmail.com

Please
render exact translation in your mother tounge and all other languages
you know for this Google translation practice and spread and become a
Sota panna (Stream Enterer) to reach Eternal Bliss as Final Goal.

SELF AWAKEN ONE’S WITH AWARENESS PRACTICE IN A NUT SHELL

BUDDHISM IN A NUTSHELL !

DO NO EVIL !

ALWAYS DO GOOD

BE MINDFUL !

- EASY FOR A 7 YEARS OLD BOY TO UNDERSTAND

BUT DIFFICULT FOR A 70 YEARS OLD MAN TO PRACTICE !

TIPITAKA is of 3 Baskets - 1) Basket of Discipline (Vinaya), 2) of Discourses (Sutta) & 3) of Ultimate Doctrine (Abhidhamma) Pitakas.

TIPITAKA

Encyclopedia

The complete Tipitaka is 40 volumes long

BEST PHYSICIANS

DR. DIET !
DR. QUIET !!
DR. MERRY AWAKEN ONE WITH AWARENESS THE MIGHT !!!

Course Program 1. Kamma-Araha.m Sutta: The Arahant - in English

Guest lecture presented by J. Chandrasekharan, Rector FREE
ONLINE E-Nālanda Research and Practice UNIVERSITY on ELECTORAL REFORMS
at Yogi Vedmana University KADAPA on 07-01 at 11;00AM-2015
Presided
by the Vice Chancellor of the University and Introduction done by Dr.
Satish Babu, Coorinator Dept. of Political Sciences,Guest lecture presented by J. Chandrasekharan, Rector FREE
ONLINE E-Nālanda Research and Practice UNIVERSITY on ELECTORAL REFORMS
at Yogi Vedmana University KADAPA on 07-01 at 11;00AM-2015
Presided
by the Vice Chancellor of the University and Introduction done by Dr.
Satish Babu, Coorinator Dept. of Political Sciences,

Full text of the lecture:

ELECTORAL REFORMS ON EVMs - GUEST LECTURE IN YOGI VEMANA UNIVERSITY KADAPA CAMPUS

EVMs have been under a cloud of suspicion over their alleged tamparability and security problems during elections (especially after the 2009 general elections).After rulings of Delhi High Court, Supreme Court and demands from various political parties, Election Commission decided to introduce EVMs with Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system. The Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system is introduced in 8 of 543 parliamentary constituencies as a pilot project in Indian general election, 2014.

Court cases

On 25 July 2011, responding to a PIL (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 312 of 2011), Supreme Court of India asked EC to consider request to modify EVMs and respond within 3 months. The petitioner Rajendra Satyanarayan Gilda had alleged that EC
has failed to take any decision despite his repeated representation.
The petitioner suggested that the EVMs should be modified to give a slip
printed with the symbol of the party in whose favour the voter cast his
ballot.

On 17 January 2012, Delhi High Court in its ruling on Dr. Subramanian Swamy’s Writ Petition
(Writ Petition (Civil) No. 11879 of 2009) challenging the use of EVMs
in the present form said that EVMs are not “tamper-proof”. Further, it
said that it is “difficult” to issue any directions to the EC in this regard. However, the court added that the EC should itself hold wider consultations with the executive, political parties and other stake holders on the matter.
Dr Swamy appealed against Delhi High Court’s refusal to order a VVPAT
system in Supreme Court. On 27 September 2012, Election Commission’s
advocate Ashok Desai submitted to a Supreme Court bench of Justice P Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi
that field trial for VVPAT system is in progress and that a status
report will be submitted by early January 2013. Desai said that on
pressing of each vote, a paper receipt will be printed, which will be
visible to the voters inside a glass but cannot be taken out of the
machine. To this, Dr Swamy replied that the new system was acceptable to
him. The Supreme Court posted the matter for further hearing to 22
January 2013.

Another similar writ petition filed by the Asom Gana Parishad is still pending before the Gauhati High Court.

Introduction of voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT)

On 8 October 2010 Election Commission
appointed an expert technical committee headed by Prof PV Indiresan
(former Director of IIT-M) when at an all-party meeting majority of
political parties backed the proposal to have a VVPAT in EVMs to counter the charges of tampering. The committee was tasked to examine the possibility of introduction of paper trail so that voters can get a printout that will show symbol of the party to which the vote was cast.After studying the issue, the committee recommended introduction of VVPAT system.

On 21 June 2011, Election Commission accepted Indiresan committee’s recommendations and decided to conduct field trials of the system. On 26 July 2011, field trial of VVPAT system was conducted at Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Cherrapunjee in Meghalaya, East Delhi in Delhi and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan.

Just 2 days after Delhi High Court judgement saying EVMs are not “tamper-proof”, Election Commission on 19 January 2012 ordered Electronics Corporation of India Limited and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) to make EVMs that will generate a “paper trail” of the vote cast. BEL CMD Anil Kumar said: “The new EVMs’ paper trail should make the poll process safer and tamper-proof.
EC has given us its requirement for EVMs and work is on to incorporate
new features. The EVM software will be modified and a printer attached
to it. When you cast a vote, the serial number and “some data” will be
generated as a printout. It is to ensure that there is no malpractice in
the voting system. “ It appears that, when the voter presses the
button for the candidate of his choice in the EVM, a paper ballot with
the serial number, name and symbol of the candidate will be printed. The printouts will be used later to cross check the voting data stored
in the EVMs. Talking about other features in new EVMs, he said the
machines will be more rugged and smaller in size but with more computing
power.

The Voter-verified paper audit trail
(VVPAT) system which enables EVM to record each vote cast by generating
the EVM slip,is introduced in 8 of 543 parliamentary constituencies as a
pilot project. VVPAT is implemented in Lucknow, Gandhinagar, Bangalore South, Chennai Central, Jadavpur, Raipur, Patna Sahib and Mizoram constituencies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud

Tampering with electronic voting machines

All voting systems face threats of some form of electoral fraud. The types of threats that affect voting machines can vary from other forms of voting systems, some threats may be prevented and others introduced.“Threat Analyses & Papers”. National Institute of Standards and Technology. October 7, 2005. Retrieved 5 March 2011.

Some forms of electoral fraud specific to electronic voting machines
are listed below. Recent research at Argonne National Laboratories
demonstrates that if a malicious actor is able to gain physical access
to a voting machine, it can be a simple process to manipulate certain
electronic voting machines, such as the Diebold Accuvote TS, by
inserting inexpensive, readily available electronic components inside
the machine.

Tampering with the software of a voting machine to add malicious code altering vote totals or favor any candidate.
Multiple groups have demonstrated this possibility.

Private companies manufacture these machines. Many companies will not allow public access or review of the machines source code, claiming fear of exposing trade secrets.

Tampering with the hardware of the voting machine to alter vote totals or favor any candidate.

Some of these machines require a smart card to activate the machine
and vote. However, a fraudulent smart card could attempt to gain access
to vote multiple times.

Abusing the administrative access to the machine by election officials might also allow individuals to vote multiple times.

Election results that are sent directly over the internet from a
county count center to the state count center can be vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack,
where they are diverted to an intermediate web site where the man in
the middle flips the votes in favor of a certain candidate and then
immediately forwards them on to the state count center. All votes sent
over the internet violate chain of custody and hence should be avoided
by driving or flying memory cards in locked metal containers from county
count centers to the state count center. For purposes of getting quick
preliminary state wide results on election night, encrypted votes can be
sent over the internet, but final official results should be tabulated
the next day only after the actual memory cards arrive in secure metal
containers and are counted.

^{http://www.rediff.com/news/report/ls-election-it-took-ec-4-years-to-admit-that-evms-could-be-hacked/20140314.htm}

‘It took EC 4 years to admit that EVMs could be hacked’

March 14, 2014 15:16 IST

In
October 2013, the Supreme Court, in a landmark verdict, directed the
Election Commission to equip its Electronic Voting Machines with Vote
Verifiable Paper Audit Trial systems, which allows voters to verify that
their votes are cast as intended and serves as an additional barrier to
changing or destroying votes.

Subsequently, the EC introduced VVPAT in 10 assembly constituencies
in Mizoram and one constituency each in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan during the elections in these states.

Now, as the nation gears up for Lok Sabha election, the ECI has created
a flutter by announcing that it may not be ready to roll out VVPAT
before 2019.

The poll body says that it will need about 14 lakh
VVPAT machines to introduce the system in all 543 Lok Sabha
constituencies. However, it believes that so many machines cannot be
produced and tested in such a short duration of time.

Under VVPAT, a printer-like apparatus is linked to EVM.

When a vote is cast, a receipt is generated showing the serial number, name and symbol of the candidate.

It confirms the vote and the voter can verify the details.

The receipt, once viewed, goes inside a container linked to the EVM and
can only be accessed by the election officers in rarest of rare cases.

The system allows a voter to challenge his or her vote on basis of the paper receipt for the first time.

As per a new rule, the booth presiding officer will have to record the
dissent of the voter, which would have to be taken into account at time
of counting.

G V L Rao, part of Save India Democracy which exposed the frauds being committed through EVMs, told rediff.com that
the bigger issue was that the government dragged its feet on
sanctioning funds for the introduction of VVPAT despite the Supreme
Court passing its order a year ago.

Rao said, “To begin with
every EVM needs to be kept in a secure environment so that it is cannot
be tampered with. However, what we had found is that these machines were
dumped in an open yard which made it vulnerable to tampering.”

“As a result of dumping these machines in the open, many had gone
missing and the ECI has not yet revealed these details to us.”

Rao added, “The most important part of this machine is the chip, which
contains the source code. We suggested was that since these machines
were kept in the open, it would be advisable to at least change the
chip. These chips cost not more than Rs 100 each.”

“The other
suggestion that we made and was not taken was regarding the maintenance
of the machines. These machines are manufactured by Bharat Electronics
Limited and Electronics Corporation of India. These companies send
engineers to carry out a maintenance check or a first level check.
Shockingly, these are not employees of the above mentioned two
companies. They are agents hired on a contract basis and they conduct
the inspection of these machines before the elections.”

“We
suggested that that the job of the first level check be given to the
National Informatics Centre so that the person doing the job has
accountability. We had pointed out that some of these persons who were
hired to conduct this check belonged to software companies that were
being run by politicians.”

“The chances of tampering are
higher in such cases. However, the ECI did not agree with us. The
problem is that there is a leap of blind faith in technology and the ECI
blindly trusts everything that the manufacturer does. We have always
pointed out that elections cannot be based on trust.”

“It is
necessary to ensure safeguards and more importantly the ECI should have
implemented VVPAT by now. It took them almost four years to acknowledge
that EVMs could be hacked.”

“When a person votes there ought
to be a valid receipt of the same, just the way one would get a
statement when cash is drawn out of an ATM. Without a valid record one
cannot go back and check in case there is a problem.”

Comments :

Re: Save Indian democracy
by Vishvaksenah E (View MyPage) on Mar 15, 2014 04:23 PM

EVMs can be easily hacked, those r not completely indigenous, the
chips and ECs inside EVMs r imported from unknown country. (may be from
_Italy). EVMs can be pre-programmed b4 elections and can be manipulated
after polling is over.

Re: Re: Save Indian democracy
by Vishvaksenah E (View MyPage) on Mar 15, 2014 04:23 PM

They take care of these things:
1) they never hack state assembly
elections. who cares state assemblies, supreme court, vigilance, CBI,
ED everything is at central hand. those r enough to secure their looting
spree.

Re: Re: Re: Save Indian democracy
by Vishvaksenah E (View MyPage) on Mar 15, 2014 04:24 PM

2) they dont hack the constituencies of eminent opposition leaders who can win undoubtedly.

3)
they dont do rampant hacking, c0ngress only needs seats between 160 to
210 on its own to rule the nation. the remaining seats wud come from its
slave tentacles (parties).

Re: Re: Re: Re: Save Indian democracy
by Vishvaksenah E (View MyPage) on Mar 15, 2014 04:25 PM

In 2009 , Hariprasad- a techie from AP stole the EVMs from a
polling booth and demonstrated the hacking procedure of EVMs before
media. But no channel aired that news, Some papers published in inside
pages. After that the c0ngress started humiliating him by imposing
numerous non-bailable cases for stealing EVMs and even fake sexual
harassment case too.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Save Indian democracy
by Vishvaksenah E (View MyPage) on Mar 15, 2014 04:26 PM

Thanks to EVMs, UPA 1 and 2 happened.

The real force who manipulates the_CONgress_ party are happy. They care a hoot for the assembly results

Immediate solution
by v dev (View MyPage) on Mar 15, 2014 09:05 AM

is to go back to paper ballot where VVPAT is not available. Cost is no
consideration when the nation’s is future is at stake. Hope a
respectable person approaches SC NOW to compel EC to use VVPAT machine
or paper ballots…

Then why EVM to be used
by sujit choudhury (View MyPage) on Mar 15, 2014 09:03 AM

If evms can be hacked why it is used,no other country is using evms our
ex cm pk mahanta had proved that evms can be hacked yet EC has not taken
any action,this india,a loughing country

Hacking EVMs is easy…
by Dhananjay Kumar (View MyPage) on Mar 15, 2014 06:58 AM | Hide replies

It is just a toy with an interface which shows all the party symbols,
and produces a sound when you press a button (cast a vote). The
microcontroller, in an ideal case, runs a program which identifies the
input from user and take action accordingly. In a hacked EVM, the
interface, producing sound and all works fine, except for the action
part which is essentially hidden from public.

The best case to
prove the hacking is how P Chidambram won by 1000 votes after losing by
big margin. There simply cannot be a counting mistake by an electronic
voting machine. In an ideal scenario, it will produce the same count
whether you do it 100 or 1000 times. But the second time, the
manipulated EMVs were used to count, to win him the MP seat.

http://www.indianevm.com/blogs/?p=402

The “Ugly face” of the ECI: Arrest of Hari Prasad for “sting demonstration”

Today, at wee hours Maharashtra police landed up at the residence
of Hari Prasad in Hyderabad, a technologist and Technical coordinator
of VeTA to arrest him. The arrest was made on the flimsy charge of
‘theft of EVM’ used for vulnerability demonstration by Hari Prasad and a
team of security researchers that included Alex Halderman, professor of
computer science, University of Michigan and Rop Gonggrijp, a security
researcher from Netherlands along with a team of their colleagues.

Earlier, police came to Hyderabad in the first week of August and
recorded a statement on the EVM they had used for exposing the
vulnerability of EVMs. They summoned him to Mumbai for further
questioning. Hari Prasad could not go as he was busy with his
professional work. Then, the sudden arrest happened this morning.

Over the past one year, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has
been lying blatantly and willfully to ensure continued use of EVMs at all costs. It attributed all kinds of qualities to its EVMs: “totally tamper proof, perfect, fail safe and requiring no improvement”
etc. etc. When Hari Prasad agreed to meet the ECI’s challenge to
demonstrate tamperability of EVMs, the ECI backed out imposing silly,
unscientific restrictions.

To call the ECI’s bluff, Hari Prasad and team have demonstrated the
tamperability of EVMs on an EVM made available to them. This is like a
sting operation carried out by media organizations. If the stings done by media are a legitimate method of information gathering, so is this sting demonstration.
There cannot be separate standards for separate groups. In both cases,
public interest is paramount. Moreover, the world over this is the
practice followed by security researchers to expose vulnerabilities of
absurd claims of “perfect” and “tamper proof” electronic voting systems.
The details of this sting demonstration are available at www.indiaEVM.org

For the ECI, the following developments threatening EVM exit seem to have caused unbearable stress.

-         13 political parties had written to the ECI in April
expressing concerns about the reliability of EVMs and urging the ECI to
organize an All-party meeting. The ECI has not responded to this request
so far.

-         In Telangana bypoll held last month to 12 assembly
constituencies, the TRS had fielded a large number of dummy candidates
to avoid use of EVMs. The ECI was thus forced to use ballot papers in 5
of the 12 constituencies where byolls were held.

-         Last week, international
experts in computer security have concluded in a workshop held in
Washington D.C on August 9 and 10 that the Indian EVMs do not provide
the security, verifiability, or transparency adequate for confidence in
election results, the Election Commission of India. (Read the letter here:

http://www.usenix.org/events/evtwote10/final-letter-eci.pdf)

This workshop was attended by ECI’s expert committee chairman P.V.
Indiresan and election commissioner Dr. Alok Shukla. Along with these
ECI’s representatives, I had also participated in a panel discussion
with these ECI representatives. ECI’s arguments were completely trashed by an independent team of security researchers. The audio of the panel discussion can be heard at this link:

http://josephhall.org/misc/indian-evm-panel-evtwote.mp3

All the above developments have clearly unnerved the Election Commission.

On August 10, the ECI had invited V.V.Rao, National Coordinator of
VeTA along with Hari Prasad to discuss about the vulnerabilities of
Indian EVMs. The chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi and
commissioner V.S. Sampath have sought suggestions from Hari Prasad on
how the EVMs could be strengthened. They said that they were willing to
make improvements and are keen to understand what all improvements were
needed.

Reliable sources tell us that the Election Commission of India had
pressurized the Maharashtra police to press for Hari Prasad’s arrest on
charges of stealing the EVM used for exposing the vulnerability of EVMs.
The ECI’s intent becomes evident from the fact that they had instructed
the police not to share a copy of the FIR with Hari Prasad to deny him
an opportunity to move an anticipatory bail application. Hari Prasad did
mange to get a copy of the FIR later but decided to court arrest if
necessary rather than seek anticipatory bail.

What is the Election Commission
of India trying to do? Does it think that it can intimidate critics of
EVMs? What interests is the ECI trying to protect by resorting to such
repressive actions? Has the Election Commission of India got skeletons
in its cupboards that it is seeking to protect any damaging disclosures?

Worldwide, vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems are exposed
in exactly the same manner as was done by researchers in India. Nowhere
have the election bodies used such repressive steps to intimidate
critics.

With its desperate actions, the
ECI stands totally exposed and is betraying signs of losing the “EVM
battle”. While earlier the ECI seemed only guilty of being ignorant
about the vulnerabilities of EVMs, the latest actions raise question
marks about the integrity and intent of the ECI.

In the ongoing battle for reforming the ballot (voting) system, fast
paced developments are expected in the coming weeks. In the face of this
adversity, as we double our efforts on all fronts, there is unstinted
support forthcoming from all quarters.

Finally, the stage is now set for a renewed legal battle in the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India. With
all the evidence now available and the statements from experts in
computer security, defending the EVMs is becoming as difficult for the
ECI as the unbridled bungling in Common Wealth Games (CWG).

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66 Responses to “The “Ugly face” of the ECI: Arrest of Hari Prasad for “sting demonstration””

lenin Says:

August 21st, 2010 at 3:49 PM

The ECI ugly action itself shows the that EvMs haveen manipulated
and it is in fear of being exposed.Fair and honest elections are lifine
to demcracy.the elections should be conducted in transparent and
verifiable manner.Black box voting is unconstittuinal and is dangerous
to democracy.Black box model DRE voting is unconstitutional as this
voting process is secret to voter himself!!!!Unless papaer trails are
used these are cheating machines.I want to know whether my vote really
casted to my candiadate.Even if those machines are honest they have
technical failures due to lot of other factors effect on electronic
divices.Many polling stations showed the failure of EVMs in middle.Votes
polled upto then were reset and deleted !!!.ECI actions shows its fear
of being exposed.Truth can not be suppressed for ever.There are millions
of people to in support of Hariprasad.What more can ECI do in democracy
where people active and protest.I will be ready to be the next person
to continue fight against black voting.Elcetions are for the people and
democracy not for the employment of public sector EVM assembling
companies like ECIL , BEL and not for those american back end chip
making companies which get billion doller contracts.I support Hari
prasad.ECI ahs used older EVMs in andhra which does not have time
stamp!!then this EVM data can be erased in seconds and freshly voted in
two hours using a multi meter like divice as ballot unit!!!

Arunkumar Says:

August 21st, 2010 at 5:21 PM

ECI has once again proved beyond doubts that we are living in a
camouflaged Aristocracy rather than Democracy; it’s pathetic to see the
most supreme body of India to resort to such a heinous act. Now is the
time for all those Technically qualified Indians to come forward to
support the cause Mr. Hari Prasad has started. This act of unwarranted
arrest is an axe to the so called democracy. Please join hands to save
India

Surendera M. Bhanot Says:

August 21st, 2010 at 6:22 PM

The story is very disturbing. I urge the RTI Activists to file RTI
Applications with all those matters in this case to expose their
designs. This is a another blow to the “Whistle-Blower”.

Sujeet Says:

August 21st, 2010 at 9:37 PM

ECI has to answer the question of vulnerability of the electronic
balloting system. Staging this kind of arrest of a person who is only
trying to strengthen the system is foolish and illegal. Any weakness in
the election system can easily be exploited by the political party in
power. This will not serve the democratic system.

Dinesh Chanchalani Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 6:29 AM

This is totally shocking! And expected!
Shame on the ECI, which has become part of the sycophant brigade!!

B. Rajendran Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 6:52 AM

Shame. Govt. officers are ambassadors between people and
government. But, once they entered into public service in all level and
all departments,they are acting as a masters. The government servants
should be separated from the politicians a law.

Kalpesh Sharma Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 6:55 AM

Hariprasad is arrested… This proves now very clearly that EVM’s
were truely tampered and the election commission of india is now
misusing their powers by arresting the common indian citizens.

I have a doubt? Has Indian Citizens got independence where such
misuse of powers and position are being done? I think that pre-1947, we
were ruled by Britishers and post-1947 Congress is ruling us? And we
Indian Fools are celebrating 15th August with great hapiness. This
question is for every Indian Citizen: Are you truely and honestly
speaking living in a democratic and Independant Country? Ask your
children this question? You will get the answer for yourself.

Congress has come upto this level of doing the crime and misusing
their powers on general public. I never assumed this. Now it seems like
this message should be sent to every citizen across the nation. And who
the hell is this ECI Chief Election Commissioner?

B. Rajendran Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 6:59 AM

# B. Rajendran Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
August 22nd, 2010 at 6:52 AM

Shame. Govt. officers are ambassadors between people and government.
But, once they entered into public service in all level and all
departments,they are acting as a masters. The government servants should
be separated from the politicians by law.

Saurabh Adhikari Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 10:03 AM

EVMs are not tamper-proof anywhere..from India to the US. We need
to make them better. Improved them as best as we can and that depends on
who all may help us by understanding its vulnerabilities. As a CEC, I
would have asked Hari Prasad and others to be part of an inclusive ECI
team instead of harassing t=him and others. Unless one has something to
hide, such actions discredit national institutions. Its likely that they
may have a “WMD” like case against Hari Prasad. But haven’t we learnt
that the abuse of power can put the whole world at risk? Hari Prasad has
done well to take the stance he has taken and it may help expose ECI
further.

Lenin Babu Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 10:30 AM

The pillars of Democracy are its Institutions. If this institution
(ECI) does not come clean on this episode… people will loose faith in
the democratic system. Why ECI doesn’t want to accept shortcomings in
its EVMs and come clean?

Many countries have abolished EVMs due to the possibilities of
manipulation. Why don’t we revert back to Paper Balloting till EVM are
probed by by a committee of members from all National and Regional
Parties?

Sanjay Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 1:23 PM

EVMs are better than paper ballots.

That’s all that matters.

How many people in India have the technical expertise to hack an EVM in the manner disclosed in your “sting” ? 5 ? 10 ?

Do you really want us to go back to the dirty old days of booth capturing and ballot stuffing ?

You Sir, are a fear-monger.

kakim Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 1:31 PM

The instruction would have come from both Home Ministry and the
ECI to arrest Hariprasad. The government should ban these EVMs
immediately.

Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested Over Anonymous Source Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 1:44 PM

[…] any good has come from this, it’s that there has been an
outpouring of support for Hari. He has received positive messages from
people all over […]

Narasimha Rao Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 2:52 PM

Dear Mr. Sanjay,

Like you, until some months ago, we all thoughts
that EVMs were a good thing that happened. But the facts that have
surfaced and the international developments show that we were unwise and
uninformed. There is plenty of evidence now which shows that EVMs pose a
threat. All over the world EVMs like the one we are using have been
rejected..Germany, Netherlands, Ireland and most states in the U.S. to
name a few. Come on, should we not be alert to such dangers to
democracy? Should we merely trust them because they are machines? With
paper ballots, you know booth capturing has happened because ordinary
voters can see. How would you know if electronic booth capturing happens
in an invisible manner. Paperless voting has been rejected all over the
world and India has to follow suit. Is in’t better to safeguard
yourself (even if it earns the epithet of fear mongering) rather than be
shocked to find yet another scam in a country where they happen
routinely. Wake up to the hard realities, my friend. Look up at our
website to get more details.

Pawan Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 2:55 PM

Mr. Sanjay, you said

“EVMs are better than paper ballots.
That’s all that matters.
How many people in India have the technical expertise to hack an EVM in the manner disclosed in your “sting” ? 5 ? 10 ?
Do you really want us to go back to the dirty old days of booth capturing and ballot stuffing ?
You Sir, are a fear-monger.”

But why arrest the person who is trying to get the
authorities’ attention to perfect the machine? That looks like bullying
by the powerful. Who is really spreading fear here? The powerful. You
must be one of them Mr. Sanjay.

Deepak Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 4:34 PM

We agree with the above findings. It was very evident that scam
has existing for last 5 years. The first misuse is seen in 2004
election.

I am also victim of one Scam in which I have lost my life savings due to congress.

Augosto Pinochet Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 6:17 PM

Looks like we are heading for the days of emergency of 1975.
Congress party consists of mainly Nehruvian Stalinists who want to keep
thier hold on power no matter what the cost.

One Hari Prasad may be arrested and silenced, but there are many more
Hari Prasads in our country who will keep the flag of Indian democracy
high.

God bless India

Jo Dean Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 8:14 PM

Stupid cops, go arrest the REAL crooks, the politicians themselves!

Lou

http://www.privacy-tools.eu.tc

Bharat Says:

August 22nd, 2010 at 10:21 PM

GVL boss,

You guys have done a great job, now I guess it is upto the political
setup in India to continue on the great work and get rid of evm’s. I
have one question though it might seem out of context. You have a 13
party memorandum on EVM’s. Did you have any success in getting more
parties to sign it. I am surprised that TRS, BSP and many others have
still not signed it. But irrespective of that, roping in more parties
for this cause will do it good, wont it??

Manish Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 12:04 AM

I request this website to start a petition demanding the release of Mr. Hari Prasad ASAP.

dharmendra Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 12:26 AM

There is no coverage of this news by any media channel …

we owe the responsibility to spread this news ….

Hijacking Elections IT-Style | Chronosynclastic Infundibulum Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 2:23 AM

[…] Welcome to India, a country whose democracy has been bought
and paid for. Anyone trying to rock that boat will not be tolerated.
[…]

Doug Webb Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 2:46 AM

Sounds like free and fair elections do not and cannot happen in India. Too bad the world’s largest democracy isn’t!

v Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 2:53 AM

Im from Florida in the US, remember what happened in Florida. The
EVM’s in florida had results where certain races there were undervotes
where no vote was recorded in certain races in some races up to 5%
undervote other people complained that touched one candidate button only
to have the other show up. Florida is a fairly honest state but in the
year 2000 , the margin that elected Bush was only 535 votes in Florida.

This was such an issue(with the lack of a paper receipt) that Florida
in 2006 switched from touchscreen EVM to optical scan balloting where
people would mark on paper ballots which would be scanned into the
computers.

a b Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 4:24 AM

The very fact that the EVMs can be compromised brings into question all the election results.
@Pawan…it’s not a question of how many people can do it. The question
is are politicians “capable” of doing. Why not? Election Commission
of India should use the wisdom of the researchers in making these EVMs
better and not shoot the messenger!

Bala Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 6:04 AM

Guys,
this is how congi won in andhra last time, no way they cld have got 33
of 42 seats in lok sabha. it is ok to use EVM, but what is the proof
that the button i press registers the vote for the party i actually am
voting for, we need a print receipt like ATM or some other proof to show
that the vote went for the correct party

Jaidev Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 7:26 AM

This is India. Are you surprised? The bureaucrats and politicians
supposed to be running the show have no clue about technology, free
speech, or human rights. Money runs the show.

Don’t rock the boat, pay your friendly politicians and policemen
their monthly bribes, shut up and get to work. And we dare dream of
challenging China.

dnate Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 7:40 AM

where do i donate?

Moosia Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 8:30 AM

Follow the money. Find out how who stands to benefit from EMV implementations, and see how it’s tied to the EC.

Ram Kumar Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 9:42 AM

Any type of Black Box electronic voting system can and will always be manipulated.

The Indian EVM’s can be easily made more reliable by adding a simple ticket printer that prints a small ballot with:

1. Election symbol of the candidate
2. Name of the candidate

Then the voter can verify the vote and drop it in the vote box.
Tabulation can be made both electronically and by counting the vote
tickets. This will create a fool proof voting system.

Conditions for Real Democracy
——————————
For real democracy to exist the following conditions are required:

1. Real currency system, means the currency issuer has obligation to
supply the quantity of commodity “that will sustain life” eg. food,
mentioned on the currency on resumption of the currency.

2. Largest 3 media companies in the country should be owned by public
membership. ie. Any adult citizen can buy a single membership and vote
in electing the management of the media company.

3. All political parties should be membership based and the
membership fee should be sufficient for the functioning of the political
party without accepting donations.

4. Teaching staff in the Universities of the country should reflect
the same approximate demographic proportion as the general population.
If we allow any ethic group to exceed their numeric strength as
university teachers – through nepotism they will put their kin in key
bureaucratic positions and eventually take control of the government and
subvert democracy.

5. 90% literacy rate among the population of the country.

संदीप नारायण शेळके Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 10:13 AM

Namaste Shri Rao,
I show my support to Shri Hari Prasad and will try my level best to bring this to the wider public.

Can I use your article for republishing it on blog?

Dhanywad!

Jai Bharat!

Amitabh Ranjan Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 10:45 AM

Can someone please provide a link to the ECI feedback page (or
similar) so that readers can post comments to them protesting against
this ?

ashok pai Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 10:55 AM

this is government subverting democracy at its best

SS Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 11:07 AM

As unacceptable as the arrest is, I agree with Sanjay …. Anyone
who has lived through the days of booth-capturing, rigging, false voting
etc. can vouch for the comparitive improvement today.

Yes, EVMs can be tampered with (and thanks to you guys to bringing it
out in the public eye – real proof beyond the mere unsupported claims
till then) – but it requires technology that has not yet made it
mainstream in India – and for now it largely works. Margins of victory
are closing in, we observe manifestations of incumbency (and voter
apathy) in almost every election – and in general we hear much less of
guns during elections than we used to!

Unsurprisingly, the major parties you see opposing the EVMs today are
the exact same ones that were most prolific in the booth-capturing days
(not that any party was above it – each had their own areas where they
were strong).

Having said all that — I hope the EC takes their heads out of their
*rses, accept the flaws and works with the acaedemic community &
manufacturers to close the issues as far as possible instead of such
wasteful strong-arm tactics to supress people / information.

Here’s hoping and wishing …..

Sagar Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 11:18 AM

This send out all the wrong signals to responsible people wanting
to contribute to the government machinery. If we so boisterously claim
to be the world’s largest democracy (sic) then Hari Prasad’s arrest
shouldn’t be tolerated.

Tejaswy Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 11:46 AM

Well,
India is a democratic country, It is not that he will go into a blackhole without a trail.
In the word of Bhagat Singh who launched the smoke bomb in the british
india parliament “if we are caught, there will be a case, if there is a
case then there will be a trail, it takes a loud voice to make the deaf
hear”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagat_Singh#Bomb_in_the_assembly

I am not too worried. Even if he is charged with stealing the EVM,
Under IPC Sections 381, It has a small amount to pay as bail. I guess he
can afford this amount.
None the less he has broke the codes and ethics of research,that is if he has indeed stolen the EVM.

Don’t get me wrong I appreciate the work done by him, But please
understand, You just cannot break the law and hope to get away with it
even if you are doing it for good.
This would have been the same case for him if he had stolen a EVM in the US or anyother country.

I hope that this case brings out the flaw in the voting machine and it will be rectified.
Ironically BJP has been crying “foul” on the voting machine since they have been incepted.

http://videos.sify.com/EVMs-have-become-Electronic-Victory-Machines-for-Cong-BJP-ISTREAM-watch-jkwpObhifhe.html

Tejaswy Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 11:49 AM

I might have got the sections of IPC wrong.

A website tells me it is Sec 379 of IPC, the punishment goes from 6 months to 7 years.

You get the point don’t you?

Ajay Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 12:27 PM

The new sepoy is proving his loyalty to the Queen.

I humbly repeat, the only way to tackle the stolen mandate of the LS
May 2009 elections is to file more number of candidates, way higher than
the limit of 64.
The BEL and ECIL may improve this to 128 . Even then, the major
political parties could easily out maneuver this rigged system. A
deposit of Rs 10,000 * 128 works out tu less than thirteen lakhs rupees.
Are we so naive that we spend lakhs of ruppees to campaign in the
assembly and the LS and crores to obtain that elusive “Form A” or the
seat and then can’t spend a tiny sum of thirteen lakhs? The friends of
the UPA, when they start losing out in the state, will also join the
bandwagon. Such manipulation would not be possible in this years Bihar
polls, but could surely occur in WB next year, leaving Mamata Banerjee
holding a lantern.

With this action of arresting Shri Hari Prasad, the state of mind of
the EC can be clearly seen. Time and era for “Emergency” type measures
is up, but the sepoys that be, seem to be stuck in a time warp.

The opposition must come to the aid of Shri Hari Prasad and rid the nation of this menace of rigged EVMs.

John Gilmore Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 1:48 PM

Many people who expose insecurity in deployed systems are
initially treated like criminals by the people who fielded those
systems. However, they usually realize pretty early in the process that
they are unlikely to win in front of a jury, and meanwhile the public
decides that the authority is merely bullying its critics, possibly to
hide its mistakes or to avoid responsibility.

For example, the Boston MBTA (subway system) sued MIT students who
wrote a paper provocatively titled to ride free forever – and even got a
judge to suppress their paper. But the security researchers got good
lawyers, got the unconstitutional gag order rescinded, and in the end,
the MBTA and the students settled the case by agreeing that the students
would help the MBTA improve the security of the system. Which was the
goal of both sides in the first place.
See: https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/12/22

HVP Urs Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 2:35 PM

“To call the ECI’s bluff, Hari Prasad and team have demonstrated the tamperability of EVMs on an EVM made available to them.”

Who provided the EVM?
When was it done?
How was it carried out?

“If the stings done by media are a legitimate method of information gathering, so is this sting demonstration.”

THEFT cannot be treated in the same category!

“security researchers to expose vulnerabilities of absurd claims of
“perfect” and “tamper proof” electronic voting systems.” – If changes
are made to a design – to prove a point; this one is an example.

HVP Urs Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 3:45 PM

There is another blog, which is equally interesting. link is provided for your perusal. Better sense should prevail.

“http://blogs.newsx.com/saeednaqvi/2010/06/26/electronic-voting-machines-tamperable/”

HVP Urs Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 4:12 PM

The following link is another one for your study. A wake up call.

http://www.webandall.net/education/iit-2009-evtwote-10-panel-on-indias-electronic-voting-machine/

Sameer Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 5:58 PM

Indian establishment is no different from the British
establishment before independence… I was reading about the british rule
some days back during Independence day and thought.. our present govt is
no less.
These politicians are sucking the blood out of the people and the only
farce of democracy the elections are being hacked away by the corrupt
‘con’gress.
Hope the voice of people if heard by our sold out media dn pressure put
on police to release Mr Hari Prasad and hope the end of EVMs comes soon,
I also hope the stupid Quereshi is sacked.

KG Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 7:11 PM

The research involved had a very fundamental premise that was
flawed i.e. that physical access to the EVM is very easy to have, and
that tampered EVMs can be taken in and out of government warehouses very
easily, and that corrupt officials or criminals with inside access
could easily influence the result. Makes for a great academic paper, but
in the real world absolutely no system is invulnerable to corrupt
insiders, including paper ballots. What the EC has done is to build in
multiple checks and balances at various stages to make the system
redundant as much as possible. To claim that all of them will fail is a
smear job.

In the western world it will draw a lot of eyeballs, and the
narrative of a 3rd world government trying to hide something will
immediately catch on. But what has the EC exactly done? Physical
protection of the EVM is a cornerstone of the system. And it has filed
an FIR against a person who has illegally acquired one. Can IndiaEVM
point to any instance of research done to expose the vulnerabilities of
EVMs abroad based on illegally acquired hardware?

If it were so sure that EVMs were vulnerable, then why did it have to
resort to illegally breaking the exact system the EC has put in place.
India has a functioning judicial system independent of the EC, then why
didnt IndiaEVM follow the legal route to get the access it wanted.
Demanding improvements to the EVM based process, and illegally acquiring
one to make physical hardware alterations are entirely different
propositions.

Siva Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 7:28 PM

I agree that vulnerability in EVM is not good for the country. But
I don’t agree returning to paper ballot is a fool proof/Efficient way
as well. We need to fix the vulnerabilities and continue. We need to
quit complaining about corrupt politicians and bureaucracy. EVM’s
security standards must be open and available for public scrutiny. An
open standard democratic way to resolve the problem. India is a young
country.

Roy Says:

August 23rd, 2010 at 8:44 PM

Please take support of some politicians who are critical of EVMs.
For instance Mamata Banerjee is a vocal critic of the EVMs. Hopefully
media pressure and support of some politicians will result in Mr Hari
Prasad being freed. It is a shameful day for Indian democracy and
research mileu.

Links 24/8/2010: Many Android Tablets, OpenSolaris Board Disbands | Techrights Says:

August 24th, 2010 at 12:21 PM

[…] The “Ugly face” of the ECI: Arrest of Hari Prasad for “sting
demonstration” Reliable sources tell us that the Election Commission of
India had pressurized the Maharashtra police to press for Hari Prasad’s
arrest on charges of stealing the EVM used for exposing the
vulnerability of EVMs. The ECI’s intent becomes evident from the fact
that they had instructed the police not to share a copy of the FIR with
Hari Prasad to deny him an opportunity to move an anticipatory bail
application. Hari Prasad did mange to get a copy of the FIR later but
decided to court arrest if necessary rather than seek anticipatory bail.
[…]

Vibhu Says:

August 24th, 2010 at 1:08 PM

@tejaswy
Do not talk like a loser.. If things like stealing for good is bad..
then why did we fight for freedom it was against the laws of that time
.. be logical don’t try to be Mahatma and preach bullshit here..

I feel HARI did the right thing.. why dint the government/ ECI itself
gave away the machines to hackers and security researchers for
researching the loopholes if they were so sure it was tamper proof..coz
they wan to keep the tampering secret to themselves so that they can
drink and be merry..

kayveeb Says:

August 24th, 2010 at 2:15 PM

I have read the paper that has been released by the researchers
and they have clearly described the EVM architecture and its
vulnarabilities,
The indian government should strive to rectify these shortcomings rather than defending them.

The arrest of Hari is a pure political action. We all should commend it.

Geeva Says:

August 24th, 2010 at 2:43 PM

I think the method ramkumar has said will be the useful moderation
for EVM. Printing the tickets and dropping it in vote box would be a
good suggestion.

Srinivas Says:

August 24th, 2010 at 2:48 PM

Whoever thought the EVMs cannot be tampered. If you have physical
access to the machine, obviously you can tamper it. Ask any network
security guy and he would tell you if you have the physical access to
your computer not even GOD can save you even you have the best of
security mechanisms.
What guarantee that if you have paper ballots cannot be replaced? The EVMs are as safe or unsafe as paper ballots.
What you guys should be proving is, during the whole election process
how anybody can fiddle with EVMs and get the result in someone’s favor.
What Hariprasad has done is a mini-project in an engineering course. No great shakes.
But I am all for any improvement in the system which will help in conducting free and fair elections.

ying Says:

August 24th, 2010 at 7:13 PM

Thanks to the upcoming World Basketball Festival, we now get a
“USA” Air Jordan 2010 Team. It seems as if more people like the Air
Jordan 2010 Team than the original Air Jordan 2010 because of the
windowless side panels. I’m not one of those people who likes the team
better; I think the original

Nike Shoes 2010 Shoes looks much better.Since this jordan Shoes
Team is made for the USA team, the colorway should be clear. White can
be seen on the side panels, toe, shoe laces, tongue, part of the midsole
and the entire outsole. Navy blue covers the toe, heel, inner lining
and above the midsole. Red accents appear on the tongue, toe, heel, lace
panels and the midsole. The sneaker is constructed of perforated white
leather with larger perforations placed on the side panels.

sgs Says:

August 24th, 2010 at 7:42 PM

the correct argument is not “how many people have expertise to
hack the EVM” that is an incorrect argument. Indian EVM doesn’t have any
good footprint to detect fraud. The thing is it should make it
uneconomical to hack into EVM. And should have good foot print to detect
any possible fraud. people should be able to verify thier votes.

Sad State Says:

August 24th, 2010 at 9:04 PM

The press report from Times Of India:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Man-who-stole-EVM-in-Mumbai-held-in-Hyderabad/articleshow/6398910.cms

paints the computer scientist as a thief.

I don’t think media like Times of India will come to Mr Hari Prasad’s
rescue. Who will sponsor ? This is the decade of “Paid News” invented
by Times of India themselves.

Pradeepchandar Says:

August 25th, 2010 at 10:06 AM

story is heard and famous all over. Government should release Hari
Immediately and a public apology for these stupid action. Government
want to take his advice or not its upto them. He did his job as an
Indian citizen and a professional. Screw other things..

GIJoe Says:

August 25th, 2010 at 2:50 PM

While I do believe that the machines should be made available to
researchers to improve the robustness of their design and rectify any
flaws, I also believe that all tools have flaws and I do regards EVMs as
a step forward. There has to be an authority u got to trust and we have
to trust EC in case of elections. Even if the machine is tamper proof
in the hands of a corrupt official its useless. The chain is as weak as
the weakest link. As far as physical tampering at voting booths is
concerned, the sophistication of methods involved almost completly
eliminates that option.

baddy Says:

August 25th, 2010 at 4:57 PM

end of democracy in india…………areest all politicians and kick their butts

настройка strong dc « Эхо блогосферы Says:

August 25th, 2010 at 5:16 PM

[…] Narasimha Rao пишет: Last week, international experts in
computer security have concluded in a workshop held in Washington D.C on
August 9 and 10 that the Indian EVMs do not provide the security,
verifiability, or transparency adequate for confidence in election …..
Unsurprisingly, the major parties you see opposing the EVMs today are
the exact same ones that were most prolific in the booth-capturing days
(not that any party was above it – each had their own areas where they
were strong) . … […]

seetharaman Says:

August 25th, 2010 at 8:53 PM

What surprises me is that electronic media which exposes small
time frauds like Common Wealth Games has royally ignored this shocking
fruad on the entire Citizenry and perhaps we are being ruled by those
who did not win elections by fair means at all. This also shows that
these Reasearchers have not given proper publicity to their selfless
work. Whatever may be the reason, it is time to go to Supreme Court and
expose these Voting Machine Fraud and do everything to make the voting
public know about this fraud.

meg Says:

August 25th, 2010 at 9:05 PM

This is a sad thing, I have come across. As an responsible citizen
of INDIA have always felt that my vote counts.Insisted of arresting
and making fool, I think it would be better to take inhouse (within
country) experts help and make thing better the best!!! Stop wasting
everybody’s time, its now the time to work for the betterment.

Truth seeker Says:

August 26th, 2010 at 9:27 AM

Why is congress and election commission scared?: Look, to generate
faith, EC can invite people like Halderman and Hari Prasad and ensure
that machines are tamper proof. But strangely, they seem scared.

The case should be taken to Supreme Court and this whole business of fraud should be exposed.

I strongly suspect there is EC fraud. We do not want to find this in
10 years are so, when most of these leaders are in their graves.

Whatever the truth should come out.

P N V Krishnan Says:

August 26th, 2010 at 4:45 PM

The Blackberries,the Ipads etc are not tamper proof .Then why
should the EVM developed in India almost 10 years back, be expected top
be tamper proof.
The EC and the Govt must agree that these machines are not 100% tamper
proof. The paper trail is the best .Regarding booth capturing etc , it
is prevalent even with the EVMs. Nobody can stop a powerful candidate
from capturing the machines and pressing the right buttons any number of
times.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and it is true in any system.

Ganesh Says:

August 28th, 2010 at 1:07 PM

I have read the report by the three member team on the risks of
EVM. one thing i found was that it is not possible to tamper with it
without acces to the machine. it is obvious that the moment a fraudster
gets access to a machine it is possible to tamper with it. changing the
CHIP or the memory devise is possible even in remote circumstances. what
you can probably have is an auto delete / auto destroy option if there
is any kind of tampering. i am sure there are solutions to it. so the so
called VETA / researchers etc can do is not to create panic and aim for
cheap publicity.

raj Says:

August 29th, 2010 at 8:43 PM

The arrest of Hari Prasad had once again proved that ECI has been
shook hard and it no more could face the ample evidence shown by experts
like hariprasad.. So they have gone to the extent of arresting him..
Such kind of arrest will not intimidate determined persons..

Some one said, booth capture is not possible in EVM.. they did not
understand that in the case of booth capture, the parties need to print
so many ballot papers, for the rigging, which costs them enormous, in
terms of printing, handling, transporting secretly, capturing the booth
and replacing its own rigged votes..

But in case of EVMs, all one needs is just to change the memory data,
which in any way is NOT a difficult task in present world.

In the case of ballot papers, we can physically verify the ballot
papers in case of rigging.. In case of error in counting, each and every
vote can be retraced back..

In case of EVM, this is not possible.. individual vote is NOT
physically existing and cannot be verified.. when some one changes
memory data before counting, no one can find it or trace back..

So technically, there is no need for booth capturing in EVMs.. what
one needs are access to the place where EVMs are stored, where they can
change the memory data, in all the EVMs over night..
And common sense tells, that it is NOT difficult to get this access, if
the ruling party wishes.. Just a small hole in a storehouse, or just
few minutes of opening the door to allow conspirators in, who would
silently do all the data manipulation and then get back..

Such a rigging does not need any physical data to handle.. a small
piece of electronic device for changing the data is enough, and it can
be done by one or two persons..

The possibility of rigging in EVMs are very largescale and highly sophisticated to be detected by ordinary persons..

I need not tell about other possibilities, where the data can be rigged even by counting machines..

But the point is that EVM’s are more potentially riggable..

K.C. Suresh Says:

September 9th, 2010 at 8:06 AM

EVM is not fools proof is evident from the words of”Last week,
international experts in computer security have concluded in a workshop
held in Washington D.C on August 9 and 10 that the Indian EVMs do not
provide the security, verifiability, or transparency adequate for
confidence in election results, the Election Commission of India. (Read
the letter
here:http://www.usenix.org/events/evtwote10/final-letter-eci.pdf)”.
ECI must be fair and it should appear like that. Otherwise the
whole system will collapse. The perfection always rests at hard disks.
So let us go back to the Ballots. No EVM is necessary if there is a 1%
error possibility.
Like Rama the ECI must be fair to Nation. Let your honest, trust
worthy, loving Seetha shaped EVM to seperate. That is Indian model of
honesty and public interest. Don’t show over enthousiastic trappies,
which is not expected from an independent fair and impartial system like
ECI.

akshada Says:

September 10th, 2010 at 5:12 PM

Above information is only half truth.police wants only a name of
people who had given machine to him. but he is not ready to dispose
name. lator on he said he got machine from shobha Bachhav and her
husband from nashik who is working as social activist. police are doing
enquiry of these people.
During election collector has oppointed a retired tahsildar to
see all activities related to EVM and 10 outsider temporary people were
working under him. they didn’t keep the record.worst thing is all
machines were on open ground below one tree whitout any security,infront
of collector office mumbai.any one can steal it. collector knew
this.Every day she was passing by, she saw it. At that time no one got
importance of this machine. and now they are making issue. main thing is
while loging complaint she has written, machine was stollen from
godown.it may be stollen from open ground.collector transfered to
mantralaya as a joint secretory.
Now present people working in collector office are not taking
resposbility. bcoz they were not appointed for EVM. now let me tell who
is responsible for this from collector office?

Present collector has suspended 4 people from collector office
just bcoz currently they are working on EVM. how stupid action this
is.just to show the ECI that he has taken action. but one of these four
one is filed case in court against illegal suspension aganist
court.present collector realy did unjustice with these people.
hari prasad is right in his place. according to police he know the name of person and not telling to police.

https://sites.google.com/site/hindunew/evm-technology

hindunew

EVM Technology

Link to Electronic Voting Machines (Linked webpage on Indian EVMs)

Indian EVMs, video of an international conf. held in Chennai, on 13 Feb. 2010 organised by the Centre for National Renaissance

Source : Dr. Subramanian Swamy

EVM Conference Part 01

from Dr. Swamy on Vimeo.

EVM Conference Part02

from Dr. Swamy on Vimeo.

CENTRE FOR NATIONAL RENAISSANCE

Conference on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs)

Savera Hotel, Chennai, February 13, 2010

Resolution adopted by the participants at the above mentioned Conference on February 13, 2010

      At
the
International Conference on EVMs, the participants consider in
detail the current international practice and law relating to the
deployment of EVMs, the evidence on and the scope for their
tamperability and the safeguards that are necessary to ensure that the
deployment of EVMs, does not, in any manner, compromise the central
requirements of transparency and accountability to the voter, at each
and every stage of the election process.

      In
the interest of the electoral process remaining free and fair,
transparent and accountable to the voter, the participants unanimously
resolved that the EVMs should provide for an voter verifiable paper
trail, and if not feasible then we should return to the paper ballot
system.

      The
participants further resolved that, without such an auditable paper
trail, the two essential requirements, namely transparency and
accountability to the voter and the related requirement of verifiability
of the validity of the votes cast by the voters envisaged under
sections 100 and 101 of the Representation of People Act, 1951 will
stand and seriously compromised as well as infringing Sections 11 to 14
of the Information Technology Act (2000) and the Indian Evidence Act
(1872).

Review of Indian EVMs

The study of printout option is a welcome, but inadequate step to enhance the reliability of Indian EVMs.

Why
retain the members of the Committee which recommended the earliest
design of Indian EVM? Why not include members who are conversant with
the current state-of-the-art in IT technologies? The IT has undergone a
veritable revolution in the last few years with Wi-Fi
(Wireless-Fidelity) with ability to intercept interface devices of any
computing system (e.g. printer interfaces, visual display interfaces,
memory storage interfaces).

Why
doesn’t the committee include other technology-savvy members and also
Constitutional experts? The committee should certainly include members
with expertise in Cyberlaw.

The terms of reference of the Committee should also include

1.
a study of ALL the types of Voting Machines in use [types such as those
1)with or without date-time stamp, 2) with or without machine
identification by software; 3) with dynamic code hopping with
encryption; 4) with digital signatures in the control unit]. And
recommend one design type for consistent use in ALL constituencies in
ALL elections.

2.
a study of the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and
related cyberlaws of the land including amended Indian Evidence Act and
other laws which impact on the use of computing systems

3. recommend procedures consistent with the provisions of IT Act, 2000 for systems audit and requirements of ISO standards.

4.the
constitutionality of the use of non-transparent systems like EVMs
should also be subject to a detailed study in the wake of the German
Supreme Court Judgement which defines the universal application of the
definition of suffrage which enjoins voter control over every process of
balloting and vote counting.

5.
the Committee should also examine the infirmities of the system of
manufacturing EVMs using foreign agencies or device/service components
procured from foreign companies.

6.
Indian EVM should be an entirely indigenous system with NO foreign
involvement which can seriously jeopardise the integrity of the most
sacred process in a democracy, the election process. The committee
should recommend 100% indigenisation of the entire manufacturing process
including the making of microcontrollers, burning in Hexacode in the
microcontrollers or embedded systems or masking such programs since once
burnt-in and masked, the programs ARE UNREADABLE even by the EC. This
is the most serious lacuna of the Indian EVM system which compromises
the integrity and security of the system and opens up possibilities of
tampering.

7.The
Committee should recommend a return to the paper ballot (which is an
option used when there are more than 16 candidates) until complete
indigenisation of the Indian EVM is achieved and subject to ongoing,
rigorous systems audit in all stages of the life-cycle of manufacturing,
distribution and deloyment of the EVMs during the elections.

8.
The option of paper ballot should also be seriously considered by any
committee set up by EC since the addition of a printer interface may
only introduce another trojan, another possible leak in the bucket.
Lessons have been learnt by using a variety of such devices including
scanners, but ultimately, the reliable piece of evidence is the BALLOT
entered by the voter (not any intervening computing artefact).

9.
Is efficiency a constitutional criterion justifying the use of
machines? The last Lok Sabha polls was spread over more than 30 days;
what is the loss of efficiency if the vote counting is done mannually
over 12 hours, of all the paper ballot printouts with the clear
understanding of the process by the voters and their agents?

10.
The committee should also review all system vulnerabilities being
discussed on such machines in the international IT community with the
clear understanding that any man-made computing system is tamperable. If
there is booth-capturing of ballot boxes using paper ballots, there can
be wholesale election capturing using electronic machines and wi-fi
interventions.

kalyanaraman

EC studies paper trail option as EVM backup

New Delhi, Oct 8, DHNS:

The
Election Commission of India has set up an expert committee to explore
the possibility of incorporating ‘voter verifiable paper trail’ in
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

Following
up on the suggestions made by political parties at a meeting convened
on October 4, the EC has set up a committee which includes P V
Indiresan, former director of IIT-Madras, and D T Shahani and A K
Agrawala, professors at IIT-Delhi.

The
selected members are noted specialists of instrumentation engineering
and the same committee had done the technical evaluation of the upgraded
EVM in 2006.

Referring
to the all-party meeting, the EC said in its communication to the
committee members, “There was a consensus among political parties that
the EVMs should continue to be used in our elections to the Lok Sabha
and State Legislative Assemblies. Several political parties, however,
suggested that the possibility of incorporating a “voter verifiable
paper trail” in EVMs should be explored.”

At
the all-party meeting, most parties, barring the Congress, had demanded
the printer trail for EVMs. Telgu Desam Party leader N Chandrababu
Naidu made a power-point presentation on this issue and demanded a voter
verifiable trail in EVMs to ensure that the vote was correctly
registered.

The
Bharatiya Janta Party too strongly argued for a “paper trail” as a back
up to the EVMs. The party also demanded that voters should get the
acknowledgment of their votes cast.

Subsequently,
the EC has asked the experts to initiate the process with wider
consultations with political parties. It has also requested the
political parties to interact with the committee with their suggestions
in this matter. The expert committee will now decide the dates and venue
of their meetings with them.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/103372/ec-studies-paper-trail-option.html

October 9, 2010

Electronic Voting Machines: Tamperable?

Saeed Naqvi, 26 June 2010

On July 31, S. Yaqoob Quraishi will take over as the Chief Election Commissioner.

http://blogs.newsx.com/saeednaqvi/files/2010/06/EVMs-1.jpg

Slots
in diplomacy and governorships are already being identified as the
retiring chief election commissioner Navin Chawla’s parking lots. But at
the Election Commission Chawla has set for himself a busy agenda almost
until the end of his term.

For
example, on July 27 elections will be held in the 12 assembly seats
which had fallen vacant after the Telangana Rashtra Samithi members
resigned from the House agitating for a separate Telangana.

This
apparently simple election is not without its complications. For
instance, elections in two constituencies cannot be held because of a
Supreme Court stay. Reason? Two of the candidates claimed they had won
the elections. According to a SC judgment if a petitioner challenges
election results, a re-election is possible only after the High Court
clears the issue.

True
to form, TRS leader K. Chandrasekhar Rao claims the elections to these
two seats are being held up because of pressure from the Congress.

Quraishi’s
first challenge will be elections to the Bihar Assembly due in
October-November. Who knows, Tamil Nadu too may call for early elections
if K. Karunanidhi is persuaded that, in addition to other calculations,
the International Tamil Jamboree has moved Tamil voters in his favour.

A
simmering controversy Quraishi will have to contend with is a
sustained, low level, campaign by interested parties on the reliability
(or otherwise) of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

Allegation
of booth capturing and poll rigging, particularly in states like Bihar
had brought into disrepute the old paper ballot.

These
allegations made is essential for the Election Commission to explore
new technologies. As always in modern Indian political history, Kerala
first showed the way when EVMs were tried in 50 polling elections in a
constituency in Kerala in 1982.

Subsequently
Representation of People Act of 1951 was amended, permitting EVMs since
1989 but not before an Expert Committee, under Prof. P. V. Indiresan
was constituted to evaluate these machines.

The
General Elections of 2004 and 2009 were conducted entirely on EVMs.
Following some critical observations, the Expert Committee suggested
some improvements in the machines. These improvements were introduced in
2006.

The
controversy has acquired some momentum because many European countries
have turned their backs on EVMs i.e. they employed EVMs and then
discontinued the practice in favour of good old paper ballots.

Recently,
electronic voting has been banned in Ireland, Holland and Germany.
Italy and France are not using them either. In the US, systems change
from state to state.

In
Germany the Supreme Court found EVMs violative of the election law
which demands absolute transparency – The objection being that what
happens inside a “chip” or a “machine” is not visible to the naked eye.

The
lobby placing a question mark on EVMs is citing the European
experience. Also, since Bharat Electronics (Ministry of Defence) and the
Electronic Corporation of India Ltd. (Dept. of Atomic Energy) are the
only manufacturers of EVMs, a case is being made out that official
agencies can be persuaded to favour the government in power.

It
is being argued that if the machines could leave “paper trail” to be
handed to the voter, the system will become beyond reproach. After all,
millions of credit card transactions around the world would not be
possible without both, electronic registration of the transaction and a
paper receipt for the customer.

The
counter argument is that in a country where votes are bought and sold, a
receipt for having cast a vote will be that much easier to encash.

That
is fine, but remember paper also gets jammed obstructing rotation of
the paper roll. One such obstruction will hold up the election in a
given constituency. Many such hold ups can disrupt the election
schedule.

The
leadership to those opposing EVMs are politicians like Chandrababu
Naidu and Subramanyam Swamy. Also, individuals like former Chief
secretary of Delhi, Omesh Sehgal have approached the Election Commission
with complaints against EVMs on the grounds that they were
“tamperable”.

Psephologist
G.V. Narasimha Rao, having gone woefully wrong in his recent electoral
predictions, has joined the anti EVM bandwagon.

Another lobby opposing EVMs are undiluted commercial interests.

In
1980, one Mohammad Haneefa of Tamil Nadu approached the Election
Commission with an Electronic Voting Machine he had invented. He filed a
writ petition before the Madras High Court when the Election Commission
seemed to favour Public sector companies. Even though the High Court
dismissed the petition, he persisted with this communications with the
EC challenging the efficacy of the Public sector manufactured EVMs.

Ultimately
in 2007 the EC invited him to make a presentation before the Chief
election Officer in Bangalore to establish flaws in the EVMs in use.
According to the Election Commission sources “he failed to demonstrate
any tamperability”.

After
the 2009 elections, Subramaniyam Swami, G.V.L. Narsimha Rao, and one
Hari Prasad of Net India (a would be electronic machine manufacturer)
asked the Election Commission to let them open an EVM. They were given
the permission. When they started taking measurements and noting details
of EVM components, the Election Commission stopped them. Why? They may
use the data for “reverse engineering”. Strange reason! Quraishi will
have to handle the controversy.

http://blogs.newsx.com/saeednaqvi/2010/06/26/electronic-voting-machines-tamperable/

Tamperable Indian EVMs

22 June 2010

Speaking
to the media in Itanagar last 5 June 2010 Navin Chawla said, “…a
private manufacturer, who failed to sell their machines for use in
polls, were behind the propaganda that EVMs were vulnerable.”

This has been refuted effectively http://www.indianevm.com/news_detail.php?id=88

What
is shocking is that CEC is talking of private manufacturers. This lets
the cat out of the bag. Manufacture of Indian EVMS is NOT fully under
the control of the two public sector units (BEL/ECIL). There is a
considerable outsourcing ongoing and ECI should come clean on the
manufacturing and distribution processes of the Indian EVMs and the
components/services embedded in them. One example of a service rendered
by foreign manufacturers through their private manufacturer agents in
India is the burning of the controller chip with the program used to
record and count poll data. This clearly compromises the integrity of
the Indian EVMs since even ECI or BEL or ECIL can NOT read the burnt-in
programs. What is the guarantee that dubious programs had NOT been burnt
in some of the Indian EVMs, including the new design Indian EVMs with
date-time stamp features? It is also clear that since ECIL/BEL use parts
procured from private manufacturers (including foreign manufacturers)
to assemble the Indian EVMs, ECI’s claim indicating use of Private
manufacturers should be fully exposed and made transparent to the voters
and parties alike.

In this situation, Election Commission’s claim in the BBC report of 18 May 2010 is of questionable validity. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10123478.stm The report noted: “However,
for their system to have any impact they would need to install their
microchips on many voting machines, no easy task when 13,68,430 were
used in the last general election in 2009.”

It
is an easy task, to get the desired results on a large number of Indian
EVMs, if the components of the EVMs and the programs burnt-in to the
EVM electronic chips are under the control of private manufacturers.
What is the guarantee that such tampered machines have NOT been put into
use in the elections conducted by ECI? ECI has a lot of explaining to
do.

There
are clear-cut evidences to show such desired results were IN FACT
obtained in selected polling booths in select constituencies during the
2009 Lok Sabha poll conducted with 100% use of Indian EVMs. Some agency
like CBI has to investigate this. More
at http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Review_the_2009_Lok_Sabha_Election_Process:_Promises_and_Reality

It
appears ECI has lost control over the sacred election process, blinded
by a faith in infallibility of Indian EVMs. No man-made computing system
is tamper-proof. This is a fundamental security axiom in computing
technology. Murphy’s law says: If things can go wrong, they always will.

kalyanaraman

Additional comments: Senthil Raja, 22 June 2010:

One
need not hack all the EVMs.. It’s enough, if they hack few hundred
EVM’s in a constituency enough to add few thousand votes..

And they need to chose only 50-100 constituencies where their winning possibility is more and winning margin is less.

In this advanced world, its not difficult to arrive at a precise calculation on how many, and which are the booths to be hacked to alter the margins etc.

So if we consider this aspect, it’s enough if one hacks few thousand EVMs on a national scale.

US scientists ‘hack’ Indian electronic voting machines

Julian Siddle

Scientists at a US university say they have developed a technique to hack into Indian electronic voting machines.

After connecting a home-made device to a machine,
University of Michigan researchers were able to change results by
sending text messages from a mobile.

Indian election officials say their machines are
foolproof, and that it would be very difficult even to get hold of a
machine to tamper with it.

India uses about 1.4m electronic voting machines in each general election.

‘Dishonest totals’

A video posted on the internet by the researchers at
the University of Michigan purportedly shows them connecting a home-made
electronic device to one of the voting machines used in India.

Professor J Alex Halderman, who led the project, said
the device allowed them to change the results on the machine by sending
it messages from a mobile phone.

“We made an imitation display board that looks almost
exactly like the real display in the machines,” he told the BBC. “But
underneath some of the components of the board, we hide a microprocessor
and a Bluetooth radio.”

“Our lookalike display board intercepts the vote
totals that the machine is trying to display and replaces them with
dishonest totals - basically whatever the bad guy wants to show up at
the end of the election.”

In addition, they added a small microprocessor which
they say can change the votes stored in the machine between the election
and the vote-counting session.

India’s electronic voting machines are considered to be among the most tamperproof in the world.

There is no software to manipulate - records of candidates and votes cast are stored on purpose-built computer chips.

Paper and wax seals

India’s Deputy Election Commissioner, Alok Shukla, said even getting hold of machines to tamper with would be very difficult.

“It is not just the machine, but the overall
administrative safeguards which we use that make it absolutely
impossible for anybody to open the machine,” he told the BBC.

“Before the elections take place, the machine is set
in the presence of the candidates and their representatives. These
people are allowed to put their seal on the machine, and nobody can open
the machine without breaking the seals.”

The researchers said the paper and wax seals could be easily faked.

However, for their system to have any impact they
would need to install their microchips on many voting machines, no easy
task when 13,68,430 were used in the last general election in 2009.

(Courtesy: BBC; May 18, 2010)

(URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10123478.stm )

Source: http://www.socialcause.org/getarticlefromdb.php?id=2622

d

EVM ‘FIXERS’ DEMAND HEFTY SUMS (Part 1)

GVL Narasimha Rao, 27 May 2010

Skeptics who are now convinced that
EVM tampering is possible have a question to ask: is tampering of
electronic voting machines merely a theoretical proposition (as Prof
Indiresan, ECI’s expert committee chairman would have you believe) or is
there any ground level evidence of tampering?

The answer to this question lies in
personal experiences and encounters of a number of senior political
leaders with “EVM fixers”. From these personal accounts, it is evident
that there is more to the EVM story than what meets the eye.

Take a look at some such shocking
incidents narrated to me ever since I began to explore electronic voting
machines in the wake of surprising election outcomes. The first such
incident relates to fixing by insider-technicians having easy access to
the voting machines.

Insider ‘Fixing’

(Want EVMs fixed? Pay Rs. 5 Crore)

Weeks after elections to the
Maharashtra state assembly in October last year, Omesh Saigal, a retired
IAS officer and a whistle blower on the poor security of electronic
voting machines narrated an incident to me about EVM tampering.

  “I was in Maharastra in October
last year. I met an ex-MP from the Congress party there. He confirmed my
worst fears about EVMs”, Saigal said.

“What did you hear from him”, I queried.

“The ex-MP’s son stood for the
Maharastra assembly elections recently. The ex-MP told me that they were
approached by some “authorized” engineers (apparently representing one
of the EVM manufacturers) who offered to manipulate election results in
50% of the polling stations of his assembly constituency for the
princely sum of Rs. 5 Crore. The engineers said that the candidate could
choose whichever polling stations he wanted manipulated.”

“Scandalous. What happened then?” I asked Saigal.

“The ex-MP refused to believe them.
He said that this couldn’t be true. The engineers gave some (client)
references to him and asked him to verify for himself, if he so
desired”, Saigal added.

The son of the ex-MP lost his
elections. He thinks that his election may have been stolen by his
rivals employing unethical means. He and his father have joined the
ever growing list of people who have no trust in EVMs.

I promptly incorporated this incident
in my book on EVMs released in February this year. Later, speaking at
the function to launch www.indianEVM.com website on April 12 this year,
Saigal narrated this incident publicly before the entire media.

Unlike most of us who do not belong
to the clan of election commissioners, Omesh Saigal has been a fellow
IAS officer who has served in several key positions in the government as
chief secretary, Delhi and Secretary to the government of India.
Present chief election commissioner Navin Chawla was a contemporary of
Omesh Saigal from the union territories cadre in the IAS. They know each
other quite well.

Election Commission of India,
brimming with a false sense of pride that nothing can go wrong with its
checks and balances, has not taken even such specific accounts
seriously. Should the Commission want to get details in this regard,
Omesh Saigal was only too willing to reveal all the information in his
possession.

Would the Commission care to initiate an enquiry into similar incidents?

http://www.indianevm.com/blogs/?p=166

Debate with Prof. Indiresan on his ‘Case for electronic
voting machines’

Date:17/05/2010 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/05/17/stories/2010051750350800.htm

Case for electronic voting machines

Suspicions about EVMs are ill-founded. First, the Indian
EVM, unlike the machines used in Europe, is not programmable. Besides, a large
number would have to be manipulated to impact a result, and this cannot escape
detection, says P. V. INDIRESAN.

From: S. Kalyanaraman
Date: Fri, May 21, 2010 at 4:44 PM
Subject: Re: Indian EVMs tamper-proof? Scientists demonstrate how to hack the
EVMs.
To: PV Indiresan

Dhanyavaadah, Prof. Indiresan ji. With your guidance and the guidance of
other concerned citizens, elders, and technology experts, we shall succeed in
prevailing upon EC and the justice system to ban the use of EVMs which 1)
take control of the election process — balloting and counting — away from the
people who are sovereign; 2) cloud the transparency of the process; and 3)
impose additional technological security, systems audit risks unintelligible to
and beyond the control of the voter.

Thanking you for your consideration and with
the best regards,

kalyanaraman

Annex

German
Supreme Court Judgement holding EVMs unconstitutional (Full text of English
translation )

Read on the full debate at http://www.scribd.com/doc/31720659/Debate-With-Prof-Indiresan

Scrap EVMs & introduce paper ballots: Save Democracy Org. writes to ECI.

FOR  IMMEDIATE  RELEASE
Electronic Voting Machines

Satya Dosapati
Save Indian Democracy Organization
New Jersey, USA

Date:           May 5, 2010
Email:    saveindiandemocracy.org@gmail.com
Ph:            +1 732 939 2060 (US)
Websites: http://saveindiandemocracy.org , http://indianevm.com ,

Mr. Navin Chawla, Chief Election Commissioner
Mr. S.Q Quraishi, Election Commissioner
Mr. V.S. Sampath, Election Commissioner
Election Commission of India
Nirvachan Sadan
Ashoka Road, New Delhi 110001

Dear Mr. Navin Chawla, Mr. S.Q. Quraishi, Mr. V.S. Sampath,

Our Organization Save Indian Democracy, consisting of active volunteers
from India and the Indian Diaspora all over the world , was in earlier
communication with you regarding our concerns on the usage of stand
alone EVMs and their rejection across several countries in the world.
We had presented you the statement regarding Indian EVMs by Stanford Dr.
David Dill who is considered a pioneer in election reform in United
States along with a personal letter of invitation to Mr. Chawla to visit
Stanford to learn more about the EVM issues. We have brought in the
best world wide known international experts to India to attend various
conferences and Press Meet and had extended invitation to you and the
Expert Committee to meet with the experts. Our organization have even
extended invitation to you to come to US at our expense. This is in
addition to various Indian Organizations and activists who have been
working hard to bring your attention to the issue for several months.

However, none of this elicited any response from you. You have not
engaged in any meaningful and honest debate other than bland assertions
that Indian EVMs are not proven tamperable without subjecting them to
any honest scrutiny in India or internationally. You have kept from
public that the patent submitted on the Indian EVMs to World
Intellectual property Organization was withdrawn because they found all
the 21 claims for patent are worthless (ref 1). The recent exposure of
the real Indian EVMs with the help of international and national experts
(ref 2) show that what we had feared all along is true and the many
reports of issues both by individuals and the political parties during
last few elections are on strong foot hold.

We know that ECI is serious about protecting Indian democracy and are
hopeful that ECI will engage into an honest debate on the issues of
electronic voting.   Unfortunately all the efforts made so far to bring
to your attention the serious threat to democracy of India was met not
only with disregard but continuation of campaign of misleading the
country.      As Dr. Dill and several others have asserted tamperability
and insider tampering of stand alone EVMs are biggest threat to any
country’s democracy. With Corruption Perception index of India by
Transparency International same as that of war torn African country
Rwanda, the recent expose’ of ease of tamperability of real Indian EVMs
in combination with high risk of insider tampering puts a great urgency
in addressing the issue.

Save Indian Democracy will continue to take further actions through
various international and national Organizations to protect our
democracy. Note that a paper on real Indian EVMs is already scheduled
to be presented at one international conference by well known expert Rop
Gongrijjp from Netherlands (ref 3).

1) Expose the tamperability of real Indian EVMs in several international conferences..
2) Expose the ease of tamperability of real Indian EVMs to
countries India is selling the EVMs, particularly Nigeria, Malaysia,
Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Mauritius, Nepal, Bhutan,
Bangla Desh. We are already in touch with Nigeria where the Election
Commissioner was recently sacked for corruption.
3) Explore and pursue bringing awareness to the Indian EVM issues
to various international human rights and election watch bodies.
4) Work closely with other Indian counterparts to bring awareness
to Indians about the rejection of stand along EVMs around the world,
the vulnerability of Indian EVMs etc

We sincerely hope the ECI would take further immediate actions. We look
forward to cooperate and assist in any sincere efforts. Some of the
actions ECI may pursue are:

1) Engaging in an honest debate with an open mind on tamperability
of Indian EVMs and the risk of insider tampering and explore ways to
make Indian elections accountable and verifiable.
2) Learn and understand the status of stand alone EVMs across the
world and why even the most advanced countries rejected them due to
reasons of transparency, tamperability and insider tampering. (Note
that, notwithstanding IT boom in India, the research on EVMs in India is
minimal).

3)
Recognize that even the countries with far less corruption than
India and have reputable Electoral bodies are extremely concerned of
insider tampering and have effectively done away with stand alone EVMs.
4) Bold enough to reintroduce the paper ballots unless a well proven method could be found to make elections more secure.

With best regards,

Satya Dosapati
Save Indian Democracy

####

References:

1)      Technical paper on how to tamper a real Indian EVM at http://indiaevm.org/paper.html  (being submitted at Chicago and other international conferences)

2)      Video on how  to tamper a real Indian EVM by Rop Gongrijjp,  Hari Prasad, Alex Halderman.   Visit:  http://indiaevm.org/media.html  (scroll down)

3)      Withdrawal  of patent application of EVM made at World Intellectual  Property Organization, www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2002093503 ,   look under claims for  21 claims for patent and under National Phase showing withdrawn.

EVM hacked! (We told you it’s easy to do)

Inside the EVM is a main circuit board with t

Inside the EVM is a main circuit board with the CPU and vote memory. It also has a smaller display board

This clip-on device ‘steals’ votes from EVMs.

The
display in the EVM can be replaced with a look-alike (above). Parts
were hidden under the LEDs, that substitute dishonest vote totals when
showing election results

A demonstration attack device was also developed. It clips on to the memory chips inside the EVM and steals votes

There’s no doubt about it. Electronic Voting
Machines can be tampered with, and a team of experts have demonstrated exactly
how it’s done, using an EVM from Maharashtra

By Alka Shukla & Jaison Lewis

Pune Mirror, Posted On Thursday, May 06,
2010

On March 29, 2010, Pune Mirror carried a
report on how Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are easy to hack into.

Now, there is proof. Setting of alarm bells well in time for the next election
in 2012, a team of researchers used a machine from the state to demonstrate two
ways in which the results could have been rigged.

The researchers, in a report posted on their website, showed precisely how a
display component could be replaced with a fake substitute programmed to steal
a percentage of the votes in favour of a chosen candidate.

They also exposed how stored votes could be changed between the election and
the public counting session, which in India can be weeks later, with a pocket-sized
device.

The team, comprising Hyderabad-based NetIndia, Dr J Alex Halderman, a
professor and noted expert on electronic voting security from the University of
Michigan and Holland-based security expert Rop Gonggrijp, was instrumental in
the ban on EVMs in the Netherlands.

Last year, NetIndia Managing Director Hari Prasad had demonstrated how the
instrument could have been tampered with, but he could prove this only
theoretically as the election commission didn’t provide him with a real EVM.

“This time, a bureaucrat provided us with a real EVM,” said Prasad. He was
vocal about the vulnerability of EVMs even as the chief election commission
vouched for their ‘infallibility’ last year.

Indian EVMs record votes only onto the internal memory of the system. There are
no paper records that allow for inspection or recount.

In fact, the vote-counting software in the EVMs is programmed to not allow the
software to be read out and verified.

“Since these chips are made in the US and Japan, this has led to a situation
where nobody in India knows for sure what software is in these machines or
whether it counts votes accurately,” reads the report.

Attack One

A small display component of the machine can
be replaced with an identical component. This component can be programmed to
steal a percentage of the votes in favour of a chosen candidate.

The signals to activate the program can be transmitted from by using a mere
mobile phone. Explains Hari Prasad, “The result of voting is displayed on LED
segments. There’s a 3-mm gap between segments.

That’s where a chip can be loaded. This chip can be connected wireless to
mobile phone.” If a miscreant manages to place a chip, a signal from a
micro-controller will control what is displayed on the screen.

Attack Two

The votes stored in the EVM between the election and the public counting
session can be changed by using a specially made pocket-sized device.

When you open the machine, you find micro-controllers, under which are
electrically enabled programs, with ‘read-only’ memory. It is used only for
storage.

However, Prasad warns, “You can read and write memory from an external
interface. We have developed a small clip with a chip on the top to read votes
inside the memory and manipulate the data by swapping the vote from one
candidate to another.”

Reasoning the need to demonstrate he says, “We are not questioning the system
of checks and balances. Our intention is only to highlight that EVMs are
vulnerable and have even been banned in countries like the Netherlands.”

When contacted, Maharashtra’s Chief Electoral Officer Debashish Chakravarty
said he was aware of the issue. “We know that such claims are being made. It is
a matter of inspection.

We will decide what is to be done after investigations. I can’t comment beyond
this about the issue.”

http://cms.mumbaimirror.com/portalfiles/29/62/201005/Image/evm4.jpg

http://www.punemirror.in/index.aspx?page=article§id=62&contentid=201005062010050600232543c9f000db§xslt=

Insecure Indian electronic voting machines. Scrap them. Declare them unconstitutional

Democracy is too much of a treasure for the people to be risked with use of experiments such as the Indian EVMs.

What does it take for the policy
brass, in this state of Hindusthan, to see reason and act for the
abhyudayam of the people, and to listen to the true voice of the people,
who are sovereign in a democratic republic of Hindusthan?

ECI is a constitutional body
entrusted with conducting elections, an expression of the sovereign will
of the people. This means that ECI has to ensure that EVMs do NOT
undermine the will of the people

This is the precise serious,
intolerable situation that has arisen by the proof by experts that EVMs
CAN undermine the will of the people. EVMs are tamperable, replaceable
by fraudulent duplicates and are hence, unreliable as balloting and vote
counting systems. Why should ECI insist on persisting with unsafe
systems of Indian EVMs?

Subhash Kak one of the author’s of the following article is Professor of Computer Science, Oklahoma State University.

David Dill who wrote to Navin Chawla, CEC, is Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University.

Computer experts including Alex
Halderman, Professor of Computer Science, Univ. of Michigan, have
demonstrated how the Indian EVM can be hacked.http://indiaevm.org (video, images).

In the face of such overwhelming
advice of computer experts, why is Election Commission of India doggedly
defending the indefensible, tamperable Indian EVMs ?

Is it because the Courts are
likely to annul the Lok Sabha elections of 2009? So what, let us save
democracy in India. It is the duty of Caesar’s wife (ECI) to be above
susupicion and bound by their oath of office to uphold the traditions of
democracy started over 1000 years ago by secret ballots used in
Uttaramerur (Parakesari Varman Chola) discussed in Constituent Assembly
debates (1948) by T. Prakasam, late CM of Madras Presidency.

Will ECI see reason and scrap
EVMs? Will Supreme Court of India save democracy declaring EVMs
unconstitutional as German Supreme Court has done, since EVMs violate
the public nature of elections in a democratic republic?

Who will save the field when the fence eats away the crop?

Creatures created by the sovereign
people of Hindusthan cannot arrogate to themselves the power to
denigrate the basic feature of Indian Constitution: democratic republic
which calls for votes to be cast under the control of the voters and
votes to be counted under the gaze of the voters.

ECI are NOT sarvaprajna that they
can declare that Indian EVMs are untamperable. No system invented by a
human being is untamperable. Every system humanly engineered can be
reverse engineered by people who have an axe to grind, an evil intent to
realise to get elected, by hook or by crook. Given the high stakes
involved in elections, it is easy (and cost-effective) to capture a few
booths and introduce duplicate, look-alike EVMs which will elect the
candidate chosen by a fraudster, say, comparable to a criminal who
manipulates an ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) to withdraw cash which
does not belong to him or her.

ECI, you owe it to the people of
Hindusthan to scrap the EVMs and SC, you owe it to the people of
Hindusthan to declare EVMs unconstitutional.

Dharmo rakshati rakshitah. Eternal
vigilance is the price of liberty. Let not prestige of a few
individuals stand in the way of the imperative of saving democracy in
Hindusthan. It is a treasured legacy, a thousand-year old legacy from
the Chola days, Bharat is a beacon of democracy for the entire world.
Let us not extinguish this deepam.

kalyanaraman

Former Sr. Exec., Asian
Development Bank (A computer expert involved with computers on Indian
Railways and in Asian Development Bank).

Challenges facing electronic voting

Abhishek Parakh and Subhash Kak, May 2010, Seminar Monthly, New Delhi

LIKE Caesar’s wife, an election should not only be fair but also
above suspicion. After the contested 2000 presidential elections, the
United States government attempted to develop electronic systems to
overcome many shortcomings of paper ballots. But electronic machines
have presented several problems of their own, and their use is coming
under increasing legal challenge. Electronic voting systems that do
not leave a paper trail have been banned in Netherlands, Ireland, and
some counties in the United States.

The German Federal Constitutional Court decided on 3 March 2009
that electronic voting is unconstitutional and therefore not to be used
in future elections. Consequently, the 2009 German national
elections were conducted with hand counted paper ballots. The reasoning
used by the German court was that electronic voting is not verifiable
because the votes are counted in secret. It uses a technology accessible
only to the initiates. The court stressed that electronic voting
machines (EVMs) don’t allow citizens to reliably examine, when the vote
is cast, whether the vote has been recorded fairly. The German
court defines conditions for acceptability of voting systems that go
beyond paper trails for touch screen voting that are popular in the
United States.

In India the use by the Election Commission of EVMs has been challenged
in the Supreme Court, and the court’s decision is awaited. The argument
used by the government appointed Chief Election Commissioner is that the
EVMs ought to be trusted as they are manufactured by two government
owned companies, ECIL and BEL, that they are sent in a random order to
the election booths, and that their chips cannot be removed. At present
many political parties outside of the ruling coalition are uneasy about
the use of EVMs.

Electronic elections are conducted either using Direct
Recording Electronic (DRE) machines or over the Internet. Although DREs
have benefits such as speedy results, accuracy, reduction in manpower
and paperwork,1 they are vulnerable to sabotage and equipment
malfunction. Further, if a malfunction is detected, there seems no way
to conduct a recount and the only remedy is a recast of ballots.
Internet voting too provides ease of access and eliminates absentee
ballots, but is surrounded by many more security concerns than the DRE
systems.

Electronics has been a part of the election process for several decades
in the form of punch card machines and optical scan systems that rely on
software for the tally process and can carry a bug as easily as the DRE
machines.2 But punch card and optical scan systems leave a paper trail
that can be used for verification and recounts in case of disputes. This
is the rationale behind the argument that DREs should have voter
verified paper trails wherein the voting machine prints a paper receipt
of the cast ballot for the voter. The receipt can then be verified by
the voter and deposited in a ballot box, bringing the DRE systems at par
with punch card and optical scan systems. However, it requires
additional resources and the burden of handling of paper receipts which
were sought to be avoided in the first place.

A solution would be to allow voters to take receipts home in
which voters can verify their votes by accessing the results posted
on bulletin boards against receipt numbers. Chaum3 has proposed
schemes that combine visual cryptography and mixnets to achieve this.
However, a receipt that is taken home may be used to prove the way a
voter cast his ballot and thus invite vote selling and give rise to
irresolvable false claims. Rivest and Smith4 suggest a variant of this
scheme in which the voters deposit their receipts and take home with
them the receipt of a random voter who cast a ballot before them. Now
when the results are posted on the bulletin board, a voter will be able
to verify one cast ballot, although not his. This scheme eliminates
false claims and vote selling, but the receipts that are taken home must
be tamper resistant, which would add to the cost of the system.

But there is no guarantee that a voter will not raise a false alarm
at the polling station and claim that the receipt printed by the
machine is different from the vote he just cast. There would be no way
to verify his claim because we have assumed the machines to
be fundamentally distrustful. One such claim can disrupt the
election process and an unscrupulous party can easily put in place
people to make such claims in a wide geographic area. Another solution
may include random permutation of votes during the voting process and
then un-permuting the results after the vote count. This permutation
order may be randomly chosen by the presiding officer at the polling
station before the beginning of the polls and recorded appropriately.
This would require a separation between the input device and the
vote recording machine with a physical permutation device joining
them. Once the tally is made, the results can then be permuted back.

It might be simpler to employ two machines endorsed by opposing
major parties in the elections recording the same vote and then their
counts could be tallied after the elections are closed.

Although it is widely believed that open source software can help
in improving system security and confidence, some argue that this
makes the job of hackers easier who might find a bug and instead
of reporting it, exploit it. Also, there is no guarantee that
companies would be using the same software in the same form, which is
made public, in every machine that is deployed and there is no way to
prove this, for certain, one way or the other.5 This also does not
eliminate the possibility of bugs inserted by an unscrupulous employee
into the machines during their manufacture and software installation.

In general, the requirements for an ideal voting system include receipt
freeness, un-forge-ability, privacy, fairness, verifiability, coercion
resistance and ballot secrecy. Receipt freeness prevents a voter from
proving to anyone how he voted, un-forge-ability prevents a voter from
casting double ballots, privacy protects the voter from eavesdroppers,
fairness protects the intermediate election results that could sway the
outcome, verifiability allows voter to ensure that his ballot is
recorded as intended, and so on. The election system and procedures are
particularly challenging because one needs to treat every party involved
as an adversary.

The imperative of technology demands that future elections take place on
the Internet since it finesses the problem of verifiability.
But Internet based systems cannot satisfy the requirement of
coercion resistance, if the vote is to be cast by voters from their
homes or elsewhere, at their convenience. Also, the requirement of
receipt freeness does not apply to an Internet based system since
anybody who is coercing a voter to cast a ballot a certain way can
easily watch him do so over his shoulder. Further, the problem of vote
selling is one of the central issues when talking about Internet voting.

Conversely, the above shortcomings are not unique to online
voting systems. They exist in paper based systems as well when one uses
the provision of absentee ballot and yet everyone accepts them as a
part of the system. In fact, about 16.8 per cent of votes in the 2008
US presidential elections were cast as domestic absentee ballots,6
which is more than enough to change an election outcome if any fraud
was intended.

Internet based voting systems require strong safeguards against hacking
attacks, viruses and Trojans. Software continues to get complex and can
never be bug free. A virus or network attack can also be mounted during
the verification process and result in false positive verifications.
Network attacks may be met by cryptographic key exchange and distributed
backend databases. Information dispersal algorithms and verifiable
secret sharing schemes may be used to maintain system fairness such that
no single server stores all the
cast ballots and the partitions are distributed over
independent servers.7 As long as a majority of these servers remain
honest, the possibility of sabotage remains low.

Although the Germans have returned to the paper ballot system,
the fidelity of this system requires that the officials managing
the election process are honest. For example, the 2004
presidential election held in Taiwan using paper ballots was won by the
incumbent, Chen Shui-Bian, where the central election commission
declared 337,297 ballots invalid, which was more than 11 times the
margin of victory.8 In countries without a strong tradition of honest
bureaucracy, it is common for ballot boxes to disappear or be replaced
with already filled ones before counting takes place. The most recent
example of this was the 2009 national election in Afghanistan.

The strengths and weaknesses of electronic and paper based
election systems are different. It is of course true that given an
honest bureaucracy, paper based systems are demonstrably trustworthy
whereas the trustworthiness of EVMs cannot be so established.

Designing a perfect electronic voting system is impossible due to
the opposite requirements of secrecy and verifiability, and
no implementations that are demonstrably secure are available.
Germany and other countries have already chosen to go back to the
paper ballot, and it appears that in spite of the ease and flexibility
of electronic voting other countries will eventually do the same.

Footnotes:

1. B.J. Williams and M.S. King, ‘Implementing Voting Systems:
The Georgia Method’, Communications of the ACM 47(10), October 2004.

2. L. Norden et al., The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in
an Electronic World, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law,
October 2006.

3. D. Chaum, ‘Secret-ballot Receipts: True Voter-verifiable Elections’,
Security and Privacy, IEEE 2(1), Jannuary-February 2004, pp.38-47.

4. R. Rivest, Three Voting Protocols: ThreeBallot, VAV, Twin.
http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/RivestSmith-ThreeVoting ProtocolsThreeBallotVAVAndTwin.pdf

5. N. Paul and A.S. Tanenbaum, ‘Trustworthy Voting: From Machine to System’, Computer 42(5), May 2009, pp. 23-29.

6. http://www.eac.gov/News/press/eac-releases-data-from-2008-presidential-election/base_view retrieved on 7 March 2010.

7. A. Parakh and S. Kak, ‘Internet Voting Protocol Based on Improved Implicit Security’, Cryptologia 34(3), 2010.

8. Keith Bradsher and Joseph Kahn, Taiwan’s President Appears to Win Elections. New York Times, 20 March 2004.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/international/asia/20CND-TAIWAN.html?pagewanted=all
– retrieved on 2 March 2010.

Source: http://www.india-seminar.com/semframe.html (Click on COMMENT section).

Indian EVMs insecure. Scrap them. Order fresh Lok Sabha elections

The Lok Sabha elections of 2009 are suspect. SC should declare the
elections null and void, since use of EVMs is unconstitutionaL Caesar’s
wife should be above suspicion and Indian EVM are of suspected
integrity.

There are serious reports that ECI had access to results of
elections for over 100 constituencies at least 13 days before the
official declaration of results on May 19, 2009. Someone has to
investigate these reports to save democracy in India and make the ECI
accountable to the people, who have given to themselves a democratic,
republis of India, that is Bharat.

Even giving a paper printout from EVM is an unsatisfactory,
unreliable solution. Best option is to revert to paper ballot for which
India holds the patent. cf. the invention by Parakesarivarman about 1000
years ago as documented in Uttaremerur inscription which was also
discussed in Constituent Assembly debates by the late CM of Madras
Presidency, Shri Tanguturi Prakasam.

kalyanaraman

India’s Electronic Voting Machines Are Insecure, Study Finds

A group of researchers say Indian voting machines are vulnerable to fraud.

John Ribeiro, IDG News Service

Friday, April 30, 2010 06:50 AM PDT

Indian electronic voting machines (EVMs) are vulnerable to fraud,
researchers said this week, and advocated that a paper trail should be
maintained to verify the results of balloting.

The researchers have also released a video where they have
demonstrated attacks on an EVM after tinkering with its internal
electronics.

They got access to a working EVM, that was already used in an
election, through an anonymous source, Hari Prasad, one of the
researchers said on Friday. Prasad is managing director of Netindia, a
Hyderabad-based technology firm

One attack involved replacing the display board of the machine with
a look-alike component that can be instructed to steal a percentage of
the votes in favor of a chosen candidate.

The new display board adds a microcontroller that replaces the
election results with fraudulent ones as they are displayed, and a
Bluetooth radio module that allows the attacker to wirelessly signal
through his mobile phone which candidate should receive the stolen
votes, the researchers said.

Though the use of mobile phones is prohibited within 100 meters of
polling stations, this rule is infrequently enforced, the researchers
added.

In another attack on the test EVM, the researchers used a
pocket-sized device, attached to the memory chips, to change the votes
stored in the EVM between the election and the public vote counting,
which in India can be weeks later.

Storage rooms where EVMs are kept between elections are insecure,
and criminals can bribe an official and get access to the machines,
Prasad said.

Officials at the Election Commission of India were not immediately
available for comment. Prasad said the researchers have offered to
demonstrate the attacks to the Election Commission.

India uses EVMs of the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) variety,
which record votes only to internal memory and do not provide paper
records for later inspection or recount.

The researchers have also raised concerns that criminals and people
intending to rig elections can tamper with components. The EVMs are
designed so that the firmware is stored in masked read-only memory in
the microcontroller, and there is no provision for reading it out or
verifying its integrity.

If the software was modified before it was burned into the CPUs,
the changes will be very difficult to detect, the researchers said.

The chips are made in the U.S. and Japan, and nobody in India knows
for sure what software is in the machines, or whether they count votes
accurately, they added.

The researchers have recommended a voter-verified paper audit trail
(VVPAT), which combines an electronic record, stored in a DRE machine,
with a paper vote record that can be audited by hand. Existing EVMs do
not have upgradeable software, but a VVPAT can be added on the cable
between the control unit and the ballot unit, they said.

The researchers recommend precinct-count optical scan (PCOS) voting
as an alternative. In this model, voters fill out paper ballots that
are scanned by a voting machine at the polling station before being
placed in a ballot box. Attacking either of these systems would require
tampering with both the paper records and the electronic records,
according to the researchers.

http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,195328/printable.html

Security Analysis of India’s Electronic Voting Machines

Abstract: Elections in India are conducted almost exclusively using
electronic voting machines developed over the past two decades by a
pair of government-owned companies. These devices, known in India as
EVMs, have been praised for their simple design, ease of use, and
reliability, but recently they have also been criticized because of
widespread reports of election irregularities. Despite this criticism,
many details of the machines’ design have never been publicly disclosed,
and they have not been subjected to a rigorous, independent security
evaluation. In this paper, we present a security analysis of a real
Indian EVM obtained from an anonymous source. We describe the machine’s
design and operation in detail, and we evaluate its security, in light
of relevant election procedures. We conclude that in spite of the
machine’s simplicity and minimal trusted computing base, it is
vulnerable to serious attacks that can alter election results and
violate the secrecy of the ballot. We demonstrate two attacks,
implemented using custom hardware, which could be carried out by
dishonest election insiders or other criminals with only brief physical
access to the machines. This case study contains important lessons for
Indian elections and for electronic voting security more generally.

http://indiaevm.org/paper.html

Full technical paper at http://indiaevm.org/evm_tr2010.pdf

Excerpt:

Conclusions

Despite elaborate safeguards, India’s EVMs are vulnerable to
serious attacks. Dishonest insiders or other criminals with physical
access to the machines at any time before ballots are counted can insert
malicious hardware that can steal votes for the lifetime of the
machines. Attackers with physical access between voting and counting can
arbitrarily change vote totals and can learn which candidate each voter
selected. These problems are deep-rooted. The design of India’s EVMs
relies entirely on the physical security of the machines and the
integrity of election insiders. This seems to negate many of the
security benefits of using electronic voting in the first place. The
technology’s promise was that attacks on the ballot box and dishonesty
in the counting process would be more difficult. Yet we find that such
attacks remain possible, while being more difficult to detect.

It is highly doubtful that these problems could be remedied by
simple upgrades to the existing EVMs or election procedures. Merely
making the attacks we have demonstrated more difficult will not fix the
fundamental problem: India’s EVMs do not provide transparency, so voters
and election officials have no reason for confidence that the machines
are behaving honestly.

India should carefully reconsider how to achieve a secure and
transparent voting system that is suitable to its national values and
requirements. One option that has been adopted in other countries is to
use a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT), which combines an
electronic record stored in a DRE with a paper vote record that can be
audited by hand [43]. Existing EVMs do not have updatable software, but
it would be possible to add a VVPAT by interposing on the cable between
the control unit and the ballot unit. Another

option is precinct-count optical scan (PCOS) voting, where voters
fill out paper ballots that are scanned by a voting machine at the
polling station before being placed in a ballot box. Attacking either of
these systems would require tampering with both the paper records and
the electronic records, provided that routine audits are performed to
make sure these redundant sets of records agree [14]. A third option is
to return to simple paper ballots. Despite all of their known
weaknesses, simple paper ballots provide a high degree of transparency,
so fraud that does occur will be more likely to be detected.

Using EVMs in India may have seemed like a good idea when the
machines were introduced in the 1980s, but science’s understanding of
electronic voting security—and of attacks against it—has progressed
dramatically since then, and other technologically advanced countries
have adopted and then abandoned EVM-style voting. Now that we understand
what technology can and cannot do, any new solutions to the very real
problems election officials face must address the problems, not merely
hide them from sight.

EVMs are not
foolproof, says computer scientist

April 23rd, 2010

DC
Correspondent, Kumar Chellappan

Picking holes. A low-budget adversary armed
with a small instrument can read out votes cast, suppress the votes of one or
several voters, and even delete all the votes.

April 22: Electronic voting machines are not as tamper-proof as
the Election Commission of India would like us to believe, going by the
research of an Israeli comuter scientist who has found flaws in the most
advanced EVMs in the world.

“The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) EVMs
developed in Israel are rated as the most advanced machines in the world. But
we have proved that they are vulnerable to all kinds of tampering,” Avishai
Wool, of the School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, told DC on
Thursday.

“We can show how a low-budget adversary armed with
a small instrument can read out all votes already cast into the ballot box,
suppress the votes of one or several voters, rewrite votes at will and even
completely disqualify all votes in a single booth,” Prof. Wool says in the
paper. “These attacks are easy to mount and very difficult to detect.”

\
While Prof. Wool refused to comment on Indian
EVMs, several experts have noted that most electronic polling devices are
susceptible to tampering. Prof. Wools’ comments follow a letter qritten by
David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University, to Chief
Election Commissioner Navin Chawla on Indian EVMs lacking credibility.

Subramanian Swamy, former Union minister for law,
said Bharat Electronics Ltd and ECIL, who developed the Indian EVM , have
withdrawn their application for a patent for the device from the World
Intellectual Property Organisation.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/chennai/evms-are-not-foolproof-says-computer-scientist-540

Don’t stand on prestige, dump EVMs, save democracy

http://www.indianevm.com/videos.php?id=12 Computer Science Prof. of Stanford Univ., Dr. David Dill’s statement on Indian EVMs

http://www.indianevm.com/videos.php?id=14 (Videos, expert panel)

Election Commission concedes manipulation of EVMs

The Election Commission of India has made an amazing confession:
that the security and integrity of the entire election system will be
compromised if the EVM software and the hardware design becomes known.

This is what technologists, activists and political leaders have
been saying for many months now and the Commission had steadfastly
refuted such claims with a bizarre “our EVMs are fully tamper proof”
claim.

The above revelation was made by the Election Commission in a
letter dated March 30, 2010 to V.V. Rao, petitioner in the Supreme Court
on the EVMs. I quote below:

”…The Commission is concerned that commercial interests could use
the route of reverse engineering (a process by which the original
software and hardware configuration can be accessed) which may
compromise the security and sanctity of the entire election system.”

“…It is once again made clear that any demonstration of alleged
tamperability cannot include reverse-engineering as it compromises
security and sanctity of the entire […]

http://www.indianevm.com/blogs/?p=11

Don’t stand on prestige, dump EVMs: Naidu

J. Balaji, The Hindu

Published: April 13, 2010 00:53 IST | Updated: April 13, 2010 02:54 IST

He seeks national debate to clear “doubts in the minds of voters”

Telugu Desam Party president N. Chandrababu Naidu doubts that
electronic voting machines (EVMs) are non-tamperable, and has sought a
national debate to “clear all the doubts in the minds of voters.”

“I am convinced that there is scope for tampering with the EVMs,”
he said here on Monday after launching a website, www.indianevm.com,
hosted by election analyst G.V.L. Narasimha Rao and information
technologist Hariprasad.

Though he would not blame the Election Commission, with the
existing EVMs people were not sure whether the votes they cast went to
the candidates of their choice, Mr. Naidu said. When Germany, Singapore
and some European countries had gone back to the paper ballot, as the
EVMs could be tampered with and hacked, why should India alone use such
machines? “The EC should not stand on false prestige and gracefully go
in for a debate as the issue involved the fundamental rights of the
citizens.”

Mr. Naidu said he would take up the issue with other parties. There
would be nothing wrong in the country going back to the old system of
ballot votes if the machines were not safe and susceptible to tampering.

The former Chief Secretary of Delhi and IIT alumnus, Omesh Saigal,
asked why the chip used in EVMs was allowed to be written in the United
States. “A Trojan horse is sitting inside the machine.”

During August last, the EC said it gave opportunities to political
parties and individuals who claimed that EVMs could be manipulated to
prove their case. But “they either failed or chose not to demonstrate,”
it said.

“The EC would like to underline that it always had a firm
conviction and complete satisfaction that EVMs could not be tampered
with. Its faith in the machine has never wavered through the conduct of
elections in the last many years.”

None was able to actually demonstrate that the EVMs used by the
Commission could be tampered with. “What has been demonstrated or
claimed to have been demonstrated is on a privately assembled lookalike
of ECI-EVMs and not the actual EVM, produced by the Electronics
Corporation of India Limited,” the Commission said.

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article395509.ece

EVM debate rages on, lets get rid of it.

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article395509.ece

EVM debate rages. Jump in and cast your vote on the spot poll on this blog.

My personal take is that advanced countries with a longer history
of democracy like the US, UK, Australia, France, Netherlands, Norway,
Sweden and many other European countries don’t use a EVM but the good
old paper and ballot. Why should we move to a EVM.

1) The EVM does not provide a physical evidence of a vote. Whereby a
re count can be demanded. In earlier elections it has been seen that
after a re count a loosing candidate has won. A recount in EVM will just
mean adding up of all votes which will always add up to the earlier
number. How do we know this is correct.

2) This machine does not allow for any audit just because it has no
physical evidence. So tomorrow we shall all do corporate accounting on a
calculator (no need for bills, invoice, chalan etc) and show the
auditors the final figure on the screen of the calculator. This is what
EVM amounts to.

3) This goes against the basic Right to Information Act. Where is the evidence.

4) A 10 std Physics student can rig up such a device. I wonder why you need a micro processor even.

Please, please jump in and tell the govt that we don’t need the
EVM. Why are they scared of going back to the old system when there is a
section of the population that does not believe in the authenticity of
this device. Don’t believe in the impartiality of the EC, its fully
corrupted by congress ideologues.

भारत मैं सभ कुछ बिकता हैं हम कैसे मान ले की EC नहीं बीके, EVM यंत्र बनाने वाले नहीं बीके होवे हैं |

PS: UPA won a surprise victory in 2004 and left many stunned about
NDA’s loss. Many never expected this but it happened. Incidentally EVM
were first used in 2004.

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/04/evm-debate-rages-on-lets-get-rid-of-it.html

http://www.indianevm.com/ : EVMs are prone to tampering by both
external hackers and insiders. The danger of insider fixing of elections
is recognized the world over. Hence mere faith in companies and a host
of private players handling EVMs cannot be the basis for election
results. Elections can be trusted only if the results are verifiable and
auditable. Most developed countries have rejected or reformed
direct-recording EVMs. Election Commission of India is persisting with
the voting machines ignoring the serious concerns. Hence this effort to
mobilize public opinion.

In
the Philippines ballot papers are used. Counting is done through voting
machines by optically scanning the ballots into the machine. Still, a
manual audit is mandated. In computing, if things can go wrong, they
always will; this is Murphy’s law of computing. I hope you have read
Stanford Univ. Prof. Dill’s letter to ECI. http://www.scribd.com/doc/26954805/Dr-Dill-Letter-to-ECI

The nature of the electonic counting in the Philippines

kalyan 25 Feb. 2010

EVMs and cyberlaw of the Philippines: mandated manual audit

Article posted February 24, 2010 - 09:48 PM

Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Jose Melo on Wednesday
rejected the idea of conducting the random manual audit before the
declaration of the winners in the May polls, saying that it will only
cause unnecessary delays.

“(We don’t want) a simple audit (to) deter proclamation,” Melo said in a press briefing.

The poll body chief issued the statement after some groups asserted
that the random manual audit be done right after the election results
are transmitted and before the winners are proclaimed. (See: More voting
machines should be audited to ensure polls’ credibility)

Section 24 of Republic Act 9369 requires a random manual audit to
be conducted in one precinct per congressional district in each province
and city.

“Any difference between the automated and manual count will result
in the determination of root cause and initiate a manual count for those
precincts affected by the computer or procedural error,” it further
said.

But Melo said that conducting the audit before the proclamation
would cause a great delay because the auditors would still have to
“reconcile” the marks on a ballot that were recognized and not
recognized by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine.

“Magkakaroon ng variation yan, magdedebate, madedelay yan. Ang mark
na ganyan, bibilangin ng manual, pero hindi binilang ng makina, sino
paniniwalaan mo (There will definitely be a variation, triggering
debate, which would delay everything. Marks like those that are counted
manually, but not counted by the machine—which would you believe),” he
said.

He further said that it would be fine if only the proclamation of
the winners of the local elections would be delayed, but he said that
even the national positions would have to await proclamation.

“If we are going to delay the proclamation because of a simple
concern of one machine, bakit pa tayo nag-automate (why did we automate
at all)?” he said.

Earlier, the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections
(Namfrel) and the Consortium of Electoral Reforms (CER) also asked the
poll body to increase the number of voting machines that will undergo
auditing.

The groups said that at least 2.5 to 3 percent of the 82,200 PCOS
units or five poll machines per congressional district should be
manually audited to give enough assurance that the results of the
elections are credible. —Kimberly Jane T. Tan/JV, GMANews.TV

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/184694/comelec-chief-no-audit-before-poll-winners-are-proclaimed#

‘EVMs illegally being used for a decade’

Sanjay Sharma, TNN, Feb 22, 2010, 03.44am IST

CHANDIGARH: The electronic voting machines (EVMs) are being used in
violation of the Information Technology Act 2000, a research paper has
revealed.

Author of the research paper, advocate Ajay Jagga, told The Times
of India, on Sunday that as per IT Act, 2000, a verifiable audit trail
has to be provided in case of any electronic record, which is now
admissible as evidence as per Evidence Act but in case of electronic
voting, the voter does not get any receipt with regard to his voting.

The research paper recently attracted the attention of experts when
a conference on “EVMs: How trustworthy?” in Chennai passed a unanimous
resolution on February 13 asking Jagga to approach the Election
Commission of India (ECI) for bringing the electronic voting procedure
in tune with IT Act, 2000.

Jagga said he would soon approach ECI seeking formation of legal
committee to remove the illegality or will knock the doors of court.

The lawyer said, “Unless the voter gets a receipt like the one we
get in ATM or after the use of debit or credit cards, all electronic
transactions including a vote, are illegal.” What is the evidence that
the vote cast has really been recorded and that it has been recorded in
the manner the voter intended, he asked.

For the purpose and to protect the secrecy of ballot, all such
receipts, after the voter has checked his transaction, should be put in a
box which should remain with ECI to be produced as evidence in case of a
dispute, he said. The government amended the relevant laws in 1989 to
equate EVM with ballot and ballot box to facilitate transition from
ballot paper to EVM but the IT Act 2000 created a new complication that
has to be immediately resolved in the interest of fairness of things,
Jagga pointed out.

The lawyer also proved that the machine can be tampered with which
has been accepted by the government itself in its letter to withdraw
patent applications filed by Electronics Corporation of India and Bharat
Electronics Ltd, makers of the machine. The PSUs withdrew their patent
applications on the ground that the machine may not be tamper-proof, he
said, adding that America and Germany had to return to ballot paper
after their machines were found wanting.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/EVMs-illegally-being-used-for-a-decade/articleshow/5601297.cms

Linked on USA Today 23 Feb. 2010 http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Places,+Geography/Countries/India/05zF4kBeFJ47y/1

Hackers can ’steal’ ballots from electronic voting machines- 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop

Indo-Asian News Service

Washington, August 11, 2009

First Published: 16:48 IST(11/8/2009)

Last Updated: 17:06 IST(11/8/2009)

Computer scientists have demonstrated how criminals could hack an
electronic voting machine (EVM) and ’steal’ votes using a malicious
programming approach that had not been invented when the voting machine
was designed.

The team of scientists from the Universites of California, San
Diego, Michigan and Princeton employed “return-oriented programming” to
force an electronic voting machine to turn against itself.

“Voting machines must remain secure throughout their entire service
lifetime, and this study demonstrates how a relatively new programming
technique can be used to take control of a voting machine that was
designed to resist takeover, but that did not anticipate this new kind
of malicious programming,” said Hovav Shacham.

Shacham is professor of computer science at UC San Diego’s (UC-SD
)Jacobs School of Engineering and study co-author. His study
demonstrates that return-oriented programming can be used to execute
vote-stealing computations by taking control of an EVM designed to
prevent code injection.

The computer scientists had no access to the machine’s source code -
or any other proprietary information - when designing the demonstration
attack.

By using just the information that would be available to anyone who
bought or stole a voting machine, the researchers addressed a common
criticism made against voting security researchers: that they enjoy
unrealistic access to the systems they study.

“Based on our understanding of security and computer technology, it
looks like paper-based elections are the way to go. Probably the best
approach would involve fast optical scanners reading paper ballots.
These kinds of paper-based systems are amenable to statistical audits,
which is something the election security research community is shifting
to,” said Shacham.

“You can actually run a modern and efficient election on paper,” he said.

“If you are using electronic voting machines, you need to have a separate paper record at the very least,” he added.

There findings were presented at the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop.

http://www.erodov.com/forums/hackers-can-steal-ballots-electronic-voting-machines/23603.html

ECI
has to answer for the holes in the bucket identified in the book edited
by Subramanian Swamy and Kalyanaraman, Electronic Voting Machines –
Unconstitutional and Tamperable (2010)

http://www.flipkart.com/electronic-voting-machines-subramanian-swamy-book-8170947987

A private co. had a project to EVMs. Are look-alike EVMs available in the market?

Why
are EVMs being manufactured abroad (with control units burnt-in with
programs in foreign countries using Indian agents)? How can BEL/ECIL
claim IP rights for such foreign-makes? How much money has been spent
for this foreign outsourcing?

ECI
should scrap EVMs which are unconstitutional in any case and revert to
paper ballots.Save democracy which has flourished in India for over 1000
years since Uttaramerur Inscription of Parakesari Varman of Parantaka
Chola days. This was mentioned in Constituent Assembly debates by the
late T. Prakasham, CM of composite Madras Presidency.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/6-EVMs-recovered-from-scrap-dealers/articleshow/7049951.cms

Editorial: E-voting needs a paper trail

Dec. 6, 2010

Eight
years after the “hanging chads” fiasco in Florida, and two months
before one of the most important presidential elections in U.S. history,
Congress still refuses to listen to the nation’s top computer
scientists and require a secure, auditable paper trail for all federal
elections. This despite the latest revelation of a serious problem with
the electronic voting machines used in 34 states — including Virginia
and Maryland — in addition to their well-publicized vulnerability to
hacking.

In March, Ohio officials found a programming error that
dropped votes when the data on memory cards from multiple electronic
machines are electronically transferred to a central tabulator, as they
would be on Election Day. Dozens of lawyers are ready to file legal
challenges everywhere e-voting machines are used, even those declared
“qualified” by the National Association of State Election Directors.
Such litigation could tie up final election results far longer than it
would take to count paper ballots.

State and local government
officials have spent $1.5 billion on e-voting machines in recent years,
most of it federal funds under the 2002 Help America Vote Act. But
instead of ensuring a fast, secure way to count millions of votes, they
got a technological nightmare. Studies in Ohio and California confirmed
that e-voting machines currently in use can allow individuals to cast
multiple votes, load viruses that crash the system, produce fake tallies
and even change previously cast votes.

As recently as May, a
spokesman for Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election
Systems) blamed the Ohio glitch on state-installed anti-virus software,
but eventually admitted to a decade-old “logic error” programmed on all
19 of its touch screen and optical scan models. Computer experts say
every e-voting machine now in use has serious security vulnerabilities.
Even a piece of white tape on a scanner can block votes from being
recorded.

“We don’t know how to make secure paperless voting,”
says Stanford computer science professor David Dill, founder of the
Verified Voting Foundation and author of Attackdog, a computer model
that simulates more than 9,000 ways to attack e-voting systems. Dr. Dill
and others like him have warned again and again that an auditable paper
trail is the only way to guarantee a secure election, the very bedrock
of democracy. Congress has less than two months to pass emergency
legislation requiring state election officials to add verifiable paper
trails to all voting in the November election. There is no more time to
lose.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorial-e-voting-needs-paper-trail

Source: http://www.indianevm.com/

Download:

http://www.supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/wp%28c%29No.161of2004.pdf

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/supreme-court-asks-election-commission-to-implement-paper-trail-in-evms-429689

Supreme Court asks Election Commission to implement paper trail in EVMs

New Delhi:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Election
Commission to introduce in a phased manner the paper trail in Electronic
Voting Machines (EVMs) for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, saying “it is
an indispensable requirement of free, fair and transparent” polls which
will restore confidence of the voters.

The Supreme Court, which
directed the Centre to provide financial assistance to the poll panel
for introduction Vote Verifier Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system with the
EVMs, said it will “ensure the accuracy of the voting system” and also
help in “manual counting of votes in case of dispute.”

“The
‘paper trail’ is an indispensable requirement of free and fair
elections. The confidence of voters in the EVMs can be achieved only
with introduction of the paper trail,” it said.

“EVMs with VVPAT
system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With an intent to have
fullest transparency in the system and to restore the confidence of the
voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with VVPAT system because vote is
nothing but an act of expression which has immense importance in
democratic system,” the bench said.

“VVPAT is a system of
printing paper trail when the voter casts his vote, in addition to the
electronic record of the ballot, for the purpose of verification of his
choice of candidate and also for manual counting of votes in case of
dispute,” a bench comprising Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi
said.

The bench asked the Election Commission to introduce VVPAT
in EVMs in gradual stages or geographical-wise in the 2014 general
elections.

While asking the Centre to provide financial
assistance, the bench noted the submissions made by the Election
Commission in its affidavit that it has decided to increase the use of
VVPAT units in a phased manner and has already written to the Ministry
of Law and Justice to issue administrative and financial sanction for
procurement of 20,000 units of VVPAT (10,000 each from M/s BEL and M/s
ECIL) costing Rs. 38.01 crore.

The
bench said, “Taking notice of the pragmatic and reasonable approach of
the Election Commission and considering the fact that in general
elections all over India, the Election Commission has to handle one
million (ten lakh) polling booths, we permit EC to introduce the same in
gradual stages or geographical-wise in the ensuing general elections.”

“The
area, state or actual booth(s) are to be decided by the EC and the EC
is free to implement the same in a phased manner,” it said.

The bench passed the order on two similar petitions; one of those petitions was filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy.

Claiming
that EVMs were open to hacking, Mr Swamy had sought directions to the
poll watchdog to introduce paper trail to easily and cheaply meet the
requirements of proof that the EVM has rightly registered the vote cast
by a voter.

Mr Swamy had moved the Supreme Court against January
2012 order of the Delhi High Court disallowing his prayer to direct
Election Commission to incorporate the system of paper trail in EVMs.

The
bench noted that though initially the poll panel was little reluctant
in introducing paper trail by use of VVPAT, pursuant to its directions,
the Election Commission contacted several expert bodies and technical
advisers and held meetings with national and state level political
parties and carried out demonstrations.

It noted that after a
thorough examination, VVPAT was successfully used in 21 polling stations
of 51-Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency of Nagaland.

“The
information furnished by the ECI, through the affidavit dated October 1,
2013 clearly shows that VVPAT system is a successful one,” the bench
said.

http://sarvajan.ambedkar.org/?m=20140518

LOK SABHA ELECTIONS FIXING

Outcome of the May 2014 General Elections in India.
Hackers made hay in May!

From
J.Chandrasekharan
Scheduled caste
668 5A Main Road,
8th Cross, HAL 3rd Stage,
Bangalore-560075
Karnataka State
India
Mob:9449260443
Email:chandrasekhara.tipitaka@gmail.com
http://sarvajan.ambedkar.org

To ,
Honourable Chief Justice
Supreme Court of India
Tilak Marg,
New Delhi-110 001 (India)
PABX NOS.23388922-24,23388942-44,
FAX NOS.23381508,23381584,23384336/23384533/23384447
supremecourt@nic.in

Sub: Grievance of a Scheduled Caste

It has been conclusively proved to the satisfaction of the Hon’ble
Supreme Court that Indian EVMs ARE tamperable.The process of elections
is the most sacrosanct duty in a Republic which ECI should carry out
with utmost diligence. Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion. Free and
fair polls should not only be ensured but APPEAR to be ensured to the
satisfaction of the voters.

India first tested EVMs in a by-election in 1982, but the machines
were first deployed on a large scale of over 1 million in a general
election in 2004.
In 2010, security researcher Hari Prasad and his
associates released a video that they said demonstrated vulnerabilities
in the EVMs, after hacking an EVM that had already been used in an
election.

Prasad and his team replaced the display board of the
machine with a look-alike component that could be instructed through a
Bluetooth connection on a mobile phone to steal a percentage of the
votes in favor of a chosen candidate. The researchers also used a
pocket-size device that could be attached to the memory of the EVM to
change the votes stored in the machine during the period between the
election and the public counting session.

The Supreme Court has in
its ruling this week asked the government to provide the financial
assistance required by the Election Commission to roll out the EVMs. It
has not set out a schedule for the full deployment of EVMs with the
paper trail.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-05-20/news/27589262_1_voting-machines-display-board-hack

American scientists ‘hack’ into Indian voting machines

LONDON:
India’s voting machines - considered to be among the world’s most
tamperproof - can be hacked, American scientists claim.
Researchers
at the University of Michigan connected a home-made device to a voting
machine and successfully changed results by sending text messages from a
mobile.
“We made an imitation display board that looks almost
exactly like the real display in the machines. But underneath some of
the components of the board, we hide a microprocessor and a Bluetooth
radio,” the BBC quoted Prof J Alex Halderman, who led the project, as
saying.

He added: “Our lookalike display board intercepts the vote
totals that the machine is trying to display and replaces them with
dishonest totals - basically whatever the bad guy wants to show up at
the end of the election.”

Moreover, they added a small
microprocessor, which they say can change the votes stored in the
machine between the election and the vote-counting session.
No one’s
right mind would yet allow the use of absolutely antiquated, completely
out-dated, easily hack-able and highly tamper-able “high school
technology” based, obsolete EVMs (electronic voting machines) in
national elections, but it was used now — in 2014

More than 80
democracies in the world have simply done away with them, dumping them
in the trash, or simply declared the usage of this simplistic voting
system susceptible to fraud, and hence declaring the same as
illegal — as the Supreme Courts of Germany and Holland indeed have done.
Even Japan, from where EVMs originated, has long abandoned its rogue
babies, and is using paper ballot system since then. All the advanced
democracies in the West, except the most dull-headed ones, have reverted
to a voter verifiable system or the ballot paper. In Canada, even at
the ,most basic school level, ballot paper voting is in use.

Last
year, the Supreme Court of India, having been convinced of an
undeniable, edible possibility of EVMs getting tampered with and that
easily hacked — even from afar — had ordered the imbecilic Election
Commission and the indolent Government of India to provide about 1600
crore (1600, 0000000) rupees — convert this into your respective
currency! — for manufacturing these VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit
Trail) voting machines; which show a verifiable paper receipt to the
voter.

This is the Fundamental Right of a citizen of India, as per
the laws laid down by the Constitution. However, recent newspaper
reports tell us that only 20, 000 such voting machines have been
provided for the entire country in this, 2014 election! India has 29
states now — with Telagana being the latest. In most of them, depending
upon their size etc., either about 400 VVPAT machines are being
deployed, or some such similar ridiculous number — more or less — has
been made available in the length and breadth of the country. It’s an
asinine, bland, cruel, demeaning joke we 1.25 billion voters have been
“blessed” with by the powers that be.

All “patriotic” hackers of our motherland made hay in May!

As
to how EVMs can be hacked into, tampered with, and results favorably
manipulated via software interference and other means — from near and
from far, far away — this can easily be found by anybody by just going
to Google etc. and filling “EVM HACKING, TAMPERING” or something to this
effect in the Search. And lo, behold! a plethora of information will
just overwhelm your overly chilled-out, lesser employed, un-billed
brains.

However, the only solace for us naive fools is that quite a
few unscrupulous politicians and every other most “honorable” political
party worthy of its “salt”, would surely be playing this comic-tragic
game of hacking into and hijacking the votes of a billion people! Thus,
one who outsmarts the other such fine folks, armed with their hacking
forks in this merry-go-around, will win.
The rest — this or that
“tsunami” or wave in favor of one or the other, poll forecasts and the
“newbie”, the over enthused, seeming game changers in the making — well,
they may well fall flat on their dumb faces, if not on their smart
asses.

That the Supreme Court of India too, while passing the order
of putting new VVAT voting machines in use in a “phased manner”, has
unwittingly shirked its duty. In fact, it committed a grave error of
judgment. Perhaps dealt a fatal blow to Indian democracy. It should have
ordered, as a caution, that till the time this newer set of about
1300ooo voting machines is manufactured in full and so deployed
throughout India, ballot paper system would be brought in. No such
precautionary measure was decreed by the apex court.
Well, crib all
you want. But don’t cry, my dear countrymen. After all, the same model
of EVMs is yet very much in use in South Africa, Bangla Desh, Bhutan,
Nepal, Nigeria, Venezuela etc. These poor folks of the said “non-techy”
countries — millions of them — too cannot figure out as to what the hell
had, yet is happening, in their dear short-circuited “developed”
democracies. Nor will you.

Don’t worry, be happy! You are not alone “out there”.

Oh,
by the way, the somewhat notorious lawyer who had brought in this
case — of the present lot of EVMs being tamper-able and hack-able — and,
who, had successfully fought it so, forcing the Supreme Court to order
the installation of a fail-safe voting mechanism (of Voter Verifiable
Paper Audit machines replacing the susceptible earlier Electronic Voting
Machines) to ensure a free and fair electoral process in India — well,
this oh-so-very honorable fellow too has fallen silent, like a demure
maiden. This most vociferous gentleman had openly declared on social
websites, especially Twitter, that in case VVPAT machines do not get
installed in time for 2014 elections, then, there would be a
“constitutional crisis” — putting it out there like an Indian
“pehalwan”, a la WWW wrestler, that he would challenge the same in the
apex court. He had most emphatically underlined he would ensure that
either the new fail-safe voting machines or the old time-tested paper
ballot system will be put in use during this general election in India.
However, recently, when asked specifically on Twitter about this
matter — as to what this lovely man is doing or is going to do about
this impending doomsday electoral scenario — there was a deafening
silence from his side. May be owing to the fact that since the Supreme
Court judgement late last year, this self-righteous rightist has joined
the ultra-rightist political bandwagon.

The latter has been projected
by pollsters to overwhelmingly sweep these elections — as a direct
result of the doings of the monstrous public relations firm hired from
the land of the let-it-be, oops! free. This US firm is the same that was
used fruitfully by President Bush and Hillary Clinton for their
respective political campaigns. It has — let there be no doubt about
it — successfully projected its client as the potential winner and the
next numero uno in Indian politics.

What the majority of the Indians
have missed in fine print is that the outgoing Chief Minister of the
state of Rajasthan, in the last year elections, had officially filed a
complaint with the election commission that the EVMs used in his state
were pre-programmed and tampered with — and that the same had come from
the state of which this presently hyped-up future Prime Minister of
India, is the current Chief Minister. Now, the lawyer who had gone to
the dogs to awaken India and the rest of the world about the mischief
and malfeasance possible with the old model of EVMs — and had in fact
written a book on this subject — is in a wink-wink deep-throat “smadhi”.
A silence that speaks truths we dumb billion idiots on this part of
slippery earth cannot fathom. Perhaps it’s a precursor of the things to
come.

Let us hope the jolly good hackers of this-that party screw-up
each other’s devilish, outright evil plans. In a dog eat dog political
crap pit we hapless billion creatures have to walk through every
election, maybe this time the ape sitting by the side — the wide-eyed
hopeful citizen of India — at least gets a tiny part of the apple pie
this messy hacking cat fight will leave behind, on the side lanes.
Perhaps these little crumbs will be enough for us to stay afloat. though
not gloat.

In a nutshell, simply put, whosoever “out-hacks” the other, will win.

Then
again, we are an ancient civilization of more than 33, 0000000 gods and
goddesses — some civilized, others not so civil. Let’s hope one of
these fancied deities has a soft corner for us dumbos. Otherwise, we are
going to get screwed. A billion times over.

Therefore, I made doubly
sure I did not vote. I sat on my ass on voting day — not that I don’t
do so everyday. This voting day, I absolutely did. Not only figuratively
and metaphorically, but literally. I may have many buts in life, but at
least today I have a little sore, yet not so sorry a butt.

We are a fool’s paradise.

Long live the banana republic of India!

LOK SABHA ELECTIONS FIXING

‘FIXING’ Indian Lok Sabha elections

Computer
Business Review appeared more certain with the “How Google search
results influenced elections” headline for its version of the story, the
Guardian reported.”……Google changed its course, it undermined people’s
trust in its results and company.”

A press release put out on 13 May
by the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, an
independent research organisation based in California created a furore
around the topic when it released a report headlined “Could Google have
fixed the Lok Sabha elections? A landmark new study in India shows it’s
possible,” the report added. (ANI)

http://mattersindia.com/google-search-threatens-democracy-study/

Google Search threatens democracy: Study

Published: 9:31 am, May 15, 2014 Story By: mattersindia.com

A threat to democracy

Washington: As India eagerly awaits the outcome of the just
concluded general elections, a study by an American institute says the
real threat to democracy comes from an unexpected corner: Google Search.

Google
search results can pose a real threat to democracy as it could swing a
close election by influencing the voting preferences of undecided
voters, wars the American Institute for Behavioral Research and
Technology in California that studied more than 2,000 undecided voters
throughout India.

The study conducted in recent weeks suggests that
Google has the power to fix elections “without anyone being the wiser.”
This is possible because of the power that search rankings have on
people’s opinions, the researchers said.

Studies show that the higher
the rank, the more people trust the result, which is why companies are
spending billions now to push their products higher.
“So could
highly-ranked search results that make Arvind Kejriwal look better than
Narendra Modi drive votes to Kejriwal?” the researchers set out to
determine, The Times of India reported.
In research conducted last
year in the US, researchers found that search rankings biased in favor
of a candidate could push the preferences of undecided voters towards
that candidate by 15 percent or more.

The researchers have shown that
votes can easily be pushed toward one candidate or another by about 12
percent — double that amount in some demographic groups — enough to
determine the outcomes of many close races.

“This is a very serious
matter — a real threat to democracy,” said Dr Robert Epstein, lead
researcher in the study and Senior Research Psychologist at the American
institute.
“If two candidates were both trying to push their
rankings higher, they would be competing, and that’s fine. But if
Google, which has a monopoly on search in India, were to favor one
candidate, it could easily put that candidate in office by manipulating
search rankings, and no one could counter what they were doing.

“Even
if without human intervention the company’s search algorithm favored
one candidate, thousands of votes would still be driven to that
candidate,” said Epstein.
In the new study, participants were
randomly assigned to groups in which search rankings favored either
Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi, or Modi.

Real search rankings and web pages
were used, and people were asked to research all the candidates just as
they would on Google. The only difference between the groups was the
order in which the search results were displayed.

The new study
suggests that biased search rankings can be used to fix the outcome of
races in India in which the winner is projected to win by a margin up to
2.9 percent.
This can be done just by influencing undecided voters
who use the internet — a small but important group of voters that is
sure to grow in coming years, researchers said.
Worldwide, the researchers said, upwards of 25 percent of national elections are won by margins under 3 percent.

The study also shows that certain demographic groups are especially vulnerable.

The
voting preferences of 19 percent of women over 35 were shifted in the
study, as were the voting preferences of 18 percent of voters who were
unemployed.
“Of particular concern is the fact that 99 percent of the
people in our study seemed to be unaware that the search rankings they
saw were biased. That means Google has the power to manipulate elections
without anyone suspecting they’re doing so,” said Epstein.

“To
prevent undue influence, election-related search rankings need to be
regulated and monitored, as well as subjected to equal-time rules,”
Epstein said.

I, Nostradamus! — Predicting the Outcome of the May 2014 General Elections in Indool’s Paradise. Hacke hay in May!

Fakeer Ishavardas in Humour Online and beyond

Over a billion cuckoos cackle, cry and crap in India.

It

is a nation where intelligence rules in closed quarters, idiocy in the
open. Just like the open toilets under the benign gaze of Mother
Nature — there are more cell phones than toilets in India, a survey
reports. Oh! the average Indian retorts — and, then, goes on to do
“business” as usual, sitting on the haunches, as sorry-assed as
before — or sorts.

We are an indifferent,
intelligently inclined idiocy — oops! democracy, We make gods out of
mud, then, prostrating before them, we remain, as before, a dud. And,
some times, in the name of our fancied little god and his glory, my
motherland’s favorite sons also kill each other, with the deep ingrained
vigor of all our bestial ancestry, and like a whiff of wind are
gone — dead.

Lest it becomes confusing, let’s say itas it is — we Indians, like every other human being, are truly one
really, really queer kin of apes. In some fields, ahead of others and
beyond compare; in other areas, we are as silly and supercilious as a
bull-hounded mare. In a nutshell, Indians, at least in the loftier
mystical and evolved spiritual circles “get” some things well — like
higher metaphysics — while failing miserably, simplistically, in simple,
elementary physics.

After all,
who in one’s right mind would yet allow the use of absolutely
antiquated, completely out-dated, easily hack-able and highly
tamper-able “high school technology” based, obsolete EVMs (electronic
voting machines) in national elections, even now — in 2014?

More than 80 democracies in the world have simply done away with them,
dumping them in the trash, or simply declared the usage of this
simplistic voting system susceptible to fraud, and hence declaring the
same as illegal — as the Supreme Courts of Germany and Holland indeed
have done. Even Japan, from where EVMs originated, has long abandoned
its rogue babies, and is using paper ballot system since then. All the
advanced democracies in the West, except the most dull-headed ones, have
reverted to a voter verifiable system or the ballot paper. In Canada,
even at the ,most basic school level, ballot paper voting is in use.

Lastyear, the Supreme Court of India, having been convinced of an
undeniable, edible possibility of EVMs getting tampered with and that
easily hacked — even from afar — had ordered the imbecilic Election
Commission and the indolent Government of India to provide about 1600
crore (1600, 0000000) rupees — convert this into your respective
currency! — for manufacturing these VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit
Trail) voting machines; which show a verifiable paper receipt to the
voter.

This is the Fundamental Right of a citizen of India, as per the laws laid down by the Constitution. However, recent
newspaper reports tell us that only 20, 000 such voting machines have
been provided for the entire country in this, 2014 election! India has
29 states now — with Telagana being the latest. In most of them,
depending upon their size etc., either about 400 VVPAT machines are
being deployed, or some such similar ridiculous number — more or
less — has been made available in the length and breadth of the country.
It’s an asinine, bland, cruel, demeaning joke we 1.25 billion jokers
have been “blessed” with by the powers that be.

All “patriotic” hackers of our motherland are going to make hay in May!

As to how EVMs can be hacked into, tampered with, and results favorably
manipulated via software interference and other means — from near and
from far, far away — this can easily be found by anybody by just going
to Google etc. and filling “EVM HACKING, TAMPERING” or
something to this effect in the Search. And lo, behold! a plethora of
information will just overwhelm your overly chilled-out, lesser
employed, un-billed brains.

However,
the only solace for us naive fools is that quite a few unscrupulous
politicians and every other most “honorable” political party worthy of
its “salt”, would surely be playing this comic-tragic game of hacking
into and hijacking the votes of a billion people! Thus, one who
outsmarts the other such fine folks, armed with their hacking forks in
this merry-go-around, will win.

The rest — this or that “tsunami” or wave in favor of one or the other, poll
forecasts and the “newbie”, the over enthused, seeming game changers in
the making — well, they may well fall flat on their dumb faces, if not
on their smart asses.

That the Supreme Court of Indiatoo, while passing the order of putting new VVAT voting machines in use
in a “phased manner”, has unwittingly shirked its duty. In fact, it
committed a grave error of judgment. Perhaps dealt a fatal blow to
Indian democracy. It should have ordered, as a caution, that till the
time this newer set of about 1300ooo voting machines is manufactured in
full and so deployed throughout India, ballot paper system would be
brought in. No such precautionary measure was decreed by the apex court.

Well, crib all you want. But don’t cry, my dear countrymen. After all, the
same model of EVMs is yet very much in use in South Africa, Bangla Desh,
Bhutan, Nepal, Nigeria, Venezuela etc. These poor folks of the said
“non-techy” countries — millions of them — too cannot figure out as to
what the hell had, yet is happening, in their dear short-circuited
“developed” democracies. Nor will you.

Don’t worry, be happy! You are not alone “out there”.

Oh,by the way, the somewhat notorious lawyer who had brought in this
case — of the present lot of EVMs being tamper-able and hack-able — and,
who, had successfully fought it so, forcing the Supreme Court to order
the installation of a fail-safe voting mechanism (of Voter Verifiable
Paper Audit machines replacing the susceptible earlier Electronic Voting
Machines) to ensure a free and fair electoral process in India — well,
this oh-so-very honorable fellow too has fallen silent, like a demure
maiden. This most vociferous gentleman had openly declared on social
websites, especially Twitter, that in case VVPAT machines do not get
installed in time for 2014 elections, then, there would be a
“constitutional crisis” — putting it out there like an Indian
“pehalwan”, a la WWW wrestler, that he would challenge the same in the
apex court. He had most emphatically underlined he would ensure that
either the new fail-safe voting machines or the old time-tested paper
ballot system will be put in use during this general election in India.
However, recently, when asked specifically on Twitter about this
matter — as to what this lovely man is doing or is going to do about
this impending doomsday electoral scenario — there was a deafening
silence from his side. May be owing to the fact that since the Supreme
Court judgement late last year, this self-righteous rightist has joined
the ultra-rightist political bandwagon.

The latter has been projected by pollsters to overwhelmingly sweep these
elections — as a direct result of the doings of the monstrous public
relations firm hired from the land of the let-it-be, oops! free. This
US firm is the same that was used fruitfully by President Bush and
Hillary Clinton for their respective political campaigns. It has — let
there be no doubt about it — successfully projected its client as the
potential winner and the next numero uno in Indian politics.

What the majority of the Indians have missed in fine print is that the
outgoing Chief Minister of the state of Rajasthan, in the last year
elections, had officially filed a complaint with the election commission
that the EVMs used in his state were pre-programmed and tampered
with — and that the same had come from the state of which this presently
hyped-up future Prime Minister of India, is the current Chief Minister.
Now, the lawyer who had gone to the dogs to awaken India and the rest
of the world about the mischief and malfeasance possible with the old
model of EVMs — and had in fact written a book on this subject — is in a
wink-wink deep-throat “smadhi”. A silence that speaks truths we dumb
billion idiots on this part of slippery earth cannot fathom. Perhaps
it’s a precursor of the things to come.

Let us hope the jolly good hackers of this-that party screw-up each other’s
devilish, outright evil plans. In a dog eat dog political crap pit we
hapless billion creatures have to walk through every election, maybe
this time the ape sitting by the side — the wide-eyed hopeful citizen of
India — at least gets a tiny part of the apple pie this messy hacking
cat fight will leave behind, on the side lanes. Perhaps these little
crumbs will be enough for us to stay afloat. though not gloat.

In a nutshell, simply put, whosoever “out-hacks” the other, will win.

Then again, we are an ancient civilization of more than 33, 0000000 gods and
goddesses — some civilized, others not so civil. Let’s hope one of
these fancied deities has a soft corner for us dumbos. Otherwise, we are
going to get screwed. A billion times over.

Therefore, I made doubly sure I did not vote. I sat on my ass on voting day — not
that I don’t do so everyday. This voting day, I absolutely did. Not only
figuratively and metaphorically, but literally. I may have many buts in
life, but at least today I have a little sore, yet not so sorry a butt.

We are a fool’s paradise.

Long live the banana republic of India!

what is E-Filing? Whether this E-Filing process is a user friendly programme?

E-Filing is Electronic filing of matters in the
Registry of Supreme Court of India. Yes, E-Filing is a user friendly
programme prepared by National Informatics Centre.

The Registrar,
Supreme Court of India,
Tilak Marg,
New Delhi-110 001 (India)
PABX NOS.23388922-24,23388942-44,
FAX NOS.23381508,23381584,23384336/23384533/23384447
supremecourt@nic.in

what is the benefit of E-Filing facility ?

Through E-Filing facilitates any Advocate-on-record
(in the Supreme Court of India) or Petitioner-in-person can file his/her
matter through internet facility, sitting anywhere in the world. It
does not require any person to come at the filing Counter in the
Registry of the Supreme Court of India for just filing his/her matter.

Prequalification - you must have prepared the Petition offline. The steps required for E-Filing process are:

1. Login: For login you need User ID and Password. (Advocate on record
are provided ID and password from the Registry. Petitioner-in-person has
to create his ID and Password by submitting his/her Identity proof.

http://citizencentre.virtualpune.com/html/supreme-court.shtml

E-FILING by Supreme Court of India

The Supreme Court of India has introduced E-FILING. Now you can file a case in the Supreme Court through the internet and also avail of the following services:

what are the procedures/ steps required to be taken for E-Filing process ?

Filing of cases by any Advocate-on-Record or Petitioner-in-person
through internet from anywhere in the world

Electronic payment of court fee and other charges by visa/master card/debit card

Electronic registration of defect-free cases

Electronic communication and removal of filing defects

Electronic filing of reply/rejoinder/applications/documents

Service of notices and communications through e-mail

For further details, access website or contact Registrar

Tele : 91-11-23388556
E-mail : shahsg@msn.com
Website : www.supremecourtofindia.nic.in

https://in.news.yahoo.com/google-denies-fixing-indian-lok-sabha-elections-105557389.html

‘FIXING’ Indian Lok Sabha elections

Computer Business Review appeared more certain with the “How Google
search results are influencing elections” headline for its version of
the story, the Guardian reported.”…. if Google changed its course, it
would undermine people’s trust in its results and company.”

A press release put out on 13 May by the American Institute for
Behavioral Research and Technology, an independent research organisation
based in California created a furore around the topic when it released a
report headlined “Could Google have fixed the Lok Sabha elections? A
landmark new study in India shows it’s possible,” the report added.
(ANI)

Let us appeal to the Computer Business Review and the American Institute for
Behavioral Research and Technology, an independent research organisation
based in California to review and research on the following technology:

Napolean had once said that “I can face two
battalions but not two scribes”. Scribes are aware that the Supreme
Court had directed that all the EVMs must be replaced with TAMPER PROOF
machines. But the CEC had not bothered tto replace all the EVMs and went
for Lok Sabha elections. Napoleans suggested scribes have to do some
investigative journalism and expose the CEC to save this MURDER of
DEMOCRACY and STOP

‘fixing’ Indian Lok Sabha elections

SUB:An Appeal to do research on all Electronic
Voting Machines those were to be replaced with Tamper proof machines as
per the directives of Supreme court of India

Appeal to the Computer Business Review and the American Institute for
Behavioral Research and Technology, an independent research organisation
based in California to review and research on the following technology:

Napolean had once said that “I can face two battalions but not two scribes”.
Scribes are aware that the Supreme Court had directed that all the EVMs
must be replaced with TAMPER PROOF machines. But the CEC had not
bothered tto replace all the EVMs and went for Lok Sabha elections.
Napoleans suggested scribes have to do some investigative journalism and
expose the CEC to save this MURDER of DEMOCRACY and STOP
‘fixing’ Indian Lok Sabha elections.

With reference to

https://in.news.yahoo.com/google-denies-fixing-indian-lok-sabha-elections-105557389.html
‘FIXING’ Indian Lok Sabha elections

Computer Business Review appeared more certain with the “How Google search
results are influencing elections” headline for its version of the
story, the Guardian reported.”…. if Google changed its course, it
would undermine people’s trust in its results and company.”

A press release put out on 13 May by the American Institute for Behavioral
Research and Technology, an independent research organisation based in
California created a furore around the topic when it released a report
headlined “Could Google have fixed the Lok Sabha elections? A landmark
new study in India shows it’s possible,” the report added. (ANI)

http://aibrt.org/index.php/about

The American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology
is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization based in Vista,
California, USA, which promotes and conducts research that has the
potential to increase the well-being and functioning of people
worldwide. It currently has ongoing research projects in eleven
different topic areas.

Mission

The mission of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and
Technology is to conduct, promote, and advance research on behavior that
has the potential to improve the human condition, to develop possible
applications of such research, and to educate the public about both this
research and its applications. It pursues this mission by conducting
relevant research, presenting such research at scientific conferences,
publishing reports of such research in both scientific and popular
publications, developing possible applications of such research and
presenting and publishing reports of such applications, and keeping the
public informed about relevant research and applications through
classes, workshops, Internet activities, videos, and a variety of other
publishing and media activities.

http://mattersindia.com/google-search-threatens-democracy-study/

Google Search threatens democracy: Study

Published: 9:31 am, May 15, 2014 Story By: mattersindia.com

A threat to democracy

Washington: As India eagerly awaits the outcome of the just concluded
general elections, a study by an American institute says the real
threat to democracy comes from an unexpected corner: Google Search.

Google search results can pose a real threat to democracy as it could
swing a close election by influencing the voting preferences of
undecided voters, wars the American Institute for Behavioral Research
and Technology in California that studied more than 2,000 undecided
voters throughout India.

The study conducted in recent weeks suggests that Google has the
power to fix elections “without anyone being the wiser.” This is
possible because of the power that search rankings have on people’s
opinions, the researchers said.

Studies show that the higher the rank, the more people trust the
result, which is why companies are spending billions now to push their
products higher.

“So could highly-ranked search results that make Arvind Kejriwal look
better than Narendra Modi drive votes to Kejriwal?” the researchers set
out to determine, The Times of India reported.

In research conducted last year in the US, researchers found that
search rankings biased in favor of a candidate could push the
preferences of undecided voters towards that candidate by 15 percent or
more.

The researchers have shown that votes can easily be pushed toward one
candidate or another by about 12 percent — double that amount in some
demographic groups — enough to determine the outcomes of many close
races.

“This is a very serious matter — a real threat to democracy,” said Dr
Robert Epstein, lead researcher in the study and Senior Research
Psychologist at the American institute.

“If two candidates were both trying to push their rankings higher,
they would be competing, and that’s fine. But if Google, which has a
monopoly on search in India, were to favor one candidate, it could
easily put that candidate in office by manipulating search rankings, and
no one could counter what they were doing.

“Even if without human intervention the company’s search algorithm
favored one candidate, thousands of votes would still be driven to that
candidate,” said Epstein.

In the new study, participants were randomly assigned to groups in
which search rankings favored either Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi, or Modi.

Real search rankings and web pages were used, and people were asked
to research all the candidates just as they would on Google. The only
difference between the groups was the order in which the search results
were displayed.

The new study suggests that biased search rankings can be used to fix
the outcome of races in India in which the winner is projected to win
by a margin up to 2.9 percent.

This can be done just by influencing undecided voters who use the
internet — a small but important group of voters that is sure to grow in
coming years, researchers said.

Worldwide, the researchers said, upwards of 25 percent of national elections are won by margins under 3 percent.

The study also shows that certain demographic groups are especially vulnerable.

The voting preferences of 19 percent of women over 35 were shifted in
the study, as were the voting preferences of 18 percent of voters who
were unemployed.

“Of particular concern is the fact that 99 percent of the people in
our study seemed to be unaware that the search rankings they saw were
biased. That means Google has the power to manipulate elections without
anyone suspecting they’re doing so,” said Epstein.

“To prevent undue influence, election-related search rankings need to
be regulated and monitored, as well as subjected to equal-time rules,”
Epstein said.

https://www.facebook.com/cbronline

Jagatheesan Chandrasekharan shared a link.

about a minute ago

https://in.news.yahoo.com/google-denies-fixing-indian-lok-sabha-elections-105557389.html
‘FIXING’ Indian Lok Sabha elections

Computer Business Review appeared more certain with the “How Google search results are influencing elections” headline
for its version of the story, the Guardian reported.”…. if Google
changed its course, it would undermine people’s trust in its results and
company.”

A press release put out on 13 May by the American
Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, an independent
research organisation based in California created a furore around the
topic when it released a report headlined “Could Google have fixed the
Lok Sabha elections? A landmark new study in India shows it’s possible,”
the report added. (ANI)

Let us appeal to the Computer Business
Review and the American Institute for Behavioral Research and
Technology, an independent research organisation based in California to
review and research on the following technology:

Napolean
had once said that “I can face two battalions but not two scribes”.
Scribes are aware that the Supreme Court had directed that all the EVMs
must be replaced with TAMPER PROOF machines. But the CEC had not
bothered tto replace all the EVMs and went for Lok Sabha elections.
Napoleans suggested scribes have to do some investigative journalism and
expose the CEC to save this MURDER of DEMOCRACY and STOP
‘fixing’ Indian Lok Sabha elections.

CONCLUSION

Ex
CJI SADHASIVAM, shirked its duty & committed a grave error of
judgment by allowing in phased manner Fraud Tamperable EVMs on the
request of CEC SAMPATH because of Rs.1600 crore cost to replace
them and dealt a fatal blow to the Country’s democracy.

Ex CJI
did not order for ballot paper system to be brought in. No such
precautionary measure was decreed by the apex court. Ex CJI did not
order that till the time this newer set of about 13,00,000 voting machines
is manufactured in full & deployed totally. All the people in 80
democracies in the world who simply done away with fradulent EVMs should
not recognise Modi & his Government.

Attempt
to E-File through http://sc-efiling.nic.in/sc-efiling/registration.jsp
while trying to attach Driving Licence through
http://sc-efiling.nic.in/sc-efiling/identity_file.jsp - got the result
java.lang. StringIndexOutOfBounds Exception: String index out of range: -
could not proceed further.

Brought this to the notice of
supremecour@nic.in without any response. through
supremecour[at]nic[dot]in with a confusion whether it is
supremecour[at]nic[dot]in supremecour@nic.in or
supremecourt[at]nic[dot]in
supremecourt@nic.inhttp://goidirectory.nic.in/feedback.php - all
maintained by wim@nic.in also does not work. It often says “invalid
characters found, Please Re-Enter”

A correct procedure for
E-Filing must be known to all procedures/ steps required to be taken for
E-Filing process ?
http://www.indg.in/e-governance/vle-corner/ict-in-legal-services/egov-legal-efilling
Supreme Court initiatives for citizens via e -Filing - e-Filing in
Supreme Court of IndiaSupreme Court of India is also on the e-governance
track and providing its services at doorstep of the Indian citizens.

In
this regard, on October 2, 2006 Supreme Court started e-filing
facility. It is a simple way of filing any case via internet from his
house. e-filing via internet does not require the help of advocate.

This
service can be utilized by any common man as well as registered
advocate. Anybody desiring to avail this service may log on to
www.sc-efiling.nic.in/sc-efiling/index.html and sign up as a user.

For
sign up procedure please follow up these steps: First time users of
Supreme Court’s E-filing have to register him/her through the ‘Sign Up’
option.Through ‘e-FILING’ only Advocate-on Record’ and
petitioners-in-person can file cases in the Supreme Court of India
Advocate option is to be chosen if you are an ‘Advocate-on-Record’,
otherwise choose ‘In-person’ option in case you are
petitioner-in-person.

For registering first time personal
details such as Address, contact details, E-mail Id etc., which are
mandatory, need to be entered.For Advocate-on-record, his/her code
(Advocate-on-record code) will be ‘Login-ID’, while ‘In-person’will
create his/her Login-Id through ‘Sign Up’ option. Password needs to be
entered thereafter. Login Id and password will be created once the
mandatory requirements are filled properly. After successful login the
‘Disclaimer screen’ appears on the screen.

Clicking of ‘I agree’
button on Disclaimer allows the user to proceed further, while ‘I
decline’ button sends the control back to the Login screen. After
successful login, the user can file the case electronically. ‘New Case’
option allows the user to file a new case ‘Modify’ option allows a user
to carryout changes to the already e-filed case, provided the court fee
payment option is not invoked. Defects associated with the e-filed case
will be e-mailed to the advocate/petitioner by the Supreme Court
Registry.For further assistance, ‘Help’ option is available.Click here
to file case online in Supreme Court of India
http://kohram.in/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms/ - Reasons For
Banning Fradulent Tamperable EVMs Electronic voting machines (EVMs) were
introduced in a limited way in Indian elections in 1982, and they have
been in universal use since the general elections of 2004, when paper
ballots were phased out completely.

It is about time this
country reformed its voting system to ensure that the electoral verdicts
reflect the true will of the people of the country.
1. The Whole World has Discarded Similar EVMs
2. Use of EVMs is Unconstitutional and Illegal Too!
3. EVM Software Isn’t Safe
4. Nor is The Hardware
5. EVMs are Sitting Ducks
6. “Insider” Fraud a Concern
7. Storage and Counting are Concerns
8. Vote of No Confidence
9. EC is Clueless on Technology
10. Trust Deficit1.

The Whole World has Discarded Similar EVMs.

The
electronic voting machines used in this country’s elections are
internationally known as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting
machines which record votes directly in electronic memory.

Similar
voting machines have been banned in many countries such as Germany, the
Netherlands, Irelands etc. and such machines are allowed in most states
of the US only with a paper back up. Potential dangers of “vote fraud”
and more importantly, lack of transparency and verifiability associated
with them prompted ban or restrictions of their use. Developed nations
like the United Kingdom and France and advanced countries in our region
like Japan and Singapore have so far stuck to voting on paper ballots,
owing to their simplicity, verifiability and voter confidence in the
system. This country is an exception to this international trend and we
continue to use these voting machines long discarded by the world due
to lack of awareness and appreciation of the lay public of the concerns.

2. Use of EVMs is Unconstitutional and Illegal Too! This
country’s EVMs may also be held unconstitutional because they infringe
upon the fundamental rights of the voters. In this country, Right to
vote is a legal right but how that vote should be exercised by a voter
is his/ her individual expression covered by Article 19 (1) (a) of the
Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights to the citizens. In
the 2002 case pertaining to disclosure of assets and the criminal
background of candidates, the Supreme Court ruled that voters have a
right to know the antecedents of the contesting candidates and this is
fundamental and basic for survival of democracy. Accordingly, a voter
has the right to know that his vote which he exercised as a part of
freedom of expression has really gone in favour of the candidate whom
he/she has chosen. This right, fundamental in nature, is absent in the
electronic voting system.

In the traditional paper ballot
system, that fundamental right was preserve because a voter knew exactly
how his/ her vote was recorded and Universal use of EVMs in Indian
elections is illegal too! In 1984, the Supreme Court of India held that
the use of electronic voting machines in elections was “illegal” as the
Representation of People (RP) Act, 1951 did not permit use of voting
machines in elections. Later, the R.P. Act was amended in 1989
incorporating Section 61A. However, the amendment says voting machines
“may be adopted in such constituency or constituencies as the Election
Commission may, having regard to the circumstances of each case,
specify.” Violating the provisions of the R.P Act, the Election
Commission has conducted 2004 and 2009 nationwide general elections only
using electronic voting machines. Going by the 1984 judgment of the
Supreme Court, parliamentary elections of 2004 and 2009 may be held
illegal.

3. EVM Software Isn’t Safe.

The electronic voting machines are safe and secure only if the source code used in the EVMs is genuine.

Shockingly,
the EVM manufacturers, the BEL and ECIL, have shared the ‘top secret’
EVM software program with two foreign companies, Microchip (USA) and
Renesas (Japan) to copy it onto microcontrollers used in EVMs. This
process could have been done securely in-house by the Indian Worse, when
the foreign companies deliver microcontrollers fused with software code
to the EVM manufacturers, the EVM manufacturers cannot “read back”
their contents as they are either OTP-ROM or masked chips.

Amusingly,
the software given to foreign companies is not even made available with
the Election Commission, ostensibly for security reasons. With such
ridiculous decisions, the Election Commission and the public sector
manufacturers have rendered security of the EVMs a mockery. Adopting an
open standards policy by making the software public and allowing
parties to test the software installed in the EVMs would have offered
better.

4. Nor is The Hardware. The danger for EVM manipulations is not just from its software.

Even
the hardware isn’t safe. Dr. Alex Halderman, professor of computer
science in the University of Michigan says, “EVMs used in the West
require software attacks as they are sophisticated voting machines and
their hardware cannot be replaced cheaply.In contrast, the Indian EVMs
can easily be replaced either in part or as wholesale units.” One
crucial part that can be faked is microcontrollers used in the EVMs in
which the software is copied. EVM manufacturers have greatly facilitated
fraud by using generic microcontrollers rather than more secure ASIC or
FPGA microcontrollers. Not just only microcontrollers, mother boards
(cards which contain microcontrollers) and entire EVMs can be replaced.
Neither the Election Commission nor the manufacturers have undertaken
any hardware or software audit till date. As a result, such manipulation
attempts would go undetected. To detect such fraud, the upgraded EVMs
have a provision to interface with an Authentication Unit that would
allow the manufacturers to verify whether the EVM being used in the
election is the same that they have supplied to the Election Commission.
The EVM manufacturers developed an “Authentication Unit” engaging the
services of SecureSpin, a Bangalore based software services firm.

The
Unit was developed and tested in 2006 but when the project was ready
for implementation, the project was mysteriously shelved at the instance
of the Election Commission. Several questions posed to the Election
Commission for taking this decision went unanswered. 5. EVMs are Sitting
Ducks. Thic country’s EVMs can be hacked both before and after
elections to alter election results. Apart from manipulating the EVM
software and replacing many hardware parts discussed above, discussions
with knowledgeable sources revealed that our country’s EVMs can be
hacked in many ways. I mention just two of them below. Each EVM contains
two EEPROMs inside the Control Unit in which the voting data is
stored.

They are completely unsecured and the data inside
EEPROMs can be manipulated from an external source. It is very easy to
read (data from) the EEPROMs and manipulate them. The second and the
most deadly way to hack our country’s EVMs is by inserting a chip with
Trojan inside the display section of the Control unit. This requires
access to the EVM for just two minutes and these replacement units can
be made for a few hundred rupees. Bypassing completely all inbuilt
securities, this chip would manipulate the results and give out “fixed”
results on the EVM screen. The Election Commission is completely
oblivious to such possibilities. A demonstration of these
vulnerabilities is on the cards.

6. “Insider” Fraud a Concern.
Personal accounts from some well placed political sources and experts
say that there are some “insiders” demanding vast sums (Rs. 5 Crore for
each assembly constituency) to fix election results. Who are these
insiders? Unlike in the traditional ballot system where only the
election officials were the “insiders”, electronic voting machine regime
has spawned a long chain of insiders, all of whom are outside the ambit
and control of the Election Commission of this country. There is every
possibility that some of these “insiders” are involved in murky
activities in fixing elections. The whole world—except us in this
country–is alive to the dangers of insider fraud in elections. The
“insiders” include the public sector manufacturers of this country’s
electronic voting machines namely, the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL)
and Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL), the foreign companies
supplying micro controllers, private players (some of which are
allegedly owned by some political leaders) for carrying out checking and
maintenance of electronic voting machines during.

7. Storage
and Counting are Concerns. The EVMs are stored at the district
headquarters or in a decentralized manner in different locations.
Election Commission’s concern for EVM safety becomes apparent only
during elections, where as security experts say that voting machines
must remain in a secure environment throughout their life cycle. There
could be many malpractices associated with electronic counting.
“Everybody watches polling closely. Nobody watches counting as
closely),” says Bev Harris, an American activist. Our Election
Commission takes three months to conduct parliamentary elections but
wants counting to be over in just three hours! In the rush to declare
results and the winners, several serious lapses go unnoticed in the
counting process. As a result, parties cannot give it the kind of
attention that this activity deserves.

Massive discrepancies
between votes polled and counted in a large number of polling stations
across the country raise serious concerns in this regard.

8. Vote
of No Confidence.The political class cutting across all sides of the
divide has just one verdict: “we don’t trust the EVMs”. This vote of “no
confidence” stems from the personal experiences of parties and leaders
as well as the nature of results thrown up by the EVMs. Parties are
looking at EVMs with great suspicion and dread the prospect of EVMs
“defeating” them.This mistrust in EVMs is not confined to any single
party and is all pervasive. Almost all mainstream political parties,
including the BJP, Congress, left parties, regional parties like the
Telugu Desam party (TDP), AIADMK, Samajwadi party, Rastriya Lok Dal
(RLD), Janata Dal (United) etc. have all expressed reservation about
EVMs in the aftermath of 2009 Lok Sabha polls. Even the Congress party
that decisively won the 2009 general elections alleged that the EVMs
have been manipulated in Orissa. Today, it is difficult to find parties
that vouch for the continued use of EVMs in Indian elections. On the
contrary, there is a flood of opposition to the EVMs from the political
class.

9. EC is Clueless on Technology.The Election Commission
has adopted the EVM technology about which it has practically no
knowledge.

As a result, it has little control over many aspects
of the election process. None of the election commissioners, neither
the present commissioners nor their predecessors, have proper
understanding of the EVM technology. The only source of technical
understanding for the Election Commission is a Committee of experts led
by its chairman, Prof. P.V.Indiresan. Even the Expert Committee seems
very weak in its capacities and understanding. Alex Halderman, professor
of computer science at the University of Michigan and an expert on the
security of voting systems who was present in New Delhi for the launch
of the book, Democracy at Risk, Can We Trust our EVMS? commented, “When I
read the 2006 technical report prepared by the Expert Committee of the
Election Commission. I scribbled on it that there was a cause for alarm
and quickly decided to agree to come here.” That speaks volumes for the
quality and rigor of security testing done on the Country’s EVMs.

10.
Trust Deficit. Election Commission’s conduct in the wake of the serious
reservations expressed by people has been unbecoming of a
constitutional body. It has uttered many lies – our EVMs are “tamper
proof”, they are “different” etc. etc. It has refused to provide any
clarifications sought to the petitioners in the Supreme Court, despite a
reference from the Supreme Court of India. It has taken several
questionable decisions for which it has refused to offer any
explanations. For instance, it does not explain why old EVMs were used
in Lok Sabha elections despite the recommendations of its own Expert
Committee.

It does not explain why as many as 4.48 Lakh new EVMs
(which are more secure as per the Expert Committee) were not used in
any Congress party or UPA ruled states? Why and where it had allowed use
of state government owned EVMs? The non-transparent conduct of Election
Commission in the use of EVMs and the farce of an “enquiry” it has
conducted following serious reservations on EVMs does not inspire
confidence in its unbiased functioning.

How EVM Works and how can changed it’s functionality Watch this video [youtube id=”ZlCOj1dElDY” width=”620″ height=”360″]

-
See more at:
http://kohram.in/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms/#sthash.5sue6t7S.dpuf
youtube id=”ZlCOj1dElDY” width=”620″ height=”360″ -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlCOj1dElDY

This country’s EVMs
are Vulnerable to Fraud-Contrary to claims by our country,s election
authorities, the paperless electronic voting systems used in India
suffer from significant vulnerabilities. Even brief access to the
machines could allow criminals to alter election results.

In
this video, we demonstrate two kinds of attacks against a real Indian
EVM. One attack involves replacing a small part of the machine with a
look-alike component that can be silently instructed to steal a
percentage of the votes in favor of a chosen candidate. These
instructions can be sent wirelessly from a mobile phone. Another attack
uses a pocket-sized device to change the votes stored in the EVM between
the election and the public counting session, which in India can be
weeks later. These attacks are neither complicated nor difficult to
perform, but they would be hard to detect or defend against. The best
way to prevent them is to count votes using paper ballots that voters
can see. indiaEVM.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br2Mjt1BecI -
EVMs Can Be Tampered - Says Net India - Net India company says that the
Electronic Voting Machines EVMs which are used in polling stations can
be tampered in favor of the candidates. Watch this to find out
more…..To watch live news, videos subscribe to CVR News @
https://www.youtube.com/user/CVRNewsO…-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1xov8mrLZc -

EVM in INDIA
REALITY EXPOSED by Dr Subramanian
Swamyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3THfIvvxPY - EVMs can be tampered,
experts say - Electronic voting machines could be easily tampered to
manipulate elections results, a group of foreign experts said at a
seminar in Dhaka on Tuesday. A standing committee member of the main
opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Abdul Moyeen Khan, in the
seminar said that the party would make some prototypes of the EVMs the
Election Commission made to show the people how the device could be
tampered.

Non-governmental organisation Centre for Sustainable
Development organised the seminar, ‘Electronic voting machines: use and
abuse,’ at the Lake Shore hotel in the city. The organisation’s
secretary general Mahfuzullah conducted the seminar and its president
Anwar Hashim, also a former ambassador, presided over the programme.
Computer science professor in the University of California Mathew Allen
Bishop, senior software architect of Yahoo in India Shashank Shekhar and
research and development director of Hewlett Packard of the United
States Shawn Islam made presentation in the seminar highlighting how
EVMs could be tampered. All the three experts said the EVMs could be
tampered in several ways in a short span of time to manipulate the
elections results in favour of a certain candidate if the manipulators
would get physical access to EVMs. Citing an example of the flaws of the
EVM used in the United States and in other parts of the world, Bishop
said the EVMs, electronic devices which need software to function, could
be easily tampered. Bishop, however, asked the authorities concerned to
look into certain issues before using EVMs. ‘When votes are counted,
how do you know that the button pushed to vote for scales on the ballot
unit is in fact counted as a vote for scales?’ he said. Bishop also
said, ‘How do you know that the software is correct? There are no bugs
that affect the vote counting?

How do you know that the software on the EPROM chip is the version that is supposed to be used? There was no malware?’

He
said the security of the software running the EVM must be part of the
inbuilt design of the device. Earlier, Shawn Islam,m a
Bangladeshi-American, demonstrated how a vote cast for a candidate could
be stored for the candidate the voter did not vote for through software
manipulation effected beforehand. Both of the experts said that there
be a system of paper trail of the votes cast so that the voters could
see that their votes were stored for the candidate they voted for.’But,’
Shawn Islam added, ‘the EVMs developed by Bangladesh do not have any
option to add the paper trail system.’ He claimed that the EVM developed
in Bangladesh have plenty of problems. Shashank said that there was no
electronic device in the world which could not be tampered. All of the
experts said that the device must be tested by a third party before its
use.

In reply to a question whether the EVM can be manipulated
with remote control devise without physical intervention once EVMs are
tested and certified by the experts of the political parties just before
the elections, Shawn said, ‘You must have physical interventions to
manipulate it if the EVM does not belong to any wireless network.’ 

When
a reporter asked Abdul Moyeen Khan whether the BNP would accept it if
EVMs were tested by their experts, the BNP leader parried the answer
saying that the party would develop some EVM prototypes to show how they
could be tampered.

Representatives from the Bangladesh
Nationalist Party, including its acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul
Islam Alamgir, the chairperson’s advisers Iqbal Hasan Mahmud, Sabiuddin
Ahmed, Ruhal Alam and opposition chief whip Zainul Abdin Farroque,
attended. Speaking on the occasion, former Dhaka University
vice-chancellor Moniruzzaman Mia, BRAC University professor Piash Karim
and Sushaner Janya Nagarik secretary Badiul Alam Majumder stressed the
need for building trust among political parties before introducing any
new device in the elections process.The country’s two major political
camps are now at loggerheads over the introduction of EVMs in the next
polls. The ruling Awami League-led alliance said that it would extend
all cooperation to the E C in using EVMs in the next general elections
while the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance vowed to
resist the move.Attachments area- Preview YouTube video India’s EVMs are
Vulnerable to Fraud
-Preview YouTube video EVMs Can Be Tampered -
Says Net India Preview YouTube video EVM in INDIA REALITY EXPOSED by Dr
Subramanian Swamy.

https://plus.google.com/113142121719000136445/posts/VLy4JhB9DV2

Chandrasekharan Jagatheesan

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Chandrasekharan Jagatheesan
Shared publicly - Nov 6, 2014

The
fradulent EVMs are the part of the conspiracy along with all the
opposition parties. Though the Supreme Court was convince that these
fardulent EVMs could be tampered and passed orders to replace all the
fradulent EVMs with tamper proof voting system while the ex CJI
Sadasivam agreed with the CEC Sampath to replace them in phases because
of the cost of Rs.1600 crore as a conspiracy that helped Murder of
democratic institutions (Modi).

BSP is not only a political
party but also a movement of societal change. Hence this technological
game of 1% Chitpawan RSS plan has to be defeated by strengthening the
99% intellectuals by exposing the fradulent EVMs as done by 80
democracies of the world in the larger interest of Sarvajan Hitaye
Sarvajan Sukhaye i.e., for the peace, happiness and welfare of all
societies including SC/STs/ OBCs/ Minorities and the poor brahmins and
baniyas for distributing the wealth of this country among all sections
of the society as enshrined in the Constitution by making the Supreme
Court to pass orders to replace all fradulent EVMs and till such time to
scrap all elections conducted by these fradulent EVMs and then to
conduct elections with tamper proof voting system to save democracy,
equality, fraternity and liberty

Full text of the lecture:

enclosure: http://saranaloka.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/13-arahants-mel-zeki.mp3 1010461 audio/mpeg, http://saranaloka.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/13-arahants-harmonium-mel-zeki.mp3 1692570 audio/mpeg, http://saranaloka.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Recollection-of-Foremost-Arahant-Bhikkhunis-english.mp3 2060385 audio/mpeg

TIPITAKA

Encyclopedia

Court cases

Introduction of voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT)

Tampering with electronic voting machines

‘It took EC 4 years to admit that EVMs could be hacked’

The “Ugly face” of the ECI: Arrest of Hari Prasad for “sting demonstration”

66 Responses to “The “Ugly face” of the ECI: Arrest of Hari Prasad for “sting demonstration””

hindunew

EVM Technology

Electronic Voting Machines: Tamperable?

References:

Editorial: E-voting needs a paper trail

Dec. 6, 2010

Supreme Court asks Election Commission to implement paper trail in EVMs

what is E-Filing? Whether this E-Filing process is a user friendly programme?

what is the benefit of E-Filing facility ?

what are the procedures/ steps required to be taken for E-Filing process ?

‘FIXING’ Indian Lok Sabha elections

‘fixing’ Indian Lok Sabha elections

Google Search threatens democracy: Study

Chandrasekharan Jagatheesan

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