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Comment Re:What's the margin of victory? (Score 1) 159

by Weird O'Puns (#26683543) Attached to: Finnish Court Accepts E-Voting Result With 2% Lost

The article you linked has couple more points that are in my opinion more important than the problems with the interface:

Additionally, there is risk of a breach of the anonymity of the votes, because the electronic ballot box has been archived with information on who voted and how. The e-voting project had been strongly criticised by Effi from its inception for the lack of transparency both in the process and software.

First, the system is not anonymous. Right people can see from the archives who voted for who. In fact, right after the election they were telling those who asked if their vote had been cast or not.

Secondly, the system is completely closed. There was an audit, but the auditors were forced to sign a NDA. There is also no paper trace. The voter has no guaranties that his/hers vote has been cast to the right candidate.

Comment Re:Let me get this straight... (Score 1) 159

by Weird O'Puns (#26683501) Attached to: Finnish Court Accepts E-Voting Result With 2% Lost

The EFF says the system is flawed because it requires people to verify their vote once they selected it?

No, they criticize that it was possible to stop the voting process unintentionally. This could have been solved using card readers that took whole card inside the reader, so it wouldn't have been possible pull it out without voting. Other solution would have been to display clear message that the voting process was interrupted and no vote was cast.

You also don't yank out your card until you're told to.

ATM won't give you any money if you yank out the card too early. That means that there is a clear feedback when the transaction has happened correctly. With voting machines there was no such feedback.

A 2% spoilage rate although higher than the typical rate, isn't incredibly high.

Why spend money to switch to a system that is worse?

Comment Re:Usability Glitch? (Score 1) 366

by Weird O'Puns (#25556123) Attached to: Finnish E-Voting System Loses 2% of Votes

One of the biggest issues on the Finnish system is that you can connect the vote to a voter. Basically, a vote is stored in to the main database with voter identification. The database is encrypted, but anybody with right password and key can check who voted for who. The database, keys and passwords will be stored for years.

Compared to this the user interface glitch is just a minor issue.

More detailed criticism can be found from Effi's e-voting report.
Censorship

Finnish Censorship Expanding 196

Posted by kdawson from the as-it-always-does dept.
Thomas Nybergh lets us know about the secret list maintained by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, containing an estimated 1,700 foreign "child pornography'" sites. These are mostly in the US and the EU, and certainly not all of them contain child porn or even links to it. Finnish ISPs are required by law to block access to sites on the list, according to The Register. Finland's EFF has information about the block list, which reportedly includes a musical instrument store, a doll store, and a site of Windows tips in Thai. Recently added to the list — which by law should contain only child pornography sites — is the text-only site of a Finnish free-speech advocate who criticizes the censorship law. Evading the ISPs' block is trivial, of course.
Censorship

Submission + - Finnish Internet censorship (effi.org)

Submitted by
Thomas Nybergh
Thomas Nybergh writes: "The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation maintains a secret list of "child pornography" sites. Some major Finnish ISPs, although currently not required by law to do so, do block access to sites on this list.

The blocking, which is performed by crippling DNS, has been criticized, especially since lapsiporno.info ("childporn.info"), a site discussing the practice, but not containing any illegal material, was added to the list of blocked sites, despite the fact that only sites hosted outside of Finland are allowed to be blocked (Real child porn sites hosted inside Finland are to be shut down and the maintainers prosecuted).

Quite a lot of other sites that have nothing whatsoever to do with "child pornography" are also on the list, and critics of the practice of crippling DNS say that it's only a matter of time before other inconvenient or controversial material will be censored, too. This article on Electronic Frontier Finland's site is the most adequate summary of the situation available in English."
Censorship

Submission + - Finland police censors vs Matti Nikki

Submitted by
newtley
newtley writes: "If the name Matti Nikki seems familiar, you're probably thinking of his analysis of the Sony BMG DRM spyware. He's now in the news again, but this time this software expert and activist is in trouble with Finnish police censors over kiddie porn and his case has become a major issue. As the the EFFI (Electronic Frontier Finland) puts it, "After a public outcry on the censorship practices the police decided to suspect Nikki of aiding the distribution of material violating sexual chastity." He's now slated for interrogation on Wednesday (February 20). "This is not a proud moment to be a Finn," says the EFFI, pointing out that one of the sites censored was set up in honour of the late HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana of Thailand."
Censorship

Submission + - Finnish police censors numerous U.S Web sites (nyud.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Kai Puolamäki of Electronic Frontier Finland writes:



The Finnish police maintains a secret block list of web sites allegedly containing child pornography, pursuant to a law passed last year. The purpose of the law is to prevent the access to the foreign sites that contain child pornography.

Most of the censored sites are located in the United States or EU countries. Many of the censored sites have turned out to be apparently legal pornographic sites. Some of the censored sites are not pornographic sites at all.
Music

Submission + - EU Commissioner proposes 95 year copyright

Submitted by Albanach
Albanach writes: The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. He also wishes to investigate options for new levies on blank discs, data storage and music and video players to compensate artists and copyright holders for 'legal copying when listeners burn an extra version of an album to play one at home and one in the car.'
Censorship

Submission + - Finnish police censors blacklist critisism

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The recently deployed domain blacklists in Finland meant for censoring child porn are already being abused by the police. a Finnish website spreading information and heavily criticising the blacklist was recently added to the list of blacklisted websites. While no official reason has been given, this has been most likely due to the website releasing list of known blacklisted websites. The police has warned that distributing a list of blocked domains may lead to juridical action.
Censorship

Submission + - Finnish anti-censorship site censored

Submitted by
Leetteri
Leetteri writes: "A Finnish site(in Finnish) criticizing censorship has been blocked by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) of Finland. EFF has also released a statement. The censorship is based on a law that been in use since the start of 2008 and is supposed to censor ONLY child pornography. The censor is DNS-based and optional for ISP's but the government has announced that if the system wouldn't be used voluntarily, it would become forced. The site was apparently censored because it contains about 2/3's of the list of censored sites. The list is maintained by one part-time police officer and has been declared classified. Most sites are perfectly legal sites from the US and EU and consist mostly of gay- "barely 18" and fetish porn. The law itself states that it is only applied to FOREIGN sites and contains no information about sites linking to child porn. It is obviously against the Finnish constitution and freedom of speech, but it still passed without opposition."
Censorship

Submission + - Finnish police censors a critic of censorship (effi.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A while ago Finland started censoring alleged child porn sites on the DNS level. The secret block list contains more than sites hosting child porn. Digital rights group Electronic Frontier Finland writes:



Now the censorship list has been appended with a site called lapsiporno.info [translates to childpornography.info] that is maintained by a Finnish Internet activist Matti Nikki. The site does not contain child pornography, but articles that criticise censorship and a list of blocked IP addresses.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - ACLU: Ohio voting switch may be illegal

Submitted by phorest
phorest writes: Oh the irony! Lawmakers decide to go one way, then the new ones take over and the fun begins! With so many decidedly against electronics in our elections, who would've thought the ACLU is looking to potentially sue the state of Ohio for switching away from Diebold touch-screen voting terminals.

CLEVELAND — The American Civil Liberties Union urged the elections board in the state's most populous county on Thursday not to make a switch to a new voting system for the state's March presidential primary, warning that the move could violate state law.


It appears to me that we'll never again get in our beds after the sweet feeling of democratic voting as when we awake from our slumber, the elections will be tainted from any lame excuse available. Go ACLU!
Media

Submission + - Adobe dumps HD-DVD for Blu-Ray

Submitted by
Miti
Miti writes: "The media wars have taken a sharp turn as Adobe's latest software Premiere Elements package; version 6 will only support export options for Blu-ray rather than HD DVD. Adobe spokesman says that he is not sure why the company wont support the next gen format. However industry sources say that Adobe has cracked under pressure from Sony a close partner who ships all its Vaio PC's with Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Tries to Stop RICO Class Action 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Last month an Oregon woman, victimized by the RIAA for two years, retaliated by bringing a class action for fraud, RICO, malicious prosecution, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, misuse of copyright law, civil conspiracy, and other assorted wrongs, against the record companies, the RIAA, their investigators, and their 'enforcers', in Andersen v. Atlantic. The opening gambit of the record companies, the RIAA, and the enforcers (Settlement Support Center LLC), all of whom are being represented by the same law firm, has been to file a motion to dismiss Ms. Andersen's complaint. The RIAA's unlicensed "investigators", MediaSentry/Safenet, presumably represented by separate counsel, have yet to respond to the amended complaint. Ms. Andersen is the disabled single mother, who together with her 10 year old daughter, had been pursued by the RIAA for two (2) years, despite the fact that neither of them had ever engaged in file sharing."
Biotech

Journal Journal: So Long, Baiji 175

Journal by ozmanjusri
After 20 million years, Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) are now officially extinct http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292932,00.html.

"It's a relic species, more than 20 million years old, that persisted through the most amazing kinds of changes in the planet," said marine biologist Barbara Taylor at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service. "It's been here longer than the Andes Mountains have been on Earth."

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