Comment: Re:Is "Securing elections" a euphemism? (Score 1) 85
I don't mean to challenge whatever white-hat work that Kevin Mitnick is doing, but the phrase does indeed strike me as something a lobbyist (or well, tout) would tell me. Perhaps I'm just cynical.
It's cynical at all. Ecuador isn't really known for being terribly trustworthy.
http://report.globalintegrity.org/Ecuador/2008
My feel is that Mitnick was just brought in as window dressing. I wouldn't even suspect that Mitnick would have to hide anything he finds. It's only the tabulating equipment that he's "securing", not the entire election. There's FAR more to securing elections than some silly computer system that counts things. Election fixing happens out in the polling places where few people are looking, not in some big centralised location where the counting happens.
To actually ensure a fair election requires people monitoring polling places, not a couple guys making sure nobody hax0r3d the machine that does the counting. Mitnick is smart enough to know this, but yet is lending his name to make money. I really have no idea if elections are fair in Ecuador, but you're quite right to be skeptical of Mitnick's role in the whole thing.