Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Transparency, India, Voting Machines

India’s EVMs are Vulnerable to Fraud. And for pointing that out, Hari Prasad has been arrested by the police in India, who wanted to threaten and intimidate him question him about where he got the machine that he studied. That’s a shame. The correct response is to fund Hari Prasad’s work, not use the police to silence him.

I could write quite a bit about how science and security progress through open debate; about how no one likes to be wrong, but by admitting mistakes, we can improve, or the terrifying power of the state and the need to restrain it.

Rather I’ll just comment that arrogant abuses of power like this serve to de-legitimize the state and undermines the moral basis of claims to a monopoly of violence. When people can’t protest with speech and demonstrations of fact, they’ll continue to pursue their interests by other means with higher stakes.