#goverrnment

[kdougs95]

It's that time again....

[firstwehealthenwefight]

ATTN: Congrats New York, for becoming the first state to offer tuition-free four-year college!

[churdtzu]

When people tell you, “you have a drinking problem”, that may be a sign that you are addicted to alcohol.

However, when people tell you, “you have a problem with authority”, that may be a sign that they are addicted to authority.

www.theparadiseparadox.com

[kdougs95]

No matter what I do, literally nothing bad can happen to me.  I'm like a white male U.S. Senator.

Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation

[parrhesiajoe]

The fastest way to get a digital voting system running

In case of revolution, do not break glass. Organize. Those you organize against are masters of information management. This plan is a solid kick to their nut-side.

To keep the votes relatively anonymous, key sets are collected in sets of 50+, from a neighborhood based on geographic location. So… imagine a revolution breaks out, and the networks get cut… and we need to make decisions quickly, but we don't have a secure way to vote...

In my neck of the woods, about 1 in 50 people can figure out how to generate a key pair on a computer with a few command lines in less than an hour. Right when the revolution starts, you start looking for this person in your neighborhood.

Knock-knock for one hour. Depending on proposition strength, you will have between 50 and 500 people involved at T=1h. You should be able to find a person in this group and tell them THIS:

"You need to generate about 400 key pairs, which people will use to sign their vote. You are going to hand out the private keys to individuals as you go around. They will use these keys to sign their vote.

Each person you meet, you have to

1. Copy a Pk pair to their computer from the thumb drive.

2. Delete the private key from the thumb drive. 

3. Write their contact info on a single line in the text file:

a. John Cambridge - 1401 Chestview drive

b. Jan * Same

c. Trevor C* Same

d. John Dredder - 1415 Chestview drive

e. …

Now, keep knock-knocking to collect more people.

Within 500-1000 people, you will have found someone to make you a voting application. It is dead simple for anyone who has done any forms and crypto. In text box one, you paste your private key. In text box two, you put the number (id) of the vote your are making. In text box three, you put a very short description of the vote… just for error checking. In box four, you list the options you support.

Box 1: Key: 83fjoj3awjlah38f8fh3l82hfi23halh

Box 2: Vote#: 12

Box 3: About disarming and stuff

Box 4: 1,3

The vote is, "Should we offer disarmament to other countries?"

1: Nuclear weapons

2: Tanks and heavy armor

3: Chemical weapons

Box 4: 1,3 means that the person is in favor of disarming nukes and chemicals, but not tanks and armor.

Finally, the person hits VOTE and an encrypted text file is generated which cannot be duplicated, which can be decrypted by the public key that was generated earlier.

SO, the text file looks like this:

9/2/2015 12 About disarming and stuff 1,3

Very simple. (For added security, the modified and created times of the file should be erased and the files should be named: ZipCode-RandomInt32 98112-3423532 98112-1959339 98312-982843

No network connectivity is required for this whole scheme… just any old crappy laptop that ya got laying around.

Putting it all together, here's how it works: start to finish.

A person in the community creates a bunch of digital certificates/pk pairs distributes the private portion around the neighborhood… one per person.  Only the voter has the private key. The person who hands out the private keys collects the name of everyone he gave a key to and destroys the unused keys.

Now the dude has a thumb drive with 262 public keys on it and a list of 262 names in a txt file. This list is distributed to everyone. Everyone gets a list of all public keys… everyone in the world, if we like.

The person voting is anonymized within the group of 262 people, as long as they transmit their vote in an anonymous way.

Again, this can be done with a thumb drive. Just go around and collect everyone's vote (text file) they create on their computer and put it on the thumb drive… just walk around and collect all the files. Once all the files are on the thumb drive, they all get made public.

Now, anyone in the world can see what these 262 people voted. Each person can verify that their vote is there by looking for the one that matches their public key.

Note: For additional security, the person generating the private keys should do so on a computer that can be PAVED after the process. PAVED and overwritten with random bytes. A techie will know what that means and why. The thumb drive with the private keys should be smashed afterwards with a big secure rock.

Note: Transmitting a vote through a network will link that private key to an IP address, unless a strong TOR type connection is used. In an emergency, people won't have TOR. If it is a revolutionary situation, people won't want their identities linked to votes like, "Do you support the government: NO!!!"

Note: Although it is more of a pain in the ass, keys should be generated in little groups, because when you put the flash drive into someone's computer, they could conceivably be infected with a worm that copies all data it sees. This would not be a catastrophic mistake, but it would mean that keys need to be reissued.

Note: Even if keys are compromised, there is no way to tender a fake vote with this system without having it quickly caught. If someone casts a vote using your key, you will see it, and it will be easy to change keys, and perhaps find out who cast the vote with your key.

Note: No more notes.

[reformparty-blog]

If you want to find out if the Reform Party USA is holding an even near you, this is the place to check.