Blayne Sucks

Allison passed me a link to a video about the comparisons between Barack Obama’s campaign for President of the United States and the fictional Santos Campaign on the TV show The West Wing via email today. I have mentioned that I’m a fan of The West Wing before. I didn’t necessarily agree with the politics in the show. In fact, sometimes I strongly disagreed with them. However, the show portrayed politicians of every stripe as people who earnestly want to improve the world in which they live. Sure, they talked about the seedy side of politics from time to time, but on the whole the picture was one of politicians actively caring about the people. The American people yearn for that. This Slate V video is just another example of (in part) why Barack Obama has been so successful.

Although Ed Felten has recently gotten tons of press about his research group’s recent analysis of breaking hard drive encryption, I wanted to talk about some research that he’s done previously on electronic voting for several reasons. First, I mentioned voting in my last post. Second, I have blogged about electronic voting here before that. Third, it is an election year and seems pertinent. Fourth, I am still trying to catch up on some blogs that I follow and recently was able to watch Ed Felten’s presentation in the CERIAS Security Seminar series.

If you are unfamiliar with Ed Felten, I would like to provide some background. He’s a computer security researcher with extensive experience in authentication, secure Java programming, and digital rights management. He has recently also become a leader in analyzing security concerns relating to electronic voting. He is a fellow of the ACM and an EFF Pioneer Award winner. He is the author of a popular technology and public policy blog called Freedom to Tinker. He is also an excellent presenter.

His presentation for the CERIAS seminar is extremely good. I think it is probably accessible for those who are not well-versed in computer security terminology. Certainly, most of the talk is non-technical in nature. I strongly urge anyone reading this who has wondered just what the big deal surrounding electronic voting is all about to at least watch the first half of the presentation. It is an excellent introduction into the amazingly insecure fashion by which elections are held in America.

He talks about the history of electronic voting, some of the legislation that may affect electronic voting, the goal of verifying an election and how their research group has approached the problem. I’m not entirely sure that the importance of the problems can really come through in a sterile environment such as an academic presentation, but he certainly does a great job of motivating these problems on his blog. For example, the pictures on his blog he takes of unattended voting machines prior to election day. Of course, like any true academic, he provides references to their work so that you know where to look for more information if you are interested.

At the end of the talk he is asked a question about possible cryptographic methods that would allow a voter to obtain a receipt that they could later verify on a government website. I’m not entirely sure I like his answer. He says something like (Yes, I’m paraphrasing.), “There are attempts, but they aren’t ready for primetime.” This is a huge caveat and it almost seems to imply that the crypto isn’t quite there yet. Usually, it’s the humans that aren’t ready for the crypto. In this case there are some pretty interesting cryptographic schemes, and they lack the same thing most other cryptographic schemes lack: an easy-to-understand user interface. I’m sure Dr. Felten knows this and was just providing a concise answer, but if you are interested in more, I would read Dr. Rivest’s paper on Three Ballot Voting as a great place to start.

Lawrence Lessig, perhaps best known for his creation of Creative Commons licensing, is considering a run for Congress. His possible campaign website, and the somewhat related change congress website, talk about the kind of change that Congress needs. While the talk is good, I am not sure it’s anything new. People have known for many, many years that it’s probably not a good idea for congressmen to be accepting campaign donations from the industries they regulate, but that certainly hasn’t been the impetus needed for change.

There’s a part of me that wants to believe that Lessig could bring about this kind of change. I have to admit that I like a lot of his ideas. The Creative Commons licensing concept is an excellent example of the kind of thinking that I think we need in America. It is new, different and consumer friendly. I love the fact that he was willing to create a book through the use of a wiki and consider feedback from interested parties. So many politicians appear so disconnected from the people that elect them, but as the Draft Lessig movement shows, he has a lot of real people supporting him.

I’m not sure what to think. I don’t live in California, let alone in his district, but I do think I would vote for him if only to see what happens. It’s not that I’m not skeptical. Lessig is a former Harvard Law Professor and current Stanford Law Professor – those aren’t exactly “new and different” institutions which would bring sweeping change to Capital Hill. Plus, the sheer numbers of people that have tried to change congress and failed are staggering.

Another aspect about him that I think is rather interesting is his background in writing actual constitutions for former Soviet Republics. Very few politicians have actually written constitutions that were meant to really be used. It sort of reminds me of the saying that was written on Richard Feynman’s chalkboard at the time of his death:

What I cannot create, I do not understand.

I’m not sure politicians who haven’t tried to create a constitution for real people can understand what democracy is all about. Democracy is more than a piece of paper can ever really be. It is a culture. It is a mindset. It is a way of life. It is fragile. It is in danger. After the problems with the 2000 Presidential election, you would think that it would have been the number one priority to improve voting accuracy. After all, Congress should have significant motivation to make sure that elections are fair, right? Amazingly, here we are in 2008 and we are still working on a solution. There is obviously something wrong. Something that needs to change.

Change is a tall order though, particularly in Washington, which is a city where change goes to die. But there is something Obama-like about Lessig, an Obama supporter himself. If there is hope for change in Congress, perhaps people like Lawrence Lessig are the folks to do it.

Fox News is reporting that some lost documents and artifacts relating to the assassination of JFK were found in a Dallas courthouse. As someone who has been fascinated with the JFK assassination for years, this is obviously interesting news for a variety of reasons.

My first reaction was the sort of comic imbalance of the stark reality that an object possesses compared to its potential importance. Baseballs in the baseball Hall of Fame don’t really look all that different from some old baseball you have in your closet for 20 years, and yet people would pay millions of dollars for them on the open market. Moon rocks look pretty much like earth rocks, except that you have to actually physically travel to the moon and back to show them to all your friends and relatives. In the history of all kitchen knives that have been used as weapons there was a point when someone bought it at a store and used it to prepare food that they later ate. I’m sure the brown leather gun holster they found doesn’t look any different than that description would imply, except that at one point it was holding a gun that was used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald live on national TV.

However, the documents that were discovered are even more interesting to me. After everything that I’ve read about the assassination, I think the most compelling conspiracy theory has to be the mob theory, which these documents would seem to support. It’s compelling for many reasons. One of the main reasons I find it compelling is that the first rule in assassinating someone is always kill the assassins. This is the essence of a dead end. Police can’t interview their main suspect when he’s dead. Without being able to ask detailed questions to suspects it’s difficult to uncover what really happened.

The mob has understood this very well and has a long and documented history of killing anyone who had any chance of telling the police anything. (Plus, as is mentioned in the article, the mob had serious motivation to kill JFK.) In Oswald’s case, it’s even more interesting because he claimed to have been setup prior to his death. This puts investigators in the unenviable position of trying to prove a negative – that he murdered alleged assassin *didn’t* actually do the assassination. If Oswald was framed and the framing was done at all decently, proving he didn’t really do anything without being able to ask him questions about everything leading up to the assassination can be extremely difficult.

Perhaps it would be easier to think of it using the analogy to the controversy surrounding baseball. Roger Clemens claims to have not used HGH or whatever. How can he prove that he didn’t? There’s no evidence either way that would be unimpeachable. Without irrefutable proof that a particular event actually happened in a particular way, it can be extraordinarily difficult to prove that the event in question didn’t happen another way. (BTW: This is not my first post on the JFK assassination that involved Roger Clements. This is. )

This is in part because of the way the question is phrased. Thomas Pynchon once said,

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.

This is most apparent in conspiracy theories. A conspiracy nut will ask you to prove that it didn’t happen any of a million different ways. Many of these may require a cogent argument to prove, but they are the wrong questions to ask. However, that is the wrong question to be asked. What should be asked is “How can you prove that Oswald acted alone killed JFK?” If this can be formed into a rational argument, then that would be the only argument that matters.

The difference is subtle. On the surface you might think that proving Oswald did something alone would be equivalent to proving that everyone else didn’t do it. In mathematics, proofs actually can work like that, but real life is different in that humans are imperfect by nature and therefore a certain level of uncertainty exists in everything we do. Uncertainty can either work in favor of an argument or against it. Conspiracy theorists force people to try and eliminate every possible uncertainty, which uses uncertainty as a weapon against an argument. However, if you accept that every argument is going to have an element of uncertainty and present your rationale supporting the theory of Oswald acting alone as the most certain of the arguments, then you are using the uncertainty of everything else to support your argument.

Anyhow, I suppose I’m no longer really commenting on the article and more accurately rambling like a true blogger. I’ll stop now and spare you, the reader, from further blather.

It has been a statement week for the Purdue Men’s Basketball team, which has had back-to-back wins against two top ten teams. They have won their last ten games and sit atop the Big Ten Conference. Their latest victims have been Wisconsin, who had won their last 16 home conference games, and Michigan State, a veteran team with big expectations.

These two games had distinctly different flavors. The Wisconsin game was a masterful offensive performance against one of college basketball’s toughest defensive teams. The Boilers were 8 for 19 from three point range and shot better than 50% from the floor. The Michigan State game was a defensive showcase against a team with veteran ball handlers. The Boiler defense forced 17 turnovers and held Michigan State’s starters to 32 points for the game.

Over a month ago, there was an ESPN column that cited the three best teams in the Big Ten as Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan State. Next week Purdue will play Indiana in what promises to be the best rivalry matchup since the Keady – Knight years. Will Purdue manage to beat all of the Big Ten’s “best” teams in a 10 day span? I know I’ll be watching.

To the New England Patriots: Sorry about your legacy guys. Have fun in the off season. And don’t worry about the cheating thing. I’m sure Goodell will appease Arlen Specter while the Giants are out celebrating their win. Hey, maybe Tiki Barber will commiserate with you.