It’s very rarely that I talk about the intricate details of my research. It is not because of the potential business value. It is instead mainly for the reason that my research only truly began two days ago 🙂
My research is about bringing general election to the people via the Internet. So people do not have to travel back to their voting precinct just to mark a ballot. So that people will not be complaining when EC decides to have by-election on a weekday, like yesterday Bukit Selambau, Bukit Gantang and Batang Ai tri-election. So that the Parliament no longer need to allocate RM100 million for election conduct, or for EC to employ nearly 200,000 election workers. There are plenty of motivations for having election conducted via Internet. At a more personal level, my research in this area is motivated by the prospect that I do not have to queue, and be stucked in traffic jam just to mark a ballot. Life is too short for such a thing. If a more convenient way exists for us to exercise our democratic rights, why not use it?
Election is interesting. It is the best type of contest, even better than a game contest such as Go and Shogi. Contestants in an election are actually racing against each other, trying to capture as many voters as possible.
It was a painful admission on my part, but an election contest is really better than a Go contest. While a Go contest brings out the character of the contestants, an election brings out the true character of a nation, the contestants personalities, the qualities of the voters and may even determine the fate of our children! I have none for now (or so I think?). Anyway, not being a Christian, I dont believe in Original Sin, but election is one case where the children en masse may have to suffer for the sins and foolhardy of their fathers, en masse. For that reason, I maintain that election (Parliamentary and State) are the best type of contests.
What are these true characters, and qualities? For instance, it could be our basic human survival instinct, despite masking ourselves as Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, atheists etc. Despite wearing the Malay, Chinese and Indian skin. Yes to bribery, yes to badmouthing, yes to selling principles, yes to holier-than-thou, yes to fraud. Yes, yes, yes. Votes are the One Ring, we are all Gollums.
Now that Internet voting is such a cool thing, why has it not been implemented? Well, actually it has been implemented in (astonishingly) Estonia. This one country that has been escaping from my mental image of the globe is now having 80% of my attention. Their citizens can vote via Internet, wohoo. Voting 2.0 if you want to call it 🙂 Well, actually, voting is the right of all residents of Estonia, not limited the citizens.
Utilising computer and Internet for voting is very tricky, due to its unique requirements. The most tricky of the requirements is ensuring fail-safe vote secrecy. No one is supposed to know who you had voted for ! And technology must be implemented to ensure that the voter can not prove to anyone that they had voted for this or that person. This is to discourage vote-buying (or vote-selling) and intimidation.
This requirement can be satisfactorily met by the traditional election. An individual voter enter the voting booth by him/herself, mark the ballot and cast it. Of course, RPK claims that vote buying still exist with the buyer instructing the voters to record their votes using handphone and show the image captured to receive rewards. Even if that is true, at least in traditional voting, such activities do not scale. In Internet voting however, such practice can be done in large scale, by distributing software that automates the recording and reporting of all activities of the voters. Potential for large-scale fraud is tremendous, which is why Internet voting must be subject to more strict requirements.
Internet voting is impossible, some people are crying! However Avi Rubin said, there is hope for Internet voting, when voters’ PC can be trusted, and trusted path can be established between the users and the voting servers.
Seriously, when will PC ever be trusted? We’re not just talking about being free from virus, or Trojan. We’re talking about even deeper level, i.e. secure boot, secure OS etc. Luckily for us, there is an effort started by Trusted Computing Platform Alliance to produce specification for a hardware that can be hard-mounted on our motherboard to facilitate this. This is the basis of Trusted Computing really.
My job is marrying Trusted Computing and Internet voting. Certainly not the first and last academic attempt at this. I’ll try to fit my research into Malaysian election scenario, to have a more personal flavour.
Ah, I think I have written long enough. Suprisingly, effortlessly. If only I could write thesis as easily as I write blog posts, I could have a long list of academic credentials by now 🙂 But of course, there is no academic quality in blog posts whatsoever. There is however, an eerie feeling that more people will read this post than people who will read my final thesis.
Which begs the question, what is the point of writing thesis?
ps/: The time will come when there is no trust among humans, only between humans and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and trust among TPM-selves.
Read Full Post »
Waq's Words and World 