Re: John McAfee running for US pres

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 10:48:54AM -0700, Steve Pirk wrote:
> We have batshit candidates, and then we have batshit crazy voting systems
> to make sure that the batshit endowed end up in office. Maybe these
> republican presidential wannabees act batshit crazy because they know that
> they can get away with it, because the game is rigged...

You and I may be in agreement on this.  I've opined loud and long
(on the IP list, at TechDirt, elsewhere) that it is not presently possible
to construct a secure electronic voting system for a variety of reasons.
I could delve into the myriad technical issues involved, but that's been
done and it's tedious, so I will simply put the non-technical trump card
on the table first: economics.

As I'm sure everyone here is aware, the asymmetric nature of security
attack and defense means that competent attackers can often be wonderfully
successful even when utilizing a budget that's only a tiny fraction of
that available to defenders.

So when we ask ourselves "what budget is available to those attacking
voting systems?" we start finding highly disturbing estimates, including
this back-of-the-envelope calculation from Bruce Schneier:

        Stealing an Election
        https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2004/0415.html#4

That's alarming on its face, despite being quite conservative.  But it's
also 11 years old, which means that it is now a massive underestimate.
Pick the multiplier you want but do keep in mind that there are quite
clearly people in the US willing to spend $1B in pursuit of the electoral
outcome they want. [1]  If told that they could *guarantee* it for a
mere $500M, they could and would write that check in a heartbeat.

And with a $500M budget, any of us reading this could rig any election.
That attack budget would necessitate a defender budget well into the
tens of billions, and that is never going to happen.

---rsk

[1] Koch Brothers' Budget of $889 Million for 2016 Is on Par With Both Parties' Spending
        http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to-spend-900-million-on-2016-campaign.html?_r=0
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