Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise
Thousands
Wired News (09/17/08) Zetter, Kim
Election experts are warning that thousands of voters could be
disenfranchised in the November elections by statewide, centralized
voter-registration databases that are not federally tested or certified.
Election experts say the real worry is how states are performing database
matches of new voters under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), given the
databases and applicants' propensity for error in the provision of unique
voter identifiers. States are left to themselves when it comes to deciding
how to conduct matches, and in August Wisconsin carried out a test of
20,000 voter names against motor vehicle records and discovered 20 percent
with mismatches, chiefly because of typos and transposed numbers. HAVA
mandates that databases be equipped with "adequate technological security"
without specifying precise safeguards, and access controls have not been
devised in some states even though the databases interface with all county
election offices. "Generally speaking, the uncertainty that hangs over the
process, including uncertainty that results from election challenges and
litigation introduced shortly before election day, creates a greater
likelihood for problems or confusion at the polls," says the National
Association of Secretaries of State's Kay Stimson. A recent study from the
Academies of Sciences concluded that many states' matching procedures are
based on intuitive reasoning without additional systematic validation or
mathematically stringent analysis, fail to reflect the state of the art in
matching methods, and have not been scientifically, commercially, or
otherwise validated.
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Warning Sounded on Web's Future
BBC News (09/15/08) Ghosh, Pallab
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is helping to create the World Wide Web Foundation, a
new organization that will certify Web sites it finds to be trustworthy and
a reliable source of information. Berners-Lee says there needs to be a new
system that will give Web sites a label for trustworthiness once they have
proven to be a reliable source. "On the Web the thinking of cults can
spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some
deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he
says. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine
spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging." Berners-Lee
and colleagues at the World Wide Web consortium examined simple ways of
branding Web sites, but concluded that a whole variety of different
mechanisms are needed. In addition to creating a trustworthiness rating,
the World Wide Web Foundation also will strive to make it easier for people
to get online. Currently, only 20 percent of the world's population has
access to the Web. The foundation also will explore ways of making the Web
more mobile-phone friendly, which will increase its use in Africa and other
developing parts of the world where there are few computers but plenty of
handheld devices. The foundation also will examine how the Web can be used
to benefit those who cannot read or write. "We're talking about the
evolution of the Web," Berners-Lee says. "When something is such a
creative medium as the Web, the limits to it are our imagination."
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Critics: Homeland Security Unprepared for
Cyberthreats
CNet (09/17/08) Condon, Stephanie
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is being criticized for its
lackluster cybersecurity efforts on the grounds that it has proven to be
inefficient, bureaucratic, and unable to monitor federal computer networks.
Some have even suggested that DHS should no longer be trusted with its
cybersecurity mission and another federal agency should be given the task.
"While DHS has improved, oversight for cybersecurity must move elsewhere,"
says James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. "This is now a serious national security problem
and should be treated as such." Lewis testified at a recent hearing of the
House Homeland Security's subcommittee on emerging threats, cybersecurity,
and science and technology. Adding to public criticism of DHS are two
reports published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Since
2005, the GAO has reported on DHS' cybersecurity efforts and has made 30
recommendations to the department, but DHS "still has not fully satisfied
any of them," says GAO director of information management issues David
Powner. The GAO's latest reports include descriptions of DHS' failure to
fully address 15 key cyberanalysis and warning attributes related to
activities such as monitoring government networks for unusual activity.
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Voting Group Release Guidelines for E-Voting
Checks
IDG News Service (09/15/08) Gross, Grant
About 20 U.S. states using electronic-voting systems currently do not
audit the results after elections, but there is still time to change that
policy, according to a coalition of fair elections advocates and e-voting
critics. The groups, including Common Cause, Verified Voting, and the
Brennan Center for Justice, called on states to require post-election
audits of e-voting systems, including touch-screen voting machines and
optical-scan systems. The groups released a set of recommendations for
election audit best practices, which calls on states to hand count paper
records generated in conjunction with many e-voting systems. Verified
Voting president Pamela Smith says audits can help restore voter confidence
in elections. Since the 2000 U.S. presidential election, e-voting machines
have been blamed for lost votes in several elections. In August, Ohio
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed a lawsuit against Premier
Election Solutions, saying the company should pay damages for dropped votes
in the state's March primary election. Audits after the election found
hundreds of uncounted votes. Premier first denied its machines were to
blame, but later admitted that programming errors were at fault. "Audits
really help to restore the public trust in our voting systems," says Maggie
Toulouse Oliver, county clerk for Bernalillo County, N.M. "When there is a
lack of trust in how that vote came out or how that transition took place,
it can cast aspersions on our system of government."
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World's Largest Gathering of Women in Computing Attracts
Leading Researchers, Industry Experts
AScribe Newswire (09/16/08)
The impact of women on technology that has helped improve world conditions
will be the focus of this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in
Computing (GHC), which is scheduled for Oct. 1-4, in Keystone, Colo. GHC
will offer a program filled with speakers from around the world and more
than 88 sessions. Fran Allen, IBM Fellow Emerita and ACM's 2006 A.M.
Turing Award winner, will be a keynote speaker, along with Mary Lou Jepsen,
founder and CTO of One Laptop Per Child. The seven tracks of the sessions
cover technology skills and career opportunities. There will be sessions
on organizing regional celebrations to bring women in computing closer
together, helping women to contribute to projects and brainstorming new
projects and priorities, and ACM's new Membership Gender Study on meeting
the dynamic needs of women in computing. There also will be new
investigator technical papers, Ph.D. forums, and achievement awards. The
three-day technical conference, co-presented by the Anita Borg Institute
for Women and Technology and ACM, is expected to have more than 1,400
participants.
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Websites Shed Light on How Humans Value Fresh
Ideas
New Scientist (09/11/08) Barras, Colin
Emerging Web sites supplant more established Web sites half the time, a
new study from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers
Vwani Roychowdhury and Joseph Kong and the University of Regina's Nima
Sarshar suggests. The team visited roughly 22 million Web pages once a
month for a year and recorded the number of other pages that link to each
page, or its "in-degree." Just under half the pages with the most links
were younger pages, and the proportion remained the same when the
researchers raised the in-degree value above 1,000. Roychowdhury says the
study suggests that the quality of content of a Web site ultimately
determines whether it succeeds or fails. "Talent versus experience is
difficult to document in a society," he says. "But what we show is that on
the Web it can be documented in terms of page popularity--and newborn pages
become more popular than older established pages on a regular basis."
Search technology could benefit from the analysis, considering many engines
use the page in-degree to deliver search results. Still, Roychowdhury
acknowledges that ranking pages by the rate of in-degree growth might
better reflect the impact of new Web sites.
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Engineering Students Exhibit E-Voting Applications
IDG News Service (09/15/08) Wanjiku, Rebecca
At the Engineering Students' Exhibition in Nairobi, students from Kenya,
Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, Canada, and the Philippines displayed 150 projects
on information and communications technology. Electronic voting
applications gained the most attention. Students demonstrated how e-voting
technology could have prevented the bloody chaos that followed the
controversial general election in Kenya earlier this year. "Laptops and
mobile phones offer a better system of monitoring the elections; everyone
now has a phone," says University of Nairobi student Quentin Papu, who
developed vote tallying software for handheld devices. Papu says the
software can be used by agents at polling stations to log on to their
mobile phones using a unique user ID and password to enter presidential and
parliamentary results, which would then be relayed to the Election
Commission of Kenya. Nimrod Kibua and Juliet Kamau from Kenya Methodist
University also impressed judges with their e-voting system. Abdelkareem
Abdelrahman from Khartoum University was recognized for a sign language
voice translator, and Julliet Mutahi and Frederick Omondi of the University
of Nairobi won an award for a Short Message Service program for the
visually impaired. "The event has showed the determination by students
within African universities to use technology to improve the way of life,"
says event organizer Kevit Desai, a member of the Kenya ICT Board.
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Putting Pictures Into Words
ICT Results (09/16/08)
European researchers working on the aceMedia project are developing an
information layer that would be added to digital image files. The goal is
to create image files that contain content information, metadata, and an
intelligence layer that automatically generates word-searchable data for
the image. The researchers say the extra information layer, which would
add both automatically generated and manually generated information to
images, could revolutionize image searching on the Internet. The aceMedia
project reused, developed, and combined a variety of technologies that
provide enriched content information on an image. One of the technologies
is software that can identify low-level visual descriptors, such as
consistent areas of color that could be the sky, sea, or sand, as well as
information on the texture, edge, and shape of the subject. Combining
low-level descriptors with sets of contextual rules held in domain
ontologies, such as the fact that consistent areas of blue at the top of an
image are most likely sky, makes data a rich information source. Data from
low-level descriptors also was combined with the results from specific
detectors, such as the kinds of face detectors commonly available in some
cameras, adding additional data for image searching. Additional
information can be added by the user, including rules defining personal
preferences, profiles, and policies to create a personalized filing
system.
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First 3-D Processor Runs at 1.4 Ghz on New
Architecture
University of Rochester News (09/15/08) Sherwood, Jonathan
University of Rochester researchers have developed the Rochester Cube, a
microprocessor based on three-dimensional (3D) synchronization circuitry.
The 3D chip, which runs at 1.4 gigahertz, was designed specifically to
optimize all key processing functions vertically, through multiple layers
of processors, in the same way ordinary chips optimize functions
horizontally. "This is the way computing is going to have to be done in
the future," says Rochester professor Eby Friedman, co-creator of the chip.
"When the chips are flush against each other, they can do things you could
never do with a regular 2D chip." However, Friedman notes that vertical
expansion is problematic. He says getting all three levels of the chip to
act in harmony is like trying to devise a traffic control system for the
entire United States, and then layering two more United States above the
first and simultaneously coordinating all three systems. The system is
further complicated when the two upper layers are different systems. Each
cube layer could be a different processor with a different function, such
as converting MP3 files to audio or detecting light for a digital camera,
for example. Friedman says the 3D chip is essentially an entire circuit
board folded up into a tiny package. This complicated structure is made
possible by the architecture Friedman and his students designed, which uses
many techniques used in regular processors, but also accounts for different
impedances that might occur from chip to chip, different operating speeds,
and different power requirements.
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Software Agents Make Their Way Out of the
Laboratory
Financial Times Digital Business (09/17/08) P. 2; Cane, Alan
Agent-based software development could be a key to progress in both stem
cell research and business data processing. The University of London's
Mark d'Inverno uses agent-based systems in his stem cell research by
applying mathematical modeling techniques to understand stem cell growth
and development. D'Inverno aims to create software that humans can
communicate with easily, can delegate certain responsibilities to, and can
use to understand the natural world. D'Inverno's research team includes an
artist, a mathematician, an artificial life programmer, and a curator. In
a recent book by d'Inverno and Southampton University researchers Michael
Luck and Ronald Ashri, the authors note that agent technologies are already
providing benefits in a variety of business and industry domains, including
manufacturing, supply chain management, and business-to-business exchanges.
Software agents have some similarities with artificial intelligence (AI),
but d'Inverno says AI deals with abstract questions of knowledge
representation while software agent development is close to engineering.
"As technology increasingly becomes part of our everyday life, we want
different things from the old-fashioned ideas of input which produces some
output," d'Inverno says. "We want to have a much higher level of
interaction with computer systems, possibly at the level of ascribing to
these systems the kind of things we ascribe to each other such as beliefs,
desires, and intentions."
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Universities Announce Virtual Clusters Project Called
SnowFlock
InfoWorld (09/15/08) Marshall, David
Computer science researchers at the University of Toronto and Carnegie
Mellon University have jointly made the binaries and source release of the
SnowFlock project available to the general public under the GNU General
Public License. SnowFlock allows for virtual machine (VM) cloning
involving dozens of identical replicas running on different hosts, in less
than a second and with little runtime overhead, says Andres Lagar-Cavilla,
a member of the SnowFlock project team. "With SnowFlock you can, for
example, perform parallel computations on the fly by scaling
instantaneously your computing footprint in a shared cluster,"
Lagar-Cavilla says. SnowFlock relies on VM descriptors, a memory-on-demand
subsystem, a set of avoidance heuristics, and a multicast distribution
system for commodity Ethernet networking hardware to enhance Internet
applications.
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UW-Eau Claire Computer Science Professor Receives
$404,305 NSF Grant
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (08/26/08)
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire professor Paul Wagner has received a
$404,305 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop
portable and customizable software for hands-on, computer-intensive
educational workshops. The three-year grant builds on the work Wagner
completed through a previous NSF grant to create a laptop-based computer
security workshop program. Wagner devised a program that enables
instructors to control file downloads, run programs, and monitor laptops in
a workshop setting. The program eliminates problems with workshop
participants from different universities from putting new software on other
university systems, leading to compatibility problems. The new NSF grant
will enable Wagner to adapt the program for wireless functionality. "The
tricky thing to do is to run our program without destroying or damaging
other files or programs people have on their laptops and to do this in an
isolated environment so the workshop environment is protected from the
outside world and the outside world is protected from the workshop," Wagner
says. Going wireless will significantly expand the uses of the program, he
says. Currently, the program is only used for workshops on computer
security, but once wireless functionality has been added the program will
be useful for wider variety of general education purposes. The team plans
to implement the program in the next year, and will submit a proposal to
distribute it at the 40th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science
Education, which takes place Mar 3-7, 2009, in Chattanooga, Tenn.
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Robotics Institute and Caterpillar Inc. to Automate Large
Off Highway Haul Trucks
Carnegie Mellon News (09/09/08) Spice, Byron; Kenny, Kate
Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute researchers are working with
Caterpillar to develop autonomous versions of the large haul trucks used in
mining operations. The driverless truck effort is the first major project
resulting from a three-year master agreement for sponsored research that
was signed last year by Carnegie Mellon University and Caterpillar.
Researchers from the Robotics Institute's National Robotics Engineering
Center will work with Caterpillar's Pittsburgh Automation Center. The
driverless truck effort is part of an autonomous mining haulage system that
Caterpillar recently announced it is developing with BHP Billiton. Plans
call for the autonomous trucks to be integrated into some of BHP Billiton's
mine sites by 2010. The autonomous technology is expected to provide
productivity gains through a more consistent process, and also should help
minimize the environmental impact of mining through efficiency and overall
mine safety. The Carnegie Mellon researchers will be adapting perception,
planning, and autonomous software architectures originally developed for
the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's autonomous vehicle program
and the DARPA Urban Challenge.
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Internet Specialists See 'Clouds' Gathering
Chicago Tribune (09/01/08) Van, Jon
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) computer scientists are
working with Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Yahoo! researchers, along with
researchers in Europe and Asia, to build a global test bed for exploring
future cloud computing systems. 3Tera CEO Barry Lynn says that within six
years cloud computing will expand to the point that corporations rely less
on on-site information technology infrastructure and more on applications
supplied over the Internet. UIUC computer scientist Michael Heath, one of
the leaders building the global test bed, says cloud computing will go
beyond replacing corporate data centers. "You won't even have to know
about applications or where things happen or what happens," Heath says.
"You take the Internet to the next level, where it doesn't just cough up
pre-stored data but it creates new knowledge by extracting new information
from data." Linking thousands of computers to enhance their speed and
power is the key to the global test bed project. Creating a cloud
computing system on an Internet scale will involve problems of allocating
work with optimal efficiency among various processors, which researchers
will explore once the test bed is operating later this year. "We're
focused on a large amount of data and a great deal of processing power,"
Heath says. "For example, the computer must not merely do a symbolic
search of a document, it must understand the English semantics of the
document and do analysis."
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Even the Pentagon Shares 'Open-Source' Approach
Kansas City Star (09/01/08) Canon, Scott
Minerva is an open source Pentagon effort to pool information on various
issues--such as the Chinese military and anti-terror strategies--by asking
everyone to contribute and posting the results publicly. The project
follows the philosophy that secrecy and classification of data is
counterproductive, says Defense Secretary Robert Gates. "In the open
source world, respect is earned, not assigned," says Rice University
computer scientist Dan Wallach, who recently worked on open source software
for voting machines which he thinks will deliver transparency to
ballot-counting and make elections more trustworthy. Software development
is ideal for open source collaboration, given the massiveness of the
challenges and the ability to fragment them into pieces that all kinds of
programmers can focus on. The Pentagon, politicians, and other
institutions have thrown down the gauntlet to all kinds of people to
develop better technologies for applications ranging from remote-controlled
unmanned vehicles to a battery that can replace the internal combustion
engine through competitions that often offer huge cash prizes. The Army
and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth is engaged in
experiments with blogs to encourage the more open sharing of advice between
troops, and is inviting papers from anyone with some deep knowledge about
various subjects, including the illegal immigration of Albanians into
Kosovo. One of the sticking points of open source collaboration is the
potential for concept theft, especially for concepts designed to improve or
facilitate business.
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Hotline to the Cowshed
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (09/08)
Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and
Systems IMS in Duisburg have developed a wireless system for monitoring the
health of livestock. The wireless measuring system makes use of a tiny
sensor that is placed in the rumen of a cow. The pH level and the
temperature inside the cow's rumen is wirelessly transmitted to another
receiver module attached to the animal's collar, and the data is forwarded
to a central database via a network of sensors. A reading below a certain
reference value serves as the first sign of disease for a farmer. The
wireless measuring system does not need special infrastructure or
supervision. Capable of autonomous networking, the system also uses little
energy. There are plans to test the wireless measuring system on pilot
farms. The developers of the system say the technology could have other
uses in agriculture and forestry.
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