Hackers find serious problems in California voting machines

> in the US, the government is largely immune to prosecution

The government can, however, be sued, or, at least, in most places it can. There's a twist to it, though: the only reason the government in the US can be sued is because the legislature (state or federal) passed a law saying that you can sue it. The laws could be revoked, but they aren't. You could, in fact, point to the existence of those laws as strong evidence that Bob is all wet. How powerful (if not always obvious) must the influence of the electorate be if it can force the government to let people file suit against it?

There's a second kind of "prosecution":

Citizens get their day in court against government actions. In cases of a criminal nature, the government carries the burden of proof. Outcomes can be appealed, potentially to the Supreme Court. That's more powerful than people realize. It's easy to view the judiciary as just another part of the same old government, but it's not.

We talk about 3 branches of government, but there are really two divisions: the democratic (or, at least, representative) and the anti-democratic. The judiciary is anti-democratic by design, a hedge against what James Madison called "the tyranny of the majority". Federal judges are appointed for life, can never have their salaries reduced, and answer to no one -- except for personal malfeasance.

The judiciary has the legal authority to tell the rest of the government to go jump in the lake. If a case comes before them in which a law causes violation of a citizen's constitutional rights, they can strike down the law. This is one of the oldest principles in American law, going back to Madison v Marbury in 1803.

The Judiciary would be really scary if it had any power to go along with that authority. It has no police, no army, no taxing authority. It relies on the moral authority to get the acquiescence of the other branches. In the end, the whole dance comes down to the will of the people. Congress and the President don't really have to go along with court decisions, but they must stand for election. So long as they believe in the legitimacy of governmental roles -- or fear for their own continued power, it more or less works.

It has always been possible to prosecute or sue corrupt officials, but their is a catch. Officials are protected from suit for carrying out their official duties. That is annoying but essential. Officials must be free to do their jobs or government would grind to a halt.

> At some point in our lives, we have to rely on the judgment of doctors, architects, auto mechanics, police officers and others who could not effectively do their jobs without some room for discretion.

All of which have competition and must therefore satisfy their customers in order to make a living. None of which may use coercion to keep customers, or extract payments for services not explicitly requested.

Government does not allow competition. Government is by definition a monopoly on the use of coercion, extracting its operating funds at gun point.

Hardly a fair comparison.

A fair comparison is between the tax man and the mob enforcer, the Mayor and the Godfather. What is most interesting is that many people turned to the mob for "justice" because the mobsters were internally less corrupt than the police and courts.

You choose to support an arbitrary state because you consider the alternative unworkable.

But what is the alternative? A lack of coercion. Voluntary cooperation by interested individuals to achieve goals. If you want a worst-case pissing match, I'll put the 200,000,000 people dead at the hands of their _own_ governments during just the 20th century (not including wars) up against any private crimes that have been committed. Mere criminals cannot even come close to the shadow cast by the death toll of those who "legitimately" wield their power over others.

Child molestation? Did the child consent? No? Ooops, too bad, you can't blame that one on voluntary cooperation.

> You argue for the privacy and freedom that let's them prey on innocent children.

Damn right I do. The alternative, where there is no privacy or freedom, means death and destruction for children as well as everyone else. Or did you think the cattle-cars were filled with only the consenting adults? That the sick and starving because of government "sanctions" were only some other governments workers?

Now please tell me: If you are so against child molestation, and you fully expect me to be against it also, why do you think that you, and I, and other interested individuals (such as the child's parents, relatives, related charitable organizations, etc) WON'T hunt down such vermin and give them the repercussions for their molestation that they so richly deserve?

Next, please tell me: Why is it wrong for someone to rob me to support themselves, but it is ok for a tax man to use exactly the same threat of force to pay his own salary? Because it is called a "tax" that makes theft ok?

Either something (murder, robbery, rape) is wrong, or it is not. Having two sets of rules, one where something is called theft for some people and eminent domain for others, is hypocrisy.

I refuse to be a hypocrite.

The more I have read, the more I have lived, the more I have become convinced that there is nothing good that government does that cannot be done more efficiently and more effectively, and with greater "justice", through voluntary cooperation rather than coercion.

I have given you several citations and recommended reading, have you bothered?

Are you willing to entertain the idea that freedom can work?

Even if nothing else, I am very interested in your reaction to the following discussion: http://www.mises.org/mp3/MU2004/Long2.mp3

> That's why the Bill of Rights is there and why the second amendment is the right to bear arms.

Which is interesting, because you ignored my assertion that there could not be 20,000+ gun prohibitions on the books _legally_ with the 2nd Amendment in place. That is because government agents are not subject to the law. Not even the highest and most explicitly framed laws, when acting under the _colour_ of law.

Which brings us full circle: The government of the United States is immune from prosecution for breaking the law.

> Life intervenes. Wife, kids, broken car, etc.

All of which you do without coercion, which is an-archy.

Except the kids, over which you exercise non-arbitrary authority.

> Reading is down the list. So what?

I'm actually quite happy that you decide what you will and will not do, regardless of the opinions of others. It means that you already live your life in an an-archic fashion.

> Are you?

I'm not the one defending arbitrary authority. By definition, I am entertaining the idea that complete liberty works, and works very well day in and day out already.

> You seem only to like a picture of freedom that is precisely YOUR picture.

Non sequiter, for two reasons.

1) I accepted your bad-example of "freedom" above, and dealt with it through voluntary cooperation. So even your "bad" picture, that there will be abusive people, I accept because there are abusive people _now_, even in an environment of arbitrary coercive authority.

2) Without coercion, I cannot enforce my "picture" of anything on anyone. If you wish to live your life by some particular set of rules, go right ahead. The limit is simply that, regardless of how many people agree with you (your "majority"), using coercion against someone is wrong. It's called the "Non-Aggression Principle."

Non-aggression. This is not _my_ picture, it is the basic rule by which each of us lives our lives day in and day out, including you. Unilateral changes in contracts are considered abuse in every situation we all encounter except one: The state maintains the monopoly on the use of coercion.

Logically, that means that there is no requirement for coercion between anyone. The state maintains that monopoly, and people get along just fine. Remove the coercive power of the state and what changes? Nothing, except that your property, life and money are yours to spend as you see fit rather than being stolen by force from you to pay for the programs of other people.

Which makes me wonder, why do you object to the idea that I might want _my_ picture of freedom, and yet espouse the need for me to live under _your_ picture?

> so the death penalty should be abolished?

The philosophical literature has gone into this one aspect of "justice" quite deeply. The conclusions are pretty much like this:

Restitution works for crimes up to murder, because restitution is "the restoral of what was lost." Since it is impossible to restore life, murder becomes a special case.

Without the monopoly on coercion that the state embodies, who could do the execution without themselves committing murder? Complete ostrisization(sp?) and outlawry is a possible punishment. One of the better fiction books to take on this subject utilizes the duel for this extreme situation, where someone who is actively evil would have many people ready to stand up and challenge them.

http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=1

Or for people who don't like the comic book format or are otherwise impatient, the "You can't touch me because I'm free too" sequence and duel, with lots of echos of Dino's pro-state arguments, starts on page 159.

http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=159

But getting back to reality, most violent crimes in the US are related to drug trafficking and gang turf wars. Without the artificially high profits available to the most ruthless and violent through the various prohibitions we live under, there is less profit to be made by being violent. Just as crime rates dropped after the 18th Amendment was repealed, with the repeal of the prohibitions we live under now those crimes vanish. No one ever killed anyone over aspirin distribution territories.

With a removal of the legal prohibitions against self defense, what we would see is a continued experience of what has been seen in every place where private firearms ownership and self defense have been made less illegal: Crime rates plummet. Criminal don't want to die, and the cost/benefit analysis of "take the purse and maybe get shot" means less purses get taken, etc.

Those who tend to commit violent crimes would also tend to themselves get killed by their "victims", thus reducing any need for the death penalty still further.

But I don't have one answer. I don't have a perfect answer, and I'm not going to say that any particular answer is going to work every time. The state _does_ claim to have the answers, and then fails because of the primary deficiency of arbitrary authority: It is _arbitrary_! As inefficient as dealing with life one case at a time may seem, at least without the state monopoly no one is going to be forced to subsidize or patronize a system they think is unjust or inefficient.

Just as with every other free market service, costs drop and quality increases over time. Justice is no different than any other service.

The comic above has lots of Socratic dialog discussing one possible system of justice, I highly recommend it.

The full novel is good to, AbeBooks.com has it cheap.

Sorry for hijacking the conversation, back on topic:

Quoting:how is it that something as important as elections are forced to rely on a known insecure technology, which has no proper audit trail, as to what the software is actually doing, and which can be compromised so easily.

I tried to fiend out for my country (NL). It's not to save costs, voting with voting-computers is more expensive than counting by hand. It's mainly convenience, incompetence and ignorance, and finally, a vendor lock-in, from which threats by the manufacturers of the software for the voting-computers arose (I will come back to the latter later). It's also because the government gave the organization of the elections almost away to companies (privatization). Therefore, the government isn't even able anymore to organize its own elections it seems.

As a result of this privatization, somewhere in the election process, the results of the elections are sent over GPRS using Windows XP (!). Why's that? Probably the same reason some cash withdrawal computers run Windows XP too: Everybody can work with it without the costs and efforts of training; and therefore it's cheaper for companies. Also, in my country, there's a TV show, where the results come in one municipality after the other. Every municipality wants to make themselves look good; there's also always a race to be the first municipality to deliver the results. Being one of the last municipalities, makes your municipality looks like it's still in the stone-age.

The efforts of a group of citizens, 'We don't trust voting-computers' has helped though. The SDU-voting computers were rejected two times, because the radiation was too high, and therefore the computers were suspect to eavesdropping; an eavesdropper could pick up radiowaves and thereby determine what the voter voted. This machines won't be allowed, until that case is resolved and the AIVD (Dutch intelligence) confirms the radiation will be low enough to make it almost impossible for eavesdroppers to pick up.

The issue of proprietary software, however, still remains. One problem is, the 'deputy minister' doesn't want to lose his face. It seems the (Groenendaal) proprietary Delphi-software which has been in use for years is an organic grown mess (a bit like the Linux-kernel, with the difference only a hand full of persons ever saw the actual closed-source code and nobody wants to speak about it). If that code ever becomes public, it will show the chairs of our governments have been handed out by faulty messy proprietary software for probably over a decade. Therefore, the deputy minister tries to stop making those source-code public at all costs, it seems.

It even seems, Groenendaal, the maker of the software* for the only other voting computer (NEDAP), threatened the government. Since the NEDAP was the only voting-computer which could be used after the rejection of the SDU, and the NEDAP computer can't work without the Groenendaal software, the government was locked in to this company. Therefore, the maker of the software threatened to withdraw his support from the coming provincial elections, if the state wouldn't buy his company. Without the help of this single one person (!), electronic - elections couldn't be held in my country. Sounds a bit like Microsoft, not?

Anyway, it seems two different committees are researching the problems at this moment, which is the way my country resolves problems in general.

In the meantime, it seems NEDAP is working on its own (open/proprietary? Still not known) software, and is also trying to sell lots of voting computers in the US state of New York... (People over there: Awake!)

*There's a funny anecdote about the maker of the software: When defending his software by saying it's secure, he said 'You can't play chess on our voting computers'. Not long thereafter, a group of hackers showed the contrary: By some modifications, the voting computers could be used to play chess.