The digital election
OUT-LAW Radio, 28/09/2006
Hear from the people behind the world's first election using
digital pen and paper, which took place today in a small Scottish
town – and from the Swedish pirates planning to take over
Europe, in this week's podcast.
A text transcription follows.
This transcript is for anyone with a hearing impairment or who
for any other reason cannot listen to the MP3 audio file.
The following is the text spoken by OUT-LAW journalist Matthew
Magee.
Hello and welcome to OUT-LAW Radio, the weekly podcast that
keeps you up-to-date on all the twists and turns in the world of
technology law. Every week we bring you the latest news and in
depth features that help you to make sense of the ever-changing
laws that govern technology today.
My name is Matthew Magee, and coming up on this week's show we
look an electronic election with a difference – it uses pens and
paper. And we talk to the leader of the Swedish pirate party about
music, copyright and election disappointments.
But first, the news.
- A cheap internet router breaks the rules of 7 out of 10 top
ISPs.
- The US Government lobbied the European Commission on
Microsoft's behalf.
- And, the UK's top retail websites are failing the
disabled.
A router designed to share broadband internet connections with
third parties breaks the terms and conditions of seven of the top
10 UK internet service providers. Fon.com offers WI-FI routers for
as little as €5 and encourages connection sharing in a bid to build
a WI-FI community, but its policies could put users at odds with
their providers.
OUT-LAW has examined the terms and conditions of the 10 biggest
UK ISPs and found that only two allow connection sharing, while a
third allows sharing only if no charge is made. FON does allow
users to charge for access.
The US Government lobbied EU's competition commissioner in an
attempt to influence her on Microsoft's behalf. Commissioner Neelie
Kroes has said that the intervention was not welcome and that that
behaviour is "not done".
The US Embassy in Brussels contacted Kroes just before she was
to decide what fine to impose on Microsoft in an ongoing antitrust
battle with the company over its windows operating system. The
embassy asked her to be "nicer" to the world's biggest software
company. Kroes went ahead and fined Microsoft €280.5 million in
July.
The UK's top 30 shopping websites exclude disabled users, new
research has found. Usability agency Nomensa tested sites including
Ryanair, British Airways, Currys, Apple and Amazon.co.uk and found
that none fulfilled the most basic accessibility guidelines.
Though John Lewis, Marks and Spencer and Tesco were commended
for showing consideration for disabled users, not one site had
adequate descriptions of images, text alternatives and resizing
options necessary for disabled users.
As well as being Editor of OUT-LAW, Struan Robertson is a
Technology Lawyer specialising in usability for Pinsent Masons.
"There is commercial and ethical issues on
this but there is also a legal obligation for web sites to be
accessible to the disabled. There is no cause for panic when
you realise that there are problems with your website. The first
thing that is going to happen is not that you are going to get a
law suit coming through the door, it is going to be a complaint,
and how you deal with that complaint is going to be instrumental in
determining on whether it goes any further."
That was this weeks' OUT-LAW News.
Menstrie is a small town just outside Stirling that is fair to
say is unused to World firsts, but today officials from the
Electoral Commission, the Department of Constitutional Affairs and
the Scottish Executive are congregating there to observe the
World's first electronic election using pens and paper.
Looking for a system which finally solves the legal and
procedural problems long associated with electronic voting,
officials will be closely examining the results of a humble
community Council election held in one of the UK's smallest Local
Authorities.
Using digital pens and special marked paper, Menstrie voters
will today be putting crosses in boxes just as they have all their
voting life. This time though, the pen sends the vote via a
Bluetooth connection to a hidden mobile phone, which then sends it
onto a database to be counted. That count will be compared to the
physical ballot paper to find out just how accurate the system
is.
Responsible for making sure that the election is conducted
securely and legally is Returning Officer Rod Richardson. I asked
him what worries he had about the new technology.
"The first concern is obviously one of
risk. Untried technology equals big risk. We have worked
that down to very very low levels because of the size of election
and the type of election we are able to run it in tandem with a
traditional process. What we are trying to do is prove the
concept to the extent that it should no be ignored and indeed is
worthy of considerable investment and pilot in much more defined
circumstances, ie complying with electoral law in terms of the
Representation of the People Act."
The technology was put together by a Glasgow company called
Sysnet. Peter Burtwhistle talked me through just exactly what goes
on inside the polling booth, and even let me cast a vote.
PB: "A digital pen is just like an ordinary pen except it has a
little camera in the end of it and that camera takes about 80
pictures a second as you are writing. And as it is taking the
pictures, it is not photographing what you write, it is actually
photographing the pattern of dots on the paper. The pattern of
dots on the paper is really clever – mathematically it
identifies each individual sheet of paper. So the pen knows what
piece of paper it is writing on so in this case a ballot paper, and
it also knows exactly where on the paper you are writing. So for
example if you make a cross against any of these candidates, we
know if it is in the cross box.
MM: I am just going to cast a vote using a digital pen and
paper. The pen is as thick as a marker pen. The ballot paper, has
got lots and lots and lots of tiny little dots in funny little
patterns with white spaces between them, and otherwise it is an A4
sheet of paper that looks entirely like a ballot paper, so I am
going to cast a vote now. I've put a cross in one of the boxes and
then there is another little box which tells the pen to send the
vote to the system, so I put an X in that box as well. And the pen
buzzes in your hand, which is obviously it sending it. If you hear
the beep of a phone message, that is the vote being sent from the
pen to the telephone, and that is the vote cast."
Probably the most important thing about this system for those
concerned with the legality and accountability of elections is the
fact that there is a trail of ballot papers that can be manually
counted in the case of any suspicions. Richardson said that this
not only reassures voters, but that it was this which put his mind
at ease.
"The beauty of this system is the experience
for the voter is not very much different from what they would
experience with a graphite pencil. It relies as well upon the
fact that there is a bit of a paper there with a mark on it which
in evidential terms is significant. With this example, if we should
ever end up in Court where something was questioned, we could
produce the bits of paper, and verify what had occurred."
There is just one remaining potential problem: what with
people's votes flying through the air on Bluetooth connections and
text messages, is the information secure? Is there any chance that
the principle of voter secrecy can be compromised? I put that
question to the man who brought the system to Clackmannanshire
Council after using it for other purposes in Leeds City Council,
Barry Dickson.
"In terms of the actual data transmission,
it is very secure. In fact when I was working at Leeds we did ask
about the data security and our technology partners there actually
told us that it was accepted by the US Military in terms of data
security and also US banking systems. So if it passed those guys
scrutiny, we felt that we did not need to you know challenge the
data integrity during the transmission process."
The whole operation will conclude this evening with Rod
Richardson opening a sealed envelope containing the only username
and password that can open up the database. He will then see a
preliminary result within 30 seconds of the last vote being cast.
This time round, it is still the bits of paper that count for the
final tally, but Menstrie may well be bearing the first witness to
a new, safer electronic voting system.
Sticking with elections, last week one of the oddest phenomenons
of recent European politics had its first stern test. File sharing
activist group the Pirate Party faced its first election in the
home of the party's birth, Sweden. Looking for 4% of the vote to
attain a seat in Parliament, or at least 1% to qualify for public
funding, the party received a surprising 0.63%. In the aftermath of
that defeat Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge revealed his big
plans for Europe's first pan European party, but first he told me
about his reaction to that disappointing election night.
"I was, lets say I was taken aback at first
because we had expected high numbers, but once the feedback started
rolling in saying that you guys don't understand that this was a
fantastic result. You sort of start shifting a bit and realise that
ok, maybe this wasn't so bad after all. We have seriously
influenced the debate here in Sweden. All of the established
parties save one have shifted feet on their stance towards file
sharing and corporate regime."
Sweden has long had a different view on copyright to the rest of
Europe. Unauthorised file sharing of copyrighted music and movies
is incredibly popular and policies of the Pirate Party are radical
and extend far beyond mere file sharing and into a broad civil
liberties platform.
"We are saying that a citizen free of
suspicion must be free of intrusion into his or her private life by
the Government. That we are profile sharing is a consequence of us
being pro civil liberties."
Though he was disappointed with last week's result, Falkvinge
says the party is now taken seriously and that other parties are
using its policies as their own. He recognises whole pages in other
parties' manifestos, he says, and is proud of it. That respect has
spurred him on, and he is now forming more ambitious plans
than ever. He wants to form the first pan-European party fighting
European elections on a common platform.
"We are investigating the possibility to run as the first major
pan-European party with a common platform across all countries and
we are seeing this as the next logical step that we should run on a
common platform throughout Europe that if you look at for example
the French Pirate Party or the Spanish Pirate Party, they should
have the same programme as the Swedish Pirate Party when we run for
the Common
Rick Falvinge there, with possibly the birth of a new
pan-European political movement.
That's all we have time for this week, thanks for listening.
Why not get in touch with OUT-LAW Radio? Do you have a legal
problem you would like us to discuss on air? Do you know of a
technology law story? We'd love to hear from you on radio@out-law.com.
Make sure you tune in next week; for now, goodbye.
OUT-LAW Radio was produced and presented by Matthew
Magee for international law firm Pinsent Masons.
