[MG] Pollserver Federation - Crosstalk between voting systems

[conseo]

 On Wed, 5 Jan 2011 22:11:04 +0100, Alex Rollin wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 7:49 PM, conseo <4consensus at web.de> wrote:
>> It shouldn't not be personal though.
>
> My point is exactly that.  I hope I can be clearer about it.  Let me
> try again:
>
> try not to take it personal if I come off as critical; it is not 
> meant
> to be personal; I am doing my best to focus on the objectives and
> issues, in my own human and limited ways; I am doing my best to 
> remove
> anything personal from what I'm  saying.

 +1. Sometimes it is also helpful to tell a personal opinion and mark 
 that as
 potential flaming, since this helps to discuss prejudices as well, 
 beforehand.
 Otherwise, when they keep stripped out and hidden, they might drive a 
 strange
 dynamic and create conflicts exactly in the neutral places, since the 
 unconcious
 wants to keep hidden ;-)

>
> On Tues, Jan 4, 2011 Alex Rollin wrote:
>>> Based on this need, then, I would say that there is a clear need 
>>> for
>>> at least 1 standard that allows all polling facilities to implement
>>> some form of identity check (that can be verified) to reach a 
>>> certain
>>> level of "certainty" that adequate steps, to a certain level of
>>> certainty, are being taken to eliminate duplicates.
>>
>> That is a *very* serious problem in my perspective which has been 
>> tackled
>> by Mike with a streetwiki/trust-network approach already.
>
> I am aware of this approach and I find it to be inadequate to my 
> needs
> and use case as my polity crosses extended geographic territory.

 Ok, I also still have issues with it, since geographical topography is 
 very
 restricting. In Germany they now create an electronic passport which 
 you can
 use at home with a special smart card reader to identify to 
 governmental
 institutions or private businesses. This can be worrysome, but it might 
 be
 interesting for us.

>
>> The approach that Thomas has proposed to me, was to create "admins" 
>> in
>> communities which are both trustworthy to the network and the member 
>> and
>> can prove the identity of every voter when queried. You would have a 
>> proxy
>> then who protects your official identity from the network. In a 
>> trust
>> network you can likely create valid admins out of the network as 
>> well.
>
> I am going to be implementing some form of process for identification
> verification within my own system that will be open to third party
> verification of some form.  This will make me an "admin" of this 
> type,
> and a "central authority."  A standard is the key to spreading this
> power out, though, as I am not interesting in monopolizing identity
> verification, and I don't think a monopoly serves anyone.  I think
> that we should work together on something like this.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_verification
> http://www.idology.com/
> At which point I will issue something like an RSA key:
> http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=3347

 Sure, I am interested in this problem as well. I will have a look at 
 it,
 once I got a first version of the diff-feeder in Votorola.

>
> Like a bank, basically.  In Europe this type of authentication is 
> very
> common for online banking, and I was issued a complex system with a
> USB key for my computer when I lived in China.  It is growing rather
> commonplace; there are reasons it is not perfect, but I cannot put
> everyone in a single neighborhood right now so they can knock on
> doors.  My system involves people voting for the disposition of real
> assets.  I will already have a need of their identity documents in
> order to enable their legal participation.

 This is a very good test case imo. I am curious about your concepts and
 experiences.

>
> I will write a standard for what I do and open myself to an external
> audit of my procedures and hope that other polling providers would do
> something similar.
>>
>> Still I don't know how you can avoid people registering with 
>> different
>> admins. Maybe the admins should visit each other regularly and 
>> compare addresses and identities?
>
> I'm primarily concerned about the people in "my system" who have a
> legal right to vote.  If other people think my standard is gold, then
> perhaps it will be sufficient to grant my users access to their 
> "other
> systems" as well.  I do not have need of address verification yet, 
> but
> at some point I will, I am sure.  In the meantime RSA with central
> authority to reset and reclaim accounts is sufficient, and auditing
> this system will come into play.

 Ok. So a trust level on the pollserver for register data sets might be 
 handy
 for the open network. But I definitely need to inform myself better 
 before
 I keep on discussing.

>
>> +1 But we still need to implement it. A standard without a reference
>> implementation is pretty useless.
> If several projects are working along the same lines drawing the
> conversation together towards a standard and a consensual "mandatory
> minimum implementation" the standard is Definitely not useless; far
> from it because, as Owen has pointed out, it is something to which we
> could all sign our names as a shared strategic plan and draw our
> communities together on.  Of course I want to implement it and will.
> My point was that my implementation may exceed the mandatory minimum,
> but I'd like to start the conversation there and connect what I'm
> doing with the work of others on this list.

 Of course. I was just mentioning it, because many FOSS projects have 
 already
 dreamed themselves to dead and on the code side it proved to be much 
 more
 difficult than in theory. I just say this work has to be done to create
 meaningful standards by exploring the technique practically. I also 
 like
 theoretical discussions more than programming because you can push your
 thoughts far out beyond the current state, so this was just my current
 reflection on my position. But you definitely need to push your 
 thoughts
 from time to time or you will lose yourself in meaningless details imo.

 Since we want to create a distributed network, we definitely need to 
 explore
 the underlying techniques as well, as this is a really heavy task imho.

>
>
> Alex

 conseo

>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: Start at metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org




Originally posted to the mailing list of the Metagovernment Project:
http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org