New Jersey Lawsuit Challenges E-Voting; Border ID System Called Inadequate; New Tool Targets Spyware

New Jersey Lawsuit Challenges E-Voting

A group of concerned citizens and local elected officials have filed a lawsuit in New Jersey challenging the state’s use of electronic voting machines. The New York Times reports that the suit claims that the 8,000 electronic voting machines in the state cannot reliably record votes and therefore cannot adequately protect an individual’s right to vote. “The right to vote is simply too important to not try to get some sort of court intervention to protect it,” Penny M. Venetis, a law professor with the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers University and the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the suit, told the Times. According to the state’s attorney general, it would be imprudent to make changes this late in the process. The state’s attorney general’s office controls elections in New Jersey.

For more details, read the full article in The New York Times.

Border ID System Called Inadequate

The two-fingerprint system employed by government to catch terrorists before they enter the country is flawed, according to analysis by researchers at Stanford University. The Washington Post reports that the Stanford research suggests that the two-fingerprint system is only 53 percent reliable. Rep. Jim Turner (D-Tex.) sent a public letter to Homeland Defense Secretary Tom Ridge Friday with the study’s findings and a call to improve fingerprint identification systems. The fingerprint identification system is one measure that is part of the controversial US-VISIT program that requires foreign travelers to register before they arrive to the U.S. and have their fingerprints checked upon entering and exiting the country. Experts say a 10 fingerprint system would be more reliable.

For more details, read the full report in the Washington Post.

New Tool Targets Spyware

Blue Coat Systems announced Monday a proxy-based gatweay antispyware tool that aims to prevent spyware from ever being downloaded on an enterprise user’s machine. Wayne Wichlacz, director of IT for the Green Bay Packers football team, said his organization has been testing the Blue Coat tool. “Our client support people had been spending like eight hours a week cleaning [spyware] off machines,” Wichlacz told Computerworld.

For more details, read the full story in Computerworld.