taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (06/25/86)
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Computers and Society Digest, Number 17
Friday, March 14th 1986
Topics of discussion in this issue...
Re: Ethical Issues with technology
Re: Social Classes
Baby Booms
Re: Computers and Society Digest #16
SPECIAL NOTE: As of high noon on the 14th of March I will no
longer be employeed by the Colorado Networks Divison of HP!!
I'm transfering to HP Labs to work in Sunny Palo Alto, so for
the next two weeks I'll be totally out of touch, and after that
my NEW email address will be either
hplabs!taylor
or taylor@HPLABS.CSNET
Feel free as always to send mail and core dumps (just joking)!
-- Dave
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From: Eyal mozes <ihnp4!wisdom.bitnet!eyal>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 86 13:55:32 -0200
Subject: Re: ethical issues with technology
The standard for responsibility should not be different than in any
other area: the "reasonable man" standard - could a person reasonably
foresee that his actions will cause the damage?
If an engineer has taken all reasonable safety measures when designing
a piece of equipment (or of software), has tested it rigorously, and it
then causes a death by a set of circumstances nobody could have
foreseen, then the engineer should NOT feel responsible. If he does,
this means that he feels guilty for being a fallible, non-omniscient
human being - and there is no reasonable standard for justifying such a
feeling. If everybody acted according to such feelings, then I don't
see how any technology would be possible at all - no-one would dare to
introduce it.
If we apply this standard to the hypothetical case of the pharmacy:
whether the designers and testers of the computer systems are
responsible depends on how rigorously they worked, and on whether they
could have foreseen the case of the two drugs; as for the pharmacist,
who trusted the system when its results contradicted his own knowledge,
he clearly is responsible.
As for the legal situation today, I think it is a disgrace. When we see
businesses losing "products liability" suits even though they had no
way of foreseeing the damage, we should start wondering whether
technological advance isn't going to be stopped completely by fear of
the courts.
Eyal Mozes
BITNET: eyal@wisdom
CSNET and ARPA: eyal%wisdom.bitnet@wiscvm.ARPA
UUCP: ..!ucbvax!eyal%wisdom.bitnet
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From: Eyal mozes <ihnp4!wisdom.bitnet!eyal>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 86 14:15:21 -0200
Subject: Re: social classes
I think your concept of an "elite class" is confused. The defining
characteristic of an elite class is LEGAL power - an elite class has
the government on its side, and can use it to oppress others.
People with access to computers may have the power to cause damage to
other people; so do people who are physically strong, or who own
knives, or who drive cars. This doesn't make them an elite class.
Your analogy of the hackers and the feudal rulers just doesn't fit.
The hackers didn't have the law on their side, they were criminals. A
more accurate analogy would be the mafia sending a goon to beat up
someone who criticized them; do you regard the mafia as an example of
an "elite class"?
If you want to advocate better security in computer systems, or harsher
penalties for those who maliciously use computers to harass other
people, then, of course, I completely agree. But I don't see what this
has to do with "social classes".
Eyal Mozes
BITNET: eyal@wisdom
CSNET and ARPA: eyal%wisdom.bitnet@wiscvm.ARPA
UUCP: ..!ucbvax!eyal%wisdom.bitnet
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Date: Fri 28 Feb 86 15:17:11-PST
From: Diana <hplabs!Egly%HP-HULK@HPLABS>
Subject: baby booms
Sorry to disillusion any romantics, but the much-touted relationship between
baby booms and blackouts is better explained by induced labor and seasonal
variations in birth rate. (This was a question on a mid-term in a stat class
I TA'ed.) The day nine months after the famed New York blackout was on a
Friday and the birth rate on any Friday is higher than it is other days of the
week. Also, the took as the two birth rates that they compared the one at the
time of the blackout and the one nine months later. If you instead take the
birth rate from a year earlier and correct for annual change in birth rate and
correct for the fact that the day nine months later was a Friday, there is no
correlation.
But I wonder why there is rioting after an un-natural disaster (like a
blackout) and rarely one after a natural disaster (like an earthquake)?
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Date: Tue, 4 Mar 86 11:56:04 pst
From: hplabs!nsc!sequent!brian (Brian Godfrey)
Subject: Re: Computers and Society Digest #16
>From: Kurt Hyde at DEC
>Subject: On the security of computerized voting
>
>How secure are computerized voting booths?
>
>Last year's class discovered that an OEM was manufacturing a computerized
>voting booth. Further research has revealed that the company's strategy for
>ensuring security is secrecy of operation. Secrecy of operation increases
>the difficultly in penetration, but it also has a negative side effect of
>making it difficult (if not impossible) to detect tampering.
>
>There are many documented cases of accidental miscalculation in computerized
>vote tallying equipment. The reasons why such errors were discovered is
>because reconstruction and recount was possible. Investigators
>reconstructed by gathering the machine-readable ballots. They were then
>able to recount by machine or by hand. Such reconstruction is impossible
>with the current state of the art in computerized voting booths because no
>physical ballots are created. Recounts in such cases are wholly dependent
>upon the software to have stored each vote in its proper storage location at
>the time of voting.
So fraud in computerized elections can be induced by tampering or by
computer/software error.
I don't think a tamperproof ballot system can be developed - computerized
or not. I think it would be easier to make a tamperproof computerized system.
This is because anybody can figure out how to stuff a ballot box. It would
take a special person and a lot of time to figure out how to stuff a computer
ballot box. Once a paper ballot box is stuffed, it would be hard to detect.
Recounts would yield the same results because the same fraudulent ballots
would be recounted. Once a computer polling device is tampered with to produce
a desired result it should be possible to go in and disassemble the software
and determine that tampering had occurred. Either way the tampering could
occur and either way someone would have to have reason to check for tampering.
If a popular candidate is defeated by a landslide (Like Cory Aquino was)
there may be reason to suspect tampering. If an election is close, no one
may ever suspect tampering.
The same is true for innocent computer/software error. If the results are
off by a shade, no one may ever notice. If the error is of a magnitude, or
the total ballots counted are more than there are voters, or whatever other
gross errors you can think of occur, then the error is pretty obvious and
a recount would be in order.
How would you recount the results of a computerized election? Obviously
the computer polling booth must make a hard copy. The votes would be sent
electronically to a counting computer for quick tallies, but a hard copy
would be generated which the voter checks for accuracy and deposits in a
regular ballot box in case there is a need for a recount. The printout
could be made on a cash register type paper roll using machine readable
type face.
This still would allow voter fraud, but it seems inconvenient enough
that it would not present an unduly high risk. Like I said, no system is,
or probably will ever be foolproof.
--Brian M. Godfrey
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NOTE: I'm changing positions within HP (hurrah!) so my new (NEW) email
address, as of the 14th of March, is hplabs!taylor or taylor@HPLABS.
The old addresses will work for a short while, but it's recommended
that you change over as soon as possible!
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End of Computers and Society Digest
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