¶ Enhancing Transparency in Election Technology
Welcome to another episode of Privacy Please , where we break down complicated tech stuff into bits everyone can understand . We're your hosts , Cameron Ivory and Gabe Gumps . I'm gonna break a little bit down of enhancing transparency in that overall election process . How you been , Cam .
Doing well , doing well . What are we talking about today , gabe ? Actually , you know what , how you doing .
I'm solid . No complaints out here . We've got a couple hurricanes behind us at this point , so you know things are looking up .
They are looking up and outward and , yeah , we got some decent fall weather these last few weeks , which is nice yeah .
As we roll into election season .
Yeah .
Actually , I mean technically , I guess we're already in election season . We've been in election season , by my count , for like 20 years , though I don't know if the election season stopped since 2014 or maybe even before that . But yeah , that's what we're going to . We're going to break some of that down today .
We're going to break a little bit down of enhancing transparency in that overall election process through technology . Privacy and security are very intimate parts of our election process , extremely important parts of our election process the validity of every vote one man , one woman , one vote and the privacy with which we can establish ourselves under that rule .
So we should get into that today . There's a lot of technology at the center of elections . A couple of years ago it was election voting machines were at the center of elections from a technology perspective and there was a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not those machines did their jobs properly and things of that nature .
And so again , transparency in the process , jobs properly and things of that nature . And so again , transparency in the process . Those machines very intentionally spit out paper records still , because as transparency goes , believe it or not , nothing beats good old fashioned papers . Nothing beats good old fashioned paper .
But as an election process goes , and , as transparency goes , there's a need for transparency through other parts of the process , not just the actual voting part of the process , but the information that people consume to make those ever so important decisions as to who they're casting their vote for . And so there's been a lot of AI generated misinformation .
We can talk about the dead internet theory , where there's more bots online than humans . I believe it . I put a handful of those bots out there myself like guilty as charged , but they're not spewing misinformation , but AI generated misinformation from deep fakes . So you've got your video and your audio , just to the written , is really good , really really good .
And so it's not easy for even sometimes the more experienced of us to discern what this content is , the validity of it , where it comes from , et cetera . And so there's a lot of technology . That has been well .
We've been at this show now for five years , and in that five years alone we've seen a lot of privacy preserving and privacy enhancing technologies really take off , including the decentralized privacy preserving and protecting space right . There's been a lot of- .
That was my first question for you . Yeah , Since we're on that topic , just for the listeners and everything . When it comes to decentralized technology , Gabe , from your view , how does decentralized technology differ from traditional systems ? Or in the context of something like the selection or security or whatever ?
lot about things like censorship on those closed platforms , right ? So if you take X , for example , aka Twitter , it is a centralized platform . It's owned and operated by one individual right Like one person , one entity , if you would . However , there are other similar platforms , right ? Mastodon comes to mind .
Mastodon is probably the most known popular decentralized federated network that looks , feels , acts like Twitter does . It's an alternative to Twitter and so there's a lot more transparency , for example , in who is making decisions about what content ends up on Mastodon .
And there are different Mastodon instances , so you can run one , I can run one , and then you and I can federate so that your post that ends up on your server is also in mine and vice versa . Or you could say you know what ? Cam's gone off the deep end . I don't trust the content on that network any longer .
You can remove , you can deassociate , you can defederate from that network , right . So there's some transparency in the who controls the platform . That's not to still say that you know there isn't trust involved , like anyone on our Mastodon networks has to trust that Cam and Gabe are actually doing all of the right things by us from a privacy perspective .
But the primary difference between centralized and decentralized is ownership , and with that ownership comes the ability to make decisions , privacy impacting decisions , censorship decisions . Do I let them advertise it , do I not ? Do I silently suppress some of the things they try to share , do I not ? There's all of those things .
Are there people having conversations on the platform that we find problematic to our own agenda and so we retaliate ? There are all of those things . Decentralization has been very popular across a number of things . In the money world , we've seen a lot of all the random coins pop up , all the random digital coins . Decentralizing who owns the money ?
Right , you know , we take Bitcoin as the primary example . But you have a central banking authority held in the World Bank . You have that in the US government . You have a central banking authority , et cetera . But things like Bitcoin give you a decentralized option for that . No one gets to control the creation , distribution , et cetera , of that money .
So , that's a lot of what we see coming to the forefront of how do we enhance transparency in the overall election process as it pertains to information , and I think things like decentralized social networks are a really really , really , really good place to start with that Really good place to start .
Yeah , and since we're on that topic , when you mentioned the things that we talk about on the show , just as a reminder , disclaimer , it's not legal advice . We're not lawyers . Everything we say is our opinions , not our companies . You know things like that . So , again , we appreciate everyone that tunes in . So these anyways .
I am indeed not a lawyer , so do not at me . Do not at me .
I know a thing or two about decentralized networks , so if you want to at me on that topic , go ahead and take your chances . For sure , go ahead and take your chances . But no definitely not legal advice . This is just good life advice we're slinging out to you .
That's right . What about blockchain ? What does that have to do with elections , Gabe ? What role does that have to do with elections , Gabe ? What role does that have in elections ?
Blockchains provide a mechanism for openly recording transactions . Right Like , you , can openly record a transaction and make that transaction immutable , namely no one else can ever change that . So you can track the history of it , and so you know . There's been talks of using blockchain-like technology in the voting process itself .
Right Like , I cast my vote on a blockchain . It should ostensibly be preserved there forever . It is also not quite as private , though , right ? So one of the things about blockchain is it is posted for all to see . That is part of the transparency in it .
So when you , for example , when you use Bitcoin and you send money from one wallet to another , that transaction is publicly posted . It is very much captured forever and all time to always see . But you could also tell like wallet A sent $10 to wallet B , and I know that wallet A belongs to Gabe and wallet B belongs to Cam .
So there is so much transparency in things like blockchain that it doesn't always serve well for also preserving privacy .
¶ Exploring Trust in Decentralized Technology
There's a lot of things that have sprung up in the world to help with that , like tumblers , et cetera , but that probably wouldn't work in . Maybe it would . I don't know how well that would work in the voting scenario , but then again , there's still the . Now you have to trust the nodes in this blockchain system that they are indeed not .
They haven't been , for example , some blockchain technologies . It's a majority vote thing right , like all of the checks are done , and if 51% of all of the nodes agree that this is accurate and right , then it is . But there are ways in which one could take over such a system . They're not silver bullets .
Things like blockchain are definitely not silver bullets to decentralization , but a very , very important cog in that , in that machine yeah , it's good to know .
How much do you know about cryptographic tools ?
decent amount . It depends on how far down the stack we want to go . I dabble dabble as as as an armchair understander of topics in that realm specifically , but definitely not a lot deeper than that . We've got some friends in the network , though , and the Friends and Family Network we could probably bring on to talk about it .
Yeah , I'd be interested to know about that because you know , when it comes to tracking media providence and changes , and yeah , yeah .
Is that piece of information ? Who it said it's from ? So back to the deep fake thing .
Right like I can stand up a website that looks and feels like a new independent website and then repost an article that I claim to be from the associated press , right which is a thing that , like other news , agencies cite other news agencies and most people don't go check those sources but the associated press as an entity and pretty much everyone in their
newsroom . They all have their own public keys that they use to secretly share , or not even secretly .
Let me rephrase that to validate who they are sharing information with and vice versa , so that you can actually , for example , validate , say , the provenance of the email you got came from Joe Smith at the Associated Press , extending that all the way out , so that the news articles themselves use some similar type of method , which would be great , just basic PGP
right , like just public key , private key pair , where every time an article is posted , it posted its key and then you could import into your browser . You know your key and then it can check .
And so , like you can , just like when you see the little lock in your browser that says , ah , my site is secure , like I went to chasecom and I logged in , you know , you can , you should , should be able to , should be able to beyond .
Theoretically we could , we could implement such technology in the real world to to prove the providence of things like news articles . But there's , there's very much a nesting doll of that all the way down like a .
I have to now also trust the associated press and although I might , you might not right like you know , that's that's pretty common I hear people voice their opinions on different news agencies Like I trust the Washington Post , I don't trust the Washington Post and so even if you can prove the provenance of it being from the Post , then there's still always a
trust element . But today there's a double trust element there's . I have to trust that . I trust the source and then I have to trust where I get that information from . If I didn't get it directly from a known location that the Washington Post posts information , like their webpage , their Twitter feed , then maybe I shouldn't trust it .
But we see a lot again of fakes and they're really , really good at just convincing you that that source is real and that story is real yeah , it's going to be interesting to see what happens over the next couple years .
For sure , when it comes to the ai thing . Um , you know , you see videos where they're clearly ai generated but I mean the impact of misinformation , especially when it comes to something like the election like we were talking about offline back in 2016 , 2015, . That election , was it 16 ?
16, .
I think , yeah , there was always that big concern of just you know , the voting and the ballots and the and the dis and misinformation that was swirling all around this .
I'd argue it's still there to today . It feels like it's not as loud as it has been in the past , but maybe some of us have just gotten better at filtering it out or just more deaf to some of it . But it hasn't exactly gone completely away .
No .
We can almost guarantee , given currently how close you know polls , air quotes , however accurate those things are . But you know , if they're fairly accurate and this race is as tight as it is here stateside , then there's almost guaranteed to be some voices that are going to call foul play . So you know again , transparency in that entire process .
How can technology come to its rescue ?
That's a good question . Yeah , going back to the decentralized technologies , do you think that there's any , would you know of any potential barriers on kind of implementing those technologies into , like an existing , the existing electoral systems that we have right now ?
your biggest barriers , everyone and everything . It take a lot of work to convince the entire american public to trust the process purely to technology . I think .
Yeah , because paper is a big thing . Still , paper is still a big thing .
I don't know how much people really trust digital . Maybe , they do right , Because I've heard people say things like well , my bank , I don't need ID to deposit a check into my bank account from my phone . It's like that's true , but have you ever seen how much fraud goes on in the banking world ?
Have you ever seen how much money is spent on anti-fraud systems in the banking world ? It's a lot . Do you know how much actual digital shenanigans occur in that world ? I think that would be one of the biggest barriers . It's convincing the people to trust the system . And then again it goes back to who's going to control the system .
It's a decentralized system .
Even the decentralized systems have to be owned by someone . Is this where we bring back a well-regulated cloud militia , a properly armed DevOps militia , to own and operate our decentralized technology stack ? There's definitely still some things that would have to occur there . Yeah , but I think your number one hurdle is I don't know .
Are you going to convince everyone of voting age from 18 to 80 and above right that they should trust this system ? I don't know . I will tell you right now . You would have a hard time convincing me . I would just as soon stick to paper .
Yeah , agreed , you would have a very difficult time convincing me .
I , by contrast , have been an ethical hacker for a healthy number of years , and so you know I live in my brain lives a different picture of technology and the ease with which it can be abused , so I don't think you can convince me .
Yeah , it's like bending the light . Yeah Well , I mean to kind of wrap things up here in terms like we've kind of already touched on this , but you know , the privacy and ethical considerations of blockchain and decentralized networks , technologies , whatever . I mean , what do you , what do you kind of see happening ?
What do you think we're going to see if this is going to start to be implemented ? I mean , is this something you see that actually will pay off in the end , or is it just going to be another thing ? I think we are .
I think we're a long way away from seeing it make a meaningful impact in our everyday lives , but I don't think it's going to fade . You know , again , it hasn't quite gotten groundswell amongst all the masses , but platforms like Mastodon are really taking off right , like decentralized Twitter .
There are decentralized versions of YouTube out there , right , similar platforms . I think at the ground level , like starting now , we'll see more of that .
We'll see more of this technology build itself up from the ground floor , more grassroots and , uh , eventually make its way into into more of of our lives in this , in this way yeah , a lot of things to think about .
Yeah , Just with future elections , and this topic of the thing that I always think about is and you talk about as well is , like you know , balancing that innovation and privacy and trust , and I think that's always going to be a challenge , but I'm glad that it's something that our leaders and our nerds , all the smart people that are figuring these things out and
putting them together it's I think it's top of mind for most of them . There's just so much that can go into this , I mean , especially with AI . Ai is it's going to start getting more and more implemented for more and more , more and more businesses and organizations too .
It's going to be interesting Because who you know ?
I mean , that's another , that's a whole other episode . Right there we're talking about the government , but We've never done an episode on just the government yes .
We should do an episode on the government . We'll invite the smoking man on and actually go as him for Halloween . The smoking man .
That could be interesting . Gabe , any other thoughts for the listeners before we wrap this one up . Anything to leave them .
Remember to trust but validate . Trust but validate that's your best weapon in today's world . Believe nothing you read and half of what you see .
That's good , that's good .
That's just good , solid advice right there .
Yeah , I would have to agree . Yeah , all right . Well , ladies and gentlemen , thank you so much for always supporting us . Gabe , as always , pleasure , always good to see you . Yes , sir , and we'll see you guys next week . Appreciate you . Don't forget to like , share , subscribe , smash that button . Smash that button . We'll see you guys next week .