Hacking Democracy

Last night I was watching Hacking Democracy — HBO documentary about holes found in US electronic voting system. Long time ago, the word "hacking" used to have positive connotation and required a lot of creativity and persistence. You would think that such an important system as a voting machine would have a lot of protection: encryption, private/public keys, intrusion detection, traps, access logs, and so on. At the very least, when the system is compromised there is a way of detecting that, right?

It was astounding to see how quickly and easily the vote totals on Diebold machine can be changed by simply launching Microsoft Access (!), opening the table and typing in the numbers. All that in a "nice" GUI. And, all that, without leaving any traces on the machine.

UPDATE. See also, Bruce Scheneier on Voting Technology and Security.