You are right about "end-to-end verifiable". I misunderstood that.
About understanding what is happening, I have to say: No, I do not know every detail on how we do it in Germany. But I would say that I have a pretty good overview and trust in the system. We had minor election related scandals, but never on a larger scale. Everything happens under the eyes of many. Those many consist of volunteer. When I go to vote, I know some of them personally.
If somebody does not know how our system works, it is at least possible for him/her to find out and fully understand. There are some complains about our system, but none are about the risk of large scale fraud.
I don't know much about on how you do it in the US. I heard that it is more complicated than ours, and that using a computer would help a lot. But as I said, I would prefer to get the job done manually. It is possible. It worked before.
About online shopping. It is a trade-off.
I know I should not trust my computer. I know the current state of how we use ssl and our trust in different CAs is pretty bad. But I am still doing it, since I hate to go shopping in real live. For me it would be much more risky to get into my car and drive to a shop.
I would not want to trust my computer and the current state of how we use crypto with everything in any case.
I was more about bribing people to make mistakes during the implementation. And do you know for sure that there is not yet a quantum computer in some kids basement? :)
In some cases like "xor" with a random key, you can proof that the crypto is unbreakable. But the way people use it is often faulty. There are certain requirements that apply to the key and without them, the method is not secure any more. In other cases like RSA, there is no real proof that it is working. It is hard to proof that nobody will figure out an highly efficient way to do prime factorization. All we know is that many people tried and failed.
Public inspection of those computers is not really possible. How do you trust the hardware? It is more easy to show that something does something. But it is hard to proof that something is not doing something.
We would use computers to do the calculations that prove that our votes are ok.. so we need to trust those machines again..
In the worst scenario the privacy of the system may be breached but the integrity of the system is always preserved. Let us emphasize this a bit more. Let us consider the unlikely, worst-case scenario where a hacker gets full control of both the software and all the secret keys of the system. Even in this case, the system guarantees that if the hacker tries to change the posted votes or the tallied result, then auditors would detect the attempt and reveal the forgery. Thus, if the elections pass audit and are successfully verified by voters, then voters can be assured that the election results are correct.
About understanding what is happening, I have to say: No, I do not know every detail on how we do it in Germany. But I would say that I have a pretty good overview and trust in the system. We had minor election related scandals, but never on a larger scale. Everything happens under the eyes of many. Those many consist of volunteer. When I go to vote, I know some of them personally. If somebody does not know how our system works, it is at least possible for him/her to find out and fully understand. There are some complains about our system, but none are about the risk of large scale fraud.
I don't know much about on how you do it in the US. I heard that it is more complicated than ours, and that using a computer would help a lot. But as I said, I would prefer to get the job done manually. It is possible. It worked before.
About online shopping. It is a trade-off.
I know I should not trust my computer. I know the current state of how we use ssl and our trust in different CAs is pretty bad. But I am still doing it, since I hate to go shopping in real live. For me it would be much more risky to get into my car and drive to a shop. I would not want to trust my computer and the current state of how we use crypto with everything in any case.
I was more about bribing people to make mistakes during the implementation. And do you know for sure that there is not yet a quantum computer in some kids basement? :)
In some cases like "xor" with a random key, you can proof that the crypto is unbreakable. But the way people use it is often faulty. There are certain requirements that apply to the key and without them, the method is not secure any more. In other cases like RSA, there is no real proof that it is working. It is hard to proof that nobody will figure out an highly efficient way to do prime factorization. All we know is that many people tried and failed.
Public inspection of those computers is not really possible. How do you trust the hardware? It is more easy to show that something does something. But it is hard to proof that something is not doing something. We would use computers to do the calculations that prove that our votes are ok.. so we need to trust those machines again..