DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Security guru Bruce Schneier dissects the papal election process in a 1750-word essay. He comes away impressed with the security of the procedure: it would be very hard to hack this election.

In related news, Diebold is not going after the papal election vote-machine market.

Schneier’s conclusions are interesting and disheartening:

[O]pen systems conducted within a known group make voting fraud much harder. Every step of the election process is observed by everyone, and everyone knows everyone, which makes it harder for someone to get away with anything. Second, small and simple elections are easier to secure. This kind of process works to elect a Pope or a club president, but quickly becomes unwieldy for a large-scale election.

I find this disheartening because it would be great to apply the procedures of the Congress of Cardinals to our own horribly flawed national election procedure… but due to scale, we can’t.