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A Democracy
The chief characteristic and distinguishing feature of a Democracy is: Rule by Omnipotent Majority. In a Democracy, The Individual, and any group of Individuals composing any Minority, have no protection against the unlimited power of The Majority. It is a case of Majority-over-Man.
Originally posted by Rren
Basically what you're proposing, and please correct me if i'm wrong, is abolishing the republic in favor of a true democracy, yes?
I'm not so sure it would have the outcome you hope for. Is it better to have a bunch of narrow-minded political hacks running the show or your average ignoramous. Let's be honest, on average the "average Joe" ain't too bright. Present company excluded of course.
Originally posted by shot messenger
You can't even kill em because they got suitcase nukes.
Originally posted by 12m8keall2c
IMO the fatal flaw starts with, "if properly monitored and administrated,".
Biometrics at forefront of Diebold's LatAm offerings
From the October 14, 2005 edition of Business News Americas
By Scott Sadowsky
US banking equipment supplier Diebold (NYSE: DBD) is introducing increasingly more biometric and other high-tech systems into the Latin American financial sector, said Diebold Colombia marketing and communications director Paula Bonilla.
Diebold has been offering biometric technology for over five years, beginning with a system implemented throughout Colombia to verify the identity of retirees picking up their pensions.
But the highlight of Diebold's offerings is its biometric solution for ATMs. The main obstacle to the use of this technology has been the lack of standardization among different biometric devices, a problem Diebold has tackled with proprietary middleware.
"Biometric algorithms vary from brand to brand, so what Diebold did was create middleware that runs on its Agilis platform to allow clients to implement whatever technology they choose - they are not obligated to use biometric devices from a specific provider," Bonilla told BNamericas.
Whereas most biometric identification systems merely generate readings, such as those used by police agencies, the Diebold software also performs identity verification, which greatly reduces processing time. Users first identify themselves using a number or code, and then the biometric data gathered by the ATM is compared to data that the bank has already collected on the customer.
Diebold recently finished a small test run of its biometric ATMs in Chile, and "the pilot units passed the test successfully," said Bonilla.
However, the mass implementation of these systems is not without obstacles.
"Latin American banks are in general somewhat conservative. They don't want to implement anything they fear might be poorly received by customers, and biometric technology can make people feel invaded to a certain extent. It's going to require a cultural and educational process," said Bonilla.
November 10, 2005
DIEBOLD ELECTION SYSTEMS’ TOUCH-SCREEN DEPLOYMENT DESCRIBED AS GREAT SUCCESS
Voters and elections officials praise the ease and speed of the Diebold AccuVote touch-screen voting system
ALLEN, Texas -- Across the country on Election Day, voters who had the opportunity to cast their vote on Diebold AccuVote touch-screen systems raved about the ease and speed of the high-tech process, and election officials received positive feedback from throughout the electorate.
Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell described Ohio's first large-scale use of modern voting systems as a great success. "It was a great day for Ohio voters. More than 15,000 new voting machines were used by nearly one million voters today and we were overwhelmed with positive reports," he said.
FallenFromTheTree said:
This is good news, but you still have to secure the tabulation servers or make the source code
available to independent inspections.
What goes in, must come out with a permanent and verifiable record. No exceptions!
As long as computers are in any way involved, this makes the system vulnerable.
Concealment of Known Flaws in Voting Machines
Additional facets of the company's internal structural problems were revealed in a series of previous BRAD BLOG articles reporting on an anonymous company insider we dubbed "DIEB-THROAT" who alerted us to the "Cyber Alert Warning" issued by a branch of the Dept. of Homeland Security in August of 2004. That warning concerned the vulnerability to hackers of Diebold's central vote tabulating software prior to last year's Presidential Election. The election watchdog organization BlackBoxVoting.org, who had first discovered the vulnerability, had also recently arranged for a computer security expert to successfully hack into actual Diebold voting machines used in Leon County, Florida without leaving any trace of the manipulation.
It was just several days after our first report on DIEB-THROAT that stock prices plunged at the company in September. Diebold attempted to blame their troubles, at the time, on bad weather in the gulf which lead our insider source to aver: "Using Hurricane Katrina is a poor excuse for bad products - the last time this kind of deception occurred it was called Enron."
Internet news site, The RAW STORY recently ran their own interview with DIEB-THROAT revealing still more structural problems within the company and its voting division. The report explained that the company was "plagued by technical woes," even as a Diebold spokesperson claimed the 144-year old company "has a sterling reputation in the industry."
I seem to remember reading about a movement for a true democracy back when the telephone was becoming widespread. The idea was since every house was getting a phone, they could just phone in votes every night for whatever issues were on the docket that day.
It could possibly work with the internet. The way I see it there would be daily "in session" votes that the News Hounds like us would follow and vote on, in effect becoming representatives ourselves. The more controversial or more center stage the issue, the more people take the time to vote. A rule could be set on how many votes would have to be logged in order for it to count.
It could work, but as someone earlier pointed out... there's no way the current power structure releases their grip on America. This would be a good idea for a "start-up" country like Iraq.
Originally posted by djohnsto77
I don't think we could ever become a true democracy. For one, our government is just too big for the average person to be able to intelligently decide on budget issues, etc. Also, it just leaves us way to vulnerable to the day to day whims of the people -- one day we'd be declaring war against France because Jacques Chirac was overheard saying something nasty about Americans and the next day we'd tire of war and surrender etc.
sardion2000 said:
The Individual is stupid but the whole is a genius. Just look at "Who Wants to be a Millionarre" for proof. The "Ask the Audience" option is usually right while the phone a friend is usually wrong(at least when I watched the show) Something similiar should be tried and poo-pohing it before it's even tried is well small-minded to say the least.
Same thing with Heinleins version of a future Government which I call a Veteranocracy(only those who've served at least a 4 year military term can vote it's detailed in Starship Troopers the Book)
people automatically say it would never work but we just do not know. Remember America is still an experiment in progress one that people thought would never work. I think we need to try this out and see what happens on a small scale at first and gradually scale it up. Of course we need to have a good Encryption Scheme for it to be viable but once we get there I don't see any reason why we should try it(and scrap it if its horrible)