Return to Geneva: Uncertainties and Options

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Cast-as-Intended Mechanism with Return Codes Based on PETs

We propose a method providing cast-as-intended verifiability for remote electronic voting. The method is based on plaintext equivalence tests (PETs), used to match the cast ballots against the pre-generated encrypted code tables. Our solution provides an attractive balance of security and functional properties. It is based on well-known cryptographic building blocks and relies on standard cryptographic assumptions, which allows for relatively simple security analysis. Our scheme is designed with a built-in fine-grained distributed trust mechanism based on threshold decryption. It, finally, imposes only very little additional computational burden on the voting platform, which is especially important when voters use devices of restricted computational power such as mobile phones. At the same time, the computational cost on the server side is very reasonable and scales well with the increasing ballot size

Vulnerability analysis of three remote voting methods

This article analyses three methods of remote voting in an uncontrolled environment: postal voting, internet voting and hybrid voting. It breaks down the voting process into different stages and compares their vulnerabilities considering criteria that must be respected in any democratic vote: confidentiality, anonymity, transparency, vote unicity and authenticity. Whether for safety or reliability, each vulnerability is quantified by three parameters: size, visibility and difficulty to achieve. The study concludes that the automatisation of treatments combined with the dematerialisation of the objects used during an election tends to substitute visible vulnerabilities of a lesser magnitude by invisible and widespread vulnerabilities.Comment: 15 page

HandiVote: simple, anonymous, and auditable electronic voting

We suggest a set of procedures utilising a range of technologies by which a major democratic deficit of modern society can be addressed. The mechanism, whilst it makes limited use of cryptographic techniques in the background, is based around objects and procedures with which voters are currently familiar. We believe that this holds considerable potential for the extension of democratic participation and control

Liberty versus security? EU asylum policy and the European Commission

The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) experienced significant developments during the Tampere programme (1999 – 2004). This article analyses how security is constituted or viewed by the European Union in the area of asylum policy; more importantly how the European Commission, in the face of the emerging discourse on the ‘war on terror’ decided to push for a more inclusive agenda. Thus, the European Commission can (though not always does) play a significant role in this process - the role of a supranational policy entrepreneur that enables the normative construction of a policy. The article analyses the high-profile case of the first phase of the CEAS, particularly the four main directives, its legal and political construction, and suggests the significance of the Commission in the political and normative process. Despite the challenges of the ‘war on terror’, the Commission managed to keep the CEAS within the limits of the Geneva Convention

The European Union and refugees: towards more restrictive asylum policies in the European Union?

Several scholars have argued that European countries have decided to cooperate on asylum and migration matters at the EU level in order to develop more restrictive policies. In particular, it has been argued that European states have ‘venue-shopped’ to a new policy-venue in order to escape national constraints. This paper puts this argument to the test by assessing the extent to which the development of EU cooperation on asylum matters has indeed led to the adoption of more restrictive asylum standards. The paper argues that, actually, EU asylum cooperation has led to an overall increase in protection standards for asylum-seekers and refugees. This outcome is explained by two main factors: the increasing ‘judicialisation’ of asylum in the EU and institutional changes in the EU asylum policy area that have strengthened the role of more ‘refugee-friendly’ institutions

ISEL: An e-Taxation System for Employers

In 2008 the State of Geneva modified its regulation on taxation at source in order to collect electronic fiscal data from employers. Indeed the latter provide data on their employees directly to the tax administration (AFC) and furthermore pay taxes to the State on behalf of their employees. They subtract the corresponding amounts from employees' income and refund that money to the fiscal administration. The taxation at source system is applied to foreigners who work in Switzerland or who receive Swiss pensions, to people who live in Geneva but work in other Cantons, as well as to performers, artists or speakers who work occasionally in Geneva. More than 12'000 companies and 117'000 employees are concerned by the scheme, and large companies provide data on several thousand employees. In the past these files provided by employers were handled semi-automatically by the AFC (at best). The new system (called ISEL for Impôt à la Source En Ligne) offers employers two electronic channels to provide data on employees: file transfer (.XSD) and internet e-form. This case study describes the ISEL project and its context, and discusses the issues raised by the introduction of this e-taxation system. On the human side, our paper takes a qualitative approach, based on interviews of various stakeholders involved in the project. They were asked questions on ISEL's functionality, usability, performance, and so on. On the technical side, the paper presents the architecting principles of the e-government approach in Geneva (Legality, Responsibility, Transparency and Symmetry) and the workflow that was implemented on top of AFC's legacy system.private public partnership; tax collection; e-services; e-government; data exchange; architecture; usability

Considering Human Aspects on Strategies for Designing and Managing Distributed Human Computation

A human computation system can be viewed as a distributed system in which the processors are humans, called workers. Such systems harness the cognitive power of a group of workers connected to the Internet to execute relatively simple tasks, whose solutions, once grouped, solve a problem that systems equipped with only machines could not solve satisfactorily. Examples of such systems are Amazon Mechanical Turk and the Zooniverse platform. A human computation application comprises a group of tasks, each of them can be performed by one worker. Tasks might have dependencies among each other. In this study, we propose a theoretical framework to analyze such type of application from a distributed systems point of view. Our framework is established on three dimensions that represent different perspectives in which human computation applications can be approached: quality-of-service requirements, design and management strategies, and human aspects. By using this framework, we review human computation in the perspective of programmers seeking to improve the design of human computation applications and managers seeking to increase the effectiveness of human computation infrastructures in running such applications. In doing so, besides integrating and organizing what has been done in this direction, we also put into perspective the fact that the human aspects of the workers in such systems introduce new challenges in terms of, for example, task assignment, dependency management, and fault prevention and tolerance. We discuss how they are related to distributed systems and other areas of knowledge.Comment: 3 figures, 1 tabl