Norwegian internet voting protocol revisited: ballot box and receipt generator are allowed to collude

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. open access articleNorway experienced internet voting in 2011 and 2013 for municipal and parliamentary elections, respectively. Its security depends on the assumptions that the involving organizations are completely independent, reliable, and the receipt codes are securely sent to the voters. In this paper, we point out the following aspects: - The vote privacy of the Norwegian scheme is violated if Ballot Box and Receipt Generator cooperate because the private key of Decryption Service can be obtained by the two former players. We propose a solution to avoid this issue without adding new players. - To assure the correctness, the receipt codes are sent to the voters over a pre‐channel (postal service) and a post‐channel (Short Message Service [SMS]). However, by holding both SMS and the postal receipt code, a voter can reveal his vote even after the elections. Albeit revoting is a fairly well solution for coercion or concealment, intentional vote revealing is still a problem. We suggest SMS only for notification of vote submission. - In case the codes are falsely generated or the pre‐channel is not secure, a vote can be counted for a different candidate without detection. We propose a solution in which voters verify the integrity of the postal receipt codes

A Simple Cast-as-Intended E-Voting Protocol by Using Secure Smart Cards

We propose a simple cast-as-intended remote e-voting protocol where the security is based on the use of secure (and trusted) smart cards that incorporate incard numeric keyboards and LCD displays, and can perform a limited number of cryptographic operations (like encryption, signing, and random number generation). The protocol, while very simple, is significantly more secure (in the sense of ``cast-as-intended\u27\u27) and convenient to use than the e-voting protocol currently used in Norway. The protocol is developed primarily with the idea of deploying it in Estonia within the next $3$ to $10$ years. Since in Estonia, a vast majority of the population already has ID-cards with digital signing and authentication functionality, and the use of ID-cards is a required prerequisite to participate in Estonian e-voting anyway, our assumption of every voter having a secure hardware token makes sense in this concrete context

Secure voting in the cloud using homomorphic encryption and mobile agents

While governments are transitioning to the cloud to leverage efficiency, transparency and accessibility advantages, public opinion - the backbone of democracy - is being left behind. Statistics show that traditional paper voting is failing to reach the technological-savvy generation, with voter turnout decreasing every election for many first-world countries. Remote electronic voting is a possible solution facilitator to this problem, but it still faces several security, privacy and accountability concerns. This paper introduces a practical application of partially homomorphic encryption to help address these challenges. We describe a cloud-based mobile electronic voting scheme, evaluating its security against a list of requirements, and benchmarking performance on the cloud and mobile devices. In order to protect voter privacy, we propose moving away from a public bulletin board so that no individual cipher votes are saved, while still allowing vote verification. As the majority of the security threats faced by electronic voting are from the underlying system, we also introduce the novel concept of using a dedicated hardware server for homomorphic tallying and decryption

On E-Vote Integrity in the Case of Malicious Voter Computers

Norway has started to implement e-voting (over the Internet, and by using voters\u27 own computers) within the next few years. The vulnerability of voter\u27s computers was identified as a serious threat to e-voting. In this paper, we study the vote integrity of e-voting when the voter computers cannot be trusted. First, we make a number of assumptions about the available infrastructure. In particular, we assume the existence of two out-of-band channels that do not depend on the voter computers. The first channel is used to transmit integrity check codes to the voters prior the election, and the second channel is used to transmit a check code, that corresponds to her vote, back to a voter just after his or her e-vote vast cast. For this we also introduce a new cryptographic protocol. We present the new protocol with enough details to facilitate an implementation, and also present the timings of an actual implementation

Representative democracy and climate change : Climate policy preferences and congruence between citizens and elected representatives

Denne avhandlingen tar for seg to viktige aspekter ved politikken i dag. For det første, koblingen mellom innbyggere, folkevalgte og offentlig politikk, som er essensielt for funksjonen til et representativt demokrati. For det andre, den globale samfunnsutfordringen klimaendringer. Jeg kombinerer to viktige forskningsfelt, (1) kongruens (samsvar) mellom folk og folkevalgte og (2) offentlig mening om klimaendringer, og analyserer hvor godt demokratiet fungerer når det gjelder å representere klimapolitiske preferanser. Jeg analyserer kongruens og i hvilken grad folk og folkevalgtes politiske preferanser samsvarer i Norge. Jeg bruker spørreundersøkelser fra Norsk medborgerpanel og representantpanel og stiller identiske spørsmål til innbyggere og representanter. Forskningsspørsmålene mine er hvorvidt folkevalgte er kongruente med velgerne, om noen grupper er bedre representert enn andre og om noen partier er flinkere til å representere klimapolitikk enn andre. Videre undersøker jeg hvordan støtte til politiske tiltak kan flyttes, og om mekanismer for å endre politisk støtte varierer mellom innbyggere og representanter, samt mellom spesifikke tiltak. Norge er et ideelt land å studere kongruens i grunnet det politiske systemet, et egalitært samfunn, høyt utdannede borgere, høy grad av sosial tillit og sosial mobilitet. Klimaendringer er en svært viktig og fremtredende sak. I tillegg er det tidskritisk og en økende etterspørsel etter politisk handling. Norge er imidlertid et paradoksalt tilfelle når det gjelder klimaendringer med et ønske om å være en leder i internasjonal klimapolitikk, samtidig som økonomien er avhengig av oljeindustrien. Avhandlingen består av tre artikler som alle omhandler aspekter ved støtte til klimatiltak og samsvar mellom folk og folkevalgte. I den første artikkelen (A1), «Unequal Representation of Women and Youth on Climate Policy Issues», undersøker jeg om deskriptivt underrepresenterte grupper også er underrepresenterte på klimaholdninger. Jeg analyserer kongruens mellom folk og folkevalgte på klimapolitikk i Norge og finner at det generelt er bra samsvar. Når folket deles inn i sosiodemografiske grupper derimot, er folkevalgte mindre kongruente med kvinner og unge enn de er med menn og eldre aldersgrupper. Dette viser en sammenheng mellom deskriptiv representasjon og representasjon av holdninger. Kvinner og unge har mer støtte til klimatiltak enn menn og eldre, og de er underrepresentert i formell politikk. Mannlige og eldre representanter representerer preferansene til deres samsvarende grupper bedre enn det kvinnelige og unge representanter gjør. Preferansene til kvinner og unge borgere er imidlertid bedre representert av deres egne grupper enn av alle representanter. I den andre artikkelen (A2), «Party-voter congruence: Representing climate policy preferences», ser jeg på de samme klimatiltakene som i A1, men i stedet for sosiodemografiske grupper, vendes linsen mot politiske partier. Jeg sammenligner preferansene til velgere og representanter i partiet de stemmer på. Partiene som best representerer sine velgeres klimapolitiske preferanser er større og såkalte «mainstream-partier» som i stor grad fanger opp alle velgere. De minst kongruente partiene er derimot mindre og mer nisje. Representanter fra Fremskrittspartiet (FrP) har minst samsvar med sine velgere på klimatiltak, mens representanter fra Arbeiderpartiet (Ap) har mest samsvar med velgerne. Miljøpartiet De Grønne (MDG) har størst sakseierskap i klimasaken, men et gjennomsnittlig nivå av kongruens. I den tredje artikkelen (A3), «Framing Climate Policy: Moving the public and elected representatives», flytter jeg fokus til hvordan støtte til politiske tiltak kan endres ettersom hvordan politikken formidles og rammes inn, og i hvilken grad slike effekter varierer mellom innbyggere og representanter. Hovedfunnene er at hvordan tiltak formidles og rammes inn har betydning for støtte. Effektene er betinget av hva slags tiltak som presenteres, så vel som publikumet det presenteres til. Innramming av tiltak fungerer best for mindre kontroversielle saker. Jeg finner at måten tiltakene rammes inn og formidles på kan styrke allerede eksisterende meninger om sakene. De samme rammene reduserer støtten til et tiltak med generelt lav oppslutning (karbonskatt på mat) samtidig som de øker støtten til et tiltak som allerede har høy oppslutning (utbygging av sykkelveier). Innramming har mer effekt på folk enn på folkevalgte. Dette fører til at meningene til folket flyttes nærmere representantene og dermed øker kongruensen mellom dem.This thesis deals with two important aspects in politics today. First, the linkage between citizens, elected representatives, and public policy, which is an essential topic for the functioning of representative democracy. Second, the global challenge that is climate change. I combine two important research fields, (1) issue congruence and (2) public opinion on climate change, and analyse how well democracy functions in terms of representing climate policy preferences. I analyse congruence and the degree to which citizens and elected representatives align on their policy preferences in Norway. I employ novel survey data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel and the Panel of Elected Representatives, asking identical questions to citizens and representatives. The main questions I pose are whether elected representatives are congruent with the electorate, whether some groups are better represented than others, whether some parties are better at representing climate policy than others, how to move policy support, and whether mechanisms to move policy support vary between citizens and representatives, as well as between specific policies. Norway makes for an ideal case to study congruence because of the Norwegian political system and its egalitarian society, a highly educated public, strong levels of social trust, and social mobility. As a highly salient issue, climate change makes for a good policy domain to focus on. In addition, the issue is pressing and demand for policy action is rising. However, Norway is a paradoxical case when it comes to climate change. Tensions and stakes are high as Norway desires to be an international leader in climate politics while simultaneously being economically dependent on the oil industry. This thesis consists of three articles, all dealing with aspects of climate policy support and congruence. In the first article (A1), “Unequal Representation of Women and Youth on Climate Policy Issues”, I explore whether descriptively underrepresented groups also are substantively underrepresented on climate issues. I study issue congruence between the public and elected representatives on climate policies in Norway and find high levels of overall congruence. However, when divided into sociodemographic groups, representatives are less congruent with women and youth, than they are with men and older age groups, linking descriptive and substantive representation. Women and youth support climate policies to a larger extent than their counterparts, and they are underrepresented in formal politics. Men and older representatives tend to represent the preferences of their matched groups better than women and younger representatives. However, the preferences of women and young citizens are (slightly) better represented by their own sub-groups, than by all representatives. In the second article (A2), “Party-voter congruence: Representing climate policy preferences”, I examine the same policy issues as A1, but instead of descriptive characteristics and sociodemographic groups, the lens is turned to political parties. When comparing voters to representatives in the party they vote for, issue congruence varies. The parties that do best in terms of representing climate policy preferences of their voters are the larger mainstream parties that tend to ‘catch all’ voters. The least congruent parties, on the other hand, are smaller, and more niche. Representatives from the right-wing Progress Party (FrP) are the least congruent with their voters, while the social democratic Labour Party (Ap) representatives are the most congruent with their voters. The Green Party (MDG) has the most issue ownership on climate issues and average levels of congruence. In the third article (A3), “Framing Climate Policy: Moving the public and elected representatives”, I shift the focus to how policy support can be moved by the framing of the issues, and the extent to which framing effects differ between citizens and representatives. The main findings are that framing does matter for policy support. Framing effects are conditioned on both types of policies as well as the audience. Framing policy issues works best for less controversial issues, and it impacts citizens more than politicians. I find that framing policy issues can strengthen general opinions. The same frames decrease support on a policy issue with generally low support (carbon tax on food) while simultaneously increasing support on a policy issue with high support (public spending on cycle lanes). Frames have more effects on citizens than representatives, subsequently making citizens more aligned with representatives, and increasing congruence between the two groups.Doktorgradsavhandlin

Future narratives for two locations in the Barents region

What does the future look like from the perspective of municipalities in various locations in the Barents region? What climatic, social and environmental challenges might there be, and how might local people respond? This report documents the results from two workshops held in Kirovsk and Bodø in 2015, addressing above questions. These workshops are part of a series of four workshops across the Barents region with the aim to build visions of different local futures in the Barents region under different climatic and socio-economic contexts. All workshops use the same methodology and research question, and connect local change to global scenarios. A secondary aim of this report is to offer a description of and reflection on the methods employed as a basis for further development of the approach. The method follows a bottom-up, participatory scenario building approach, and is based on identifying local drivers of change which are of especial importance or uncertainty in the region. These locally important drivers are then evaluated in the form of narratives in context of four different global scenarios of alternative futures of societal development, known as the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The entire exercise, from driver identification to narrative development, involves a mixture of local actors together with researchers, using knowledge and understanding from both communities. The resulting narratives highlight locally important issues different from pan-Arctic evaluations of future change. They also show that local development is perceived as closely linked to global processes, such as changes related to climate, but especially socio-economic factors such as demography, resource markets or politics

"Taking part in society the way I am". An exploration of active citizenship norms in Denmark and Norway

Active citizenship is a seductive concept alluding to unquestionably positive values such as neighbourliness, community work, solidarity, and democratic participation. Although it might seem like a descriptive term, active citizenship is used in political rhetoric and carries normative expectations towards citizens who must demonstrate certain qualities and attitudes that are deemed desirable for the nation. In this normative way, the concept is often applied to specific segments of the population, such as the poor, disabled or immigrants, producing morally loaded differentiations between ‘desirable’ citizens who are active in the ‘right’ ways, and ‘less desirable’ citizens who are presumably passive and need to be activated. In this dissertation, I explore how individuals living in Norway and Denmark subscribe to, contest, and resist prevalent norms of active citizenship. I focus specifically on civic engagement, looking at how the lived experiences of people impact their understandings of what it means to be an active citizen. My fieldwork is ethnographic, and consists of interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observations in five different localities in Oslo and Copenhagen with 123 individuals. I find in my study that participation norms articulated in Danish and Norwegian policy discourses are widely asserted, yet they are also contested and resisted by variously situated individuals. On the one hand, people expect themselves and others to contribute to society in ways that are highly aligned with national policy aims. On the other hand, individuals, most particularly those occupying minoritized positions and living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, challenge and resist exclusionary participatory norms and argue for the recognition of currently ‘invisible’ ways of contributing to society. I draw mainly from scholarship on feminist citizenship and citizenship geography that conceptualizes citizenship as a lived experience embedded in power relations, identities, and places (Desforges, Jones, & Woods, 2005; Lister, 2007; Wood, 2013; Young, 2000). By engaging in this study, the dissertation aims to advance existing research on the participatory dimension of citizenship from a perspective intended to stimulate reflections about dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the Norwegian and Danish societies. My contribution to feminist scholarly citizenship debates is two-fold. First, drawing on the recent work of Bridget Anderson (2013, 2014), I empirically demonstrate that active citizenship is more than just a civic obligation and a democratic right; it is also a norm that creates internal boundaries between the ‘good citizens’ and the ‘not-good-enough’. Applying West and Fenstermaker’s (1995) approach of intersectionality, I analyse the multiple and intersecting power dimensions that inform active citizenship norms, and how such norms are (re)produced and challenged by individuals in both the private and the public spheres (Plummer, 2001, 2003). Second, my dissertation moves beyond binary discussions of active citizenship as either a disciplinary or an empowering practice (Isin, 2008; Newman, 2013; Newman & Tonkens, 2011; Segal, 2013) by demonstrating how people sustain, contest and resist active citizenship norms in a contextually situated way. This doctoral research calls for taking seriously how everyday spaces of belonging and lived experiences impact practices of active citizenship and understandings of civic responsibility. By doing so, it widens the definition of what it means to be a contributing member of society to include marginalized practices and spaces that are often overlooked in dominant articulations of active citizenship. The dissertation concludes that active citizenship norms, although articulated through political, policy, and academic discourses, are also sustained, challenged, and resisted by individuals through their subjective experiences and across various spaces and scales of belonging both within and beyond the nation-state.Doktorgradsavhandlin

A Cloud-based Intrusion Detection and Prevention System for Mobile Voting in South Africa

Publishe ThesisInformation and Communication Technology (ICT) has given rise to new technologies and solutions that were not possible a few years ago. One of these new technologies is electronic voting, also known as e-voting, which is the use of computerised equipment to cast a vote. One of the subsets of e-voting is mobile voting (m-voting). M-voting is the use of mobile phones to cast a vote outside the restricted electoral boundaries. Mobile phones are pervasive; they offer connection anywhere, at any time. However, utilising a fast-growing medium such as the mobile phone to cast a vote, poses various new security threats and challenges. Mobile phones utilise equivalent software design used by personal computers which makes them vulnerable or exposed to parallel security challenges like viruses, Trojans and worms. In the past, security solutions for mobile phones encountered several restrictions in practice. Several methods were used; however, these methods were developed to allow lightweight intrusion detection software to operate directly on the mobile phone. Nevertheless, such security solutions are bound to fail securing a device from intrusions as they are constrained by the restricted memory, storage, computational resources, and battery power of mobile phones. This study compared and evaluated two intrusion detection systems (IDSs), namely Snort and Suricata, in order to propose a cloud-based intrusion detection and prevention system (CIDPS) for m-voting in South Africa. It employed simulation as the primary research strategy to evaluate the IDSs. A quantitative research method was used to collect and analyse data. The researcher established that as much as Snort has been the preferred intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS) in the past, Suricata presented more effective and accurate results close to what the researcher anticipated. The results also revealed that, though Suricata was proven effective enough to protect m-voting while saving the computational resources of mobile phones, more work needs to be done to alleviate the false-negative alerts caused by the anomaly detection method. This study adopted Suricata as a suitable cloud-based analysis engine to protect a mobile voting application like XaP

Internet Voting in Austria: History, Development, and Building Blocks for the Future

This dissertation aims to investigate the origins of Internet voting, analyze several deployments of Internet voting technology in Austria and identify - based on these accumulated experiences - building blocks that can be useful in decision-making on and planning of future uses of Internet voting technology within Austria and throughout the world. In line with the goals of this thesis, it will address the following research questions: - How did Internet voting originate? - What experiences were noted in the process of implementing Internet voting in Austria? - What building blocks can be identified for developing future Internet voting both inside and outside Austria? Internet voting is part of a transformational movement that applies information and communication technologies to daily business activities. It is only logical that elections are also considered for applying electronic (remote) communication technologies. While early efforts were driven by the belief that elections could make easy use of the Internet, it was shown that while the principles have to be interpreted and consequently applied in a different way, the same principles can still be derived for Internet voting, like integrity, secrecy, transparency, accountability and public confidence. The need to have forms of decision making in electronic networks has been identified in its beginnings and has received continuous attention throughout its development. At the height of the excitement about the possibilities of the Internet, countries raced to become the first to run a legally binding election using electronic voting systems. While several candidates emerged (e.g., Costa Rica, Bosnia Herzegovina, Germany, United States), Estonia was victorious in 2005. To date, Estonia is the only country that has introduced this form of voting without any preconditions or other limitations. In Austria, the intentions to use information and communication technologies (ICT) in elections concentrated on parliamentary affairs. Spurred by the efforts around student elections in Germany, Austria sought to conduct Internet voting in 2000. In the years thereafter, considerable progress was made at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), and this progress spearheaded the debate in the early 2000s. At the beginning in the years 2001-2003, technical solutions were sought to verify voter eligibility and maintain voter privacy. Later, more sophisticated algorithms were developed, and functionalities like quotas in election commissions were added. The Federation of Students' elections in 2009 were a remarkable event that demonstrated highly contentious political debate around the topic. This debate continued after the elections, which were held in May 2009 and suffered from the intense debate and protests and consequential organizational shortcomings. The experiences also showed that accurate legal regulations are needed to show interaction with the constitutional legal texts and to ensure accountability to a remote electronic voting channel through legal means. International standards were a first step, but regulations based on actual experience were needed to show how remote electronic voting channels could be realized and how to avoid problems identified in pilot implementations. This practical knowledge also shows that sophisticated algorithms are not always the key to success. Rather, several key implementations make use of very basic technical means to realize the tasks given by law. One should not forget about the voters. They not only need to use such systems, but they also need to understand the processes in order to build trust. The constitutional court ruling lifted the election and ruled that the respective ordinance was not in line with the requirements of the law. Hereby, the court established higher requirements resulting barriers for offering Internet voting channels in future elections. While the election administration system, which was a pre-requisite for the Internet voting system, was discontinued in the election thereafter, it returned in recent elections where postal voting was offered. On the basis of the aforementioned experiences, twelve building blocks were compiled discovered. These include design decisions, such as the following: the form of electronic voting, adaptations of the legal base, the technical means for identification and secrecy, observation, control functions for the electoral commission, evaluation processes, transparency functions, ballot sheet designs, controlling the organizational context as well as providing options for planning and implementation. This framework therefore facilitates and eases the generation of feasibility studies and other analyses and decision making ahead of using Internet voting in an election. With little adaption it can also be used for the use of other voting technologies. This work utilizes theoretical work and knowledge from adaptations of legal texts. These texts cover a wide range of topics, including methods for implementing identification and anonymity functions in remote electronic voting as well as testing and certifying systems that require transparent procedures. The findings also show that implementing remote an electronic voting system is a complex topic. It requires trust in the election administration; otherwise, suspicion will arise when more technology is introduced and implemented in an election process. Remote electronic voting is one of the most challenging information technology (IT) projects