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Text Messages Used To Monitor Elections
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Apr 21, 2007 02:10 AM
from the getting-the-word-out dept.
from the getting-the-word-out dept.
InternetVoting writes "The upcoming historic Nigerian elections are going to be defended by an army of observers armed, not with guns, but with text messages. Every one of the observers will be outfitted with a cell phone to report vote tampering. The volunteers are a part of the Network of Mobile Election Monitors, and they use freeware to do what they do. From the article: 'NMEM is using a free system called Frontline SMS, developed by programmer Ken Banks, to keep track of all of the texts. Originally developed for conservationists to keep in touch with communities in National Parks in South Africa, the system allows mass-messaging to mobile phones and crucially the ability to reply to a central computer. It has already been used in countries such as Zimbabwe as a way of bypassing broadcast restrictions and distributing information to rural communities.'"
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An anonymous reader writes "Building off the design mandates of CALEA, the FBI has constructed a 'point-and-click surveillance system' that creates instant wiretaps on almost any communications device. A thousand pages of restricted documents released under the Freedom of Information Act were required to determine the veracity of this clandestine project, Wired News reports. Called the Digital Collection System Network, it connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure. From the article: 'FBI wiretapping rooms in field offices and undercover locations around the country are connected through a private, encrypted backbone that is separated from the internet. Sprint runs it on the government's behalf. The network allows an FBI agent in New York, for example, to remotely set up a wiretap on a cell phone based in Sacramento, California, and immediately learn the phone's location, then begin receiving conversations, text messages and voicemail pass codes in New York. With a few keystrokes, the agent can route the recordings to language specialists for translation.'"
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SQL (Score:1, Insightful)
select quote_text from quote where author like 'benjamin%' and quote_text like '%vigil%';
Additional information (Score:4, Funny)
You'll soon get called back by voting official Dr. Adewale Johnson, who incidentally also has a lot of money locked up in a bank account and needs your help.
Working well (Score:4, Funny)
Doing it all wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Can you use dot NET? Everybody uses that these days. And what if I want to use it when I am already on the phone. Can't it have a WAP interface as well? Listen, I don't give a shit that the thing works. I want to sell a thousand copies of this thing and nobody is going to pay a million bucks for something which doesn't use a single cutting edge technology.
And don't get me started on your engineering practices. Last month this POS stopped working and you attached it to a different power circuit and a came right up. You can't make any money off maintenance that way. You need to network at least three computers with 12 daemons which have to start in a specific order, and have it crash from running out of memory at least once a week. Fault calls are where the real money is made. Lets see some forward thinking thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, why can't we send ballot papers to the polling stations via the Internet?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/a [bbc.co.uk]
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Say WHAT?! (Score:1, Redundant)
Ron Rivest has the answer (Score:2, Interesting)
http://rangevoting.org/Rivest3B.html [rangevoting.org]
Makes me wonder when election campaigns start to a (Score:2)
what's the point (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
That's not how it works in Africa
The election monitors are there to endorse the winning candidate.
Some rural areas in Zimbabwe's last election had a 110% voter turnout.
If I tell you that the voters must oftentimes cover 10-20 miles on foot in or
Re: (Score:1)
Now that I think about it, why didn't Doom have a cell phone as a weapon?
Re: (Score:1)
Silent observer = WOMBAT [note] = NULL
Vocal observer = CORPSE.
[note] Waste Of Money, Brains And Time
How to volunteer (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
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Happened first couple of times we used SMS-based voting for TV shows here in my country.
Also happens occasionally on New Year's eve etc.
SMS service generally has capacity that pres
You Voted? (Score:1)
Excellent! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
If they only have cell phones and no way to physically back it up, they're just a self important cluster phuque with cell phones. Once they are done with their self congratulatory phase, th
In the usa texting cost a lot (Score:2)
this is so freakin ingenious! (Score:1)
"Sunshine is the Best Disinfectant" (Score:2)
It's easy, natural and fun to look at this effort with cynicism, but it really does represent a great application of information sharing in the service of freedom.
Cell phones are relatively cheap, ubiquitous and easy to use. If the procedures promoted in
I know... (Score:2, Funny)