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October 06, 2014

Comments

Henry Sinn

Tomi,

Great to see blogs of other mobile happenings again....

Seems you've been overly distracted by Elop and other iThings for a few years.

Awesome stuff. Keep it coming

virgil

" And the ultimate was in Estonia. The first national election where you could vote by SMS! Every eligible voter in Estonia when registering, could opt in to register one mobile phone number as their official voting phone, and then use that to do the vote. Of course this is safer easier faster and more accurate than any other paper or machine we have for voting. Why isn’t every country doing this? "

Well, I don't know about other countries, but mine has in the constitution written down that the vote must be secret and non-identifiable (i.e. the government can't know who I voted for, only that I voted). As you say, an SMS is very much identifying, the guys operation the service would know what I voted, which would be illegal. And for a good reason.

Tomi T Ahonen

Hi Henry and virgil

Henry - yeah, you know it was partly by design. When we approached year 2010, it became obvious to me that the smartphone space would be hot - as its been the past 3.5 years - and as I had some insights I could share to help our readers navigate that difficult global market, I felt it a worthwhile investment of my time. I can tell you it was at times quite difficult to find the time to blog about the latest news while on crazy travel in my consulting work. But I think it was worth it. As you know, that crazy time is now past and most of the smartphone wars are now settled.

As to Nokia and Elop, well, that was just Elop. If he'd only made one mistake, I'd have written a couple of blogs at best. But as you saw, he managed 33 truly strategic and immensely damaging management mistakes in his 35 month tenure as Nokia CEO, so the reason I had to write so much about Elop was simply that he kept digging Nokia further into that hole he blasted with his idiotic memo, haha.. I wasn't repeating most of his mistakes as the cause of any new blog, while I would often mention his history, most of those blogs were caused by yet another new mistake. Luckily finally the Nokia Board saw how bad he was and removed Elop from office a year ago and I could stop that series of blogs, with only the wrap-up blogs about the final count of the damage haha...

But yeah, its 'good to be back' talking about the other things, there is far more to mobile than the smartphones. And you know also Henry that on the blog I have been writing every so often about Africa's mobile scene or developments in mobile advertising or mobile messaging etc, so its not only been smartphones the past 3-4 years haha... But yeah, I have more of these items still pending, items partly drafted or just waiting to be blogged. And I'll still finish this year of the Bloodbath series but probably next year I won't bother with it.

virgil - haha interesting viewpoint. Actually I do believe that almost whatever is your country you probably have some form of absentee voting too. Voting by mail or voting at the embassy if you're abroad etc. Those would be quite suspect to capturing voter data and actual vote (or else be suspect to voter fraud). But specifically SMS voting, its actually rather easy technically to do what you wanted. Its similar to how most polling places work in the real world too. One part of the polling place verifies your identity, you have to provide your ID or your voting document whatever it is. Then separate from that, is a secret voting booth where you do your voting by paper or machine.

So we just need to do the same via technology. If we have the national registration of the mobile phone number as the individual registration for voting, its rather easy then. We install a 'white list' of approved voter phone numbers. That will act as the gate-keeper just like at the polling place someone inspects your ID. Then if your mobile phone number is approved, then the vote is passed through to the counting system but without the phone number. Meanwhile the number is marked as 'having voted' so you can't vote twice, and you can't go vote in a physical location etc. But the vote count is now separated from the mobile phone number so only your vote counts without identifying your name (or mobile phone number or any other identifier) with the vote. Its technically rather easy to build, we did similar things for example when we did some consumer behavior data from telecoms data, where we didn't want to allow the individual to be targeted but wanted aggregated behavior data. So technically this is rather easy to build to satisfy that need your constitution has. Obviously we then have to trust that nobody like the CIA gets into that system to do some data-hacking or spying at the stage when the SMS arrives before the phone number is stripped from the vote, haha...

An SMS vote is at least as secure as a mail-in vote, and far more easy, accurate, fast and less costly to process than a mail-in vote.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

virgil

Hi Tomi,

Well, if we go into security, I have to disagree :)
The problem with SMS is that it carries option+identity in the same message, and you have to trust someone (who can read both) to record the identity, transmit the option further, and then forget the identity.
With mail-in, you can actually have an envelope within the envelope. The outer envelope is the identity (who voted); the inner one is the actual vote. Whoever handles the votes can mark you as "has voted" and put the inner envelope in an urn with the rest of the mail-in votes. Yes they could theoretically open the inner envelope, but that would make it rather obvious that they have broken the law.

BTW, my country doesn't have mail-in votes (or any other 'absentee voting' (you have to vote at one of the official polling stations - embassy if you're abroad). I've had a rather long discussion with "my" senator on the subject, he feels that the critical problem that cannot be worked around with absentee voting (and the reason why we don't have it/ he doesn't push a bill on e-voting) is that you can't guarantee that the votes are 'free' - i.e. votes are not bought (or otherwise constrained).

I disagree with him on this, I think there are ways to make sure that the vote is free even outside the official polling stations; but that would be a long discussion. My point was that you give away some non-trivial liberties/rights with these "conveniences", we shouldn't always hail them as "great idea, why doesn't everybody implement this?"

Jonas Lind

I agree with virgil. A voting system has to be both anonymous and tamper-proof. Any e-voting system is susceptible to software hacking and/or corruption. There is no way to guarantee that a touch screen vote at the polling station is not manipulated by some software exploit (or corrupt officials or evoting machine vendors). The only way to ensure that no voting fraud has taken place is to have a paper trail where the votes can be recounted if there is doubt about the result. This is particularly important to prevent conspiracy theories forming among the losing side in an election battle.
The anonymous vote is important to prevent voters from selling their votes to the highest bidder, and to protect for example women with abusive husbands from forcing them to vote for the party he wants her to vote for.

Gonzo

Some very good ideas here for Samsung to catch up, as expected, at least by some of us here, the market share strategy failed and today samsung announced an amazing 60% profit drop in Q3, a stunning financial decline so fast that is hard to digest, and this is the 3rd or 4th Quarter in a row. It was so clear that racing to the bottom and selling cheap phones eventually leads to problems.

Well, but maybe this is what samsung needs, maybe they will learn a lesson, and focus on creating value for consumers instead of going after a pointless market share strategy selling cheat phones in a make no money ecosystem, well…. except Microsoft, An Android cross-licensing contract with Samsung had been yielding Microsoft $1 billion each year in payments.

Paul Ionescu

Another book about Elop's adventure at Nokia called "Operation Elop":
http://www.hs.fi/talous/a1412646148850

chithanh

@virgil
Do you assume that the vote will be sent via SMS in plain text? The problems that you mentioned have long been solved and SMS based voting needs not be less secure than paper based.

The voting message would ideally consist of three parts: Voter identification, encrypted vote and a unique vote ID which is generated by the voter (and kept secret).

The "gate-keeper" will only be able to verify the identification. It forwards the encrypted vote and vote ID to the vote database, where it is decrypted and counted.

The database of votes and associated vote IDs will be made public. So every voter can download it and verify through the presence of their vote ID that the vote was counted properly.

@Gonzo
There is no other strategy for Samsung. They will continue to see falling profits because Chinese manufacturers can provide almost the same thing at a lower price. Their only hope for margins is their brand and keeping costs down through economies of scale.

John Phamlore

@Tomi,

You in fact may know an analogy to what women face shopping bras if you get your suits hand-tailored. For one of the questions such a tailor will ask is, "Which side do you dress."

From this we see what the real problem is that mobile purports to be solving. First there is obtaining customized data, for which no doubt the camera on a smartphone provides an excellent solution. But more importantly there is the translation of such data into economically producing and transporting a physical object, in this case, an article of clothing.

It's not like the smartphone is the only solution to the data collection problem. Not too long ago in my memory women were advised to go to the nearest high class clothing store where an experienced older woman would be working who could take decent measurements and offer advice. From this example we are starting to see what the real problem is, particularly in the case of the United States. So here's something for your files about how terrible and inefficient the United States can be. What really changed is that older more experienced workers have been laid off to be replaced with either younger less experienced ones or no workers at all. So now women are left to fend for themselves.

Now for the second part, the production and transportation of physical objects: Where I live, a wealthy area, it is apparently quite popular for shoppers to go to a mass discount store and attempt to find clothing among stacks of clothing that are simply piled on tables, with no changing rooms in sight to even try clothing on. Any thought of customization or service is thrown out the window. Why would people put up with this? The obvious answer is price, and the reason price can be such a factor is the production of clothing can be moved around the world to seek the absolute cheapest area and workers. But there is of course other prices to be paid and one of them is that this works well only if one's size of clothing is on sale.

Note that clothing such as bras are especially where the idea of offering just a few sizes completely breaks down for satisfying large numbers of potential customers.

But there is another factor, a psychological one, that may explain some of mobile's appeal but also show its potential limits. One can shop for clothing in piles in relative anonymity, not having to interact with anyone other than the clerk taking one's payment, and even that human interaction is starting to disappear. More on this later on the real secret and possible limitation of mobile ...

eduardom

off topic: book on Elop at Nokia

http://yle.fi/uutiset/new_finnish_book_microsofts_elop_was_no_trojan_horse_just_a_terrible_boss/7515214

Christoph

I completely agree with my co-commenters on the voting by SMS issue. Not only that the election secrecy can be easily violated but also it opens the door to election fraud as there is no paper which can be re-counted. And thousands of votes can be easily falsified if you only need to hack one computer system. Modifying thousands of papers is much more difficult.

Concerning measuring for bra: "naked, in private, via selfie, ...". You may search the web for the word "fappening" in case you think your smartphone pictures are really private. I know, you can disable upload to the cloud, but I assume like these "stars" (I hardly recognize any name of the affected women) most people are not really aware of this option.

Concerning credit score: I heard about a similar project which wanted to use your Facebook activities and contacts to determine your credit score. One of the data points was if you have contact to other people with financial problems. If people are aware of these scoring practices, they will most likely adapt their behavior to appear less "suspicious", in this case they could abandon their contact to their friend in financial trouble, stigmatizing these people even more.

Expanding this idea to other fields: Will you fix a date with your doctor for an AIDS test if you know that your health insurance could rise your fee due to "unsafe behavior"? If you're in financial trouble (but not bankrupt yet) will you call a debt counseling if you know that your bank could cancel your mortgage as a reaction? I'm afraid that this kind of data analysis could lead to self-censorship which in the end does more harm to society than good.

Per "wertigon" Ekström

I too am highly sceptical of e-voting, for three things;

1. Ultimately you need to trust your government (or other official body administring elections) not to be corrupt and keep records of voting. One can theoreticly make something like, say, a block-chain based ledger keeping track of who votes and who does not. But ultimately, you need to ensure that what you vote does not get registered, and the only entity that can do that is the election administration body.

2. Provided we come up with a way to 100% anonymize voting, which is a very hard problem to solve, we today do not have a 100% proof that votes have not been tampered with. In ballot voting, it is easy to find out if someone tampered with votes - just count them again. You have a paper trail, use it. In e-voting, no such confirmation can be made.

3. And finally, even if we solve problem #1 and #2, there is problem #3; what if the person voting is voting under threat of violence or other forms of intense pressure? What if Alice wish to cast a vote on Republicans, but Bob is holding a gun to her head and threatens to kill her if she does not vote Democrats? Yes, the example is overly dramatic, but it is one that has to be considered. Unless voting takes place in a public place like, say, a library, then no such control can be made.

These are three very, very complex problems that need to be solved before I would consider e-voting as a viable choice. Not ruling it out; just saying these three problems need to be solved first.

virgil

@chithanh - that's not the system described by Tomi. He describes "voting by SMS", by humans - and not a machine that uses the SMS protocol/delivery system in order to transmit data.
I don't think your average voter is able to encrypt his vote - not even with a simple XOR encryption :D

chithanh

@virgil and Christoph

Nobody made the absurd suggestion that the voters would encrypt their vote by hand. This is taken from the e-voting website of Estonia:

> If mobile-ID is used, the voting procedure goes like this:
> 1. The voter opens the webpage for voting.
> 2. The voter enters his/her mobile number into the computer. After that a control code is sent to voter's mobile phone by SMS.
> 3. The voter identifies himself/herself by entering the PIN1 code into the mobile phone.
> 4. The voter is shown the candidate list of the appropriate electoral district on the computer screen.
> 5. The voter makes his/her voting decision, which is encrypted. A control code is again sent to the voter's mobile phone by SMS.
> 6. The voter confirms his/her choice with a digital signature by entering the PIN2-code into the mobile phone.
> 7. The voter receives a notice on the computer screen that the vote has been accepted.

Seems reasonably secure and anonymous to me, as long as the receiving SMS gateway is not able to see the decrypted vote.

It could be made even safer by not using a website, but a J2ME or smartphone app to encrypt the vote, and let the voter add a self-chosen vote ID. But I challenge the idea that this system is inherently less safe and more susceptible to manipulation than paper based voting.

RottenApple

@chithanh:

"But I challenge the idea that this system is inherently less safe and more susceptible to manipulation than paper based voting."

As long as there is even one place in the entire chain where the vote can be assigned to some data point that makes user identification even remotely possible it's inherently less anonymous, and for something as sensitive as voting, is unacceptable.

There's good reasons why, despite having personal computers for 30 years now, in many countries, voting is still strictly being done on paper and computers only coming into play when the actual numbers have already been verified.

Of course, even with paper voting you have to make sure that no single group has total control over parts of the voting process - otherwise a rigged vote is almost ensured.

chithanh

@RottenApple
"As long as there is even one place in the entire chain where the vote can be assigned to some data point that makes user identification even remotely possible it's inherently less anonymous, and for something as sensitive as voting, is unacceptable."

But this is true for paper based voting by mail too. The voter identification and vote are sent in the same envelope. So the postal service can intercept all the votes. Same for going to a vote booth: The people who check your ID and hand you the ballot can secretly mark it.

If done properly, e-voting can be made fully secure, fraud-proof and anonymous. Those who think like Christoph that the Estonian SMS voting system's "election secrecy can be easily violated but also it opens the door to election fraud" are welcome to explain their findings in more detail. (Well maybe not on this blog if Tomi thinks it belongs elsewhere)

"There's good reasons why, despite having personal computers for 30 years now, in many countries, voting is still strictly being done on paper and computers only coming into play when the actual numbers have already been verified."

The reason why voting computers are not used in more widespread fashion is that the advantages that they bring are only marginal in the current voting tradition.
In the future, they could allow Condorcet methods (e.g. CSSD) that are often infeasible to count manually.

RottenApple

@chithanh:

"But this is true for paper based voting by mail too. The voter identification and vote are sent in the same envelope"

In which country? If you ask me, that's the fundamentally wrong way to do it. The voter's identity should be checked when requesting the papers, not when sending it. That way voting by mail can indeed be completely anonymous. But for SMS that's fundamentally impossible because the SMS will have a sender ID attached to it by design.

"The reason why voting computers are not used in more widespread fashion is that the advantages that they bring are only marginal in the current voting tradition."

That may be a reason for careless countries but in most countries the reason not to use them is that any automation is a security risk. Wanna bet that even in 50 years there'll still be lots of places in the world where voting will still be done the old fashioned way without any electronic help allowed?

chithanh

@RottenApple

"In which country?"

This is common practice in many countries. I rather ask you to tell me one where this is not the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting

In the US for example: "To vote by mail, an individual marks the ballot for their choice of the candidates (or writes in their name), places the ballot in a secrecy envelope, seals it, places it in the provided mailing envelope, seals it and signs and dates the back of the mailing envelope."
The mailing envelope contains the name and signature of the voter, and the secret ballot itself. Anybody who gets physically hold of it can learn the vote of that person.

"But for SMS that's fundamentally impossible because the SMS will have a sender ID attached to it by design."

That SMS have a sender ID is correct, but not different from mail envelopes which have a return address.

"That may be a reason for careless countries but in most countries the reason not to use them is that any automation is a security risk. Wanna bet that even in 50 years there'll still be lots of places in the world where voting will still be done the old fashioned way without any electronic help allowed?"

Of course there are legitimate security concerns but these can be addressed. If done properly, electronic voting is not less secure than paper based.

David Bailey

Great to read that Estonia was mentioned - you can do your taxes and vote online now in Estonia! Every person has two unique PIN codes, a 4 digit and 5 digits one - you use the 4 digit one to login to vote and then the 5 digit one to confirm your vote - thus it is very secure.

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    Tomi Ahonen is a bestselling author whose twelve books on mobile have already been referenced in over 100 books by his peers. Rated the most influential expert in mobile by Forbes in December 2011, Tomi speaks regularly at conferences doing about 20 public speakerships annually. With over 250 public speaking engagements, Tomi been seen by a cumulative audience of over 100,000 people on all six inhabited continents. The former Nokia executive has run a consulting practise on digital convergence, interactive media, engagement marketing, high tech and next generation mobile. Tomi is currently based out of Helsinki but supports Fortune 500 sized companies across the globe. His reference client list includes Axiata, Bank of America, BBC, BNP Paribas, China Mobile, Emap, Ericsson, Google, Hewlett-Packard, HSBC, IBM, Intel, LG, MTS, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Ogilvy, Orange, RIM, Sanomamedia, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Three, Tigo, Vodafone, etc. To see his full bio and his books, visit www.tomiahonen.com Tomi Ahonen lectures at Oxford University's short courses on next generation mobile and digital convergence. Follow him on Twitter as @tomiahonen. Tomi also has a Facebook and Linked In page under his own name. He is available for consulting, speaking engagements and as expert witness, please write to tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com

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