Voting computers in the rebound

The SDU-Newvote computers that were taken out of the Dutch 2006
election are back. If all goes well (for them) the license to operate
on the local March 2007 elections will be given out again.

This is bad news for transparent democracy. The SDU newvote way of
organizing an election is horrible. One day before the elections the
computers are rolled into the polling station. At the end of the day
the numbers are sent to the SDU headquarter via ‘wireless modems’ and
added up there. The people who vote only press a button and have to
hope for the best. Before you know it the computers are taken back by
SDU again and are no longer available for inspection.

In other words: our elections are going to be done on leased Windows
XP machines with a build in wireless modem. This is not something I
can live with…

So the quest for information is on again. I am not sure if they by now
were clever enough to add real locks to these voting computers, but
until that is clear we are looking for information on the following
locks (click here to read the original information request including
high resolution images)

newvote locks

One of the three keys is already identified by one of our readers.
The key to open the back of the SDU-newvote is the same as what is
used in the the computer server industry (the EMKA ‘EK 333’ key).

Who can identify the remaining two locks? The apple-pie reward is still on!

5 Responses to “Voting computers in the rebound”

  1. novicelockpicker says:

    Hi Barry,

    A big hello from Canada! I found the name of the tubular cam lock for the Nadap Dutch voting machine. The (beheerssleutel) key and tubular lock is called the C&K YL Series 4 Tubular Camlock! I found the mane! i found it in a pdf document while on google here is the URL:
    http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/other/es3b-en.pdf

    Feel free to contact me via my e-mail (removed)@hotmai.com,

    Novicelockpicker.

  2. novicelockpicker says:

    im sorry its the other key that im talking about the C&K YL Series 4 Tumbler Camlock the one with the “normal” looking key on the right of the first picture.

    contact me via email (removed)@hotmail.com,

    novicelockpicker.

  3. Barry says:

    Novicelockpicker: If you take a close look on the document you found
    you could have seen I was one of the co-authors of it. We are not
    looking for Nedap keys, we are trying to identify the SDU keys. They
    are two different machines.

    Thanks for trying and keep up the good work 😉

  4. NKT says:

    Well, a wireless denial of service is about as easy a thing to do as anything I can think of! Run netstumbler to determine the network channel, then set your laptop card to the same. The wireless machine will then fail.

    Of course, we (meaning some clever reader) will have to find out if it is a GPRS card rather than 802.11. Of course, that can easily be killed with a PLL device the size of a pack of cards. See “How Jews celebrate christmas” by LadyADA, inventor of the WaveBubble.

  5. Buck-O says:

    Sorry this is a little late, i hope someone catches it.

    I was just reading some news today, and it fit very nicely with your voting computer issues, in terms of security.

    http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4066

    The picture on their website was the ACTUAL key cut used to open the lock boxes. GENIOUS!

    Anyway, i thought you would get a kick out of that Barry.