There has been an awful lot of news lately regarding various different computer hacking organizations that have been out to make a statement about the state of computer security (or rather, the lack thereof) in the world at this time. I have commented on some of these stories before, and in at least one case I also talked about how I vehemently oppose online voting in the United States due to the fact that my experience as a computer scientist tells me that we simply do not have adequate security measures available to prevent tampering with the voting.

Well, it turns out that a hacker, wanting to illustrate the point more forcefully, has apparently hacked into the Florida voting database and made some of that information public…just to prove how insecure the system really is (see the original article here).

I am not sure that this person’s well being is going to be maximized by this intrusion should he or she be caught, but I certainly understand the desire to underscore the fact that the current state of computer security is totally insufficient to allow for online voting at this time. From my point of view, anyone telling you otherwise is just feeding you a line of malarky (don’t ask me what “malarky” is…I just know that my mom seemed to know what it was because she used it in sentences like this one all the time…).

While I cannot condone illegal activities to prove a point, I do understand this person’s frustration with the misinformation that has been spread regarding the security of online data, and their desire to illustrate the fallacy of those statements.

Anyway, give this a read and ask yourself just how safe YOU would feel if voting was moved to an online system in today’s security environment.