{"id":507,"date":"2010-12-17T18:50:59","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T22:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=477"},"modified":"2010-12-17T18:50:59","modified_gmt":"2010-12-17T22:50:59","slug":"alex-halderman-and-indias-assault-on-academic-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=507","title":{"rendered":"Alex Halderman, and India’s assault on academic freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five years ago, not long after the founding of Shtetl-Optimized<\/em>, I\u00a0blogged about Alex Halderman<\/a>: my best friend since seventh grade at Newtown Junior High School, now a famous security researcher and a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, and someone whose exploits seem to be worrying at least one government as much as Julian Assange’s.<\/p>\n

In the past, Alex has demonstrated the\u00a0futility of copy-protection schemes<\/a>\u00a0for music CDs, helped force the state of California to change its standards for electronic voting machines, and\u00a0led a spectacular attack<\/a>\u00a0against an Internet voting pilot in Washington DC. \u00a0But Alex’s latest project is probably his most important and politically-riskiest yet. \u00a0Alex, Hari Prasad of India, and Rop Gonggrijp of the Netherlands demonstrated\u00a0massive security problems<\/a>\u00a0with electronic voting machines in India (which are used by about 400 million people in each election, making them the most widely-used voting system on earth). \u00a0As a result of this work, Hari was\u00a0arrested in his home<\/a>\u00a0and jailed by the Indian authorities, who threatened not to release him until he revealed the source of the voting machine that he, Alex, and Rop had analyzed. \u00a0After finally being released by a sympathetic judge, Hari flew to the United States, where he received the\u00a0Electronic Frontier Foundation’s 2010 Pioneer Award<\/a>. \u00a0I had the honor of meeting Hari at MIT during his and Alex’s subsequent US lecture tour.<\/p>\n

But the story continues. \u00a0Earlier this week, after flying into India to give a talk at the International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS’2010) in Gandhinagar, Alex and Rop were\u00a0detained at the New Delhi airport<\/a>\u00a0and threatened with deportation from India. \u00a0No explanation was given, even though the story\u00a0became front-page news in India<\/a>. \u00a0Finally, after refusing to board planes out of New Delhi without being given a reason in writing for their deportation, Alex and Rop were allowed to enter India, but\u00a0only on the condition that they did so as “tourists.”<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0In particular, they were banned from presenting their research on electronic voting machines, and the relevant conference session was cancelled.<\/p>\n

To those in the Indian government responsible for the harassment of Alex Halderman and\u00a0Rop Gonggrijp and (more seriously) the\u00a0imprisonment of Hari Prasad: shame on you! \u00a0And to Alex, Hari, and Rop: let the well-wishes of this blog be like a small, nerdy wind beneath your wings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five years ago, not long after the founding of Shtetl-Optimized, I\u00a0blogged about Alex Halderman: my best friend since seventh grade at Newtown Junior High School, now a famous security researcher and a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, and someone whose exploits seem to be worrying at least one government as much as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[11,16,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-interest","category-rage-against-doofosity","category-the-fate-of-humanity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}