Ya Gotta Love 'Em

Hackers, that is - at least, benevolent ones.

One great pleasure of my life as a geek was my interaction with icons of Open Source like Monty Widenius.  Despite my not being even close to such folks in technical prowess, those exchanges were characterized by a full-duplex flow of ideas.

So it was with something approaching glee that I read of the Voting Machine Hacking Village held recently at the DEF CON hacker conference.  Hackers toyed with more than 25 pieces of election equipment, such as voting machines and electronic poll books, purchased from eBay.

By the end of the conference, each of the 25 had been breached.

These folks plan to form a coalition comprised of cyber and national security leaders, academic institutions, and government associations, in order to focus on ways to make elections more secure on the federal, state and local level.  That's good news for us all.