On 7/5/07, Aphaia <aphaia(a)gmail.com> wrote: The encrypted votes are accessible on the website, I figured someone had the key.

Anthony - No one from the Foundation has the key. That's one of the reasons for using a third party auditor/tally-er - only SPI has it. Philippe ----- Original Message ----- From: Anthony To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 8:38 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Election] Unqualified votes striking On 7/5/07, Aphaia <aphaia(a)gmail.com> wrote: The encrypted votes are accessible on the website, I figured someone had the key. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hi All, I know the election committee is working hard since yesterday on devising a way of contacting all affected individuals through different means. Thanks Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice Chair Wikimedia Board of Trustees Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

As far as I know, the rules haven't change. That last sentence should read "June 1", not "March 1". If I'm wrong and rules have changed, then something is seriously messed up.

On 7/5/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: The rule has been June 1, 2007 400 edits, March 1, 2007 first edit. I am quite sure of this. There is a lot of confusion over the requirements ... and the election com. sending out an email saying that 220 votes were stricken because they did not have 400 edits before March 1st will certainly not help things. So long as the list of eligible voters has been determined in a manner which is in accordance with the disclosed rules, it is a result which is entirely derived from public data and could be reproduced by anyone. As such the list should be made public, ideally on the day of announcement, so that anyone interested can verify it.

Gregory, The eligibility requirement was not correctly applied by the software, which thought the limit was 201 edits instead of 400 edits. The date in her email is probably a typo, since March is the limit for how young an account can be. No rules were changed, and I rather doubt the election committee is conspiring to forge the elections. Yours cordially, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

On 7/5/07, Jan-Bart de Vreede <wiki(a)devreede.net> wrote: Thank you, this is a great relief. [snip] Yes, indeed, it is a monumental task. It needs to be assured that no one except SPI *ever* has access to the key used to decrypt the ballots, otherwise the secrecy of the User->ballot connection is compromised. I pointed out this weakness last year, but it was not sufficiently addressed. Ideally all determinations about ballot validity will be made final before a single ballot is decrypted, and after they are decrypted the key should be destroyed.

This letter is sent personally and has not been reviewed or approved by the rest of the election committee, but reflects what I know to be true: I'd like to answer a couple of Greg's points below... First, it's important to point out that no one from ElecComm will get the key. I don't think there's anyone on the committee that would even TAKE if, if it were offered. Despite some rather kooky conspiracy theories, the Election Committee has remained neutral and shall remain neutral. We have all voluntarily given up our privilege to vote in this election, and have not supported or campaigned for any candidate. The security of the votes has been assured through the use of a third party provider (SPI), and despite an honest mistake on the part of the committee in creating the voter list (which, I should point out, was not only fixed but was immediately announced to our auditor and the community), we are very comfortable with the security of the election to this point. As for the decryption: we have specifically built into the timeline sufficient time that we can evaluate the voter list and remove inappropriate votes (multiple votes, votes from banned/blocked users, etc) before asking SPI to decrypt the votes. SPI is aware that they are not to decrypt the votes until they get a "go-ahead" from us, and they absolutely will not provide any results prior to the voter list being approved by the election committee. SPI has been a wonderful partner in this process, and their good faith efforts and the use of their server is greatly appreciated by the committee. It should be mentioned, by the way, that they have fallen all over themselves to partner with us and have done absolutely everything that we asked without once asking for a thing in return. I appreciate the high interest in this election, Philippe ----- Original Message ----- From: Gregory Maxwell To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 11:31 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Election] Unqualified votes striking On 7/5/07, Jan-Bart de Vreede <wiki(a)devreede.net> wrote: Thank you, this is a great relief. [snip] Yes, indeed, it is a monumental task. It needs to be assured that no one except SPI *ever* has access to the key used to decrypt the ballots, otherwise the secrecy of the User->ballot connection is compromised. I pointed out this weakness last year, but it was not sufficiently addressed. Ideally all determinations about ballot validity will be made final before a single ballot is decrypted, and after they are decrypted the key should be destroyed. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.