A voting system which uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
technology to store electronic votes has been under scrutiny after election
experts questioned its capacity to safeguard the integrity of election data.
Though the voting system had been tested in a few Argentine jurisdictions,
academics from around the world had not had a real chance to analyze it in
detail until authorities from the Democratic Republic of Congo decided to use a
similar system for the long-delayed
elections of December, 2018. The decision to automate the controversial
elections using an untested system drew criticism
from U.S. diplomats.
According to experts from The Sentry, it is possible to
manipulate the information the RFID chip contains, since the use of this unique
identifier technology and radio communications give off signals that can be
easily detected at distances greater than expected. Experts recommend election
officials to refrain from implementing this type of technology.
RFID technology
is well known for its usefulness in tracking inventories, but its use extends
to other industries, from bookstores and apparel to health and transportation. The
main benefit of having RFIDs is that it allows quick communication with remote
sensors. Nonetheless, however useful RFID may be for certain industries,
elections are an entirely different ballgame. The capacity to allow remote
sensors to read the information it contains opens the door for bad actors to
hack the votes.
An RFID-based system
was ruled out in Israel in 2010 as it was considered unsafe. Researchers Yossef
Oren and Avishai Wool, from the Tel-Aviv University, demonstrated that the secret of the vote was compromised with such type of systems.
In their paper, they “show how the proposed system can be completely
compromised using low-cost relay attacks. Our attacks allow an adversary to
read out all votes already cast into the ballot box, suppress the votes of one
or several voters, rewrite votes at will and even completely disqualify all
votes in a single voting station. Our attacks are easy to mount, very difficult
to detect, and compromise both the confidentiality and the integrity of the
election system.”
The future of
this technology is unknown. For now, only a few Argentine provinces have dared
to use it. The elections in Congo, which led to weeks of post-election violence
and political unrest, are a testament to what a poorly designed election system
can do to the legitimacy of elections.
