fromYona F Maro

Bangalore: Hari Prasad, the Managing Director of Netindia an Indian
research and development firm, on his refusal to disclose an anonymous
source who provided an electronic voting machine to a team of security
researchers was arrested. He and other researchers have long
questioned the security of India’s paperless electronic voting
machines. Despite repeated reports of election irregularities and
concerns about fraud, the Election Commission of India insists that
the machines are tamper-proof.

As per the reports Prasad was questioned Saturday morning at his home
in Hyderabad by authorities who wanted to know the identity of the
source who gave the voting machine to the research team. Prasad was
ultimately arrested and taken to Mumbai, though reportedly hadn’t been
charged with a crime.

In 2009, the commission publicly challenged Prasad to show that
India’s voting machines could be compromised, but refused to give him
access to the machines to perform a review. Earlier this year, an
anonymous source provided an Indian voting machine to a research team
led by Prasad, The team exposed security flaws that could allow an
attacker to change election results and compromise ballot secrecy.
They published a paper detailing their findings.

The Election Commission of India should have given researchers access
to the voting machines in the first place. Prasad is a respected
researcher who helped to discover a critical flaw in India’s voting
system. He and his fellow researchers would never have been able to
document the weaknesses in India’s voting machines without the help of
their anonymous source. This is precisely why anonymity is important:
it allows people to make important contributions to the public
dialogue without fear of retribution.

By http://www.siliconindia.com