Rio de Janeiro Law School (FGV DIREITO RIO) welcomes Diego de Freitas Aranha today, February 12, an expert on Cryptography and Computer Security who will discuss the security of the electronic voting system used in Brazil.

Diego Aranha is the former coordinator of the first team of independent researchers capable of detecting and exploiting vulnerabilities in the voting machine software in tests organized by the Superior Electoral Court. The goal of his lecture is to present ways in which the free software community can contribute to enhance the security of the electoral process, from single intervention in one of the few moments available for transparency: the total number of votes.

According to the expert, there are several measures that can be adopted to strengthen the security of the Brazilian elections, from the expansion of audit capacity, although limited, for representatives of civil society to the redrafting of the voting model to enable voters to check if their choices were recorded correctly, without, however, providing any receipt that would serve as evidence of their choices for others, he explained.

Diego also states that the transparency of the process also needs to be urgently improved. To mention one example, no technical details concerning the correction of vulnerabilities affecting confidentiality and integrity of the vote found by my team were disclosed during the Safety Public Testing of 2012's Electronic Voting System - only evasive information. There is a direct conflict between the magnitude of confidence placed by the population in the electronic voting system and what is indeed deserved.

The meeting will take place at 1 pm at the School's main offices, at Praia de Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro.