Over the years, I've periodically written articles about the perils of paperless voting machines.

One of the leading researchers in this field is Steven Freeman, a statistical expert at the University of Pennsylvania and director and principal investigator with a U.S.-based group called Election Integrity.

This weekend, there's a story out of India that should alarm anyone with concerns about free elections.

According to University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman's blog, another leading researcher in this area, Hari Prasad, has been arrested by the Mumbai police.

Prasad is managing director of Netindia Ltd., a Hyderabad-based research and development firm. He cowrote a paper with Halderman and others demonstrating how India's paperless voting machines can be tampered with in two ways to fix elections.

"Indian election authorities have repeatedly claimed that the machines are 'tamperproof,' but we demonstrated important vulnerabilities by studying a machine provided by an anonymous source," Halderman wrote on his blog. "The story took a disturbing turn a little over 24 hours ago, when my coauthor Hari Prasad was arrested by Indian authorities demanding to know the identity of that source."

Here's a taped telephone conversation that Prasad had with Halderman on a cellphone as he was being carted away by the Mumbai police:

According to Halderman, police arrested Prasad in Hyderabad and drove him to Mumbai, which is 14 hours away by car.

"The police did not state a specific charge at the time of the arrest, but it appears to be a politically motivated attempt to uncover our anonymous source," Halderman wrote. "The arresting officers told Hari that they were under 'pressure [from] the top,' and that he would be left alone if he would reveal the source's identity."

Prasad received a machine from the anonymous source last February. Halderman stated that the researchers "have every reason to believe that the source had lawful access to the machine and made it available for scientific study as a matter of conscience, out of concern over potential security problems".

Their research paper, Security Analysis of India's Electronic Voting Machines, has undergone peer review and will be presented in October at the ACM Computer and Communications Security conference.

"Our work has produced a hot debate in India," Halderman wrote. "Many commentators have called for the machines to be scrapped, and 16 political parties representing almost half of the Indian parliament have expressed serious concerns about the use of electronic voting."

Related articles:

STV could bring electronic counting machines to B.C. politics (May 6, 2009)

Was the 2004 presidential election stolen? (October 12, 2006)

Prof Questions Bush's Tallies (November 18, 2004)

Electronic-Voting Critics Scrutinizing U.S. Election (November 4, 2004)

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