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9470	16730	Let me introduce co-organisers, Matt Blaze and Kat.
22030	29590	David and Brian are back there, who are our board members, waving hands.
31250	35750	This year we have an exciting programme. We have a two-day speaker track.
35750	41070	We have a vendor, Wotec, who are doing a check-in kiosk.
41070	46590	They will introduce their stuff at 11.15 as an introductory talk.
46710	51890	At noon, a little bit after noon, we have an unboxing of Dominion ballot marking device,
51890	55070	which has been at the heart of a lot of controversies.
55090	60990	And tomorrow we will have a talk based on the controversy of the executive report
60990	67230	recently unsealed by federal judge and the countering paper by MITRE.
67230	69390	So, a lot of attention there.
70270	72410	Matt, you had a few slides.
74730	80410	Hi, everybody. My name is Kat. I am the co-organiser of the Voting Village.
80410	83810	I wanted to thank you all so much for being here.
83810	85650	Thank you, as Hari said.
85650	87250	Woo! Give it up for Kat!
89710	93130	It's also my birthday tomorrow, just so everybody knows.
93670	95230	They're going to kill me for saying that.
95230	97150	So, I'm really excited to be here.
97150	102330	It's quadrupled in size from last year, so we're really, really proud of what we've accomplished.
102530	106710	We have a number of incredible panel speakers.
107210	108430	We have workshops.
108810	113830	We have an incredible voting systems manufacturer that's here that Hari said.
113830	115750	We've put a lot of work into it.
115750	118550	We have countless volunteers.
118550	122710	We have so many people that stepped up and so many people that care about democracy
122710	127890	and that care about making it safer and care about preserving election integrity.
127890	133290	And it's amazing how many true patriots are in this room that want to make a difference.
133290	135850	And it's an honour to be a part of this.
135850	139950	And I feel blessed to be amongst such incredibly brilliant minds.
139950	141410	So, thank you so much.
141410	142790	Thank you for this opportunity.
142790	147710	And I really hope that you all enjoy or at least learn something or question something
147710	150290	while you're here at The Village this year.
153700	155120	Thanks, Kat.
157120	162380	So, I'm Matt Blaze. I'm one of the co-founders of The Village along with Hari.
163700	166380	So, the Voting Village has evolved.
166920	170760	We got our start after the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
170760	177740	had an exemption passed that allowed for good faith security research
177740	181080	that would otherwise have been illegal,
181080	185500	allowing us to reverse engineer and take apart and find security vulnerabilities
185500	188900	in, among other things, voting equipment.
188900	194680	So, we started out by buying as many surplus voting machines as we could find,
194680	199240	putting them in a room and letting the DEF CON community loose on them.
199240	201680	And we are continuing to do that.
201680	204740	As you can see, we've got voting machines all over the room.
204740	206380	Feel free to break them.
206380	209180	Just do it in interesting ways and tell us about it.
209180	213480	And try to, more importantly, try to understand how they work.
213480	220440	We have become kind of the preeminent event for helping technical experts
221020	225400	learn about the problems and solutions in elections
225400	229260	and how to have high-integrity elections
229260	234400	and how to separate BS from legitimate concerns.
234640	237280	And I have a couple of slides that I want to put up
237280	242800	just to kind of give a sense of how this world is...
243400	245460	what the problems in this world are.
245460	250360	There are two truths in voting, and they're both true.
251220	254640	And they're unsatisfying by themselves.
254640	259200	The first is that there are, in fact, as you will see here,
260040	265260	genuine, serious vulnerabilities in parts of U.S. election infrastructure
265260	269940	that, under some circumstances, if they're exploited,
269940	273520	could alter election outcomes or could be used to alter election outcomes.
273520	278680	That's irrefutably possible in some circumstances.
278680	283380	But at the same time, there's no credible evidence.
283380	285820	And by no, I really mean zero credible evidence
285820	290580	that any U.S. election has ever had its outcome altered
290580	293720	by the exploitation of technical vulnerabilities.
294400	296960	So how do we square those two things?
296960	300820	Now, it's certainly logically possible for both of them to be true,
300820	303960	but which one you want to emphasize
303960	309000	tends to depend on how happy you are with the results of some election.
310140	314000	We're here to acknowledge both of these realities
314620	318360	and help equip you to sort through them
318360	321220	when someone says, hey, there's this vulnerability,
321520	323520	the election was rigged,
323520	327780	to see if that's actually a credible statement or not.
328260	331360	In fact, there are two different problems here.
331360	334560	One is making election technology and protocols
334560	337260	and the systems around them more trustworthy.
337260	341260	And that's actually what we as technologists tend to focus on.
341900	346660	And there are actually a lot of really interesting problems here.
347220	351780	And we've actually made significant progress on them over the last decade.
351780	354580	It's really amazing how much progress we've made on this.
354580	356400	But there's a second problem,
356400	359660	which is increasing public confidence in election outcomes
359660	362660	to go along with the improvements that have been made
362660	364440	and how trustworthy they are.
364440	366640	And sometimes these two are at odds
366640	369860	because in order to make progress on the technology,
369860	371980	we have to expose the problems.
372160	376300	So putting that into context is one of our big problems here.
376300	380340	And you might recall that some of the things from the voting village
380340	383780	were pointed to by people who doubted the outcome
383780	389280	of both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
389820	392880	So, in fact, the stakes are kind of high.
392880	395440	This was people who didn't believe in election outcomes
395440	398960	held a little riot in Washington a couple of years ago.
399460	401900	And, you know, people died.
402020	407300	And, you know, our democracy could have actually potentially fallen
407300	409120	as a result of this.
409600	411920	So what does this look like?
411920	414160	Well, here's the first problem.
414220	419200	Technology and automation has become absolutely essential
419200	422260	to the conduct of elections in most of the U.S.
422260	424760	You can't hold an election without computers.
424760	428070	And as we all know, computers,
428560	431620	and particularly large-scale software-based systems,
431620	436020	are inherently unreliable and untrustworthy.
436160	439260	So one question is, you know,
439260	442420	how do we manage the fact that there may be flaws
442420	446680	in the technology that we use to hold elections?
446680	451180	And some of those flaws, if the system isn't designed well,
451180	455280	could end up being fatal to our ability to know who won.
455280	457740	So one of the things that's important is to find ways
457740	461400	to deal with the fact that we're trying to build
461540	466220	a highly trustworthy system from inherently untrustworthy components.
466260	469160	And sometimes that's possible and sometimes that's not,
469160	471400	depending on how the system is designed.
471540	474740	Now, over my career in voting,
474740	479880	there have been two approaches to trying to improve voting technology.
479880	484320	One is to try to eliminate all the defects in the underlying technology.
484760	488420	And that's actually what we were doing up until about 10 years ago.
488420	490900	We were looking at systems, examining them,
490900	493000	and trying to find and fix all the bugs.
493020	495720	That didn't actually work all that well.
495720	497260	We found and fixed lots of bugs,
497260	499900	but we never know when we found the last one.
500420	505400	So, you know, that approach was the best we had,
505400	507960	even though it was inherently kind of doomed to fail.
507960	512220	But over the last 10 years, we've evolved a different approach,
512220	516400	which is to embrace the fact that the technology is going to be flawed
516400	521740	and try to find ways to use it that tolerate inevitable flaws.
521740	526780	And there were two big breakthroughs about a decade ago that let us do this.
526780	528940	The first was Ron Rivest,
528940	534380	who came up with a set of requirements called software independence.
534380	538520	And then there was Philip Stark, a statistician at Berkeley,
538520	542700	who's a co-board member of the Voting Village,
542700	547660	who came up with a technique for doing this with certain types of voting equipment
547660	549700	called risk-limiting audits.
549700	553020	And we'll actually be having a talk about how to do a risk-limiting audit
553020	557360	and a demo of risk-limiting audits throughout our program.
557940	562420	Okay, so some voting tech can't be built in reliable ways.
562420	569680	In particular, DRE touchscreen voting machines can't be used in a way where we can audit them.
569680	572680	Software flaws can be fatal there.
572680	577240	But other voting technology, particularly that uses paper ballots,
577240	579400	actually we know how to do that.
579500	582960	And one of the things we're hoping is that we're going to equip you
582960	585300	to work with local election officials
585980	591820	to implement some of these secure auditing techniques in your local communities.
591820	596540	Because this has to be done on kind of a county-by-county, state-by-state basis.
596540	599800	So there's enough work to do for everyone in this room.
599980	603740	And I'm hoping that all of you will spend the whole conference here
605060	608300	learning about voting equipment and pretend that there's nothing else going on.
608300	611320	There's nothing else interesting going on here at DEF CON.
611780	617400	So, you know, there's just plenty to do and we really need people to go back home
617400	620500	and understand this, explain it to your local community,
620500	625060	work with your local election officials, become a poll worker.
625060	629100	That's a great way to get a sort of introduction to the right people.
629100	634080	Learn how these systems work on the ground and help contribute.
634080	636320	You can have a huge, huge impact.
636560	638480	All right, so thanks very much.
638760	643400	So in about five minutes or so, we're going to start our first panel.
643400	646180	We'll take a little break to get everybody together.
646180	648600	Anyone who's on the first panel who doesn't have a microphone,
648600	650960	please go to the back of the room and see Jutta.
651160	653880	Thanks very much. Let me turn this back over to Harri.
656720	658020	Thank you, Matt.
658360	664820	I want to remind and underline our mission in Voting Village is educational.
665760	671240	All voting machines can be hacked. That's not news. At all.
671820	678560	We are educating how the vulnerabilities work, how you can exploit, how the machinery works.
678560	682120	And if you accidentally discover something new,
682120	685660	we have scribes who are documenting down your findings.
685760	688720	So if you see something, say something.
689400	693660	With that being said, the volunteers are here to educate, help.
693660	698200	We are happy to answer any questions. And on we go.
698200	700800	And you can identify the volunteers.
700800	703680	We have these awesomely cool shirts designed by Cat,
703680	706220	which have the DEF CON logo and an I Voted sticker.
706220	710080	You can't get these. You can only get them by being a volunteer.
710080	712100	And if we have extras, we'll be selling them later.
712200	716740	So thanks very much. We have about five minutes before our first panel.
716880	717860	So stick around.