[Cryptography] Questions about crypto that lay people want to understand

[Ray Dillinger]

On 12/20/2015 04:29 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote:

> When you access your bank account, you want reasonable assurance that you've actually reached your bank, and no one can see your transactions.  Beyond that, you trust the bank - you have no real choice, as they are the ones holding your money and all the records.
> 
> When you vote, you should not trust whatever agency collects the votes.  In traditional voting systems, you votes are secret from *everyone*, even the people running the polling station.  Think about paper ballots:  The system has to insure that no one but you can see what you wrote on your ballot, but also that your vote is actually counted correctly.  To count votes, someone has to see the ballots!  So what we do is make sure that no one can tie a particular person to a particular ballot - and that no one can remove ballots from, or adds ballots to, the ballot collection box.

That is an excellent point - and more to the point than the one I
made.  The requirements *are* different, in authentication and
privacy and in which endpoints are trusted.

				Bear

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