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Britain J. Williams is a Professor Emeritus at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and is director of the school's Center For Election Systems. He is a figure in the controversy over Diebold and electronic voting systems.
He was a consultant to the FEC during the development of the FEC Voting System Standards in 1990 and again in 2002. He is currently a member of the NASED Voting Systems Board and Chair of the NASED Voting Systems Board Technical Committee. He serves as a consultant to the states of Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, where he has certified electronic voting systems. In 2003, he wrote a defense of the Georgia electronic voting system in response to criticism of Diebold systems levied by Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting. The Williams defense of Georgia procedures provides the only biographical information about him available on the Net. [1] (http://www.votescount.com/georgia.pdf)
Williams appeared at a United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Public Hearing on the Use, Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems in Washington, DC on 5 May 2004. Other technology panelists included Dr. Avi Rubin, Johns Hopkins University, Information Security Institute; Stephen Berger, IEEE; and Dr. Ted Selker, MIT. The EAC is providing $2.3 billion dollars in grants to States for upgrading election equipment.
Controversy
Williams is positioned as a recognized expert on electronic voting systems; he is a consulant to Diebold, the FEC, and four states. However, there is no publicly available information about his education/degrees, courses taught at Kennesaw or positions held. Williams reportedly has held a key position at the IEEE. [2] (http://www.americanfreepress.net/08_25_03/Concerns_Over/concerns_over.html)
NASED is the National Association of Election Directors; these are high level government employees. NASED is not an association of computing professionals. Kennesaw State University began life as a junior (community) college in 1963; it became a university in 1996. It is not an established research institution in computer security.
Williams does not appear as an author of any paper - technical or otherwise - in a search of ACM, the first society in computing, nor has he ever participated in the 23-year old ACM public forum on "Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems" (RISKS-L). [3] (http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/) In contrast, Peter G. Neumann, moderator of that forum, published "Security Criteria for Electronic Voting" in 1993 at the 16th National Computer Security Conference. [4] (http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/ncs93.html)
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