The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released guidelines that would allow nearly 3 million overseas and military voters to cast votes over the Internet in November. The EAC plan worries cybersecurity experts, election officials, and voting integrity advocates. They note that email messages and voting Web sites are vulnerable to interception or hacking. Congress mandated in 2009 that the EAC develop guidelines for pilot programs to aid overseas voting, including online voting. Most states seek EAC certification of voting technology, and the commission’s Jeannie Layson says “the EAC hopes that the work we do in 2010 will assist states already running pilot programs to improve services for military and overseas voters.” The majority of the 33 states that have developed pilot programs for Internet voting will let voters send completed ballots as an email attachment, while faxes, which are another approved method for sending votes, are increasingly being sent on the Web due to the growing use of voice-over-Internet phone service. Critics say the EAC is circumventing the technical board that is supposed to review new regulations and also may be violating federal law by not allowing enough time for public comment on the guidelines.
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Students at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya’s Castelldefels School of Technology are working with Team FREDNET to place a small robot named PicoRover on the Moon. The robot is equipped with a built-in camera to send images from the lunar surface back to Earth. The prototype uses a spherical design that enables it to move along the lunar surface in low gravity and on uneven surfaces. The team plans to develop a fully autonomous robot capable of moving or stopping on the lunar surface as required. The team has developed controls for the device, which consist of a small computer equipped with Wi-Fi that weighs two grams. The current model is a 12-centimeter ball housing a motor, a battery, a remote control system, and a high-definition camera, all weighing less than 250 grams. The group also is developing antennas for sending the images back to Earth.
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