This document discusses various topics related to democracy, e-democracy, and media regulation. It provides information on: 1) Definitions and quotes related to democracy from Winston Churchill and others. 2) Statistics on GDP, population, and poverty thresholds from the World Bank. 3) Discussions around the proliferation, sustainability, and perceived façade of democracy. 4) Requirements and challenges for secure e-voting systems and the use of e-tools in democracies. 5) Elements that constitute the public sphere and how public decisions can be reached. 6) The need for balance between principles of democracy and processes of propaganda in media regulation.

1. Information and
E-democracy
George Cambourakis
Prof National Technical University of Athens
Electric and Computer Engineering School
European Communication Institute Governor

2. E-Voting Systems

3. House of Commons on November 11, 1947
 Many forms of government have been tried, and
will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one
pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the
worst form of Government except all those other
forms that have been tried from time to time.
Winston Churchill

4. Average GDP
per capita
adjusted for price
changes over time
(inflation) and
price differences
between countries
– it is measured in
international-$ in
2011 prices.

5. Average
GDP per
capita 2016

6. Based on world bank 2019

7. Population & Poverty thresholds
(international dollars 2011)

8. Does Democracy proliferate?
 Today, for the first time in history, there
are more democratic states than non-
democratic states. Indeed, some view
the rise of democracy as perhaps the
most important event to have transpired
in the 20th century.

9. Sustainability of Democracy
 In consolidated democracies, there is a
growing trend of apathy and
disillusionment among voters, particularly
the young, with respect to politics whereas in
emerging democracies voter turnout tends to
be high and many democratic movements are
led by youth.

10. Is Democracy a façade?
 The iron law of oligarchy is a political
theory, first developed by the German
sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911
book, Political Parties. It asserts that rule
by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an
"iron law" within any democratic
organization as part of the "tactical and
technical necessities" of organization.

11. confidence
 At the turning of 21st
century a
survey by The Economist found that
in 11 of 12 established democracies,
public confidence in political
leaders and institutions has declined
steadily over the past few decades. It
is still valid…

12. Democracy and Growth
 While it is often claimed that authoritarian
regimes are better at bringing about economic
development, comprehensive statistical
analyses do not back up this hypothesis. First,
as Przeworski found, wide-ranging statistical
analyses confirm that no linkage can be
drawn between authoritarian regimes and
economic development.

13. E-elections
 cannot be considered as a pure
practice of e-democracy, since
there has been too little research
into e-voting to draw definitive
conclusions in terms of its actual
influence.

14. Use of different e-tools in EU Member States based on information collected from

15. The public sphere
 is for the state what the market is for the economy.
in the public sphere, the goods that are exchanged
and the currency that is traded are not of economic,
but of political nature. The main product of the
public sphere is public opinion, and ideas are the
“goods” that are exchanged. This view equates the
public sphere with a “free marketplace of ideas,” a
libertarian ideal where everyone is able to propose
ideas, and where the best idea (?) will win.

16. Public sphere constitutive elements
 Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties
 Free, plural, and independent media system
not under state control
 Access to public information
 A vibrant civil society
 Sites of everyday talk about public affairs

17.  In human societies collective
decisions can be reached as a result of
three different mechanisms (or
combinations thereof): by talking, by
voting or by fighting.

19. An e-voting system should be
Secure. That is,
Democratic. Only eligible voters can cast votes, and
no voter can cast more than one vote.
Accurate. No vote can be altered, duplicated or
eliminated without being detected.
Private. All votes remain secret while the voting takes
place, and each individual vote cannot be linked to the
voter who cast it. For uncoercibility, no voter should be
able to prove the value of his/her vote to another party.

20. An e-voting system should be
 Universally verifiable. Any observer can be convinced
that the election is accurate and that the published tally
is correctly computed from votes that were correctly
cast.
 Robust. All security requirements are fully satisfied,
despite failure and/or malicious behavior by any
(reasonably sized) coalition of parties (voters,
authorities, outsiders).
• Practical. That is, convenient, compatible with a variety of
standard platforms and technologies, and accessible to the
disabled.

21. E-VOTING INCOERCIBILITY
 A system is incoercible if the voter
cannot prove his operations to a
coercer, i.e. a person who would
prescribe a voter to send a ballot of
some very specific kind and later check
that it is present in the results.

22. E-Voting. Blind signature protocol
 The major problem of this scheme is that a
failure of a single voter can disrupt the whole
election process. Specifically, to maintain a
secure election, even people who were not able
to vote must verify that no vote was counted for
them. Besides, the fact that the scheme requires
a communication that is both secret and
anonymous, it is impractical in real elections.
Schemes based on blind signatures ([Fujioka A., Okamoto T. & Ohta K.,
1992], [Sako, 1994], [Okamoto, 1997])

23. E- Voting. Mix-Nets protocol
 The Chaum voting scheme uses an
anonymous communication channel and
provides unconditional security against
tracing the votes but the failure of a single
voter can disrupt the election. This
approach is not practical for large-scale
elections because of the fact that the election
must be restarted when a failure is traced.
Schemes based on mix nets [Chaum, 1981], [Sako, Kilian, 1995], [Hirt, Sako,
2000]

24. E-Voting.
Homomorphic Encryption protocol
 Incoercibility is not satisfied because
the voter can decrypt his ballot and
present certificate for encryption
(randomness used) to the coercer.
Schemes based on homomorphic encryption [Benaloh, 1987], [Benaloh,
Tuinstra, 1994], [Sako, Kilian, 1994], [Cramer R., Franklin M. K.,
Schoenmakers, B. & Yung, M., 1996], [Cramer R. Gennaro R. &
Schoenmakers B., 1997]

25. Requirements for e-voting schemes

26. Voting Systems
Y: Yes; N: No; NK: Not Known; HE: Homomorphic Encryption; EBF: Encrypted
Bloom Filter; ZKP: Zero Knowledge Proof; CM: Commitment; HC: Hash Chaining;
SS: Secret Sharing; VM: Verification Module; Booth: Voting Booth

27. Commercial Voting Software
Survey Legend
VoxVote
eBallot
Election Runner
ezVote
secureVoting
 OpaVote
 AssociationVoting
 Balloteer
 BigPulse
 Electionbuddy
 EZ-VOTE Connect
Corporate oriented up to 1000+ voters

28.  Utmost coercibility can be
achieved by voting anytime
from anywhere…

29. Remember
 Technology solves problems and
simultaneously creates problems…

30. Bibliography on Voting Systems
 [1] R. Abdelkader and M. Youssef. Uvote: A ubiquitous e-voting system. In Mobile,
Ubiquitous, and Intelligent Computing (MUSIC), 2012 Third FTRA International Conference
on, pages 72–77, 2012.
 [2] A. P. Adewole, A. S. Sodiya, and O. A. Arowolo. A receipt-free multiauthority e-voting
system. Int. Jour. of Comp. App., 30(6):15–23, Sep. 2011.
 [4] B. Adida. Helios: Web-based open-audit voting. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on
Security Symposium, SS’08, pages 335–348, 2008.
 [8] J. Bohli, J. M¨uller-Quade, and S. R¨ohrich. Bingo voting: Secure and coercion-free
voting using a trusted random number generator. In Proceedings of the 1st International
Conference on E-voting and Identity, VOTE-ID’07, pages 111–124, 2007.

31.  [14] H. Chen and R. Deviani. A secure e-voting system based on rsa time-lock puzzle
mechanism. In The 7th International Conference on BWCCA, pages 596–601, 2012.
 [16] M. Clarkson, S. Chong, and A. Myers. Civitas: Toward a secure voting system. In
Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pages 354–368, 2008.
 [17] M. Clarkson, B. Hay, M. Inge, D. Wagner, and A. Yasinsac. Software review and
security analysis of scytl remote voting software, September 2008.
 [23] A. Essex, J. Clark, and U. Hengartner. Cobra: toward concurrent ballot authorization
for internet voting. In Proceedings of the 2012 international conference on Electronic
Voting Technology/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, EVT/WOTE’12, pages 3–3,
Berkeley, CA, USA, 2012. USENIX Association.
 [26] R.Haenni and O Spycher. Secure internet voting on limited devices with anonymized
dsa public keys. In Proceedings of the 2011 Conference on Electronic Voting
Technology/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, EVT/WOTE’11, 2011.
 [32] A. Kiayias, M. Korman, and D. Walluck. An internet voting system supporting user
privacy. In Proceedings of the 22Nd Annual Computer Security Applications Conference,
ACSAC’06, pages 165–174, Washington, DC, USA, 2006. IEEE Computer Society

32.  [42] H. Pan, E. Hou, and N. Ansari. E-note: An e-voting system that ensures
voter confidentiality and voting accuracy. In IEEE International Conference on
Communications (ICC), pages 825–829, June 2012. .
 [48] P. Y. A. Ryan, D. Bismark, J. Heather, S. Schneider, and Z. Xia. Prˆ et ` a
voter: a voter-verifiable voting system. Information Forensics and Security, IEEE
Transactions on, 4(4):662–673, Dec 2009.
 [51] D. Sandler, K. Derr, and D. S. Wallach. Votebox: A tamper-evident,
verifiable electronic voting system. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on
Security Symposium, SS’08, pages 349–364, 2008.
 [54] G.Tsoukalas,K.Papadimitriou,and P.Louridas. From helios to zeus. In Greek
Research and Education Network; Panayiotis Tsanakas, National Technical
University of Athens, 2013 Usenix EVT conference, pages 1– 10, 2013.

33. SECOND PART
Humanistic Communication
and mass Media

34. Existence axiom
Habeat confinium ergo est
It has boundary so it exists.

35. three types of boundaries:
material, energetic, and ITformational
Physical substances
Matter, energy, ITformation

36. Existence hyper-law
Two antagonistic parts:
Self preservation (no change)
entropy
Communication (change)
information

37. Situatedness
Situatedness is a theoretical position that posits
that the mind is ontologically and functionally
intertwined within environmental, social, and
cultural factors. As such, psychological
functions are best understood as constituted by
the close coupling between the agent and the
environment.

38. Situatedness is frequently understood in
contradistinction to a traditional cognitive science
approach that characterizes the mind as an
essentially interior entity, one that is conceptually
separated from the environment but can interact
with it through computational manipulations of
mental representations. In contrast, situatedness
argues against a strict dualism of mind and world.

39. In short, media regulation can address the following:
 licensing of public, privately owned and community
broadcasting services (goal: competition, system
administration);
 property transactions (goal: market pluralism,
diversity);
 abusive content (goal: protection of societal norms);
 content quotas (goal: protection of and promotion of
national culture);

40.  performance obligations (goal: public service,
programming requirements);
 rates for free-to-air, subscriber, pay-per-view services
(goal: consumer protection);
 access provisions (goal: equal opportunity for free
expression);
 relation between public and private services (goal:
system balance); and
 funding requirements (goal: promotion of priority
services).

41.  It is evident that a conflict exists between
the principles of democracy- particularly its
concept of the individual and the processes
of the propaganda.
 Global regulation of the media would
possibly drive to Humanistic
communication.

42. Thank you for your attention
gcamb@cs.ntua.gr