EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | James Johnson
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
Section Comments
Section : | 6.7
Page no. : |
Line no.: |
Comment : | Because most IrDA devices use standard protocols at the upper layer (TCP/IP), it can easily be interconnected with other networks. All of the voting terminals in a room could be added to a Local Area Network (LAN) by mounting an optical transceiver node in the ceiling that is capable of communicating with each of the voting terminals. This would be difficult to monitor and control if the optical node on the LAN was there for other approved reasons. Determining whether the node was disabled and could not communicate over the LAN would be difficult to determine, even by a trained observer without close inspection. The only easy solution would be to mandate that the ceiling mounted node have an opaque cover while voting. Precautions such as these are not mandated in the NIST standard. Infrared optical links used in the Diebold system are based on the Infrared Data Association (IrDA) specification and currently operate at up to 115.2 K bit/s. The Windows CE Operating System implements Microsoft’s TCP/IP protocol stack. Are there Eye Safety issues with IrDA? “Short Rang” optical devices under P1583 are not required to comply with IrDA Class 1 device specifications. The IrDA specifications indicate that the range of IrDA devices has been limited to 1m for reasons of eye safety. [Statements submitted to NIST Technical Guidelines Development Committee]