The Devil's Excrement

Disclaimer:
The following post does not attempt to spread, diffuse or distribute its
contents. While this post was written
while the author may have been legally considered to be in Venezuela, its
contents are hosted, stored and accessed in a foreign country. Anyone that
believes that reading it violates the CNE regulations towards the Presidential
campaign, should abstain from reading it, enjoying it, understanding it, distributing
it and/or diffusing it. The post itself does not judge or imply a value on any
presidential candidate and/or its supporters; it is simply an intellectual
exercise on the meaning of the new CNE regulations. The author is not
responsible for the contents of the comments generated by this post.

There were
these two great ads this weekend in national newspapers by the branch of Big
Brother at the Electoral Board (CNE), telling us what we can or not do or say
during the upcoming Presidential campaign. Over the weekend the ad dealt with the
do’s and don’t’s, which I read with some interest, particularly faced with
such difficult questions as the fact that the regulations forbid having
electoral advertising “that promotes the exaltation of political hate”.

Now, given
that the word hate means, according
to the dictionary “intense animosity or dislike”, this is certainly one
that could be tricky to comply with, but which clearly could lead to many cheap
and easy jokes. I mean, loving your political opponent is not exactly the norm,
so where do you draw the line between strongly opposing and “promoting the
exaltation of political hate”. Do you have to say “Our Dear and beloved
President which we hope to unseat, and then you begin to blast his incompetent Government? (UUps!)

Another
example may be if I give you the pictures below, with the headline “Hugo
Chavez, love him or leave him or get rid of him”, could I be accused of promoting animosity or
dislike? Or abstention?:

I guess it
would be all in the eyes of the beholder, no?

I guess,
only as an example, that maybe I would be violating the regulations if I post
these two pictures:

With a
caption that said: “Hugo Chavez the day he had more than 200 innocent Venezuelans
killed and Hugo Chavez, 14 years later enjoying more happy times” This may
be ruled as going against his “honor”. Or would it? Can you dishonor someone by
telling the truth?

But by
now, you may be wondering what this has to do with my blog? Why am I concerned
or wondering about this at all? Am I planning to campaign for or against
someone?

Well,
today the “companion”
ad appeared in major newspapers and down below, it says very clearly:

“There
will be sanctions, in the case of (…long list of cases)…The diffusion of
messages distributed through the Internet….”with a sanction of 200 tax units
(equals to Bs. 548,000 or some US$ 2,500, in 2006). Now, this really grabbed my
attention.

First
of
all, this one is sort of difficult to understand and interpret in
detail. All of the Internet? Does the CNE have such powers? What
if I am not in Venezuela?
If I have a blog, am distributing its contents it? i.e. Am I delivering it?
Spreading it? Or diffusing it? Umm, hard to tell, particularly about the
diffusing. It seems I am indeed diffusing my content, no? But what if my blog is
abroad (which it is) and I do the post abroad (which I do sometimes). Does it
apply? Hard to tell, even if revolutionary justice can be quite creative about
finding its enemies guilty, even when they are not. Will they ask Interpol to send me back to pay the 200 tax units?

The
curious thing about all of this is that between now and Dec. 3d., Chavez will continue to be able
to hold his Sunday program “Alo Presidente” according to the same regulations
and the decision of the “independent” CNE (no hate implied!). If he follows the
pattern of the last five years, during his long broadcast hours he will surely attempt
against the honor, privacy, dignity or reputation of people, promote the
exaltation of ethnical, religious, gender or political hate, promote abstention,
use images of children (or even use real ones!), use the national and regional
symbols or those of the heroes of Venezuela, will name people and will use
public funds in promoting himself and his candidacy.

This
text
is a carbon copy of the regulation (I left out cruelty to animlas or
soemhing like that) and includes 90% of what the regulations say
you can’t do…but…

…the CNE
will say nothing to him…but this blogger may get into trouble because of this
post alone.

Francis Fukuyama on Chavez
from
the Washington Post, you can also find
a discussion with him on the subject here. Here is a man who understands democracy, social policies
and economics rather well, I thoight it was important to reproduce his full article here. He is a
professor of international political economy at the School
of Advanced International Studies at
Johns Hopkins University.

History’s Against Him By Francis Fukuyama

Sunday, August 6, 2006;
Page B0

CARACAS, Venezuela

Early on in Hugo Chavez’s
political career, the Venezuelan president attacked my notion that liberal
democracy together with a market economy represents the ultimate evolutionary
direction for modern societies — the “end of history.” When asked
what lay beyond the end of history, he offered a one-word reply:
“Chavismo.”

The idea that contemporary
Venezuela
represents a social model superior to liberal democracy is absurd. In his eight
years as president, Chavez has capitalized on his country’s oil wealth to take
control of congress, the courts, trade unions, electoral commissions and the
state oil company. Proposed legislation that would limit foreign funding could
soon constrain nongovernmental organizations as well. And people who signed a
recall petition against Chavez in the run-up to a 2004 referendum on his rule
later found their names posted on the Web site of a pro-Chavez legislator; if
they worked for the government or wanted to do business with it, they were out
of a job and out of luck.

Chavez’s success in
attracting attention — cozying up to Fidel Castro’s Cuba,
signing an arms deal with Russia,
visiting Iran and
incessantly criticizing the United States
— has popularized the notion that Chavismo embodies a new future for Latin America. By preserving some freedoms, including a
relatively free press and pseudo-democratic elections, Chavez has developed
what some observers call a postmodern dictatorship, neither fully democratic
nor fully totalitarian, a left-wing hybrid that enjoys a legitimacy never
reached in Castro’s Cuba or
in the Soviet Union.

Latin America has indeed
witnessed a turn to this postmodern left in some countries, including in Bolivia, where
Evo Morales, Chavez’s kindred spirit, won the presidency last year.
Nonetheless, the dominant trends in the hemisphere are largely positive:
Democracy is strengthening and the political and economic reforms now being
undertaken augur well for the future. Venezuela
is not a model for the region; rather, its path is unique, the product of a
natural resource curse that makes it more comparable to Iran or Russia than any of its Latin
American neighbors. Chavismo is not Latin America’s
future — if anything, it is its past.

How did Venezuela end
up at such a pass? The answer is oil, oil, oil.

The country’s modern
political order was negotiated in a Miami
hotel room in 1958 by leaders of its two traditional political parties; the
resulting pact created a viable democracy that provided stability for four
decades. But stable politics did not make for sound economics. With the growth
of oil revenue through the 1970s, Venezuela was relieved of the need
to create a modern non-oil economy. Commodities that the country once exported
— such as coffee and sugar — soon withered. And rather than foster social
mobility or strong public institutions, the two political parties bought social
peace by distributing oil rents through subsidies, government jobs and
patronage.

Venezuela did not suffer the Latin American
debt crisis of the 1980s, a trauma that in many ways inoculated countries such
as Brazil, Mexico and Peru from relapsing into the worst
forms of economic populism. Instead, Venezuela experienced a disastrous
decline in living standards as oil prices fell during the 1980s. The country
had never been part of the global economy — aside from the energy sector —
and had no competitive industries to fall back on. Chevez and others on the
left blame Venezuela’s problems on globalization and “neoliberal”
economic policies, but with the brief exception of the opening attempted by
President Carlos Andres Perez in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the country
never truly sought to globalize its econom

There is more continuity
between the pre-Chavez and Chavez eras than proponents of either would like to
admit. The recent rise in oil prices has again exempted Venezuela from
the laws of economics. The Chavez government has imposed a blizzard of
regulations controlling the exchange of currency, setting prices, limiting the
ability of employers to hire and fire, and mandating trade and investment deals
based on political considerations — all of which further undermine Venezuela’s
weak private sector. Yet, because of its hefty oil revenue, Venezuela’s
economy has grown sharply over the past two years. The irrationality of
Chavistanomics will not be felt until oil prices fall.

Venezuela‘s peculiar history shows why
Chavez does not represent the region’s future. Countries such as Brazil, Mexico
and Peru, lacking Venezuela’s oil
resources, know that they cannot get away with such dysfunctional policies;
they experimented with them and were burned. It is no accident that postmodern
authoritarianism is most successful in oil-rich countries such as Iran, Russia
and Venezuela.
While Bolivia’s
Morales aspires to be another Chavez, it will soon dawn on him that his
country’s natural gas is not a fungible commodity like Venezuelan crude oil.
Morales’s only real customer is Brazil,
which he has already alienated through his nationalization of the heavily
Brazilian foreign energy investments.

The dominant political
forces in Latin America, while bringing to power a new generation of
politicians on the left, run counter to those in Venezuela. Central banks and
finance ministries throughout the region are much more capable than in the past
of maintaining sound monetary and fiscal policies, and even left-leaning
presidents such as Brazil’s
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentina’s
Nestor Kirchner are not inclined to stray far from economic orthodoxy.

In contrast to Chavez’s
politicization of Venezuela’s
institutions, Mexico
has made its Supreme Court and Federal Electoral Institute politically
independent. Brazil and Colombia have increased the autonomy of local
governments, permitting experiments in budgeting and education; and Brazil and Mexico have undertaken programs to
increase the incomes of the poor while giving them incentives to keep children
in school.

There are already signs of
an anti-Chavez backlash. While the Venezuelan president rails at U.S. interference in Latin politics, he has
tried to promote populist allies such as Ollanta Humala of Peru and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico. Venezuela’s neighbors
resent this, and have punished the Chavista candidates at the polls. Indeed,
Chavez may well have cost Lopez Obrador the Mexican presidency, since the
number of votes the latter lost because of dislike of Venezuelan interference
probably exceeded the small margin by which he lost the election.

Chaavez’s popularity among Venezuela’s
poor is based on his social policies. He has begun innovative initiatives, such
as a network of health clinics in low-income neighborhoods, where Cuban doctors
treat the poor. He has created subsidized food outlets that equalize the prices
paid by rich and poor. And he has attempted to distribute land to peasants.
Some of these policies, such as the clinics, meet pressing social needs and
should have been undertaken long ago; others, such as the food subsidies, will
be hard to sustain absent high oil prices.

A response to Chavismo
must recognize that populism is driven by real social inequalities. Proponents
of economic and political liberty in Latin America
are often suspicious of grand social-policy experiments, perceiving them as a
road to bloated welfare states and economic inefficiency. But free trade alone
is unlikely to satisfy the demands of the poor, and democratic politicians must
offer realistic social policies to compete.

Social policy is,
unfortunately, difficult to get right: Unless it creates incentives for the
poor to help themselves, it can become an entitlement that breeds dependence
and out-of-control fiscal deficits. In Brazil, Lula’s government took over
a program of income transfers to the poor but in the process weakened
enforcement procedures obliging parents to keep their children in school. And
market policies are no panacea: Even Chile, which has extensive high-quality
private education, saw huge student protests this spring because of the low
quality of its publicly funded schools.

Democratic governments in
Latin America must also work patiently at enhancing the quality of their public
institutions — improving simple things such as issuing business licenses,
enforcing property claims and controlling crime. There is no cookie-cutter solution;
it often requires local-level experiments, such as the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre’s
“participatory budgeting” initiative from the early 1990s, which
opened the budget process to civil-society groups and forced politicians to
show where the money was going. Bad public administration saps economic growth
and delegitimizes democratic institutions, paving the way for violent swings
and backlash.

Last December, a bridge on
the road connecting the Venezuelan capital to its international airport collapsed,
diverting traffic into the mountains and stretching a 45-minute journey into
one lasting several hours. A two-lane emergency highway now bears this traffic;
renovation of the bridge is still months away. The bridge epitomizes what is
happening to Venezuela
today: As Chavez jets to Minsk, Moscow
and Tehran in
search of influence and prestige, the country’s infrastructure is collapsing.

The postmodern
authoritarianism of Chavez’s Venezuela
is durable only while oil prices remain high. Yet it presents a distinct
challenge from that of totalitarianism because it allows for democratic choice
and caters to real social needs. At a recent conference of business leaders
here, I witnessed many speakers openly criticize Chavez; their remarks were
cited in the mainstream media. There is no police state in Venezuela — at
least not yet.

Chavismo remains a threat.
But it need not embody Latin America’s future,
not if the region’s democrats can reduce economic inequities through innovative
social policy and nimble public institutions. Of course, such developments
would not mark the end of history. Just the end of Chavismo.

I started
this blog exactly four years ago today. Not that I keep track, but
Userland has this way of terrorizing me a few days before the anniversary,
reminding me that I need to pay US$ 39.95 in x days if I want to keep blogging.
And every time I start wondering whether this will be the last year or not, or
even how many more years it will be. The truth is I have no clue. Writing this
blog has been fun, frustrating, satisfying, difficult, easy, hard,
illuminating, threatening, enlightening and certainly a learning experience. I
have met great people thanks to the blog and they outweigh the fanatics, the
pains in the buts, the liars and the obsessive ones.

I have learned that there are some people out there that support Chavez out of
this fanatical belief in anything left wing and that no matter what he does, he
is their heroe. I have also learned that there are also people exactly at the
opposite end of the political spectrum that are at times quite similar to the
extreme pro-Chavez people. But in the middle there are a bunch of people that I
consider the target of this blog, who just care about this poor country and its future and
can’t stand what is happening, even if politically we don’t agree on
everything. At least we are willing to discuss it with honesty.

I have also learned that democracy is not as ingrained in Venezuelans as I
thought it was. Neither are the values that lead you to have respect for human
rights. Of all sorts. This is perhaps the saddest lesson of the last seven
years. We apparently lived forty years of an illusion of democracy. Little was
apparently learned by most people in those four decades. I have also learned
that too many people have a price and it is remarkably low, even if this is irrelevenat. A price is a price. As Chavistas have
left their ideals aside and become part of the new oligarchy, the old oligarchy
has begun to work with them. And they are making huge amounts of money
together, illegally and immorally. And the robolution does not seem to care

Today, President
Chavez “reiterated his will to fight corruption”, as the evidence of
corruption everywhere mounts each day that goes by, whether it is in the way
the finances of the country are run, or the agricultural sector and its many
corrupt funds, or PDVSA, as the flashy lifestyle of the revolutionaries,
reivindicates the politicians of the IVth. At least you could seldom tell they
were stealing based on their lifestyle. But note how few people have been punished because of their corrupt ways in the robolution. Remeber the 42 cases denounced by the Head of the DISIP in 1999? They are still there, gathering dust. Much like Bolivar 2000, Caez, FIEM, the bonds, the bonds again, the Argentinian bonds now, the PDVSA buy out, the CD’s, FONDAFA, and on and on.

Unfortunately,
I can no longer be optimistic. Not because Chavez will or not remain in power,
but because we have once again wasted the oil windfall of the last few years,
much like we did in the previous ones. What is worse this time around is the
level of dishonesty and unethical behavior floating around. The idea that
things can be easy, either because the Government gives them to you or because
you steal them. That politics is above all, that results just don’t matter.

I also
think that before the robolution is over, there has to be a huge shake up of
our economy. We will all lose, but the poor will lose the most. Very little
foundation for a solid economy has been laid in the last few years. On the
contrary, half of the manufacturing sector has been destroyed, many parts fo the real econo, were simply wiped out. Just because this was supposed to be a revolution….

PDVSA has been
reduced from a world class company to a mediocre, political, inefficient and ineffective company. There
is very little investment. The oil windfall hides the distortions, but they
become larger as the days go by. Inflation will hit 12-14%, but savings rates
are 4-6%, while lending rates are 8-14%. You can buy an Electricidad de Caracas
bond in Bolivars that yields 7.38%, but you can also buy an Electricidad de
Caracas bond in US$ that yield 9% in
dollars! The banking system makes money because they charge commission and
their Government paper goes up when interest rates go down. Governemnt debt in Bs. and dollars is way up. So is the lack of transparency and accountability. There are simply no checks and balances.

One day,
the laws of economics will prevail, like they always do, and it will be the worst financial crisis in
our history. I wonder who will be blamed? We will likely spend ten years
blaming someone, rather than trying to avoid the same mistakes again. Another populist
will win, with the same promises and the same policies. And we will see the
movie again.

Meanwhile,
the Governments spends billions to protect us from a military threat that only exists in
their imagination, as 44 Venezuelans are killed daily by crime and poverty has
not budged in the last seven plus years.

But as
long as Userland supports the software I will likely be here chronicling the
events for the next four years and some of you may not be bored enough to come
back and read my tales. Sometimes I will post more, sometimes less. But I will
be here, what else can I do? I do want a better Venezuela. That was the whole point, wasn’ it?

Two from the news:

1) I don’t know if this is true or not, but the Miami Herald has an article about corruption  in the agricultural development fund Fondafa in the town of Zaraza, Guarico state in central Venezuela, whereby local crop producers would hire locals to sign for credits and pay them for doing it. As a result, among those participating were a group of prostitutes. According to one person interviewed for the article “The brothels closed down because the women got credits from Fondafa”.

Must be the first time that prostitution goes down thanks to corruption. Maybe Freakonomics should study the case.

2) The day after the sister of former President of the CNE Jorge Rodriguez calls for an investigation of Clinica Avila, because she claims they did not want to treat her brother, the tax office shuts down the administrative office of the clinic. Government denies any connection.

Sure, just a coincidence!

According to page A-4 of today’s El Nacional, the Vice President of the CNE Janeth Hernandez said “we want, that this Saturday, when the period to register candidacies from August 5th. to 24th, begins, that the rules be completely clear. Anyone that registers would know the rules, there will not be changes in rules”

The first question is why say that?

Because in the past rules were changed over and over, up to the day of the vote and even afterwards. (Remember the audit that would be known five weeks after and we learned only some of the results eight weeks after? Or how about the rule changes on voting procedures on the day of the RR? Or the audit that never took place on the day of the RR? Or not allowing people to go in the audits, despite the rules saying that would be the case? Or polls staying open for hours, even though there were no lines? Or how about voting machines would not talk to the servers until polls were closed in the rr and they chatted all day?)

The curious thing is, the meeting to approve the rules was cancelled, so she will not be able to keep her promise on day one, as candidates will be able to register starting tomorrow, without even knowing the rules.

Par for the course…

Teodoro Petkoff officially withdraws from the Presidential race, as
announced on the cover of today’s Tal Cual. About time.

Deputy Albornoz made lots of noise about Sumate today, but in essence all he was saying is that Sumate did not commit the illegalities that he had accused them of last week. Indeed, all the Deputy did today was say that Sumate received funds via local banks, not in US$ and most of them before the new law was approved anyway. So it did not matter if Sumate wss not registered in CADIVI, bringing in dollars has nothing to do with CADIVI. But Shrelock Albornoz, as Petkoff calls him, continues screaming about Sumate, but fails to point out what it is that is illegal about that instituitions funding. In fact, we may ask:

Where does PPT, Albornoz’ party gets its funds? We simply have no idea, in contrast with Sumate that keeps and submits audited financial statements. How about Chavez’ MVR? Where does it get its funding? Well, as Petkoff points out, in the only well known case of ILLEGAL campaign funding in Venzuela’s history, Spain’s Juez Garzon determined that Hugo Chavez received MILLIONS of dollars illegally from two Spanish banks. Of course, this was never investigated. Such are the ways of autocratic and dictatorial regimes. It is simply all about hunting and persecuting your enemies as Petkoff points out in his Editorial today:

The Hunt
by Teodoro Petkoff

Nothing has happened in this country

Using a
phrase from that personality named Jose Vicente Rangel we could qualify the
situation as “normal”. All Venezuelans have a dignified home, all Venezuelans
old enough to work have a job, there are no kids in the streets, nor old people
in the streets, nor indigenous citizens in the streets. All Venezuelan study
and students no longer have to repeat the school year.

Security
is the norm in the barrios and residential areas, hamlets and cities.

Newspapers
are thinking of eliminating the sections on crime, because only natural deaths
occur these days.

However, such a disproportionate normality worries the dominant
political circles. Revolution and calm do not go along well. They are diametrically
the opposite from each other. The calm, drowsiness, demobilizes, makes you feel
lightheaded, makes the masses that need heroics sleepy so that, even if it is unlikely that
the socialist paradise will arrive in the next few days, months of years, at least
they can live the drunkard illusion of confronting the empire and make it bite
the dust.

The main exponent of the empire in Venezuela, with Mister Brownfield’s
permission is Sumate. José Sherlock Albornoz, a bloodhound who does not miss a
thing, is following the trail of the mysterious funds that feed the organization.
In charge of the mixed committee of the National Assembly he has proposed himself
to summons (yesterday was the first) the Superintendent of Banks, the Tax
Superintendent and the President of the Venezuelan Central Bank, organism to
which the Constitution assigns the task of formulating and executing monetary
policy, design and execute foreign exchange policy, regulate the currency,
credit, interest rates and administer international reserves.

Can there be a relationship between these tasks and Sumate? Sherlock
Albornoz clarifies this mystery.

Elementary

Alejandro, the President of Sumate qualified the investigation as “political
persecution”.

And, indeed it is. The
National Assemblies oversteps its attributions and misspends public funds in useless
hors of republican life, in this surrealist circus which lacks any grace.

Nothing happens except for these diminished hours for the
country. What was public and notable was that a bank of Spanish origin
contributed to the financing of the campaign of Hugo Chavez in a sort of deal
that Chavez’ MVR shuts up about and that the Deputies of the regime forget with
remarkable quickness.

While the CNE asks the candidates to RESPECT institutions,
these in turn laugh at the country and its members who actually elected them. Because
the true objective of this non-Government is not only to control institutions,
but also to convert them in old worthless objects, in docile instruments of their
political whims, in weapons for hunting, today against Sumate, tomorrow against
any organization or individual that bothers or dissents from this unhinged
regime.

Chavez breaks relations with Israel over the attack on Lebanon…

Of course, he is a man of principles:

This
was too good not to translate. Bruni performs an analysis of the
fingerprint machines, as applied in the Venezuelan election and gets an answer
that I have always suspected was the reason why we never heard any evaluation
of the performance of this very expensive fingerprint capturing system in our elections:

The Devil is in the details, Chapter
IV. One voter, one vote: indelible ink or fingerprint machines?

The first
time I heard about the fingerprint capturing machines I was surprised at the
large number of technical and logistical challenges that would have to be
overcome in order to install such a system and I asked myself if the
possibility of multiple votes in Venezuela, justified the purchase
and installation of such an expensive and complicated system. In fact, in a pamphlet
by COGENT systems, the winner of the bidding process, it is specified that never
before had such a system been implemented, with so many technical challenges,
as the one that was installed in Venezuela[1].

But, independently of whether it is,
or not, technically feasible to put such a system in practice with success, the
question that has been going around in my head is if the Directors of the CNE [2]
that defend the fingerprint machines are right, if, effectively, the
fingerprint machines guarantee the premise of

One voter, one vote

I decided then to investigate a
little bit about systems for the recognition of fingerprints

I found that such systems are used
specially for criminal identification and that there are two types of problems
that an be tackled.

The first one is called “1:1” or “one-to-one”,.
In this one, the fingerprint is compared
with another one that is believed to be that of the same person. For example
the fingerprint of Pedro Perez is compared with that which the authorities have
of Pedro Perez and it is determined whether it happens to be the same fingerprint
or not.

The second problem is the “1:N” or “one
to many”. In this case you want to know if the fingerprint of Pedro Perez is
found among a set of fingerprints stored by the authorities. It is obvious that
the second case is more complicated and that it can yield a higher percentage
of errors than the first.

Logically, in an
election, I told myself, both types of recognitions have to be performed to
determine if Pedro Perez is who he says he is and later determine if he already
voted.

I could not obtain official information
about this, but I have been told that in the Venezuelan elections only the second
type of verification was performed, that is, the “one to many”, while the
determination if the person was Pedro Perez was done with the National ID card,
called cedula.

Following this, I tried
to learn more about the ways to verify such systems. I found that the then
National Institute for Standards (NIST)
of the US Government, performs
tests to determine the precision of various commercial systems, including among
them, the systems made by Cogent Systems.

The evaluation is made following
two complementary criteria, the TAR and the FAR. According to one of the NIST
reports [3], the
TAR (True Accept Rate) is defined as the fraction of correct identifications by
the identity algorithm, while the FAR (False Accept Rate) is defined as the
fraction of false positives in recognizing an identity.

Now, even thought the Cogent
systems received excellent reviews in the independent tests that were
performed, the accuracy rates were not 100%

Let’s see, for example, the results
relative to the identification systems of individuals presented by NIST at the Biometrics
Congress in 2004 [4]
(see page 16). According to the presentation, it was found that in the tests for
the identification of visitors, Cogent’s technology had a TAR of 98% when databases
of high quality fingerprints were used and it could go down as low as 47% when databases
with low quality fingerprints were used.
In both cases, a value of FAR (false positives) of 0.01% was found.

Let’s set aside these numbers in our minds
for the moment and let’s make an analysis of the possible results of the
application of fingerprint capturing machines in the Venezuelan elections.

When a vote arrives at the
fingerprint machine, there are two possibilities: that he is an honest voter
(He has not voted yet) or he is a voter that cheats (He already voted and wants
to vote again). On the other hand, the verification system for the fingerprint
capturing system can respond correctly or erroneously if the voter already
voted or not or even may not find the fingerprint or take longer than the time
required to do it. We then have the following possibilities:

As you
can see, it is a system much more complex than a simple system to identify
Pedro Perez whether individually or with a database of many fingerprints. Thus
if you were to design tests to evaluate the trustworthiness of the answers of such
systems, the levels of precision have to
be much tighter than those found in identification systems.

Now, suppose for a moment that we
can apply the TAR given above for our system. That is, let’s say that the TAR
is 98% for excellent fingerprint databases and goes down to 47% for low quality
fingerprints. The TAR gives the rate for a good performance which, in our
system, consists of cases 1 and 4. Let’s say also that only 25% of the
fingerprints stored in the database of the CNE are of low quality and finally,
let’s say that there are 10 million voters. In this case, we would obtain that only 8.52 million voters are in the
category of “One Person, one vote”, the other 1.48 million missing would
fall under the category of errors. According to the law, in cases 3,5 and 6
they are allowed to vote and, among them, we don’t know if there are any cases
of multiple votes.

Of course, if the CNE were a
serious organization, it would have already informed us of how many cases there
were of multiple votes and false positive recognitions by the little machines. After
spending so many millions on them, Venezuelans deserve to know what are the TAR
and other statistical errors of such an onerous system. No?

One thing is certain. The CNE is
NOT right: the fingerprint machines DO NOT GUARANTEE the principle of “One Voter,
one vote”

….and the indelible ink is much cheaper
and much faster….

References

[1]
COGENT document, “One Voter one Vote”.

[2]
El Nacional, 30 de Julio, page A2. Reference to CNE Directors Lucena y Hernández.

[3] Fingerprint Vendor
Technology Evaluation 2003, Análisis Report. National Institute of Standards
and Technology.

[4]
Wilson, C.L., “NIST Patriot Act Biometric Testing”, Biometrics Conference,
2004.

[5] CNE,
Resolución N° 041022-1621, “Normas sobre el procedimiento de captación de
huellas dactilares y garantía del principio de un elector un voto en las
elecciones regionales 2004”.

Note: after publishing this post,
a reader indicated that my sentences about the CNE not publishing the data was
not accurate since the information on the number of  “cheaters” in the elections have been
published in a table of an Ultimas Noticias article of July 30, 2006 (page30).
According to that table, between the Revocatory Referendum and the governors
elections there has been a total of 53 cheaters.

Such a value shows that not only the system is not 100% reliable and
produces mistrust among the voters, but its cost and the political anxiety it
has created cannot be justified by the abysmally low cheating statistics.

In the same table, I discovered some data called “grey zones” that show the
number of  voters that could not be
properly identified by the system. The numbers shown are quite high and seem to
confirm even more strongly that the “one voter, one vote” principle cannot be
guaranteed.

Another reader indicated that in the CAPEL report there was information
about the digital fingerprints. A quick review made me realize that my
hypothesis of 25% of bad quality fingerprints was optimistic. Therefore, the
errors produced due to the imprecision of the fingerprints is even higher.

In other words, the more I learn details about this system, the more I like
the indelible ink.

That is why I say that the Devil is always in the details.

Another
excellent day for the new robolutionary Justice system in Venezuela, to wit:

—While
over 200 people, all opposition of course, are being harassed and persecuted
for being at, signing the entrance sheets or even being taped on video being
there, the Supreme Court rejected
today trying today General Lucas Rincon for either rebellion or abandoning
his position as Chief of Staff. As is usual with robolutionary Justice, the
Court used a technicality; in this case, that those that asked that he be tried
do not have the required “legitimacy” to request the trial. It was Lucas Rincon
who appeared on TV on April 11^th. saying that Chavez had resigned
setting off the fateful events of that day. Lucas Rincon was later named
Minister of Defense, Minister of Interior and Justice and currently enjoys
robolutionary dolce vita as Venezuela’s
Ambassador to Portugal.

—In an
unheard of threat, the Superintendent of Banks gave the banking system
three days to turn over all of the banking information on Sumate. All of this
to satisfy the fishing expedition of some Deputies of the National Assembly who
have no evidence that Sumate committed a crime, but nevertheless continue
saying they did. You can read all of the sordid details in
Daniels’ blog, but basically, there is only a suspicion that Sumate may
have exchanged dollars (Sumate says it only received Bolivars), that it
violated the foreign exchange illegalities law (which did not exist
at the time) and that it did not register in CADIVI (you don’t need to
register if you bring dollars in, you bring dollars in via the Central Bank).
Thus, ignorant Deputies fish, but no evidence of illegalities exist but the
Government goes all out against it. Meanwhile US$ 45 million is missing
from FOGADE and the National Assembly does not even peep, since they were lost
under the robolutionary non-supervision and a buddy might be guilty.

—The
former Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations and sister of former President of the
Electoral Board wants to open an investigation of Clinica Avila where
her brother was taken after having an accident. The private hospital says they
could not take care of him because the tomographer was not working. Mrs.
Rodriguez should go to any public hospital and see how many people are turned
away daily for things like having no gauze. Should we then open an investigation
against the Government? 

—The
Prosecutor’s office appeals
the detention of two bank clerks in the case of the sugar processing plant
in Barinas state who paid the false checks in that case, the only two people
detained in the case of the gigantic fraud with the Government’s grandiose sugar
plans announced by Chavez in 2002. Meanwhile, Venezuela is now importing sugar
and there
is a deficit of 73% of the amount needed every month. As they used to say
in the IVth.. Republic: “Donde estan los reales?” (Where is the money?). I
know, it is all in the hands of the robolution. In this particular case, active
and former military, former Government officials and millions given to the
Cuban Government to purchase obsolete processing plants from that country.

—Meanwhile,
with the customary vote of 4 to 1 the Electoral Board approved
the rules for advertising in the upcoming Presidential campaign. Chavez
will be able to hold his Sunday marathonic reality show Alo Presidente, he will
be able to address the Nation forcing all TV stations and radio stations to
carry his speeches whenever he wants and just in case, the CNE is now
considering putting a cap of US$ 7.7 million dollars to the amount any
candidate can spend on the upcoming campaign. (Probably to protect Chavez??) 

—The Metropolitan City Council approved the expropriation
of any building built before 1987 which have been used as rental property for
more than ten years, as long as the occupants have paid their rent. Great encouragement
for new building in a country with a shortage of more than 2 million housing
units.