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Internet voting systems are inherently insecure and should not be allowed in the upcoming general elections, a noted security researcher said at the RSA Conference 2012 being held here this week.

David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and chairman of the election watchdog group Verified Voting, called on election officials around the country to drop plans to allow an estimated 3.5 million voters to cast their ballots over the Internet in this year's general elections.

In an interview with Computerworld on Wednesday, Jefferson warned that the systems that enable such voting are far too insecure to be trusted and should be jettisoned altogether.

Jefferson is scheduled to participate in a panel discussion on the topic at RSA on Thursday. Also on the panel are noted cryptographer and security guru Ron Rivest, who is the "R" in RSA, and Alex Halderman, an academic whose research on security vulnerabilities in e-voting systems prompted elections officials in Washington to drop plans to use an e-voting system in 2010.

"There's a wave of interest across the country, mostly among election officials and one agency of the [Department of Defense] to offer Internet voting," to overseas citizens and members of the military, Jefferson said. "From a security point of view, it is an insane thing to do."

A total of 33 states allow citizens to use the Internet to cast their ballots. In a majority of cases, those eligible to vote over the Internet receive their blank ballots over the Web, fill them in and submit their ballots via email as a PDF attachment. Some states, such as Arizona, have begun piloting projects that allow eligible voters to log into a web portal, authenticate themselves and submit their ballots via the portal.

The insecurity and the inability to audit such voting practices is unacceptable, Jefferson said.

Ballots sent via email for instance, are transmitted in the clear without encryption. That means any entity, such as an ISP or a malicious hacker that sits between the voter and the county where the vote is being cast, can view, filter, substitute or modify the ballot, he said.

Meanwhile, the e-voting Web portals that have been proposed for use in Arizona and are being tested in other states, are prone to all the security vulnerabilities and attacks that other sites face, he said.

As one example, he pointed to an attack crafted by Halderman , an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, in 2010 against a Digital Vote by Mail System that was proposed for use in Washington. The system was designed to be used by overseas voters and military personnel based in other countries.

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Researcher: Internet Voting Systems are Too Insecure

Brendan McDermid / Reuters

Conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart speaks at a news conference prior to Representative Anthony Weiner in New York on June 6, 2011

Andrew Breitbarts last big appearance in Washington took place a few weeks ago, outside a Marriott hotel where conservative activists had gathered. Protesters from the local Occupy movement were laying siege in the parking lot, and Breitbart started to scream at them. Behave yourself, he began, before moving on to more incendiary language. You are freaks and animals Stop raping the people, you freaks. You filthy freaks. You filthy, filthy, filthy raping, murdering freaks.

No one else joined in. But Breitbart wasnt really looking to lead a counterprotest. He was trying to seize the spotlight, and he did it quite well. More outrageous, noisy and defiant than anyone around him, he was impossible to ignore. But now his showmanship has come to an end. Breitbart, 43, died on March 1 in California of natural causes, according to his website, Big Government.

(MORE: Occupy the Regulatory Open Comment Period!)

Eras of national tumult are particularly good at creating characters like Breitbart. He was not the first to find fame and fortune by recasting politics as a verbal blood sport. Commentators like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher had been making a mint calling people names for years before him. But Breitbart was the first to do it so successfully with the Internet as his primary medium, and with original, sometimes misleading muckraking as his primary technique. And in that, he leaves behind a generation of would-be ideological warriors and partisans who will follow in his footsteps.

WhatBreitbart did wasnt only journalism. It also wasnt only entertainment. And it wasnt only combat. In his furious rants and explosive exposs, he pushed the bounds of what could be considered advocacy for a new information age. His foes were not just wrong. They were the lowest life form I have ever seen. He was not just speaking truth to power. He was trying to obliterate entire power structures.

Breitbarts drive kept him in the headlines. He passed around explicit photos that had been taken by former Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner, though Breitbart says he never intended them to be published. He publicized a hidden-camera sting on the long troubled community organization ACORN that showed, at minimum, poor judgment by low-level staff and eventually contributed to the groups demise. He released part of a speech given by Shirley Sherrod, a Department of Agriculture employee who was fired as a result of the misleadingly edited footage, only to be invited back to the agency once the full text of her speech was publicized.

(PHOTOS:Occupy Protesters March on Manhattan)

I love fighting back, he wrote in a new conclusion to his book Righteous Indignation, which his website has posted as an ad hoc epitaph. I love finding allies, and famously I enjoy making enemies. He put it to TIME another way in 2010: The second I realized I liked being hated more than I liked being liked thats when the game began. With such a clear self-assessment, he was hard to hate.

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The Webmaster of Partisan Spectacle: Conservative Blogger Andrew Breitbart Dies at 43

SEO Positive, the digital marketing agency responsible for the search engine optimisation activities of renowned Mexican restaurant chain Benitos Hat, has announced that the increase in enquiries as a result of online promotional activity has contributed towards the opening of their clients fourth restaurant in the UK.

(PRWEB UK) 1 March 2012

Just three months later, Benitos Hat is proud to announce that they will be opening a fourth Mexican restaurant in London, situated in Kings Cross, to cater for customer demand, a move which has been made possible in part by the buzz currently surrounding the company as a result of extensive online promotional work.

And its no wonder interest in the business is at an all-time high thanks to the work of the search team at SEO Positive, the companys website is now enjoying top five positions for all specified keywords within Google.co.uk.

Dave Damhar, the Client Account Manager responsible for the restaurants SEO activities, will also be looking at targeting a broader range of keywords as the two parties move into the second phase of the campaign.

Our strategy has achieved fantastic success for Benitos Hat in a relatively short period of time, so our priority now is to build upon their first-page positions by looking at ways of expanding their reach via different search terms, Dave explains. Were working together to push forward the expansion of their business to make even more openings possible in future.

SEO Positive was established in 2007 in Chelmsford, Essex with the aim of bringing effective yet affordable online marketing services to companies from all industries and backgrounds. The company offers a huge range of services including search engine optimisation, Pay Per Click account management, social media marketing and online reputation control.

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SEO Positive Aids Opening of Client’s 4th Restaurant

Insiders find every aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) fascinating. But the real world doesnt. An SEO professional may live and die by every algo update and latest social signal split-test, but please know that the non-SEO world couldnt care less.

Take, for example, a carpet cleaner, a dentist, a veterinarian, roofer, plumber, mover, even doctors, lawyers... you get the idea. They are busy running their businesses. Over the years a divergence has developed between the SEM blogs and the realities of small business marketing. A course correction is needed.

Lets first be clear, small business needs online marketing. In fact, many of these businesses need online marketing far more than their larger corporate brothers. The big guys can swing fat SEO budgets around as they explore different social media outlets and experiment with social engagement as an alternative customer service strategy.

The small business profile is not nearly as pretty, particularly in this economy. Often hampered by small margins, super tight budgets and a general lack of respect from vendors who give them their lesser-trained account managers, many small business owners are living on a frustrating edge.

A small business owner who has been around for a while is often especially unhappy with the migration to online marketing. The rules used to be simple. You set up shop, bought your yellow pages ad, and then had a modest budget for other media outlets such as radio, newsprint, fliers, coupons and perhaps local television.

While youd expect great enthusiasm for the new online economy, you often hear frustration and bitterness. Why is small business so mistrustful of online marketing? And what is so special about SEO that has them particularly distrustful?

Last years big Panda updates were the obvious big SEO news. It was, as algorithm updates go, a major change that impacted 12 percent of Googles search results. And SEO shop phones across the country rang off the hook from small business owners who were scrambling to figure out what it all meant for their traffic.

Trained empiricists will be fascinated by the scientific reviews of Panda. But this is inaccessible to small business owners who really ask questions such as,Hey, does Panda mean that Google is finally going to get me for that guy I hired last year to spin articles and post them to 2,000 article sites?

Was Panda really about thin content as everybody claimed? You can find all sorts of human and machine spun content still warm and cozy in Googles database today, leading many to believe Panda was really more about duplicate content (still) than anything else.

But back on point, the small business world isn't interested in debates. They want the yellow pages, conceptually anyway. And SEO is about as far from that as possible because the rules keep changing.

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5 Reasons Why Small Business Owners Distrust SEO

MICHELLE WRANIK

Getty

MODESTY BATHE: An Iranian woman emerges from the water after riding a jetski at Kish Island.

As the scorching rays of the Middle Eastern sun bore down, I plunged into the sea, desperately happy to feel cool water against my skin.

I had been wrapped in a hijab all day in 45-degree heat. A dip at the beach offered the only respite.

But in the Islamic Republic of Iran, women must not show their hair or skin, let alone wear bikinis in public. A woman caught wearing a miniskirt could be sentenced to 50 lashes. Could wearing a bikini land me in jail?

With its white-sand beaches, tax-free shopping and luxury hotels, Kish Island is the Iranian equivalent of Hawaii or Bali. It's well known for being more relaxed than the mainland and is popular with holidaying Persians.

Iranian women can be a bit more carefree, mingling with the opposite sex, riding jet skis and walking on the beach with their headscarves loosened and trousers rolled up. But this island is no Ibiza. The strict laws of the Islamic regime apply.

Dancing is forbidden, as I discovered while watching a live Farsi band at a restaurant. Iranians make do with clapping their hands to the music.

Though beachside touts offered me bootleg booze in whispered hisses ("Absolut vodka? Johnnie Walker?"), alcohol is otherwise illegal, meaning no pina coladas by the pool. And while the island is surrounded by calm beaches fringed by swaying palm trees, men and women are forbidden to swim together. A bikini in public? It seemed unlikely.

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From hijab to skimpy bikini