Open Tech Calendar

Even if Donald Trump won't acknowledge the U.S. presidential election is now over, we will! On Friday 13 November, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which led federal election protection efforts in the United States, stated that the presidential election was the “most secure in American history”. But how many of us remember the 2016 U.S. presidential election and 2018 midterm elections, which were not at all secure?! How have U.S. exports of "digital democracy" affected countries elsewhere in the world?

Our incredible guest speaker, Dr Joseph Lorenzo Hall, will be joining us at our post-elections November 2020 ICT4D Meetup to talk about voting technology and elections security, sharing perspectives on efforts in the U.S., the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Nigeria. In the U.S., Joe will touch on how "digital democracy" came to be so maligned, an evaluation of the DRC's voting system, and fingerprint reading technology used in Nigeria for voter registration.

SPEAKER'S BIOGRAPHY: Joseph Lorenzo Hall is the Senior Vice President for a Strong Internet at the Internet Society (ISOC), a global non-profit organization dedicated to an open, globally-connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet for everyone. Hall leads ISOC's Strong Internet portfolio including encryption, routing security, time security, open-standards-based secure servers, and making the case for the Internet Way of Networking.

Prior to joining ISOC in 2019, Hall was the Chief Technologist and Director of the Internet Architecture project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Before that, Hall was an academic, completing postdoctoral research with Helen Nissenbaum at New York University, Ed Felten at Princeton University and Deirdre Mulligan at University of California, Berkeley. Hall received his Ph.D. in information systems from the UC Berkeley School of Information in 2008. His Ph.D. thesis used electronic voting as a critical case study in digital government transparency.

Hall holds master's degrees in astrophysics and information systems from UC Berkeley and was a founding member of the National Science Foundation's ACCURATE Center (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections). He has served as an expert on independent teams invited by the States of California, Ohio and Maryland to analyze legal, privacy, security, usability and economic aspects of voting systems. Hall is the Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the California Voter Foundation, a member of the Board of Directors of the Verified Voting Foundation and a member of technical advisory boards to the Los Angeles County's Open Technology Advisory Group, the Electronic Registration Information Center, TechCongress, the Center for Civic Design, and VotingWorks.

In 2012, Hall received the John Gideon Memorial Award from the Election Verification Network for contributions to election verification. In 2017, Hall was part of a team that received the Researcher Award at the 2017 O'Reilly Security Defender Awards in recognition of the team's dedication and innovative contributions to election security for organizing the first Voting Machine Hacking Village at DEFCON 25.

We hope you join us for this incredible opportunity to hear from one of the greatest minds and defenders of voting technology and security!