USPS reportedly confirmed to The Washington Post this week that it had recently explored the technology in secret. In 2019, in anticipation of the 2020 presidential election, USPS developed and tested a blockchain-based smartphone voting system. The agency then asked the University of Colorado, after signing a nondisclosure agreement so they couldn’t say that USPS was involved, to evaluate the system.
Did the USPS secretly test out mobile blockchain voting?
Answer: Yes.
Shutterstock/SFIO CRACHO
A few municipalities have dabbled in smartphone-based voting recently, but they’re not the only ones. Turns out, the United States Postal Service has also explored the idea.
USPS reportedly confirmed to The Washington Post this week that it had recently explored the technology in secret. In 2019, in anticipation of the 2020 presidential election, USPS developed and tested a blockchain-based smartphone voting system. The agency then asked the University of Colorado, after signing a nondisclosure agreement so they couldn’t say that USPS was involved, to evaluate the system.
What the university discovered, however, was bad enough that the project was scrapped. The system had many security flaws creating a high risk for a number of attack types, including denial of service and impersonation. There was also risk of compromised privacy.
USPS reportedly confirmed to The Washington Post this week that it had recently explored the technology in secret. In 2019, in anticipation of the 2020 presidential election, USPS developed and tested a blockchain-based smartphone voting system. The agency then asked the University of Colorado, after signing a nondisclosure agreement so they couldn’t say that USPS was involved, to evaluate the system.
