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Cryptographers Held an Election. They Can’t Decrypt the Results.
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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Assuming they were using threshold cryptography, they could have easily configured some redundancy into the system, e.g. by requiring 3 out of 5 people to decrypt it instead of 3 of 3.
It's easy to blame the one guy for losing the key, but he could have gotten hit by a bus or lost the hard drive in a house fire and they would have been equally as screwed. This is more of a system design failure than a PEBKAC failure.
in complex systems design, you never blame human error. humans are fallible, and if the system doesn’t account for human error then it’s just a matter of time until failure occurs. look for a way to make the system tolerate or eliminate human error
According to the article they changed the procedure to require 2/3 keys, so at least they learned that lesson.