Below, you will see 2 copies of the King James version of the Bible in text form. The only difference between the two files is that a capital "T" was changed to a lower case "t". You can see that the validation code is completely different for the 2 files.
This is not rocket science folks. You could copy these 2 files to another device, and will always get the same results.
$ ls -l The_Bible-KJV*txt -rw-r--r-- 1 amp amp 4959549 Nov 30 12:39 The_Bible-KJV1.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 amp amp 4959549 Jul 7 2006 The_Bible-KJV.txt $ sha256sum The_Bible-KJV*txt e7dedd8a31fa0f3efd4eefe0db91de06a1fc7383972db27a258eb32f3faa8e88 The_Bible-KJV1.txt e2df6c3b394a8703dbfb9faaa98724437b0db9cbd4888f0e6ca1e3f6c56560f8 The_Bible-KJV.txt $
Realism
Good job
I have inserted the card into the USB slot. Below I show mounting it to the /mnt directory, doing a directory listing, showing the device table with the card, then using sha256sum to calculate values for the 2 files.
root@zprc:~# mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt root@zprc:~# ls -l /mnt total 9688 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4959549 Nov 30 14:17 The_Bible-KJV1.txt -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4959549 Nov 30 14:17 The_Bible-KJV.txt root@zprc:~# df | grep mnt /dev/sdd1 1944856 9692 1935164 1% /mnt root@zprc:~# sha256sum /mnt/* e7dedd8a31fa0f3efd4eefe0db91de06a1fc7383972db27a258eb32f3faa8e88 /mnt/The_Bible-KJV1.txt e2df6c3b394a8703dbfb9faaa98724437b0db9cbd4888f0e6ca1e3f6c56560f8 /mnt/The_Bible-KJV.txt root@zprc:~#
Now I unmount the card, then use the 'dd' command to create an image of the entire card as a single file on my local drive. Then I show the resulting file and its size.
root@zprc:~# umount /mnt root@zprc:~# dd if=/dev/sdd1 of=smallcard.iso 3897344+0 records in 3897344+0 records out 1995440128 bytes (2.0 GB, 1.9 GiB) copied, 110.408 s, 18.1 MB/s root@zprc:~# ls -l smallcard.iso -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1995440128 Nov 30 14:24 smallcard.iso
Now I create a sha256sum of the file itself. root@zprc:~# sha256sum smallcard.iso d6b806c1f19234e567b2f266b62ebb06ba7aaad43d8b120f69abd412ddc7cef5 smallcard.iso root@zprc:~#
Note, at this point you now have a cryptographically strong record of this entire card that can be written down and used to verify it. This resulting file can now be electronically sent from one location to another. The receiving party can verify the integrity of the file. The card itself can also now be placed in a tamper-proof lockbox.
Now I will mount the file itself, list the directory, and also check the sha256sum values of the individual files
root@zprc:~# mount -o loop smallcard.iso /mnt # ls -l /mnt total 9688 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4959549 Nov 30 14:17 The_Bible-KJV1.txt -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4959549 Nov 30 14:17 The_Bible-KJV.txt root@zprc:~# sha256sum /mnt/* e7dedd8a31fa0f3efd4eefe0db91de06a1fc7383972db27a258eb32f3faa8e88 /mnt/The_Bible-KJV1.txt e2df6c3b394a8703dbfb9faaa98724437b0db9cbd4888f0e6ca1e3f6c56560f8 /mnt/The_Bible-KJV.txt root@zprc:~# umount /mnt
None of the above is rocket science. Any monkey can be trained to do it. All you need is a Unix/Linux computer for which all of the above commands are native to perform the task. You also have an electronic and hardcopy method of validating the integrity of the data card. You could send the file produced by this method to any number of parties, the election headquarters, the media, and anyone else who wants it. The data integrity can be validated by any number of separate unrelated parties. There are no black boxes. Everything is completely and utterly transparent.
Why the hell isn't this a standard operating procedure? If a single bit on the card is changed, any file added or removed, or any other shennanigans, it will be instantly known by all parties because the ISO will not validate. The file will no longer match the physical card.