I just read another book by Andreas Eschbach: Ein König für Deutschland which roughly translates as A King for Germany …
The book is about the very real (and undeniable) potential to manipulate elections* if done via voting machines. Afterall, the purpose of computers is to manipulate data! The story changes its focus from the US to Germany, since it is the location for the bad guy to sell and prove its stolen software.
To prove the existence of the software-manipulation, the good guys must establish a party with the three letters of the software developer’s name VWM making us of a trapdoor. In Germany it is quite common to have three-letter parties — it does not make them any better though. Thus, a meaning is needed for VWM. The solution leads to a rather funny take since the good guys agree an ‘Volksbewegung zur Wiedereinführung der Monarchie‘ which means they want to introduce a German King once more …
The book was a good read but I liked the other books from Andreas Eschbach much better, maybe because they were a lot more about economics and the ever difficult decisions to make — most decisions have winners and losers!
*) The book is very fact based and researched, comparable to the many well-researched books from Frank Schätzing. He attaches the information, that associations lobbying against using voting machines are mainly filled with people having great expertise in computers and even in cyber security. This should give us food for thought!
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