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The Virtual Neal McBurnett: nealmcb

Contents:

Work

I'm an independent consultant in areas including computer security, election integrity, voting systems, and AI.

I'm working with Professor Poorvi Vora and colleagues on open source software to support more efficient Risk-Limiting Audits of elections.

I've taught Artificial Intelligence CSCI 3202 at the University of Colorado.

I served as vice-chair of the IEEE P1622 Standards Working Group on Voting Systems Electronic Data Interchange. I've also consulted with the State of Colorado and Boulder County as part of the Colorado Risk-Limiting Audit project (CORLA), helped organize conferences for the Election Verification Network (EVN) (see my bio there), and serve on the board of the Center for Election Science (CES).

I also spend lots of time volunteering for various organizations, editing Wikipedia, and working with open systems and free software like ElectionAudits: audit elections with good statistical confidence, and tools like Ubuntu Linux (an alternative to Windows or Mac), Google's Android mobile phone system, the Firefox web browser, the OpenOffice suite, and open standards from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

From 2001 to 2011 I worked at Internet2 on the Internet2 Middleware Initiative and the annual IDtrust Symposium series (formerly the PKI R&D Workshops).

Between June 1977 and July 2001 I worked for Bell Labs, ending up as a "distinguished member of technical staff" (really a software developer / systems analyst :-). The Bell System ("Ma Bell" - once the largest company in the world) slowly split up over 2 decades. My division ended up at Avaya, having spun off in 2000 from Lucent Technologies which itself spun off of AT&T in 1995, which divested the Baby Bells in 1984 after calling our PBX division American Bell for a year. AT&T jointly owned Bell Labs along with Western Electric when I was first hired. Wow.... But I think split-ups are much better than the anti-competitive mega-mergers that are all the rage! During the summer of 1977 I worked as a summer intern in Holmdel NJ, and summer of 1978 was at Murray Hill. After a "One Year On Campus (OYOC) scholarship at Berkeley, all the rest was in Westminster CO, except for a delightful 3-year stint in Portland OR. I like keeping in touch with Bell Labs Alums

Family

My dad, Roe McBurnett Jr., was a humanist, singer, and a great proponent of The Power In Positive Thinking. For many decades he was a patent lawyer and a champion golfer. He died in 2022. His memoir, Pass the Pepper Please will be available soon.

My mom, Trish McBurnett, was an insatiably curious "jack of all trades", organizer, singer, photographer, dancer, painter and Registered Nurse, who loved crafts and has done extensive genealogical research. She passed away in 2021. Her memoir, Moving Daze, will be available soon.

Contributions

I've enjoyed many different activities:

Issues

Go Worldwatch! Go GNU! Go Internet Society! Go IETF! Go CPSR! Go AFCN!

Interests

Humor

Affiliations

Internet Recommendations

Email

Web

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS): Open Office, Linux, vs. Windows, Macintosh, and other platforms

Friends and other Interesting Personal Home Pages

GPG - GNU Privacy Guard (free version of PGP)

If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy. Don't shy away from encrypting your email. You don't shy away from putting an envelope around your postal mail, do you? See Thomas Jefferson: Crypto Rebel? for some excellent insight into this All-American activity.

Use GPG: GNU Privacy Guard, a free and open replacement the better-known and highly respected PGP - Pretty Good Privacy. See Neal's PGP Keys for my keys, and my biglumber.com entry for trust paths and related info.

Archives

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hacker emblem Neal McBurnett
Last modified: March 17, 2016
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