The Security of Our Election Systems:
Government interference with foreign elections isn’t new, and in fact, that’s something the United States itself has repeatedly donein recent history. Using cyberattacks to influence elections is newer but has been done before, too most notably in Latin America. Hacking of voting machines isn’t new, either. But what is new is a foreign government interfering with a U.S. national election on a large scale. Our democracy cannot tolerate it, and we as citizens cannot accept it.
Last April, the Obama administration issued an executive orderoutlining how we as a nation respond to cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure. While our election technology was not explicitly mentioned, our political process is certainly critical. And while they’re a hodgepodge of separate state-run systems, together their security affects every one of us. After everyone has voted, it is essential that both sides believe the election was fair and the results accurate. Otherwise, the election has no legitimacy.
Election security is now a national security issue; federal officials need to take the lead, and they need to do it quickly.
The effects of a decade of focusing on attack capabilities at the expense of defence is now becoming apparent. And I’d bet that we’ll see democratic governments call for heightened national ‘defence’ capabilities that entail fully inspecting packets. Which will require laws that water down communicative privacy rights. Which will themselves damage the democratic characters of our political systems.
Excited Pixels 