News. Debate. Community. Levers for a better democracy.
The State of Reform
Download Unite America’s free report
Download Unite America's free report analyzing the impact of four key political reforms.
MOST READ
Get some leverage.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Testifying to Congress, Director Christopher said social media platforms are working with the FBI to combat disinformation.
FBI director says Russian election meddling is now misinformation, not hacking
Sep 17 2020
Russia has switched tactics for undermining American democracy this year, focusing on the spread of misinformation instead of computer hacking to influence the presidential contest, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress on Thursday.
Moscow is using social media, online media outlets and other tools to spread misinformation and sow "divisiveness and discord" in the electorate in a bid to undermine confidence in the election, he said. And operatives have started using against Joe Biden many of the same techniques they deployed to spread falsities about Hillary Clinton four years ago.
The "malign foreign influence" campaign is designed not only "to denigrate" the Democratic nominee but also "what the Russians see as an anti-Russia establishment," Wray testified in one of the most explicit public descriptions yet of the Russian effort — one that almost totally contradicts the president's own descriptions about the foreign threat to the election.
<p>Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee the FBI is working successfully with the largest social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, to remove phony accounts created by Russian operatives.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>He said the key is to remove the accounts quickly before they have a chance to gain a lot of attention. "Misinformation or disinformation or fake information is only effective if it seems credible," Wray said, and the more that information gets passed around the more people come to view it as legitimate.</p><p>Since the revelation that Russia tried — mostly without success — to break into election computer systems across the country during the 2016 campaign, federal, state and local officials have spent countless hours and hundreds of millions in tax dollars trying to change voting practices and strengthen protections for election systems.</p><p>At the same time, some election security experts have been predicting for more than a year that the Russians would likely switch their focus for 2020 away from hacking and toward disinformation.</p><p>Wray's testimony affirming that shift was one of a handful of election security developments on Capitol Hill as the election countdown clock moved past the seven-weeks-to-go mark </p><p>In the Senate on Tuesday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders pressed Majority Leader Mitch McConnell <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/sanders-and-schumer-letter?id=B8222B75-8558-4953-A429-7CBC395F5A0A&download=1&inline=file" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">to appoint a bipartisan committee focused on election security</a>. Noting the "great deal of concern about possible confusion and chaos" about the counting of votes, the Democrats' letter said hearings before such a panel could rebuild public confidence in the integrity of the election, which Trump has openly sought to undermine with his attacks on mail voting.</p><p>And the House on Wednesday passed a bill that would mandate federal research on issues related to election security. Among the topics that would be studied are online voting, voter privacy and data protection.</p><p>The measure, sent to the Senate on a voice vote, would also add electronic poll books and voter registration databases to the types of equipment for which the federal Election Assistance Commission sets standards. The agency's mandate now only covers hardware for casting ballots.</p><p>National security agencies have not seen any evidence Russia is trying to break into any of those election systems, Wray said.</p><p>His testimony was delivered in the shadow of recent efforts by Trump and other top administration officials to play up the theory that China is meddling to get Biden elected, while downplaying reports that Russia is working to help Trump win again.</p><p>Facebook announced this month, for example, that a troll group that was part of Russia's attempts in 2016 is trying to target Americans again.</p><p>The president continues to dismiss as a hoax the intelligence community's finding that Russia worked to help him win the White House in 2016.</p>
From Your Site Articles
- Modest measures to thwart foreign election hacking in annual ... ›
- Senate report say fear led to mishandling of hacking intel - The ... ›
- Mueller stresses gravity of Russian meddling, but election security ... ›
- Warnings of Russian meddling bolster case for security bills - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less
eclipse_images/Getty Images
More than half the IT professionals surveyed said they had become less confident in election security since the pandemic.
The IT pros are concerned about election security this fall
Sep 16 2020
The nation's professional computer geeks are very worried about the security of the election.
A survey of more than 3,000 IT professionals by their trade association, released Tuesday, found a broad array of anxiety about what state and local officials have done to prepare for the presidential vote (and left undone) — especially since the coronavirus pandemic has upended their priorities in the last six months.
<p>Among the top-line findings:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>63 percent say they are confident in the resilience of the voting equipment, electronic poll books and other electoral infrastructure the country will rely on in seven weeks.</li><li>56 percent say they have become less confident in election security since the onset of the pandemic, which has shifted much of the attention about election preparation to the challenges of a surge in voting by mail.</li><li>57 percent believe the money that's been spent since 2016, when evidence of Russian interference propelled interest in election security, has not been sufficient to prevent hacking of the coming election.</li></ul><p>The survey found these professionals most concerned about misinformation and disinformation campaigns, tampering with the tabulation of voting results and the hacking into or tampering with voter registration servers or voting machines.</p><p>The survey was conducted by ISACA, formerly known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, which in July questioned more than 3,000 IT governance, risk, security and audit professionals nationwide.</p><p>Greg Touhill, an ISACA board member, acknowledged that most election officials have "sound election security procedures in place" in the wake of the mostly failed attempts by Russian agents to hack into election systems four years ago. </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>"This means that governments, from the county level on up, need to clearly and robustly communicate about what they are doing to secure their election infrastructure," he said.</p><p>In the past two years, Congress has provided $805 million in grants to the states to bolster their election security funding and $400 million to help with election expenses related to Covid-19. The Democratic-majority House approved another $3.6 billion for election aid in May, but negotiations with the Trump administration and the Republican Senate over the underlying economic recovery package have stalled ever since.</p><p>The survey of IT professionals found that a majority favor public education about misinformation as a way to boost public confidence in the election.</p><p>Other ways to improve public confidence identified by survey participants include using voting machines that provide a paper trail that can be audited and increasing training for election and election security officials.</p>
From Your Site Articles
- Swing states build protections around 2020 elections - The Fulcrum ›
- Congress agrees to $425 million for election security - The Fulcrum ›
- How Louisiana ended up this year's election security outlier - The ... ›
- Wisconsin's debacle is an election security wake-up call - The Fulcrum ›
- The 13 states where election security matters most - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep reading...
Show less
Paras Griffin/Getty Images
A volunteer registers a voter during a curbside registration drive in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend.
New coalition on the left to fight suppression and misinformation
Sep 09 2020
Sixteen liberal political and organizing groups are joining forces with Let America Vote — a democracy reform organization that fights big money and voter suppression — to create a coalition dedicated to getting all Americans access to the information they need to vote this November.
While many of these groups typically focus on other issues — like gun violence prevention, abortion rights and veterans' benefits — they are joining forces for the next two months as a part of the Save the Vote campaign in hopes of making voting safer and easier.
The coalition will share messaging and grassroots organizing efforts to battle misinformation and keep voters abreast of the work being done to guarantee the election is safe, secure and fair. The presumed hope is that will benefit like-minded voters, whose ballots will break solidly for Joe Biden and other Democrats.
<p>"Extreme voter suppression combined with a global pandemic is making it uniquely difficult for people to vote, and know how to vote, in what will be the most consequential election of our lifetimes — an election where the literal future of democracy is on the ballot," Let America Vote President Tiffany Muller said in a statement. </p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Launched Wednesday, the campaign has broken down its work into three key categories:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Countering misinformation, particularly President Trump's unfounded claims about the vote-by-mail system.</li><li>Recruiting poll workers, absentee ballot collectors, voter registration volunteers and voter protection monitors, as well as returning absentee ballots.</li><li>Providing voters in battleground states with details about how to vote safely during the Covid-19 crisis.</li></ul>
<p>"This far-reaching coalition is stepping up to make sure we have safe, secure, accessible, and fair elections. That's the only way our democracy can deliver a government that is truly accountable to the people. Every American must have an equal voice," Muller said.</p>
<p>For a full list of organizations participating in the coalition, check <a href="https://www.savethevoteamerica.org/news-1/new-coalition-of-top-political-organizations-from-across-the-issue-spectrum-launches-save-the-vote-campaign-to-fight-voter-suppression-counter-misinformation-amp-promote-voting-1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
Keep reading...
Show less
Big Ideas: Cybersecurity Conversation with Sen. Angus King and Rep. Mike Gallagher
Sep 09 2020
Organizer: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget/FixUS
The United States faces an unprecedented challenge when it comes to cyber preparedness. From attacks on critical infrastructure to state and non-state actors seeking to undermine our democracy, confronting these cyber threats will require a comprehensive and coordinated strategy. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), co-chairs of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, will be discussing the state of our cyber-readiness, the digital threats looming on the horizon, and the Commission's recommendations for how we can meet these challenges.
