Political interference increasingly common and increasingly sophisticated

Targeted disinformation campaigns aimed at swaying public opinion have almost become an accepted feature of democracy today. With a US presidential election coming up in 2020, it seems certain that they will make headlines once again.

So far, cybercrime targeting elections has taken two forms. The first involves the spreading of “fake news” and false narratives – usually designed to slur a candidate – via social media. The second is direct attacks against candidates' or digital electoral infrastructure.

Countering the false narratives means building systems, either automated or manual, that can sift out lies, propaganda, and bad-faith by analyzing both content and metadata – where the information originates from, and who is likely to have created it. Facebook and Google have both invested in technology designed to determine whether or not political messaging fits patterns that suggest it could be part of a targeted “fake news” campaigns. This is because of the overwhelming evidence that these tactics are being increasingly adopted by state actors with the aim of causing political unrest. The Chinese government has been suspected of attempting to push a pro-China narrative around elections in Taiwan and civil protests in Hong Kong using fake social media accounts, and candidates’ private emails were hacked and released in both the 2016 US elections and the 2017 French elections.

Both forms of digital electoral interference are likely to become a growing problem over the next 12 months, partly due to the fact that they have proven to be highly effective up until now. Consequently, we can expect more investment in technology designed to counter them, as well as efforts to raise public awareness of the issue.