Techdirt has been worried by problems of e-voting systems for a long time now. Before, that was just one of our quaint interests, but over the last few months, the issue of e-voting , and how secure it is from hacking , specifically hacking by foreign powers , has become a rather hot topic. It’s great that the world has finally caught up with Techdirt, and realized that e-voting is not just some neat technology, and now sees that democracy itself is at play. The downside is that because the stakes are so high, the level of noise is too, and it’s really hard to work out how worried we should be about recent allegations, and what’s the best thing to do on the e-voting front.
What we really need is someone distant from the current US debate, and yet with a great deal of knowledge of how foreign intelligence services hack into computer systems. Maybe someone like Sir John Sawers, former head of MI6, the UK’s CIA. Here’s what he said recently to the BBC on the subject of e-voting :
“Bizarrely the stubby pencil and piece of paper that you put your cross on in the ballot box is actually much more secure than anything which is electronic.”
And added:
“The more things that go online, the more susceptible you are to cyber attacks.”
Since MI6 has probably been involved in quite a few of those attacks, Sir John speaks with a certain authority. He also has a good analysis of why there is this constant push for e-voting, even though security experts are pretty unanimous in their warnings of the dangers:
“The only trouble is, the younger generation of people expect to be able to do things remotely and through electronic devices.”
That also goes some way to explaining the naivety of most people when it comes to the Internet of Things . Many people just “expect” everything to be digital and online and linked to its own app, even when it’s just a hair brush .
Via TechDirt