An Election Interference Alert System
An early warning system to spot attempts to subvert elections is being developed by an organisation backed by former US Vice-President Joe Biden.
The not-for-profit Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity was created to combat efforts to skew election debate. Its software scours social media and other parts of the net to hunt out attempts to seed subversive content.
But experts warn nation states may answer with more sophisticated tactics.
A Compelling picture
"We're trying to create high reliability and easy-to-use tools for civil organisations to use and see what's happening in real time so they can counter it," said Fabrice Pothier, a spokesman for the commission.
The need for such tools became apparent after the 2016 US election, which was subject to widespread interference by Russia, said Mr Pothier.
Examples of the kinds of activity the software will watch out for include:
- the use of fake accounts to spread messages on social networks
- the passing of damaging information about politicians, stolen or fake, to opposition groups
- the development of malware designed to spy on political figures' communications
- the hacking of election computer systems
Too often, Mr Pothier said, knowledge about interference came only after votes had been cast and politicians had taken office.
"After an election, we put the picture together and can say there's been multi-dimensional interference," he said.
"One goal is to fix that analytical part by having a more systematic handle on how elections are influenced.
"It's a tool that gives us a real-time scan during a campaign of how certain groups inject information, how much is injected into social media, their interference and how it evolves and what effect it has."
The ability of the warning system to spot campaigns had been demonstrated during the recent Mexican presidential elections, said Mr Pothier, when it had detected subversion activity by Russian hackers and Iranian proxies working on their behalf.
No action had been taken during that election but, said Mr Pothier, the software had given a "very compelling" picture of the interference.
The software, which is being created by an unnamed company in London, is expected to get a formal launch in the summer.
Soon after it will be used to safeguard the upcoming referendum in Macedonia and elections in many European nations.
Fake News in the UK
The volume of disinformation on the Internet is growing so big that it is starting to crowd out real news, the UK Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairman has said. Tory MP Damian Collins said people struggle to identify "fake news".
The government said it was already planning to introduce new laws to make the UK the safest place to be online. The report follows the Cambridge Analytica data scandal earlier this year.
The London-based data analytics firms and tech giant Facebook were at the centre of a dispute over the harvesting and use of personal data, and whether it was used to influence the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election or the UK Brexit referendum. Both firms deny any wrongdoing.
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