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USA Today thinks chat bots can keep voters informed during midterms
USA Today is no stranger to using technology as a hook for political coverage, but this time it could be particularly helpful in performing your civic duty. It's rolling out chat bots across its properties that will help you keep tabs on various aspects of the 2018 midterm elections, including national news, regional election info and the hot-button issues of the day. And crucially, the bots will help you find polling stations -- you'll know both where local politicians stand as well as where to vote on November 6th.
Facebook is banning misinformation about voting ahead of the midterms
Partisan fraudsters may have a tougher time disseminating misinformation to voters over the next 22 days, as Facebook has vowed to crack down the spread of such "fake news" ahead of November's midterm elections, Reuters reports.
Twitter will help you prepare for election day
As the US heads closer to November's midterm elections, a number of social platforms are making an effort to encourage their users to vote. The latest to join in is Twitter, which launched its #BeAVoter campaign today. Through the campaign, Twitter will connect users to TurboVote, a nonprofit that can help them register to vote, sign up for election reminders and apply for absentee ballots. The #BeAVoter effort will be featured in Twitter's top US trends and in a prompt in users' timelines.
Instagram uses Stories to encourage voter registration
The US midterm election is right around the corner, and Instagram is doing its part to encourage as many people as possible to register to vote. It launched a registration push Tuesday, helping 'Grammers get the information they need to sign up to vote using ads in feeds and stories.
Reviewing election cybersecurity in this week's primary states
Since learning of Russia's attempts to hack into the elections systems of 21 states during the 2016 US presidential race, legislators have been on high alert. Cybersecurity experts have warned it's likely the Kremlin will attack again, and already it's been caught attempting to infiltrate legislators' computers and use phony social media accounts to influence the outcome of 2018 state primaries. Four states are holding elections on Tuesday -- Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington -- and some lawmakers are doing more than others to protect their systems against cyber attacks. Here's a breakdown of each state's approach to elections cybersecurity, as of August 2018:
Iraq reportedly ignored concerns over electronic voting machines
Iraq is learning first-hand about the potential pitfalls of electronic voting machines in the wake of its disputed May 12th national election. Reuters has discovered that the country's election commission ignored an audit board warning that the vote counting machines, provided by Miru Systems, were unsuitable and susceptible to tampering. The commission committed a "clear legal violation" by moving forward, according to the board.
Reality Winner pleads guilty to leaking NSA election hacking data
Reality Winner was expected to plead guilty to leaking NSA data, and she's done just that. The whistleblower has officially pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful retention and dissemination of national defense information. Sentencing will have to wait, but the felony carries a maximum penalty of 63 months (5.25 years) with up to three years of supervised release.
Reality Winner will plead guilty for leaking NSA election hacking info
A little over a year ago, The Intercept posted top-secret NSA documents covering Russian attacks on US voting systems, showing they hacked at least one voting software company and attempted to phish more than 100 local officials. Despite emails the outlet received (via FOIA requests) showing local officials didn't even know about the hacking until they read news reports, the government contractor who allegedly leaked the documents has been in prison ever since. Now an organization that supports whistleblowers, The Courage Foundation, has announced that the contractor, Reality Leigh Winner, will plead guilty in an Augusta, GA federal courtroom at 10 AM ET. Charged under the Federal Espionage Act, she faced up to ten years in prison.
Voting-machine makers are already worried about Defcon
Last year, Defcon's Voting Village made headlines for uncovering massive security issues in America's electronic voting machines. Unsurprisingly, voting-machine makers are working to prevent a repeat performance at this year's show. According to Voting Village organizers, they're having a tough time getting their hands on machines for white-hat hackers to test at the next Defcon event in Las Vegas (held in August). That's because voting-machine makers are scrambling to get the machines off eBay and keep them out of the hands of the "good guy" hackers.
Senate bill would help guard against election hacks
American election security is a mess. Many voting systems are vulnerable, but replacing machines is expensive -- and then there's the lack of coordination between different levels of government. The country needs a lot of help if it's going to prevent a repeat of Russia's 2016 interference, let alone full-fledged tampering. Some new legislation might sort things out, however. A bipartisan group of senators has introduced the Secure Elections Act, a bill that would support state election systems with resources and expertise that could help fend off hacking attempts.
Georgia election server reportedly wiped in wake of lawsuit
There's something going on in Georgia. First, the state rejected help from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to inspect its voting equipment for potential hacker inroads. Strangely, the man responsible for this and a massive private data leak, Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp, was placed on a DHS election cybersecurity panel. Now the Associated Press reports that a computer server important to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials has been wiped clean right after the suit was filed.
DefCon event shows how easy it is to hack voting systems
It's no secret that it's possible to hack voting systems. But how easy is it, really? Entirely too easy, if you ask researchers at this year's DefCon. They've posted a report detailing how voting machines from numerous vendors held up at the security conference, and... it's not good. Every device in DefCon's "Voting Machine Hacking Village" was compromised in some way, whether it was by exploiting network vulnerabilities or simple physical access.
Twitch wants to make sure you register to vote
Twitch's latest move to expand beyond its game broadcasting bread and butter is to get you to the polls. Amazon's $970 million baby announced a partnership with TurboVote, a web app designed to make voter registration simpler; National Voter Registration Day is tomorrow, September 26th. To celebrate, a handful of Partnered streamers who will encourage viewers to register to vote, via a TurboVote (not to be confused with Twitch's own Turbo subscription) link. Those streams will be from 6pm to 8:30pm Eastern.
Virginia to replace voting machines over hacking concerns
States are understandably nervous about the security of voting machines given both the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 election and machine makers' own shortfalls. And in Virginia's case, officials aren't taking any chances. The state's election board has approved a Department of Elections recommendation to make counties to replace direct-recording electronic voting machines with devices that produce a clear paper trail. Virginia had already instituted a law phasing out touchscreen voting hardware by 2020, but the new move effectively bumps up that end date to November 7th, when the state holds elections for the governorship and other key positions.
States still don't know if Russians hacked their voting systems
With reports of Russians conducting wide-scale hacking campaigns against US election systems in 2016, you'd think that the individual states would know whether or not their voting systems had come under fire. However, that's not the case... and in fact, they appear to have been cut out of the loop. The National Association of State Election directors' president, Judd Choate, informs Reuters that the federal government hasn't told state election officials whether or not their voting platforms were targets. Moreover, Choate says that this information is unlikely to become public even if it is shared.
Facebook pledges funding to non-profit election security group
Just last week, Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center launched Defending Digital Democracy, an across-the-aisles bipartisan effort to find ways to protect against election hacking. The group includes campaign managers from Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns as well Google and Facebook security staffers. A new report on Reuters says that Facebook will also provide an initial funding of $500,000 to the nonprofit.
Clinton, Romney campaign managers unite to fight election hacking
The threat of hacks disrupting US elections is very real, and enough people are concerned that it's creating some strange bedfellows. Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center has launched Defending Digital Democracy, a bipartisan effort to offer technology, strategies and other tools that can protect against election-oriented cyberattacks. And when they say it's an across-the-aisle effort, they mean it. Campaign managers for former presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney will help lead the group, as will Facebook's security chief, Google's info security director and the co-founder of security firm CrowdStrike. The head of the group is Eric Rosenbach, who was Chief of Staff to recent Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
Russian intelligence agents targeted US voting-software company
Russia's military intelligence agency infiltrated a US voting-software company and conducted a phishing campaign targeting more than 100 local elections officials, according to top-secret National Security Agency documents published by The Intercept. The cyberattacks occurred in the months and days before the US presidential election in November. The US intelligence community concluded in January that top Russian authorities directed a hacking campaign against the US election infrastructure, including launching cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and the staff of candidate Hillary Clinton. The NSA documents published today offer a glimpse into how Russia actually attempted to infiltrate US elections systems, and what kind of information agents were interested in manipulating. The report does not state whether these attacks directly affected the results of the election.
Amazon’s Alexa will keep you up to date with the UK election
It's general election week, and politicians have only four days left to curry favour before we fill those ballot boxes on June 8th. Between work and everything else, staying on top of the week's developments can be a tall order, so Amazon's tasked Alexa with keeping you informed while you're busy cooking dinner and cleaning up after the kids. You can now bark various commands at your Echo devices (or any other Alexa prison) to catch up on latest news, including "what's the latest with the election/the Conservatives/Theresa May?"
UK turns to Snapchat to boost young voter turnout
The Electoral Commission has partnered with Snapchat to launch a UK-wide geofilter encouraging selfie-swappers to register to vote in the upcoming general election. It's live in the app right now and asks users to "Find your voice!" ahead of the May 22nd registration deadline and actual vote on June 8th. This nationwide geofilter follows a more localised campaign in Scotland last month, which was intended to get youngsters hyped for council elections -- 16 and 17 years old particularly, given it was the first vote they were eligible to participate in.
