How do we deal with digital disinformation and election tampering?

Following the Technology and National Security All Parliamentary Group report into countering digital disinformation, Darren Jones set out the steps the UK must take to secure our legitimacy of elections in the digital age. Rather than being distracted by ineffective policies such as Voter IDs, the Government must counter hostile and foreign actors distorting and damaging our democracy.

You can read Darren’s full article published in The Times on Thursday, May 27th below.

You can read the Technology and National Security APPG report here

DIGITAL MISINFORMATION FROM HOSTILE ACTORS THREATEN OUR ELECTIONS

The UK’s democratic values and institutions shape our approach to national security and our position as a global power. Our first priority is to protect them.

But, as the select committee on democracy and digital technologies concluded, the integrity of our elections and the Union of the United Kingdom is under threat from rapid technological change and a pandemic of misinformation online.

Just two weeks ago, citizens across the UK voted in elections, with some politicians allegedly confronted with disinformation campaigns which helped their challengers win at the ballot box.

At the National Cyber Security Centre’s CyberUK conference earlier this month Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, warned that elections are a “prime target” for hostile actors. He stated that “Russian actors tried to interfere in the 2019 general election” by “spreading lies online” to undermine British democracy.

But it goes further than that. In 2014, pro-Russian trolls claimed that Scotland’s independence referendum was rigged. They fuelled demands for a revote. Pro-Russian trolls are not the only threat to our democracy. Facebook has recently shut down fake profiles created by Iranian actors to promote Scottish independence and sow discord among parliamentarians.

Facebook also found that the Iranians were behind a page called “Free Scotland” during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. There’s also evidence of Russian interference in the EU referendum in 2016, with Kremlin-owned media channels publishing numerous articles about the referendum, particularly articles with a strong anti-EU narrative.

To date, the government has stated that “it has not seen evidence of successful use of disinformation by foreign actors . . . to influence UK democratic processes”. But we can’t be complacent: it is clear that misleading information can, and does, resonate with voters. It shapes opinion, increases mistrust in our electoral processes and institutions, and divides society.

As we set out in our latest technology and national security all party parliamentary group report this week, new technologies can help to identify and counter misleading information online. These harness the power of data using artificial intelligence and machine learning to make sense of complexity and information overload, helping to track the real source of information.

But technology is only part of the solution: we need organisational and behavioural change to build resilience into our electoral processes. Educational reform is also vitally important: the government should implement a strategy to increase digital, media and civic literacy, which should be underpinned by regulation and complemented with training and resources.

Government should also sustainably fund non-profits which fact check, challenge and investigate information during election periods. Improved public and private sector collaboration will also help to identify vulnerabilities and solutions to misleading information in the electoral processes.

Big tech and social media companies, as well as broadcasters and newspapers, must collaborate with government and regulators to build resilience and defend democracy. In particular, they should work together to enact flexible regulation and changes in the law, to keep pace with technological change.

President Biden’s expulsion of Russian diplomats last month was a public example of a leader dealing with interference in Western democratic processes. When it became clear that Russian actors had been complicit in interfering with the 2016 and 2020 elections, and in cyberattacks on US government networks, he did not hesitate to act. Our response in the United Kingdom has, so far, been comparably inadequate.

If we are to build “a stronger, more secure, prosperous and resilient Union” as Boris Johnson sets out in the integrated review, all parts of the UK must come together to counter misleading information and defend our democratic values and institutions.

The dangers of election interference will increase in scale and complexity alongside advances in technology. Now is the time to take action, before it’s too late.

Darren Jones is chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Technology and National Security and founder and chairman of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence