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Content type: Examples
A flaw in the official 2018 UK Conservative Party conference app granted both read and write access to the private data of senior party members, including cabinet ministers, to anyone who logged in by second-guessing the email address they used to sign into the app. Twitter users claimed that one leading politician, Boris Johnson, had his avatar briefly replaced by a pornographic image, while another, Michael Gove, had his replaced by that of media magnate Rupert Murdoch. The app was…
Content type: Examples
Facebook ads purchased in May 2016 by the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russian troll farm, urged users to install the FaceMusic app. When installed, this Chrome extension gained wide access to the users' Facebook accounts and web browsing behaviour; in some cases it messaged all the user's Facebook Friends. The most successful of these ads specifically targeted American girls aged 14 to 17 and said the app would let them play their favourite music on Facebook for free and share it…
Content type: Examples
On the night of June 23, 2016, as the polls closed Britain's Sky News broadcast what sounded like a concession statement from Nigel Farage, the leader of the campaign to leave the EU, plus a YouGov exit poll indicating that the country had voted to remain; over an hour later, Farage reiterated his concession to the Press Association. The combination pushed up the pound on the world's foreign exchanges. A few hours later, when the true result was announced, the pound crashed - but in between a…
Content type: Examples
"Buzzer teams" - teams employed to amplify messages and create a buzz on social media - were used by all candidates in the 2017 Indonesian general elections. Coordinated via WhatsApp groups, many of the teams opened fake accounts to spread both positive and negative messages, as well as hate speech. The operators of the most influential accounts could command $1,400 for a single tweet.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/23/indonesias-fake-twitter-account-factories-jakarta-politic…
Content type: Examples
The Tel-Aviv-based private intelligence firm Black Cube, which is largely staffed by former Israeli intelligence operatives, was involved in a campaign to attack NGOs and businessman-turned-philanthropist George Soros during Hungary's election campaign. Between December 2017 and March 2018, agents using false identities secretly recorded the results of contacts with Hungarian NGOs and individuals connected to Soros. The recordings began appearing in the press three weeks before the election,…
Content type: Examples
In March 2018, Indian Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted that the Naramendra Modi app issued by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was leaking user data. The app is intended to spearhead BJP's social media strategy in the run-up to the 2019 general elections; the party hopes to use it to mobilise 100 million BJP members and has set a target of 100,000 downloads for each district. Both privacy activists and political rivals complained that the app asks for too many permissions, is…
Content type: Examples
In November 2018, the UK government announced it would pilot voter ID for in 11 local authorities during thte 2019 local elections in order to gain insight into ensuring voting security and lowering the risk of voter fraud. The Cabinet Office deemed the pilots conducted in five local authorities during the 2018 local elections to be a success. Four models of checking are under consideration: photo ID (Pendle, East Staffordshire, Woking); one photo or up to two non-photo IDs (Ribble Valley,…
Content type: Examples
In August 2018, the US Democratic National Committee notified the FBI that the San Francisco-based security company Lookout and the cloud service provider DigitalOcean had detected an attempted hack targeted at the DNC voter database. The attack took the form of a fake DNC login page intended to trick people into disclosing their usernames and passwords thinking they were accessing the DNC's VoteBuilder platrform. Lookout believes it found the site within 30 minutes of its going up online, but…
Content type: Examples
Shortly before the 2018 US midterm elections, Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp accused Georgia's Democratic Party of hacking into the state's voter registration database, though without providing any evidence to support the claim. The motives behind the claim were unclear, but a report published by WhoWhatWhy suggested that the claim may have referred to a cybersecurity investigation conducted by the Democrats that uncovered significant flaws in the state's…
Content type: Examples
In 2018, the UK Information Commissioner's Office fined Emma's Diary, a site offering pregnancy and childcare advice owned by Lifecycle Marketing (Mother and Baby) Ltd, £140,000 for collecting and selling personal information belonging to more than 1 million people without disclosing in the site's privacy policy how it would be used. Although Lifecycle denied the allegations, the ICO found that the company sold the data to Experian Marketing Services to build into profiles for use by the…
Content type: Examples
A 2018 study of the use of biometric technology for voter identification and verification in Ghana in 2012 called the effort a failure. It's not enough, the researchers argue, for biometrics to be technically sound; for the technology to function as intended registration centres must have real-time connectivity to an electronic national register, electoral officials need to be trained intensively both to operate the machines and to handle outliers and breakdowns. The biometrics themselves are…
Content type: Examples
Under a clause in the country's computer crime act that criminalises uploading content that is false or causes "panic", in 2018, Thailand's ruling military junta pursued a criminal investigation into a live feed on the Facebook page belonging to the rising Future Forward Party. The postings claimed that the governing party, the National Council for Peace and Order, which seized power in 2014 was using the threat of lawsuits to recruit former MPs from rival parties. The NCPO has promised to hold…
Content type: Examples
In July 2018, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), long the top US manufacturer of voter machines, admitted in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) that it had installed pcAnywhere remote access software and modems on a number of the election management systems it had sold between 2000 and 2006. The admission was in direct contradiction to the company's response for a New York Times article earlier in the year on US voting machines' vulnerability to hacking. ES&S says it stopped…
Content type: Examples
In the run-up to the November 2018 US midterm elections, Vice tested Facebook's new system of mandatory "Paid for" disclosure intended to bring greater transparency to the sources of ads relating to "issues of national importance". Placing political ads requires a valid ID and proof of residence. Vice found that Facebook quickly approved ads the site attempted to place that named Islamic State, US vice president Mike Pence, and Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez in the "Paid for"…
Content type: Examples
A combination of entrenched and litigious voting machine manufacturers with immense control over their proprietary software and a highly complex and fragmented voting infrastructure mean that even though concerns were raised as early as 2004 about the security of US voting machines, the 2018 midterm election saw little improvement. The machines in use in the more than 10,000 US election jurisdictions are all either optical-scan or direct-recording electronic (DRE). Optical-scan, which scans…
Content type: Examples
In September 2018, when Massachusetts state police tweeted a map of responses to fires and explosions during a gas emergency, they inadvertently revealed that they were closely monitoring several activist groups, including a Facebook group for Mass Action Against Police Brutality, the Coalition to Organize and Mobilize Boston Against Trump, Facebook 413, Facebook MA Activism, and Resistance Calendar. The image was taken down and cropped after half an hour, but it spurred journalists to ask…
Content type: Examples
In September 2018, Google warned a selection of US senators and their aides that their Gmail accounts were being targeted by foreign government hackers. Google has issued warnings of phishing attempts by state-sponsored actors since 2012, though getting a notice does not mean the account has been compromised.
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-warns-us-senators-of-foreign-hackers-targeting-their-gmail-accounts/
Writer: Richard Nieva
Publication: CNet
Content type: Examples
In the run-up to the 2018 US mid-term elections, researchers found that the dissemination of fake news on Facebook was increasingly a domestic American phenomenon rather than, as in the 2016 presidential election, an effort driven by state-backed Russian operatives. Removing such accounts (Twitter) and pages (Facebook) is tricky in the US, where the boundary between free speech and disinformation is particularly sensitive. In addition, domestic disinformation is harder to distinguish. One of…
Content type: Examples
In the months leading up to the US 2018 midterm elections, Republican officials in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina made moves they described as ensuring voting integrity but which critics saw as blocking voter access. In Georgia, where Secretary of State Brian Kemp is charged with enforcing election law and was simultaneously running for governor, election officials blocked 53,000 applications to register, 70% of which are those of African-Americans, under a law requiring personal…
Content type: Examples
In 2018, after the UK Cabinet Office said a trial of compulsory voter ID was necessary because reports of voter fraud had more than doubled between the 2014 and 2016 elections - a claim immediately disputed by a voter and upheld by the UK Statistics Authority. While it was true that there were 21 reports in 2014 and 44 in 2016, the number fell to 28 in 2017, small numbers to begin with. Crucially, more than twice as many people voted in 2016, the year of the EU referendum. None of the five…
Content type: Examples
A few months before the US 2018 midterm elections, the Trump campaign team signed a contract with the newly-formed Virginia-based company Excelsior Strategies to exploit the first-party data the campaign had collected. The contract was set up by Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, who built the list as the digital director of Trump's 2016 campaign and began renting it out soon after the November 2016 elections.
Subject to the Trump's campaign veto authority, Excelsior rents out this…
Content type: Examples
A little over a month before the US 2018 midterm elections, Twitter updated its rules to reduce manipulation of its platform. Among the changes, the company outlined the factors it would use to determine whether an account is fake and should be removed, provided an update on its automated detection and enforcement actions, and announced some changes to its user interface, which included reminding candidates to turn on two-factor authentication and encouraging US voters to register and vote.…
Content type: Examples
Days before the US November 2018 midterm elections, ProPublica discovered that an organisation called Energy4US spent $20,000 to run ads on Facebook pushing conservatives to support the Trump administration's reversal of fuel emission standards. On closer scrutiny, Energy4US appeared to be a front organisation for the trade association American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which numbers the world's largest oil companies among its members. Although Facebook's announced requirement that…
Content type: Examples
For many Filipinos, Facebook is their only way online because subsidies have kept it free to use on mobile phones since its launch in the country in 2013, while the open web is expensive to access. The social media network is believed to have been an important engine behind the ascent to the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. Beginning in 2016, faked photographs and videos spread alongside false news targeting Senator Leila de Lima, a noted critic of Duterte and his violent war on drugs, and others…
Content type: Examples
In the run-up to the US 2018 mid-term elections, Facebook announced it would broaden the company's policies against voter suppression by banning misrepresentations about how to vote and whether a vote will be counted. The company also introduced a reporting option to allow users to report incorrect information and dedicated reporting channels for state election authorities. The company noted it was getting better at detecting and removing fake accounts and increasing transparency about…
Content type: Examples
In October 2018, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and questions over Facebook's influence on the UK's EU referendum, Facebook announced it would add Britain to the US and Brazil on the list of countries where the company will no longer allow political groups to publish "dark" ads on its network. Among the changes: all paid-for political content will be automatically published in a public library for up to seven years; individuals and organisations running ads with political…
Content type: News & Analysis
Photo was found here
This essay was published in The Sur International Journal of Human Rights, Issue 27, July 2018.
Abstract:
This essay focuses on elections in Kenya and analyses the use of technology and the exploitation of personal data in both the electoral process and campaigning. We only need to look to Kenya’s election history to understand why it is important. The 2007/2008 election resulted in violence that killed over 1,000 people and displaced over 600,000. The 2013 election was…
Content type: Long Read
Yesterday the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) - which is responsible for ensuring people's personal data is protected - announced it intends to fine Facebook the maximum amount possible for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
This decision highlights of how serious and rampant misuse and exploitation of data is. Facebook is responsible and failed to comply with data protection 101: be upfront and honest about what you are doing with people's data.
Importantly, the ICO's…
Content type: Report
The use of biometric technology in political processes, i.e. the use of peoples’ physical and behavioural characteristics to authenticate claimed identity, has swept across the African region, with 75% of African countries adopting one form or other of biometric technology in their electoral processes. Despite high costs, the adoption of biometrics has not restored the public’s trust in the electoral process, as illustrated by post-election violence and legal challenges to the results of…
Content type: Examples
A data breach at the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm at the centre of Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election, reveals that one way the IRA operated was to use identities stolen from Americans. Using these accounts and other fake ones, the troll farm interacted via social media with genuine US activists and recruited them to participate in and help organise rallies, all in the interests of aggravating long-standing American social divisions.
https://…