Web Summit

Alex Stamos, director of Stanford Internet Observatory discusses domestic disinformation in the US Presidential Election - Seite 2

To be able to track election security, Stamos put together a coalition called the Election Integrity Partnership, whose work began months in advance of election day. In previous elections, he said, disinformation tended to come in the form of bad actors trying to mislead voters on the mechanics of casting their ballot, or trying to discourage them from voting altogether. This year, he and his team knew a new phenomenon would be people trying to call into question the election results themselves. It's a tactic that was telegraphed by President Donald Trump for months as a way to call into question Joe Biden's presumptive victory.

"It's one of the few things he's been really honest about," Stamos said of Trump's strategy.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, there was a  "spaghetti thrown to the wall of various ideas of 'this is why the election's being rigged'," Stamos said. And it's important to point out that this wasn't a grassroots push but an organised, coordinated push.

Stamos, during the Web Summit interview, also pointed out that there is no government agency with the authority and know-how to  look at disinformation when it appears to be domestic,  whereas there are several to look after foreign threats.

He doesn't advocate for a ministry of information that tells the platforms what's true and false. At a minimum, Stamos said, the government should be able to know what's going on and have a centralised ability to do what his coalition did in checking over platforms – even if they don't then turn around and tell the platforms what to do.

More transparency about the security of polling machines themselves is a big need as well going forward. Stamos said: "You don't build perfectly secure systems. We've never done that before as a species, but we need to have confidence that the process is good and that you have processes on the backend, like paper ballots, that make it very difficult to steal an election."

About Alex Stamos

Alex Stamos is working to improve the security and safety of the internet through his teaching and research at Stanford University. He previously served as chief information security officer at Yahoo and Facebook.

About Web Summit

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