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Contents 1 e-Deceptive Campaign Practices: Elections 2.0 1.1 Tutorial Summary 1.2 Detailed description 1.3 Presenters 2 Background Resources 2.1 Discussions and Feeds 2.2 News 2.3 Tags

e-Deceptive Campaign Practices: Elections 2.0

Tutorial Summary

This tutorial explores technologyâ€™s use in the 2008 Election season. The rise of political participation is attracting the attention of those who would use these technologies in positive and negative ways. Deception of voters can include: reliability of voting systems, voter registration status, polling location information, and positions of candidates for public office. Political fundraising efforts are also vulnerable to pharming and phishing efforts to dupe supporters into sending contributions to thieves.

Detailed description

Elections are communication centric endeavors. The application of digital communication technology coupled with the benefit of the Internet, cell phones, and other personal digital communication devices creates a 24-hour stream of data that can be tailored to the interests of individual voters.

The rise of political participation by millions of individuals who can be engaged in the election process is also attracting the attention of those who would use these technologies to misdirect or misinform voters regarding such matters as: polling location information, status of voter registrations, and positions of candidates for public office. Further, technology's use in public elections can facilitate pharming and phishing efforts to dupe supporters into sending contributions to thieves and more.

The tutorial will explore a range of topics on how technology can be used in public elections to the benefit or detriment of voters. The range of topics to be discussed include a review of the benefits of technology to better inform and engage voters and how election officials, the media, voters, and opposing sides in public elections might better arm themselves for a positive democratic experience.

• Ways in which new technology may bring deceptive practices on-line

1. Use of data mining to profile and target voters and email them misinformation/ deceptive spam email
2. Compressing the timeline for launching disinformation and misinformation attacks from days to hours or minutes.
3. Setting up websites that sound official but that are fake and provide misinformation, such as sites for the Secretary of State or local election official
4. Denial of Service Attacks against legitimate sites. Also could include lapse of domain registration and hosting agreements
5. Re-routing accurate website addresses to false websites Corrupting RSS Feeds, (Pharming and Phishing attacks that misdirect voters from deceptive e-mail posing as legitimate election official communications.
6. Using â€œtypo domainsâ€ to create false websites with misinformation
7. Text messaging misinformation, and cell phone messages (GPS features)
8. Using Voice Over IP (VoIP) calls or botnet based calls to spread misinformation

• Groups that may be targeted

1. Young people
2. Voters with obvious political leanings based on their online or offline activity
3. Not traditionally disenfranchised groups

• Why deceptive practices online may be more difficult to trace and the perpetrators more difficult to apprehend

1. History of the Internet
2. How it Works: Physical Space v. Cyberspace
3. Communication and the Internet
4. Security Challenges

• Potential technological means to combat these acts

1. To target people for these attacks voter registration records are important
2. Web pages, RSS Feeds, and maybe a U-Tube Video on the threat
3. Public Awareness

• . The state of the law covering these types of acts

1. Voting laws
2. Criminal laws, e.g. cyber crime,
3. Civil liability, e.g. for providers
4. SPAM
5. Computer Crimes trespass, spyware, malicious activity

Presenters

• Lillie Coney, EPIC. Lillie Coney is Associate Director with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. She is the Public Policy Coordinator for the National Committee for Voting Integrity (NCVI), and has testified before the Election Assistance Commission. She served on the Brennan Center Taskforces on the Security and Usability of Voting Systems. She also served as a member of the ACM Committee on Guidelines for Implementation of Voter Registration Databases. She participated as a contributor in the academic paper "Towards a Privacy Measurement Criterion for Voting Systems." She has written several law journal articles on voting, and contributed to the development of the Election Incident Reporting System. She is a contributor to the New York Times Best Seller, 50 Ways to Love Your Country. She serves in an advisory capacity to several organizations, which include Verified Voting, ACCURATE, Voting System Performance Rating, and Open Voting Consortium. She is also on the board of Computing Professionals for Social Responsibility.
• Peter Neumann (Chair National Committee for Voting Integrity)

Background Resources

Discussions and Feeds

News

Hacker Redirects Barack Obama's site to hillaryclinton.com: using a cross-site scripting bug. Mox's I am the one who "hacked" Obamas site and the techmeme links have more.

Tags

cfp08 elections2.0