Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion On Election Security Techno

CSPAN Discussion On Election Security Technology Legislative Solutions July 13, 2024

Ok, lets grab some lunch and come back on in. That is something we should be able to form in our republics. And just a last quick thought, misinformation versus information. To public is able differentiate between an advertisement. Speakers our previous ked about eight 800010,000 local jurisdictions that hold the responsibility to make sure their are free and Fair Elections in their venue. And it seems to me that it is asking quite a bit, the federal government is imposing quite a burden on these locals. Any of whom do not have cyber experience. Most of whom do not have knowledge with regard to the technology deployed even in the machines. Very few of which have resources to upgrade and the knowledge on what they should upgrade to. In what youted think the federal government should do elections are still driven by local and state responsibilities, to a cyst these 10,000 jurisdictions to prepare as best they can to manage the risk of hacking into the infrastructure. I would like someone to take that on for me. I can begin this one. We heard about what the government can and cannot do today. The director and executive director talked about the amendment and what it applies to. Technically, the people who are on the front lines of this the fight against misinformation such as private actors like facebook and youtube, they are not obligated to give you free speech rights. To what has been talked about here, youtube employees a contact content id. Which somerror rate of us might consider an infringement of our free speech. Facebook can tell us when to speak as can youtube. Ones doingre the what we are trying to do as the government. They are trying to protect us from misinformation or i like to believe that they are. I think there is an important social justice aspect. Making sure the infrastructure that the localities are relying this was spoken about. There are 10,000 jurisdictions overseeing these elections. They have the money and infrastructure. I think we have an obligation to help them do something. I want to know what you think they ought to be doing. [indiscernible] i work closely with her. Our members are the state Election Officials. And i want to weigh in on this from a multiple perspective. The governor pointed out that we have so many local Election Officials in this country with such a range of capabilities, resources, Different Levels of support from the state. I think it is incumbent upon both the state and federal government to provide support to them in different ways as well as society. Universities, nonprofits to fill the gaps. We see a lot of different in electioneveryone security recognizes this as a challenge. Alls hard to even reach 800010,000 local Election Officials with a piece of information. We do not have a good process. We have a good process to reach the 50 state Election Officials with information they need to know. Officials islocal a huge challenge. There are multiple different associations through the commission and different avenues but even telling them something even one piece of information is a challenge. Support from the Cyber Security agency has been huge. Value these services. Vulnerability scans. Fishing assessments. Information about cyber hygiene. Bet continued support to able to provide the support to the localities is huge. And right now, they do not have the bandwidth to do this in every jurisdiction so figuring out the most efficient way to provide that kind of hell. And also the states are preparing providing a lot of help. And set and looking at certain programs that have been effective is huge. I dont know who mentioned the Cyber Navigator Program in illinois but a lot of programs are looking to replicate that where the state hires Cyber Security expertise at the state level to provide boots on the Ground Support in the counties. They are traveling to all of the counties. Iowa and minnesota both recently launched Cyber Navigator Program. Now, they only have one cyber navigator so there are challenges there but i think it will be expanding. A lot of states are using their National Guard for similar support. To provide assessments. I think we need to look at what is working and how we can expand upon those sorts of things. Another issue you mentioned is the challenge of procurement for local Election Officials. It is huge. Knowing what our trusted systems. Nonprofits they put out a procurement guide for Election Officials and that is a great resource to use to start thinking about asking their vendors securitybased, riskbased questions when choosing systems. And the challenge is getting that information out to local Election Officials. Not just local Election Officials but local i. T. And local procurement officers. I appreciate that. Our friend from kentucky, joe during. Joe deering. Mind, i am of my nistking you have dhs, put out a platform for businesses. A primary for Digital Security. I have some really keen experts from the Cyber Security, Digital Security world. Why can we not build out a template for every local jurisdiction . At a minimum, you have to check these boxes and you can go from there. Jerry [indiscernible] Election Security in a box. That is not going to fit every jurisdiction but here are five simple things if you do these things come in your Security Posture will be increased exponentially. I think we need a publicprivate partnership. It was just a federal fix there are jurisdictional authorities but there will be counties that will legitimately say, i dont want it. We do not want to work with the federal government. What we found is that when there , aan interlocutor thirdparty, a nonprofit, the state acting as a path through passthrough from the federal side. There are some specific things we can do going back to cyber navigator. I think that is a huge opportunity we can go from county to county making sure holding to the standard protocols when it comes to passwords and second factor authentication. The thing we are reiterating on a constant basis. I also think there israel for a system like i also think there is room for a system like. If we are using the same type of model with i. T. Professionals and inserting them into the counties on a temporary basis providing that knowledge gap, i think that could be a Partnership Among all of the sectors. [indiscernible] use of continued sustained funding from the federal government. We agree with that. Like to have a question from the audience . I cant see that part. Election security fellow. My previous job was as director of elections for idaho, boise. For those 800010,000 we had a report that had six steps. Unilateral steps that are modest but meaningful. Im not going to shill for the entire thing but it touches on a couple of things. Taking sure the information is getting out. We have talked about the fact that only a small fraction of those jurisdictions have the website. The reasons are from a security perspective and an information perspective to have that. And being able to walk through and make sure that local officials know and have the funds for that is important. And what kinds of simulation are you doing to make sure you get high intensity of elections and a higher turnout. They are increasing the number of states and increasing in tabletop exercises. Think one of the other pieces worth noting. To bring those folks in and getting there take on some of this would be helpful to point abouteds some of the things they are already doing. One more comment. Right up front. Mike nelson again, carnegie endowment. I have a question for the last three speakers. That hackinged into a election systems is actually pretty hard. About whatr to lie is going on and convince people the systems are not working. Information warfare is having a bigger affect particularly when the story is we have reports that this countys absentee ballots have been shredded. Is there a federal role for helping journalists sort out the rumors from the fact . N they get a report that election machines across southern florida are out of commission, they dont even know anyone to talk to. There is not a place in washington to call. Is there a role to counter disinformation about the election particularly on election day or the days right after . I would love to hear peoples thoughts on that but i would add there is an inherent tension between trying to verify your theces and needing to be first person to report on a thing. The impact, and im sure our Data Scientist would know it better than i do, the first headline that comes up regarding something whatever its for asked city whatever its s veracity turns out to be. In terms of the initial question, i would encourage journalists to look to the state election official. If the question is about time, place, manner of voting or what is going on in the administration of an election, i would encourage them to go to an election official. There are people in the federal government that can answer security and election in particular. But they are not going to take a question that is that specific. That would be what i would encourage journalists to do. The broader role for Election Officials it is challenging. They are figuring out as we work through this. I think all of Election Officials would consider it their responsibility to try to counter miss and disinformation about the manner of voting. Incorrectw something online, they will try to correct it and get that Accurate Information out there. When you get into political as the lastough, tale highlighted with the legal considerations, that is more challenging. Certain Election Officials are taking a larger role in trying to educate the public. Media and Digital Literacy types of issues. And educating them about the buts to interfere that is certainly a bigger challenge than those questions of wrong information about the election. [indiscernible] you mean the misinformation about the election itself . [indiscernible] states have systems for being able to report Incorrect Information well you always could call your Election Officials to report it but a lot of them have more Automated Systems and they are telling more people about them to report Incorrect Information about where you go to vote and how to vote or register to vote. You should report those things to your state and local Election Officials. Is there a federal role to inform them . Absolutely. Officials are strongly encouraging the federal government to get involved as quickly as possible. I wanted to followup on what you mentioned. We are talking about detections. That is what we want to tackle breaking news. For a normal person to detect it quick. And how guerrilla might be better at that. Is also a role for 24 7 journalism. That is something we are trying to tackle in the sense that when we see psychologically we have misinformation and then we correct the headline with new information, we see people have a hard time believing the correction. That is because of the nature of this. The likelihood of me coming back to that article and believing the new, correct information is harder. We encourage the idea of picking up on these quickly. In terms ofnible] for arocess, as we look technological solution to this, and weve talked about the legislative assistance that would aid our state Election Officials but if we are looking to identify that, how do we get platforms to be required to use algorithms that automatically identify and in terms ofct variability or the categories you had on your side . Buthat is a good question difficult for me to answer. I want to highlight whenever i show those a different types of differente do have information. We have to be very disciplined. The ons are not in the detecting side, that is difficult because we utilize source as an indicator. A newselieve that organization would be more likely to have information that is accurate and factual. That is the question for us technically. Robertson . I have a thought about a solution. Active orsearch for past awards through the National Science foundation. There are six results that include the word disinformation. That is out of the tens of thousands of Research Awards that have been presented over the decades. My suggestion is to start working on this problem for real. They cannot only happen in think tanks. Robust require a more research infrastructure. Mr. Evans, did you have something you wanted to say . There isondering if another role for private industry. How many of you have some kind of a virus checker on your computer . What about Something Like this where we can choose to put the virus checker or misinformation checker on our computer or as a hook on our web browser . Have a full out question for that. We are talking about automated programs. Rules like laws that we need to follow, we have checks and balances for that. We have a comet situation. We have a rule making progress for all agency action. If we allow these technologies to constantly up a their roles and learn, since they are learning machines, of how they identify these i am not an expert. Do you have a comment on that . I want to highlight the fact that there are two different Machine Learning methods. The one method you are talking about is unsupervised. The algorithm detects whatever it sees as the pattern. Our report is based on supervised Machine Learning. Inthat regard, we believe the transparency of those indicators. That is important to distinguish. I want to point out something that was mentioned previously. Whenever we develop this type of algorithm come it depends on the hasate sector and the user two know how he or she wants to incorporate that. [indiscernible] [indiscernible] one thing i would like to hear people touch on and there is a bit of a tension when it comes to marketbased solutions. One thing that might give a market incentive would be if distributors of content and platforms felt they would be held liable for things. There are limits to that though. Generally speaking, Silicon Valley is culturally resistant to the notion that you should impose any kind of restriction on it. But, if you look at things like the dmcas approach for copyrighted material or hip is relation to medical records, i this there seems to nontech person that there is probably a feasible answer out there and perhaps the threat of liability through some sort of amendment to the cda could motivate them to do something clever. Like milliondollar companies do. I think that ties in well comments. Corderos i think we see that it is required. Does that regulatory peace though require platforms to embrace technological review of content . In an ongoing way that identifies it . I recognize that has specific concerns. Air. D flew into the [laughter] could we get the microphone over to aemma . Would you want to come up. . Here . Just one point on this question of creating liability around the content. It is important to remember you can only do that if the underlying content is illegal. That is where we run into the real challenge about what of the would fitof content some existing or newly developed prohibition against that content . Illegal, there is no liability for the publisher and distributor unless you are ratherng a New Territory than Something Like the dmca. Mean a matter of talking about terms and services. I understand that point but i think disinformation being distinct from misinformation, mistakes, there are people actively working to do harm. You are talking about behindns on on intent the speaker that is the creator of the content. I think these are the right questions to ask. Flag that it is not as simple as creating a center for disinformation. There is a lot of unpacking of that you have to do. If it were easy, we would not need so many luminous people to figure it out. Emmas point, it is critical to recognize the distinction between talking about the regulation of the content itself versus regulation. Maria is describing it as education of the content. Could we look at this as requiring platforms, educate users about natures the nature of the content. Just like we would require financial sectors to engage in encryption practices, could we carry over some sort of educational, regulatory requirement about online content . And i understand that it opens up a can of worms but we have to be working towards solutions. As it is now, democracy is under a significant challenge. I have a suggestion about that. From a technical standpoint, i think providence what you can require is that the company can provide providence for the material they present. For the not liable publication but they are liable to identify the source. Me that i would be interested to think about what kind of policy would encourage the developers of the interest of the infrastructure to provide the tools for that kind of providence. And regarding election infrastructure and the problem of the country having lots of jurisdictions and trying to make intelligent procurement decisions, there are not that many providers. And it seems there is a real argument to be made or some kind of godliness some kind of guidance. Organizing the structures on the surface and the certification of some parties. That would take a lot of the burden off of local officials if they could look to that kind of ofp that kind certification. It is about 1 00. And myself, ifma i may, i think it would be difficult to undermine the right of anonymity. It is such a cornerstone of ou

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