Elections: perception and trust --- Florence - good point. Perception is the key when it comes to citizens' trust in elections.

Since the elections infrastructure goes well beyond voting machines (if any) - into voters' lists, counting process, databases, publishing (and election campaigns - misinformation, leaks, etc) - possibilities for a hack are diverse. More importantly, possibilities for allegations of the hack are diverse. And regardless of whether anything really happened, the trust in the entire process might be ruined. While perceptions mattered before the digital age as well, with digitalisation and obscurity of the system ('it is in computers') it is harder to do a control and transparency of the process.

It occurs to me that there is probably a whole class of trust-related CI: unlike power grid, dams or transport, which either work (deliver) or not, there are CI sectors which can work but not the way we expect them to - and this undermines trust.

Besides elections, I can also see - vaccine production and distribution (has the process been meddled with?), - water supply (can we be sure both the production and the control facilities haven't been hacked - like what happened with Stuxnet when the Iranians didn't even know the turbines are being destroyed?) - certain digital services (what content is delivered to me via social media? has the algorithm been meddled with)? ...

Should we identify such 'trust-related' CI sectors, and have a different - probably more complex and societal - approach to defending them?

Source author: Vladimir Radunovic vladar@diplomacy.edu