The biggest democratic elections are going to be held in the world’s largest democratic country. In such a situation, along with the political parties of our country, our enemy countries have also become active. Recently, Microsoft, one of the world’s biggest tech companies, has issued a warning that China is making efforts to influence the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in India (Indian Lok Sabha Election Hack). And this threat is also on the elections of South Korea and America along with India. According to the Microsoft Intelligence Team, a team of hackers backed by the Chinese government is engaged in efforts to hack important elections around the world with the help of North Korea.
However, it is not that China will directly hack EVM or any database. Instead, China will try to mislead and confuse the people of India by using Artificial Intelligence and Deep Fake so that the party whose government China wants is formed in India. And it is not very difficult for China to do this. China has the data of almost every Indian available and since there is no data protection law in India nor is there any technology available to censor the internet, China can do this very easily.
What are the methods?
With the speed with which technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Deep Fake are developing, people are not becoming aware of them as fast. People are often unable to differentiate between deep fake and genuine content and China can take advantage of this. To instigate people against any party, China can make a deep fake video of the leader of that party and make it viral on social media so that people turn against that leader. Or the way Iran has made a deep fake video of news journalists whom people trust against Israel in UAE, it can show some such false figures which may turn people against a particular party.
What are the methods of prevention?
There are dozens of ways in which elections can be influenced. And it can be fatal for any democratic country if any other country influences its internal processes. And hence it becomes very important that some steps are taken to avoid this.
- Awareness: The best way to avoid such external interference is to make more and more people aware about such technological developments. For this, the government should run a campaign and those who are aware about it should also make more people aware through their social media accounts.
- Cyber Security Mechanism: It is necessary that the government should form an agency which will keep a close watch on this type of content and immediately refute it with evidence in front of the public as soon as it comes so that the public can avoid being misled.
- Internet Operating Law: Just as the European Union has brought a strict data protection and internet related law, similarly there is a need to bring this law in India and it should be ensured that the database of data of Indian internet users is not in any enemy country.
