Facebook Funds 'Defending Digital Democracy' Initiative At Harvard (diginomica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Diginomica: A fresh initiative aimed at information sharing about election threats and dubbed Defending Digital Democracy has the financial support of Facebook and the academic muscle of Harvard behind it. Will the project succeed where similar initiatives have failed...? On 19 July and backed by a $500,000 initial grant from Facebook, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School launched a new, bipartisan initiative called the Defending Digital Democracy Project. The project will be co-led by Robby Mook, Democrat Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign manager, and Matt Rhoades, Republican Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign manager. The hope is that creating a unique and bipartisan team comprised of top-notch political operatives and leaders in the cyber and national security world, the project will be able to to identify and recommend strategies, tools, and technology to protect democratic processes and systems from cyber and information attacks.
The group will also assess new technologies (including blockchain) to secure elections, and wants to create an information sharing infrastructure modeled "on similar efforts within the tech industry to share tech intelligence." The article says Facebook's chief security officer "hopes that election officials who are wary of cooperating with the federal government will be more receptive to working with an independent group tied to Harvard and the tech industy," and the group also includes Google's director for Information Security and Privacy.

"Facebook plans to host state and local election officials at its D.C. office later this year to discuss the information sharing organization, and launch the organization in early 2018."

Comments

Let me guess

[Jarwulf]

'Defending Digital Democracy' means pushing some selfserving political narrative in the US rather than actually defending democracy in places companies like Facebook kowtow to like China.

Re:Let me guess

[TheRaven64]

Or places like the USA, where Facebook builds profiles about the issues of importance and opinions of the electorate, identifies the marginal voters in swing constituencies and the issues that will persuade them to change their vote, and sells this to the party that bids the highest. And, for an extra fee, will even put adds saying 'Candidate X supports {Issue that you think is the most important}' in their feeds.

Step 1 to protecting democracy

[El Cubano]

The hope is that creating a unique and bipartisan team comprised of top-notch political operatives and leaders in the cyber and national security world, the project will be able to to identify and recommend strategies, tools, and technology to protect democratic processes and systems from cyber and information attacks.

Step 1 to protecting democracy:

Don't riot when someone with different political views comes to your campus. For comparison:

• Bernie Sanders visits conservative Christian university and gets treated like a human being and is allowed to speak: video
• [insert name of conservative politician/pundit] gets invited to [insert name of university] then disinvited after students riot (e.g., UC Berkeley)

Once the universities begin to act like a) they have a role in our democracy (we are actually a representative republic, but I am not going to split hairs), and b) start working constructively to improve it, then we may have something worthwhile.