British Election Commission which was planning to make next general elections digital has received a warning from the former boss of MI6 that the move could expose the Britain elections to cyber attacks from hostile countries like Russia.
Sir John Sawers, the former boss of England’s Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6, said that the traditional paper ballot was much more secure than using computing devices for casting votes.
Sir John added that as more things go online, the more susceptible will things be to hackers.
Note- Electronic voting allows the electing populace to simply tick a box against the electoral candidate of their preference. The vote immediately gets registered after double confirmation and gets secured in the database. What’s amazing with this technique is that it helps the election head to count the votes with just a click of the button. Means, as soon as the button is clicked, all the votes gained by the electoral candidates get lined up on screen. So, the need to employ people to count, supervise and station the material gets eliminated on a complete note.
John Sawers alert comes after the US government accused Russia of influencing the US 2016 Polls and turning them in favor of Donald Trump.
Sir John, who worked as head of MI6 from 2009-14, told BBC Radio Documentary that digitalization paves way for sophistication of resources to simplify our lives. But he added that it could also cast a nasty spell in coming generations.
Thus, Commons Speaker John Bercow’s screech for electronic voting was slapped down by the latest comment of Sir John.
MR. Bercow wanted the British Election Commission to adopt digital democracy by 2020 general elections. So, the election commission announced that it was looking into electronic voting in December 2016. It added that a test trial will be made in 2018 on this note.
But with Sir John’s latest viewpoint gaining a lot of values in defense, the Election Commissions plan to go digital by 2020 General Elections may be withdrawn.
Surprisingly, a day before Sir John expressed his viewpoint; US President Elect Donald Trump expressed a similar feeling on digitalization.
Trump said that no computing device in the world is secure from cyber attacks and so to pass on the critical information, people should again start using courier and mail services.
