Political " Disinformation " !

An Australian Federal election used to be a relatively simple affair.   It was a contest between the conservative Liberal/Country party coalition and the socialist leaning Labor party. On a regular basis, control of the Treasury benches changed hands and we were off on a stint where new faces headed ministries - and usually little changed in policy direction.

This recent US Presidential election signalled that politics has changed forever.   Social media has emerged as the pivot point of public opinion and the " hacker " is the important entity that decides the issues that may sway the vote - and all this is done in the anonymity of cyber space.

There seems to be a valid argument that Russia had an interest in the outcome of the US election and deployed the facilities of its huge espionage facility to disparage Hillary Clinton and enhance the prospects of Donald Trump.  It is suggested that the Russian state contrived " fake news " from what its hackers compiled from penetration of the Democratic parties email traffic and the effect was enhanced by paid " trolls "  who gave the stories substance.

On the eve of the French Presidential election we are seeing a repeat of this tactic.  The front runner is Emmanuel   Macron and Russia would prefer Marine Le Pen because she proposes withdrawing France from the EU - and NATO !   Just as the medias blackout before the vote comes into force there has been a massive release of confusing matter hacked from the Macron campaign containing " misinformation " !

The source seems to be a mysterious news source that calls itself " MacronLeaks " - and this is styled on and assisted by Julian Assange's  WikiLeaks.   Assange still controls WikiLeaks from his bolt hole in London, where he avoids arrest by sheltering within the diplomatic protection of the Ecuadorean embassy.

The age of the computer brought with it the prospect of cyber warfare.   Electronic intrusion is capable of disrupting power, water, transport in a target country and the espionage world maintains constant probing to penetrate the defences in place to guard the information stored by computers.  As we are now seeing, the means exist to probe the political parties behind governments and steal secrets to be divulged just when voters are making decisions on their vote.

Russia was accused of interfering in the American Presidential election and now precisely the same tactic seems to be happening with the Presidential election in France.   There is the expectation that the next important election target on the world stage will be in Germany, and once again it would seem to be in Russia's interest to unseat Angela Merkel.   Many will expect a similar scenario to emerge.

This is a clever tactic that exploits the " freedom of information " that is a part of western democracies.  It is doubtful if the world of computers will ever be secured against the  best efforts of various state security to penetrate systems and steal secrets.   Of course, the very states that are now deploying this method have their own media under tight control and exercise rigid censorship. The outcome of any elections they may permit are usually decided well in advance.

We are a long way away from the next Federal election, but it would be surprising if spooks trained in misinformation techniques are not already gathering background information and preparing the way to blacken the character of those not favoured by foreign intelligence services.  Such is the hazard voters will need to learn to recognise - and ignore !