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Parliament’s leading cross-party security committee has set out its fears over “threats and risks to our democracy” in the run-up to the 4 July election – as a swathe of loopholes allowing foreign interference remain unclosed.
Last year the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre said that the UK Government “is almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general elections”, and that we could “expect to see the integrity of our systems tested again” during this election year.
The National Security Strategy Joint Committee’s inquiry into defending democracy was launched in February to examine UK preparedness for a national election in a year when record numbers of people, including in Europe, the UK, the USA, and India, go to the polls.
The cross-party committee made up of peers and MPs says the UK Government should be prepared for the possibility of foreign interference during the upcoming General Election.
It has taken the decision to write and publish this letter because “it is not clear if members of the public fully understand how these threats will manifest and what this means for the UK, its democracy and for them as individuals.”
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The letter warns of cyber-attacks on UK institutions, for example public bodies or Parliament, with the aim of destabilising democracy, as well as the use of hacking and targeting of candidates to expose personal information or blackmail them. And it warns of the spread of AI-generated deepfakes imitating public figures and sowing doubt, division and “chaos where there are already domestic divides” on contested issues.
In February, during his re-election campaign, London mayor Sadiq Khan was targeted by a deepfake audio file which appeared to show him making inflammatory remarks about Armistice Day. The Met Police decided a crime had not been committed, as there is little legislation banning political deepfakes designed to warp elections.
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