Until Americans realize how vulnerable the democratic process is to cybercrimes, we are playing in to the hands of foreign aggressors like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager Robby Mook warns in an opinion piece in Tuesday's The New York Times.
Mook admitted that he also underestimated the seriousness of cybercrimes until Democratic staff members and organizations were hacked.
The attitude that hacks are similar to leaks has to change, Mook said, because what Putin did by exposing the emails of Democrats wasn't a leak, it was "an attack with stolen information" with the intent of trying to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process," as described in a report released by the office of the director of national intelligence.
Mook insisted that this is not a partisan issue, because foreign strongmen are not against one U.S. political party or another but are anti-American and want to harm democracy itself. To justify what Putin did, or to blame the victim, as President-elect Donald Trump has chosen to do by saying the Democrats should not have been so careless, simply leaves "all of us, under threat, because the next attack may be aimed not at a political party, but at the White House or the Pentagon."
Mook admitted that individual Americans must improve ways to protect ourselves and become more aware of the dangers, but law enforcement also needs to do a better job of alerting and assisting potential victims. He insisted that "Our democratic structures — elections equipment and officials, elected officials and candidates, activists and reporters — must be elevated as a priority.
Mook said that just as the Watergate break-in more than four decades ago "prompted major reforms to safeguard our democratic institutions," this more sophisticated break-in should inspire us to do that again.
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