It is "much too late" to protect the 2018 elections from cyber attacks, a former Facebook security chief said Wednesday.
In a post on the blog Lawfare, Alex Stamos, who left Facebook recently to teach at Stanford, said hacks and misinformation campaigns "are evidence that Russia has not been deterred and that Iran is following in its footsteps."
"This underlines a sobering reality: America's adversaries believe that it is still both safe and effective to attack U.S. democracy using American technologies and the freedoms we cherish," Stamos wrote.
"While it is much too late to effectively rehabilitate election security for the 2018 midterms, there are four straightforward steps the United States can take to prepare for potential attacks in 2020," he added.
Stamos said Congress should establish legal standards for misinformation; the federal government should decide who is in charge of cybersecurity matters; states should bolster their election infrastructure; and Americans should demand that cyberattacks be investigated.
"The attacks against U.S. political discourse aim to undermine citizens' confidence, create chaos and jeopardize the legitimacy of the American government," Stamos wrote.
Lawmakers will have a chance to address concerns from Stamos, who left Facebook at the beginning of this month, and others in the tech and cybersecurity communities during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Sept. 5, The Hill noted.
Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google are slated to testify before the committee on foreign political influence efforts on their platforms.
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