Published By: Wired, 8/29/2016

Summary: Hackers have broken into the Illinois and Arizona state boards of elections’ records, following hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign in the last couple of months. This highlights concerns about the security of electronic voter records and even ballot integrity, including effects on U.S. citizens’ confidence in election results.

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Extended Discussion Questions:

• What does this story show about the impact of computing on elections?
• Besides the specific issues mentioned in the article, can you think of some other impacts (positive and negative) that computing has had on elections?
• Were elections in the U.S. ever “hacked” before electronic voting and electronic storage of voter registration records?
• The Wired article points out that voter records (registration details and which elections the person voted in) are commonly sold to data brokers, who resell it. How is this similar to and different from companies selling purchase records to data brokers? Do you think the two situations should be treated differently under the law?

CSP Global Impact Learning Objectives/EKs:
LO 7.3.1 Analyze the beneficial and harmful effects of computing.

EK 7.3.1G Privacy and security concerns arise in the development and use of computational systems and artifacts.
EK 7.3.1L Commercial and governmental curation of information may be exploited if privacy and other protections are ignored.

Other CSP Big Ideas:
3 Data and Information
6 The Internet

Banner Image: “Network Visualization – Violet – Crop 7”, derivative work by ICSI. New license: CC BY-SA 4.0. Based on “Social Network Analysis Visualization” by Martin Grandjean. Original license: CC BY-SA 3.0