Pointed out that weak points of democracy are 'attacks on common political knowledge'

by Magnus Franklin

In a country operated by democratic politics, the existence with the decision making power of the state is the people themselves which constitute the state, and conflicts with this are autocratic politics where one individual or a few one parties hold a mighty power. In recent years, the preparation for national cyber security is regarded as important, but researchers have published a paper entitled " Common Knowledge Attacks on Democracy " and said that "not only information security and cyber attack, You should also be aware of attacks that encourage recognition and knowledge. "

Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by Henry Farrell, Bruce Schneier :: SSRN
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3273111

Information Attacks against Democracies - Schneier on Security
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/information_att.html

Mr. Henry Farrell, an international political scientist at George Washington University and Bruce Schneier, a special researcher at the Berkman Center at Harvard University, analyzed the impact of information security and Internet attack on democracy. And pointed out that "attacks on people's knowledge of politics" could threaten democracy.

According to the paper, democratic politics and dictatorship are made up of different information systems, and it depends on what kind of information attack vulnerable due to the difference. In the paper, the two have said that there are two kinds of knowledge about the people 's politics.

The first is information that people of society agree broadly, including who the ruler of the state is, its justification, how the members of the government are elected and operated, "common The political knowledge of the information "is called. Even those who are dissatisfied with the government widely agree on this common political knowledge, and in democracy the knowledge of many people about the ruling parties, the elections and voting methods is roughly Match.

The other is called "competing political knowledge", and in a broader sense it is the part of society that has a different perception of each. Specifically, the knowledge that various opinions are possessed by people, such as the role the government should play against the current economy, the measures to be taken, the rules of the tax system to be taken by the government, the scope of regulation by the government, I will point it. With regard to these two different political knowledge, democratic politics and dictatorship have resolved with different approaches respectively.

Democratic politics uses a majority vote to solve "competing political knowledge", and different political parties persuade voters to approve a lot of people to their opinions. Ideally, democracy can suck up the opinions of many people and can search for solutions from various perspectives on complex problems.

On the other hand, in democratic politics, there is also a problem that "the political party who will take the next administration can not be predicted". For example, even if the former ruling party is working on solving problems on a certain issue with a long-term perspective, it is possible that the posture of the next administration may be changed by the next administration. In order for democracy to function adequately it is important that people understand firmly the democratic principles and the way they are operated.

On the other hand, the authority of the administration does not change for a long time in dictatorship politics, so the information such as government goals and administrators of the administration remains constant at all times. Also, administrators of the regime will try to monopolize "conflicting political knowledge" itself because it does not require the citizen's knowledge of the fairness and effectiveness of elections. In democratic politics, the support rate to the administration known as "common political knowledge" and the way of making political parties with political goals different from the government, the autocracy politics trying to keep them away from the reach of citizens Schneier said.

The difference in approach to "political knowledge of the people" of this democratic politics and dictatorship politics has a big difference in the influence of information security on the state.

by Michael Kappel

In dictatorship politics, while trying to maintain political knowledge by monopolizing political knowledge, it is vulnerable to external information attacks such as "there is a power opposing the government in fact." Information such as "there are a lot of potential adversaries to the administration", "support from the public is not so high in fact", "information on the democratic politics being carried out by a free political party management in foreign countries" is dedicated to dictatorship It will cause great damage.

For example, in Tunisia, the beginning of the " Arab Spring " that started in 2010, political control over the people worked. It was said that everyone was requested to publicly support the government, the repulsive heart to the government did not surf and was hindering the formation of a group opposing the government. However, with the development of the Internet and SNS, citizens became able to have a sideways connection, and when dissatisfaction with the government surfaced, it quickly changed to a big activity. Nowadays the Arab Spring has subsided, but in countries that have an autocratic political system, open information by the Internet and SNS can still pose a threat.

Unlike this, democratic politics are vulnerable to information attacks that shake people's "common political knowledge". People who are dissatisfied with the result of the elections tend to believe the information that "election results are being manipulated illegally", and if political parties that are different from political party they support in public opinion survey are predominant, "the survey result is arbitrary I'd like to jump to the information that I am distorted.

What is important for successful democratic politics is "common political knowledge" which is the premise that politics is democratically operated. If the credibility of the political system itself becomes poor, active discussions necessary for the prosperity of democratic politics will be sluggish, distrust of the political system itself will be solicited.

by Element 5 Digital

While open information distribution can be a tool to accelerate democracy, it can also be a tool to lower the stability of democracy by causing doubts about the democratic political system by the dissemination of fake news. The paper states that by understanding what different political regime is vulnerable to what kind of information attacks, it is possible to prepare for attacks on political systems by external and internal sources.