The elections of the new congressmen for the 2016-2021 congressional period will be held on Sunday 25 and the publicity of the candidates has not been expected in the different social networks such as media and BTLS. Under this context of a favorite use towards technology, assumptions and predictions are questionable practices and constitute a danger on the management of information and technology data.
The term «fake news» refers to the publication of pseudo-journalistic content disseminated through news portals, press, television, radio, and social networks and which sole purpose of generating misinformation. In today’s technological environment, data is a very important and powerful tool that organizations have in order to influence user behavior. To fulfill this purpose, both data and fake news are used, which in the Peruvian context flood congressional campaigns.
In 2016, Cambridge Analytica, an English company that has already disappeared, violated the security of several large data storage organizations, such as Facebook and other social networks. CA seized the personal information of more than 50 million users of these networks to benefit the current president of the United States Donald Trump. These data were used by the company to identify, in an almost personalized way, the medium, content, theme, and tone of what a new fake should have or need to be able to change the thinking of the voters; this modus operandi was also applied in the referendum by the «Brexit»
Years later, with the advances in big data and artificial intelligence, it would be proven that citizens are more susceptible to being manipulated, and this increases in countries with low levels of prevention, control, and response like ours. An ESET study determined that Peru is the Latin American country that has the highest percentage of data hijacking. The country is vulnerable and this makes the elections presented in the country too. In the last presidential campaign, micro-segmentation was used to favor certain candidates.
Although this method is not harmful if it joins the «fake news» it could be decisive and harmful for the elections. Today, certain political interests want to take advantage of the vulnerability in the recognition of the veracity of information by the population, which also does not seek to find out or inform about a subject and only guides what it reads in forums publications of doubtful origin.
To counteract this problem that seems imminent in these elections, secure and efficient data governance protocols should be implemented. Likewise, the state must help with the establishment of guidelines, security, and privacy, as in the more developed countries. An example to follow would be the General Regulation of Data Protection of the European Union because it poses sanctions and in turn requires transparency to institutions as well as the awareness of citizens about the consent of the use of personal data and its implications. According to the local scope, technology must be seen as an enemy and start using platforms such as Cloud or Blockchain that provide better recognition of data instead of physical or paper servers.