John McAfee’s Election Campaign to Focus on Cryptocurrency
John McAfee is clear on what he wants. He announced that he is one of the top contenders for US President in 2020. His sole motto will be promoting Cryptocurrency. While McAfee CTO Steve Grobman says, the industry should include their focus on securing beyond the counting process and cultivate broader concern at the voting processes itself. He identified risks in the current US elections as well, pointing out that there was a ‘gap’ insecurity in communications between the local jurisdictions and constituencies.
The top-executive proposes that security issues in the processes of elections being conducted should also secure the infrastructure used such as counting machines and voting machines have to be considered as combined security risks.
McAfee for President in 2020
Besides, there is another connection between the US elections and McAfee. The founder of McAfee, John McAfee has announced that he will be the fray for the US Presidential elections of 2020. He had set the ball rolling with a proposal being made out to the local party, Libertarian Party for a nomination back in 2016. Back during those elections days, his focus was on ‘lapses in cybersecurity.’ Four years down the line, his efforts in campaigning for Presidency will focus on ‘currency independence’ since he believes that in five years there would be no fiat currency to talk about. He admits that he will never get elected to the post, but would concentrate on the opportunity. The run-up to the contest would be the perfect opportunity to showcase the cause and effectiveness of cryptocurrencies.
Concerns in US elections
Grobman said that his organization was able to identify “two big issues” regarding local jurisdictional communication between constituencies.
The issues are the result of the decentralization of US elections which are conducted by the states and the local authorities in their capacities and not by a unified central body. There are no standards, and the practices of every state and local body differ from one to the other.
The first issue was with relation to use of Top-level domains which are not standardized, and there is no regulation by the government. Grobman said,
“We found, for example, that a lot of the jurisdictions are using .com, .net and .org for their official voting information sites.”
The second issue was the lack of fundamental or ‘basic’ cyber hygiene practice in local jurisdictions. The sites were not using SSL or TSS which are standard practice and allow users a higher level of communications assurance.
One of the worst sites to be affected by this development was – 92.6% was West Virginia. These sites did not enforce TLS nor SSL, with other states, 91% of Texas-based election-specific websites not following the process, apart from Montana’s 90% sites.
At the same time, these practices are not concerns which are specific only to the US. Grobman shared that these could be issues which are challenging most other governments as well.
