Online voting is a serious security risk, says former MI6 chief

Sir John Sawers says uncertainty over cyber capabilities puts the world in a dangerous place

Online voting makes countries more susceptible to interference and is less secure than a pencil and paper, according to Sir John Sawers, former head of MI6.

Speaking on a BBC Radio 4 documentary The New World: Axis of Power, he said that countries need to be wary of adopting online voting, despite the obvious appeal to younger voters who are used to doing everything online.

"The younger generation of people expect to be able to do things remotely and through electronic devices," he said. "Bizarrely, the stubby pencil and piece of paper that you put your cross on in the ballot box is actually much more secure than anything which is electronic."

Sawers, who led MI6 between 2009 and 2014, said that the world is returning to a phase of great-power rivalry between the USA, China and Russia not seen since the end of the Cold War, and that suspicion and misunderstandings over cyber attacks and hacking could spiral out of control because the ground rules are not clear.

"We've not had a major cyber attack [the equivalent of] 9/11, but you can't rule out something like that in the future," he said.

"One of the big problems we face with cyber is that it hasn't really been discussed internationally, about what is an acceptable use of cyber powers and where are the red lines and what happens when those red lines are crossed," he went on.

"We're at a very early stage. It's a bit like with nuclear weapons back in the 1950s. We've got the capabilities, but there are no rules lined up as to how they should be used," he said.

"China, the US and Russia feel more vulnerable to being attacked than having the power of being able to attack so this makes everyone err on the side of caution, but it's not based on an understanding of each others' capabilities. There's no hotline to say 'this is getting out of hand'."

Sawer said he was worried that recent developments on the international political stage did not bode well for fostering understanding.

"I'm not sure, frankly, that president Trump will be very well suited for having these discussions at the highest level," he said.

Sir John's comments come at a time when the US intelligence agencies have accused Russia of hacking the Democratic National Congress's systems, releasing emails by Hillary Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta which may have swung the result of the presidential election. Whether or not this is the case, Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, told the programme that the temptation to interfere using hacking will always be there.

"In an adversarial world if you can get away with something you do it", he said. "For Putin it's a way of getting back at Hillary Clinton's condemnation of Russia's own elections in 2011. He was very critical of US involvement in that campaign."

Sawers added that Putin sees cyber warfare as a way of leveling the playing field between Russia and the larger economies of China and the USA.

"Putin is using cyber and propaganda warfare to assert himself in a way we haven't seen Russia do since the 1970s," he said.

With more and more actors gaining offensive cyber warfare capabilities we are entering a dangerous new territory, said former Swedish prime minister Karl Bild.

"You have the US elections, and we know what China has been up to, then there's an Iranian-Saudi cyber conflict going on, and we've seen in the last few months someone doing reconnaissance on the core of the internet," he said.

"Clearly a lot of actors are now acquiring cyber capabilities. "