The real threat of fake voices in a time of crisis – HYPEREDGE EMBED

Latanya Sweeney is a professor of government and technology in residence at Harvard University's Department of Government, editor-in-chief of Technology Science and the founding director of the Technology Science Initiative and the Data Privacy Lab at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. Max Weiss is a senior at Harvard University and the student who implemented the Deepfake Text experiment. As federal agencies take increasingly stringent actions to try to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic within the U.S., how can individual Americans and U.S. companies affected by these rules weigh in with their opinions and experiences? Because many of the new rules, such as travel restrictions and increased surveillance, require expansions of federal power beyond normal circumstances, our laws require the federal government to post these rules publicly and allow the public to contribute their comments to the proposed rules online. But are federal public comment websites -- a vital institution for American democracy -- secure in this time of crisis?