National Security or Privacy: A Second Thought on the DNC Hack

Abstract

The recent U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack raises several difficult questions in the fields of cybersecurity and privacy. Obviously, this was first and foremost a matter of security in that the hack likely involved a foreign government attempting to intervene in a presidential election process with the possible motive of influencing its outcome. From another perspective, however, the incident was also a matter of privacy, in that the fundamental motive of the DNC hack was to reveal “information that the victim wants to keep private” and to influence its future decision through the compromise of privacy.