Deepfakes Put Scottish Parliament TV at Risk

Recordings and live video broadcasts of Scottish Parliamentary proceedings are increasingly at risk from deepfakes. Scottish Parliament TV is a website that offers the general public live streaming and recorded footage from the Debating Chamber and committee chambers. Users can download live-streaming video clips from the website because it has no content limitations. Additionally, the material's reuse license is rather expansive.

Ben Collier of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) and the University of Edinburgh says that although the Scottish Parliament was one of the first legislatures to permit this type of public access to its proceedings, the transparency also carries significant cybersecurity risks that "could threaten public trust in democracy."

Three major threats to the Scottish Parliament have been identified by researchers at the University of Edinburgh and SCCJR: threat actors producing deepfake videos of Parliament and disseminating them via social media channels for broader distribution; attackers taking over a live stream by breaking into the network and chain of video and intercepting the data, displaying viewers a manipulated video on the live stream instead of the true version; and, finally, using the parliamentary video archive to train AI to create malicious materials to target members of the Scottish Parliament.

The Scottish Parliament does not currently have any procedures in place to stop these kinds of attacks, but the researchers outlined a number of ways to lessen the risks, including  developing an intervention and reporting plan, implementing more authentication checks, and creating a communications team with the broadcasting unit to support any Parliament members that are targeted.