Homeland Security Newswire |
Time 2020-06-20 09:04:07Web Name: Homeland Security Newswire |
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Displaced persons1 Percent of Humanity Displaced: UNUNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said yesterday it was appealing to countries worldwide to do far more to find homes for millions of refugees and others displaced by conflict, persecution or events seriously disturbing public order. This is as a report released today showed that forced displacement is now affecting more than one per cent of humanity – 1 in every 97 people – and with fewer and fewer of those who flee being able to returnhome.Read more Pandemics5 Ways the World Is Better Off Dealing with a Pandemic Now Than in 1918By Siddharth Chandra and Eva Kassens-NoorNear the end of the First World War, a deadly flu raced across the globe. The influenza pandemic became the most severe pandemic in recent history, infecting about one-third of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920 and killing between 50 and 100 million people. It was caused by an H1N1 virus that originated in birds and mutated to infect humans. Now a century later the world is amidst another global pandemic caused by a zoonotic disease that “jumped” from wildlife to people, a novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. If managed competently, this fight may turn out differently, resulting in lower rates of infection and mortality and, possibly, fewerdeaths.Read more VaccinesVaccine Access and Hesitancy: The Public Health Importance of VaccinesBy Stephanie Miceli While health experts say a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection is needed to return to “normal,” several polls have indicated some Americans would be reluctant to receive a vaccine, citing safety concerns. The spread of disinformation on social media has only further complicatedmatters.Read more ExtremismThe Appeal of Far-Right PoliticsWhy do ordinary citizens join far-right organizations? Agnieszka Pasieka explores how far-right groups offer social services, organize festivals, and shape their own narrative to attract new members. In her Austrian Science Fund (FWF)-project, she accompanies activists to investigate their practices and philosophies. Pasieka says that difficult as it might be to empathize with someone who shares fundamentally different values, taking all parties seriously and understanding their motivation is key in a time in which a refusal to engage with other people s views has become a feature of political as well as academicdebates.Read more Energy securityUsing Wind Turbines to Defend the National Grid from Power CutsA ‘smart’ system that controls the storage and release of energy from wind turbines will reduce the risk of power cuts and support the increase of wind energy use world-wide, say researchers. The system uses the variable speed of the rotors in wind turbine systems to more closely regulate the supply of power to the grid. This means that when electricity demand is high, stored kinetic energy in the turbines can be used intelligently to keep the gridstable.Read more Water securityThe Answer to Groundwater Resources Comes from High in the SkyGroundwater makes up 30 to 50 percent of California’s water supply, but until recently there were few restrictions placed on its retrieval. Then in 2014 California became the last Western state to require regulation of its groundwater, and water managers in the state’s premier agricultural region – the state’s Central Valley – are tasked with estimating available groundwater. It’s a daunting technological challenge – but scientists can help by pairing satellite data with high-resolution monitoring to estimate groundwaterdepletion.Read more ArgumentBans on Facial Recognition Are Naïve — Hold Law Enforcement Accountable for Its AbuseThe use of facial recognition technology has become a new target in the fight against racism and brutality in law enforcement. The current controversy over facial recognition purports to be about bias — inaccurate results related to race or gender. Osonde A. Osoba and Douglas Yeung write that “That could be fixed in the near future, but it wouldn’t repair the underlying dilemma: The imbalance of power between citizens and law enforcement. On this, facial recognition ups the ante. These tools can strip individuals of their privacy and enable masssurveillance.Read more PerspectiveCOVID-19 Reveals Need for More Research about GunsShortages of toilet paper at neighborhood grocery stores have become a symbol of the nation s response to the COVID-19 virus, but recent reports suggest that people also reacted to the pandemic by purchasing firearms and ammunition in massive numbers. Andrew R. Morral and Jeremy Travis write in USA Today (republished by RAND) that eventually, the pandemic will recede, scientific rigor will lead to treatments or a vaccine, and life will start to return to a new normal—but those new firearms aren t going anywhere. They ask: “What does this mean for public safety? And what can policymakers do to ensure that a spike in sales doesn t result in more injuries ordeaths?”Read more Our picksPreparing for EMP Attacks | Bold Vision for Infrastructure | Rising Seas American Homes, and more· China s surprise, years in the planning: An EMPattack· U.S. Science Groups Wary of New Senate Bills to Curb ForeignInfluences· Twitter Labels Trump s Tweet as ManipulatedMedia · The Damage of Trump’s Voter-Fraud Allegations Can’t BeUndone· Inside the Boogaloos’ Facebook-to-ViolencePipeline· A Bold Vision forInfrastructure· DHS Alerts to Ransomware Campaign Targeting Remote AccessSystems· Rising Seas Threaten an American Institution: The 30-YearMortgage· Emails Show Army Corps Scramble after Trump Gutted ResiliencyProject· Hidden Cyber War Between Israel and Iran Spills into Public View with Attacks on PhysicalInfrastructureRead more Nuclear weaponsFlight Tests Show B61-12 Compatible with F-15E Strike EagleDropped from above 25,000 feet, the mock B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb was in the air for approximately 55 seconds before hitting and embedding in the lakebed, splashing a 40- to 50-foot puff of desert dust from the designated impact area at Sandia National Laboratories’ Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. That strike was the last in a series of flight tests designed to demonstrate the refurbished B61-12’s compatibility with the U.S. Air Force’s F-15E Strike Eagle jetfighter.Read more DACASupreme Court Rules Trump Cannot Rescind Immigration ProgramThe U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday the Trump administration cannot rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that has protected at least 650,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from being deported to their nativecountries.Read more SurveillanceYes, Big Brother IS Watching: Russian Schools Installing Surveillance Systems Called “Orwell”By Matthew LuxmooreYou might think governments seeking digital oversight of their citizens would avoid invoking the author who coined the phrase Big Brother is watching you and implanted the nightmare of total state surveillance in the imaginations of millions of readers. Think again, because Russian officials appear to disagree. In the first phase of the project, the “total surveillance” system will be installed in 43,000 schools acrossRussia.Read more Conspiracy theoryFinding Links between Belief in Conspiracy Theories and Political EngagementA belief in the existence of conspiracies particularly among followers of extremist movements seems to go hand-in-hand with the assumption that political violence is an acceptable option. However, the role that a belief in conspiracies actually plays in political extremism and the willingness to use physical force has to date been disputed bypsychologists.Read more Conspiracy theoryDon’t Blame Social Media for Conspiracy Theories – They Would Still Flourish without ItBy Joseph E. Uscinski and Adam M EndersCOVID-19 conspiracy theories have encouraged people to engage in some dangerous activities in the past few months. There is no simple explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories like these, and the best researchers can say is that the causes of such beliefs are complex and varied. And yet journalists, activists and politicians are increasingly blaming the internet, and social media in particular, for the spread of conspiracy theories. The problem with such accusations is that the evidence paints a more nuancedpicture.Read more Forensics“Black Box” Study: Testing the Accuracy of Computer, Mobile Phone ForensicsDigital forensics experts often extract data from computers and mobile phones that may contain evidence of a crime. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will conduct the first large-scale study to measure how well those experts do their job. But rather than testing the proficiency of individual experts, the study aims to measure the performance of the digital forensics communityoverall.Read more ForensicsForensics Laser Technology Can Detect Crime Scene SmokersRaman spectroscopy is a technique that shines a monochromatic light (i.e. from a laser) on a sample and measures the intensity of scattered light. No two samples will produce the same Raman spectrum, offering a unique measurement that is similar to a fingerprint. Results are instantaneous and nondestructive, preserving the sample for future testing. Researchers developed a laser-light technology which allows investigators to determine if a smoker was at the crime scene based on biologicalevidence.Read more Water securityLessening Water Quality Problems Caused by Hurricane-Related FloodingJune 1 is the start of hurricane season in the Atlantic, and with 2020 predicted to be particularly active, residents in coastal regions are keeping watchful eyes on the weather. Flooding is often the most damaging effect of tropical storms, and one of the first casualties of large-scale is the quality of water sources in the floodedareas.Read more ArgumentBeware a China-Russia Nexus in Central Europe Amid US-EU NeglectUntil recently, Russian and Chinese influence across Europe generally reflected their distinct strategic aims. But their interests increasingly converge. Common to both Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s strategies is the decoupling of the United States and Europe. Jakub Janda and Richard Kraemer write that leaders on both sides of the Atlantic will have to act in concert – and fast – to forestall an even greater corrosion of the democratic norms that have kept the peace – or helped restore it, in the case of the wars in the former Yugoslavia – for three-quarters of acentury.Read more PerspectiveAs Trump Warns of Leftist Violence, a Dangerous Threat Emerges from the Right-Wing Boogaloo MovementA far-right extremist movement born on social media and fueled by anti-government rhetoric has emerged as a real-world threat in recent weeks, with federal authorities accusing some of its adherents of working to spark violence at largely peaceful protests roiling the nation. Craig Timberg writes that at a time when President Trump and other top U.S. officials have claimed — with little evidence — that leftist groups were fomenting violence, federal prosecutors have charged various supporters of a right-wing movement called the “boogaloo bois” with using the protests as cover for killing, or plotting to kill, police officers and other government officials. “The numbers are overwhelming: Most of the violence is coming from the extreme right wing,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who studies extremist political activity for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank inPhiladelphia.Read more Our picksBolton’s Book U.S. SigInt | Retiring Nukes | Chinese Honeypot, and more· Bolton Book Could Cause “Irreparable Damage” to U.S. Signals Intelligence, NSA DirectorSays· Now Who’s Weak on China? Bolton Paints Trump as Ignorant andServile· When Old Age Catches Up, Even Nuclear Weapons Go intoRetirement· Scientists Just Found the “Chemical Fingerprint” of an Alleged Nuclear Explosion that Went Undeclared inRussia· Chinese Students Are Key to US National Security, Eric SchmidtSays· Number of Far-Right Terrorist Prisoners in Britain Hits RecordHigh· Iran Appears Poised to Go on the CyberOffensive· Cybercrime Has Undergone an Industrial Revolution – How to KeepUp· Images Play Persuasive Role in DisinformationCampaigns· Harvard Professor Indicted on False StatementChargesRead more Terrorism25 Years Later, Budyonnovsk Hostage Crisis Seen as Horrific Harbinger of TerrorBy Tony Wesolowsky and Yevgenia KotlyarTwenty-five years ago this week, on 14 June 1995, Chechen nationalist militant Shamil Basayev led a group of fifty Chechen terrorists in seizing the Budyonnovsk Hospital in Russia s southern Stavropol region, taking 1,500 people hostage in the process. Five days later, after a botched Russian attempt to liberate the hostages – an operation during which the Chechen terrorists killed 129 of the hostages – Basayev and his people were allowed a free passage in exchange for releasing the remaining hostages. Russian commandos killed him and five of his senior aids in 2006. Twenty-six of the terrorists were captured and are in Russian jail; twenty-three are still beingpursued.Read more Terrorism“Boogaloo” Follower Charged with Killing Police Officer during BLM Protest Steven Carrillo, an Air Force sergeant who is a follower of the extreme-right Boogaloo movement, was on Tuesday charged with the murder of an Oakland policeman during 29 May Black Lives Matter protest. Carrillo will also face charges for killing another police officer on 6 June near SantaCruz.Read more PerspectiveIs China winning?This year started horribly for China, with a respiratory virus spread in Wuhan, and the Chinese government hiding the truth about it from the world. But the draconian measures taken by the government appears to have worked, and Wuhan is back to normal (to a new, post-COVI-19 normal, that is). The Economist writes that China’s Communist Party hails this as a triumph not only for Chinese science: the country’s vast and well-oiled propaganda machine explains that China brought its epidemic under control thanks to its strong one-party rule – and the fact tat some Western democracies – chief among them the United States – have botched their response to the epidemic shows that Western liberal democracy is an inferior system of government compared to China’s own. “Some, including nervous foreign-policy watchers in the West, have concluded that China will be the winner from the COVID-19 catastrophe. These observers warn that the pandemic will be remembered not only as a human disaster, but also as a geopolitical turning-point away from America,” the Economistwrites.Read more PerspectiveWhat to Make of New U.S. Actions Against Foreign TelecomsRecent moves by the administration mark another concrete step in the U.S. campaign to limit the digital and economic influence of Chinese telecommunications companies both within and outside U.S. borders. Justin Sherman writes that “The moves also demonstrate that current American efforts to limit the influence of the Chinese telecommunications sector are much broader than just the well-publicized targeting of Chinese telecom giantHuawei.”Read more PerspectiveInternational Air Travel as an Indicator of COVID-19 Economic RecoveryIt seems likely that routine international air travel may not resume until the end of June at the earliest. Paul Rozenzweig writes that that, more than President Trump’s wishful thinking, is a true indicator of what economic recovery will look like. As any good student of law and economics would say, the best indicator of commercial expectations can be found in commercial enterprises—the market signals that indicate what businesses truly anticipate. And if any enterprise is likely to be a leading indicator of economic expectations, it seems that the airline industry is a goodcandidate.Read more ArgumentThe Totalitarian Temptation ResistedIn Hungary, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, the Philippines, and other countries, strongman leaders are taking advantage of a distracted international community to reinforce authoritarian agendas. Josef Joffe writes that, in contrast, national emergencies in the West do not breed despots, nor the grasping security state. Joffe argues that those who predict that the coronavirus epidemic will facilitate an authoritarian takeover, ignore four critical points – all of which contribute to making Western democracies resilient in the face of challenges such as an epidemic and othercrises.Read more ArgumentThe Next Pandemic Might Not Be NaturalGerms have killed more people than all the wars in history, and people have been trying to make use of them throughout all those wars. In the U.S., we have seen small-scale bioterrorist attacks – the Rajneeshee poisoning of restaurants in 1986 and the Amerithrax letters that were mailed in 2001. Still, the years running up to this current coronavirus pandemic not only saw the gutting of U.S. national healthinstitutionsbut also a cultural groundswell of science denial in theanti-vaccinationmovement. Today the United States in particular is paying for that denial in livelihoods and lives. The warnings were clear. If 9/11 was a “failure of imagination,” then history will no doubt judge the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 as a failure of courage, compassion, and, most of all,competence.Read more PerspectiveChinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials SayU.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives have pushed false messages across social media platforms, aiming to amplify and exaggerate the actions of the U.S. government in order to sow panic, increase confusion, and deepen political polarization in the already-on-edge American public. The amplification techniques are alarming to U.S. officials because the disinformation showed up as texts on many Americans’ cellphones, a tactic that several of the officials said they had not seen before. American officials said the operatives had adopted some of the techniques mastered by Russia-backed trolls. That has spurred agencies to look at new ways in which China, Russia and other nations are using a range of platforms to spread disinformation during the pandemic. President Trump himself has shown little concern about China’s actions, dismissing worries over China’s use of disinformation when asked about it on Fox News. “They do it and we do it and we call them different things,” he said. “Every country doesit.”Read more ArgumentThe Limits of the World Health OrganizationPresident Trump has characteristically tried to divert public attention from his botched response to the coronavirus pandemic by blaming others—Democrats, governors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China. Eric Posner writes that in the World Health Organization (WHO), however, he has found the ideal piñata. It is tempting to blame the WHO itself for its problems—its notoriously complex bureaucracy, its decentralized structure, its “culture” or the persons who run it. But, Posner writers, all of those things are a result of the political constraints it operates under, as many reform-minded critics haveobserved.Read more PerspectiveAutocrats See Opportunity in DisasterThe world is distracted and the public need saving. It is a strongman’s dream. All the world’s attention is on COVID-19. The Economist writes that rulers everywhere have realized that now is the perfect time to do outrageous things, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the world will barely notice. Many are taking advantage of the pandemic to grab more power for themselves. No fewer than 84 have enacted emergency laws vesting extra powers in the executive. “In some cases, these powers are necessary to fight the pandemic and will be relinquished when it is over. But in many cases they are not, and won’t be. The places most at risk are those where democracy’s roots are shallow and institutional checks are weak.” The Economist continues: “Take Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been eroding checks and balances for a decade. Under a new coronavirus law, he can now rule by decree. He has become, in effect, adictator.”Read more PerspectiveCoronavirus and Its Social Effects Fueling Extremist Violence, Says Government ReportThe coronavirus pandemic and its social repercussions are fueling violence by both frustrated individuals and domestic terrorists, according to a new intelligence report by the Department of Homeland Security. Social distancing has meant the cancelation of mass gathering events that are historically appealing targets for both international and domestic terrorists, the report adds, but the pandemic has created a new source of anger and frustration for some individuals. As a result, violent extremist plots will likely involve individuals seeking targets symbolic to their personalgrievances. Read more ArgumentMinisters Can’t Keep Hiding Behind the ScienceIt’s dishonest and cowardly to keep pretending that how and when the lockdown is lifted isn’t a political judgment call. Matthew Parris writes that the political leaders of the country – the U.K. in his case, but any country – must have the courage to share with the public the political — political, not medical — choices they must make, and take ownership “of the trade-offs that only politics can settle: trade-offs between deaths caused by one disease and deaths caused by others less immediately in the public eye; between the longevity of the elderly and the education of the young; between mortality in April 2020 and debt that will scar a whole generation; between loss of life and loss of livelihood.” Whichever side you come down on in this trade-off, Parris write. somebody’s got to say there’s a trade-off, and it isn’t ‘the’ science. “It is for the ministers who will make the judgment to be upfront with the public about the human cost. They can ‘follow’ the science, cite the science, be guided by the science, but in the end the science will lead them to a point where pathsdiverge.”Read more PerspectiveThe Deepfake iPhone Apps Are HereOn Sunday, Lawfare’s Jacob Schulz, like many Americans, woke up to see that President Donald Trump had retweeted a misleading gif of his presumptive Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Schultz notes that Trump’s dissemination of a deepfake video was met with alarm. David Frum, for example, noted the significance of the president’s retweet: “Instead of sharing deceptively edited video—as Trump and his allies have often done before—yesterday Trump for the first time shared a video that had been outrightly fabricated.” Schulz adds: “Soon, people will be able to use their iPhones not just to turn themselves into mildly convincing late-night comedians but to convincingly turn Joe Biden into whatever they want. When that happens, in the now-infamous words of Samantha Cole of Motherboard, ‘We are trulyf****d.’”Read more PerspectiveThe Department of Defense Should Not Wage Cyber War Against Criminal Hackers During the Coronavirus CrisisPoliticians and pundits in the United States have frequently described the challenge of controlling the COVID pandemic with the language of waging war. Erica D. Borghard writes that given this terminology, it can be tempting to look to the Department of Defense (DOD) to solve problems it was not meant to address. While nefarious actors in cyberspace are seeking to capitalize on scared and vulnerable individuals during the pandemic for criminal gain and national strategic objectives, “any efforts to leverage DOD capabilities in combating these efforts must distinguish between nation-state and criminal activity,” shewrites.Read more PerspectiveCyber Operations against Medical Facilities During PeacetimeIn the face of the coronavirus pandemic, governments around the world have tried to compensate for insufficient hospital beds and intensive care units by nationalizing private medical facilities and relying on military ships and improvised evac hospitals. Adina Ponta writes that at a time when overcrowded medical and testing facilities struggle with shortages in supplies and a huge influx of patients, hacker groups have exploited their inattention tocybersecurity.Read more Perspective“A Threat to Health Is Being Weaponized”: Inside the Fight against Online Hate Crime Perpetrators of terrorist attacks now routinely leave online statements or manifestos to justify their actions, hoping their words might encourage others. Simon Parkin writes that now, just as Facebook and Twitter have become the prodigious muck-spreaders of our age, a handful of clandestine startups are using technology to stem the flow. Moonshot, whose office is at a secret location in London, is, at five years old, a veteran in this emergingindustry.Read more The BriefRestless citizenry; clinical success and failure; holding China to accountThese four major developments on the coronavirus front in the past week caught oureye:1. Difficult reopening. More and more countries are moving to reopen their economies, schools, and other parts of society, and each offers a different mix of measures aiming to balance economic recovery, societal (new) normalcy, and health security, with an eye to avoiding a second wave of infections in the fall. They all share one thing: Their citizens are becoming restless.2. Clinical success. The FDA om Friday allowed emergency use of remdesivir, the first drug that appears to help some COVID-19 patients recover faster, a milestone in the global search for effective therapies against the coronavirus.3. Clinical failure. Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin have been aggressively promoted by President Trump as possibly “the biggest game changer in the history of medicine.” But in the largest clinical trial yet of the two drugs, they failed to have any benefit for infected patients, while significantly increasing the risk of electrical changes to the heart and cardiac arrhythmias, which could lead to heart attacks, strokes, and death.4. The China syndrome. More and more countries are calling for an impartial and credible investigation of China’s conduct regarding the coronavirus between November 2019 and the end of February2020.Read more PerspectiveAll’s Clear for Deep Fakes: Think AgainA few analysts are claiming that the bark of deepfakes is worse than their bite. Robert Chesney, Danielle Citron, and Hany Farid disagree, writing that “Now is not the time to sit back and claim victory over deep fakes or to suggest that concern about them is overblown. The coronavirus has underscored the deadly impact of believable falsehoods, and the election of a lifetime looms ahead. More than ever we need to trust what our eyes and ears are tellingus.”Read moreTAGS:Homeland Security Newswire
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