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Published 13 September 2019

·  As Election Security Risks Grow, Congress Must Get Off the Sidelines

·  How Counties Are Preparing for Election Day Cyberattacks

·  Israel Wants Free Hand against Iran, Netanyahu Says in Russia

·  Leaked Documents Contain Major Revelations About the FBI’s Terrorism Classifications

·  7 Ways That 9/11 Created a Dystopian Security Landscape That Americans Are Still Living in

·  Climate Change Is Hurting Philadelphians’ Health, and the Worst Is Yet to Come

·  DoD Inspector General to Reevaluate Select Agent Facilities, Biosafety Oversight

·  Pentagon’s Former Top Hacker Wants His Startup to Inject Some Silicon Valley into the Defense Industry

As Election Security Risks Grow, Congress Must Get Off the Sidelines (David B. Waller, Roll Call)
Some Republican senators argue new legislation is unnecessary. They’re wrong

How Counties Are Preparing for Election Day Cyberattacks (Joseph Marks, Washington Post)
If Russian hackers seek to disrupt the 2020 election, it will be county election officials on the front lines. And some are diving in to war games so they can be ready for anything Moscow or another U.S. adversary can throw at them.
Election officials from New Jersey’s 21 counties huddled at tables in a hotel ballroom here, hashing out how they’d respond to Election Day cyberattacks. In some attack scenarios, hackers shut down voter registration databases, loaded voter files with phony information, or compromised county social media accounts so they start spreading false information about polling locations. They also prepared for what happens if attackers locked up election office computers with ransomware or shut down cellphone towers across multiple states.
How the U.S. fares during an Election Day hack is likely to rest on the response of local election administrators in the first few hours, state and federal officials told me.

Leaked Documents Contain Major Revelations About the FBI’s Terrorism Classifications (Maya Berry and Kai Wiggins, Just Security)
New revelations about the FBI’s classification system for domestic terrorism investigations raise questions about why the government is unable or unwilling to shed greater light on white supremacist violence. They also cast doubt on whether the FBI has truly abandoned the concept of “Black Identity Extremism.”
The FBI uses a classification system to organize case files according to the type of criminal activity being investigated. These records provide a sense of the FBI’s prioritization of different types of criminal activity over which it has jurisdiction, as well as the nature and extent of the threat posed by those activities. In the decade since the Department of Homeland Security released, and later under pressure withdrew, a report warning about the threat of white supremacist violence, the topic has become a major concern of policymakers, the media, and impacted communities alike. Amid a surge of white supremacist attacks and a reported increase in hate crime, many have questioned whether the Trump administration has done enough to counteract the scourge of white supremacist violence. (Cont.)