Our picksParkland shooting’s injuries; Houston’s flooding predicted; Border Patrol & e-passports, and more

Published 23 February 2018

· What I saw treating the victims from Parkland should change the debate on guns

· Russia’s election interference is Digital Marketing 101

· North Korea is upping its offensive cyber operations

· Flood waters in Indiana carry health and safety dangers

· Record reservoir flooding was predicted even before Harvey hit Houston

· Here’s how to counter fake news during a disaster

· It’s time to question longstanding password security best practices

· Post-Parkland, some unlikely states embrace gun control

· Trump administration ready to scrap envoy to anti-ISIS coalition

· U.S. Border Patrol hasn’t validated e-passport data for years

What I saw treating the victims from Parkland should change the debate on guns (Heather Sher, The Atlantic)
They weren’t the first victims of a mass shooting the Florida radiologist had seen—but their wounds were radically different.

Russia’s election interference is Digital Marketing 101 (Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, The Atlantic)
The new Mueller indictment doesn’t get at the root of the problem: the unchecked market power of social-media companies.

North Korea is upping its offensive cyber operations (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
As Pyongyang runs out of money for missile tests, expect more hacking.

Flood waters in Indiana carry health and safety dangers (Margaret Fosmoe, South Bend Tribune)
Flood waters can contain contaminants, and the water also may carry electrical currents from downed power lines or appliances.

Record reservoir flooding was predicted even before Harvey hit Houston (Lise Olsen, Houston Chronicle)
The forecasts, closely held internal records, have emerged six months after Harvey through discovery in a lawsuit.

Here’s how to counter fake news during a disaster (Joseph Marks, Nextgov)
A Homeland Security Department advisory group wants to help emergency responders control the social media conversation.

It’s time to question longstanding password security best practices (Mike Chapple, Fedtech)
New research suggests federal IT leaders should rethink how they manage password security and authentication.

Post-Parkland, some unlikely states embrace gun control (Natalie Delgadillo, Governing)

The mass shooting at a Florida high school may be turning the tide of gun politics as some Republicans, including President Trump, embrace the idea of gun control.

Trump administration ready to scrap envoy to anti-ISIS coalition (Rhys Dubin, Dan de Luce, Foreign Policy)
With the Islamic State on the brink of military defeat, the State Department is poised to eliminate the office charged with coordinating the fight.

U.S. Border Patrol hasn’t validated e-passport data for years (Lili Hay Newman, Wired)
Passports, like any physical ID, can be altered and forged. That’s partly why for the last 11 years the United States has put RFID chips in the back panel of its passports, creating so-called e-Passports. The chip stores your passport information—like name, date of birth, passport number, your photo, and even a biometric identifier—for quick, machine-readable border checks. And while e-Passports also store a cryptographic signature to prevent tampering or forgeries, it turns out that despite having over a decade to do so, US Customs and Border Patrol hasn’t deployed the software needed to actually verify it.