AI will find you in the crowd; Alaska’s earthquake sensors; liberal European Islam?, and more

Trump mocks immigrants who follow legal procedure and attend their court hearings (Daily Beast)
President Trump on Monday mocked immigrants for following the legal citizenship process, reportedly arguing that those who attended their immigration court hearings “cannot be very smart,” according to a tweet from BuzzFeed reporter Paul McLeod. After falsely claiming that only two percent of immigrants show up to court for their hearings, Trump reportedly added that “those people you almost don’t want because they cannot be very smart.. those two percent are not going to make America great again, I tell ya.”

What someone needs to explain to Trump about “national emergencies” (Bob Bauer, Defense One)
It’s not just the likelihood that he will lose in court—it’s how he will lose that matters.

Trump’s brder wall: President eyes taking money from California flood projects to pay costs (John Woolfolk and Paul Rogers, The Mercury News)
Bay Area officials said Friday that they are stunned by the possibility that money already approved by Congress for an important flood control project on San Jose’s shoreline could somehow be shifted to Trump’s pet project.

“We have people counting on that”: Fla. governor weighs in on using hurricane funds for border wall (Emily L. Mahoney, Tampa Bay Times)
DeSantis’ comments Friday struck a different tone than when he was asked about the shutdown on Thursday — before news broke that Florida’s hurricane funding could be in sacrificed for the border wall. DeSantis said then that he has his “hands full down here,’ indicating he didn’t want to get involved in all the “political posturing’ in Washington.

Want to cultivate a liberal European Islam? Look to Bosnia. (Riada Asimovic Akyol, The Atlantic)
Throughout the 20th century, Bosnian Muslim thinkers offered creative theological interpretations that squared with European life.

How America’s government shutdown is affecting flyers (Economist)
Miami airport is already closing one of its concourses due to a lack of airport-security personnel

FBI agents say the shutdown is a threat to national security (Natasha Bertrand, Defense One)
Nearly 5,000 FBI special agents, intelligence analysts, attorneys, and professional staff have been furloughed.

How AI will find you in the crowd, without facial recognition (Patrick Tucker, Defense one)
New deep learning methods tested on video footage groups of animals could be a surveillance hit.

Officials push to keep dozens of earthquake sensors slated for removal across Alaska (Alex DeMarban, Anchorage Daily News)
The National Science Foundation next year plans to remove more than 150 seismic sensors it installed in Alaska in recent years, closing out a $50 million project that vastly improved the state’s limited seismic network, said Mike West, state seismologist.

Ryuk ransomware shows Russian criminal group is going big or going home (Sean Lyngaas, Cyberscoop)
A criminal hacking group suspected of operating out of Russia has shifted tactics in recent months from wire fraud to targeting big organizations for ransomware payouts, according to new research.
The change in tactics is exemplified by the infamous Ryuk ransomware, which cybersecurity company CrowdStrike said Thursday is being used by a subset of the Russian group to rake in $3.7 million since August.
The trend in extorting bigger organizations “has been increasing in the last year and poses a significant challenge to enterprises and businesses,” Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike, told CyberScoop. “We have observed numerous adversaries adopting this tactic and charging substantial fees to unlock data across the entire network.”