Our picksSelf-Screening at Airports | Hackers' Pivot to Medical Espionage | Pandemic & WWIII, and more

Published 27 May 2020

·  How the Pandemic Is Helping the Military Prep for World War III

·  COVID-19 Infodemic: EU Grapples with Conspiracies

·  TSA Considers Temperature Screening, Thermal Imaging

·  Passenger Self Screening Systems for Aviation Checkpoint

·  DHS’s Cyber Division Has Stepped Up Protections for Coronavirus Research, Official Says

·  Defense Department Cuts Funding for Border Wall Section in Yuma

·  How 9/11 Changes the Way the Federal Government Manages Crises

·  Lessons from Operation “Denver,” the KGB’s Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign

·  Hurricanes and Other Extreme Weather Disasters Prompt Some People to Move and Trap Others in Place

·  Inside Hackers’ Pivot to Medical Espionage

How the Pandemic Is Helping the Military Prep for World War III (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
A local coronavirus response functioned as a crucial test of a new data network concept intended to deter Russia and China.

COVID-19 Infodemic: EU Grapples with Conspiracies (Nad’a Kovalčíková, EURANetplus)
Disinformation is on the rise. The COVID-19 pandemic has created the perfect storm for conspiracy theorists as well as political extremists, who are exploiting the crisis to further their aims. The EU is fighting back, and tech companies are clamping down. But will moves to censor content just fuel the conspiratorial fire?

TSA Considers Temperature Screening, Thermal Imaging (Kyle Arnold, Dallas Morning News)
We’re not going to eliminate risk, we can never eliminate risk,” Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said as he wore a face mask for his tour of Alliance Airport. “How do we buy that risk down?

Passenger Self Screening Systems for Aviation Checkpoint (SAM.gov) DHS S&T is looking for a :Screening-at-Speed (SaS) technology which would allow airline passengers to “self-screen.” “Just like self-checkout at grocery stores, self-tagging checked baggage, or ATM machines, many passengers prefer an experience that they can complete all by themselves, at their own pace. SaS is exploring ideas to bring similar concepts to the passenger screening process,” DHS says in its solicitation.

DHS’s Cyber Division Has Stepped Up Protections for Coronavirus Research, Official Says (Sean Lyngaas, Cyberscoop)
The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity wing says it has put heightened defense measures for health-care-focused organizations and research facilities in place as foreign government-backed hackers continue to try to steal U.S. coronavirus research.

Defense Department Cuts Funding for Border Wall Section in Yuma (Alisa Reznick, Arizona Public Media)
A court document pulls funding for a 7-mile stretch that would have crossed tribal land.

Rubio Warns of Foreign Actors Amplifying Virus Conspiracies (AP)
Sen. Marco Rubio, the new Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is warning that foreign actors will seek to amplify conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and find new ways to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.

How 9/11 Changes the Way the Federal Government Manages Crises (John Black, Sofrep)
Though the talk over whether protection or emergency management should receive fiscal priority has been ongoing for many years, reforms in response to 9/11 changed the whole debate. Following the 9/11 terror attacks, the administration of George W. Bush, with the permission of Congress, defined presidential disaster declaration authority as a national security instrument, thus drastically changing federal emergency management.
Many of those reforms increased presidential authority and created new categories of incidents, defined under National Special Security Events, which then became eligible for funding. The talk does not revolve around whether protection or disasters should receive funding; rather all major disasters, emergencies, and catastrophic incidents as declared by the President are incidents of national significance. Presidents now possess almost unencumbered authority to mobilize federal and state resources.

Lessons from Operation “Denver,” the KGB’s Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign (Mark Kramer, MIT Reader)
Historian Douglas Selvage sheds light on a conspiracy theory that reverberates to this day.

Hurricanes and Other Extreme Weather Disasters Prompt Some People to Move and Trap Others in Place (Jack DeWaard, The Conversation)
Since 1980, the United States has experienced 258 “billion-dollar weather and climate disasters” – defined as disasters resulting in US$1 billion or more in economic losses – totaling $1.75 trillion in losses.About two-thirds of these disasters and three-quarters of these losses have occurred since the early to mid-2000s.Natural disasters force millions of people to move every year, a trend which is expected to accelerate around the world due to a changing climate. This is true in the United States as well.
Eesearch shows that, while there are many factors at play, extreme weather disasters are one of the reasons that people migrate to other parts of the United States. An increase in extreme weather events could mean that disaster-driven migration will become more frequent.

Inside Hackers’ Pivot to Medical Espionage (Zack Dorfman, Axios)
A wave of cyber-spying around COVID-19 medical research is once more demonstrating the perils of treating cybersecurity as a separate, walled-off realm.