Flesh-Eating Bacteria Spreads | Virtual Border Fence | Terrorism After the Pandemic, and more

·  “While Russia has at times cooperated with the United States and appeared interested in Afghan stability, it often seems to work at crosscurrents with its own national interest if the result is damage to American national interests, said a former senior Trump White House official … Revenge is also a factor in Russia’s support for the Taliban, the official said. Russia has been keen to even the scales after a bloody confrontation in 2018 in Syria, when a massive U.S. counterattack killed hundreds of Syrian forces along with Russian mercenaries nominally supported by the Kremlin. … Both Russia and the Taliban have denied the American intelligence assessment.”

CBP’s Outgoing Biometrics Lead on Law Enforcement Use of Facial Recognition (Aaron Boyd, Nextgov)
Law enforcement should be careful using facial recognition in public spaces. But with the right applications, authorities and transparency, federal programs could serve a lot of good.

Government Seeks to Halt Release of Noncitizen Who Served Terrorism Sentence (Carol Rosenberg, New York Times)
In a test of its power to impose indefinite detention, the administration asked two appeals courts to stop a lower court from freeing a stateless man who has completed his prison term.

Trump Administration Hires Tech Firm to Build a Virtual Border Wall, an Idea Democrats Have Praised (Nick Miroff, Washington Post)
The Trump administration has awarded a major border security contract to a California technology start-up that will use artificial intelligence on an unprecedented scale, pairing the president’s giant steel barrier with the kind of “virtual wall” long favored by Democrats to prevent illegal crossings from Mexico.
The five-year agreement between U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Anduril Industries calls for the company to deploy hundreds of solar-powered mobile surveillance towers designed to operate in rugged locations. With cameras and thermal imaging, they detect moving objects and feed an artificial-intelligence system capable of distinguishing among animals, humans and vehicles, sending location and mapping information right to the cellphones of U.S. patrol agents.

House Subcommittee Again Takes Aim at Amazon over Ring Surveillance (Frank Konkel, Nextgov)
The subcommittee wants assurances from Amazon that its Ring doorbell camera isn’t being misused by law enforcement.

Court Nixes Use of DoD Funds for Border Wall (FEDWeek)
The Trump administration erred in using Defense Department funds to build the wall along the border with Mexico, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled in a 2 – 1 decision.

Could Obama Have Stopped Putin’s Election Interference? A New Book Argues He Didn’t Think He Needed to, review of David Shimer’s book Rigged: America, Russia and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference (Carlos Lozada, Washington Post)

·  “In his absorbing new book, ‘Rigged,’ David Shimer argues that the Russia story is far older, and the risks to U.S. electoral security far greater, than we imagined, particularly as a new election approaches. Even more, he assembles a damning oral history of the Obama administration’s failure to deter or combat Moscow’s interference in 2016 … as told by some of the top officials responsible for it.”

·  “Shimer … begins with Moscow’s attempts early in the 20th century to spread Soviet ideology and influence, first by financing like-minded groups around the globe and, after World War II, by manipulating elections throughout Eastern Europe. … As for Washington’s efforts, Shimer notes that the first formal authorization for postwar covert action involved interference in Italy’s 1948 election. … It was classic Cold War strategizing. The two sides battled for influence, and elections were how they kept score.”

·  “Shimer’s key point [is that] [w]hat Vladimir Putin accomplished in 2016 was little different from what his predecessors attempted for decades. … In keeping with the goals of Soviet premiers and intelligence chiefs long before, Putin wanted to subvert threatening candidates, promote friendlier ones and deepen America’s divides to discredit U.S. democracy. The difference was not the strategy the Russians used, but the power and efficacy of the tools at their disposal.”

·  “Just as vital was Russia’s assessment of Washington’s potential response. … [Obama] settled for a policy of ‘managed interference,’ the author concludes: As long as Putin didn’t mess with our election infrastructure, Russia’s social media campaign was tolerable; Obama and president-elect Clinton could deal with Putin later.”

·  “Favorable results encourage the interfering party to keep going. And this time, the man in the Oval Office is solicitous of Russia’s president and unconcerned, even welcoming, about foreign influence.”

Prospect of a Coronavirus Vaccine Unites Anti-Vaxxers, Conspiracy Theorists and Hippie Moms in Germany (Loveday Morris and William Glucroft, Washington Post)
The fact that the anti-vaxx movement has been gaining new adherents has been a concern for the German health authorities, as the coronavirus unites a mishmash of groups resistant to the prospect of a vaccine, from far-right conspiracy theorists to hippie moms. Germany already had a fervent anti-vaxx movement, reflecting a historic skepticism of government control and an affinity for alternative medicine. Now, health experts have warned that even if a coronavirus vaccine gets approval, refusals could open the way to a resurgence while threatening efforts to keep other preventable diseases in check.

QAnon Conspiracy Theorists on the Ballot show Trump’s Influence on the GOP (Michael Warren, CNN)
When the next Congress is sworn in to office in January 2021, there’s a high likelihood it will have among its Republican members someone who is sympathetic to a wild, unsubstantiated conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
Although the theory is nebulous enough to invite all kinds of interpretations from its adherents, at its core QAnon claims that Donald Trump has been secretly fighting to bring down a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that has infiltrated all levels of the US government and other elite institutions.
The latest Republican office-seeker to talk up QAnon is House candidate Lauren Boebert, who upset five-term Congressman Scott Tipton of Colorado in Tuesday’s Republican primary. Boebert joins two more Republicans — US Senate nominee Jo Rae Perkins of Oregon and Georgia House candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene — who have embraced all or part of the QAnon theory.

Terrorism After the Pandemic (Robin Simock, Foreign Policy)
Months of isolation and governments grappling with other crises could lead to a rise in attacks.