Our picksSpies Tackles Vaccine Propaganda | No Social Media Is Safe | Biden to Boost Data Transfer Deals, and more

British Spies’ Cyberwar on Anti-Vaccine Propaganda(Lucy Fisher, The Times)
GCHQ has begun an offensive cyber-operation to disrupt anti-vaccine propaganda being spread by hostile states, The Times understands.
The spy agency is using a toolkit developed to tackle disinformation and recruitment material peddled by Islamic State, according to sources.
It is the latest move by cyberagents to counter activity linked to Moscow whose aim is to exploit the pandemic in order to undermine the West and boost Russian interests.
The government regards tackling false information about inoculation as a rising priority as the prospect of a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus draws closer.
These tactics are understood to focus on taking down hostile state-linked content and disrupting the operations of the cyberactors responsible for it, including encrypting their data so they cannot access it and blocking their communications with each other. The British government confirmed in 2018 that it had an offensive cyberarsenal to take on ISIS.

Trump files Arizona Lawsuit Based on Debunked Sharpie Conspiracy Theory(Ebony Bowden, New York Post)
It would have to be the Sharpie again, wouldn’t it.
In a last-gasp effort, President Trump’s re-election campaign filed a lawsuit in Arizona on Saturday — based on a debunked conspiracy theory that machines invalidated ballots filled out with Sharpies.
The suit — filed after Joe Biden was declared president-elect — claims that in-person ballots marked with Sharpies in the swing state were incorrectly rejected because tabulation machines believed they were spoiled “overvotes.”

This Time, the Meddling Is Coming from Inside the House (Elisabeth Braw, Foreign Policy)
The U.S. presidential election came off with little evidence of outside interference—but plenty of internal confusion.

No Social Media Is Safe: How Election Misinformation Spread on LinkedIn, Pinterest and Nextdoor(Cat Zakrzewski and Rachel Lerman, Washington Post)
Smaller social media sites are fighting the spread of disinformation with far fewer resources than Facebook and Twitter.

In Plain Sight: How an Alleged Chinese Spy Tried to Build an Australian Business Empire(Nino Bucci, Guardian)
When Chunsheng Chen departed Australia last year after being publicly outed as a suspected Communist party operative, he left several threads behind that have baffled authorities

Boy in Beheading Plot among 100 U.K. Terrorists Due for Release(Dipesh Gadher, The Times)
A convict who planned an atrocity could be free within weeks of the UK’s security threat level being raised to ‘severe’

China Irate after U.S. Removes ‘Terrorist’ Label from Separatist Group (Sha Hua, Wall Street Journal)
China blames East Turkestan Islamic Movement for violence in remote Xinjiang region; scholars say group is defunct

Biden Term Could Spell Sanctions, Boost Data Transfer Deal (Ben Kochman and Allison Grande, Law360)
Joe Biden’s presidency could lead to tougher sanctions for state-backed actors who target the U.S. with cyberattacks and carve out an easier path for a key trans-Atlantic data transfer deal, industry experts say.