Domestic Terrorism Threat Is ‘Metastasizing’ | Radicalization Gone Viral? | Prisons as ‘Terrorist Training Grounds’, and more

“No Social Media Accounts For Terrorists”: House GOP Pushes to Block Sanctioned Foreign Leaders From Platforms  (Brooke Singman, Fox News)
House Republicans are proposing legislation that would expand U.S. sanctions law to prohibit social media companies from allowing foreign individuals or entities sanctioned for terrorism from using their platforms.  The legislation, led by GOP Reps. Andy Barr, Jim Banks, and Joe Wilson, and cosponsored by 40 other members of the House Republican Study Committee, is titled the “No Social Media Accounts for Terrorists or State Sponsors of Terrorism Act of 2021.” “U.S. law gives big tech a free pass to provide platforms to terrorist groups and dictators,” Barr, R-Ky., told Fox News.  “Social media companies should not provide a vehicle for terrorist groups like ISIS to raise money or for dictators like the Ayatollah of Iran to spread propaganda.”  Under current U.S. sanctions law, the president of the United States does not have the authority to require social media platforms to adhere to U.S. sanctions laws on terrorists due to the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1976—specifically the “Berman Amendments” passed in 1988 and 1994—which prohibit the president from even indirectly regulating or prohibiting anything to do with the free flow of informational services.

SolarWinds Hack May Lead to Breach Notification Law and Stronger Cyber Agency  (Gopal Ratnam, Roll Call)
Lawmakers from both parties, and tech companies, see a need for mandatory notification about data breaches and criminal hacks.

U.K. Prisons Must Not Become ‘Terrorist Training Grounds’ as Sentences Increased, Government Warned  (Lizzie Dearden, Independent)
British prisons must not be allowed to become “terrorist training grounds” as the number of extremist inmates rise, the government has been warned. The number of terrorist prisoners hit a record high last year, and a package of new laws currently going through parliament aims to make them serve longer inside jail by increasing sentences and changing release rules. During a debate in the House of Lords on Wednesday, several peers demanded assurances that security inside prisons will be maintained and extremists can be deradicalised. It comes more than a year after the first Isis-inspired attack inside a UK jail, where a terrorist inmate and radicalised violent criminal attempted to kill a prison officer at HMP Whitemoor. Proposing a series of amendments to the new Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill, Liberal Democrat peer Lord Marks said: “We are also concerned to consider the effect on other prisoners of having serious terrorist offenders in their midst. “It is of great importance to avoid the risk that the most serious offenders are seen as some kind of kingpins within prisons to be looked up to and emulated. If our prisons become terrorist training grounds, the effect of long sentences will have been utterly counterproductive.

COVID-19 and Terrorism in the West: Has Radicalization Really Gone Viral?  (Michael King and Sam Mullins, Just Security)
According to a recent report published by the United Nations, violent right-wing extremists and jihadists “have successfully exploited vulnerabilities in the social media ecosystem to manipulate people and disseminate conspiracy theories” designed to reinforce their narratives and incite terrorism. From the outset of the coronavirus outbreak it was evident that violent extremists were seeking to take advantage of the growing calamity by working the virus into their existing narratives and increasing the volume of online propaganda. Concurrently, terrorism experts and government officials have warned that “captive audiences,” stuck at home during lockdown, bored and lonely, with little to do but surf the internet, are particularly vulnerable to such efforts. As the assistant commissioner of Britain’s Metropolitan police, Neil Basu, told members of parliament: his “greatest single fear” was that this confluence of factors would result in a rising tide of COVID-driven violent extremism and terrorism. Indeed, practitioners and terrorism scholars alike seem to agree, “COVID-19 and extremism are the perfect storm.”
At the heart of this supposed rise in extremism—at least in the West—is the internet.