Our picksQAnon is ISIS Lookalike | Why Government Failed to Detect SolarWinds Attack | Tracking Android Users, and more

Published 8 April 2021

·  U.K. Launches Digital Watchdog to Clamp Down on Big Tech Dominance

·  QAnon, ISIS More Alike Than You Might Think

·  Memo Reveals DOJ Pushback on Domestic Terrorism Bill

·  U.S. Exercise Focuses on Role of Police, Courts in West Africa Counterterrorism

·  Twitch Will Ban Users for ‘Severe’ Offline Behavior, Including Terrorism and Sexual Assault

·  E-Commerce Platform Sells Nazi-Glorifying Merchandise, Despite Removal Request

·  Google Accused of “Illegally” Tracking Android Users

·  The Suez Grounding Was an Accident. The Next Blocked Chokepoint Might Not Be.

·  The Threat That COVID-19 Poses Now

·  Why Didn’t Government Detect SolarWinds Attack?

U.K. Launches Digital Watchdog to Clamp Down on Big Tech Dominance  (Keumars Afifi-Sabet, ITPro)
The Digital Markets Unit is charged with drawing up codes of conduct for competition and will operate without statutory powers at first

QAnon, ISIS More Alike Than You Might Think  (J. J. Green, WTOP News)
How does QAnon radicalize its followers? On this week’s edition of “The Hunt with WTOP national security correspondent J.J. Green,” Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, said its radicalization process is very similar to way the terror group ISIS does it.

Memo Reveals DOJ Pushback on Domestic Terrorism Bill  (Betsy Woodruff Swan, Politico)
A domestic terrorism bill from a powerful Senate chairman could create bureaucratic headaches, jeopardize ongoing investigations, and endanger witnesses, Justice Department officials argued in a memo sent on the last day of the Trump administration and obtained by POLITICO. At issue is legislation Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has pushed since 2017. The bill is designed to counter the growing threat from domestic terrorists, which law enforcement officials have called the most lethal terror threat facing the U.S. It would set up offices at the Justice Department, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security to focus specifically on the threat, and it would have those agencies send Congress joint reports on the threat twice a year, among other provisions. The legislation passed the House of Representatives last year but died in the Senate when Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) objected to letting it move forward under unanimous consent. In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the bill’s sponsors say its passage is newly pressing. When Durbin re-introduced the bill on Jan. 19, 2021, along with Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, he said in a statement that “the continued rise in horrific incidents of domestic terrorism and hate crimes” means Congress must act.