Ransomware Crisis | Fight against Industrial Espionage Hasn’t Worked | U.S. Officials under Silent Attack, and more

QAnon Crowd Convinced UFOs Are a Diversion from Voter Fraud  (Will Sommer, Daily Beast)
In June, American intelligence agencies are set to release an unclassified report on what the government knows about UFOs.
For “ufologists,” long mocked as tinfoil hat-wearers obsessed with little green men, some measure of vindication may finally be at hand. But for many UFO enthusiasts on the right, this new round of UFO disclosures is nothing to cheer about. Instead, they’re claiming the new videos of possible UFO sightings are meant to distract people from Donald Trump’s baseless voter fraud allegations and conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s no doubt that this mainstream UFO disclosure push is offering a convenient distraction for the Deep State to turn our attention away from important issues like the Scamdemic and the election fraud getting exposed,” Jordan Sather, a UFO and QAnon conspiracy theorist, complained on social media network Telegram on May 19.
Conspiracy theory hub InfoWars has started to see the prospect of extraterrestrial revelations as a deep state plot. In an April video, InfoWars staffer Greg Reese posited that the UFOs were being faked, with the ultimate goal of faking an alien invasion to enslave humanity in “the most dire false flag imaginable.”
“We know the cabal has the will to do this, and it seems they have the means as well,” Reese said.
The claims that an evil cabal is behind the new wave of interest in UFOs reflects the growing overlap between the UFO “disclosure” community and other conspiracy theory movements, especially QAnon. Believing in UFOs means buying into what Syracuse University professor Michael Barkun, an expert on conspiracy theories, has dubbed “stigmatized knowledge”— embracing a universe of ideas that’s been dismissed by the mainstream. People who have already embraced one form of stigmatized knowledge often find it easy to sign on for another, according to Barkun—going from New Age healing crystals to UFOs, or from anti-vaccine activism to QAnon.

How Hacking Became a Professional Service in Russia  (Joshua Yaffe, New Yorker)
The outfit behind the Colonial Pipeline attack had a blog, a user-friendly interface, and a sliding fee scale for helping hackers cash in on stolen information.

Are U.S. Officials under Silent Attack?  (Adam Entous, New Yorker)
The Havana Syndrome first affected spies and diplomats in Cuba. Now it has spread to the White House.

GCHQ’s Mass Data Interception Violated Right to Privacy, Court Rules  (Haroon Siddique, Guardian)
Human rights judgment follows legal challenge begun in 2013 after Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing revelations

Facebook Takes Down Support Group for Extremist Belgian Soldier  (Pieter Haeck, Politico)
A Facebook group with over 40,000 members supporting a far-right soldier on the run from Belgian authorities was taken down by the social network. “We removed the group because it violated our policy on Dangerous Individuals and Organizations. Content, groups or pages that praises or support terrorists, like Jürgen Conings, are not allowed on Facebook or Instagram”, a Facebook spokesperson told POLITICO. Conings’ personal account was also taken down later. The group was launched last week to support Jürgen Conings, a soldier who threatened Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst, and is said to be heavily armed. Belgian police and armed forces are still looking for Conings, who remains in hiding. The company cited its policy on “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations,” in removing the group, which was also the basis for its crackdown on militarized social movements like the one that resulted in the Capitol Hill riots in the U.S. in January.

The FBI’s Decades-Long Fight against Industrial Espionage Hasn’t Really Worked  (Mara Hvistendahl, MIT Technology Review)
In the global economy, companies that steal trade secrets rarely face the consequences