Our picksDHS Jan. 6 Failure | Biden’s Border Plan Isn’t Working | There's an Earthquake Coming!, and more
· Government Watchdog Finds DHS Should Have Considered Jan. 6 a Special Security Event
· GAO Faults DHS for Failing to Designate Jan. 6 as a Protected Event in Advance of Attack
· There’s an Earthquake Coming!
· Following the IPCC’s Report, We Need More Technology to Respond to More Disasters
· Climate Change Is Already Disrupting the Military. It Will Get Worse, Officials Say
· Facebook Bans Russian Disinformation Network That Claimed Coronavirus Vaccines Turn People into Chimpanzees
· Biden’s Border Plan Isn’t Working
· House Republicans Urge DHS to Reveal How Many Migrants Are on Terror Watchlist
· Are Federal Sting Operations in U.S. Counterterrorism Cases Legal?
· Headline Saying Apple Plans to Scan U.S. iPhones for Extremist Content and Firearms Is Digitally Altered
Government Watchdog Finds DHS Should Have Considered Jan. 6 a Special Security Event (Rebecca Beitsch, The Hill)
The first of three reports from a government watchdog on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) response to Jan. 6 found the agency failed to consider designating lawmakers’ certification of the 2020 election as a special security event — a move that would have funneled additional resources to the Capitol that day.
The report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found DHS didn’t assign a National Special Security Event (NSSE) or a Special Event Assessment Rating (SEAR) to the Jan. 6 certification, something DHS said would be an unusual approach to standard congressional business.
GAO Faults DHS for Failing to Designate Jan. 6 as a Protected Event in Advance of Attack (Ryan Goodman, Just Security)
In the run up to Jan. 6, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) considered the certification at the Capitol “routine congressional business” and did not properly take into account the threat environment, a new report from the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says. The result is that it did not consider special event designations that could have raised the security profile at the Capitol before the insurrection.
The lack of designations is seen as an important link in the chain of security failures that contributed to the Capitol being overrun in a violent insurrection that sought to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes. Other failures include the absence of an intelligence bulletin specifically warning of threats to the Capitol that day.
There’s an Earthquake Coming! (Zoey Poll, New Yorker)
The newest warning systems give users ten seconds’ notice. What can be done in that time?
Following the IPCC’s Report, We Need More Technology to Respond to More Disasters (Danny Crichton, Techcrunch)
There has been a rush of initiatives, investments and startups bubbling around the theme of climate tech, with projects focused on everything from improving the yields and decreasing the emissions of agriculture and food production, to improving the power grid, and to reducing the emissions from air conditioning in buildings. Those initiatives are fine and important, but they don’t get at one of the toughest challenges facing us this century: that disasters are here, they are coming and they are going to continue to get more intense as the century rolls on.
