• Risk-management roadmap to denuclearization in North Korea

    Immediate denuclearization of North Korea is unrealistic, scholars say. They recommend a phased denuclearization to take place over ten years or more, allowing the United States to reduce the greatest risks first and address the manageable risks over time.

  • Ukraine claims it found list of 47 Russian assassination targets

    Ukrainian authorities claim they have uncovered a hit-list of forty-seven people — mostly journalists — who are potential Russian assassination targets as a result of their sting operation staging the faked murder of exiled Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko. Ukraine said all forty-seven have been informed they are on the alleged hit-list, and arrangements are being made for their safety. Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko met with top EU diplomats to explain the staged murder, and Reuters quoted a senior EU country diplomat as saying that the Ukrainian minister had given a convincing explanation to justify the sting operation.

  • Corporate data collection and U.S. national security: Expanding the conversation in an era of nation state cyber aggression

    What has the Russia investigation revealed about risks inherent in mass private data collection? Carrie Cordero writes that one thing we learned from the Russia investigation is that we may be framing the conversation about corporate data collection too narrowly. “Based on what we have learned publicly so far about the Russian election interference, it is worth pausing to reflect on the national security implications of corporate data collection and aggregation as it relates to the collection of individual, private citizens’ data,” she says. “Although the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and special counsel investigations are not yet complete, we know enough already about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to understand that data collected from private companies and organizations can be accessed, exposed and potentially misused in a way that is harmful to the country’s institutional stability. At the very least, its misuse sows distrust and confusion. At worst, it shreds the institutional and societal fabric that holds the country together.”

  • Civil liberties organizations urge transparency on NSA domestic phone record surveillance

    Last week, twenty-four civil liberties organizations sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, urging him to report—as required by law—statistics that could help clear up just how many individuals are subject to broad NSA surveillance of domestic telephone records. According to the most recent transparency report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the NSA collected more than 530 million call records in 2017, an increase of more than 300 percent from the year prior.

  • Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan: “Satanic Jews” responsible for world’s ills

    In his first major public speaking appearance since February 2018, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan delivered a nearly three-hour sermon filled with attacks on Jews and Judaism from his pulpit at Mosque Maryam in Chicago on Sunday, 27 May. Farrakhan warned his audience about “Satanic Jews who have infected the whole world with poison and deceit,” charging that Jews are responsible for promoting child molestation, misogyny, police brutality and sexual assault, among other social ills.

  • AfD leader: Nazi era mere “bird s***” in “1,000 years of successful German history"

    Alexander Gauland, the co-leader of the far-right, xenophobic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has described the Nazi era as a brief and insignificant episode in Germany’s otherwise glorious history. In the October 2017 German election, the AfD was actively supported by the same Kremlin’s hackers and disinformation specialists who effectively interfered in the U.S. 2016 presidential election. The AfD emerged as Germany’s third-largest party.

  • Mapping DHS’s new cybersecurity strategy, highlighting S&T’s R&D support

    Last month at a cybersecurity conference, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen previewed the May unveiling of DHS’s new cybersecurity strategy and issued a stern warning to cybercriminals. The new DHS Cybersecurity Strategy was released 15 May. Nielsen said: “I have a news flash for America’s adversaries: Complacency is being replaced by consequences. We will not stand on the sidelines while our networks are compromised. We will not abide the theft of our data, our innovation and our resources. And we will not tolerate cyber meddling aimed at the heart of our democracy.”

  • World Cup 2018: British intelligence briefs players, staff on Russian cyberthreats

    The U.K. Football Association (FA) said it was taking cybersecurity seriously this summer – the Soccer World Cup tournament will be held in Russia from 15 June to 15 July — and will be taking advice from the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) at the GCHQ (the British equivalent of the U.S. NSA). The England team will be briefed by GCHQ staff before flying out to the World Cup to help them stay safe from Russian hackers.

  • Reintegrating extremists: “Deradicalization” and desistance

    What is the most appropriate way of ensuring that returnees from the conflict in the Middle East do not go on to carry out attacks in the U.K.? Likewise, as those convicted of terrorism offenses in the U.K. continue to be released into the community at the end of their sentence, how do we ensure their positive transition into mainstream society?

  • Handgun purchaser licensing laws linked to fewer firearms homicides

    State laws that require gun purchasers to obtain a license contingent on passing a background check performed by state or local law enforcement are associated with a 14 percent reduction in firearm homicides in large, urban counties, a new study finds.

  • Denmark bans burqas, niqabs in public

    Denmark has become the latest European country to ban people from wearing clothes that cover the face in public. The Danish parliament in Copenhagen voted 75-30 on 31 May in favor of the ban, which effectively restricts people from wearing the burqas and niqabs worn by some Muslim women.

  • The era of fake video begins

    “Deepfake” videos produced by Russian-linked trolls are the latest weapon in the ongoing fake news war. The Kremlin-backed trolls are already experimenting with new video manipulation techniques which use artificial intelligence to create convincing doctored videos. Franklin Foer writes the internet has always contained the seeds of postmodern hell, and that mass manipulation, from clickbait to Russian bots to the addictive trickery that governs Facebook’s News Feed, is the currency of the medium. In this respect, the rise of deepfakes is the culmination of the internet’s history to date—and probably only a low-grade version of what’s to come. Fake-but-realistic video clips are not the end point of the flight from reality that technologists would have us take. The apotheosis of this vision is virtual reality.The ability to manipulate consumers will grow because VR definitionally creates confusion about what is real,” Foer writes. “Several decades ago, after giving the nascent technology a try, the psychedelic pamphleteer Timothy Leary reportedly called it ‘the new LSD’.”

  • Regulation or research? Searching for solutions to reduce Truth Decay in the media

    What is social media’s role in the decline of trust in the media? Is government intervention needed to help stop the spread of misinformation on these platforms? These questions were the focus of a recent RAND Corporation event on the connection between the media and Truth Decay.

  • Winners announced in $300K biothreat prize competition

    DHS S&T the other day announced the grand prize winner of its $300,000 Hidden Signals Challenge. The prize competition called for the design of an early warning system to keep communities safe by using existing data sources to uncover emerging biothreats.

  • Hacker accused of aiding Russian spies in massive breach gets prison

    A Kazakh-born computer hacker who U.S. prosecutors say unwittingly worked with a Russian spy agency in a massive Yahoo data breach has been sentenced to five years in prison. Karim Baratov was named in an indictment last year that charged two Russian spies with orchestrating the 2014 Yahoo breach involving 500 million users — one of the largest breaches at any Internet company.