• Texas must reduce nonmedical exemptions to vaccinations

    In Texas, approximately 45,000 nonmedical exemptions were filed across all age groups during the 2015-16 school year, a record high in the last decade and a figure that is only increasing. Vaccines are one of most cost-effective public health measures, the authors of a new study write, and Texas should make the process of obtaining nonmedical exemptions more rigorous to avoid the public health risks and costs associated with preventable diseases.

  • Terrorists, hackers, corrupt officials: Game theory need updating to catch up with today’s chaos

    Game theory has long been used to apply mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers. Many of today’s major problems do not stem from great power conflicts or monolithic blocks of self-interest, but from a vast array of single entities making highly individual choices: from lone wolf terrorists to corrupt officials, tax evaders, isolated hackers, or even armies of botnets and packages of malware. Game theory thus needs to catch up with the chaos of the modern world.

  • More powers, tighter monitoring: Germany reforms its intelligence service

    The Bundestag has passed a comprehensive reform of the BND, Germany’s main intelligence service. The legislation strengthens government monitoring of intelligence powers, and allows the BND to carry out certain types of surveillance activities. The reform is a response to two recent developments: the 2013 Snowden revelations that the BND had spied on German citizens on behalf of the NSA, and the growing concerns about terrorism in Europe. The new legislation thus gives the BND more powers – but subjects it to tighter judiciary monitoring.

  • Special forces should be at the heart of Britain’s military planning

    What sort of military does the United Kingdom need to deal with a rapidly changing set of potential threats? As Western countries increasingly move away from the conventional foe — one that is easily identified, armed in a similar way and which, most critically, thinks in a similar way, and therefore in a conventional and predictable manner – it’s time to reappraise the sort of armed forces required for the future. It is no longer the size of your arsenal of firepower but how well it is employed that matters. Organizations such as Islamic State understand that well: their actions are carefully targeted to achieve maximum effect with limited resources. With technology on the Western side, the best counter to this present – and likely future – threat, will be to adopt in turn Voltaire’s maxim and concentrate increasingly on special, and specialized, forces.

  • U.K. police charges man with terrorism over researching, using encryption

    Samata Ullah, a 33-year old Briton, earlier this month was charged in a London court with six counts of terrorism, one of which related to researching and using encryption. Privacy advocates say that a controversial statute under British law criminalizes, in the name of combatting terrorism, actions which, on their own, are perfectly legal.

  • Effective counter-extremism policy in the U.S. would focus on individuals, not entire communities

    The Obama administration’s domestic CVE policy has strained relations with an entire religious community, in large part because its policy perceives American Muslims through a security lens. The CVE efforts primarily consist of outreach to Muslim leaders to keep the community onside and encourage information sharing about vulnerable youth — but the community rarely knows about youth who are radicalized in their midst, and the vast majority of Muslims do not embrace violent extremism. Of the world’s jihadi foreign fighter population, there have been approximately 250 people mobilized out of 3.3 million Muslims in America (a mere .000075 percent). The U.S. government should jettison a community-oriented approach, and instead focus on individuals who have demonstrated a clear and sustained interest in jihadist propaganda, not an entire faith-based community.

  • Trump’s union has long history of discrimination against female Border Patrol agents

    The union representing the agents of the U.S. Border Patrol, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), is a direct reflection in many ways of the U.S Border Patrol’s unique institutional history and present culture. That the NBPC leadership endorsed Donald Trump during the primaries is not surprising, nor is NBPC’s continued strong support for Trump to be our next president.As I documented more than a decade ago, the Border Patrol and the NBPC are both run by masculinist and militaristic bureaucracies more self-interested in their own agendas than reflecting the needs of their employees or union membership. NBPC’s endorsement of Trump is nothing less than support from the leadership of a labor union that has always been much too busy with other issues to support their own female Border patrol agents when they are discriminated against and harassed in a hostile work environment.

  • Half of American adults are in a little regulated police face recognition database

    Half of American adults — more than 117 million people — are in a law enforcement face recognition network, according to a report. Of the fifty-two government agencies that acknowledged using face recognition, only one obtained legislative approval for its use and only one agency provided evidence that it audited officers’ face recognition searches for misuse. Not one agency required warrants, and many agencies did not even require an officer to suspect someone of committing a crime before using face recognition to identify her.

  • ISIS fighters coming home after Mosul defeat pose threat to EU countries

    ISIS supporters who left Europe to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq have been fleeing from Mosul in the face of the U.S.-led coalition offensive – and European security officials say that as they come back home, they would pose a “serious threat” to European security. Experts warn that as the group loses power, the fighters will return home and continue the ideological battle on their home turf, even if the group is no longer in control of territory in the Middle East.

  • Widespread anti-Semitic harassment of journalists perceived as critical of Donald Trump: Report

    A new report released earlier today by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) details a troubling, year-long rise in anti-Semitic hate targeting journalists on Twitter, with data showing that the harassment has been driven by rhetoric in the 2016 presidential campaign. The anti-Semitic tweets have been directed at 800 journalists, both conservative and liberal, who wrote critically about Trump. The tweet writers are disproportionately likely to self-identify as Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, or part of the “alt-right,” a loosely connected group of extremists, some of whom are white supremacists. There were 19,253 anti-Semitic tweets in the first six months of 2016, and the words that appear most frequently in the bios of the 1,600 most prolific anti-Semitic Twitter attackers are “Trump,” “nationalist,” “conservative,” and “white.” “To be clear,” ADL stresses, “this does not imply that the Trump campaign supported or endorsed the anti-Semitic tweets, only that certain self-styled supporters sent these ugly messages.”

  • Should NSA and cyber command have separate leadership?

    The National Security Agency is the nation’s digital spying organization. U.S. Cyber Command is a military unit focused on cyberwarfare. Does it make sense for one person to lead them both at the same time? I believe that the NSA and Cyber Command should be under separate leadership, so each can pursue its mission with undivided focus and complete intensity. The NSA can gather intelligence. Cyber Command can defend our military networks and be ready to attack the systems of our enemies.

  • Resolving border issues offers rival nations best hope of moving toward peace

    Resolving border disputes gives rival nations the best hope for moving toward peace. A new study concludes that settling territorial conflicts had a greater impact on rival nations’ relations than democratization or ending civil wars. Border disputes create a threat that prompts citizens to give their leaders greater autonomy in exchange for protection. This leads to a more aggressive foreign policy and militarization.

  • Assessing 100 years of Los Angeles groundwater replenishment

    A new study offers the most sophisticated analyses to date on how Los Angeles-area groundwater supplies are replenished. The analyses provide water managers with a clearer understanding of the sources and amount of available groundwater in the region — information that is important for planning and management of the vital resource.

  • Iraq maintained a secret “torture chamber” in diplomatic mission in New York City

    The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein kept what it called a “detention room” – a euphemism for a torture chamber — in the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Iraq, a five-floor apartment building on 79th Street. One of the rooms in the mission was converted to a torture chamber after Saddam seized power in Iraq in 1979. Saddam’s security police used the space to imprison Iraqis living in the United States – at times for up to fifteen days — and use the prisoners as leverage against their family members back in Iraq. Quite a few uncooperative prisoners were killed, and their bodies shipped back to Iraq in diplomatic boxes.

  • Developing tests for radiation absorbed in nuclear emergency

    In a large-scale nuclear or radiological emergency, such as a nuclear detonation, hundreds of thousands of people may need medical care for injuries or illness caused by high doses of radiation. To help save as many people as possible and better prepare the nation for the health impacts of such catastrophic emergencies, HHS will sponsor late-stage development of two tests, known as biodosimetry tests, which can determine how much radiation a person’s body has absorbed.