Our picksTwitter: Gateway for Conspiracy Theories | Oath Keepers & Law Enforcement | Detecting COVID Variants

Published 18 October 2021

·  Taliban Could Lose Power Amid Governance Struggles, Experts Say

·  Twitter Is Serving as a Gateway to Gab’s Conspiracy Theories, Study Finds

·  Hack exposes law enforcement officers who signed up to join anti-government Oath Keepers

·  U.K. Politician’s Murder Puts Focus on Anti-Terrorism Program

·  Ministers Ignored Official Recommendations to Combat Hateful Extremism

·  CDC Program to Detect New COVID Variants Launches at SFO

·  What Can the United Nations Do About Counterterrorism?

Taliban Could Lose Power Amid Governance Struggles, Experts Say  (Jacqueline Feldscher, Defense One)
The Afghan people could rise up if food shortages, access to medical care and unemployment worsen without international help.

Twitter Is Serving as a Gateway to Gab’s Conspiracy Theories, Study Finds  (Cristiano Lima, Washington Post)
Twitter is struggling to curtail covid-19 misinformation and hate speech originating from the fringe social network Gab and migrating to find massive audiences on the platform, according to a report released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League.
The group, which studies and advocates against extremism and antisemitism online, wrote that while Twitter has beefed up its policies against such content, it “has not addressed the ease with which users are able to drive traffic to hate and misinformation hosted on outside sites.”

Hack exposes law enforcement officers who signed up to join anti-government Oath Keepers  (Will Carless, Grace Hauck, and Erin Mansfield, USA TODAY)
The Oath Keepers trade in conspiracy theories and wild interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. Its members have been involved in armed standoffs with the federal government. Some face charges in connection with their role in the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

A massive trove of data hacked from the Oath Keepers website — some of which from the whistleblower group Distributed Denial of Secrets — made available to journalists, includes a file that purportedly provides names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of almost 40,000 members.
A search of that list revealed more than 200 people who identified themselves as active or retired law enforcement officers when signing up. USA TODAY confirmed 21 of them are still serving, from Alabama to California. Another 23 have retired since joining the Oath Keepers.

U.K. Politician’s Murder Puts Focus on Anti-Terrorism Program  (Bloomberg)
The murder of a U.K. lawmaker has focused attention on “Prevent,” a program designed to identify people at risk of becoming radicalized, as well as on how to combat “corrosive” online discourse. U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel said Sunday the counter-terrorism program is undergoing an independent review. (Cont.)