“Ghost Guns” Available Online | Calibrating Domestic Intelligence | What It’s Like to Fight a Megafire, and more

COVID-19, it said, had worsened existing strains of xenophobia and anti-authoritarianism. Violent extremists were exploiting the pandemic by amplifying false information about government measures and the virus, it said.
Protesters opposed to mandatory vaccinations have blocked access to hospitals across Canada and abused medical staff, both in person and online.
“Online rhetoric that is increasingly violent and calls for the arrest and execution of specific individuals is of increasing concern,” CSIS said in a statement.

Report: Hackers with China Ties Linked to Global Password Thefts  (Adriann Zhang, VOA News)
A U.S. cybersecurity firm says a hacking group possibly linked to China has breached nine global organizations including at least one in the United States.
The report by Palo Alto Networks of Santa Clara, California, said it found malicious actors were actively stealing passwords from target organizations with the goal of maintaining long-term access.

New Report: “Network of Networks: The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe”  (European Eye on Radicalization)
A new report, “Network of Networks: The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe”, republished here, was recently released by the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group of the European Parliament. The report was launched on 10 November in a webinar organised and hosted by Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Charlie Weimers, Chair of the ECR’s Working Group on Religious Freedom, which included the authors of the report, as well as other experts on the Muslim Brotherhood to discuss the organisation’s ideology and its threat to European values and fundamental rights.

Calibrating Domestic Intelligence at the 20-Year Mark  (Genevieve Lester and John P. Sullivan, HSToday)
The divide between foreign and domestic intelligence, while grounded in legitimate civil liberties concerns, can inhibit detection of transnational threats.

Video Games, Extremism and Terrorism: A Literature Survey  (Sam Andrews and Joshua Skoczylis, Global Network on Extremism & Technology)
Video games are extremely popular, with a market worth over $175 billion per year and at least 3 billion players worldwide. High-speed Internet has also made multiplayer gaming a social activity, facilitating the growth of a gamer subculture and identity, supplemented by online forums  and offline meetups, leading to a growing community around this hobby.
Today speculation is rife that many of these video gaming communities are vulnerable to extremist and terrorist groups. Researchers and practitioners are concerned that video gaming forums and games are used as recruitment tools, and that extremist and terrorist groups are producing their own video games, serving as effective propaganda to an overwhelmingly young audience.
Due to this interest, there is a growing literature on video games, terrorism, and extremism. This Insight looks to provide an overview of this literature and the associated literature on Internet masculinities. The article is split into two parts, looking first at online video gaming communities, and then at video games themselves. While recent research has also been interested in gamification, this is beyond the scope of this review. Additionally, this review looks only at online gaming communities. Further work is needed to link the offline and online gaming communities. This too is beyond the scope of this review.

Politicians Face Violence and Threats from Voters—and Each Other. Are We Nearing a Civil War?  (Brian Michael Jenkins, NBC Think)
At least one noted American historian is comparing today’s pugnacious politics with that of the republic in the years leading up to the Civil War. And indeed, Americans around the country seem to endorse bellicose behavior. According to a survey published on Nov. 1, 18 percent of all Americans (30 percent of Republicans, 17 percent of Independents and 11 percent of Democrats) believe that “patriots” might have to resort to violence to save the country. Another poll earlier in the year found that 46 percent of people thought the country was somewhat or very likely to have another civil war.
Are they right? Does America’s increasingly uncivil behavior mean we are heading toward civil war?

What It’s Like to Fight a Megafire  (M. R. O’Connor, New Yorker)
Wildfires have grown more extreme. So have the risks of combatting them.

Personality Type, as well as Politics, Predicts Who Shares Fake News (Asher Lawson and Hemant Kakkar, Scientific American)
Highly impulsive people who lean conservative are more likely to share false news stories. They have a desire to create chaos and won’t be deterred by fact-checkers