OUR PICKSSummer of Rolling Blackouts | Terrorist Manifestoes | Swiss Spying, and more

Published 21 May 2022

·  Summer Forecast: Extreme Heat with a Chance of Rolling Blackouts

·  Buffalo Gunman’s Video Is Surfacing on Facebook, Sometimes with Ads Beside It.

·  Terrorist and Extremist Chants Used to Woo Recruits – Focus of Latest Europol Referral Action Day

·  Interagency Officials Prepare for ‘Another Tough Hurricane Season’

·  There Aren’t Answers in Terrorist Manifestoes. There’s Only Self-Mythologizing.

·  The Terrorist Threat Posed By Lone Actors Is ‘Difficult to Detect,’ Says Federal Report

·  Swiss Plan to Let Spy Agency Snoop on Security Risk Financial Flows

·  Just Before Buffalo Shooting, 15 Users Signed into Suspect’s Chatroom, Says Person Familiar with Review

·  Climate-Fueled Heat Waves Will Hamper Western Hydropower

Summer Forecast: Extreme Heat with a Chance of Rolling Blackouts  (Lina Tran, Grist)
NOAA expects unusually hot temperatures across all 50 states.

Buffalo Gunman’s Video Is Surfacing on Facebook, Sometimes with Ads Beside It.  (Ryan Mac, New York Times)
People searching on Facebook for footage of Saturday’s racist shooting rampage in Buffalo, N.Y., may have come across posts with footage of the attack or links to websites promising the gunman’s full video. Interspersed between those posts, they may have also seen a variety of ads. The social network has sometimes served ads next to posts offering clips of the video, which a gunman live streamed on the video platform Twitch as he killed 10 people. For the past six days, recordings of that livestream have circulated across the internet including on Facebook, Twitter and fringe and extremist message boards and sites, despite some companies’ efforts to remove the content. The pace at which an 18-year-old gunman’s ephemeral livestream morphed into a rapidly proliferating, permanent recording shows the challenges large tech platforms face in policing their sites for violent content. Facebook and its parent company, Meta, rely on a combination of artificial intelligence, user reports and human moderators to track and remove shooting videos like the Buffalo one. But in some search results, Facebook is surfacing the violent video or links to websites hosting the clip next to ads.

Terrorist and Extremist Chants Used to Woo Recruits – Focus of Latest Europol Referral Action Day  (EUROPOL)
Between 5 and 13 May, a large-scale Referral Action Day targeting terrorist and extremist audio content online took place involving Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) and six countries. More than 1000 illegal items were flagged as terrorist or extremist content.

Interagency Officials Prepare for ‘Another Tough Hurricane Season’  (Bridget Johnson, HSToday)
Agency leaders discussed progress on disaster equity initiatives to help those affected by storms who may have limited access to resources.