OUR PICKSDefectors & Spies | Tech Giants & Skilled Immigrants | Outsmarting Disasters, and more

Published 8 June 2022

·  Seagate Technology and the Case of the Missing Huawei FDPR Enforcement

·  Defectors Provide Immediate Gratification, But Spies Change History

·  German Far-Right Growing and More Prone to Violence - Govt Agency

·  Online Platforms Now Have an Hour to Remove Terrorist Content in the EU

·  Tech Giants Urge DHS to Revamp Policies for High-Skilled Visa Holders’ Children

·  Praise for Uvalde Shooter and Call for Copycats Is Growing Online, Homeland Security Warns

·  Outsmarting Disaster: AI Predicts Earthquakes, Fires, Floods

Seagate Technology and the Case of the Missing Huawei FDPR Enforcement  (James Mulvenon, Lawfare)
There have been no major regulatory actions against companies for violating the expanded Huawei FDPR despite evidence of numerous violations.

Defectors Provide Immediate Gratification, But Spies Change History  (Douglas London, Just Security)
I was not among those celebrating news that veteran Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev resigned from his Geneva United Nations posting in protest of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. It’s a lovely symbolic gesture, but unsurprisingly, it has quickly disappeared into the rapidly changing news cycle. While some Russia watchers applaud defectors for the prospect that they might provide evidence for war crimes investigators or erode Putin’s control — or the appearance thereof — there is a better use of those potential defectors’ time and effort: stay in place and clandestinely provide current intelligence over an extended period of time.

German Far-Right Growing and More Prone to Violence - Govt Agency  (Yahoo News)
Political extremism is a growing threat to Germany, with its adherents, primarily on the far right and increasingly driven by misinformation, ever more willing to resort to violence, a new report by domestic intelligence showed. The Federal Agency for the Protection of the Constitution counted 33,476 politically motivated crimes in 2021, a slight increase over the previous year, after 32,924 in 2020, but there was a 10% increase in politically motivated violent crime. “Far-right extremism remains the biggest extremist threat to our democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said introducing the report on Tuesday. “We see a high degree of openness to violence here.” Political extremism is highly sensitive in Germany given the country’s Nazi past and many Germans feel a special responsibility to root out racism and intolerance. The president of the domestic intelligence service, Thomas Haldenwang, said misinformation played a key role in nourishing all the various extremist activity. In a positive development, the German population seemed more or less immune to propaganda Russia was spreading in Germany in support of its war in Ukraine.

Online Platforms Now Have an Hour to Remove Terrorist Content in the EU  (Clothilde Goujard, Politico)
Facebook, Google and Twitter now have an hour to take down flagged terrorist content spreading on their platforms or risk fines of billions of euros. Passed in 2021, the EU’s terrorist content regulation enters into force Tuesday. It seeks to crack down on terrorist propaganda on social media and viral livestreams of gruesome attacks such as the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. Public authorities such as law enforcement, interior ministries and Europol can now require a platform or cloud services to remove specific posts, music, livestreams, photos and videos inciting violence and glorifying terrorist attacks. Promoting terrorist groups and instructions for how to commit an attack will also be forbidden online. Any European Union country, from Hungary to Poland, can tell a company to remove terrorist content across the bloc. Digital companies will have an hour to comply and will have to ensure similar content is not uploaded again. Users will be informed that their content has been deleted and can contest the decision. If tech companies regularly fail to tackle terrorist content, they could face a fine of up to 4 percent of their global revenue. The law has been criticized by digital rights activists who worry that the tight deadline and limited safeguards could stifle free speech.

Tech Giants Urge DHS to Revamp Policies for High-Skilled Visa Holders’ Children  (Olafimihan Oshin, The Hill)
A coalition of U.S.-based tech companies sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking him to revamp the department’s policies for children of high-skilled visa holders. 
In the letter sent on Tuesday, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, the coalition asked the Biden administration to establish “more robust aging out policies” in an effort to address the issue of children of long-term visa holders being able to continue as beneficiaries of their parents’ pending green card applications even after they turn 21 years of age.
The coalition noted that more than 200,000 children have grown up in this country under their parents’ protected visa status, which included those who are holders of H-1B visas. 

Praise for Uvalde Shooter and Call for Copycats Is Growing Online, Homeland Security Warns  (Michael Murney, Chron)
In a U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security bulletin released Thursday, officials sounded the alarm over violent extremist content and misinformation following the shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Outsmarting Disaster: AI Predicts Earthquakes, Fires, Floods  (Jule Pattison-Gordon, Government Technology)
As natural disasters grow more severe across the country, local governments are increasingly using predictive analytics to understand where and when an emergency will impact their communities.