OUR PICKSFighting Extremist Content Online | U.S. Halting COVID-19 Response | Protecting cities from drone threat, and more

14-Year-Old on Long Island Arrested for Online Terrorist Threat Against School: Police  (NBC New York)
Police on Long Island arrested a 14-year-old boy they said made a school threat on social media. Suffolk County Police arrested the teenager Thursday night after he allegedly said on social media that he was going to bring weapons to the R.C. Murphy Junior High School in Stony Brook and harm students and faculty. Following an investigation, detectives arrested the 14-year-old at home. Police say he was transported to Stony Brook University Hospital for evaluation and was charged with making a terrorist threat. No weapons were found in the teen’s home.

NZ’s Ardern Says Christchurch Call Anti-Online Hate Project Gets New Tech Investments  (Reuters)
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Wednesday announced a new research initiative under a global project aimed at tackling online hate set up in the wake of a mass killing by a white supremacist in Christchurch in 2019. Ardern said in a statement that as part of the Christchurch Call initiative, New Zealand, the United States, Twitter (TWTR.N) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) will invest an undisclosed sum in developing new technology aimed at helping researchers understand how algorithms affect internet users’ experiences. Partners in the initiative will work together to build and test a set of privacy-enhancing technologies that, once proven, could form the basis for infrastructure to support independent study of impacts of algorithms, according to the statement. “This initiative won’t tell us all we need to know about the outcomes algorithms are driving online, it will help us better access data so researchers can answer these very questions,” the statement said.

Fighting Extremist Content Online: Feds Dedicate $1.9M to Terrorist Analytic Tool  (Rachel Gilmore, Global News)
The federal government is giving new funding to continue the development of an automated tool for finding and flagging terrorist content online. In a press released issued Tuesday evening, the public safety department detailed a $1.9-million, three-year investment in funding “to combat online terrorist and violent extremist content.” “We need to confront the rise of hate and violent extremism,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a tweet on Tuesday. “At the Christchurch Call Summit, I announced that Canada will fund a new tool that helps small and medium-size online platforms better identify and counter content related to terrorism and violent extremism.” The tool Trudeau referred to is the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform. Created by the United Nations’ Tech Against Terrorism initiative in 2020, the tool combs various corners of the internet for terrorist content and flags it for tech companies around the world to review — and, if they choose to do so, remove. The creation of this tool is funded by Public Safety Canada through the Community Resilience Fund. However, despite their funds supporting it, the government is at arms-length from the work TCAP does, according to the website for the tool.

Jan. 6 Committee’s Focus on Trump Raises Questions About Its Ultimate Goal  (Scott Patterson, Sadie Gurman, and Alex Leary, Wall Stret Journal)
Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney says panel will use coming hearings to lay out alleged seven-part plan by former president to overturn his 2020 election defeat

Strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention’s Contributions to Global Health Security  (Aurelia Attal-Juncqua, Matthew Shearer, and Gigi Kwik Gronvall, Think Global Health)
Countering Russian disinformation creates opportunities to enhance the BWC’s role against dangerous pathogens.

The United States COVID-19 Testing Debacle  (Jennifer B. Nuzzo and Christina Potter, Think Global Health)
Understanding why the U.S. response to COVID-19 was marred by challenges.

Immediate Action is Needed to Protect the Homeland from Drone Threats  (Steve Karoly, HSToday)
The government needs to give companies access to designated military installations to conduct quarterly scientific R&D testing without potential customers present. As it stands today, this is a national security risk because foreign drone mitigation companies can innovate faster as a result of their governments’ streamlined R&D testing processes.

The Tipping Point of Stupid  (Mark Leibovich, The Atlantic)
In most states, you can’t pass yourself off as an election-denying January 6 truther and still be taken seriously by a majority of voters.