Cloud Cybersecurity Challenges | Mis- and Disinformation Studies | New Infectious Threats, and more

Mis- and Disinformation Studies Are Too Big to Fail: Six Suggestions for the Field’s Future  (Chico Q. Camargo and Felix M. Simon, Misinformation Review)
Who are mis-/disinformation studies for? What agenda does the field serve? How can it be improved? While the increase in the attention towards the topic in the last years is healthy, it has also led to an explosion of papers in all directions, and the field has been subject to various criticisms and attacks. In this commentary, we discuss the status and wider impact of the field, raise current challenges, and propose ways ahead for the development of a more critical, interdisciplinary, and rigorous scholarly discipline of mis- and disinformation studies.

Saudi Counter-Extremism Center Works with Telegram to Remove Five Million Extremist Posts in Past Two Months  (Hebshi Alshammari, Arab News)
More than five million examples of extremist content were removed from instant messaging service Telegram in the space of just two months. The Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, also known as Etidal, on Monday said that between July 17 and Sept. 13, its work with a task force from Telegram to prevent and combat terrorism and violent extremism resulted in the deletion of 5,269,078 items from the platform. They included 3,012,489 messages relating to Tahrir Al-Sham, a militant group involved in the Syrian civil war, 1,168,447 about Al-Qaeda, and 1,088,142 about Daesh. Since the collaboration began on Feb. 21, Etidal said 7,146,016 examples of extremist content has been removed from Telegram to protect users from threats and damaging ideological influences. They include messages in Arabic that contained various types of media files, including PDFs, videos and audio recordings. Mubarak Al-Aati, a Saudi writer and political analyst, said that Etidal is showing that it is efficient and serious in its efforts to confront the rhetoric of extremism and the ideas of terrorism. He told Arab News that the organization’s work to combat the threats on the local, regional and global levels is well known, and its work with high-profile partners such as Telegram will help to reduce the extremist influence on social media and in other public online spaces.

Fighter Jets Scrambled After Bomb Threat on Singapore Airlines Flight from San Francisco  (Anurag Kotoky, Bloomberg)
A Singapore Airlines Ltd. flight en-route from San Francisco was escorted by fighter jets after a passenger allegedly claimed there was a bomb in his carry-on bag and assaulted the crew, according to the police.  Singapore Airlines Flight 33 landed safely at Changi airport at 5:50am, the city-state’s Police Force said in a statement. The plane was taxied to a remote bay for security checks and was later towed to the terminal, Singapore Airlines said in a separate statement. All passengers and crew disembarked normally. Fake bomb threats are fairly common in aviation while fighter jets are generally used when crew don’t respond to commands from ground handlers or an aircraft veers off its approved route. In July, an EasyJet Plc flight to Spain was escorted by a fighter jet after a British teenager made a bomb threat on social media, according to Reuters. On Wednesday, residents living nearby reported hearing two loud fighter planes passing overhead just before 6am local time, one first, followed by another a few seconds later.

Analysis: New Infectious Threats Are Coming. The U.S. Isn’t Ready.  (Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times)
The coronavirus revealed flaws in the nation’s pandemic plans. The spread of monkeypox shows that the problems remain deeply entrenched.

Federal Agencies Face Cloud Cybersecurity Challenges  (Kylie Bielby, HSToday)
GAO found that FedRAMP’s requirements and guidance on implementing control activities were not always clear and the program’s process for monitoring the status of security controls over cloud services was limited.