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In Disasters, People Are Abandoning Official Info for Social Media. How to Know What to Trust
In an emergency, where do you turn to find out what’s going on and what you should do to stay safe? The rise of social media has seen community groups, volunteers and non-government organizations nudging out official channels. While these informal sources often provide faster, more local information, they may also be less reliable than government sources.
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Officials Fear Disinformation Could Spark U.S. Election Violence
With just one week to go until the U.S. midterm elections, a key senior U.S. official is expressing concerns that misinformation, or influence operations by U.S. adversaries, could ignite violence at the polls. For weeks, top officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security have said they have found no traces of specific or credible threats to the November 8 vote.
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How Serial Killers Captured Popular Culture
Celebrity, monster, antihero—the serial murderer has many faces in our movies, books, and shows, and we love them all.
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Sensor Technology Detects Fires Before They Start
Fire alarms generally operate by detecting the presence of smoke, open flame, or higher-than-normal levels of carbon monoxide. Such indicators, however, are byproducts of a fire once it has already started. By using functional nanomaterials-based fire sensor technology, researchers hope to take a step forward from existing detection methods.
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Unexpected Trends in Gun Violence Revealed by Statistical Analysis
Only a handful of U.S. states showed a surge in gun violence incidents in mid-2020 during civil unrest at the start of COVID-19 lockdowns and the murder of George Floyd, a new study finds.
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Cracking the Secrets to Earthquake Safety, One Shake Simulation at a Time
A new experimental capability, designed to replicate realistic earthquakes in the laboratory, paired with the world’s fastest supercomputers, will help lead to resilient buildings and infrastructure across the U.S.
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Deep Learning Underlies Geographic Dataset Used in Hurricane Response
Extreme weather and natural disasters are happening with increasing frequency across the United States and its territories. Accurate and detailed maps are critical in emergency response and recovery. ORNL’s has mapped and characterized all structures within the United States and its territories to aid FEMA in its response to disasters.
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U.K. Unveils New Counterterror Strategy to Address New Threats
In the U.K. and overseas, there has been a shift towards self-initiated terrorists operating independently from organized groups with increasingly personal ideologies and warped views used to justify violence. The U.K. is updating its counterterrorism system is so it can continually adapt to new and emerging threats.
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An Assessment of the Second U.S. Government Domestic Terrorism Assessment
The recently released intelligence assessment of domestic terrorism is the second iteration of the Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism, and Seamus Hughes, Moshe Klein, and Alexis Jori Shanes write that “From additional granularity in the size and scope of the threat of domestic terrorism to a more forthcoming acknowledgement of its complexity, it should provide a road map for U.S. domestic counterterrorism efforts.”
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The Business Case for Reducing Gun Violence
While gun violence in the United States continues to claim lives at an alarming rate, it is also taking a quiet toll on the U.S. economy, according to new research. The research found that the toll of U.S. firearms injuries on the U.S. economy reaches billions of dollars annually.
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Rare-Earth Processing Must Be a Strategic Priority for Australia
There are well over 3,000 items of U.S. military equipment requiring rare earth elements (REEs), including crewed and uncrewed aircraft, satellites, nuclear weapons, missiles, surface warships and submarines, advanced radars and combat systems, and army vehicles such as tanks. REEs are also essential to green technology. China’s near global monopoly over the processing of these minerals is becoming increasingly worrisome.
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Intrusive Surveillance and Interrogation of Portland Demonstrators by DHS Agents
DHS surveillance of 2020 protestors in Portland, Oregon was broader and more intrusive than had previously been knows. DHS agents created individual dossiers on many of the protestors, dossiers which included lists of friends and family, travel history, social media postings, and other records unrelated to securing federal property or homeland security. Documents also reveal that Trump appointees at DHS endorsed baseless conspiracy theories in justifying what Senator Ron Wyden D-Oregon) called “violations of Oregonians’ civil rights.”
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U.K. Police Fail to Meet “Legal and Ethical Standards” in Use of Facial Recognition
Researchers devise an audit tool to test whether police use of facial recognition poses a threat to fundamental human rights, and analyze three deployments of the technology by British forces – with all three failing to meet “minimum ethical and legal standards.”
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Relaxing Conceal Carry Permit Restrictions Significantly Increases Firearm Assaults
The average rate of assaults with firearms increased an average of 9.5 percent relative to forecasted trends in the first 10 years after 34 states relaxed restrictions on civilians carrying concealed firearms in public. Researchers say that specific provisions in conceal carry laws may reduce risks associated with civilian gun carrying.
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Russia: Western Commercial Satellites Could Become 'Legitimate' Targets
Russian officials have warned that Western commercial satellites could become “legitimate” targets for Moscow if they were involved in the war in Ukraine. Russia is upset about Starlink, a network of more than 2,000 satellites orbiting the Earth and thousands of terminals on the ground. In late February, Elon Musk said his rocket company SpaceX would continue to fund its Starlink Internet service in Ukraine.
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More headlines
The long view
AI-Controlled Fighter Jets May Be Closer Than We Think — and Would Change the Face of Warfare
Could we be on the verge of an era where fighter jets take flight without pilots – and are controlled by artificial intelligence (AI)? US R Adm Michael Donnelly recently said that an upcoming combat jet could be the navy’s last one with a pilot in the cockpit.
What We’ve Learned from Survivors of the Atomic Bombs
Q&A with Dr. Preetha Rajaraman, New Vice Chair for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
Need for National Information Clearinghouse for Cybercrime Data, Categorization of Cybercrimes: Report
There is an acute need for the U.S. to address its lack of overall governance and coordination of cybercrime statistics. A new report recommends that relevant federal agencies create or designate a national information clearinghouse to draw information from multiple sources of cybercrime data and establish connections to assist in criminal investigations.
Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled
“The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have,” Michael Horowitz writes.
Twenty-One Things That Are True in Los Angeles
To understand the dangers inherent in deploying the California National Guard – over the strenuous objections of the California governor – and active-duty Marines to deal with anti-ICE protesters, we should remind ourselves of a few elementary truths, writes Benjamin Wittes. Among these truths: “Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart”; “Not all crimes require a federal response”; “Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable”; and “It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations.”
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”