• Russian Opposition Leader in Coma after Being Poisoned

    Outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny is in a coma in a hospital intensive-care unit in Siberia after falling ill in a manner similar to that of many of the critics of Vladimir Putin who were poisoned by agents of the FSB, the domestic intelligence service and heir to the KGB. This is he Kremlin’s third attempt to silence one of Putin’s more persistent critics. In 2017, Navalny suffered serious damage to one of his eyes after he was attacked with antiseptic dye. In July 2019, while in prison for 30 days for participating in a demonstration against the regime, he was poisoned with TCDD dioxin, the same poison Russian FSB agents used, in September 2004, against Viktor Yushchenko, then the leader of the Ukrainian opposition. Yushchenko survived, but his face was permanently disfigured by the poison. The quantity of prison used against Navalny in July 2019 was too small to kill him or leave permanent marks, but he had to be treated in a hospital for more than a week for a swollen face and a severe rash all over his body.

  • “We Must Do Better in 2020”: Bipartisan Senate Panel Releases Final Report on Russian 2016 Election Interference

    “The Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence” the “outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” This is the key, bipartisan finding of the fifth and final report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The committee’s investigation into the massive intervention campaign waged by Russian government agencies and operatives on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump was thorough, totaling more than three years of investigative activity, more than 200 witness interviews, and more than a million pages of reviewed documents. All five volumes total more than 1300 pages. “We must do better in 2020,” said Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) the committee’s chairman. “This cannot happen again,” said Senator Marc Warner (D-Virginia), the committee’s ranking member.

  • Tick Tock for TikTok

    Every company in China works for the Chinese Communist Party. They are required, by law, to turn over any information they can access, whenever the Party asks for it. It’s not just a matter of cooperating with the regime or being friendly to it. They must take and obey all orders from the regime, and that includes handing over any American data they touch, regardless of privacy commitments, legal concerns or respect for intellectual property. The administration is rightly concerned about any company that can deliver the keys to the information kingdom to Beijing. That’s what motivated the White House campaigns against letting the Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE build out the 5G telecom infrastructure for our nation and our allies.

  • Insider Threat at Twitter Is a Risk to Everyone

    Elected officials currently announce policies and spar with one another on Twitter. An unauthorized individual appearing to tweet from a world leader’s account could crash markets, spark conflicts, or create other catastrophic global consequences. Hacking the accounts of media companies could create similarly far-reaching effects. A well-respected news outlet tweeting out “breaking news” of impending war, or a local journalist warning of an active shooter on the loose could generate chaos.

  • Hack-and-Leak Operations and U.S. Cyber Policy

    The On 27 November 2019, Jeremy Corbyn, then-leader of the U.K. Labour Party, held a press conference in which he held up a hefty, official-looking, heavily redacted document – it was a heavy tome of about 400 pages. the documents Crobyn held in his hand were purported to show the details of discussions between the U.K. and U.S. governments on a post-Brexit trade deal, including demands by U.S. representatives to open access to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) for American companies — an inflammatory issue for many voters. James Shires writes that “This is one example of a hack-and-leak operation where malicious actors use cyber tools to gain access to sensitive or secret material and then release it in the public domain.” He argues that “hack-and-leak operations should be seen as the ‘simulation of scandal’: strategic attempts to direct public moral judgement against the operation’s target.”

  • Justice Department Completes Review of Errors in FISA Applications

    The 2016 application by the FBI to the FISA court for permission to place Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, under surveillance over his suspicious contacts with Russian intelligence officers, was reviewed by the Justice Department’s Inspector General. The DOJ IG found the application to be proper and in line with the department’s guidelines, even though it contained a few minor errors. AG William Barr ordered a second thorough review of the FBI’s application, a review which included a review of the IG’s review as well. The Barr-ordered review has been completed, and the Justice Department reported that most of the errors identified by the Office of the Inspector General were minor, and none invalidated the surveillance application and authorizations. The DOJ review “should instill confidence in the FBI’s use of its FISA authorities,” said FBI Acting General Counsel Dawn Browning, committed the agency to “meeting the highest standard of exactness” and “eliminat[ing] errors of any kind.”

  • A Bible Burning, a Russian News Agency and a Story Too Good to Check Out

    With Election Day drawing closer, the Russian efforts to influence the vote appear to be well underway. One example: A video cooked by a Kremlin-backed video news agency, purportedly showing dozens of BLM protesters in Portland , Oregon, burning a stack of bibles, was seized upon by Trump supporters as evidence, in Donald Trump Jr’s words, that antifa had moved to “the book burning phase.” Matthew Rosenberg and Julian E. Barnes write that “the truth was far more mundane. A few protesters among the many thousands appear to have burned a single Bible — and possibly a second — for kindling to start a bigger fire. None of the other protesters seemed to notice or care.” They add: “The Portland video represents the Russian disinformation strategy at its most successful. Take a small but potentially inflammatory incident, blow it out of proportion and let others on the political fringes in the United States or Canada or Europe spread it.”

  • A Ban on WeChat and TikTok, a Disconnected World and Two Internets

    President Trump’s new executive orders banning Chinese social media apps TikTok and WeChat marked a significant escalation in the ongoing technology tensions between the U.S. and China. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, predicted in 2018 that within the next decade, there would be two distinct Internets: one led by the U.S. and the other one led by China. Only two years after his comments, that prediction seems to have become a reality.

  • Consumers Consider Third-Party Use of Personal Location Data as Privacy Violations

    The National Security Agency issued a warning to its employees 4 August that cellphone location data could pose a national security risk. But how do consumers feel about their location data being tracked and sold? New research yielded surprising results.

  • How Sen. Ron Johnson’s Investigation Became an Enabler of Russian Disinformation: Part I

    Senator Ron Johnson’s investigations involving Ukraine have become a conduit of Russian disinformation, Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa write. Johnson has been warned before about being used as a vehicle for Russia disinformation, but chose not to heed those warnings. Goodman and Rangappa write: “Part of the Kremlin’s effort is to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the United States, part is to sow political discord inside the United States, and another part is, as now confirmed publicly by the U.S. intelligence community, to support Trump’s re-election bid. Johnson has enabled all three.”

  • China Uses Its Market Power to Censor, Alter American Films, Threatening Free Speech, Artistic Expression

    In a report out last week, the literary and human rights group PEN America said Chinese government censorship is exerting influence on Hollywood and the global filmmaking industry, posing a clear threat to free speech and artistic expression. The U.S. film industry, in ways large and small, has over the past decade increasingly capitulated to Chinese government pressure to alter and censor films. Studios have made content changes to films, either at the direct request of government censors or increasingly through voluntary self-censorship in order to gain or sustain access to the tightly controlled and lucrative Chinese film market; in some instances, studios have even permitted state censors on film sets or in production studios.

  • Official: U.S. Adversaries Taking Sides, Wielding Influence Ahead of Election

    Russia, China and Iran are all actively meddling in U.S. presidential politics hoping to persuade American voters to put their preferred candidate in the White House, according to an extraordinary warning from Washington’s top counterintelligence official. As was the case in 2016, Russia is actively working to help Trump. Russia has also recruited Ukrainian “actors” to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden and his son, to be fed into the investigation of the Bidens by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin). China and Iran would prefer to see Biden in the White House, but their interference efforts are not at the level of Russia’s broad campaign to help Trump. Trump rejected that part of the intelligence community’s assessment which details Russia’s broad effort on his behalf. “The last person Russia wants to see in office is Donald Trump,” he said. “I don’t care what anybody says.”

  • U.S. Accuses Russia of Complex Online Disinformation, Propaganda Operation

    The United States has accused Russia of developing a sophisticated “ecosystem” to spread disinformation and propaganda about the coronavirus and other issues. In a new report published on August 5, the State Department said Russia’s online operations use “five main pillars” to amplify false narratives and conspiracy theories in a bid to sow confusion and fear.

  • Russian Government Hackers Stole, Leaked Classified U.K. Trade Documents Ahead of 2019 Election

    A treasure trove of classified documents about secret trade negotiations between the United States and the United Kingdom – discussion which aimed to prepare the U.S.-U.K. economic relationship for the post-Brexit era – were stolen by Russian government hackers and leaked to the opposition Labour Party ahead of the December 2019 general election. The Russian government hackers stole the classified papers – 451 pages in all — from an email account of Liam Fox, who was then the U.K. trade secretary.

  • Pompeo: U.S. Will Take Action on Chinese Software in “Coming Days

    Chinese software companies operating in the United States assiduously collect customers’ personal date, browsing habits, facial images, and other information and deliver it to China’s intelligence agencies for possible use by China when it would serve China’s interests to do so. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the fact the Chinese software companies serve as information collectors for China’s intelligence agencies poses a serious national security threat to the United States, and that the administration, in the coming days, will soon announce a series of measures aiming to restrict the ability of Chinese software companies to operate in this way, and ban some companies from operating in the United States altogether.