• High-Tech Surveillance Amplifies Police Bias and Overreach

    Local, state and federal law enforcement organizations use an array of surveillance technologies to identify and track protesters, from facial recognition to military-grade drones. Police use of these national security-style surveillance techniques – justified as cost-effective techniques that avoid human bias and error – has grown hand-in-hand with the increased militarization of law enforcement. Extensive research, including my own, has shown that these expansive and powerful surveillance capabilities have exacerbated rather than reduced bias, overreach and abuse in policing, and they pose a growing threat to civil liberties.

  • Risks of—and Solutions for -- Remote Voting

    Delaware, West Virginia, and New Jersey have either deployed OmniBallot or plan to do so for fully online voting, also referred to as “electronic ballot return.” Other states including Colorado, Florida, Oregon, Ohio and Washington, the New York Times reports, use it to deliver blank ballots to registered voters who can mark them and return them by fax, email or mail. Election security researchers have found troubling vulnerabilities in OmniBallot.

  • Designating the Russian Imperial Movement a Terrorist Organization: A Drop in the Bucket of Needed U.S. Counter-Extremism Responses

    On 6 April 2020, the U.S. State Department designated the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) as a terrorist organization and placed its leaders on its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Mariya Omelicheva writes that this unprecedented move—the first time in history the State Department has deployed tools reserved for jihadist groups against a white supremacist organization—comes at a time of rising right-wing extremism and violence in the United States and around the globe as well as the internationalization of white supremacist movements.

  • Congress Should Investigate the Trump Administration’s Coronavirus Response

    Charlie Martel, who in 2008-2009 led the staff of a bipartisan Senate investigation of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, writes that “Today, as with Katrina, the nation is faced with a deeply flawed federal response to an ongoing crisis with catastrophic consequences on a historic scale.” He adds: “Having apparently discarded the careful pandemic planning it inherited, the Trump administration has no evident strategy guiding its response to the complex crises created by the coronavirus. Administration statements and decisions have been impulsive, contradictory and in some instances dangerous. Congressional oversight is necessary to review the federal response and correct it where necessary.”

  • Chinese Govt.-Controlled Telecoms Operated in the U.S. with Little or No U.S. Government Oversight

    A bipartisan report released Tuesday by the Senate investigative panel found that U.S. government officials had “exercised minimal oversight” of the risks posed by three Chinese telecom companies which have operated on American communications networks for nearly twenty years. The Trump administration took steps to limit the ability if Huawei and China Telecom to operate in the United States, but U.S. officials have failed to keep an adequate watch on three other Chinese government-controlled companies — China Unicom Americas, China Telecom Americas, and ComNet (USA).

  • EU: China, Russia Waging Broad Pandemic Disinformation Campaign to Deepen Crisis

    The European Union, in an unusually blunt language, has accused Russia and China of a running a broad, sustained, and “targeted” disinformation campaign inside the European Union, aiming to deepen and lengthen the coronavirus pandemic crisis and its negative medical, economic, and social effects. The EU has criticized Russia in the past for its sophisticated disinformation campaign aiming to weaken the West and undermine liberal democracies, but the direct criticism of China is a break from the EU recent approach, which saw it tiptoeing around China’s many transgressions.   

  • Why Are German Neo-Nazis Training in Russia?

    Militant far-right extremists from Germany, Sweden, and Finland are receiving combat training in Russia. IntelThe training camps are run by the right-wing extremist Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), which, in April, was designated by the United States as a terrorist organization – the first white supremacist group to be so designated. Russia’s active campaign to weaken the West and undermine liberal democracies has so far been limited to covert and overt support of populist, far-right, polarizing leaders and political movements in the West. Western intelligence services are worried that military training of far-right extremists is part of the next chapter in Russia sustained, disciplined campaign to undermine Western democracies.

  • Militias Evaluate Beliefs, Action as President Threatens Soldiers in the Streets

    So-called “militias” and “patriot groups” have different beliefs and viewpoints, but most of these citizen-focused organizations share a concern about government infringement on individual liberties. The protests over the killing of George Floyd saw largely peaceful demonstrations being met by well-armed police, often equipped with military gear, and National Guard troops. That puts these groups in a curious position. Their public activity has long championed the importance of individual constitutional rights, and they believe in the right to use armed resistance against government overreach. But many of these groups’ members have also been supporters of the president, who is now speaking openly of taking the sort of far-reaching government action these groups have long warned against.

  • Why Were Out-of-State National Guard Units in Washington, D.C.? The Justice Department’s Troubling Explanation

    Over the previous week, thousands of National Guard troops from states across the country arrived in Washington, D.C., as part of the Trump administration’s response to the largely peaceful protests taking place across the city. “But under what legal authority were they deployed to D.C. in the first place?” The mayor of Washington, D.C. asked Attorney General William Barr the same question – but Steve Vladeck writes that Barr’s response, that the deployment of the troops was under the authority of 32 U.S.C.§ 502(f), raises two vexing possibilities, neither of them reassuring: either Barr is wrong about 32 U.S.C.§ 502(f), or he is right.

  • Under Pressure, Britain Pushes Back on Huawei Dependence

    The Trump administration’s campaign to keep Chinese tech giant Huawei out of its allies’ 5G networks appears to be gaining ground in Britain. Earlier this year, the British government proposed to allow Chinese tech giant Huawei restricted access to the U.K. 5G infrastructure, but relentless U.S. pressure; mounting opposition from Conservative Party backbenchers; and China’s conduct during the coronavirus epidemic have pushed the government to change course. Now, British officials are trying to forge an alliance of 10 democracies to develop their own 5G technology and reduce dependence on the Chinese firm.

  • Calls for New Federal Authority to Regulate Facial Recognition Tech

    A group of artificial intelligence experts — citing profiling, breach of privacy and surveillance as potential societal risks — recently proposed a new model for managing facial recognition technologies at the federal level. The experts propose an FDA-inspired model that categorizes these technologies by degrees of risk and would institute corresponding controls.

  • Military Prestige during a Political Crisis: Use It and You’ll Lose It

    Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, walked himself into a civil-military problem when he walked across Pennsylvania Avenue – in his battle fatigues! – last week. Jim Golby and Peter Feaver write that Milley was literally following President Donald Trump, who was on his way for a photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in order to counter stories about the president holed up in his basement while riots raged outside. “Presidents who are struggling politically have a powerful incentive to wrap themselves in military garb precisely because the American public holds the military in high esteem. But, when the language of national security is stretched to provide cover for what is otherwise viewed as a nakedly partisan effort, it jeopardizes the very esteem for the military on which the administration relies,” they write.

  • U.S. Accuses Foreign Actors of Inflaming Tensions over Floyd Killing

    U.S. adversaries are starting to weaponize protests that have gripped parts of the country “to sow divisiveness and discord,” according to top law enforcement officials who refused to share additional details. The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI allege that unnamed countries are actively manipulating information to make the situation in the United States worse.

  • German, Swedish, Finnish Neo-Nazis Receive Military Training at Russian Camps

    Militant far-right extremists from Germany, Sweden, and Finland are receiving combat training in Russia. The training camps are run by the right-wing extremist Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), which, in April, was designated by the United States as a terrorist organization – the first white supremacist group to be so designated. Russia deployed the foreign nationals to Russian militias operating in eastern Ukraine. Sources in German intelligence said they were worried that when the Germans come home from their stint in Ukraine, they would add military know-how and experience to the rising tide of far-right terrorism in Germany.

  • The Future Bioweapons Threat: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

    Experts discussing the lessons of the coronavirus epidemic for preparations for a bioweapon attack, are worried that the failures to detect, mitigate, and respond to COVID-19 may make a future biological weapon attack more likely. These experts agree that the U.S. has a long way to go in addressing biological threats from natural and man-made sources. Further, the U.S. needs to adapt to new realities – a time where citizens’ trust of government is significantly lower, where citizens actively protest experts and their recommendations, and where misinformation is one tap on a smartphone away.