• DOJ: Deliberately Spreading COVID-19 to Be Prosecuted as Domestic Terrorism

    As panic and fear spread with the COVID-19 pandemic, stupid, or malicious, acts may soon be considered criminal offenses and subject to terrorism laws. DOJ has circulated a memo to law enforcement and federal prosecutors saying that deliberate acts to spread the coronavirus could be prosecuted under federal terrorism laws given that the virus is a biological agent.

  • Russia Using COVID-19 Disinformation, Conspiracy Theories to “Subvert the West”: Repot

    Russian President Vladimir Putin and his administration are using the coronavirus crisis to spread conspiracy theories in a bid to “subvert the West” and create a new world order, a new report has charges. The report says that Russia was propagating disinformation and conspiracy theories via social media accounts, fake news outlets, state-controlled media, pseudo-scientists and Russians living in the West.

  • UN Report Highlights Threat of Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism

    The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) has just issued a new report on the dangers posed by the rise of right-wing terrorism. The report cites experts who have identified extreme right-wing terrorism as a unique form of political violence with often fluid boundaries between hate crime and organized terrorism. It is a not a coherent or easily defined movement, but rather a shifting, complex and overlapping milieu of individuals, groups and movements (online and offline) espousing different but related ideologies, often linked by hatred and racism toward minorities, xenophobia, islamophobia or anti-Semitism.

  • Threats to Democracy Spread with the Virus, We Must Keep Both in Check

    As the coronavirus pandemic has spread, governments have responded predictably to the threat by agitating for increased authority. Melissa Hooper writes that the worst of these, the Hungarian proposal, was easily enacted into law on Tuesday, “setting a terrible precedent for other countries, in the West and around the world.” She adds: “Under the legislation, Hungary’s parliament will be disempowered in favor of rule by executive decree. The parliament now loses the ability to check the power of Viktor Orbán and his executive branch. Since the Fidesz government has hamstrung its court system, already limiting judicial oversight, this would remove the last obstacle to a dictatorial government. This is especially true since expanded executive power will be granted indefinitely: The bill has no sunset clause.”

  • Some Mobile Phone Apps Contain Hidden Secrets Compromising Users’ Private Data

    Researchers have discovered that a large number of cell phone applications contain hardcoded secrets allowing others to access private data or block content provided by users. The study’s findings: that the apps on mobile phones might have hidden or harmful behaviors about which end users know little to nothing.

  • The U.S. Needs to Know What Went Wrong

    When America has recovered from the coronavirus crisis and people are back to work, Congress should consider a 9/11-style independent commission to examine why the United States was so unprepared for the pandemic.

  • Atlantic Council Launches Future of DHS Project

    The Atlantic Council announced the other day that the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s launch of the Future of DHS Project: Protecting the Homeland from Coronavirus, Threats to Democracy, and Other Future Threats. The project will rely on senior experts in homeland and national security to recommend major reforms for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

  • How to Think about the Right to Privacy and Using Location Data to Fight COVID-19

    If asked to give up their privacy in the interests of stemming the coronavirus, many Americans may be inclined to say yes. Jay Stanley writes, however, that the answer requires more nuance, both because there are serious tradeoffs to be made, and because sacrificing privacy may actually backfire.

  • Why Does Russia Use Disinformation?

    There is much discussion about Russian disinformation in today’s popular discourse, but the conversation about why Russia uses disinformation usually does not get beyond general notions of Moscow wanting to “divide us” or “muddy the waters.” Kasey Stricklin writes that this is dangerous and incorrect thinking, because, in fact, “Russia has a number of strategic goals that it hopes to advance through its use of disinformation, including restoring Russia to great power status, preserving its sphere of influence, protecting the Putin regime and enhancing its military effectiveness.

  • How to Keep the New Coronavirus from Being Used as a Terrorist Weapon

    The possibility that extremist groups may attempt to deliberately spread SARS-CoV-2—the virus causing the current pandemic—should not be ignored. In fact, one of the primary limiting factors to such an attack—recruiting humans willing to infect themselves—does not apply in this case; potential perpetrators would come from the ranks of those already infected with the virus. We are faced, therefore, with a genuinely challenging task: preemption.

  • U.S. COVID-19 Cases Surge Past 82,000, Highest Total in World

    Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, reached 82,404 yesterday in the United States, giving it the most cases in the world. And yesterday was the most active day so far in the country, with 14,042 new cases reported, and the national death toll reaching 1,069 fatalities. The numbers came on day 10 of the White House’s “15 days to slow the spread campaign,” a nationwide effort at social distancing measures that has been implemented in a patchwork fashion across the 50 states.

  • U.S. Announces Narcoterrorism Charges Against Venezuela's Maduro

    The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced narcoterrorism charges against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other top officials, accusing them of collaborating with a leftist Colombian guerrilla group to traffic cocaine to the United States.

  • FBI Foils Neo‑Nazi Plot to Blow Up Missouri Hospital

    FBI agents on Tuesday shot and killed a white supremacist in Belton, Missouri while trying to arrest him for plotting to use a car bomb to blow up a local hospital overflowing with patients. Timothy Wilson, 36, was initially considering blowing up a mosque or a synagogue, but with the onset of the epidemic, he reasoned that blowing up a hospital would allow him to kill more people.

  • Germany Bans Far-Right “Reichsbürger” Movement

    German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer last week banned a faction of the far-right “Reichsbürger” movement, also known as the Imperial Citizens’ Movement, a group which combines far-right nationalism and yearning to 1930s Germany. The movement rejects the legitimacy and authority of the modern-day German government, because all post-Second World German governments were not interested in reclaiming the territories Germany gained under Adolf Hitler – what the movement calls the German Empire — but was forced to relinquish when the Allies defeated Nazi Germany.

  • Cyber Attacks against Hospitals and the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Strong are International Law Protections?

    In a situation where most, if not all of us are potential patients, few government-provided services are more important than the efficient delivery of health care. The strain on hospitals around the world is rapidly growing, to which states have responded by mobilizing military medical units, nationalizing private medical facilities, and building emergency hospitals. All of this underlines the urgent need to understand what protections the law offers against attacks – including cyberattacks – on medical facilities.