• New bill to help protect security of U.S. elections

    On Friday, four members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) introduced the Secure Elections Act, which would provide local communities and state governments with the resources needed to strengthen election systems against cyberattacks. “Hostile foreign actors have attempted and will continue to attempt to undermine the fundamentals of our democracy by attacking our electoral process,” said Representative Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina), one of the bill’s sponsors. “It is our responsibility to take every precaution necessary to safeguard our elections and ensure no vote count is ever interfered with.

  • Violence in U.S. cities: Mixed, but optimistic, picture

    Violence has fallen in nearly all major U.S. cities since 1991, but recent fluctuations in violence in selected cities point to temporary disruptions in this 17-year decline. “American cities are much safer than they were in the early 1990s,” says one researcher. “While violence rose in many cities from 2014 to 2017, the most recent data indicate that, overall, cities have turned a corner and this recent rise in violence may have come to an end.”

  • Maria Butina's well-connected money contact highlights the breadth of her support network

    In an exclusive reports, the Daily Beast reports that suspected Russian spy Maria Butina had a point of contact for the cash she was getting from Russian oligarch Konstantin Nikolaev, and that man is a public relations professional with some interesting and wide-ranging connections.

  • Holding law-enforcement accountable for electronic surveillance

    When the FBI filed a court order in 2016 commanding Apple to unlock the iPhone of one of the shooters in a terrorist attack in San Bernandino, California, the news made headlines across the globe. Yet every day there are tens of thousands of court orders asking tech companies to turn over Americans’ private data. Many of these orders never see the light of day, leaving a whole privacy-sensitive aspect of government power immune to judicial oversight and lacking in public accountability. MIT researchers have proposed a new cryptographic system, using cryptography on a public log of wiretap requests, which encourages government transparency.

  • EU develops legislation to tackle online terrorism-promoting content

    The EU is planning to take legal measures to control online content which supports and promotes terrorism. The EU Security Commissioner, Julian King, said voluntary agreements, which are currently in place, had not provided European citizens enough protection against exposure to terrorist-promoting content.

  • U.S. imposing new sanctions on Russia for spy poisoning in U.K.

    The State Department says it will be implementing new sanctions on Russia as punishment for the March 2018 poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on British soil. The new sanctions, which will go into effect on 22 August, target export licenses of sensitive U.S. technologies and industrial equipment, such as electronics, calibration equipment, and gas turbine engines. Russia will also be given 90 days to comply with other demands, including allowing international inspectors into the country to ensure that no chemical or biological weapons exist there. If Moscow does not comply with the demands, a second round of sanctions could further downgrade diplomatic relations with Russia, or even restrict flights by Russian air carrier Aeroflot.

  • We researched Russian trolls and figured out exactly how they neutralize certain news

    Russian “troll factories” have been making headlines for some time. First, as the Kremlin’s digital guardians in the Russian blogosphere. Then, as subversive cyber-squads meddling with U.S. elections. A few statistical analyses of large samples of trolling posts also show that institutionalized political trolling and the use of bots have become a consolidated practice that significantly affect the online public sphere. What has been shrouded in mystery so far, however, is how institutionalized, industrialized political trolling works on a daily basis. We have also lacked a proper understanding of how it affects the state’s relations with society generally, and security processes in particular.

  • Britain “ready to ask” Russia to extradite suspects in Skripal poisonings

    Britain is preparing to ask Russia to extradite two men it suspects carried out the March 2018 nerve-agent attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy in the city of Salisbury. Russia will likely reject the request. In 2006, on Putin’s orders, former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was killed in London by two FSB (the KGB’s successor organization) agents, who put the radioactive substance polonium in his tea. In 2007 Putin rejected a British extradition request for the two operatives. The same year, one of the two operatives, Andrei Lugovoi, was elected a member of the Duma – the Russian parliament – as a member of United Russia, the Putin-led party. In 2015 Putin awarded him a state medal “for services to the motherland.”

  • Maryland lawmakers question Russian investment in election technology

    Two lawmakers, Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) have sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin asking that he instruct the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.(CFIUS), which he chairs, to review a Russian oligarch’s financial stake in ByteGrid, a web hosting company which hosts much of Maryland’s election systems. “ByteGrid hosts Maryland’s voter registration system, candidacy and election management system, online ballot delivery system, and unofficial election night results website. Access to these systems could provide a foreign person with ties to a foreign government with information that could be used for intelligence or other purposes adverse to U.S. interests,” the two senators write.

  • Terrorist violence decreases worldwide in 2017, but remains historically high

    With 10,900 terrorist attacks killing more than 26,400 people in 2017, the numbers of terrorist attacks and deaths worldwide have declined for the third consecutive year, according to new data released last week. Despite recent decreases in terrorist violence, the number of attacks in 2017 is 28 percent higher than in 2012, and deaths 71 percent higher. Terrorist violence peaked in 2014 at nearly 17,000 attacks and more than 45,000 total deaths.

  • Bin Laden’s mother says al-Qaeda leader was “brainwashed”

    The mother of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has said in her first interview with Western media that her infamous son was “brainwashed” into a life of extremism. She appeared to blame Abdullah Azzam, a Muslim Brotherhood member who became bin Laden’s spiritual adviser at the university. The bin Laden family confirmed that Hamza bin Laden, the son of the late al-Qaeda leader, has married the daughter of Mohammad Atta, the lead hijacker in the 9/11 terror attacks.

  • A Mueller-like criminal investigation into Russia’s meddling in U.K. politics needed: MP

    British lawmaker calls for launching a criminal investigation in the U.K., modelled after the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the United States, to explore the reach and extent of Russia’s efforts to interfere in British democracy. Damian Collins, a Conservative MP, said that only a police investigation, with the power to seize documents and subpoena witnesses, could ascertain the scope of any Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to influence the 2016 referendum over Britain’s membership in the EU. Such an investigation, he said, would also ensure that future elections were protected from attack by foreign powers.

  • Suspected spy socialized with Trump campaign advisor

    J. D. Gordon served for six months as the Trump campaign’s director of national security before leaving in August 2016. In November, after Trump was elected, Gordon was offered a role in the nascent Trump transition effort. Email show that suspected Russian agent Maria Butina communicated during the last few months of the 2016 presidential campaign and socialized in person on a couple of occasions. Noting that Butina networked extensively, Gordon said: “I wonder which prominent Republican political figures she hasn’t come across?”

  • Blocked from distributing plans for 3D-printed guns, "crypto-anarchist" is still in the DIY gun business

    Cody Wilson’s group Defense Distributed is known for attempting to upload the digital blueprints for 3D-printed guns. But he also helps customers make unregistered, unserialized conventional firearms, from Glocks to AR-15s.

  • New FDA initiative to reduce overuse of antibiotics in animals met with skepticism

    Each year more than 2 million Americans suffer infections from bacteria that cannot be treated by one or more antibiotics—and at least 23,000 die. Approximately 70 percent of all medically important antibiotics in the United States are sold for use in food-producing animals. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced last week that the agency will soon be implementing a 5-year blueprint to advance antimicrobial stewardship in veterinary settings. The FDA wants to further its efforts to reduce the overuse of antimicrobial drugs and combat the rising threat of antimicrobial resistance. Critics charge the new FDA’s initiative is too timid.