• False Memories of Crime Appear Real When Retold to Others

    People are no better than chance at identifying when someone else is recounting a false or real memory of a crime, according to a new study.

  • U.S. Designates Russia-Based White Supremacist Group, Leaders as Terrorists

    The United States has designated the ultranationalist Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) along with three of its leaders as terrorists, marking the first time the classification has been applied to a white supremacist group. The decision comes after Trump signed an executive order in September 2019 that expanded sanctions for combating terrorism by allowing the terrorist designation to be applied to groups that provide training to terrorists.

  • New Report Outlines Tactics of Modern White-Supremacist Terrorism

    On Monday, as the U.S. Department of State, for the first time ever, designate a white supremacist group as a terrorist organization, a new report on white supremacist terrorism was released, analyzing the evolution of the threat presented by violent white supremacists. The report notes that, until Monday’s announcement of the Department of State’s decision, none of the 69 organizations designated by the U.S. Department of State as Foreign Terrorist Organizations is a white supremacist organization, despite the dramatic uptick in that threat.

  • 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.

  • Most Mass Shootings Occur Closest to Non-Trauma Hospitals

    In an analysis of 2019 mass shootings and hospital locations, researchers found that the closest hospital to more than 70 percent of mass shootings was a non-trauma center, where sudden, high casualty loads were more likely to overwhelm capacity and trauma-specific care options may have been limited. They also found that in more than half of mass shooting events, the nearest pediatric trauma center was more than 10 miles away.

  • 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.

  • Deal with Ransomware the Way Police Deal with Hostage Situations

    When faced with a ransomware attack, a person or company or government agency finds its digital data encrypted by an unknown person, and then gets a demand for a ransom. The two major ways people have so far responded – pay the ransom of hire a specialist to recover the data — are missing another option that we have identified in our cybersecurity policy studies. Police have a long history of successful crisis and hostage negotiation – experience that offers lessons that could be useful for people and organizations facing ransomware attacks.

  • Strengthening Cybersecurity in Sports Stadiums

    Someone pulled a fire alarm during the February 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 students and teachers. The alarm caused more students to move into the hallways and into harm’s way. “Hackers no longer use cyberattacks to cause cyber damage,” says an expert. Instead, “they are using these attacks to cause physical damage or put people in locations to maximize physical damage.” Sports venues, with tens of thousands of spectators, are especially vulnerable. To combat the cyber threat in sports, scientists built an assessment tool for team and stadium owners to fix vulnerabilities.

  • Body Armor for Women in Law Enforcement

    Law enforcement in the United States remains a male-dominated profession. According to recent reports, less than 13 percent of full-time officers are female. So, it stands to reason that the ballistic-resistant body armor worn by law enforcement officers in the field has traditionally been designed for the male build. As the number of women entering the field continues to rise, so too has the demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) that is designed for the female physique.

  • Right-Wing Extremists’ New Weapon

    The 9 October 2019 attack on a synagogue in Halle, in eastern Germany, highlights terrorists’ growing affinity for homemade firearms as a means for leaderless resistance, a decentralized strategy of guerrilla warfare popularized by Ku Klux Klan member Louis Beam. Eric Woods write that “This presents particular legal challenges to the United States, more so than other countries. The United States has an idiosyncratic approach to homemade production of firearms, rooted in its history as a frontier country where informal networks of artisan producers existed for decades before federal armories.”

  • Germany: 14 Soldiers, Defense Ministry Employees, Designated as Extremists

    The German Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) has classified 14 members of the armed forces as extremists in 2019. Eight soldiers were members of far-right extremist groups; four soldiers had ties with Islamist organizations; and two soldiers belonged to a violent anarchist movement which does not recognize the German state and its laws. The cases of more than 500 other soldiers and civilian employees of the Defense Ministry suspected of extremism are still being investigated. In the last three years, MAD has increasingly focused on combatting the spread of far-right extremism in the ranks of the Bundeswehr – especially in the ranks of elite units — in the wake of soldiers being found to have been involved in acts of terrorism against migrants.

  • 2019: Far-Right Extremists Killed 38 People in the U.S., More than All Other Murderous Extremists

    Right-wing extremists were responsible for the vast majority of extremist-related murders in the United States in 2019, with the El Paso shooting capping off a bloody decade during which the far right was responsible for 76 percent of all extremist-related murders. A new report found that of the 42 extremist-related murders in the U.S. last year, 38 were committed by individuals subscribing to various far-right ideologies, including white supremacy.

  • New Jersey: Homegrown Violent Extremists Greater Threat Than Foreign Terrorists

    New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) now regards white supremacist extremists as posing a threat which is equal or greater than that posed by terrorists inspired by Islamist fundamentalism (in both cases, homegrown violent extremists [HVEs] pose a far greater threat than foreign terrorists). “Homeland security and law enforcement professionals at all levels have taken notice of the rise in activity from white supremacist extremists,” NJOHSP says in an introduction to the annual Terrorism Threat Assessment issued by the office. “New Jersey is committed to protecting the diversity of culture and faith that shapes our great State. For that reason, NJOHSP increased the threat posed by white supremacist extremists from moderate to high in 2020, joining homegrown violent extremists as the most persistent hostile actors in New Jersey.”