• Foreign countries’ Efforts to Influence U.S. Public's Understanding of COVID-19

    The ongoing worldwide coronavirus pandemic hasn’t been immune to the problem of rampant disinformation—intentionally misleading information or propaganda. The European External Action Service of the European Union recently stated that “despite their potentially grave impact on public health, official and state-backed sources from various governments, including Russia and—to a lesser extent—China, have continued to widely target conspiracy narratives and disinformation both at public audiences in the EU and the wider neighborhood.” Thomas Rid, author of Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, discuss how disinformation has impacted the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Anti-Semitic Incidents in U.S. Hit All-Time High in 2019

    The American Jewish community experienced the highest level of anti-Semitic incidents last year since tracking began in 1979, with more than 2,100 acts of assault, vandalism and harassment reported across the United States. The record number of incidents came as the Jewish community grappled with violent and lethal anti-Semitic attacks against communities in Poway, Jersey City and Monsey, and a spree of violent assaults in Brooklyn.

  • Students Take Witness Stand in Virtual Courtroom

    USC students took the stand as part of the capstone project in their advanced digital forensics class at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. In years past, students in the class traveled to a real courtroom, but this year the COVID-19 pandemic pushed them to a digital venue: a videoconference on Zoom.

  • Virus Conspiracists Elevate a New Champion

    A discredited scientist who blames her professional downfall on Dr. Anthony Fauci, is the new hero of the anti-vaccinators, the conspiracy group QAnon, activists from the Reopen America movement, and some right-wing media. They support her claims that Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, and other “establishment” figures inflated the danger of the coronavirus in order to make money by selling more vaccines.

  • All’s Clear for Deep Fakes: Think Again

    A few analysts are claiming that the bark of deepfakes is worse than their bite. Robert Chesney, Danielle Citron, and Hany Farid disagree, writing that “Now is not the time to sit back and claim victory over deep fakes or to suggest that concern about them is overblown. The coronavirus has underscored the deadly impact of believable falsehoods, and the election of a lifetime looms ahead. More than ever we need to trust what our eyes and ears are telling us.”

  • Software Flaws Often Reported First on Social Media Networks

    Software vulnerabilities are more likely to be discussed on social media before they’re revealed on a government reporting site, a practice that could pose a national security threat. At the same time, those vulnerabilities present a cybersecurity opportunity for governments to more closely monitor social media discussions about software gaps.

  • Examining Australia’s COVIDSafe Tracing App

    The Australian government releases an App called COVIDSafe to help in tracing contacts of those infected with the coronavirus. As is the case with similar apps in other countries, COVIDSafe has raised privacy concerns, especially about the potential of abuse by government agencies and hacking by cybercriminals. The University of Sydney academics from the disciplines of cybersecurity, media, law and health comment on COVIDSafe, its pros and cons.

  • The Deepfake iPhone Apps Are Here

    On Sunday, Lawfare’s Jacob Schulz, like many Americans, woke up to see that President Donald Trump had retweeted a misleading gif of his presumptive Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Schultz notes that Trump’s dissemination of a deepfake video was met with alarm. David Frum, for example, noted the significance of the president’s retweet: “Instead of sharing deceptively edited video—as Trump and his allies have often done before—yesterday Trump for the first time shared a video that had been outrightly fabricated.” Schulz adds: “Soon, people will be able to use their iPhones not just to turn themselves into mildly convincing late-night comedians but to convincingly turn Joe Biden into whatever they want. When that happens, in the now-infamous words of Samantha Cole of Motherboard, ‘We are truly f****d.’”

  • How Far-Right Extremists Are Exploiting Pandemic

    Far-right extremists have been linked to bombing plots tied to the coronavirus pandemic, spotted holding anti-Semitic signs at protests outside state capitols, and seen trafficking on fringe platforms in all manner of conspiracy theories about the virus. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage millions of lives and paralyze much of the economy, these extremists in the United States are seizing every opportunity to reach out to thousands of potential followers and expand their ranks.

  • Protecting Oneself from the Latest Internet Sex Crime: Sextortion

    What makes sextortion — the use of intimate images or videos that have been captured to then extort compliance from a victim — different from any other crime is the threat to release. A perpetrator could say, ‘I have these images of you and will publish them unless you…’ to get more images or even in exchange for money.” But in many cases of sextortion, perpetrators don’t actually possess the images or videos they’re using as leverage. Instead, offenders manipulate victim behavior by tapping into the fear of not knowing whether the threat is real.

  • Chinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say

    U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives have pushed false messages across social media platforms, aiming to amplify and exaggerate the actions of the U.S. government in order to sow panic, increase confusion, and deepen political polarization in the already-on-edge American public. The amplification techniques are alarming to U.S. officials because the disinformation showed up as texts on many Americans’ cellphones, a tactic that several of the officials said they had not seen before. American officials said the operatives had adopted some of the techniques mastered by Russia-backed trolls. That has spurred agencies to look at new ways in which China, Russia and other nations are using a range of platforms to spread disinformation during the pandemic. President Trump himself has shown little concern about China’s actions, dismissing worries over China’s use of disinformation when asked about it on Fox News. “They do it and we do it and we call them different things,” he said. “Every country does it.”

  • Can Twitter Anticipate Attacks against Asians and Asian Americans?

    Computer scientists are gleaning a wealth of information from Twitter users to document the social impacts of the novel coronavirus pandemic. For example, a new study finds that the increased use of terms like “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus” on the social media platform correlated strongly with a rise in media reports of attacks on Chinese and other Asians.

     

  • Twenty-Five Years Later, Oklahoma City Bombing Inspires a New Generation of Extremists

    On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast destroyed the building, killing 168 men, women and children and injuring hundreds more. Twenty-five years later, the Oklahoma City bombing remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history.  McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, were not part of any large, well-funded terrorist organization; they were American extremists acting on their own. Today, their deadly legacy is one of the inspirations for a new and violent segment of the white supremacist movement.

  • The Coronavirus Contact Tracing App Won't Log Your Location, but It Will Reveal Who You Hang Out With

    The Australian federal government has announced plans to introduce a contact tracing mobile app to help curb COVID-19’s spread in Australia. Roba Abbas and Katina Michael write in The Conversation that rather than collecting location data directly from mobile operators, the proposed TraceTogether app will use Bluetooth technology to sense whether users who have voluntarily opted-in have come within nine metres of one another. Contact tracing apps generally store 14-21 days of interaction data between participating devices to help monitor the spread of a disease. The TraceTogether app has been available in Singapore since March 20, and its reception there may help shed light on how the new tech will fare in Australia.

  • Deepfakes 2.0: The New Era of “Truth Decay”

    Deepfake technology has exploded in the last few years. Deepfakes use artificial intelligence (AI) “to generate, alter or manipulate digital content in a manner that is not easily perceptible by humans.” The goal is to create digital video and audio that appears “real.” Brig. Gen. R. Patrick Huston and Lt. Col. M. Eric Bahm write that a picture used to be worth a thousand words – and a video worth a million – but deepfake technology means that “seeing” is no longer “believing.”  “From fake evidence to election interference, deepfakes threaten local and global stability,” they write.